Semester Loving

Much fun happened this semester. We went over the heroes journey, satire, and humanities faults. My favorite was the unit that we spent entirely on satire. Satire is just so funny and it really is a wonder that people don't realize they are being satirized. I mean, I'm sure I've been satirized before and didn't realize it, but it's still pretty amazing how satire works. When we did the satire video chunk of class, I really learned a lot on what satire is and how it is used (I recommend doing that same video project for years to come). Anyways, I really did love this semester; it was challenging, exiting, and most of all engaging. I'm not normally a very talkative person, but in this class there was much debating. I may not have talked much, but by forcing the debates forth caused others to talk, making my questions answered. I also learned different ways to organize my thoughts for essays, because as you can see from this blog, my ideas aren't exactly "neat". All around it was a solid time spent learning.

I really loved the hero's journey group project a ton too. As you know, my group did a Scooby-Doo movie for that. I think that was a lot of fun, and really helped me see how everything got sown into the real world. Now when people say "the real world" they don't really mean "when you are older". They mean "when you have to fend for yourself". These are completely different things considering the time we all live in. Let's face it; hundreds of people decide each day that they are going to live with their parents, making them still unaware and arrogant of "the real world" because they are still under the wing of an adult. This has to do with literature because we, as students and learners are getting let out into the world sooner and younger then years past because of our education standards. Literature is helping our young men and women into the real world with more and more gusto as teaching standards get higher as well. Now that I'm done with this rant, I would like to take a second to thank all the great people educating us young people into the world.

Thanks for all you have and will do for us.

Simon and all His glory

In chapter 8 of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, there is a short introduction to the actual Lord of the Flies while he talks to Simon. Simon is sitting in his meditation spot, when Jack and his pose come and murder a pig right in-front of him. This causes a mass swarm of flies to come to the carcass' head they left behind as an offering to the Beast. The swarm then is named "Lord of the Flies" but is not given a pronounced shape or form, other than a mass. At first it tries to scare Simon into going back to the other boys and playing peacefully, but sense he doesn't move, it starts to get angry and threatens him. Simon only says one thing- "Pigs head on a stick". This is the picture Simon cannot get out of his head no matter how hard he is trying, and this devil isn't helping obviously. The Lord of the Flies says some things that don't really make sense, one of which being; "This is ridiculous. You know perfectly well you'll only meet me down there-so don't try to escape!"

Symbols That Seem To Be Emerging

In "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, many symbols are presenting themselves. The most prominent symbol I notice is Piggy and his way of thinking. He thinks very logically and very much to the point. His way of thinking is quite different from the rest of the boys because he is always looking for the truth and never what he actually wants to see. At the beginning of the book, Piggy was very straight forward and new exactly what happened to Ralph's dad (died to an atom bomb), even if Ralph didn't want to admit it. Piggy is still seeing things through "an eye of wisdom" because everything he sees through his glasses seems to be very truthful and realistic. I think that Piggy is a metaphor for scientists in our world because of his attitude towards bad things; he sees them and relates, then thinks of some way to fix them. Ralph and the other boys are less mature, and don't see that things are going to turn bad unless they get some work done, and stop playing around like this island is a vacation. Piggy is all around the most intelligent human on this island.

Biology Rant

So. I'm in biology. I love science, but this year it's been a little overwhelmingly annoying. We literally have a lab every day, due the following week, making us forget about them and have to cram them in the night before. I normally do amazing in science because I like it so much, but sense I can't do my best on the vast number of labs we have, I am falling behind. I'm not literally "falling behind", it just sucks having to stay up till 10:30 (look out, we got a bad-ass over here) at night doing homework. Just last night I was up till said time doing four labs, and no, I didn't procrastinate a ton and do all of it the night before, I did about half of each of them two nights before, but then we had more homework from biology due this same Friday! It's terrible! I go from 7 hours of school, to two hours of ultimate Frisbee, to homework till I sleep.

Halloween

Yesterday was Halloween. I didn't really do much, just kinda walked around the neighborhood with two of my friends and went to various of our other friends' houses. We all dressed up in the normal teenage wear: wanna be costumes that never made it to be their own solo clothing. Basically, we just took random clothes in the old dress-up boxes our sisters have and put as many on at a time as possible. I called myself the "Family Shepard Princess" because of the princess clothes and Shepard staff I had in my wardrobe. One of my friends went as "Count Swagula", which I higher opposed, and the other went as a skeleton or something of that sort; we couldn't really decide what he was. I honestly wouldn't think it as a very exiting night, as it used to be when I was younger. We just wandered, and candy wasn't a very big motivator for actually trick-or-treating because candy makes me feel sick. We only went to two houses for candy; our friend who couldn't hang with us's house about two blocks away, and this guys house that we mess with every year who has amazing decorations. We always pretend that the "big kids" stole all of our candy and then we beg him to give us some even though our costumes were far from par. Once we got our handful of candy, we went back to Skeleton friends house and talked with his family that is living in his basement because their house got destroyed in the recent flood that hit Colorado like a bowling-ball. 

Jack

Select one character from the chapter on and write about him in detail. Use two citations in your description.

I am picking the character 'Jack' because of his immense importance in the first chapter. He first shows himself when him and his little group of choir kids comes out of the forest to the call of the conch. Once they all take off their cloaks he "was tall, thin and bony; and his hair was red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness" (Golding 18) This shows that he is a little older than the rest of the choir boys because of his height, and since he has to command them, he can't be silly about it, or they wont listen. His face looks ugly with this lack of silliness because he is very serious in his command of the smaller children. '"I ought to be chief,' said Jack with simple arrogance, 'because I'm chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp."'

Chill Quoting

"'History,' said Joyce's Dedalus, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake'. But we do not awake. Though we constantly make a heroic attempt to rise to a level ethically superior to nature, our own nature, again and again we suffer a fall- brought low by some outburst of madness because of the limiting defects inherent in our species" (Barker xv).

This is an intriguing quote because of how in-depth it is in the world we live in today. Once we see that "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake" is in here, you can tell that something is going down. The author of the quote is literally saying that they wish they could take back somethings, or maybe even do more things than they had. The next part of the quote is saying that we all make heroic attempts that don't seem possible to the standards of natures' power, but very few of them come to be something of heroic measure. She then goes on to say that "again and again we suffer a fall", meaning we always have a big time low, which is called the abyss, and its different for everyone. This is brought on by the human race always trying to bring down each other, so we ourselves don't feel bad.