Dec. 16

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/dowd-a-lost-civilization.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0 One of my favorite lines in this piece is right at the very end. "But history will no doubt record that withering Republicans were finally wiped from the earth in 2016 when the relentless (and rested) Conquistadora Hillary marched in, General Bill on a horse behind her, and finished them off." It's very amusing the way that MAUREEN DOWD relates the fall of ancient civilizations to the GOP. Not subtle in the least but still funny. And the imagery with "Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it." is hilarious. You can imagine people sitting in their hover chairs watching this on floating screens with wonder of these people. Details such as the opening, with the daughter describing eating corn like the Aztecs, really ties the whole piece together.

Dec. 9

1970 Also. Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another. In the book A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray, the main character has a necklace in the shape of a crescent eye that was given to her by her mother. In the opening chapters of the book, she and several other girls use the necklace to slice open their thumbs and become blood sisters. They didn't know that the crescent eye was a symbol of an ancient order and that they were mimicking the formation centuries later. The eye is also used as a key in later books, opening doors to other realms, as well as sealing them. The fact that the necklace was sort of like a key when it came to locking the girls together as blood sisters as well as locking the door to the realm was a very clever idea.

Analysis of Death of a Salesman

First and foremost, Willy Loman is an ass. He's been an ass the entire play, and no matter how many interviews and analysis of the book we read, he will always be an ass. The plot is there is a salesman (Willy) who is an ass and takes advantage of everyone around him, insulting them and belittling them and making their lives miserable. He cheats on his wife Linda, insults his only friend Charley, and hates his sons. He is a lying little turd who wants to get the rewards of life without doing the hard work, and when his dreams collapses he lies to himself about it. His mind is failing, and he relives past events, especially concerning his douche bag brother Ben. Willy encourages his sons to do bad things and then makes excuses for them when they fail. His dream for his family is corrupt and harmful, to himself and his family. The one redeeming act that Willy performs from the entire play is to kill himself, which gives his family 20,000 dollars. He could have saved his family the pain though by taking the job that Charley offered him. Willy Loman had far to much pride and it was eventually his undoing.

Review 12/2

For the past couple of weeks we've been talking and talking and talking about Death of a Salesman, and I am so happy that we've moved on to Hamlet! Reading Shakespearean literature is refreshing after the american plays. Willy was an ass, and so is Hamlet, but they're asses in different ways and this in itself is enjoyable, as is reading with the class. I find that I really understand the concepts better when they're being read. And the tone word exersizes are very fun. I love the candy :)

11-18

http://ideas.time.com/2012/11/14/extreme-candy-the-18-chocolate-bar/ This is not necessarily a controversial article, but was fun to read non the less. The use of rhetoric questions made this article interesting, as well as giving the impression that the author actually was thinking about what the reader was thinking. And the words he uses make you laugh. "A small number of chocolate geeks, maybe; a smattering of gastrocrats." No one ever uses words like that in everyday language, and it makes the article seem much more amusing and interesting. With each aspect of the chocolate bar being examined, from the name to the texture to the stories behind it, this article leaves little wanting from the reader.

Prompt 11-11

2002. Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary. In the book Beauty Queens by Libba Bray, one of the main characters is Taylor Hawkins. The representative from Texas, she is the very model of a conservitive modern southern bell. She prays to Jesus, never swears, owns guns, is blonde, and is, in other words, perfect. This causes us to naturally want to dislike her, and her attitude does nothing to make her endearing. She is controlling, and very against any swearing or "using the lord's name in vain". It's only when you reach the end and realize that the reasons that she acted like this is because her mother left, it's then you feel sympathy. When you look back at the book and how she was acting, it was all a way to try to hold her world together, clutching the fragments that had shattered when her mother left her when she was 6. Taylor is not a loveable character though. Even if you want to hug her and comfort her, you still do not want to be her friend.

The American Dream Review

The play begins with Mommy and Daddy sitting in a living room discussing how "they" are late. Then Mommy goes on a long winded antidote that really highlights how inane the society we're living in functions. Enter Grandma: the most honest and truthful character of the play. She is carrying boxes, and appears very chrotchety and irritable. When grandma leaves for a moment Mommy talks about how nicely grandma wrapped those boxes, equating love to material value. This is a symbol of the new American dream. Mommy then goes on to talk about how she would never open the wrapped boxes of lunch Grandma made and instead ate the other cildren's lunches. This is one of the views of Mommy that gives us good insight into her personality and mind. It shows how shallow she was and how eager she was to take advantage of other people. As she said "I used to eat all the other little boys' and girls' food at school, because they thought my lunch box was empty" (Pg66). Then Mommy goes on to talk about how she has a right to live off of Daddy because she had sex with him, and how lucky he was to have her and so was Grandma. Grandma comes back in and said some rather rude things and gets yelled at, but finally "they" arrive. It turns out that "they" are a woman named Mrs. Barker. The fact that a single person is used in a plural form represents that Mrs. Barker stands for other people as well as herself. They make polite chitchat, and mock the societal norms of "make yourself at home". As Mommy says:"Are you sure you're comfortable? Won't you take off your dress?" (Pg79). Then comes and emasculating incident with Daddy, where Mommy humiliates him and causes him some stress. They make idle chitchat for a while, then Mrs. Barker starts to feel faint and Mommy and Daddy go looking for water and other bits. Grandma snickers when they say they can't find anything, and we are under the impression that Mommy and Daddy are unintelligent and cannot even find water. Once Grandma and Mrs. Barker are alone Grandma tells Mrs. Barker about a "bumble" Mommy and Daddy had, and how they punished it by destorying it's body parts one by one. Mrs. Barkers agress with the punishments, acting like it was quite natural and normal for a child's eyes to be gouged out because it prefer it's father to it's mother. Mrs. Barker then goes in search of Mommy and Daddy to get them a new "bumble", upon which a handsome young man enters the apartment. Grandma is told about how he had an indentical twin, and that it was destroyed in the same way the previous "bumble" was destpryed. It becomes apparent that Grandma symbolizes the old american dream, while the young man is the new. Grandma says so herself, when Mommy asks who's there she says "The American Dream! The American Dream! Damnit!" (Pg 109). Soon after, Grandma leaves, only to "reaapear" unknown to most of the other characters. The American Dream boy is adopted by Mommy and Daddy, and in the end only the New American Dream can see the old one. My apoligies for the spelling and aburptnuss of this piece. I wrote it on my ipod because my computer crashed an hour and a half before this was due.

October 21st Cloze reading

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/opinion/sunday/kristof-cuddle-your-kid.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 The topic of this article is about the biological changes that occure when a child is nurtured by their parents as oppused to when they are not. One of the focal points of this piece is that they experimented on rats first. "Meaney’s team dissected adult rats and found that licking led to differences in brain anatomy, so that rats that had been licked more were better able to control stress responses." The fact that they talked about the rats first and the humans second is a way of showing how civilized and evolved we are. And also that we remmeber the "important" part better. The imagery in this piece is used to evoke emotions within us and connects the humans and the rats. "So, could the human version of licking and grooming — hugging and kissing babies, and reading to them — fortify our offspring and even our society as well?" When you think about a rat licking her babies, as a human would bathe their child and brush their hair, you get a feeling of happniness and contentment. This causes us to not view rats as nasty creatures not in any way similar to humans, but in a way that makes us all seem closer and the study more plausible. The title itself is a great example of diction. "Cuddle Your Kid!" Sounds whimsical and compelling, so it draws you in. Its actually a rather upbeat piece, and that is a wonderful way to read. The fact that it also talks about the nature of our country is more interesting.

Response to Course Materials Oct. 7

The main thing that has really stuck with me is the presentations on Mythology and Biblical stories. It really helps that we got a flash lesson on all these different stories that so often appear in the literature we read. And not only what we read in class, but the stories we read in cheap paperbacks and in TV scripts and the movies we love to watch over and over. Also the end of the class period vocab games are helpful too. The random two minutes of quick studying are a nice learning experience that doesn't get incredibly monotonous. Reading the play out loud is a tried and tested method of getting through plays that really does help people absorb things better. It's always one of my favorite things to watch my classmates laugh and sigh as we listen to words come to life, and it's so much easier than having to make them come to life in my head.

Scaring Voters in the Middles- September 23rd

First, I apologize for not posting yesterday. There is no excuse for my forgetfulness, and I am sorry for any inconvienience that I may have caused you. That said, I have written a post and would love to have your feedback on it. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-scaring-the-voters-in-the-middle.html?ref=abortion&_r=moc.semityn.www Scaring the Voters in the Middle The details in this piece are stunning. It is a political piece, and a contraversial one, and the details that they chose to incluede do try to persuade the reader to come to their side. The author leaves out Obama's stance on abortion and instead focus soley on the opinions of the Republican party, painting them in a shady light. "Mr. Romney, if you don’t know your own position on abortion, how are we supposed to understand it?". It's a running joke that Romney is a horrible flip-flopper, and this quote is meant to invoke feelings of dark amusment. "When teenagers in places like Darfur, Congo or Somalia survive gang rapes, aid organizations cannot use American funds to provide an abortion." The imagery in this is that of a young woman in a third world country, beaten and horribly abused, is presented with the news that she is carrying the child of one of the men who raped and tortured her. And there is nothing she can do about it. She'll have to have a constant reminder of what happened to her. It's a very dark and deep and horrifying scene to imagine, and even more so when we know that there might have been something we could have done to help her. The author is skilled in the way they paint this picture to stir our emotions. Its the last line of the piece that really puts the icing on the cake though. "Some Americans don’t even seem to have had any sex education by the time they’re elected to Congress. Like Todd Akin." Obviously, Akin must have had some sex education in his lifetime, but in the author's opinion he isn't acting like he has had any at all. They wrote like this is all ridiculous, and by the time I was finished, I agreed with them. This is an excellent persuasive article.

September 16th

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is about a plane full of beauty pageant contestants who crash land on a deserted island and need to learn how to survive. This is a comedy that is a satire of women in today's society. The way that we keep trying to say that women are equal and that we accept everyone that is really just a lie. There is so much in there about racism and stereotypes and how in America's culture today there are so many double standards and false meanings. When the girls first crash, many of them die, as well as all the adults. But they make jokes, like when one girl starts to pray "dear lord Jesus, thank you for getting us all here safely" when another girl shrieks that one of the others just died, and the first girl says "well, most of us here safely." The thing is, a lot of people would react like that. There wasn't that much mourning or anything, they just sort of went from being in shock to moving on. We treat our opponents (the pageant contestants) almost as harshly as we do our worst enemies. There is also "commercial breaks" throughout the book, and while they are obviously there for comedic relief it also does poke fun and seriously does turn over the leaf that we've been using to try and cover up the way America feels about women. One commercial is about Lady 'stache off, and the daughter says "will it hurt?" and the mother says "of course it will, pain is beauty". Women pluck, wax, cut, trim, paint, polish, buff, grind, file, and inject ourselves to appear beautiful, so it's no wonder that this is a common saying. A lot of the story is sex focused, especially on the double standards between men and women. It's incredibly sexist and awful that a man who sleeps with a lot of women is a stud, while a woman who sleeps with a lot of men is a slut. Women lack the sexual empowerment that society bestows upon men. We also lack the freedom to speak out with anger without being accused of being hormonal. So much of this book speaks in humorous words but with a serious undertone. This is an excellent coming of age story that every young woman should read.

Course Response #1 (September 9)

The main thing that suck with me this week is how very very many vocabulary words there are. I still don't understand why we have to learn all of them, except to sound conceited and snooty. I'd far prefer to say "surprise ending" than "paraprosdokian". It's much simpler and quicker to say, as well as far more understandable. But I guess teachers can't let everything be all fun and games, and we actually have to learn something. It was really helpful to play the games, even though there were so many words that it was difficult to process them all at once. It would have been better to do it in smaller groups as well, because quieter people like myself couldn't get a word in edgewise when it came to trying to answer.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Before I set out with writing, I'm going to warn the reader that The Nuts and Bolts of College writing has been one of the most difficult and tedious readings that I've ever had to struggle through. That said, this is my essay: Me Talk Pretty One Day has been a wonderful story to read, and I love the voice of the main character. In the beginning, when the teacher brow beats the entire class, I can feel his exasperation and slight terror for what she will say when she gets to him. And when she says "Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section" I had flashbacks to my own days in French class. I don't know what this piece would be like to someone who has no difficulty grasping foreign languages, but with each word I chuckled to myself, thinking that I know how he was feeling. Thankfully, my teacher did not poke me in my eye. The first sentence of the entire piece follows Harvey's suggestion that an introductory sentence give some sort of introduction to the context of the piece. For instance, we know that the speaker is the narrator, 41 years old, and has already gone to school. The flow of the piece is very good too. It doesn't get dull, and keeps you rooting for the protagonist to triumph and learn how to speak french. And at the end, even though he cannot quite speak it, he still has a rudimentary understanding of it, and we all cheer for his accomplishment.

Peterson's AP English

~To get a better feel of rhythm in poetry ~Not cross my eyes while trying to look for rhymes ~Soak things in instead of letting them wash over me ~Feel the symbolism better ~ Acquire a greater appreciation for the poets of the past

Diagnostic Test

I was not suprised in the least that I did poorly on assesing Jane Austen's writing. I dislike the style and subtle mockery that plays out in 19th century literature. However, I was suprised on how well I interpreted the first poem. I didn't really soak it in, and spent a lot of time crossing my eyes and trying to guess which answer sounded the most correct. I enjoyed the second poem, and wished that I had been able to interpret it better.