Friday, February 26, 2010

Great Expectations

Pip's experience at Ms. Havishams change his life. It was the first link. She changed his life by bringing Estella into Pip's life. Estella made him feel like crud for being who he was. It is not his fault that he is of lower class than her, but she sure makes him feel bad for it. It may have also given Pip reason to try to be of a higher class so that he can impress Estella to win her over. Also, even if Pip does not realize it, Ms. Havisham showed him that he has more than just Joe, Ms. Havisham cares about him. This day changed his life because he found an interest in Estella and he refuses to forget her. It is easy to understand that just one day can change your life forever.

The day that changed my life was when I started at Holy Family. I went in there with a lazy attitude. I didn't care about school at all. But as soon as I walked in the classroom door everyone was busy with work. Everyone cared. It made me feel pressured to care, as if it was weird not to care. Peer pressure won me over and from that day since I have been pressured to get good grades and do the best work I can.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Importance of Being Earnest paragraph

Coming up with something to write for my paragraph has been very difficult. Our body paragraphs are high, medium, and low dishonesty and it is very hard to find much about medium dishonesty. I want to make the point of why the levels of dishonesty are so important and why Wilde uses them in his play. In my paragraph I am going to use several lines from the play as a concrete details to describe the medium level of dishonesty. After that I want to state some of my opinions on the medium level of dishonesty. I do not have enough detail for my paragraph yet and some ideas would be great.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Victorian Research

As I read the play, The Importance of Being Earnest I notice many similarites between the play and my research on the vitorian era. Woman in the Victorian Era had one goal in life and that was marriage to a man with a good social class. Cecily and Gwendolen are following that victorian stereotype because they are both looking for marriages. Cecily is having such a hard time finding a marriage that she makes one up in her diary. Gwedolen, on the other had is having a hard time finding someone because her the man she marries has to live up to her mothers expectations. The fact that Gwedolen's mother is taking the duty of finding her daughter a husband was also common in the Victorian Era. Most marriages in the higher classes were not out of love, but out of the social class and the amount of money the man has. In Gwendolen's place she is not aloud to marry "Ernest" because he was found in a leather bag as a baby, and that does not live up to Lady Bracknell's standards.

It is also stereotypical for higher class people to be snobby in the Victorian Era. Algeron is a great example in the book of someone of such a high class that he is rude. He is so rich that he thinks he can just rip up his bills and nothing will happen to him. He also thinks that he can say what ever he wants to say and do whatever he wants to do. He often comments Jack's outfits and does whatever he wants by going to Jack's house without his permission. Those are only two bits of information that I have learned and compared to the Victorian Era. There are many more examples in the book.

Monday, January 4, 2010

New Year's resolutions

This year my biggest focus is school. My new year resolution is to focus more on school than my social life. My inspiration is the realisation that school is everything. It's my future. I want to keep my grades up. I want all A's. The highest A I can get in each class. I plan on trying my hardest for put school first. For me that is really hard to do because my social life is pretty much everything for me, but I know school is more important in the long run.

My plan is to get an organizer and write down all of my homework and the classes that I could work on. I also plan on informing my friends about what I am going to do and my plans, so that they understand that I still want to hang out but I want to get my school work done because it is much more important to me than anything else.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

animal farm poem

The Revision of Commands
by Julia McNamara

No animal in England is free
so rebellion it shall be
You take our produce everyday.
Equality we say
The overthrow of the human race
is what you get for this disgrace.


We have now rebelled
New commands we must now tell
Whatever goes upon two legs is enemy
but not now
no not for me
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend
but not when I slaughter you towards the end

No animal shall wear clothes
because everyone knows
animals shall not wear clothes
But alas we have lied again
It is okay to wear clothes, they bring no sin

No animal shall sleep in a bed
with sheets that is
never question us,
never quiz
No animals shall drink alcohol,
to excess
We revised the rule for the best

No animal shall kill any other animal
without cause
The revision of the commands has no flaws
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others
Sorry again I lied we are nothing like brothers
We changed the rules oh, yes we did
We are power hungry because we are pigs

No animal in England is free
so rebellion on you pigs is how it should be
But we shall not break the commands
because we are trstworthy as you can see
Rebellion it shalt no be.
You are human now and out efforts are lost
but for trusting you we now pay the cost.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Amanda Fernandez "Unknown Girl in the Maturnity Ward" by Anne Sexton

"Unknown Girl In The Maturnity Ward" by Anne Sexton, performed by Amanda Fernandez was exhilarating. When Amanda was performing the poem she made it feel like you were actually there in the ward with the girl. Amanda read the poem like a story and not in a sing song way. She told the story that went with the poem very well. All the imagery in the poem was very vivid. I enjoyed watching her perform. I watched at least 5 other performances and Amanda's was the best. She conveyed the poem better than the other performers, that must have been why she was in the top performances. She had a great physical presence and great voice and articulation also. This poem told a great story

The poem was about a teenage girl who had just given birth to a child. She loved the child and wanted to keep the child, but had no one to keep the child with. The father had left them both and the child was up for adoption. The poem shifts from her being happy for having to being upset with the doctors for scolding her. At the begining of the peom she says the childs lips are like animals and that hunger is not wrong at first, but I think she is talking about herself and the "hunger" and lust that she had for the man she had sex with to produce the child. She knew she had sinned when she had sex and then got pregnant without a father to care for the child. She loves the child, obviously, but can not care for it so she hands the child off to another family so that the child can have a better life. I think the message for this poem was to do the right thing and that mistakes happen, but you can always fix them in some way.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

mockingbird motif

After reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird I understood the meaning of motif more than I did before reading the novel. I know a motif is a reoccurring symbol in the book, but now I better understand how to look for a motif. Though, it was not hard to find in this novel because the motif is stated in the title.

The "mockingbird motif" in the novel is innocence. When Atticus says it is a sin to kill a mockingbird he means that it is wrong to kill something that has done nothing wrong. The themes in To Kill a Mockingbird were racism and predujice towards others. Tom Robison and Arthur Radley are both good examples of the themes and they both tie into the mockingbird motif. Tom is judged by his color and everything he does has to do with his color/race. Tom is judged unfairly by others becuase of the stories people have made up. People in Maycomb were always saying how he ate cats and only came out at night, when, in reality, he stayed in his house becuase he was scared of the outside world and his brother, Nathan Radley. Another thing that is predujice in the novel is the way men treat woman. Woman must be lady-like. They must wear dresses. It is wrong to cuss in front of them and woman can not be involved in the jury or any other type of government. I believe that everyone should be treated like equals and that that was the message the other was trying to portray with the novel.