Answer to Question #191159 in English for Emmanuel Egbuagha

Question

Write a paragraph in which you explain the irony of the story's title "Man Lands on the Moon" by Sindiwe Magona.

Answer 1

The irony of the story "Man Lands on the Moon" is that it circulates in many successful people who made it to reach to the moon in the recent past.

For the following six lunar journeys where a total of twelve astronauts have set their feet on the Moon, not one of them were women or non-binary individuals. The naming of the missions is already a telling choice; Apollo in Greek mythology is the male deity of the sun, light, knowledge, order and agriculture, along many other things, but essentially the epitome of physical superioirity and moral virtue. Aldrin and Armstrong, the two pivotal figures of the Apollo 11 mission, carry this legacy with them together with the weight of their cultural backgrounds. The portait taken by Armstrong is a complex one, both visually and conceptually. It was exposed with a specially made Hasselblad camera, which, together with the photographer and the rest of the technical equipment, are all reflected on the surface of Aldrin's space helmet. The image has been composed so that the scale of the Moon in relation to the size of the portrayed person is distorted, as the central figure is still occupying most of the perceived space. The horizon behind both astronauts merge into a seemless line, while their non-identifiable faces appear to be looking at each other. They are aliens on a celestial body that has not encountered human life before. They launched a history, that was already conceived with a specific agenda: colonizing the Moon. Our planet's only Moon. However, as oppose to previous explorers, like Christopher Columbus, the Apollo 11 crew already had an idea of what they would find on this uninhabited land.