Week 9 Essay: Opposites

For this weeks Essay I decided to try something new and do the Cartoon Essay option. I spent some time looking through the different cartoons and this one made me giggle when I read it, which is always a good thing to be able to draw emotions in such a quick time.

Yesbody Cartoon by Rick Detorie

When reading this cartoon, it took me back to the days of learning antonyms and synonyms. I just wanted to ad un- in front of every word to make it the opposite of a word. I always wanted to say that I was unsad. I still to this day do not understand why unsad is not a word. If you want to say the opposite of happy you could say sad or unhappy. But, if you want to say the opposite of sad you can only say happy. It made no sense to me as a kid learning the rules of opposites. I can definitely relate to the little kid in the picture. You have always been taught that yes is the opposite of no so it seems logical. I think that kids actually think more logically than adults sometimes.

I tried to follow the thought process of the boy and see if he was trying to say that a person had no body and the opposite would be that yes the person had a body. So this would be thinking in terms of describing physical characteristics of a person. You can also take it as looking at the word nobody as an adjective with a negative connotation. He is a nobody- not important, not exciting, a downer. And a yes body is the opposite- someone important, someone exciting, someone who says yes to adventure. Based on the expression of the boy in the images, I believe the second explanation is what the cartoonist was aiming for. In the nobody image the boy has a gloomy look on his face. In the yesbody image he is smiling.

This cartoon reminds me of the struggle learning all of the rules of the English language and of the pure creativity we have as children. We start thinking there is only up and down. Then they throw left and right at us. And then they expect us to think in diagonals and opposite angles. This cartoon made me laugh at remembering how simple it all used to be.