music

I always heard when I was in elementary school in music and art classes that music was the universal language. Until the last couple of years I really have not given that a lot of thought, but it occurred to me two days ago that music truly is the universal language. It is amazing to me that you can sit down with someone who knows barely anything about music and just sit there and make amazing music. For example, I have a friend who knows very little about music. He used to play guitar a lot but has stopped the last few years because he has gotten older, more responsibilities, etc… anyway, I also do not know a ton about music but I know a little bit thanks to my previous roommate, who was a music major and I have been practicing my guitar religiously the past year because I have finally found a band/genre that I find very inspiring. Also a lot of my friends that I grew up with and went to high school with, if they did not play a sport; they played an instrument. So I went over to my friend’s house the other day and he had like 3 guitars and a drum set. So we both picked up a guitar and he started playing some chords and I followed and then he would lay something else down and I would run scales, or soloing, over the chords he was playing and we were playing some pretty good tunes, or at least I thought so. The best part was when I decided to get on the drums. He started playing this major chord progression and then repeated it and I picked it up on the drums and we started jamming. It was amazing. We pretty much came up with a whole song, chorus, bridge and everything, without saying a word to each other. It was one of the best musical experiences of my life. Music truly is the universal language.

holidays

I am really looking forward to the holiday season this year. I am ready for this semester to be over so I can be closer to being done with undergraduate school and closer to my ultimate goal of going to law school. Hopefully this will happen. As soon as school is out I am driving to Atlanta to start celebrating Christmas. I am going to be celebrating an early xmas there with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle and cousins from my father’s side. I have been to Atlanta so many times this last month or two because my grandmother has been really sick, but apparently she is doing better so that is a plus. It has also been good because it has helped me build my relationship with my two younger cousins who definitely could use some guidance in their lives. After that, I am going to be working for four days and then Christmas will be here. The day after xmas, I will be going up to Chicago to see my brother and my mom’s side of the family. Then, it will be off to KY to stay at my brother and sister in law’s home for a couple of days. After that, I will be getting home on New Years Eve Eve and then driving to New Orleans with a couple of my friends to spend New Years in the Big Easy at one of my friend’s houses. I am looking forward to the holidays!

homework 12/8

1. Marianne Moore – “Silence”
Reading this poem makes me think that the author did not have a good relationship with her father. I think it starts off by her writing about how her father told her it was good to be silent and not make long visits. It sounds like, to me, that her father did not want to talk to his daughter a lot. It seems that he preferred to be alone. He did not want his daughter to stay long at his home either. So, either the father just really disliked his daughter, or he was just naturally not a very warm or friendly person. At the end of the poem, she says that her dad said to make his home like an inn to her. This could be another reference to the fact that he did not want her to be completely comfortable or stay very long because, as the author points out, inns are not like homes, but rather places you go to and just sleep and spend very little amount of time at. Her father sounds like a man who wanted to spend very little time with anyone except himself.
2. John Clare – “Mouse’s Nest”
I think that this poem is pretty self explanatory from the title. I could be wrong but after rereading it several times, I did not find any hidden allusions or metaphors, or at least I do not think I missed any. This poem does do a really good job of placing the reader at the scene. It is very descriptive and makes it easy to come up with a vivid image in my mind of seeing a mouse’s nest. He does this by using words and images that everyone knows such as hay and wheat. While reading this poem, I imagined myself walking through a barn and seeing something stir. Then out of the corner of my eye I would see a mouse with all her little babies attached to her teats. The mouse would see my and then scramble back under the hay to her home.
3. Carl Sundburg – “Grass”
This was my favorite poem of the three I read for Chapter 15. I liked it because it is not just a straight forward poem, but has a deeper meaning behind it. Sandburg tells the story of grass and how it spreads and grows and eventually covers over everything. It covers things like the dead bodies we have from wars or the trash we leave on the ground. I believe that this poem is all about washing away or covering up our sins. Everyone has things that they have done in their life that they are probably not proud of and I am sure would love to just cover them up and never have to worry or think about them again. The grass is the best thing to do this. We could have a huge genocide one day and not even know it the next if we have the bodies all buried beneath the dirt. It is hard for people to believe things that they do not see. So if the grass can cover up our sins and our mistakes they aren’t visible to anyone so it is like they never happened. This will eventually happen to every human being. We will all eventually be buried beneath the dirt and covered by the grass and no one will know we were even here. The same could be said about cities and countries that were once great and then crumble and fall and are buried and covered by the grass.
Ch. 17
1. Charles Simic – “Fork”
Simic uses very good imagery to describe a fork. I do not think I will look at the fork the same again. He likens it to a bird’s foot, possibly from hell, that we use to stab our food with. This is very appropriate as he includes hell and stabbing food all in the stanza. I will always see my fist now as sort of the head of the bird whose foot is my fork. Like a bird’s head, my fist is bald. Unlike a bird’s head, my fist does not have a beak or eyes. As he is describing the fork, he almost makes it seems as if it is an object used by beasts or cannibals, not an instrument used by everyday, ordinary people. It is amazing how he takes an ordinary object like a fork and attaches all of this evilness to it. The best part to me though is that when you really think about it, it fits.
2. Jean Toomer – “Reapers”
When reading “Reapers,” the first thing that caught my eye was the line about the blade silently swinging. I think that is the most perfect description of the image she was trying to portray. I can see a blade silently swinging; like in the “Pit and the Pendulum” right above someone, waiting to do its damage. I believe the way she is describing it though, the blade is attached to horse and pulley and is used to cut the grass. I think it is very appropriate to include the blade reaching the field rat. I would wonder how you could have a blade in a poem and not have do anything, or hint at affecting an object in some way. After the blade finds its first victim in the field rat, it just keeps on going like nothing happened. It is a machine almost, feeling no remorse or regret, it just keeps on chopping.
3. Arakida Moritake – “The Falling Flower”
I decided to do a haiku for my last poem because although they are short, they often have the most to say. This particular poem is no exception. After reading the poem a few times over, I was able to put myself in position to see what the author saw (maybe). I can see myself sitting in a field or grassy null on a nice fall day. The leaves are falling everywhere so why would this particular leaf be any different, but it is. For some reason or another, this leaf floats back to the tree. On better inspection, it seems that I have been fooled and the leaf is no leaf at all, but instead a beautiful butterfly. I could also see a person interpreting this poem as maybe someone who is not yet ready to leave the nest or home; or does leave home and wants to come back to help or show that they are ready to now leave. They, like the leaf, are being forced from the branch because the tree can no longer offer it life. The leaf goes off into the world, but only to return home a bigger and better object, a butterfly.

Hamlet

When I was told we were going to have to read half of Hamlet by Tuesday, I thought that it was going to be a lot of work. And then I started reading Hamlet and realized that not only had I already read it twice in high school, but I had also seen the movie version with Mel Gibson in it. I was happy about this because reading Shakespeare to me sometime is like solving a math equation. You have to go over it several times and sometimes decode the old English words to figure out what he is trying to say or what he really means. So this time reading it through was more of like a refresher instead of the agony of having to do like 50 pages of math homework. I hate math. Math is my worst subject and specifically chose a major in college where I would be doing as little math as possible, Thank God. I have always liked the story of Hamlet though, except for the end. I wish that everyone would not die and just Hamlet’s uncle, and well maybe his mom too because she should not have married his uncle. I mean, how could she not see that they guy was so evil and that he murdered his own brother, Hamlet’s daddy, just to be with this women, oh and to also become king. What a tool. And then you have the love of Hamlet’s life in Ophelia and her father thinks that Hamlet is that bad one. It is just amazing the naiviness, if that’s even a word, of all the people who think Hamlet is awful. And then when Ophelia dies you just know that Hamlet is going to take down his uncle for all the atrocities he has committed. All in all I think it is a good story/play.

Football

I, like most people in America, love football. Tonight on Monday Night Football the Saints are playing the Patriots. This is going to be a sweet game because the Patriots are and have been one of the best teams in the NFL for a very long time and they have one of the best quarterbacks, Tom Brady, coaches, Bill Belichik, and wide receivers in Randy Moss. So they are pretty much stacked. And they have also made the playoffs for like 9 straight years and won 3 of the last 5 super bowls. The Saints are more of an up and coming team but they are undefeated and the best team in the NFC. They have one of the best quarterbacks in Drew Brees. He has set multiple records in his career and it seems like every year he just gets better and better. Much like Brett Favre who is 40 years old and playing some of the best football of his career. In fact, he(Favre) just led the Vikings to a win over my favorite team, Da Bears. Unfortunately for me, the bears are just awful this year, which deeply saddens me as I am a die-hard bears fan. It is even more disappointing because they spent all this money on a new quarterback and he has been awful, I mean it is painful to watch him play because he throws a million interceptions. He was supposed to be the qb of the future, but instead he is just awful and a waste of money. The bears have hardly any talent on any side of the ball it seems, as they are being blown out pretty much every week, and they started off the season 3-1. They have won one game since then and lost 6 of 7. I wish they would fire the person in charge of hiring and/or scouting players because he is obviously blind. I did not mean for this blog post to turn out as a rant against the bears and how much they suck and waste my time on Sundays, but its hard not to be so pissed when it seems like every year they say they are going to get better and then blow more than the last year. And I am also a Cubs fan so life pretty much sucks for me.

thanksgiving

I had a really fun Thanksgiving this year. This is one of the first years since I was 12 that I have been able to spend the holiday with my family. Every year since I was 12, I went to Louisville, KY to play in a tennis tournament and I always went with my coach and other players and never with my family. We went to Atlanta because my aunt, uncle, 2 cousins and grandparents live there. My brother and his wife also came down. I enjoy spending time with my 2 cousins because they are both a little younger than me and I feel like they have always looked up to me a little bit. Unfortunately, I do not get to see them very much but when I do, I like to make it count. We all played tennis together and then they took me to this farm where they keep their dirt bike. I had ridden a dirt bike several times when I was in middle school so I figured I could still do it. I was riding in a big fenced in circle and on my second lap I told my cousins I thought I had the hang of it and then proceeded to crash into the fence. I hurt my ankle and hand and also broke off the front fender of the bike and side. I got back up though and after awhile I even taught myself how to ride wheelies. It was sweet. Afterwards, we all played ping pong and I dominated, as I have never lost to my little cousins in any sporting activity, and hopefully never will. All in all I would say it was one of my favorite if not favorite Thanksgivings because I actually got to spend it with my family and we all got a long and had fun.

Decisions

I have a very interesting decision to make regarding Thanksgiving weekend. My parents are going to leave the Friday after Thanksgiving to go to Atlanta. They are going to visit my dad's mom who has been sick for awhile but it recovering, sort of. My grandmother has been on dialysis for three years and is almost 80 years old. It has finally taken a toll on her body and it appears to be shutting down. She was in the hospital for two weeks last month because she had pneumonia and a heart attack and possibly a stroke. We do not know exactly as neither do the doctors. The reason she went into the hospital in the first place was because she refused to eat anything. She was down to 90 pounds and still losing weight. So a few weeks ago me and my family went down there and spent a weekend with her in the hospital and it appeared as if she was not going to make it. My brother's wife, a doctor, suggested that they move hospitals because it appeared to her that she was not being properly cared for. After she moved, she began to eat a little and recovered somewhat. She was then released to her home and my parents went down to make sure everything was going smoothly ( I was at a tennis tournament or I would have also gone). So now she is home and has two different caretakers to help her out, but now she is not eating again and weighs only 80 pounds. My parents said they were going to go there for Thanksgiving to see how she was doing and see how my grandfather was holding up. My parents gave me the option to go with or stay at home, citing that I am an adult who can make his own decisions and I don't have to go if I do not want to. There are some people coming in for Thanksgiving break who I am really excited to see and it would be very advantageous, for several reasons, to be able to have the house to myself for this time. On the other hand, I would feel like complete shit if I had the opportunity to see my grandma before she dies and then dies before I get to see her again. I have asked a few friends and surprisingly they were all on the side of staying home and seeing my grandmother at a later date. But what if that is not possible? I also have to factor in that My uncle and his family live there. My family does not really get along at all with their family especially my aunt. So those times are always really fun. My aunt is this super crazy baptist, I love Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and everything to do with conservatism and FOX news. So what will I do? Either way I will be somewhat upset that I could not have both, but "You can't always get what you want."

Friends

I first started college at a small university in Tennessee called Austin Peay State Univ. It is located in Clarksville, TN. I went up there because I really wanted to play tennis and they offered me a scholarship so I thought why not? While I was there I became more disenchanted with tennis because of the coach and lack of help and overall sense of team unity, so I wanted to branch out. My second year at the Peay I started hanging out with a lot of guys who were in Kappa Sigma. I hesitated to join because I did not know how long I was going to be there and didn't see a point in spending the money. My last semester there most of my friends in the fraternity convinced me to join, but I hesitated until they offered to pay my initial fees. I couldn't say no to that. So I joined and now I talk to maybe a handful of my old fraternity brothers. There are two in particular who I keep in very close contact with. One of them, Miguel, left Austin Peay the same year I did because he needed to go to school closer to home, Brownsville, TN, so he went to Southwest. We hung out all the time last year because he was coming to Memphis a few times a week and occasionally I'd go to Brownsville and stay with him and his family, who always greeted me with open arms and made some of the best mexican food I've ever had, hands down. Well, at the end of last spring he told me he had no more money to go to school or really live and it sucked because I, being a broke college student, could do nothing to help one of my best friends. He decided to go into the national gaurd and it made sense to me. Once he got done with training and all that, he would pretty much get paid to go to school and live. The only drawback is he might have to go to Iraq, or more likely now Afghanistan. I had not seen him for 7 months until last Friday. He finally made it home and his parents threw him a huge surprise party. I, of course, drove up to Brownsville to finally hang out with my friend. He had not changed much, thank God, and was still hilarious and loved to have a good time. He of course had plenty of crazy stories and interesting stories about some crazy drill sgts he had. He starts school in January and I hope we get to have many more good times and that he does not have to get deployed. He is a true friend.

POV A Worn Path

I think that watching the movie version of "A Worn Path" hurt the point of view originally presented in the story. In the book version, we start off o a journey with an old black lady who is going on a journey into town to get some medicine for her assumed to be alive grandson. We get to walk with this lady and hear all her thoughts, as she pretty much says them aloud. In the book we get to read what she thinks when she passes certain areas and sees certain things. I do not fell like the movie version did this justice. In the movie, the old black lady definitely says almost the exact same things that are in the book, but her movements are a little different and her mannerisms, or at least different from how I imagined they would be. When she encounters the hunter in the book, you get a sense of how she feels toward this man and how she feels. Not necessarily by what she says, but how the author describes her movement. Maybe I am just being too hard on the movie version. I feel like it is really hard to do a good book justice in movie form. It is just really hard to capture, or at least I belive it is, the way a book can make you feel versus a movie because with a book you can personalize it. You can make the characters almost your own and imagine, based on reading, what they would look like and how they would be. Needless to say, I liked the book version much more than I liked the movie version of "A Worn Path."

tennis

Tennis season for the fall is finally over and I am pretty excited about it. I suppose maybe I would feel a little differently if I was a player on the team, but being manager definitely is not as fun. I played tennis for two years at APSU in Clarksville, TN. It had its ups and downs but since I realized that the coach there would never be honest with me or help me with my tennis game I had grow so frustrated that I just decided to quit. Tennis had no longer become fun to me. When I first came to Memphis, I had no intentions of doing anything with the tennis teams, but since I had a long relationship with both the men’s and women’s coaches as well as a couple of players on the team, it was hard for me to turn down being manager. It is nice to still be part of the team and none of the guys or girls treat me with any disrespect, which is nice. When I first agreed, I thought maybe that some of the guys would think that they were so much better than me and could treat me poorly because I was just the manager, but that was not the case. I was well received by all the players and of course I already knew the coaches so there was no problem there. I am glad the fall is over, but I am excited for the teams’ to realize their potential and dominate in the spring, when it really counts. Go Tigers!

being sick

I have been sick now for the last two days and it has been awful. I hate being sick and not being able to do anything. It is one of the most annoying and worst feelings in the world because even if you want to do anything, you can’t. I began feeling ill about three days ago and have had my head in the toilet for the last couple of days. However, I am starting to feel like the worst is behind me, thank God. I did not miss any school because in most of my classes we are getting to the time where if you miss something, it becomes really hard to make it up and to catch up. I am really looking forward to get over this flu and living a normal life again. I really hope that I am better by the weekend. One of my really good friends and old fraternity brothers, by the way I have not been active in a fraternity for two years as I joined one at another school and decided I had to grow up when I came to Memphis, is getting out of the national guard. When he told me he was going, I did not think he was going to be gone for long. However, I haven’t seen him in 6 months because he kept getting in trouble while he was at training camp or whatever it is called. But it is not like he was doing anything bad, he was just hooking up with female officer, which apparently is against the rules in the army. Whatever. I am excited to see my buddy and see how training was on him.

homework

1. Sonny’s Blues is told from Sonny’s brother’s perspective. We never do find out his name though. The narrator is a very straight person meaning someone who is always trying to morally do the things he thinks are right such as not doing drugs and abiding the law. His view affects the story because his brother is the opposite of him. So we know how Sonny’s brother feels about the things Sonny does but, not until the end of the story do we get a peek into how Sonny really feels.
2. The older brother is a school teacher suggesting that he is not a wild person who likes to go out and go to jazz night clubs and do drugs. Also that he is a very straight person
3. If the story were told by Sonny we would be able to know why Sonny made the choices he made and how it has affected his views on life. We would also be able to know what Sonny was going through when he was in rehab.
4. The death of the narrator’s daughter prompts him to finally write Sonny.
5. The mother makes the narrator promise to always look after Sonny and make sure he is doing well. The narrator fails to fulfill this promise until he writes Sonny and then Sonny eventually comes to live with the narrator. Then they both open up more to each other and the narrator lets Sonny know that he does not want him to die, or kill himself by overdosing on heroin.
6. With the writer deciding to keep the main characters’ names simple, it lets the reader become more involved in the story for a couple of reasons. One, they do not have to remember so many characters to try to keep up with the story. Two, it makes the story seem like the reader is more a part of it since the writer is calling the characters mom and dad and the brother by the first name. The audience almost feels like they are in the role of the older brother(narrator) since the story is told from his view and he is never named.
7. Sonny has made the music his own by not letting drugs control the way he plays. He most likely was only playing before under the influence of drugs and now that he is drug free, he will be able to play what he wants to play and not be under the control of heroin.

A Worn Path
1. The story is told from the writer’s perspective, but it may as well have been told from the old Phoenix’s perspective because she lets the audience know all of her thoughts out loud any way. It is not told from Phoenix’s perspective because she is not describing the action in the story, unless she is speaking.
2. Phoenix is aptly named because she acts as a phoenix would. She stays strong even as she gets old and is extremely loyal to her grandson.
3. By having Phoenix tell us pretty much everything that is going on in her mind, it does make it a little hard to separate reality from fantasy. However, it really makes it easier for you to put yourself in Phoenix’s shoes and realize that what she is doing is not easy and that sometimes people have to amuse themselves to get through things.
4. She is not treated well by the white people, but she is not treated very poorly either. The audience should be able to tell from this that the story is set after the end of the civil war but definitely before the 1950’s in the south.
5. She admires the black dog because he, like her, looks as if he has persevered through some tough times but that does not stop the dog from keeping on.

My brother

My brother is the most important person in the world to me. He is my best friend and my only brother and I am glad he is both. He is 7 years older than me and one would think that with the large age gap that we wouldn't get a long or talk much, but that is simply not true. I did not even really spend hardly any time with my brother, that i can remember, until I was 18. When I was growing up in most of high school and middel school he was not there. He was in college far away and then as soon as college was over, moved away. When I was 18 he came in town and took me to a concert and I had one of the best times of my life. Since then we both started realizing that we had a lot in common and shared a lot of the same interests. Since then we have spent as much time together as we can. He has come to every tennis match that I have had since then and we have attended numerous music and arts events such as Bonnaroo, professional tennis events, and many other events. He has always been able to provide me with sound advice and has taught me so many things in my life I do not know how I could ever truly thank him.

Atlanta

I just got back from Atlanta because I had to visit my grandmother. unfortuantely, it was not a happy visit. My grandmother has been on dialysis for the last three years and had been doing ok up until about three weeks ago. She stopped eating, but did not complain of any pain or anything. Two weeks ago she weighed about 90 pounds so the doctors decided it was finally time to see what was wrong. They performed a colonoscopy on her, but while they were doing this she was so frail that her body could not handle it and she had a heart attack. She then got pneumonia in both lungs. She thought she had recovered this past monday and when the doctors told her she needed to go into assissted living and do physical therapy, she freaked out. She left the hospital with my grandfather without permission and went home. She then had to call 911 because she could not even make it into bed. Now she is in the icu and trying to recover. She now wieghs no more than 80 lbs and is steadily declining I fear. She will not eat even though I tired to feed her several times and now it seems that all she wants to do is have morphine. I wish there was some way I could make her realize she needs to eat, but I fear that she is just so tired from the dialysis and everything that she just does not want to feel any pain and leave us all. I can not imagine being in her situation and how I would feel if i was her. Who knows? I might have the same feelings if I was in her situation. I also had an interesting conversation with my granfather talking about how it is so weird that now he has to depend on his two sons and he can remember when they had to depend on him. It is the cycle of life. People grow from a baby to responsible adults and then after a while, they regress back into the baby stage. It is sad, interesting and true.

O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor is both a southerner and a catholic and she uses both to fuel her characters and plots in her writings. I am also a catholic and somewhat of a southerner. I was born in Chicago, but moved to Memphis when I was pretty young. In her stories, she incorporates the old southern way of thinking and dressing and such into many of her characters. For example, the grandmother in “A Good Man,” the wife and Parker in “Parker’s Back,” and the wife and husband in “Revelation.” Each one of these characters shares some traditional southern traits. She does this, I feel, because she does not want her writings to become ordinary. She wants her writings to reflect how people in the old south behaved. Traditional southerners behaved in a way that for many was very religious, racist, and a way of showing respect to elders and the way life was. All three women characters in the three stories that we read are very religious and two out of the three were very racist. They believed that they were part of a higher class of people and that if you were from a good family then you were part of the higher class, and of course if you were white. By making these people reflect traditional southern customs, she makes them unlike what most people are writing about. Most writers are writing about modern people in gray suits and not paying attention to what O’Connor called ‘the greater freaks’, which to her where the traditional southerners. It is also interesting that she would include religion in many of her stories because she was a Catholic, which was, and still somewhat is, frowned upon in the south. Most southerners were raised Baptist which carries a whole different set of norms than Catholicism. I believe that she included religion because, although not Baptist, she was very religious and saw that religion was the only way to see the good in the world.

creative response

For our essays, instead of writing an essay I decided to do the creative response. So, me and three other people from our class made a video on the Glass Menagerie. We did sort of a modern take on some of the scenes from the Williams' play. I played Tom the the drunk son wkho just wanted to get away from his mother and see the world. I was put in charge by the mother, Amanda, to find a date for my sister Laura played by Carly. I think Carly did a great job in the video especially when it comes to the dancing scene. We put a twist in the play and made the gentleman caller, Jim, for Laura an African-American. Amanda's character of course does not like the idea of having a black man date her daughter, but as the video goes she is just happy to have a gentleman caller for Laura. I think that had this been written into the original play, Williams would have had Amanda act a lot worse towards the caller than we had her portrayed as doing. All in all it was a fun and interesting learning experience. Not only did I learn how to incorporate scenes from a play into a movie and mash them with some modern takes, but I also got to learn how to use windows movie maker and how to edit which ended up taking a lot longer then I thought. The video turned out great though. A+ material of course!!

Peer editing

I am always nervous a little bit when we do peer editing. I like criticism but sometimes I do not like receiving it from classmates. A lot of times I feel like they do an inaccurate job of looking over my paper for mistakes. It also really bothers me when someone inserts their own opinion in to how they think this idea of mine or that idea of mine should be incorporated into the paper differently. A lot of times I think that people are also just editing just to say they did some work. I know that it is good to hear criticism and other people's ideas on how they think something should be, but when it comes to my writing a lot of times I feel like I have a certain idea of how I want the paper to play out or how I want the speech to play out. I really feel like I need to be more open to people's ideas when it comes to my work because I always expect people to be open to my ideas/criticisms when I offer them. When we do peer editing it is cool to kind of see how others feel/view certain topics differently or the same as you. It's interesting to see if people interpreted a story the same way you did or if the saw something completely different.

Homework for 10/22

1. O’Connor foreshadows the ending events very early in the story. Within the first two to three paragraphs the character of the Misfit is already introduced and then the audience finds out that the family will be traveling to the same area where the Misfit is. The scene from Red Sammy’s all but confirms because Sammy talks about how if there was a Misfit, he certainly would come here which foreshadows that he will be in the area and the traveling family is very likely to see him.
2. The grandmother is a very annoying character. She seems like she has a set view of the way things should be because that’s how they were when she was growing up. She is constantly nagging or talking to any member of the family that will listen to her. She is a static character because she does not change at all through the story. At the beginning, she is trying to get her way by going to TN instead of Florida and nagging and talking to the children and their father. In the middle, she is still annoying by talking Red Sammy’s ear off about the way things used to be in and at the end of the story she annoys the Misfit the whole time until he shoots her.
3. The grandmother had a moment of clarity right before she was shot. She realized that she was going to be killed no matter what. The Misfit had already killed everyone else so logically she was next. She maybe thought for an instant that she could save him by showing the love that Jesus showed, but it proved to be futile as she was immediately shot.
4. From the conversation between the Misfit and grandma, we learn a couple of things. We learn that the Misfit is taking the other family members to the woods to be killed. We also learn that the Misfit has a very pessimistic outlook on life. The only thing he really believes in is enjoying the pleasures of life which to him include killing people and harassing them. He does not believe in Jesus and His stories because he was not there to see them so he has no idea if they are true. He has no faith.


6 . The answer came back to her as clear as day because even though she was not talking to anybody. Her answer came to her because she finally was starting to realize that the way she thought about people and their classes and distinctions were not correct.
7. Mrs. Turpin has a vision of all different kinds of people, black, white trash, all going to heaven and her class of people is in the back of this line. She realizes that in God’s eyes everyone is foregiven and equal. She is not better than anyone else just because she is white and blacks are not worse or less respectable just because they are black.


5. Parker not liking long views because they made him think about religion and government shows the audience that Parker is very insecure. He is not very smart and worried about things of which he has very little or no control over.
6. Parker is motivated to get the tattoo on his back because he thinks that his wife will finally like a tattoo he gets. He thinks of the idea for the tattoo when he crashes the tractor into the tree and someone yells OH GOD.
7. Parker shows a lot of self awareness. He shows this when he know that he would not be happy with his wife and he also shows this when he realizes that the Christ tattoo is just something for his wife that he does not really want. He realizes that all these things he does are bad for him or knot in his favor but for some reason does them anyway.
8. The quote shows that Parker believes that people get what they deserve in life and getting the things you get in life has nothing to do with religion. By these standards, Parker gets exactly what he deserves because he did not want to better himself with school and could not stay in the navy and knew he should not get in a relationship with his current wife, yet he did it any way. He suffers, but only because he has put himself in the position to be one who suffers.
9. Sara Ruth does not recognize OE by his initials because she prefers what his initials stand for instead, which are two classic biblical names. This shows that she has control and making Parker do this makes him feel like she is in charge of him and she has all the control in the relationship.

Glass Menagerie Creative Option

Here is the link for the video and creative option that Tara, Jordan, Carly and I did. We did some scenes from the Glass Menagerie. Hope you all enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uASlR5mMLfw

vacation

I saw someone else write about their idea of a dream vacation so I started thinking about my own. If i could have any vacation I wanted it would span the globe and last probably about a year. I would spend a month in Australia. I went to Aussie land once when I was a senior in high school to play tennis. I was there for a month and went to three cities and had the best time ever. The air there is so clean and the beaches and people were so nice. And everyone there surfs and is just so friendly. If I could move anywhere right now it would be there or California. The next month I would travel to Europe and spend about 3 months there. I would just travel around from country to country and check out all the fine points. I would go to Germany, France and Great Britain and Spain as well as others. I have never been to Europe but have heard it is amazing. I would spend one month in Northern California and one month in Southern California as each region has a uniqueness to it's land and culture. I would spend a month in Mexico, but only if I could do it in a protected area since that place is a haven for murderous drug lords, but they also have amazing beaches. I would spend three months in South America because I have also always wanted to go there. It would be sweet to go to the rainforest and to go to beaches in Brazil. I also love latin american food so that would be an added bonus. I would spend one moth in Asia, probably China and Japan just to check it out. I know China is very strict and has a terrible government but it would still be sweet to go. The last month I would spend partially in Chicago, visiting family and the city as that is where I am from, and the other part at my house in Memphis, relaxing from a year long vacation.

Menagerie

For our upcoming essays, instead of writing one, me and three other people from my class are making a video. I am looking forward to it as it should be interesting. We are all getting together this week to write the exact script for it, but it should not be too entirely difficult. For the script is pretty much already written for us since we are just doing a couple of scenes from The Glass Menagerie. We are going to open with Tom(me) doing his opening narration. Then we will mostly be doing the scenes and scene surrounding the gentleman caller's arrival and feast. We are going to, of course, insert a few of our own takes on how the action should be, but overall I believe we are going to mostly use Williams' ideas. Hopefully it will be entertaining for all and will earn us all a's. I am excited to make it!

A Streetcar

Yesterday I went to go see A Streetcar Named Desire. I went to the Hattiloo theatre right by Sun studios to see it and it was very interesting. I have read the play and seen the movie already so I was interested to see how it would actually look in play form and it was very interesting. The theatre was definitely the smallest theatre I have ever been in, but it was cozy. My seat was very uncomfortable though. It was cool because it felt like the action was so close that we were all almost part of the play. It was easy to hear when any one in the audience was doing something because of the small theatre so that made the play extra interesting. I like most of the actors however, I did not enjoy the male lead. He was trying to use an accent the whole time and it just did not work. It sounded like he was trying to fuse a northeastern accent with a cajun accent and what we ended up getting was some sort of jumble. I mean he almost sounded like a duck most of the time he talked. I really hope he was not trying to pull of a Polish accent, since he was supposed to be Polish, because I have many relatives who still speak mostly Polish and he was far from it. He was also very far from a Creole/Cajun accent. I also thought the lady playing Blanche did an interesting job. I say interesting because she forgot a lot of her lines and would say the line that was coming up instead of the one that she was supposed to be saying and then stop and say the correct line. That part was bad. However, I do feel as if she did a really good job portraying the actions Blanche would make. She was very good at being flirtatious and acting as if she could not be in the light. All in all I would not say it was the best play I have ever seen, but it was pretty good.

MNF

The Vikings are playing the Packers tonight in Monday Night Football and I really hope they have a draw, but that it is a really high schoring draw. I hate both of these teams because I am a die hard Chicago Bears fan, and those two teams are our biggest rivals. So naturally I hope both of those teams play to some sort of deathmatch, like they used to have Celebrity Deathmatch on MTV, where no team wins. I do also play fantasy football and unfortuantely I have players on my fantasy team from both of these teams so I really hope that only these three players do well and everyone else has some sort of weird accident or something. I am sure that if any of my family in Chicago knew I had these players from our rival teams, I would end up in some freak 'accident.' Either way, as long as I get like ten points I win my league game, again I might add, and go undefeated in my league. Not that any of this matters and I feel really dorky for talking about fantasy football and even dorkier admiting that I have a fantasy football team, but whatever. If you're calling me a dork for that you would probably have to call about a million other people, maybe more, who play fantasy something, whether it be football, baseball, basketball or some other sport. I have even heard of fantasy golf and Ill be honest, I have no idea how that would work. Golf goes on all year and there are about a million different tournaments they play in. That just does not sound like fun to me.

Cell phones

I really feel like cell phones and text messaging our destroying the way we communicate with eacth other. For example, whenever you need something quick done or you just want to mention something briefly, most people from my generation are going to text message. It's not only for small things that people text about but people text about going out on dates, setting up events, etc. There is no personal one on one communication anymore. You no longer have to be good at conversing with people, but all you have to do now is be aware of what lingo or words are 'in' and use them in a text. People are no longer directly communicating. You can not tell whether someone is happy or sad or emotionless in a text message. All you get to see is some sort of electronic emotion, not really what the people are feeling. When talking to someone on the phone, you get a sense of how some one feels by the way they react to what you say. It is also easier to tell via phone if the person you are talking to is genuine or not. On text messages you have no idea how the person you are texting really feels. It is so much easier for people to hide their emotions because they can take as much time as they want to respond and respond they way they so chose, not necessarily how they feel. There is no warmth in electronics, but limitless emotions in human beings.

Movies

Everyone has a favorite movie or movies or favorite directors or actors. I have always really liek Quentin Tarantino movies. There is just something about them that really appeals to me. My four favorites from him, and no I couldn't narrow it down to one, are Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill 1 and 2, and Grindhouse. Each one is different and I like each for its subtle differences. Pulp Fiction is probably the best though. It has the best acting and by far the best story. You can't beat having Travolta and Samuel L. before they are famous playing ridiculously convincing roles as hitmen. Then having Uma Thurman playing the perfect role as Ving Rhames' coked out wife. She is amazingly convincing. Tarantino's next two movies were the Kill Bill movies as he continued to use Thurman for the leading female, and leading role for that matter. She plays a former assasin who is betrayed and left for dead by her former assasin gang. Thurman discovers she is pregnant on one of her missions and moves to Texas to try to live a 'normal' life. Bill, the boss of the gang and her former lover, tracks her down and shoots her in the head while she attempts to tell him that she has a baby and its his. She awakes from a coma years later and begins to track the assasins who shot her down and eventually Bill. There are many fight scenes, but they are not ordinary fight scenes. Each is choreographerd beautifully and each is set before unique and stunning backdrops. My favorite scene is from Kill Bill Vol. 1 when Uma is fighting Lucy Liu outside in Japan and they are in a snow covered Japanese garden. It is night and there is snow gently falling to the ground and for awhile, all you hear is the rising and falling of this waterwheel type object in the garden. Grindhouse is just 2 and a half hourse of ridiculousness. I feel like Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez just decided to make a pair of the most over the top zombie/horror movies ever made. But its not like they are doing it in an arrogant way or campy serious way, but in a way that old grindhouse movies were supposed to be. A homage pretty much to the old cheap horror movies that promised over the top action and killing but never delivered because grindhouse movies were cheaply made and made for old drive in theatres and/or old seedy theatres on the wrong side of town. So they took that and made it what the original film makers promised it would be. Brilliant!

Super heroes/powers

If I could be a super hero,I would be Superman. I would be him because he has all of the best powers put together into one character. I mean, duh, he is SUPERman. It would be sweet. I would be able to fly and see through buildings. I would also be the strongest man and fastest man in the world. I do not think I could dream up a better super hero to be than super man. If I had to pick just one super power, though, it would be the ability to fly. That would be the coolest thing in the world. I guess I would also still be the fastest man in the world then since no one else could fly and no one could run faster than something flying. It would be really awesome to be able to leave for things whenever I wanted basically and know I was still going to be on time. And best of all, there is no traffic in the sky. I mean sure, you would have to watch out for the occasional plane, but those things are ridiculously loud so I am sure you would be able to hear them from miles away. You would have to obviously worry about birds also, but since you are much larger than any bird, or at least any that I know of, then I am sure that they would be afraid of you and want to get out of your way. Maybe not though. I am sure the birds are a lot more confident when they are flying in large flocks so I bet you would have to get out of their way in that case. If I had to choose another superhero, it would be Aquaman. Haha. Just kidding. He is the lamest super hero ever. I mean, what kind of super power is it that you get to talk to fish. How is that remotely close to being able to fly or have unlimited strength. If I was Aquaman, I wouldn't even call myself a super hero and I would just work a regular 9-5 job. Seriously, if I had to pick another superhero though it would be Batman because he is awesome.

Homework 9/29

The opening statement implies that now every one is the same. No one person has any advantage over the other in any way unless of course you work for the government. The government achieved this by letting all the dumb people stay dumb and by hadicapping all the smart and/or athletic people. The smart people have little radios in their brains that don't let them think and the athletic people are forced to carry around heavy bags so they move slowly. Apparently, capitalism is dead since capitalism is founded on competition between businesses and people and democracy must be dead because there is no way people can be choosing their leaders freely since all the people are all really dumb or handicapped by the government therefore controlled by the government. Eliminating competition and free thought ensures that who ever is in control, the government most likely by some tyrannical leader, will stay in control as long as the people are kept as mindless zombies.
This is impossible under capitalism and democracy for many reasons. Capitalism is founded on businesses competing with each other to provide the best goods possible. Democracy is founded on the principle of natural rights. These rights being that every person should have life, liberty and property. Obviously taking away the ability for one to think for themselves is taking away their life and their liberty since they have no freedom to think and are forced to live a life controlled by government. I highly doubt that this would be the result of a progressive middle class since historically the middle class has been against uprisings of a socialist nature. For example, America as founded by mostly middle class Englishmen. These men made a fair amount of money, but were no where close to the wealthiest. They all felt they had a lot in common since they all made about the same and were generally happy wittheir wealth. Many historians and political scientists point to that fact as to why there was never a huge outcry for socialism or communism to be spread in America. Now if one were to ask if this were more likely to happen because of a progreesive lower class, then I would change my answer. People without anything want to have some land or money and become somewhat equal. So the idea of making every one equal really appeals to them. The French Revolution, for example, was led by the poor, lower class. They were tired of the rich staying in power and of having king's family stay in power for years just because of birth right. I believe grade inflation is silly and not fair. If someone gets a grade, that should be their grade. Giving a higher letter grade to someone just because they tried hard does not make that person smarter, but when that person is applying for college or any institution where greades are carefulyl looked at, then that person with the inflated grade looks smarter even though he is not. Then the less smart person gets more opportunities just because they have inflated grades. That is how this society in "Harrison Bergeron" probably comes to be because less smart people come into power and do not want to be questioned but just rule over people, so they handicap everyone. However, I believe that not keeping score in childrens' sports activities is far less harmless. It is just encouraging kids to keep active in sports and not necessarily worry about the outcome. This does not occur in competitive sports or any sporting activities having to do with schools and it hopefully never will. Then there would be no point in competition.
The U.S. Handicappers go around and make sure that everyone who is better in someone has that advantage handicapped so every one can be equal. The only way this would happen in America is if we gave some one absolute power for some reason, war maybe, and they took extreme advantage of it. This is enforced by the Handicappers and achieved by putting radios in people's ears or making them wear heavy bags.
Vonnegut could be talking about a number of things. He could be talking about civil rights acts or the womens movement during the late 40's and 50's. Most likely he is talking about affirmative action or something of that nature that 'equals' the playing field for those who are less priveleged or whose people have been previously oppressed. Laws like this come about because people feel they are not being looked at in the same light as others and want to have equal opportunities for everyone.
Hearing that a former Senator would say that is appauling to me. He is saying that the best and brightest should not be chosen just because the entire population of those that person is supposed to represent is not the best and brightest. I cannot believe that someone would not want the smartest and most qualified person for any job. This is the exact thing Vonnegut as talking about in his short story.
George and Hazel represent your typical, everyday person. They go to work and come home and sit by the television. Vonnegut, I believe, is saying that if people just sit around and let the televison rule our lives then we will be forced to succomb to the fate Vonegut has described. What happens when everyone watches T.V. is that they learn to just listen to the television and not think of anything for themselves and also they are not excersising their mind in any way. Go read a book.
Harrison is a teenager who is a threat to everyone becuase he has above average intelligence and he is extremely athletic. He has so many things on him to handicap him it looks like he is wearing a halloween costume. When Harrison gets on television and exclaims that he is the emperor, I do not believe he is talking about ruling government. I believe he is trying to ge the message out to the people that they are all emperors of themselves and that they have the power to not only rule themselves but to think for themselves. Therefore, they do not need the government to handicap them and tell them what to do because they are fine just they way they are. I do not believe there is any correlation between Harrison and Sammie. Harrison is actually saving people, albeit briefly, while Sammy could not even save his own job. Sammy was just trying to look cool in front of some girls, while Harrison is trying to save the world by rebelling and getting on television to try and save everyone. The only similarity is that both attempts fall on deaf ears. The singing and beauty of the girl and music are all meant to symbolize individualism. Every piece of music can beautiful to some and not others but it certainly wont sound like the last piece. And every person looks different and some people have better looking facial features than others, such as the ballerina Harrison saves.

Homework 9/24

3. In Joyce Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," there are two primary characters. One is the protagonist, Connie, and the other the antagonist named A. Friend. This short story opens with a brief description of Connie's life. It describes how Connie feels she is somewhat living in the shadow of her 'perfect' older sister. Her older sister is always doing exactly what her parents want her to do and Connie is much more selfish. Connie is always looking in the mirror and putting hairspray and doing things to try to enhance her image of herself. She obviously has a confidence problem and ends up trying to use boys to boost her self confidence. She does not think she is beautiful and thinks that by attracting boys and messing around with them that she is getting the love she apparently does not receive from her family. A. Friend sees Connie out with another boy one night and tells her that she is going to be his. He shows up at her house several days later when Connie's family has traveled to a picnic at her aunt's. It is obvious that Friend has been stalking Connie since he not only knows her name but also where her family is and what they are doing. He also knows what she has been up to these last few days with all the boys she has been with. It is obvious that Friend is crazy, constantly saying that Connie is his girl and that they are going to have a great time on their date that they were supposed to be having on this day. Not to mention the fact that he is stalking her. Eventually Connie gets tired of Friend, but he will not leave until he gets his date with Connie. After many threats by Friend and lots of crying by Connie, she finally agrees to get into the car and the story ends, leaving the reader to only assume the worst. Connie drives all the action in the story. Everything happens because of Connie and her actions. A. Friend wants to be with Connie. He pursues Connie from halfway through the story until the end. We know nothing about Friend really except for that he is a crazy stalker who has probably done this to multiple women.
3. Connie begins to question Friend almost immediately when he arrives at her house. Although, I would say that her initial questioning is not because she is alarmed or spooked by some random guy coming to see her, but more as a formality to see what he is doing here and also, as the story mentions, because she has no idea if she likes this guy. Connie does not start becoming alarmed in her questioning until Friend starts telling her he's not going to leave and he knows that her parents are at a barbecue. She does not know what to do. She goes inside and threatens to call the cops but Friend tells her that he wont come inside unless she touches the phone and then he will. He says that she wont like it if he has to come inside. She is very confused. She has no idea what to do and has thoughts racing through her head. Thoughts about doing dishes and cleaning the table. She is also confused about who she is. She knows she should or could be like her sister, highly respected and praised by her parents. Something inside of her wants to rebel and be different but now she is seeing the dark side of doing such things. Of going out when you're too young to be out alone, especially when you're a female. She thinks she is ready to be grown up, to be loved and in love with another, but she is not. She is still just a confused little girl who is trying to act big. So in the end, she does what she thinks a big girl should do and owns up to her mistakes of going out and lying and misbehaving and goes with Friend.
3. In my version of this story it does not end with Connie getting into A. Friend's car. Connie gets in and the story continues. She is taken by A. Friend to a place outside of the town they are in. It is a remote place, a field where no one can see them or hear them. Connie is forced out of the car by Friend so they can continue their 'date' outside of the car. Connie keeps refusing to get out, but Friend says he wont take her back home if she doesn't. Of course, Connie complies. They sit on a blanket in this desolate field and Friend begins telling her how beautiful she is. He keeps bringing up, as he did earlier, how they are lovers and finishes all his sentences by calling her 'Honey'. Friend tells her that it wont last long. Connie begins to think of her family and all the things she could have done to be a better daughter. How she could have been nicer to her mother and helped her out more often. How she could have tried to get along with her sister better and how she should have listened to her father more. She prayed that as soon as this was over, she would do all those things to make things with her family better. For the first time, she could not wait to see her sister's face. She wouldn't see it again though. The last thing she would see was Arnold's face, standing over her's, shoveling dirt.
3. The setting in Oates' "Where Are You Going" is perfect for the story she is trying to tell. In each setting in the story there is not much detail about the area. The reader does not know if Connie is in the city or a small town or suburb or what. Oates describes the burger joint in very vague terms. Oates gives a brief description of Connie's home, but again it is very vague. The reason she does this is so any reader can identify with the story. She is almost begging the reader to insert their own setting here. This helps the reader to further identify with the characters and what is going on because it is then easier for them to visualize the situation. If Oates had gone on to give great detail to the burger joint, it would be harder for the reader to think that Connie could be at the local burger joint in the reader's town. Oates does this and wants the readers to be able to associate themselves more with this story and setting because this story is like a big lesson. It is a lesson about trying to figure out who you want to be and also about how one does not need to try to get self worth by trying to attract the opposite sex. In stories where an author is trying to get the reader to learn a lesson, it is easier for a reader to fall into a story and understand how they might be susceptible to this behavior if they are able to visualize themselves in the story. That is why, I believe, Oates used such vague and nondescript ways of describing her settings.

Football

Everyone know that baseball is called "Our National Pasttime" but should it still be considered this? I believe that football has now taken over baseball's spot as our national pasttime and favorite sport. When looking at MLB stadiums recently, I noticed they a majority of them were maybe half full. I saw in Florida there were maybe 100 fans in the stands the last few games, and their team is not doing poorly. In baseball, not during the playoffs, not selling out stadiums is becoming a more common theme. Of course this does not count for the Yankees, Cubs or Red Sox because those fans will come to games even if they have the worst records in baseball. Mostly, I am talking about the other 30 teams or so that do not fill up their stadiums on a regular game day. Now in the NFL and college football world, you would be hard pressed to find a ticket to any NFL game and any premier college football program, such as USC, Florida, Notre Dame. Many NFL teams have multiple year long waiting lists for season tickets. For example, I signed up to purchase season tickets for the Chicago Bears three years ago and I am still not close to being able to purchase them. My family bought me Bears tickets two years ago for New Years Eve in Chicago. The tickets were $350. Who would shell out that much for a baseball game? I am not hating on baseball. I am a diehard Chicago Cubs fan and would pay to watch them play everyday if I could. I am just saying, I'd rather pay more to watch my first favorite sport, rather than my second.

Favorite books

I feel like I enjoy many different types of book, but I definitely have two genres that are my favorite. First, I like suspense/mystery novels the best. There is nothing that makes me want to keep reading and actually turn the next page more than a good mystery. Mysteries are appealing to me because they hook you in. They present their characters and a situation, but you never know how accurate the initial portrayals are. You never know if how that character is first introduced and how you first see him act, if that is really who he is or is he a killer or something else. You never know about certain settings in a mystery because the author may be trying to hide something from you at first, or the author might be sneaking some little detail about the setting or character and you have to figure it out. I guess that is why I like mysteries the most is because everything usually is not how it seems and/or you have to solve a problem. There is always some uncertainty about whether or not the protagonist is going to come out on top and defeat the killer or solve the mystery.
My second favorite type of literature is political literature. It can non-fiction or comical, either way I enjoy reading it. I am a political science major and enjoy almost anything pertaining to politics. I think reading about famous politicians and how they handled things is very interesting and can be helpful to anyone. I think it is important to understand how our government works and what is going on in government on a day to day basis.

Homework 9/21

Joyce Oates' story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a tale of a young girl who is threatened by a man who has a particular interest in young women. This man, A. Friend, first sees the young girl, Connie, at a fast food restaurant. Connie is hanging out with another boy at this time, but that does not stop A. Friend from telling her he is going to have her. Within the next couple days after seeing Connie at the fast food joint, A. Friend shows up at Connie's house. No one else is home except for Connie, and Friend knows. He has been planning on it actually. Friend knew exactly where Connie's family was and what they were doing. Friend had been stalking her and a long with knowing about her family he also knew lots of information about her. Friend starts trying to persuade her to get into his car and she keeps refusing. He hints that her family and house may be harmed if she does not get into the car. He also mentions that she reminds him of one of her neighbors, another female who is now dead. This is perhaps foreshadowing Connie's likely demise. Connie, deciding that she did not want any one in her family to get hurt and realizing she was probably out of options, decided to get into the car with Friend and they drive off. This is where Oates' story ends. In the movie based on the story, the story keeps going. Connie arrives back home alive and apologizes to her family for not being the best daughter. Personally, I like the book better because it leaves the reader to decide what happens to Connie. After reading the articles of which "Where are You Going. Where Have You Been?" are based, it would seem to indicate to me that Connie would not be coming back from her little trip with A. Friend. The newspaper articles are about a handsome young man who kills at least three girls and says he also killed a young boy. This young man has no problem with the ladies and seems to just kill for the "thrill of killing." The articles, the story and the movie all have the same central idea and that is that young women should always be weary of their surroundings and what is going on in situations, especially those dealing with the opposite sex. When someone notices something out of the ordinary, and especially if something is indicating that there may be danger, they need to alert someone. It is amazing, though, how many different ways there are to tell the same basic story. There was the true story printed in the newspaper about a murderer of women. An author saw this and turned it into a short story, but changed the characters, setting and plot. Some one then decided to make a movie about the short story. The characters for the most part were the same except some were added. The setting is the same, but the overall story is longer. Each character is explored more especially Connie. Even with all the differences, the central theme throughout stayed the same. Females need to not try to grow up too fast and get themselves caught up with the wrong boys.

Homework 9/17

A piece of literature is not just a mess of ideas and words put on a page, but a carefully thought out idea in the form of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. These ideas that are the final product, or the finished version of the story or poem, are put together from many smaller ideas and then pieced together. Each piece of work or idea can be broken down to show how one would get the final product or finished story. Each piece of literature can be broken down into the ingredients, the process, or how the ingredients are connected, and then the made thing, which shows how what the ingredients conneceted to the process make. This may sound like a way of making food, but it is actually a great way to understand how a piece of literature came to be its final product.
In John Updike's "A & P," there are many ingredients. There is the convienence market that is the A&P. There is also the people working in the store, the people who come into the store to purchase items and also the person who is the manager of the store. Next, we get to the process of putting all these ingredients together. We have all of the people in the store acting like every person in the store before them. We have all the store employees following the orders of the boss, except for Sammy who decides to not obey his boss in the end and quit. So, basically the process is showing how every person, except for Sammy in the end, is a sheep and just follows everyone else. In the made product, there is Sammy standing tall and proud, thinking that he is some hero to these girls, who were shopping and then scolded by the manager for skimpy attire. But some may view Sammy as a hero in a way for going up against the grain and standing up to his boss and not acting like another sheep.
In Sharon Olds' "Rites of Passage," there is a similar made product to that of "A & P" but the way in which the author gets there is completely different. This time for ingredients there are: boys being mentioned as men, as small bankers, as generals, discussing who can beat who up, talking about killing a 2 year old, a cake and a host speaking out. The process takes the boys and uses a parallel structure of them as children to them as different types of men such as generals or bankers. All the boys are being connected to each other through the use of conversation. In the end, or made product, there is the host of the party who decides to act like a man by speaking out and saying that everyone could agree that they could all kill a 2 year old. The boys then have a sense of everyone at least being equal in the fact that they could all kill a 2 year old. This not only shows the boy being somewhat of a hero to his mother for saving his birthday party and saving his mother what would most likely end up as her having to make phone calls to parents because some children beat each other up, but also he acted like a very mature man. This boy also went against the grain by not telling the other children he could probably beat them up. He was not being a sheep, similar to how Sammy was not being a sheep.
In Sharon Olds' "The Only Girl At The Boys Party," Olds describes a girl who, as the title suggests, is the only one at the boys' party, but this girl does not seem to mind. The ingredients in this poem are more intersting than those in the last two works of literature. The poem contains: boys in bathing suits, one girl in a bathing suit, a bathing suit being able to be folded and curves of sexes. The process shows that the description of the girl and watch she is wearing and perhaps how she is thinking is more vivid. The poem almost seems to start with the girl at a very young age, too early to notice that boys and girls have different body parts, and seems to end with her not only starting to notice but almost relishing the fact that she is the only girl here in a pool full of boys. The made product seems to show a parent dropping their child of at the pool, for the reader does not know if this is a father or mother narrating. The poem then shows the narrator going through numbers perhaps signifying that the child is growing up in front of their eyes because at the end of the poem, the narrator notices the boys all staring at the daughter like a piece of meat and her staring and the boys, almost happy in a way because she knows she is the only girl at the pool and she can choose the boy of her liking. The girl is kind of a hero herself, brave enough to be the only one of her sex at the pool. She is definitely going against the grain.
Each piece of Literature has different characters, settings and events that take place in them, but they all three come out with almost the same basic message and that is do not be a sheep. It is amazing how works of literature can be so different, but in the end be so similar. The most interesting work to me, though, was "The Only Girl at the Boys Party." I liked it the most because it did not just discuss a normal, boring topic, but sex. Not literally sex of course, but things having to do with sexual nature. There is a parents' worst fear of having their child finally old enough to realize the sexual differences between men and women. A parent of a daughter is going to be especially concerned because girls, or daughters, are looked at with particular innocence. When this innocence is broken, however, that is when a parents' daughter is transformed into a boy's lover, her innocence gone. She is still the parents' daughter, but no longer the child or baby she once was. To have a poem that really describes what that is like, in only a few lines even, is amazing and interesting to me at the same time.

Homework 9/15

After watching the John Updike interview and then rereading "A & P", I feel like I understood things better or caught some things that I really did not the first read through. The first time I read, I did not notice that Queenie buying the food item she bought really indicated that she was from a higher socioeconomic class than that of Sammy. Sammy, as interpreted through the reading and hinted at by Updike, has a lot less money than Queenie and really needs to work for him and his family. This helps me understand why Sammy would want to impress or try to get with Queenie because she now also represents something better than him or someone almost out of his league. She is most likely someone who he would not normally be able to socialize with. I also noticed this time that the people in the store are all exhibiting sheep like behavior. Every customer just walks through the aisles just like every other customer and looks at things on the shelf. All the employees must heed the word of their boss for fear they might be fired. Updike indicates that because of Sammy having to see this everyday, he grows weary of it and since the girls are almost going against the grain by coming dressed inappropriately that sparks Sammy's idea, or at least plants the seed, for him to stop following the herd and quit his job. I thought it was interesting how at the beginning of the Updike interview, Updike commented on how wildly the girls were dressed and how much of a raucous that would have created in 1961. Today, however, I feel like it would not be anywhere near the same big deal it was then. People dress so much more inappropriately/skimpy today more than ever. I also liked how Updike talked about how he writes and readers read and that there is much room for interpretation of his characters and the situations they are in. He also comments about how teachers come up with things or ideas or themes that they think relate or have to do with his stories. He says that he is aware of some of the ideas the teachers come up with, but that he had no intent or was not thinking of some or most of these ideas the teachers have come up with but that they can fit his stories. My opinion on Sammy has still not changed. To me, he is still not a hero.
After reading the two poems by Sharon Olds, I would have to say that in my opinion her view of heroism and Updike's view seem pretty similar. At least they do when comparing "A & P" and Olds' two poems. In Olds' first poem, "Rites of Passage", she describes a mom speaking about her sons birthday. Her son is obviously very young and has very young guests, about 6-7, and they begin to get restless and fight with each other. The birthday boy, and son of the mother narrating, settles the argument every one is having by saying that everyone here could beat up a 2 year old. All the little kids agree and then go on to enjoy the birthday. I can understand why the mother would view this as heroic. The boy stopped every person at the party from fighting. This saves the mother not only the aggravation from probably having to clean up a huge mess that a fight would make at a birthday party, cake everywhere, but from having to tell other parents that their child was hurt at her son's party under her supervision. The second poem was about a girl being the only girl at a pool party. In my opinion, I do not see how she is heroic in any way. She does not really do anything in the poem except for arrive at a pool party and go swimming with everyone. There is no conflict for her to resolve. I could see one arguing that she is a hero because she was brave enough to be the only girl at a pool party, but it did not seem as if she was hassled by any boys or that she did not enjoy herself. So in my opinion she is no hero at all.

Homework 9/10

What is a hero? This question was recently asked of me and at first I thought I had a concrete answer, but as I began to ponder the answer to the question, I realized there was nothing concrete about the word hero. At first, I began to think of people that are heroes to me. People like Bill Clinton, my parents or even Batman are all heroes to me, albeit one is a fictional 'superhero,' but nonetheless a hero to me. I then began to think that although these people are huge inspirations to me, are they considered to be heroes by all people? And if they are not considered to be heroes by all, does that make them not heroes? Well, Bill Clinton certainly is not a hero to many people on the righter side of the political spectrum. Obviously, my parents are not heroes to the man or woman idling next to me, waiting for the light to change because, well, I doubt they even know my parents exist. Then there is Batman. Fictional character to is a hero to most people in Gotham city, but I bet I could name a few characters who probably do not think he is a hero. I would venture to say that the Joker, Penguin or any other character that the Batman has put in jail would probably not consider him a hero. So, since I could not clearly come up with what a hero was by thinking of personal examples of heroes, I decided to see what the dictionary said was a hero. The dictionary defines a hero as "A man of distinguished ability, admired for his brave deeds and distinguished qualities." So by this definition I guess we can rule out all woman since the dictionary says a hero is a man of distinguished ability. I guess then that Justice Sotomayor can no longer be a hero to Mexican Americans and/or women since she herself is a woman and the dictionary says men only please. The dictionary also defines a hero as "A person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal." I like this definition more. It excludes no gender. This definition makes more sense to me because it is saying that a hero is in the eye of the beholder. That a hero to one is not necessarily a hero to all, but could just be a hero to one. Does being a hero to one instead of hundreds or thousands make any difference at all? Not in the eyes of that one and if that one person was me, I would of course say no because they are my hero and not necessarily your hero. Now, would I consider Sammy, a character from John Updike's A & P, to be a hero? In my opinion, he is not a hero. He quit his job for no noble reason, but only to get the attention of some girls, which he was not even successful in. Not only was he not successful, but his parents were obviously counting on him to bring in money and now he can not even do that. I can, however, see how some people might see him as a hero. I could see a grocery employee seeing him as a hero because he stood up to the boss and quit. I am sure there are lots of grocery store employees or just people in general who would love to stand up to their annoying bosses and tell them that they quit and walk out. Sammy could be a hero, but he is not my hero.

Homework pages 6,8,19 due 9/8

Page 6
1. The wind does not think. The wind just uses brute force to try to get what it wants. The wind seems to be hard headed. The sun is smarter and more cunning. The sun seemed like it had a more calculated plan.
2. The North Wind just tried to use its brute force and strength, not thinking that if the wind just constantly blew hard the man would of course clutch the jacket even harder. If the Wind would have blown harder at different times, pausing for a few minutes between each, then the wind might ave been able to blow the cloak off.
3. The sun was successful because he thought about his plan and did not just use all of its might and force at once, instead gradually making it hotter and hotter so the man would take off the cloak.
4. The human serves as the test subject to see which is smarter and/or stronger, the Sun or the North Wind.
5. The sun was more persuasive becuase it gradually warmed the man to the point of wanting to remove the cloak as opposed to the wind who just blew and used as much force as it could at once.
Page 8
1.The exposition is the first 4 sentences of the story. He uses 2 sentences to set up the dramatic situation.
2. He changes the subject because he is setting up for what he is going to say at the end. He does not answer it directly because he wants to answer it in a way that will have more of an impact in the 2 interviewers. He asks them a question because he wants them to really get the point that he does not want to be bothered.
3. That Chang Tzu is very smart and carefully chooses his words.
Page 19
1. The details of the store and how everything in it is arranged and also how he observes how people walk and act. It gives one a sense of being able to be in this grocery store.
2. He does not really fully describe Sammy. He shows admirable and foolish traits by quitting. He is admirable because he is trying to do something to prove a point, but foolish to me because he is also trying to get the girls' attention and fails. He should not have done something so bold as to quit. His character is shown more than the doctor's.
3. The expostiton starts with the first paragraph and lasts for several after that while the author Sammy goes on to describe the girls and the store as well as other people in the store. It is important because it forshadows how she is going to react in the end and also helps the story seem like its more from actual life.
4. I do detect a little change. He seems pretty smitten with them the moment they walk in because he describes every little detail about them. after he quits however, he only briefly looks for them and when can not find them does not seem that upset.
5. It becomes apparent when the manager is described to be walking up to the girls because the bathing suits they are wearing have been emphasized the whole story. The crisis is when the manager tells the girls not to wear the bathing suits, tells Sammy to ring them up and he quits. The climax is when he quits and confirms that he is quitting.
6. He quits because he is trying to be a sort of hero to the girls and hoping that they will notice him, which they do not.
7. I expected him to be sympathetic to the girls because as soon as they walk in that is all Sammy is thinking about and how he may be able to get their attention in some way.
8. I understand that Sammy was probably working this job to help his family to get by and pay bills and maybe even so he can pay for some of his own things. Sammy means that since he no longer has a job that his family was obvioulsy depending on him to have, is going to make things a lot tougher for him and his family to get by.
9. He makes that supermarket society, like every one, has its own set of characters who all have their little roles in this society such as Sammy, the manager, the old lady who Sammy incorrectly rings up and the girls as well as the other workers and shoppers.