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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Literary Analysis #2


The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan- Literary Analysis #2

General -
  1. Jing-mei's (June's) mother Suyuon left her other two children behind in China when she fled to America during World War II. Sutuon was part of a little gathering of women who play mah jong. An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair are Sutuon's friends who participate in this gathering. After Sutuon's death, they find where Sutuon's other two long lost daughters (Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa) are located in China. The women want Jing-mei to travel to China and meet her sisters and tell them about their mother. She is afraid that she doesn't know enough about her mother and realizes that she didn't have that close of a relationship with her. The story consists of these women and their daughters talking about their mothers and their life experiences. At the end of the story, Jing-mei ends up traveling to China and meeting her family.
  2. The biggest theme that I picked up in this story was Friendship. The whole story is based on the club that these four women created. They all became very close friends, and even after one of the women died, the other three are still looking out for her and trying to carry out her life wishes. They all help each other in difficult times and know each other like they are more than family.
  3. The tone of the story is emotional and reminiscent. They are all remembering their heritage and teaching their daughters more about their lives, experiences, and family legacy.
  4. Literary elements-
    Symbolism – The pendant that June is given by her mother symbolizes the relationship she has with her.
    Imagery – This is often used when the mothers tell parables.
    Allegory – The stories that the mothers tell.
    Foreshadowing - “everything fall down” foreshadows the fall of a relationship.
    Metaphor – The marriage being compared to an unstable table.
    Simile - “as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf” pg 153.
    Rhetorical Question – “How could I know these things do not mix?” pg 254.
    Allusion – An allusion to the “Ed Sullivan show on TV”
    Personification - “The chess board seemed to hold elaborate secrets waiting to be untangled” pg 93
    Hyperbole - “I felt such pain… as if someone had torn off both my arms without anesthesia, without sewing me back up.”








Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Tools That Change the Way We Think



"Back in 2004, I asked [Google founders] Page and Brin what they saw as the future of Google search. 'It will be included in people's brains,' said Page. 'When you think about something and don't really know much about it, you will automatically get information.'

'That's true,' said Brin. 'Ultimately I view Google as a way to augment your brain with the knowledge of the world. Right now you go into your computer and type a phrase, but you can imagine that it could be easier in the future, that you can have just devices you talk into, or you can have computers that pay attention to what's going on around them and suggest useful information.'

'Somebody introduces themselves to you, and your watch goes to your web page,' said Page. 'Or if you met this person two years ago, this is what they said to you... Eventually you'll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer."

-From In the Plex by Steven Levy (p.67)


I feel like the internet makes it really easy to be lazy and just look everything up. I have no need to memorize things that I look up because I know that I can just find them again. It screws up my priorities as well. When I am online and need to get my homework done, I find myself watching random videos or going on facebook instead of doing my homework. When I am online, time flies. I'll be on facebook and think I've only been on for a few minutes. I then look at my clock and realize that I have been on for an hour or two and have been wasting precious time that I could have been using for homework. If the topic I am looking up doesn't interest me, I do not retain much of the information because in the back of my mind I am thinking that I can always just come back to the site if I forget what it said. The internet is actually pretty awesome when it comes to researching your interests. The internet is so big and has so many results for everything that you can possibly imagine. When you look up things that you like, you know for sure that you will be satisfied with a very wide variety of results.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Notes on Hamlet

 At the beginning of the play, I felt like it was all just a big waste of time and that I wouldn't be interested in the story. As the play progressed, I became more and more interested. I love how many mysteries are in this play and how the reader is left hanging and has to decide for himself what he thinks is going on. I think that toward the beginning of the play, Hamlet was acting crazy for a good cause and actually had a plan. Now toward the end of act 3, I am starting to doubt that he is acting and starting to think that he is actually going crazy. I feel that as the story progresses, Hamlet is going to actually become the crazy guy that he has been pretending to be and end up doing something insane. I think that ,since Hamlet was the only one that saw the ghost in act 3, this is the start of his actual insanity and he is just imagining things now.

Who was Shakespeare?

 Nobody knows what Shakespeare looked like or when he was born. But yet, if his name is mentioned in a conversation, almost every person in the US will know who you are talking about. He is so famous because of his play writings.

Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognized as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshiped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Info taken directly from -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/merchant/shakespeare.html seemed to say the same things as well.

Shakespeare is usually seen by students as hard to understand and boring because it is outdated
I feel like it isn't as outdated anymore and actually applies to us in some ways. I also get some humor here and there that I never used to understand. His stories are actually pretty interesting once you get past the way he wrote. I still struggle with the words that he used and have trouble interpreting what his characters are saying. 

"To Facebook or not to Facebook?"

My initial impression of Facebook was that it made it really easy to communicate with friends and see what everybody was up to. I thought that it was just a cool new way to spend time and meet new people. After reading the article, I feel that all these people are making a big deal over nothing. They are all just looking for new ways to get money from Facebook by saying, "My child has been disrupted emotionally because of his use of Facebook and he is under 13!" and then suing the company. Facebook is making a ton of money, and millions of people use Facebook and like it just the way it is. It is money maker, so I feel the people in this article should stop complaining about the ways Facebook makes their money and just enjoy it.
So I would go with "To Facebook"

Monday, October 22, 2012

Vocab List #9 Remix

 Here are some ways that I am going to remember these words.

Abortive: failing to produce the intended result.
This makes me think of abortion.
Bruit: spread a report or rumor widely
It sounds like the word brew which means to conjure or create. You can create rumors and spread them.
Contumelious: scornful and insulting behavior
The "melious" part makes me think of malicious behavior which can be scornful and insulting.
Dictum: a formal pronouncement from an authoritative source; a short statement that expresses a general truth or principle
You can sometimes find a dictum in a dictionary.
Ensconce: establish or settle
Ensconce starts with an e and so does establish.
Iconoclastic: characterized by attack on established beliefs or institutions
Ensconce has "con" in it and so does iconoclastic. Ensconce is to establish, and iconoclastic is attacks on established beliefs.
In medias res: a narrative that begins somewhere in the middle of a story rather than the beginning
This has the word "media" in it. Sometimes they put an In medias res in film and media.
Internecine: destructive to both sides in a conflict
This has "inter" in it just like internal. Makes me think of internal conflict.
Maladroit: ineffective or bungling; clumsy
This is an awkward word to read. Maladroit can mean awkward or clumsy.
Maudlin: self-pitying or tearfully sentimental, often through drunkenness
Mary Magdalene (which sounds like maudlin) from the Bible was usually crying in the paintings she was in.
Modulate: exert a modifying or controlling influence on
Both modify and modulate have "mod" in them. - Like to mod a car or computer.
Portentous: of or like a portent; done in a pompously or overly solemn manner
Portent- an indication of something important about to happen.
Prescience: the power to foresee the future
Has "pre" in it which means before. So to see things before they happen.
Quid pro quo: a favor or advantage granted in return for something
My dad is a professional tile setter and usually trades tile work for something that we need in our house such as new windows.
Salubrious: health-giving, healthy; pleasant, not run-down
Reminds me of salad which is healthy.
Saturnalia: the ancient Roman festival of Saturn in December; an occasion of wild revelry
Saturnalia is the ancient festival of Saturn.
Touchstone: a standard or criterion by which something is judged or recognized
When I think of a stone, I think of a standard rock.
Traumatic: emotionally disturbing or distressing; relating to or causing psychological trauma
Just makes me think of trauma, which is the same thing.
Vitiate: spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of; destroy or impair the legal validity of.
Vitiate and validity both start with V which is a rare letter to start with.
Waggish: humorous in a playful, mischievous, or facetious manner
"Wag" makes me think of dogs which are playful.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Midterm Reflection

a) I really liked that the whole test was multiple choice. On answers that I knew but couldn't think of the definition, I could just read the list of definitions and say "Oh yeah, that's the definition."
b) I had a hard time remembering every exact word that we had, especially from the lists earlier this year.
c) I feel that I know most of the content and it will stick with me. But I need to study it more to become fluent with the words and be able to use them in my every day vocabulary.
d) I feel like I could have known the words better and I know that I got some wrong on the test. So next time, I will spread out my study time. I also only gave myself 10 minutes every night to study. If I find more time to study at night, I can study longer and hopefully do better.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Midterm study strategy

For the vocabulary midterm, I will probably just use my blog vocab lists and sentances to study. Being able to look at a word and remember the sentance it was used in helps me remember the definition of the word. I also have flashcards for a few of the lists that I can use to study as well.