Louis C.K. and The Flea (Caught'ya #13)

Louis C.K. and The Flea

I really enjoyed to “MOMO” today. Louis C.K. was exceptionally funny while delivering some great points. The biggest point he made was everything is amazing and nobody is happy. If you really think about it, he is absolutely right! We experience the best technology known to man and yet we continue to gripe over the little things. Instead of getting frustrated over slow service, you should appreciate the cell phone even exists. Just give it a second! It’s retrieving information from space! I also really enjoyed his airplane story. We really should be ecstatic to travel via an airplane, because it is after all, amazing. It made me think back to my flight to China. I was a bit disappointed with some of the food served on the plane, but now that I think about it, I was being served hot food thousands of feet in the air while traveling over 500 miles per hour! How incredible is that!

Comics do the same thing as poets: they bring to light issues in life but with a lot more swearing and humor. Mr. Delacruz also noted how even comedy needs a thesis statement like an essay does. Imagine if there was no premise in an episode of Modern Family. You wouldn’t understand the jokes as much as you would if there was a lead in to introduce the conflict for that specific episode. This “MOMO” goes to show how crucial a thesis is.

Today we also looked at the poem The Flea by John Donne. We were asked to use the SOAPSTone principle to decipher what Donne was trying to say. SOAPSTone means:

Ø  Speaker: Who is telling the story?

Ø  Occasion: What is the time and place of the piece?

Ø  Audience: The group of people to which the piece is directed at.

Ø  Purpose: What is the reason behind the text?

Ø  Subject: Who/what does the author talk about in the work?

Ø  Tone: What is the attitude of the author?

I had a very hard time understanding The Flea, but alas this is what I came up with:

Ø  Speaker: A man, probably middle aged.

Ø  Occasion: A breakup or trying to date someone. An event that includes two different people.

Ø  Audience: Possibly talking to a friend or family member about the problem.

Ø  Purpose: To get feelings out/to vent.

Ø  Subject: Flea, blood, and two people.

Ø  Tone: Angry and frustrated?

After we completed this, people volunteered and used other classmates to act out what they thought the poem meant. I realized there were so many ways to interpret the meaning of the poem, and there is no right answer. Mr. Delacruz raised the argument The Flea is about a man trying to get a woman to have sex with him, and he uses their blood inside of the flea to make the point their blood is already together in a flea, so they should just combine their bodily fluids in real life. If Mr. Delacruz did not bring this up, I would’ve never looked at The Flea from this perspective. It actually makes a lot of sense. The man is trying to woo the woman and uses the flea to make his point they should just get it on. A weird way to try to get a girl to bang you, but hey, whatever works. He could be considered the first recorded “YOLOer” because he simply tells the woman to just have sex with him and it’s not a big deal. What a guy!

CP's in 1984 & Scarlet Letter

The Broken Heart (Caught'ya #12)

The Broken Heart

I finally received some fruit snacks today in class! The glorious, sugary snack has eluded my grasp on numerous occasions in the past, but no more! I ended my fruit snack drought today. Oh what a glorious feeling!

Besides my triumph today, we looked at another poem. Instead of reading poems inspired by Robert Morrison’s gruesome, yet admirable act of protest, we looked at a poem by John Donne. The specific poem we looked at was titled The Broken Heart and described his angry, depressing and cynical view of love and what love does to a person. I almost felt like I was reading a play by Shakespeare because several of the lines in The Broken Heart were very confusing to figure out. Despite the difficulty of lines in Donne’s poem, we (the class) were able to figure out the meaning by discussing it aloud. I came to actually like The Broken Heart once we dissected the meaning.

Donne has a very pessimistic view about love. If Donne had to say something positive about love, I doubt he could come up with something; it is that sorrowful. Although the poem projects a sad theme and tone, it is beautiful. It directly insults the flowers and sunshine that love is made out to be and describes the dark underbelly of love. Donne explores how destructive love can be and quick it can strike. With the quote, “Who would not laugh at me, if I should say I saw a flash of powder burn a day?” Donne compares gunpowder to love gone wrong. Gunpowder explodes instantly and can be destructive and deadly. Donne parallels this to the ferocity and speed in which love can take down its foe, which is a very powerful and accurate statement in my opinion.

Moreover, Brooke made an exquisite connection in class when she compared the line, “All other griefs allow a part to other griefs, and ask themselves but some; they come to us, but us love draws;” to the way humans almost seek out the grief that can be love. Other grieves, such as mental and physical grieves usually come to us naturally through our own actions and actions of others. We often do not need to seek these grieves… they find us. Brooke said that love, however, is different: we seek out the grief of love. It is the pain and torture that love can morph into that attracts us. Why there is that need to seek the pain of love is the million-dollar question. I was so happy when Brooke shared this insight because that specific part of the poem made no sense to me. Once she drew the line, I was able to understand the poem more as a whole as well as the introspective question that specific part poses. 

Norman Morrison (Caught'ya #11)

Norman Morrison

I received my summer blogs back today from Mr. Delacruz. I have to say I am disappointed on how they turned out. I thought I performed better than what my grade represents. While it is not a bad grade, I was just hoping it would be higher. I can deduce that maybe it was the summer heat that drained my brain of any English coherence and spark? Looking back on summer now, I had so much free time compared to the school year! How could I have not dedicated more time to my blogs?

I am also very disappointed in myself in regards to the extra credit that was offered during the summer reading blog. I failed to do it! Had I known it would account for 100 additional points, I would’ve been all over it! I suppose I can once again blame the lethargy and heat of the summer on my failure to accrue a large chunk of extra points on the summer blog assignment. What a shame.

Despite my disappointment over my summer reading blog grade, I enjoyed looking over the different poems that were based off the Norman Morrison incident. Out of the three poems we looked at, I liked Adrian’s Mitchell’s work the best. I felt so much passion in his writing. He begins the pome titled Norman Morrison with the sarcastic line “United beautiful States of terrible America”. He turns this common phrase into a more ironic sequence of words as he shows Morrison’s disrespect for the US Government and their involvement in Vietnam. Adrian Mitchell then goes on to say Morrison’s publicized burning represents all of the undocumented burning in Vietnam when he writes, “He did it in Washington where everyone could see because people were being set on fire in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see.” In this line, Morrison becomes a symbol of those who have been set ablaze in Vietnam.

Mitchell beautifully wraps up his poem with the sentence, “He simply burned away his clothes, his passport, his pink-tinted skin, put on a new skin of flame and became Vietnamese.” I believe this to mean in the act of burning himself, Morrison stripped away all that made him American, and he became one with the Vietnamese. Morrison was experiencing their pain, and made his point about Vietnam in a rather passionate, gruesome, and admirable way. I also noticed that Mitchell did not use an oxford comma in the sequence of events about Morrison burning himself. What a sly dog! I am going to go ahead and pat myself on the back for that one.

Mary Barton

Today, Mr. Delacruz gave us an example of prompt from an old AP Lit test. It asked you to look a text written Elizabeth Gaskell.  The passage from Mary Barton describes an English mill worker in the 1840’ s who seeks out his boos to ask him to care for another worker dying of typhus. The question the prompt asked was to describe the Gaskell’s use of characterization, point of view, selection of detail, and dialogue to make a social commentary. Now that is where the confusion began. First off, I had no idea what a social commentary was, let alone how Gaskell formed it.

Once Mr. Delacruz defined social commentary as promoting change by informing the general public about a given problem and appealing to people’s sense of justice, I was able to get a better sense of what the prompt was asking. We then were divided up into four groups of people and were asked to look specifically at characterization, point of view, selection of detail, or dialogue. I was assigned to look at characterization so I tried to focus on how Gaskell attempted to make the reader feel towards the characters in the passage.

Once we started to read I was confused about the plot of the story. In the prompt, the scene was described as George Wilson, a mill worker, was going to the house of Mr. Carson, the mill owner to ask Mr. Carson if he could take care of a worker dying of typhus. From reading this, I expected there to be a lot of dialogue between two men, with a lot of confrontation. This is where I was sure to find the social commentary: between the boss and the worker. However, this was not the case at all. The majority of the story focuses solely on the interactions between Wilson and Carson’s servants. After reading the passage, I found the social commentary was not between the boss and the worker, but between the rich and the poor. I was confused as to why the prompt would confuse the reader, so I asked Mr. Delacruz, and he explained before we looked at the boss-worker conversation, we first need background. That specific passage gave us a ton of background. If we did not know who Wilson was, his socioeconomic background, details about Carson’s life, etc., then we might not understand what would happen during the conversation. Mr. Delacruz did a great job of explaining this.

PS: I completely agree with Stephen not wanting to read aloud. I always trip up when I have to read in front of class. 

Close Reading (Caught'ya #10)

Close Reading

Today, we learned yet another way to break down a text called close reading, and it’s a bit confusing. I am not really sure what I am supposed to be looking for when asked to utilize this technique. I am not sure if I should put on my formalist perspective shades and look at diction, or if I should put on my biographical perspective shades and look at the author’s past. Maybe it is a combination of all the critical perspectives? I am just unsure.

Despite my confusion about close reading, I jumped right in when we were asked to look at symbols in the first chapter of The Scarlet Letter. When I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel in the summer, I picked up on some of the symbols in the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, but looking it back over today really highlighted all the symbolic foreshadowing within the first few paragraphs. I was able to realize all of Hawthorne’s hints the second time around because I already knew the plot of the story. This allowed me to draw connections between Hester and the rosebush, the overgrown weeds to the town’s ideals, and the prison to the Puritan society. Discussing my thoughts with Jordyn and Connor further emphasized these parallels and it honestly made me appreciate the book in a whole new light. The metaphors Hawthorne used to foreshadow The Scarlet Letter were awesome. I wish I could craft my writing that beautifully. Now that I look back on what I just wrote, I pretty much just answered the question I posed in the first paragraph. Close reading is just deeply analyzing small portions of literary works. Funny how that kind of stuff happens.

While talking about symbols in The Scarlet Letter, I made a real life connection to Hester, the prison, and the whole idea of attempting to suppress mankind’s inner demons. I have a 30-year-old cousin who has been in and out of the prison system for various marijuana and hallucinogenic mushroom offenses. He was once in a prison for a one and a half year period.  He is currently on parole for the next two years. Despite his record, he is a very pleasant person, very existential, and witty. He often reminds me a philosopher and I always love when I get to spend time with him. While the offenses are drastically different, I believe both him and Hester share a similar ideology. Hester does not really care about what the Puritan society thinks about her. She wears her “A” with pride and learns to live on her own and not depend on people’s thoughts. My cousin is the same way. He is one of those people who does not trust the government and is very eco friendly. He’s basically a hippy. He doesn’t care what society labels him as, he does what makes him happy, and he is self -sufficient. This attitude reflects Hester’s ideology in The Scarlet Letter and is why she and my cousin are such interesting characters.