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 uses this experiment as a form of portraying how insighful and how sophie would percieve the world, with different perspectives. Hence, the way in which any normal person would have interpreted this, is that everything seen through these glasses would be red, however nothing would loose its identitiy. However, a more deep person, and one with the ability to wonder (i.e. Sophie) would percieve it with many different identitities, and with diverse explanations as to why. The world is filtered through what is taken for granted, or just authoritively pushed in our sub-conscious. The world is filtered through our eyes, may the filter have different degrees , or types of filtering ( ego, conception, loss of questioning authorty etc).
The glasses symbolise metaphorically of how our interpretation of all is filtered, and perhaps loosing some truth. Sometmes we believe everything that we see, but eyes have an uncanny way of decepting or diverting our minds. These things dont loose identity, but it is distorted with the many other things that may shape realism. For example, when i watch television, my mind plays off the reactions of actors, when they feel sad, and things such as music, dark inuendos, camera shots all bias my mind to believing what they want me to believe. I loose the ability to have an identity, to believe what i want to believe with simple facts, and not bias. I believe that this is Sophies' way of communicating this. Is this loss of self in our control? can we manage it?