Blogging has gotten easier and more "fun" I guess you could say during the second half of the semester. From learning how to close read more and for figuring out how to analyze different quotes in different types of books has made me a stronger student in literature. I have learned a lot from my own blogs and definitely other students' blogs. I've learned more about the books and points that I missed, glanced over, or just didn't understand the point.
I have accomplished being able to close read and to analyze what I am reading. This class has taught me how to do this more and more each week and I am glad to have learned about blogging and what it can teach individuals.
This portfolio of blogs contains blogs from readings such as Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, different poetry selections from Theodore Roethke and Sylvia Plath, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time-Traveler's Wife, and Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues. Of these works The Time-Traveler's Wife was by far my favorite because it was a modern work that I could understand the best and it was an "easy" read in that I didn't want to put it down. All of the other ones I loved to put down!
The portfolio is separated into 5 parts: Coverage, Timeliness, Interaction, Depth, and Discussion. When I get to each of the different parts it will explain how a blog got chosen for that part.
Coverage- Most of my blogs were taken from direct quotes from the book. I found it easier to talk about and give evidence of why I thought what I did about the quote and the book or work in general:
Timeliness- Most of my blogs were done on time. I am including a few I did early and a few that I have not linked anywhere else in this blog.
Early entries:
Resurrection Blues (it was done a week early!!)
sex, sEX, SEX (This one was done about a month early because I wanted to finish all of Foster to get somewhat ahead in class. It worked out somewhat in my favor, except for the fact that I could have blogged about this sex tying in with the sex from The Time-Traveler's Wife)
- Most of my entries were on time minus three when I did them the day before they were due because of business of that week.
Interaction- These blogs are ones that had other people leaving comments and continuing a discussion about what I wrote about. It had different people interacting in some way or another. It was exciting for me this second half of blogging because more people blogged on mine and there were many that had good conversations because of my blogs. It made me feel better about my blogging and like I was "growing" in my blogging!! Thank you to all who left comments!
Make a DIFFERENCE in the World
Depth- These blogs include ones inspired me or I just had a lot to say about the matter. I always liked when I read something that I thought that I had a lot to say about it because it made for a good blog.
Discussion -These are some blogs that I commented on of other people's to help spark a discussion. Some people went off of what I said or considered what I had said in my comment. It may not have been a long discussion but for someone responding to me was nice and made me feel like I could help someone else understand something.
Alicia Campbell's Dualism
Alicia Campbell's Fatal Attraction
Aja Hannah's The (Non) Rape of Sybil!
Aja Hannah's Racism at its best
I honestly may miss blogging. It helps a lot for class discussions because everyone has had something to say (hopefully) and one person can bring up a point that no one else really thought of and then they can sit there and think "Wow! I never thought of it like that." It's a great way to have a class so everyone can be involved, alert, listening, and participating!
Skip, looking up,: Charles? You simply have to return, there's no question about it. I will only remind you that my agency has a signed contract with this government to televise your crucifixion and we have paid a substanial sum of money for the rights. I will forebear mentioning our stockholders, many of them widows and aged persons, who have in good faith bough shares--show yourself and serve your legal sentence. I want to assure you that everyone from the top of my company to the bottom will be everlastingly grateful and will mourn your passing all the days of our lives. -- A practical note: the sun is rapidly going down so may I have the favor of a quick reply? Thank you very much. (Miller 107).
I just found this quote interesting in how they try talking him into the live crucifixion. I never really think about the crucifixion in the present time, I only think about what I know about it from the Bible. Obviously in biblical time there was no tv to have this event on air and so no one was getting money for it. Stockholders weren't even being close to being around. I just thought if it happened in modern day it would be a little different. I think that many people woudl want it televised but to make it as big of a deal and many people wanting it so bad for the money. I would picture it as important and everyone flocking to where it would be held. It would be on television, but I wouldn't think the television people would not be making commercials and the fact that he should show up a big deal.
what did you think as you were reading? what would you picture it as?
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/04/miller_resurrection_blues/#comments
This interpretive project is for Chelsie Bitner, Angela Saffer, and Ashley Pascoe. There are 3 facebook pages - Jack Broth (Brother Jack), Narrator Man (the Narrator/invisible man), and Tod Clifton. There is also a group that all three of these men are in called "The Brotherhood"
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1686055202&ref=name -Narrator Man
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1368026434 -Jack Broth
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1304395854 -Tod Clifton
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=68504152627&ref=mf - The Brotherhood
This book is BY FAR my favorite book that we have read. It is just more interesting than anything else. I don't really have a particular quote picked out because it's just all so good!
I like how the author tells you what is eventually going to happen but you don't find out until much later in the book because of the time traveling aspect but that just makes you want to keep reading and reading until you figure out why, how, or what exactly happened.
I also realize why this book was supposed to be read in conjuction with the Sex chapter from Foster. There are so many times were the author talks about sex and I guess in this book it is imperitive for Henry to have. I liked the part when she decides to tell him that she needs a break and how it just seems like he can keep going forever and forever and she's feels pretty much dead. It surprised me that with time travel he doesn't realize that she needs a break because it doesn't hold him back.
The whole book was just interesting in every way and I enjoyed it very much.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/04/niffenegger_the_time-travelers/#comments
"But the speech nevertheless marks a crucial turning point for the protagonist of Invisible Man, whose journey along the color line of 1930s America has up until now been a steady descent into a hell of racist de- humanization." (Hanlon 77).
The narrator giving the speech in a way makes him a new person I believe. He stands for what he believes in without thinking about what he wanted to say. Every other speech he has given was prepared. The speech transformed him because the Brotherhood transformed him. Before meeting the Brotherhood everything was going wrong in his life. And those things would make any person feel unhuman. The hell of racist de-humanization is still there in his world but according to Hanlon it isn't as bad after meeting the group. He is being rebirthed in a way.
This article was very interesting compared to the other one. I enjoyed it more and it was way easier to understand.
"But that's a hundred-dollar bill. I take that an' try to change it and the white folks'll want to know my whole life's history." She snorted. "They want to know where I was born, where I work, and where I been for the last six months, and when I tell 'em they still gonna think I stole it. Ain't you got nothing smaller?" -Mary (Ellison, 325)
This quote seems of little importance to the book as a whole but to black people it was their life. A black person having a hundred dollar bill in their hand would be looked at weird. White people are the ones that have the great jobs and make the big bucks. A black person with that kind of money is thought to have stolen the money, when in reality (in this case, anyway) they didn't. It is sad how the society will look at Mary when she spends the money. Will she be taken to jail? Laughed at? Ridiculed?
She also tells the narrator two paragraphs later that she is "going to keep part of it for [her]self and the rest [she] is going to save for [him]." (Ellison, 325).
She will always be there for the narrator even after he moves out and doesn't tell her where he is going. That is a great quality in a person and very hard to find.
"I am invisible, understand, simple because people refuse to see me" (Ellison 3).
I know this quote is from very early on in the book but it is an effective quote. It gives us an insight to how he is viewed in the book. It makes you think why do people refuse to see him? Did he do something wrong? We know he is black but does that still mean that he is supposed to be ignored and deemed as invisible?
On page 94 the vet is talking to Mr. Norton:
"He has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand.Understand? It's worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn't digest it. Already he is -- well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personifcation of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir!
This is talking about the narrator and what they think about him. The vet is even saying that he is invisible.
Mr. Norton makes black people feel invisible during his sermon on page 142 when he says: "Who Negroes? Negroes don't control this school or much of anyting else-- haven't you learned even that?"
What's ironic about this is Mr. Norton, the head of the college the narrator attends, is black. Throughout the book he seems like he is racist against his own color and I perceive this as him being invisible to himself.
" 'If you're white, you're right," I said. (Ellison 218).
That seems like a big idea of the book. Like that is what everyone is trying to prove in this book. It is kind of sad how even black people (like Mr. Norton) are trying to prove that if you're white, you're right.
Being invisible is something the narrator continues to feel throughout the book and sometimes understands, but other times he questions why people treat him the way they do.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/03/ellison_the_invisible_man/
"Love set you going like a fat gold watch" (Plath 200).
The poem is about a mother and her new born child. However, my favorite line of the entire poem is the first line.
No one truly realizes how much babies cost until they have one. This is a funny quote because it's comparing the cost of a child to a fat gold watch.
The line "One cry, and I stumble from my bed..." is sweet because every mother always talks about how they just have a mother's instint. They know when something is upsetting their child. And no matter in how deep of sleep a mother is in she'll wake up to her child crying.
It is a sweet poem about mother and child.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/03/poetry_selections_plath_blog_b/
From My Papa's Waltz:
"The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle" (Roethke 13).
...
"Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt."
The child knows its father by him being drunk alot. "the hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle" is talking about a father who works really hard and when he comes home he wants to dance with is child. The child keeps hanging on although his breath is hard to stand. The child doesn't want to let go of its father because they don't want to lose their father.
The first time reading this poem I was thinking drunk father = abuse poem. But after reading it and trying to understand one stanza at a time made me realize this is just a family poem. It is sweet how the father waltzes with his child.
Did anyone else think of it as an abuse poem at first?
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/03/poetry_selections_roethke_blog/
"and he's well brought up. See, he answers
nicely when spoken to.
Man or beast, that's good manners.
Be sure that you both always do" (Bishop 49).
I like this poem because it talks about manners. It is about teaching a child manners. The grandfather teaches the child.
The fact that he says "man or beast" means that everyone can have good manners, no matter what they do or who they are.
The poem has a good teaching towards a younger child. I personally think that teaching kids at a young age manners is a good path to take because they'll remember them.
Elizabeth Bishop must have wrote this poem for a specific reason. The real reason no one knows.
Maybe her grandfather is the one that sat her down and said "Be sure to remember to always speak to everyone you meet' (48).
The fact that the child looks up to of their grandfather is a huge part life. I know my grandparents a huge part of my life and they have taught me so many things and manners and everything about life. How about everyone else's grandparents? Who did you learn your manners from?
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL267/2009/03/poetry_selections/#comments
Recent Comments
Jake on Theodore Roethke - My Papa's Waltz: Same here, the first time I re
Taillur on Theodore Roethke - My Papa's Waltz: I always thought the poem was
Jessica Bitar on Resurrection Blues!: I was surprised at the idea of
Angela Saffer on Resurrection Blues!: I think it is just crazy to th
Sue on The Time Traveler's Wife: I agree with you. I really lik
Rebecca Marrie on The Time Traveler's Wife: I too thought the book was inc
Marie vanMaanen on The Time Traveler's Wife: I also agree with you that thi
Rosalind Blair on The Time Traveler's Wife: I would also say that this boo
Chelsie Bitner on seX, sEX, SEX: Sex does sell and I understand