This portfolio is the last in a set of three, and it compiles all the blogs I have posted between April 7, 2008 to the present for Dr. Jerz’s Introduction to Literary Study class at Seton Hill University.
-Timeliness-
The following blogs were posted on time or in advance.
Wasup?- 1 day in advance
Excuses, Excuses- 1 day in advance
Expendable Little Munchkins- 1 day in advance
-Depth-
Busy Buzzing- This example of a blank verse was actually one of my proudest accomplishments.
Excuses, Excuses- Here I discuss scansion as presented in Hamilton pages 189-215.
Expendable Little Munchkins- An analysis of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (chapters 1-5).
-Discussion and Interaction-
The following blog entries show an ongoing discussion between a peer and I or several peers and I on our blogs. This section also contains blogs written by my peers that I have written extensive comments on.
I DO like green eggs and ham!- On Angela Palumbo’s blog concerning Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, I made a clever prediction about the end of the story. This comment lead to a group discussion outside of class time about what we really think Card’s motive was for writing the book.
Because man will always be tools.- Jessie Farine, Angela Palumbo, another of our classmates continued a discussion outside the blogs on how Card created this story with child soldiers who have a speaking vocabulary so unbelievably adult-like.
Homepage | Portfolio 1 | Portfolio 2
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Rather than picking a quote I thought I would compare the real world to this book (thus far).
Children are being forced to grow up quickly and take on adult responsibilities like dying for your country. However, in order to do this, the government (Big Brother, those people inside your head, whatever you want to call the people behind the monitors) is trying to suck the emotion out of these children and failing miserably with Ender who actually shows compassion (he cries after beating up Stilson who, quite frankly, deserved the crap beat out of him).
Now it is my belief that Card wrote this story for children who 1. feel like they are being forced to grow up to quickly 2. refuse to grow up and take on responsibilities or 3. need a source to prove that children rule the world. I base this belief on the fact that I bought this book several years ago in the pre-teen section of Barnes and Noble.
As I was reading this, I couldn’t get over the fact that Andrew (Ender), Peter, and Valentine are so young. They talk like adults and have the mental capacity (if not in excess) of many adults. Their government encourages this, partly because they want to breed and use these children like robots (or suicide soldiers) to fight a war. Sadly, they see these children as expendable pieces of machinery rather than precious little gifts from whatever deity you ascribe to.
]]>Scansion
“As noted above [in John Keat’s “Bright Star”], even expert readers vary in scanning complex meters, and some might scan some of these lines a bit differently…All would agree, though, that the dominant meter is iambic pentameter” (206).
Talk about confusing the poor little dears, just when we think we’ve finally figured out feet and meter Hamilton thumps and stumps us with a final blow to the cranium. She says that Keat’s poem is a sonnet, which means it is written with 14 lines of iambic pentameter. If one looks at the scansion of the poem on page 206, you will see a lot of riff-raff. Stressed syllables are followed by stressed syllables, stresses completely disappear here and there, and dashes are used as excuses for ignoring the stress pattern. Now if Keat wanted to write a poem this mixed up, he shouldn’t have strived to confuse us by making it only dominantly iambic pentameter. That’s like making an excuse for why it’s not “gay” or “girly” for some men (ie. football players) to take ballet.
]]>Q-gasm: The sensation one experience’s when cleaning one’s ear canal with a Q-tip
Example: A female person who goes by the name sexygirl, dedicated an entire webpage to defining strange forms of sex. In her never-ending list she wrote that, “an Ear-gasm or a Q-gasm is like sex with a Q-tip.”
I love having my ears cleaned. For some reason, the inside of my ears are very sensitive, so it feels quite pleasurable. I wouldn’t say orgasmic, but nice. It’s like that nice feeling of having your hair played with or your back massaged. Now there are some people with strange fetishes, like sexygirl, who I can’t speak for.
Y’aight: ghetto for “Are you alright?”
Example: The link which I followed to find this was interestingly called “Lock me in the loony bin.” Needless to say, I had to enter. Sophiee commented to Baron Von Ginge on his bebo.com profile, “Haha well im not surprised your throat hurts…you muppet. lol. And so you did, much appreciated (Y) lol. Y’aight?”
Isn’t it lovely how alright isn’t even truly a word, yet people find the need to create even more obnoxious inner city jargon by splicing alright and hooking it up with a butchered y’all?
Banging: slamming, rocks, awesome, great
Example: FOEKIST said in response to Kanye West’s “Stronger,” “Would everybody be playing this track if Kanye didn’t make it? It’s different nonetheless, but it’s not banging by any means.”
Now if you remember Shaggy’s pop song “It Wasn’t Me,” you may recall the memorable line, “we was banging on the bathroom door,” which does not mean he was knocking loudly. Besides this meaning, I have heard banging being used to refer to a very attractive woman (she’s banging).
Want to view more. Check out my peer's word choices.
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Busy Buzzing by Jeanine O'Neal
Looking about as the buzzing grew near
I searched the corners for a friendly bee,
And finding none I fled to the kitchen
To hide away the boiling water pot.
To my dismay, not a pot of steam was there.
Windows standing ajar proved no answer,
Making me question my own sanity.
Not till after I had checked on my phone
Did I realize the buzzing came from him.
His heart beat I heard as he came closer.
Wrapping his loving arms about his life,
I fell softly into the arms of mine.
And for more examples of blank verse, check out my peers poems.
]]> This portfolio is the second in a set of three, and it compiles all the blogs I have posted between February 25 and April 4, 2008 for Dr. Jerz’s Introduction to Literary Study class at Seton Hill University.
My first portfolio compiles all my blog entries from the first half of the spring 2008 semester. It also provides a brief overview of our reasons for writing blogs about literature.
-Timeliness-
The following blogs were posted on time or in advance.
And all your sins shall be washed away… 1 day in advance
I Spy a Foil 2 days in advance
Life in a Bubble A quote taken from Nickel and Dimed discusses the relation of the book to The Truman Show.
The Coming of Christ 1 day in advance
Punctuation Gets Personal 1 day in advance
-Depth-
And all your sins shall be washed away… If you are ever in need of a Biblically inspired interpretation of Flannery O’Connor’s “The River,” you’ve come to the right place.
I Spy a Foil Here is my take on Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May be Your Own.” I discuss how the waiter boy and the drifter boy at the end of the story are foils for each other. They are significant to the story, as I point out, because they lead Mr. Shiftlet to examine his own conscience.
Breaking Through Her Shell This blog looks at Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and explains a philosophical/religious reference to evolution.
The Allegorical Wizard An allegorical discussion ensues as I rip apart The Wizard of Oz and put it back together again.
The Coming of Christ Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person” gets a thorough explanation by comparing the coming of Christ to the coming of a Bible salesman.
-Discussion and Interaction-
The following blog entries show an ongoing discussion between a peer and I or several peers and I on our blogs. This section also contains blogs written by my peers that I have written extensive comments on.
Red Water is Not a Good Sign This is Angela Palumbo’s take on Flannery O’Connor’s “The River.” I left her an insightful comment the hopefully answers some questions she may have had. I also provided her a link to my blog (And all your sins shall be washed away…) because it further discussed some points she made.
Punctuation Gets Personal This is my own blog which generated much discussion outside of class. Unfortunately, most of the reactions I got from people are not in the comments on the blog page seeing as how they were verbal.
Trusst me. You WANT to read this! In this blog by a peer, I participated in a lengthy discussion concerning her blog.
-Links Included-
This category includes blogs that contain links to other blogs I have written.
And all your sins shall be washed away… A link is included to another blog about a Flannery O’Connor. If you follow the link, I explain “A Good Man is Hard to Find” similarly to my explanation of “The River,” in a Biblical fashion.
Breaking Through Her Shell This blog contains a link to an additional blog I wrote (Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?) that does not have to do with the text but was inspired by the text.
Collards Greens and Baby Dreams Flannery O’Connor’s “A Stroke of Good Fortune” gets interpreted after I link to VegParadise to uncover the significance of collard greens.
“But to get back to those dark-side-of-the-moon years in British education when teachers upheld the view that grammar and spelling got in the way of self-expression…” (Truss 16).
When I typed this quote followed by its parenthetical citation, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not to add the comma after the citation since I used an ellipses to end the quote. Truly, Truss is already beginning to mess with my mind. However, I did not choose this quote to point out the usage of ellipses as Frank McCourt did; I had another agenda in mind. When I read this bit, I couldn’t help but ask myself where I heard this before. You see, my boyfriend is a member of the Anti-Punctuation Society, if ever one existed. He loves to write me little love notes and hide them around my room so that I find them unexpectedly to my surprise and delight. The only problem with these letters is his complete disregard for grammar rules and punctuation. He said on several occasions, after I offered to school him the art of using his native language, that punctuation and grammar limited his creativity. Many times I have found myself going to him asking for an explanation for a rather confusing sentence. For example, he once wrote, “I did not expect that I was a little worried.” This obviously could be taken the way he wrote it, that he did not anticipate being worried. But I knew that he meant, “I did not expect that. I was a little worried,” in reference to something a bit shocking I once told him.
But not only in my sweet boyfriend’s notes do I find mistakes. Recently I have noticed how many typographical errors there are on job applications and contracts. For instance, I don’t know how many times I have been asked what my mothers’ address is, suggesting I have more than one mother. In my most recent job interview, I was asked to read through the contract which was infested with the word “employe.” This confused me quite a bit on whether the rights were given to me as the employee or the employer, for, as I thought, perhaps they missed a letter when typing. Such mistakes as these make me seriously question the intelligence and legitimacy of the company. I have, on many occasions, turned down a job because its application proved the ignorance of my potential employers. As of now I work for Safari Contract Cleaners whose name isn’t much better than “employe.” Do the cleaners belong to Safari? and exactly what is a contract cleaner?
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“ ‘I heard her say, “This is going to put the Fear of the Lord into those shiftless niggers!”’Mrs. Shortley said in a ringing tone” (O’Connor 204).
By now we have all figured out that Flannery O’Connor uses Biblical allusions to support the overall message of her stories. So I thought I’d try my hand at some Biblically inspired interpretation.
The arrival of the Guizacs is a comparison to Mary and Joseph’s arrival in Bethlehem right before Jesus was born. Like the Guizacs, Mary and Joseph were displaced, leaving their home at Nazareth to travel to a town they knew very little of. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the inns were full of even more displaced people. The Guizacs were also entering a unknown locale full of “ten million billion [people] pushing their way into new places.” Mary and Joseph are left to sleep in a makeshift room in a stable. The Guizacs are housed in a makeshift shack, decorated with whatever could “be scraped together,” at some far end of the property.
Now one may ask where the star is that guided the shepherds and kings to come see the baby Jesus. Remember at the beginning when Mrs. Shortley “ignored the white afternoon sun” that was directly over the approaching Guizacs? That sun represents the bright star over Bethlehem. Mrs. Shortley even imagines herself as “a giant angel with wings as wide as a house, telling the Negroes that they would have to find another place” just like the angels bidding the shepherds to Bethlehem. Unfortunately, just as Mrs. Shortley ignored the sun, she also ignores the significance of the arrival of the displaced person (ie. Jesus).
Mr. Guizac, who is not surprisingly a carpenter, comes along and works the land in ways no one else has done. Mrs. McIntyre even proclaims, “ ‘That man is my salvation! ’” He, in Mrs. Shortley’s words would “put the Fear of the Lord” in all of them.
If you were trying to look up my quote using the page number listed and realized it does not correspond with your book you should assume with have two different books. Mine is an older collection and the pages are not the same as the newer collection. Here is the bibliographical information for my book just so you know:
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories.” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: San Diego and New York 1983.
]]>Personification- Allegory
“An extended form of personification occurs in allegory, in which an abstract concept is presented as though it were a character who speaks and acts as an independent being” (Hamilton 39).
I have always understood this concept but never had a name to associate with it. Some of the most well known allegories are “The Wizard of Oz,” “Ring Around the Rosie,” and “Humpty Dumpty.”
I will take “The Wizard of Oz” and break in down:
I am not exactly sure of the years, but there was a time in American history when there was economic instability because there was not enough gold in the reserves to equal the amount of printed money. This struck farmers very hard , yet industry kept pushing forward. The government wanted to create a new system that did not rely on gold (or silver) backing. “The Wizard of Oz” is an allegory of this situation in American history. Dorothy, who is clad in red shoes and a white and blue dress, represents America (red, white, and blue on the flag). The yellow brick road obviously represents the gold, and it leads to the Emerald City which is green, therefore representing the dollar bills that America eventually reverted to. The Wizard represents government, the Scarecrow represents the farmers in the south, the Tin Man represents industry in the north, and the Cowardly Lion represents the cowardly, indecisive people in the west.
]]>“ ‘Collard greens!’ she said, spitting the word from her mouth this time as if it were a poisonous seed.”
According to VegParadise, southerners believe that collards, when eaten on New Year’s Day, brought a year of good fortune. They also kept out evil spirits if hung over the door and supposedly prevented cancer. Not surprisingly, the title of this story suggests good fortune to come and mentions collards.
However, the story opens with Ruby yelling about collards. If there is one thing Ruby hates, it is children for all they do is make their mother’s “deader.” When she realizes that her good fortune is a child, she flips out and tries to ignore her stomach which obviously shows she is about four or five months pregnant. Ruby screaming about collards at the beginning of the story corresponds and foreshadows her screaming about being pregnant at the end of the story.
]]>When I asked my good friend Eryk “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” he immediately responded with the egg. He reasoned that if evolution is true, an animal, some animal, had to lay the egg that became the chicken. Then I thought, even if one refutes evolution, one cannot deny the existence of the dinosaurs. Massive lizards once roamed the earth, and their fossils give evidence to their previous existence. Now, some scientists believe the dinosaurs were completely wiped out by an earth shattering disaster. I ask if this is true, if all creatures were killed billions of years ago, where did the creatures that exist today come from? These very same scientists who try to disprove the creation theory never explain the origins of modern creatures, and if they do attempt to explain it, they say evolution. However, if evolution is the answer to our origins, how can they say the dinosaurs were knocked off their feet in one fail swoop?
I take it that the dinosaurs were here. How they came to be here is irrelevant to whether the chicken or egg came first. By fossilized evidence, it is a fact they were here. They did not all die off. Maybe some did for one reason or another, but they all did not. If they did, we were zapped here or we spontaneously generated from the dirt under our feet. Some Christians will tell you the latter is true based on the creation story of Adam and Eve. However, if Adam and Eve were the first people, where do the dinosaurs fit in? Adam was supposedly the first being on Earth; however, dinosaur remains date back further than The Bible allows for the existence of humans. Therefore, I refute this creation story as fact and find it is only a metaphor. The dinosaurs, for these reasons, could not have all died off. Where did they go then? Could it be possible that they evolved, like the elephant, which evolved from the wooly mammoth because it needed to adapt to its habitat. It is possible. We have no evidence to the contrary.
Some scientists say birds evolved from pterodactyls and raptors. I cannot say for certain which creatures birds evolved from and whether or not all birds evolved from the same prehistoric creature. What I can offer as some form of evidence is the fact that dinosaurs and birds both lay eggs. Birds, for some strange reason, are the only warm blooded animals that lay eggs. It is possible that they evolved from dinosaurs and continued to lay eggs like their ancestors. With this being said, each generation, starting with the dinosaurs, laid their eggs, which hatched slowly overtime as different animals. At some point in time, the egg was laid that brought forth from its yoke the chicken. That is why the egg came first in the great debate, which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Back to "Breaking Through Her Shell"
Then on what seemed an insuck of breath, he whispered, “You ever eat a chicken that was two days old?”
The girl looked at him stonily. He might have just put this question up for consideration at the meeting of a philosophical association. “Yes,” she presently replied as if she had considered all angles.
“It must have been mighty small,” he said triumphantly… (O’Connor 185).
This dialogue between Pointer and Hulga is similar to the debate over whether the chicken or the egg came first and shows their true philosophical beliefs despite their religions. In the chicken or egg debate, philosophers would say which you believe came first depends wholly on whether or not you believe in evolution or creation. Those who say the egg came first believe in evolution for a mutation happened within the egg. Those who say the chicken came first believe God created the chicken and just placed it here. However, Hulga’s answer opens up a third and entirely new possibility.
By saying she has eaten a two day old chicken, Hulga admits to believing in life at conception. Her two day old chicken is an egg which she is seen eating throughout the story. The irony is Hulga does not believe in God or have a religious affiliation, yet she adopts a well known Christian belief. Pointer on the other hand is a Christian but fails to recognize an egg can be a two day old chicken. This is an early example of foreshadowing because later in the story, it will be shown that Pointer is not truly the good country, Christian person he makes himself out to be.
If you want to see more on what I have to say about which came first: the chicken or the egg click here.
]]>“True, I take occasional breaks from this life, going home now and then to catch up on e-mail and for conjugal visits (though I am careful to ‘pay’ for everything I eat here, at $5 for dinner, which I put in a jar), seeing The Truman Show with friends and letting them buy my ticket” (Ehrenreich 34).
I’m sensing a bit of irony in this quote. The Truman Show which she mentions is about a man who lives on a giant Hollywood set, but doesn’t know it. He goes about his whole life in this bubble, basically trapped, and it is not until middle-age that he begins to realize his life was a creation. Everything was perfectly controlled. In Barbara’s situation, she has everything perfectly controlled. She loses her home? That’s okay. She’ll just quit the experiment. No food money? That’s okay. She has emergency cash. Rather than truly submerging herself into the experiment, like Truman unknowingly was, she makes these safe-guards. She does not have to worry about where her next meal will come from or whether she will have a roof over her head as she sleeps.
She also talks about her life as a minimum wage worker as though it were prison. She has the safe-guards and her home and her computer and her back-up money if things go wrong, so she is in no true prison. Perhaps she should show a little more respect for the people who have to live this way because no employer will give them a chance.
]]>“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor
“ ‘She looks like an angel of Gawd,’ he murmured” (66).
“ ‘My mother was an angel of Gawd,’ Mr. Shiftlet said in a very strained voice” (67).
Initially, one might think that in O’Connor’s warped mind, she created a story in which a man marries his mother. Even though these two lines parallel in describing Lucynell and Mr. Shiftlet’s mother, this is not the case. If you look at the circumstances surrounding the two situations you see how O’Connor is trying to convey a message.
The first quote is spoken by the waiter boy at the diner. The boy is absolutely fascinated by Lucynell’s beauty and is able to see the good in everyone (even if the person he is infatuated with bears a name resembling that of Lucifer). The second quote was spoken by Shiftlet to a hitchhiker who obviously cannot see the good in anything, not even his own mother. The two boys are each other's foils. Shiftlet, it says, is shocked by the reaction of the hitchhiker most likely because he realizes how much like him he is. As he said, “[God] took her from heaven and giver to me and I left her” (67). He obviously feels regret for his actions; constantly up and leaving every good thing in his life. Realizing his sin, he asks for God to baptize him with the rain (washing the slime from this earth). While he thought he was saving Lucynell’s mother’s life by taking he burden of her child off of her, he actually saved his own spiritual life because Lucynell made him realize his sinful, self-centered ways.
Some people, especially Catholics, believe that in death, we are born again. Another way in which Catholics are born again is through baptism, when original sin is washed away and we are newly born into God’s kingdom. In this story, baptism and death are one in the same as we see Bevel, who was baptizing himself, being “overcome with surprise” as the current takes him away and drowns him (52). The message of the story, make ready for death and the Kingdom of God because you never know when the current will take you, is reflected in this line. When Mrs. Connin says to Bevel, “ ‘Some people don’t care how they send one off.’” she foreshadows his death and reinforces this idea (32).
Despite his constant effort Bevel plunges under the water but cannot see Mr. Paradise (who obviously represents the Kingdom of God) because he only sees the worldly surface value of the river. Interestingly, Mr. Paradise is chasing after him with a candy cane. The candy cane was invented as a special gift meant to represent Jesus. The red stripe represents his blood and the white represents his purity from sin. It is also shaped like a “J.”
The boy being baptized in the river can and most likely represents Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, and his journey to the river represents Jesus’ way to Calvary where he was eventually hung on the cross.
Harry Ashfield- “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
For more information on O’Connor, check out Jesus the Misfit. In this blog I discuss The Misfit’s line, “She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. Here I also bring up her Catholic background and explain how she uses it to tell her stories.
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