I, Jury

Summarize your findings in a post entitled I, JURY.  In the same post, please comment on how reading these essays gave you ideas of what to include and/or avoid in your next essay

I commented on about six blogs and it's amazing how since we used different essay topics, but we all still came up with similar topics. I read a lot of essays about Bernard, which is probably what Huxley wanted the book to be pointed towards Bernard. Reading helped me get ideas about phrasing and wording the essay. I often get comments about my grammar mistakes and sentence structures. (Possibly start reviewing my essay before I post it on to my blog?) Reading others essay helps me realize what I can improve on or even sometimes say, "why didn't I do that?" :)

Brave New World Essay

Brave New World Essay 

2010 AP Literature and Composition Essay Prompt: Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot.

(The prompt asks for the meaning of the work as a whole, I haven't read the entire book.. so..) 

In a group of people each individuals are different and independent, but the book, Brave New World illustrates a community of informed and organized humans who are designed and programed to do a task. Within the community, scientists injected an overdose of alcohol into an infant causing it to be different from the rest. The alpha, Bernard is shorter among all the other alphas and mentally he is aware of the scientific experiment and the soma-consuming people. He is forced to act "normal" to fit in, but still often alienated by his appearance. Huxley uses Bernard's emotions and actions to show the alienation as the meaning of the work as a whole. 

Bernard is an outcast from all the other alphas, he shows a significances to the story line. He is able to emotionally connect with his inner feelings unlike other alphas, gammas, and betas. He can feels anger towards Henry Foster because he talks about Lenina like she is a piece of meat. Bernard realizes that he is different from the rest so, he chooses not to intake the soma pills which is a drug that is intended to keep people happy. Being isolated from the rest was merely difficult for Bernard to fit in to keep a disguise that he is one of the programed alphas, he chooses to pretend. He tries by excitedly mimic the after effect of soma. Huxley uses Bernard as a comparison to the robot-like human beings, but also chooses Bernard as an important character to make a connection with the readers. 

Bernard's actions of asking Lenina to go to the savage shows a human-like characteristic. Which is significant to the book, because Huxley shows the population as dehumanized qualities such as Gammas and Betas are shocked to work in machine factories everyday, because they are classified as "lower." Although Bernard is an alpha, he is alienated by the other alphas due to his height. Often his actions and inner thoughts are more humanistic, allowing him feel and also act different from the rest. 

Huxley's creation of the Brave New World is appeared to be a reference to humans just living and doing what society want us to do. The London facility shows a good representation of controlled and monitored human beings where they are forced to be shocked to do things. Often in a factory, even in a factory of producing people, there will be mistakes. Huxley includes Bernard, who was physically and mentally different from others. The Brave New World revolves around Bernard's alienation which are reflected upon his emotions and actions.  

Brave New World Essay

Bernard is criticized by the Director for not acting “infantile” enough. Discuss how and why the World State infantilizes its citizens.

I Am Here

Have you begun thinking/working on your senior project, big question, collaborative working group, or other endeavor/venture that shows how you're putting this course to work for you? 

Yes, I've been thinking about my senior project a lot. My friends and I have decided to collaborate on a project. (Hint: blowing things up) I have to say, I am the same as last semester, I get all my work done. Do every assignment with thought and somewhat effort into the assignment. I have to admit my essay was not good. I really summarized, so I agree with the comments on my essay. I hope the course becomes a little more enjoyable as the year slowly ends. 

Interdisciplinary

A few of us have been talking about out senior project, we wanted to make a video that describes our; I guess I can say, "our level of stress" we had over the past four years. Many of us look back and we don't think about what was amazing/inspirational, but we think about the blood, sweat, and tear (yes, I know very cliche´) we put in to high school. Anyway, the video will contain everything that has to do with blowning shit up. Few ideas we were thinking about: 

-Watermelons (*explosion) 

- Mentos and Coke (elaborated) 

-Slow motion cam 

- Launching things.. 

- more ideas later on. 

Lit. Terms #6

Simile: a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things throughout the use of a specific word of comparison.

Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage.

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme.

Speaker: a narrator, the one speaking.

Stereotype: cliche, a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story.

Steam of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reelections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them.

Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization.

Style: the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking.

Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less important structures of language.

Surrealism: a style in literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or the non rational aspects of man’s existence characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre and the banal.

Suspension of disbelief: suspend not believing in order to enjoy it.

Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own.

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience of another sense.

Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part stands for the whole.

Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words in a sentence.

Theme: main idea or the story; it’s message(s).

Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or disproved; the main idea.

Tone: the deices used to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the author’s perceived point of view.

Tongue in cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness.

Tragedy: in literature: any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed.

Understatement: opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis.

Vernacular: everyday speech.

Voice: the textual features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey a writer’s or speaker’s persona.

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular era in history 

Hafta/Wanna

In a blog post entitled HAFTA/WANNA explain similarities/differences you see between your life during high school and life after high school.  Is there a significant difference?  Will people somehow magically transform the day after graduation, or will they take their current habits of mind/word/deed into their next set of daily activities?  How do you balance the things you want to do and the things you have to do, and what are your expectations of yourself and the world around you as you move on?

I want to be myself first things first. Just because I'm going to be in a whole another environment, I hope to always be true to myself. I don't want anything to get in my way of suceess. Something different I hope to see is that I will use my time more efficently and hope to see another new level of me. Overall there's no significant difference during my transformation. I prefer things to be the same as always. Yes, many people change in college. It must be because we are under no supervision and it's up to only our decision to make good/smart choices. Taking someone out of their routine is hard, but when it an be out of control. Organization is the best way to sort and priortize our list of things we want and have to do. Keeping a list will help me balance my things. I hope to see myself achieve my goals and just become a greater person. As for the world, to be consistantly getting better such as no war, lowering poverty, and overall helping countries in need. 

the Nose

Quiz: The Nose

1. What does Ivan Yakovlevich do for a living? 

- Ivan is a barber.

2. What does Ivan find in a loaf of bread? 

- He finds a nose inside of a bread. 

3. How does his wife respond to Ivan's discovery? 

- His wife wants him to dispose it. 

4. What does Ivan set out to accomplish? 

- He throws it in the river. 

5. When Ivan tosses the "package" in the river, for a brief moment he is happy; then he is arrested. What does this scene suggest about the role of happiness in Ivan's life/community/society? 

- That happiness only lasts for a short time in many cases, Ivan was arrested as soon as he got rid of the nose that was holding him back from freedom. 

6. Where does the title object belong, and how does it finally get there?

The play is called, "The Nose," it plays in a part of Ivan's life because he accidentally found a nose by chance, but it led him to another trouble, causing him to be involved in this missing nose. 

Literary Terms #5

Parallelism: In grammar, parallelism, also known as parallel structure or parallel construction, is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure.

Parody: Parody is an imitation of a particular writer, artist or a genre exaggerating it deliberately to produce a comic effect.

Pathos: a quality that causes people to feel sympathy and sadness.

Pedantry:  excessive concern with minor details and rules.

Personification: the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

Plot: the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.

Poignant: evoking a keen sense of sadness or regret.

Point of view: or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; 

Postmodernism: literature characterized by experimentation, irony, nontraditional forms, multiple meanings, playfulness and a blurred boundary between real and imaginary

Prose: the ordinary form of spoke and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern

Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposed antagonist

Pun: play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications

Purpose: the intended result wished by an author

Realism: writing about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightforward manner to reflect life as it actually is

Refrain: a phrase or verse recurring at internals in a poem or song; chorus

Requiem: any chant, dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead

Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out; denouement 

Restatement: idea repeated for emphasis

Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order to persuade

Rhetorical question: question suggesting its own answer or not requiring and answer; used in argument or persuasion

Rising action: plot build up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax

Romanticism: movement in western culture beginning in the eighteenth and peaking in the nineteenth century as a revolt against Classicism; imagination was valued over reason and fact

Ratire: ridicules or condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general

Rcansion:the analysis of verse in terms of meter

Retting: the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur