The Censors - Response Paper 4 - Grade: A PDF

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Detailed response paper about Luisa Valenzuela's "The Censors" story....

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Jessica Salgado The Censors Luisa Valenzuela wrote a piece called “The Censors” which is about a man named Juan who desperately wants to send letters to his lover, Mariana but can’t because of the inappropriate details that lie within his writing. During the 1970s, the government had censorship factories where letters and packages were opened to see if they had any secret messages in them. Juan’s attempt to send his letter forces him to get a job at the factory and work his way up to obtain the position that reads through the letter, in hopes that he would find his own and send it through. Over time he became very fixated with his job that when he finally read his own letter, he did not let it go through because of its inappropriateness. The government had succeeded once Juan betrayed himself, “When his own letter to Mariana reached his hands. Naturally he condemned it without remorse. And just as naturally he couldn't prevent them from executing him at dawn, one more victim of his devotion to work” this quote showed that Juan had become brainwashed (Valenzuela). In the end, he gets executed from the job due to the contents he wrote in the letter. The main theme of the story is that you can’t trust anyone, even yourself sometimes because if you aren’t cautious, it can get you into trouble. The main symbol that was used in the text was the letters because they represented treason. People are trying to convey hidden messages to overthrow the government which shows that the conditions the people were living in were harming them psychologically. Another symbol that was incorporated was the censors, which obviously represented the government. The censorship in the story included the reading of personal letters in order to gain control of the flow of information and be alert of any acts of rebellion of the people. This story correlates to today’s world because high-risk people and even normal civilians are being monitored through cell phones, computers, and other digital databases. This creates a sense of distrust towards the government and the people around us. Valenzuela is trying to create change by shedding a light on people’s rights that are being controlled by the government through censorship. Her writing style is unique and offers an experimental style that questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective and she also centers her work around the power of language, especially when used to gain freedom for the oppressed.

Bibliography Valenzuela, Luisa. The Censors. 1976, https://www.pngisd.org/cms/lib/TX02205731/Centricity/Domain/2205/The%20Censors% 20by%20Luisa%20Valenzuela%20published%20in%201984.pdf....