Language Use

Have you ever, like, watched a 70’s or 80’s film, and see like random words like phony (overbearing and deceitful person) or boogie (to dance) and you go like, oh wow these words are like so old! And sometimes you try to search those words up in like a dictionary, but like you can never find it? Well, yeah. Those words are slangs that use to be popular during the 70’s and 80’s but have obviously faded out. However, not all slangs from the 70s or 80s fade out. Today, we still use words from the 70’s, like chill (to relax), and from the 80’s, for example a wannabe (someone who tries to act like someone else). New words are also continuously being added to our everyday speech (or type). Words like LOL and BRB have become very popular for people who chat online, partly because it saves time. Some of the words we use now may fade out in the future, but some of them might stay. Words are constantly changing as society changed. This is the reason why dictionaries are being updated. Sometimes, slangs are being used so much that they get added into dictionaries as actual words. 

Independent Reading Project Reflection

I’ll admit it. I procrastinated. It was probably because I really didn’t like my book that much. But that could be just another excuse. However, I can’t say that I’ve learned nothing from the experience. I saw the world through a person that is very different from me. I cannot imagine myself thinking or doing the things that Holden does, and I often find myself annoyed at his attitude towards the world. One thing I really wonder about this book is why it is classified as a classic. I do not mean to criticize it in any way, but it just very far from my expectation of what a classic American Literature would be. When I asked this to a friend, she said it was probably because it was “the first book of its kind”. This might also be the reason why it was banned for so long. There are so many swear words and the author is very straightforward with things like sex. The tone and voice of the book was very realistic and unique. Overall,  I would say that I did put effort in my project, but I could have done better by doing a more detailed poster/patient card. 

Archetypes

Archetypes (n.) – the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based

We live in a world full of archetypes. From the Disney princess series or Superman than young boys and girls love to watch, to the most recent movie, Beastly, archetypes prevail. Seeing the “same” characters or plots again and again sound like a bore, so why does movie goers and book readers never seem to get tired when they spot the villain and hero, or when they go watch a typical love story where “the boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy looses girl and boy wins girl back”? This is probably because these archetypes are deeply rooted in our thinking. People like to classify things. We learn by doing so. So when we see the familiar brave prince and damsel in distress, things just click into place and we smile knowingly at what is to come. A famous analytical physiologist, Carl Jung, puts this into his theory. He proposes that people’s minds consist of the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is universal and inherited. He continues by stating that the collective unconscious is composed of archetypes. We think by dividing people in the world to the shadow, the anima, the animus and the self. This explains people’s tendency to sort things.

Contemporary

The American history is divided into time periods, each with a defining way of thinking and expression. Major events in history are usually the causes of such shift in people’s thoughts. When the colonists first settled in the new world, their Protestant religion had a strong impact on the literature of the time. This time period was later called the Rationalism, where people believed that everything could be explained by the intension of God. Literature and artwork of the time put a strong emphasis on religion. After the American Revolution, people in the United States wanted to create voice of their own. People looked up to idealized Romantic heroes that were bigger than life. The Americans yearned to achieve the American Dream of freedom and prosperity. However, the Civil War, brought Americans back to reality. During the Realist movement, people stopped dreaming of the ideal and looked at the present. The subjects of this time period focused on real-life people, like the John Smith and worked in a factory and living in poor conditions. Then came the First World War. The shock of casualties and secret conspiracies between countries was reflected on the art movement of the time. Modernism sought to look at things in many different points of view. Finally, there was World War II, which brought the same intensity of disturbance on the world and caused people to re-think everything they had believed in. The contemporary, or post-modern, movement threw away all traditions and questioned what people use to believe in. There was a drastic change in expression that caused some to question whether contemporary art is a real form of art.  

Reflect on Your Project

I think each person in my group had a pretty fair share of the work. We did not have much time to get together, but I still think the poster worked out pretty well. Each of us did two posters: one on the connection with the group and the other one about the book itself. Christine did the connection with other literature. I thought her poster was really detailed. She made connections to several books she have read and wrote a thorough description on each of them. Daniel’s poster was more towards the artistic side. His poster was on the connection to the self and he drew two people that seemed to be in pain. I thought he did a great job as well. My poster was on the connection to the world. I wrote about how the women in The Handmaids Tale are in a similar situation as those in Muslim countries.

I do not think we really had a leader in our group. It was just three people that cooperated quite well. We discussed the format and paper color in class and then did most of the other work at home. Overall, I think we did a pretty good job. 

A Horror Story?

In the beginning, “A Rose for Emily” looked nothing like a horror story, but by the end of the story, you will feel a sense of uneasiness. You would also realize the little hints that the author drops in the story build up to an appalling end. Its not the usual type of horror story (the type in which you are constantly expecting a ghost to jump out). The setting is pretty normal. However, the ending is indeed horrific. The components of a good horror story would be the hints and suspense and the dreadful ending. I think Faulkner really did a great job in dong that in “A Rose for Emily”. The hints he gives are all really subtle. When reading the story, I had an uneasy feeling, but never really give my thoughts to it. It was only until the very end that I understood that he was dropping hints all along. It took me a while after I read the story to actually comprehend the ending. I had to fish some of the missing pieces of the puzzle back and put them together. “A Rose for Emily” might be the best horror story I’ve ever read. It’s not extremely scary, but the ending certainly creeped me out. Miss Emily’s action showed that she is more than eccentric. She probably turned crazy after her father died. 

Homer's End

Yes, the ending of “A Rose for Emily” was pretty surprising and a little disturbing, especially the part about the strand of gray hair. However, I thought the ending was really well written. It is like the last piece of evidence that pieced a mystery together. My take on the ending was that Miss Emily Grierson had killed Homer Baron on the night he went back to her house. He probably didn’t even plan on marrying her (he said himself that was wasn’t the “marrying type”), but only came back to say good-bye and spend one last night with her. However, Miss Emily could not bear to loose him, because of reputation and love, so she had planned to kill him, so he would stay with her forever, even if he was dead. So Miss Emily had prepared the room like a newly wed’s so she could spend one last night with him. She somehow got him to drink the poison and lay on the bed with her. She might have put the poison in some sort of drink and offered him he drink before they laid down. I think the most disturbing part might be the stand of gray hair. When Homer Baron was still alive, Miss Grierson’s hair is still black, but the strand of hair on the pillow was iron-grey. It hinted that Miss Grierson would still go back and lay in that bed with the dead Homer Baron. 

Nobel Speech

“Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” A lot of stories can come out of these “universal truths”. Think of any decent story and you can usually find some kind of universal truth in it. The most common one I have seen would be love. There are many types of love, but the recurrent one in stories or in movies would be romance. Somehow romance seems to have the capability of really capturing the audience.

I can see many of the universal truth themes in Faulkner’s own short story, “A Rose for Emily”. There was the father and daughter love that wasn’t very apparent, but is still there. This love is mixed with some pride because the father thinks that no man is good enough to court his daughter. His love and pride actually hurts Miss Emily Grierson because he stopped her from getting married until a pretty old age. The whole Grierson family is very prideful. They are from a higher social class than the rest of the villagers, so they think they are better than the others. Even after Miss Emily’s father died, and she is left without much money, she still kept her heads up. The last theme that I want to discuss is pity. After Miss Emily’s father died. The villagers secretly felt sorry for her. However, their pity is also mixed with a little bit of joy and pride. They feel good that they can look down on Miss Emily. This is probably because she is from a higher social class, and commoners usually look up to them, so it felt good for the villagers to pity Miss Emily.

Eccentric or Crazy?

I do not believe that eccentricity and craziness is defined by the economical situation of a person. They have pretty different meanings.

An eccentric person might e slightly odd or are socially awkward, but they don’t make too much of a racket and are usually tolerable. Someone that’s crazy, however, would be mentally ill and out of control. I rich person can be crazy as much as a poor person could be eccentric. I don’t know where Miss Emily fit into the oddness scale, but I feel like she is disconnected from the world she lives in. She seems to be still living in the past. Her actions are understandable. By the social norms at the time period, Miss Emily’s father pretty much ended her future by not letting anyone court her when she was still available. Her last chance of living a normal life also ended when Homer Barron, the northern day worker, left her. After that, the only way she could find to continue her life is to shut herself from the world and life in the past, when she could still bear to live. I truly feel sorry for her, but for the townspeople, she’s an aristocrat, so she doesn’t deserve to be pitied upon. They don’t like her for acting with that arrogant air, but if they can put themselves in her shoes, they would understand that her situation is pretty pitiful.

The N-Word

I swear word is only a swear word if we say it is one. Sometimes I feel like if we don’t put so much emphasis on words being bad, people will loose interest in using them. When offensive languages are used in literature for the purpose of informing rather than to offend anyone, they should be acceptable. The authors were just trying to portray what real life was back then. They did not intend to offend anyone. Take Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for example, the n-words are only used in dialogues, as a portrayal of the way people talked back then. Changing the n-word into ‘slave’ takes away from the ideas of the story. If the intensions are not to offend, I do not see the purposed of banning the books. Even if those words were words that insult me, I think I would still be able to accept it. However, some literature may really attack a certain group of people. If the author had the intension of offending anyone, those works may be more controversial. Those works, I believe should be banned because the author’s intension for using offensive language is not to inform, but to attack and hurt people.

Retreat

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, retreat is defined as “the act of moving back or withdrawing”. This word is most often used in battles, where one side looses and has to retreat. However, for the purpose of this blog, retreat is seen as a withdrawal from society. Just as we have studied before, Emily Dickenson is a great example of a person that withdrew from society. A retreat is not always a bad thing. Just look at Emily Dickenson: incredible literature was the product of her seclusion from society. Because she had not other outlet, poetry was the only way to express her feelings. However, the seclusion might not have been too beneficial for her as a person. She seemed like a pretty depressed person. Yet, retreat from society for a short period of time could be beneficial to a person. There are always times in our life, when we would just want to hide under our blankets and not come out. We may be faced with so much problems that you feel like you can’t handle them. At these times, it might be good to just withdraw and give ourselves some time to think and reflect on what to do next. But we cannot hide forever. If we don’t come out from our sanctuaries, and face the challenge, we would not be able to solve the problem.

Free Write

Hmm… this has been the only blog without a topic. I’ve always wanted to do one of these but now that I got the chance, I really don’t know what to write about. I guess I’ll just talk about my life right now or anything that’s on my mind right now.

APs are over! I am extremely overjoyed. The past few weeks had been so tiresome and busy. I feels don’t have time to just stop and have time for myself. The pressure was probably the worst part. I was pretty much constantly having a stomachache, which I always get when I’m nervous. But now that it’s all over, I feel just a tiny bit of emptiness. Life went back to normal. Probably too normal after all the chaos and I feel kind of disconnected. I don’ even know why. There’s just the usual homework that I have to do, but it just feels like something is missing.

But, enough with the APs, there’s got to be something more interesting for me to write about! I’ve been spending a lot of time on youtube recently, just watching random music videos and shows. A few days ago, someone told me about this website where I can convert music on youtube to mp3 files so I can listen to it on my iTunes. I love it! It is so useful! So far I’ve only converted three songs, but a plan on usesing it a lot more.

Oh and yes, I have to look for a new background for my blog. I wonder where I can get those….

I Hate Poetry

… not. I can’t say I hate it because I sometimes enjoy it but I can’t say I love it either, because I don’t like all poems. I guess it depends on the type of poetry I’m reading. I like poems that provoke a certain emotion or tell a touching story. When reading poems, I like to read them out loud, so I prefer poems that rhyme and have a good rhythm to it. But I don’t like poems that

Start off new lines at weird

Places and has

Very awkward,

Punctuations.

I just can’t read them correctly when poems are written that way. However, there is a type of poetry (I think its called picture poetry) that takes the shape of its subject. I once read a poem about an apple in the shape and color of an apple. It was pretty interesting.

“Poetry” by Marianne Moore is a poem about poetry. It was pretty interesting o read. However, the structure of the poem made it hard to read. It is another one of those poems with weird line structure and punctuation. Yes, I is a creative way of writing poetry, but I think sometimes, it distracts me from getting to the main topic of the poem.

Horror

I personally have very little experience with horror films because I am usually too scared to watch them, so I do not much to say about the different types of horror films, whether certain kinds are better than the others. However, on the rare occasions that I did, the buildup of the tension was much more unnerving than being scared itself. The suspense might be the key success in a horror. Of course, the ending cannot be too bad, but the tension is what gets the audience excited and addicted. The buildup takes much longer than the actual horror, but being scared of being scared might be scarier than being scared itself. When watching a horror film people would want to know: When will it come? You get a feeling of your organs being twisted and tied up because of all the suspense. (This is one of the reasons why I do not like to watch horror films. What’s the sense of putting yourself into such a vulnerable and uncomforting situation? Of course, I’m not the type of person that finds getting scared very amusing either.) I think the best type of tension build up would be very subtle, but gets the audiences thinking about what the small hints mean. 

A Journey

I did not think the journey had an actual destination. The journey that Prufrock referred to was not a physical journey, but more of a tour of his inner thoughts. He lets the reader in on his inner thoughts and troubles.

The poem does not follow the model of a usual storyline. The narrator started off unhappy and ended unhappy. The problem was there from the beginning but did not get solved in the end. There was no loss, but no gain either. The narrator broods over the same issue, but cannot find a way to solve it. The journey did not take the reader anywhere but gets the reader involved with the narrator’s way of thought. The way the poem was written is similar to a stream of thought. The subject jumps from one topic to another between stanzas. Prufrock talks about his inner thought and feelings in the first stanza and then in the second, makes a observation about his surroundings (“In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo”) then back to his own thoughts. In the very last line, “Till human voices wake us, and we drown”, can be thought of as a pull back to reality. At could be interpreted as human voices distracts Prufrock from his deep thoughts and drags him back to reality. 

Prufrock Revisited

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, written during World War II reflected the life and ideas of the time. People were depressed and spiritually empty. Life did not seem to have a goal. In line 25 of the poem, “And indeed there will be time / For the yellow smoke the slides along the street / Rubbing back upon the window pane;” and all throughout the stanza, the repetition of “there will be time” gives a feeling of hopelessness. It is like things are dragging on, and the narrator is always putting things away to be done later. The repetition gives an impression of an endless misery and life without a goal.

In line 84, Prufrock discusses death, saying “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, / And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / and in short, I was afraid,” In this part of the poem, the Prufrock talks about his fear of death, but then asks “And would it be worth if after all”. Through the whole poem, he simply presents problems, but never finds a way to solve them. We can sense the fear in the first few lines, but he does try to conquer it. 

Anti-Hero

Modern society, with its fast-paced lifestyles and high technologies, has received criticisms from many including Joseph Campbell who described the current situation as a “stagnation of inauthentic lives and living . . . that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities, or even our physical courage.” According to Campbell, modern society has made us all into listless people who only think and complain but never take action. People in modern society can’t be heroes, because they don’t take action. Instead, we can only be described as antiheros. The protagonist in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seems to be just that. The whole poem is something that went on in one man’s mind. The poem presented the reader with J. Alfred’s Prufrock’s “journey” of unresolved issues with self-confidence and ways to present himself. The narrator never takes any action, but just sits at the side and worries about his life. From the beginning of the poem till the very end, nothing changes. The narrator did even make up his mind to change the way he thinks, or try to experience something new. He just hints at his problems and let it hang there, never solving it.