It's an odd thing that people give human like substance to abstract things. In the Poem "My Fear," by Lawrence Raab fear takes on a human form, it is touchable, seeable, tasteable. It is quite odd, I have never thought of something like fear or death as something human, but more like another entity outside of humanity. It is a power, more like a force of nature. It causes people to do incredible and stupid things to eachother and to the world.
Raab gives little signs of significant things. For instance, when he calls fear "Mr." it signifies that he respects fear and that he wouldnt want to provoke it because in the next few lines in stanza 3 he asks what he must carry form fear and that he wonders if "he" is sorry for giving Raab those troubles. He is begging fear to give him a light burden so that he will not be so afraid...this is so interesting.
In the last stanza in the last line he wishes that fear would give him small fears like the crickets outside that he heard before he went to bed and met "Him." This is so dark; if he falls asleep he is met on the otherside by fear....
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Kite That Crashed...Then Soared
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini...what a great book. I loved it. It could've been because i also watched the movie so i kind of had a visual to go off of the whole time and i kinda knew what was coming but the book also offered a lot more than the movie...a more vivid discription that allowed me to really get inside the writers head and understand what he was really thinking about when all of these things were going on in his life.
As i read the book i annotated by relating to the book, and relating it to other things like in the world or to other texts.
I dont really think i liked this annotating very much...i didnt really see the purpose in doing this. As i annotated i realized that the author had similarities to my life but in all it didnt really help...OOOOHHHH! IT DID HELP! haha It did help because right when i was saying that i was remembering things that took place in the book because i refreshed my life and while that happened aspects of the authors life accomponied it. Ok ok ok it does work, but not for everything. For example, when i was trying to relate it to things other than myself i couldnt make very many connections and this frustrated me. I made almost all of the connections to myself and im wondering if that is a bad thing or not because you said that it should be to other texts and to the world.... I wonder if different kinds of books use different ones, like a science book would use more of text to world and maybe a poem book would use more text to text...i will definitely have to explore those options because i only really used text to self.
This book made me the most sad out of the three...because the whole entire time i could just envision these two little kids who had to endure all of these things...but especially Hassan. The poor kid didnt have a good life right out of the whomb...yet out of all of the characters in the book he was the most happy, and what baffles me the most is that this really happened and that makes it even harder to comprehend why he was so happy all the time. I liked that about him though because everyone needs a friend like that, one who can always lighten the mood and knows what to say and how to say it. Amir didnt deserve a friend like that i dont think. Amir never stood up for him and when Hassan needed him most he fled like the coward he was. Poor Hassan didnt need to go through that.... GOSH THAT MADE ME SO PISSED!!!! Im still pissed.
Assef was the perfect shot of the devil and the fact that they met later in life really emphasises his devilish qualities in Amir's life. I hated Assef he had a great life and he had no reason to do the sort of things that he did. I mean usually the kids that turn out to be sociopaths are the ones that had a lot of problems, but he just...was. Thats it, he just was a sociopath, no reason and no excuse. That is the worst.
This book showed the perfect balance of good and evil, and i think had the greatest lesson out of all of the three books. It really showed me that everyone can get a second chance and when you get the oppurtunity to take that second chance, that you need to pounce on it and not let it slip away from you. I havent pounced enough, and i need to start, cause like Amir changed Hassans son's life, i could change someone else's.
As i read the book i annotated by relating to the book, and relating it to other things like in the world or to other texts.
I dont really think i liked this annotating very much...i didnt really see the purpose in doing this. As i annotated i realized that the author had similarities to my life but in all it didnt really help...OOOOHHHH! IT DID HELP! haha It did help because right when i was saying that i was remembering things that took place in the book because i refreshed my life and while that happened aspects of the authors life accomponied it. Ok ok ok it does work, but not for everything. For example, when i was trying to relate it to things other than myself i couldnt make very many connections and this frustrated me. I made almost all of the connections to myself and im wondering if that is a bad thing or not because you said that it should be to other texts and to the world.... I wonder if different kinds of books use different ones, like a science book would use more of text to world and maybe a poem book would use more text to text...i will definitely have to explore those options because i only really used text to self.
This book made me the most sad out of the three...because the whole entire time i could just envision these two little kids who had to endure all of these things...but especially Hassan. The poor kid didnt have a good life right out of the whomb...yet out of all of the characters in the book he was the most happy, and what baffles me the most is that this really happened and that makes it even harder to comprehend why he was so happy all the time. I liked that about him though because everyone needs a friend like that, one who can always lighten the mood and knows what to say and how to say it. Amir didnt deserve a friend like that i dont think. Amir never stood up for him and when Hassan needed him most he fled like the coward he was. Poor Hassan didnt need to go through that.... GOSH THAT MADE ME SO PISSED!!!! Im still pissed.
Assef was the perfect shot of the devil and the fact that they met later in life really emphasises his devilish qualities in Amir's life. I hated Assef he had a great life and he had no reason to do the sort of things that he did. I mean usually the kids that turn out to be sociopaths are the ones that had a lot of problems, but he just...was. Thats it, he just was a sociopath, no reason and no excuse. That is the worst.
This book showed the perfect balance of good and evil, and i think had the greatest lesson out of all of the three books. It really showed me that everyone can get a second chance and when you get the oppurtunity to take that second chance, that you need to pounce on it and not let it slip away from you. I havent pounced enough, and i need to start, cause like Amir changed Hassans son's life, i could change someone else's.
The Not So Dark Darkness
As i read The Heart of Darkness I seem to find the subtle dark tendencies that Jospeh Conrad is trying to convey to his reader. Through the use of conspiracy and lies Joseph Conrad seems to show that perhaps the savages are bathed in white, and are not lurking in the shadows of the vast jungle that is the continent they are so vehemently trying to civilize. It is the white man that needs to learn to become civilized.
As i read through this fascinating book i annotated it for its style, which is essentially performing a rhetorical analysis of the writer. As i read i started to realize that his diction is quite distinct and that what kept popping out to me was the fact that he was very syncapated in his riding. The whole entire time i read it felt like the lines had a bounce to them in my head, and this really helped me to remember very important happenings in the book and set a very distinct pace for the book overall. I really liked how he was able to set the pace for the reader and i wanted to know how did that and i came to realize that the way in which he did this was the use of commas and prepositional phrasing that was broken up by interrupting clauses and speech. I want to learn how to apply this strategy in my writing so that i can try to set the pace for readers who may come across something i might compose.
One the thing that i didnt like was how the plot was told. The whole entire time the main character was the Captain of the ship in the present day, and he was telling the story of him going to a continent where they were gathering ivory and trying to explore the uncharted places of that continent. All the while i was trying to figure out what the people listening to the story in the book were thinking and i couldnt stay concentrated because the whole time i was thinking about the fact that maybe this guy isnt even the main character that the Captain who was telling the story should be a secondary character but no he kept on telling the story and telling the story.
I felt like one of his crew who had to sit there and listen to this story...even i started to fall asleep.
The reason why i started to lose my interest was because i already figured out the message that Joseph Conrad was trying to send so i figured the rest of the story couldnt be that important. I stopped looking for the important message throughout the rest of the book so it all kind of started to blur for me and i had to go back and re-read certain areas because i just started reading the words and not the story.
All in all i think that this book had a pretty good message about the darkness that is in all hearts and the deceit that can overtake all of us, while he contrasted it with the "savages" who were really the most civilized in the whole book.
It makes me wonder...did the white man turn "savages" into the savages they wanted them to be...?
As i read through this fascinating book i annotated it for its style, which is essentially performing a rhetorical analysis of the writer. As i read i started to realize that his diction is quite distinct and that what kept popping out to me was the fact that he was very syncapated in his riding. The whole entire time i read it felt like the lines had a bounce to them in my head, and this really helped me to remember very important happenings in the book and set a very distinct pace for the book overall. I really liked how he was able to set the pace for the reader and i wanted to know how did that and i came to realize that the way in which he did this was the use of commas and prepositional phrasing that was broken up by interrupting clauses and speech. I want to learn how to apply this strategy in my writing so that i can try to set the pace for readers who may come across something i might compose.
One the thing that i didnt like was how the plot was told. The whole entire time the main character was the Captain of the ship in the present day, and he was telling the story of him going to a continent where they were gathering ivory and trying to explore the uncharted places of that continent. All the while i was trying to figure out what the people listening to the story in the book were thinking and i couldnt stay concentrated because the whole time i was thinking about the fact that maybe this guy isnt even the main character that the Captain who was telling the story should be a secondary character but no he kept on telling the story and telling the story.
I felt like one of his crew who had to sit there and listen to this story...even i started to fall asleep.
The reason why i started to lose my interest was because i already figured out the message that Joseph Conrad was trying to send so i figured the rest of the story couldnt be that important. I stopped looking for the important message throughout the rest of the book so it all kind of started to blur for me and i had to go back and re-read certain areas because i just started reading the words and not the story.
All in all i think that this book had a pretty good message about the darkness that is in all hearts and the deceit that can overtake all of us, while he contrasted it with the "savages" who were really the most civilized in the whole book.
It makes me wonder...did the white man turn "savages" into the savages they wanted them to be...?
The Record Keeper
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was extremely intriguing. I am the type of person who enjoys studying people and their slight mannerisms and this book was the epitome of what i like to call "people watching;" Nick, the narrator, describes and observes the characters within the book almost exactly as i would.
The complex story has so much to offer the over analytical mind, which I possess. The characters are all intertwined and mingle into eachothers lives in ways that one wouldnt really expect. As the story unfolds one can see the way that Fitzgerald wanted to convey the characters, and how every single one of them had a darker more sinister side to them.
I find Gatsby to be the most interesting character out of all of the others, because his motives are all for himself. He is continually fueling himself and others believe he is such a selfless man because he shares his wealth and throws all of these extravagant parties but when it comes down to it they are all to benefit him, no one else. All of the parties are for daisy. Tom is my least favorite. Tom is a controlling man...a man who thinks that he can mold every aspect of the world around him and that bugs me a lot. Also the fact that he doesnt recognize that he has a catch right in front of him in Daisy makes me want to punch him in the face.
Now for the annotating. As i annotated this book it really made me think about what is important in the book. I annotated this book in order to make a trail. I highlighted all of the important events in the book and all of the significant aspects that i recognized in the plot. For example i always highlighted the places where pieces of Gatsby's life were revealed and where aspects of his life were questioned. The reason why i did this was in order to compare the lore of his life to what is supposedly real so i could decide whether something was true or not. Another reason i created a trail was because sometimes the plot and characters got too vast so i could go back and reference places in oder to establish plot direction and what certain character's significance was, such as Mr. Wilson and his wife Myrtle. I had to keep refering back to them because I got confused with how they were related to the story. Then when I realized just how important they are i felt like an idiot. So the annotating really helped a lot in that aspect, and I never really thought that annotating would help all that much but since i was kinda forced to I've realized that it helps quite a bit.
The irony at the end was probably my favorite part of the whole book.... The fact that Gatsby only really lived for himself was shown loud and clear at the end. No one showed for his funeral and the fact that he was killed by mistake also showed some irony. It should have been tom, but because Gatsby tried to steal the life of Daisy in order to make his life better his life, in turn, was stolen.
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