Yay! This semester is finally coming to an end! This entry is where I pull everything together and reflect on the readings as a whole.
For my depth entries:
Native American Oral Literature
For Discussion and Interaction:
The Girl of the Golden West (presentation)
XenoBlogging
I commented on Jenn Haun's blog: "Tom as a Hero"
and on Tiffany Brattina's Blog: "Fact or Fiction"
I thought I would hate reading this book! Just the title kind of turns me off, and I still wonder why "Huckleberry Finn" is someone's name.....
But surprisingly, this book was good! I think it had a lot of suspense, and I like that. A lot of the events were unexpected... I could not beleive that Huck was smart enough to fake his own death and get away with it... I liked reading "Huckleberry Finn" a lot more than "The Scarlett Letter." (At first, then I watched the movie of the Scarlett Letter, and I think they kind of ruined the story)
I like how the action in the story keeps moving along, and in class we discussed the point of the river. It is true, the river actually did keep the story "flowing." I wonder what the story would have been like if it took place on say a train?
After reading this story, I may go back and read the first novel, Tom Sawyer. Maybe I would understand more about the characters and their reasoning if I had more background knowledge.
I really enjoyed reading "The Girl of the Golden West," just for something different. Being an art major, I appreciated the construction of the play. I liked how all the scenery and stage directions were given: descriptions of every little item in a room, and their placement. It was nice to read something other than an essay or short story.
I wish we would have watched a play or movie, or, if possible, taken a field trip to see it performed... I don't know if it is still being performed, but that would have been nice to break up the routine of read, discuss, quiz, read, discuss, quiz, read, discuss, quiz..... It would have been interesting to read it and make up our own characters and ideas, then see it performed and contrast those characters and ideas with our own. (I rented the Scarlett Letter the movie, after we read the book, and it was SO different.) Then we could discuss why the director may have made these changes. (For The Scarlett Letter I think it was to "spice things up" a little to make it more appealing to the general audience) This is just a suggestion for the future!
Robinson's poetry was interesting in that everything seemed fine right up until about the last line of each poem. In "Richard Corey" we are introduced to a man that everyone love and admires. Everyone wants to be him. And then, in the last line of the poem, Richard Corey "went home and put a bullet through his head."
This reminds me of many of today's celebrities. We only see what they want us to see. And why are we so fascinated with them anyway? What is so different about them, that makes us starve ourselves to look like them? And today, a lot of celebrities' images are altered in some way, either through plastic surgery or airbrushing... yet we still want to look like them, even when THEY don't even look like themselves any more.
I wonder why the character Richard Corey would have killed himself. Was he lonely? He had all these people admiring him, but did any of them talk to him? If you think about it, most people think that celebrities are "too good" to date an average person, so most people don't bother getting to know them. Maybe he was in debt from spending so much money on maintaining his looks? Who knows?
Wow, we have analyzed "The Yellow Wallpaper" so much I think it is starting to make ME crazy!
I did really enjoy reading this story though. It is kind of ambigous; you can bring in so many different viewpoints and ideas. For example, some think that the woman died at the end, some think she didn't. I think that is really neat that the author wrote a story that is interesting and detailed enough to make us want to read it, but yet keep it ambiguous at the same time, so we can apply our own thoughts to it.
What is really interesting is the author's reference to rings and bars and things on the wall. I wish we knew what they were. I doubt it was a child's gymnasium as suggested by Jane. It is interesting that the bed is bolted to the floor and the wallpaper is torn all about the bed, AS FAR AS SHE CAN REACH, and around the walls, up to the SAME HEIGHT as when Jane is crawling around on the floor at the end of the story. It makes me wonder if Jane was in this room before and doesn't remember. The room must have been used for some sort of torture, and it seems too much to me for it to be just a coincidence that all the torn paper is within her reach. Why would the author have noted that unless she thought it was very important?
But we will never know, I guess!
I love everyone's wild card entries this time! A lot of people wrote about what they want for christmas, and some wrote about some weird "phenomenon" they possess or have experienced. I think I am going to kind of use this entry as a journal, LiveJournal style.
My life has been really crazy lately. I don't know what it is, or how to fix it. It just seems like nothing id going the way I planned or the way I wanted it to go. I hate this semester. I have all these classes that I could care less about. And I am someone who likes to give 110% percent. I just don't know what is up with me. I hope that next semester is better.
Work, work, work. It seems like all i do is work. And I think a lot of people here live in this dream world where students don't need to work. I have to work! All my loans are in my name. My parents don't pay for my schooling. And I don't think I would want them to. I would love to quit work so I could focus more on homework. But I have bills to pay, and I have to eat, so what do I do, quit school? I know it has to be this way right now, but it just doesn't seem worth it. I want to do both, and I am doing both, it is just killing me.
And now my boyfriend was activated. He leaves for Iraq next month for 2 years. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? We have been together for 2 and a half years.... do I end it? Do I wait two years? I have no idea what to do.
It just seems like everything is falling down around me. I know it will get better, but it is just really blinding me right now. So much that I can't see the good things. But it is almost over.. we have 15 days until Christmas break, and hopefully I will be able to rest, work, save up money, and spend the last Christmas with my boyfriend for the next two years.