1) Get most of the reading finished over the weekend. Review main characters and plots in the book, and then write what could be remembered of both.
2) Five AP Questions that seem challenging to myself:
1: In many works of literature, a main character has a mentor or mentor-like acquaintance whose influence dramatically changes how the character views not only himself or herself, but the world as well. Choose a novel or play in which a mentor exhibits such a strong influence, either beneficial or harmful, on one of the main characters. Then, in a well-organized essay, discuss the nature of the mentor's influence and its significance to the work as a whole.
2:One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel or a drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.
3:At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity. Choose a novel or play that you have studied and write a well-organized essay in which you describe an "illuminating" episode or moment and explain how it functions as a "casement," a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
4: In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas or behavior of the minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or play in which a minor character serves as a foil to a main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work.
5:Some novels and plays seem to advocate changes in social or political attitudes or in traditions. Choose such a novel or play and note briefly the particular attitudes or traditions that the author apparently wishes to modify. Then analyze the techniques the author uses to influence the reader's or audience's views. Avoid plot summary.
3) With knowledge of the book I am reading, I think i will be able to give a knowledgeable review of the characters of the story, their connection to the plot, and how Dickens portrays these characters to make them appear more believable.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Poem Analysis
THE WEARY BLUES
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
Analysis:
Tone: The author of this poem uses an appreciative tone, acknowledging the artistic value of Blues and those who have musical talent.
Theme: In this poem we see that Blues played a big part in the author's life, or the life of those it influenced. The theme would be to have a better understanding of the music you study so that one may have connections to it in their own life.
Syntax: The other splits the poem with lyrics of the singer, and then the words of the narrator, it is in this that we are able to see a connection to the lyrics, through a solemn tone, and the speaker, who is unidentifiable.
Diction: The words the narrator use suggest that he has a connection with Blues, and the culture of the Blues, through his use of a Southern accent, where the first African Americans had developed Blues from Gospel Music, and slave songs.Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Analysis:
Tone: The author uses a very forlorn tone, indicating the loneliness and sadness of the characters with words like, "blueblack" and "splintering cold". The darkness can be seen in our imagination.
Theme: In this poem we see that the author's intention was to show the work of a laborer, and to show the feelings of work, through the warm and the cold, and to express the inner feelings of those people who go through grueling work and expect nothing. They work simply because they have to.
Syntax: A reader can notice how the author splits the feelings of being alone and cold, and then explains the things that are what the worker is voluntarily missing.
Diction: His use of highly descriptive adjectives help the reader understand the feelings of the speaker, and how he perceives his father doing this work. The father may not feel this, but the son sees his father doing work, describing it as "without thanks".
Do Not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Analysis:
Tone: The author uses an insightful tone, describing his thoughts which contradict, showing the confusion in the meaning of night.
Theme: I see the author as comparing life and death. His description of Wild men who don't notice that death is creeping upon them until they see it overwhelm, then grieve it on it's departure.
Syntax: The author splits the views of each man by key lines, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Diction: Thomas is able to develop a sense of understanding in the character by using many contrasting words and sentences. This helps the audience compare the confusion between feelings in real life, and those described by the author.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Analysis:
Tone: Centralizing the tone on suspense and intense description help the reader see the urgency of the author, imagining end times and distress.
Theme: The theme of this poem is that the failure of life will be indicated by the unnatural events that occur. The author uses these events to develop uneasy feelings in the reader, which are unusual and unnerving.
Syntax: Yeats uses the first half of his poem to describe the occurances of end times and how we might see it and notice it. The second half imagines humanistic reactions, fearful and confused in their desperation for normality.
Diction: The author speaks like a prophetic document, indications and references to religious text help the speaker's authentication of words spoken. Using an enlightened character helps the reader look at the text from the perspective of one being informed.
OUT, OUT
BY ROBERT FROST
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
Analysis:
Tone: The author of this poem uses an appreciative tone, acknowledging the artistic value of Blues and those who have musical talent.
Theme: In this poem we see that Blues played a big part in the author's life, or the life of those it influenced. The theme would be to have a better understanding of the music you study so that one may have connections to it in their own life.
Syntax: The other splits the poem with lyrics of the singer, and then the words of the narrator, it is in this that we are able to see a connection to the lyrics, through a solemn tone, and the speaker, who is unidentifiable.
Diction: The words the narrator use suggest that he has a connection with Blues, and the culture of the Blues, through his use of a Southern accent, where the first African Americans had developed Blues from Gospel Music, and slave songs.Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Analysis:
Tone: The author uses a very forlorn tone, indicating the loneliness and sadness of the characters with words like, "blueblack" and "splintering cold". The darkness can be seen in our imagination.
Theme: In this poem we see that the author's intention was to show the work of a laborer, and to show the feelings of work, through the warm and the cold, and to express the inner feelings of those people who go through grueling work and expect nothing. They work simply because they have to.
Syntax: A reader can notice how the author splits the feelings of being alone and cold, and then explains the things that are what the worker is voluntarily missing.
Diction: His use of highly descriptive adjectives help the reader understand the feelings of the speaker, and how he perceives his father doing this work. The father may not feel this, but the son sees his father doing work, describing it as "without thanks".
Do Not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Analysis:
Tone: The author uses an insightful tone, describing his thoughts which contradict, showing the confusion in the meaning of night.
Theme: I see the author as comparing life and death. His description of Wild men who don't notice that death is creeping upon them until they see it overwhelm, then grieve it on it's departure.
Syntax: The author splits the views of each man by key lines, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Diction: Thomas is able to develop a sense of understanding in the character by using many contrasting words and sentences. This helps the audience compare the confusion between feelings in real life, and those described by the author.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Analysis:
Tone: Centralizing the tone on suspense and intense description help the reader see the urgency of the author, imagining end times and distress.
Theme: The theme of this poem is that the failure of life will be indicated by the unnatural events that occur. The author uses these events to develop uneasy feelings in the reader, which are unusual and unnerving.
Syntax: Yeats uses the first half of his poem to describe the occurances of end times and how we might see it and notice it. The second half imagines humanistic reactions, fearful and confused in their desperation for normality.
Diction: The author speaks like a prophetic document, indications and references to religious text help the speaker's authentication of words spoken. Using an enlightened character helps the reader look at the text from the perspective of one being informed.
OUT, OUT
BY ROBERT FROST
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Henry V: Speech Remix
During class today, I got the idea to interpret the speech into my own words, it may not be correct so I am asking if anyone sees anything that can be fixed comment! P.S. (I know it is wrong in a lot of places!)
(It is just an exercise)
Henry V by William Shakespeare
King:
Who are you to judge them, and wish for aid?
You, my cousin? No, not you;
But if we are to die soon we will do
our country service; if we live,
the greater praise for heroes of battle.
Only God knows! But let him not take another.
By Jove, I do not crave gold,
nor care who seeks me for riches;
it doesn't bother me if you are of them;
such things do not phase me.
But if coveting honor is sinful,
I shall burn in hell.
Have faith in yourself, my cousin.
For the love of God! I would not give
my honor to another man where I have
honor to be gained. My hopes are still high;
though not another man show.
For if the desire to fight is not there, then do not
force him to partake in killing;
He is not worthy of death by the sides of just men,
This day is called the feast of Crispian.
Those who live past this day will look back,
in old age, and dine with his neighbors proclaiming,
"Tomorrow is the feast of Saint Crispian."
Then strip the cloth from his body to reveal the scars
that so heroic a man has earned.
The names of the man that fought by myself and eachother
will be remembered forever as brethren.
And through joyous party remember this day with fine drink,
the story be told as that of a life lesson from father to son.
We are the few. We are the happy few.
We are a band forged of brothers.
On this day, I will fight shoulder to shoulder with any man,
may he be a thief, drunk, defiler;
This day he shall be a brother, and all the men in England,
now asleep in bed, be thinking themselves accursed to not
have been apart of a glorious day. They will believe themselves
no longer worthy of life, when
those who fought remember Saint Crispin's day.
(It is just an exercise)
Henry V by William Shakespeare
King:
Who are you to judge them, and wish for aid?
You, my cousin? No, not you;
But if we are to die soon we will do
our country service; if we live,
the greater praise for heroes of battle.
Only God knows! But let him not take another.
By Jove, I do not crave gold,
nor care who seeks me for riches;
it doesn't bother me if you are of them;
such things do not phase me.
But if coveting honor is sinful,
I shall burn in hell.
Have faith in yourself, my cousin.
For the love of God! I would not give
my honor to another man where I have
honor to be gained. My hopes are still high;
though not another man show.
For if the desire to fight is not there, then do not
force him to partake in killing;
He is not worthy of death by the sides of just men,
This day is called the feast of Crispian.
Those who live past this day will look back,
in old age, and dine with his neighbors proclaiming,
"Tomorrow is the feast of Saint Crispian."
Then strip the cloth from his body to reveal the scars
that so heroic a man has earned.
The names of the man that fought by myself and eachother
will be remembered forever as brethren.
And through joyous party remember this day with fine drink,
the story be told as that of a life lesson from father to son.
We are the few. We are the happy few.
We are a band forged of brothers.
On this day, I will fight shoulder to shoulder with any man,
may he be a thief, drunk, defiler;
This day he shall be a brother, and all the men in England,
now asleep in bed, be thinking themselves accursed to not
have been apart of a glorious day. They will believe themselves
no longer worthy of life, when
those who fought remember Saint Crispin's day.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Spring Semester Plan 1
As the Semester continues I plan on:
- Holding my integrity to my school work and into everything I do
- Pass the AP exam with above a 3
- Continue to learn from the place I live so that it my make my college experience even more successful
To get there:
- Spend time thinking about school (other then when at school)
- Take assignments more seriously and try to see them more in depth
- Show care and compassion to the people I love and help them understand me and my goals
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