Assignment 2

Revisit the "red-tinted glasses" extended metaphor in Chapter 25 ('Kant').What's the meaning of it? (Hint: Consider what Sophie discovers about rationalists and empiricists along the way.) How do these questions of perspective apply to your own life? Use examples from the novel and your life to illustrate your understanding of the "red-tinted glasses"metaphor/experiment.

Albert Knox used the "red-tinted glasses" to show Sophie how each individual person has their own point of view and opinion on the world. She was asked to put on the red-tinted glasses, and when she did, everything seen from the glasses is red. By doing this experiment it can be explained to her how each individual has a limited point of view on the world. “The glasses limit the way you perceive reality,”, which means how each person decides to view the world by their own way, and how each person is different because of the limited knowledge each person has on the world. And due to this limit, some people's perspective on the world may be wrong, eg the red world created by the red-tinted glasses. This brings us to the next point: How each person sees the world differently. It is by the way s/he was brought up, the way s/he experienced the world and the surrounding and environment where s/he grew up in that affects how a person looks at the world.

The red-tinted glasses is also an example of both rationalism and empiricism. Rationalists believe knowledge comes from out mind (reasons) , while empiricists believe knowledge comes from our senses and our experiences of the world (what we see). Both affects the way a person look at the world, and sometimes even help over come the redness (wrong knowledge) of the red-tined glasses. Also by using the red tinted glasses, it shows that both groups are has limited knowledge by their own reasoning and boundaries. By using the red-tinted glasses, the effect of redness on a person can be clearly seen and be understood by Sophie and the reader.