Conversation Reflection

In class today, we talked about how we personally thought the book was really strange. Some things we mentioned was that it's strange to think of the concept of not having parents or even a family for that matter. Another thing we thought that was strange was that the children played together naked. I explained how I didn't really like the idea and thought it dumb to have such structured human being beause it ultimately took the individual characteristic out of everyone. Hannah, Judith, Sierra, Stevie and Siera all agreed that the story was extremely strange. We talked about how it was extremely difficult to follow because it jumped back and forth almost every paragraph. 

I also talked about this book with my boyfriends dad who has read it three times now. He said the first time he read it he didn't like it that much either, that it was hard to understand. He said once he read it the second and third time it was more interesting and he got a lot more out of it. He said that the beginning can be hard to follow, but give it a chance because it does get better. 

Chapter 4 Analysis

Chapter 4 Analysis 

Lenina had been with all the men...Interesting 

She was talking about going with Bernard publicly not because she liked him but because she wanted to make a point to the other men.

Paragraph beginning with the and ending with stupor has a pun in it I believe. (Twilight)

Many examples of personification in the first paragraph page 60 (knees and face)

Manifest cordiality-?

Benito symbolizes sun and warmth 

Incandescence-? 

Is everywhere like this or only in where they live? Must all be like this since they can fly around 

Lenina is playing hard to get, Bernard questions himself because of her hard to get attitude 

Bernard did not meet the physical attributes of his cast. ( too short) 

I am I, and wish I wasn't. Cliche or allusion 

Bernard very self conscious, feels inferior 

Mr. Helmholtz described with vivid imagery in last paragraph on page 66 with analogies as well

Helmholtz and Bernard a lot alike because of their mental excess their defects from their castes.

Helmholtz had many women, Bernard did not 

Bernard wants attention tells Helmholtz he's taking Lenina to New Mexico with him 

Helmholtz talks about this feeling he has of power but not sure what it is and doesn't understand it

Helmholtz is sympathetic for Bernard but also embarrassed by him. 

Chapter 2 and 3 Analysis

Chapter 2 and 3 Analysis

Aseptically- never heard that word 

Long sentence of paragraph of imagery starting with half dozen nurses and ending with marble. 

Metaphor of paleness to the posthumous whiteness of marble 

What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder. Not sure what literary technique it is, but it's something. 

Deltas always loved nature and transport, but didn't get enough done in the factory. The shocks that made the babies fear flowers trained them to hate nature but still have the idea of transport even if they hated the country. 

Viviparous- never heard that before.

The students don't know what parents are, which means they too were made by this interbreeding process. The boys find parents unpleasant, this is the director brainwashing bad things into the students mind so they will continue his inhumane lifestyle.

Anecdote of Tommy which shows that kids are taught to repeat things and merely memorize them, but not understand them.

80 children are exposed to this sleep-teaching, but not about regular education about moral education. The director is brain washing the children to learn about the different breeds of humans and the jobs of the different breeds. 

Metaphor I think. Starting with Not so and ending with scarlet blob. On page 28 metaphor between the children and the liquid substance. 

Restatement in the next paragraph. The director is emphasizing his power over the minds of these children who can't even talk. 

Chapter 3 

Apertures-?

Continued theme of breaking tradition or creating a new norm. In the old days kids could find anything and make games out of it, now children can only play games that are extremely difficult and help to build the mind. 

Mustapha Mond - controller from Western Europe. Treated like a king. 

He brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees...what does this paragraph mean? 

Mond's advice is that History is bunk. Which he repeats twice. I believe he says this because the kids were never taught true history so that they would not all turn on the state, but now they are being taught history because they are brain washed enough to not want to leave this tradition. 

Controller has to be careful, but truly he wants the kids to know what a family feels like and experience a feeling of love, but the kids find nothing of it. They find it horrible to ever have parents.

I believe the controller is talking about family and how it provokes suicide and so forth. 

In the mix of this we are hearing the story of Lenina and Fanny. Are they friends? They seem to have more power than the students given that Lenina can date Henry who is the psychologist. Are the girls workers? 

Fanny is going through pregnancy substitute, which I have no idea what that means yet, but maybe we will find out? 

These girls are workers. The policy is that they can have "relationships" only if they have multiple people and as long as they are not intense or long-drawn. Lenina and Henry's relationship would be against the directors rules.

Now goes back to the controller. Not sure who is saying the paragraph that starts with mother and ends with stable. Not sure what it means exactly either. 

Director described as the strictest conventionality. 

The controllers statement about stability is a restatement and may include other literary techniques as well. 

Common theme of everyone belongs to everyone else...even the workers follow this, referred to as a game 

Anaphora on page 43 in the paragraph that starts with impulse. 

Marx and Lenina both like each other or respect each other, but other people talking them out of it.

Great lines by controller...speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole. Page 46

Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same you couldn't do things by force. Page 49 explains the world before all this happened 

Controller is saying how hypnopaedia is bad, which is what they use. 

Repetition is very important in this book because it shows how the morals are instilled into the children's head through the constant reminder.

Anaphora and other techniques in paragraph starting with now on page 55

Masterpiece

My masterpiece is going great. There are no new updates other than I need more willing participants. My dates and activities were all planned out in the previous post about my masterpiece. Nothing has changed except that I have a good idea of how I am going to present this. I plan on making a powerpoint about my cause and including my journey in the powerpoint, I will include videos, information, pictures, and many more things. I also want to bring one of the special needs students in to not only watch the presentation, but possibly to speak as well. My masterpiece is inclusion and it only seems right to include one of my fellow athletes in the presentation. Inclusion is my goal and I will continue to spread it even if it is hard to get others on board.

Chapter 1 Analysis

I had a difficult time analyzing this chapter because I thought the overall idea was kind of boring. I know that there is a lot of great writing in this book and specifically in the first page, but the idea of breeding humans seems extremely odd and is hard to connect to at first. After having a class discussion about the first chapter it was a little easier to get into the book and think deeply about it but I didn't really post anything not because I didn't do it, but because I didn't know how to analyze something that was so boring to me. Now that I have heard more about the book, I hope that chapters 2 and 3 will be a little easier for me. 

Lit Terms List 6 Definitions

Simile:  a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through 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: cliché; a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story.

Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character’s thoughts, feelings, reflections, 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 nonrational 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 of the story; its message(s).

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

Tone: the devices 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; a.k.a. “dry” or “dead pan”

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 pesona.

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular era in history

Aldous Huxley

Huxley is already extremely interesting to me because he has the same birthday as my brother but was born exactly 100 years to the day before my brother. Huxley was born to be intelligent and very successful, as his mother was a scientist and his father was a schoolteacher. Both of Huxley's brothers were biologists. The entire family was extremely successful. In Huxley's writing he observed traditions, social norms and ideals.

“A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”

This is a very interesting point that Huxley made. He is very right in my opinion because in order to win a war, one must be savage and a tyrant, wanting to literally destroy the enemy. 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

This is another interesting view of Huxley. He wrote about the traditions of the world, but he also wrote about what the future would hold and different scenarios as to which the world could become. 

Check out this site for more information: http://www.egs.edu/library/aldous-huxley/biography/

Love Essay

Love is the ultimate inspiration for learning. Many people go to school, waiting to get out. A degree is only so they can get a job or tell others they have a college degree. But an education is a lot more than just getting a degree and then getting a job, its learning something you love and being able to participate in what you love for the rest of your life. The first step to a successful future is finding something you love. You must experiment a lot, with many different fields, as this is what you will immerse yourselves into for the rest of your life. In my personal life, I have already completed the first step to a successful future, as I have experimented with many different things related to a law career and have finally decided that I have a passion for being a lawyer. I am absolutely sure that I want to be an attorney, but I am not sure what type of attorney, which leads me into the next step to a successful future.

After you find what you love, you must dive yourself into all the facts and history of your topic. In doing this, you will learn all of the different aspects of your passion. For me, I am at the stage of beginning the searching process. As I go into college, I will learn all about the lifestyles, careers and subdivisions of attorneys, in order to decide what type of attorney that I want to become. Once you find that passion or love, there are so many resources everywhere to help you learn more. The good thing about this type of learning is you love it and its something that you want to know, rather than what you are forced to learn all throughout life. The resources are especially in the computer and professors. In this day-in-age, one can get on the computer, ask any question, and have an answer instantly. Also, one can talk with professors who have the same passion and learn from them. For the rest of your life, your learning about this passion. Education never has to stop. Many people associate education with young people, but if someone has a real passion, they will continue to educate themselves throughout their entire lives.

Once one has enough education and knowledge of their passion, they can begin to live it and breathe it. In my life, this would be the part where I become an attorney and win big, challenging cases. This is the step where you fulfill your dreams and find the careers that fulfills your passion. But this is also the step where you document your ideas. Getting your ideas out on paper and for others to see is what will continue your legacy and help others in their processes of finding their passion. One may be extremely successful only because they found a love for something early on, but once they pass, their success diminishes. If one can get their ideas out and share them with younger generations the tradition will continue. I believe it is very important to keep this circulation of love because without love many people don't find inspiration. Without inspiration nothing will be accomplished. As a country and as a world, we must use love to ignite a vision that will tell us of our future and inspire us to dive into education, which is usually the only path to completion. Love is the key to a successful future. Happy Valentines Day.

First Impression

My first impression after looking at some of the practice AP tests is that I feel ready for the multiple choice. After looking at some of the questions, I feel a lot more familiar with the vocabulary. I believe that this is from religiously studying my literary terms and from reading my literature analysis novels carefully. I am not just reading to finish the assignment, but am reading to get something out of the book and to practice recognizing literary techniques and analyzing aspects of the story. I believe that my hunger for reading has truly helped prepare me for the multiple choice section of this test. As for the essays, I am in a little bit of a different situation. After reading the prompt, I feel as if I have great ideas and answers to answer the question fully and with good information, but when I sit down to actually write the essay my ideas seem lame. It is not the ideas that are lame, but the writing that is lame. I have not practiced enough with finding my voice and improving my word usage. I believe that the ideas in my head are good, but getting them onto paper in a well written form is very difficult for me. I need to practice writing freely and about something that interests me, so that I can first find my voice as a writer. I then need to focus on enhancing my vocabulary and sophistication. With these two aspects, I believe my writing will reach the 7 to 8 range that I wish to be in. The work only starts now!

Lit Terms List #5 Definitions

Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form.

Parody:  an imitation of mimicking of a composition or of the style of a well-known artist.

Pathos:  the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness.

Pedantry: a display of learning for its own sake.

Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or  abstract ideas.

Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose.

Poignant:  eliciting sorrow or sentiment.

Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing.

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

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

Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes 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 straightfoward manner to reflect life as it actually is.

Refrain:  a phrase or verse recurring at intervals 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 an 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.

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

Scansion: the analysis of verse in terms of meter.

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

Lit Terms List #4 Definitions

Interior Monologue: a form of writing which represents the inner thoughts of a character; the recording of the internal, emotional experience(s) of an individual; generally the reader is given the impression of overhearing the interior monologue.

Inversion: words out of order for emphasis.

Juxtaposition: the intentional placement of a word, phrase, sentences of paragraph to contrast with another nearby.

Lyric: a poem having musical form and quality; a short outburst of the author’s innermost thoughts and feelings.

Magic(al) Realism:  a genre developed in Latin America which juxtaposes the everyday  with the marvelous or magical.

Metaphor(extended, controlling, and mixed): an analogy that compare two different
things imaginatively.

Extended: a metaphor that is extended or developed as far as the writer
wants to take it.
Controlling: a metaphor that runs throughout the piece of work.
Mixed: a metaphor that ineffectively blends two or more analogies.

Metonymy:  literally “name changing” a device of figurative language in which the name of an attribute or associated thing is substituted for the usual name of a thing.

Mode of Discourse:  argument (persuasion), narration, description, and exposition.




Modernism:  literary movement characterized by stylistic experimentation, rejection of tradition, interest in symbolism and psychology

Monologue:  an extended speech by a character in a play, short story, novel, or narrative poem.

Mood:  the predominating atmosphere evoked by a literary piece.

Motif:  a recurring feature (name, image, or phrase) in a piece of literature.

Myth:  a story, often about immortals, and sometimes connected with religious rituals, that attempts to give meaning to the mysteries of the world.

Narrative:  a story or description of events.

Narrator:  one who narrates, or tells, a story.

Naturalism: extreme form of realism.

Novelette/Novella: short story; short prose narrative, often satirical.

Omniscient Point of View:  knowing all things, usually the third person.

Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its
meaning.

Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradicting words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox.

Pacing:  rate of movement; tempo.

Parable:  a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth.

Paradox:  a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas.

Tale of Two Cities Lecture Notes

 1) Pattern of influences: the history behind the French Revolution and Dickens's reactions to London and Paris.

In 1857, Dickens wrote the play, "The Frozen Deep." 

Dickens acts as the character who is a hero in sacrificing himself for others.

Originally wanted to name Sydney as Carton or Dick.

There is a parallelism between Charles Darnay and Dick Carton, "doubleness in character"

April 1858, Dickens began public readings for charity but also read for profit. As a result, he began to establish a relationship with his readers and was known as a great reader and writer.

May 1858, separated from his wife, Catherine and called it "Some Domestic Trouble of Mine" 

November 1858, separated from his publishers and ended his journal 

The following year he published a new journal.

April 30, 1859, chapters one to three of A Tale of Two Cities were published.

He moved to London when he was ten to work under his father's demand. Described his experience as "extensive and peculiar knowledge at the city", "wretched darkness", "great fascination."

As an adult he called it a "vile place" but he was able to be creative and find an inspiration in the "magical land."

Judith Lee

2) A tale of two cities 

- dickens wrote about London as a newspaper: everything is there but disconnected 

- organized at early age 

- London city of extremes, maze

- first impression of Paris: most extraordinary place. Perfectly distinct character. Novelty and strange things. Expressive of own character. Every house and person added to the "book". Never was such a place for a description. 

- Paris half size of London

- lacked uncontrolled nature of London

- crime common but replaced with urban city

- end of Two Cities is rememberance of this change 

- visits during period of political change and change to urban land scape

- 1879 dickens died

- Paris was modernized city with vibrant life of elegance. Had light

- dickens describes progress of city

- dickens attracted to dark side of city. Go visit morgue

- attraction of repulsion theory

- eye for detail and described Paris is deep detail when leaving city on way to Italy 

- dickens sets two cities back in time 

- articles describe beauty of two cities of London and Paris

- describe Bastille fortress in great detail 

Hannah Hurd 

3) - Dickens makes it very clear in his opening of Tale of Two cities that his worlds of London and Paris are very similar

- his opening is very profound and famous

- it was the best of times the worst of times

- he sets us back in time published in 1859 and set back in 1775

- it brings us back to the present time 

- He issues a very modern historical setting that uses a modern parallel 

- Tale of Two Cities moves back and forth from England and France immediately following the French Revolution

- Dickens uses the historical facts of the period as background

- timeline is from 1757 to 1794

- Victorians were haunted by the memory of the French Revolution in 1789

- only happened 70 years before Dickens wrote Tale of Two Cities

- the book marks violence very powerfully 

- Dickens makes it very clear between pre revolutionary France and contemporary Britain

- the novel was weary of confronting the great Victorian fear of revolution 

- the novel came out in weekly parts with one or two chapters available each week

- the novel wasn't eye appealing but was made in the US

- his book sold very well in the US

Dickens was comfortable with sending out his pages weekly

- Dickens wanted a volume of a couple chapters of the Tale to be published that including illustrations, monthly

- the taste of the people was moving more towards a realistic style of illustrations 

- Dickens style of writing was precise that left cliffhanger endings  for people to buy the next issue each week

- Dickens wrote a new chapter or chapters each week that developed the creative flow of work and characters and the plot adjusting to the audience as they were reacting to it

- "the best story he has written" was told to him by one of his colleagues 

Sierra Sanchez

4) In 19th Century England, there was a scare of Revolution.  Thus it parallels with the incubation of the French Revolution, the setting of the Tale of Two Cities.

Following A Tale of Two Cities by monthly installments is good because we can see where he intentionally put cliff hangers and where he wrote in reaction to his audience which read his writings monthly.  

He didn’t write the whole story and chop it up to fit monthly installments, he wrote it month by month and like a TV show, episode by episode.

Carlisle, friend of Dickens, wrote a symbolic historical book on the French Revolution. This, Dickens used to write the French portion of the plot of The Tale of Two Cities.

In addition to Historical Story of the novel, runs very personal stories of Dickens

Passage about Mystery in chapter 3 reflects back on Dickens personal life and is hardly connected back to the rest of the novel showing that it follows a personal plot.

It stands out in the novel

Depth of personal intensity

Imanie Patel

5) Take of two cities 

A time of war, every weapon possible being used, people had bloody hands, in a time of need and fear

- life on no account, ready to sacrifice 

- man giving orders telling people where to go. 

-setting in France, 

-living sea (metaphor)

- the attack started, symbolism of smoke and repetition of stone wall, work, smoke, gunfire, eight great towers

- told to work, women could kill, armed in hunger and revenge instead of weapons 

- wet straw, bravery, living sea repeated, massive great walls, 

- talks of Alice, a white flag, not audible in the distance, a surrender, 

- as he had been struggling in the south sea, simile 

- jack three, multiple "jacks"

- cries, loud roars, 

- man with the touch, défage says where is the north tower 

- went fast to descend, find the north tower, find a key man to the plot locked in the tower, this is a key area of the book

-likes to describe the sea, and revenge and suffering 

- two groups of seven, all very different In faces of prisoners, carried, all lost and scared to die, lost faces 

- other seven dead, droopy faces, seven heads on sticks, seven alive and released 

- found documents of former prisoners died from "broken heart"

-1789, in Paris 

- has a driving passion to move things forward, 

- dickens responses well to criticisms 

Shailyn Joesph 

6) Tale of two cities: 

Criticing letter from Edward Bollard Lintel Responds to the criticism with many facts. 

Riviting public theme, the creation of a world back in the 1770 1780

Inevitability of history but equally powerful personal story.

Authorial-not given to a character comes directly from him at start of chapter 3. Stands out differently from the rest of the novel 

Characters become mysteries to others. Sidney Counten most mysterious to the response and reaction.

Depth of personal intensity which characterizes other layer of the novel. Character rocked to sleep by the regular movement of the coach and Dreams of recording of the life the prisoner.

Dr Minets face, Man been in prisoner for 18 years and is 45 and is recalled to life 

Met Ellen turner in 1857 and he was 45 and she was 18 and she was born in 1839 in Rochester

Changed the prisoners sentence from 15 to 18 years 

Then met Lucy who is only 17 been conceived but not born when Minet was in prison. 

Described her as blue eyes very pretty and her being young and smooth. He held that child on the passage across the Channel. 

Highly personal thing in dickens experience 

Sidney Counten enabled Charles to escape and spend his life with Lucy and their family. 

By me