BLOG 8 SORRY

For many years, The Tempest was not considered a "serious" Shakespearean play because of its subject matter and approach to its topic. Would you consider this a "serious" play, or a lighthearted diversion?
I thought the play was serious to a point. It talked about revenge, and innocence, and betrayal, and love, and all the stuff you expect from drama.
I liked it, but it isn't really my thing. But it was ok. That doesn't answer the question though. The play was kind of lighthearted though. Nobody died, and everything turned out alright, even Caliban. I thought that was a nice thing. I mean even the worst character ended up with an alright ending. The bad guys did too. Yay Prospero!


The Tempest by ~tartleigh on deviantART

Blog 8

Chapter 2 of Ivan Ilych opens with the narrative comment that "Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible." What does this mean?

Well, it means that nothing happened in it. There were no exceptionally happy moments, or sad ones. Sounds rather...boring. Really. Then again, that's how Ivan Ilych was. I liked the story really.
I tried to make this post boring, like Ivan. Did I manage it?

Blog 7

"Oedipus"--is Oedipus really a tragic figure? Why or why not?

Well. It's tragic what happened. I mean you are born to live out this horror. That's pretty sucky. He doesn't has a choice. I mean, even if his parents hadn't abandoned him on a mountainside, it probably would have still come true. That's what you call UNFAIR. I mean honestly, who wants to do the dirty with their mother? EWWWW.

Poor Oedipus. I mean sure, he kept asking questions, and was stupid sometimes but he was doing it for the good of his people. Stupid people, go catch the plague or something, this is all your fault.

Blog 6 A Doll's House

What themes from this story have we encountered before? How would you compare the way these themes are treated in this play to the way they are treated in short stories or in poems?

Well I've encountered sexism, feminism, stupidity, and characters that make you want to smack them in everything. The themes in this play are treated more subtly and at the same time more extreme than in the short stories/poems we've read. I mean we see different character interaction in this play, instead of a one-sided narrative(A Rose for Emily, Yellow Wallpaper). It was more radical in the way the problem was solved, I mean Nora was like FU Torvald and ditched. I thought it was funny. So she actually did the opposite of being crazy like in Wallpaper, Emily and Chrysanthemums.

Blog 5

I didn't really encounter any problems turning a moral issue into a drama. I have enough friends to cite as an example. It's certainly more fun than a lecture, lectures make me sleepy if it doesn't have something interesting. I don't really know what you mean by "How does it work as a drama?". How does what work as a drama? The lecture? Well, you just run around and use common knowledge then blow it way out of proportion like 2012. It's funny.

Ulysses who?

So for our poetry explication assignment, I decided to do the poem Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson. Its not a very long poem, and its an easy to understand poem, and the whole poem COULD be an allusion to Ulysses S. Grant, instead of Odysseus aka Ulysses. That's how it caught my attention. It doesn't have too many strategies other than symbolism, but luckily, there is a TON of that. A person could actually go into a deep psychological explanation of this poem if one wished, which is actually one of the only really promising options to follow. Good thing i'm going to be a psych major eh?

Odysseus Vs. The Cyclops by ~ApneicMonkey on deviantART

Poetry

Lucasta:
Someone is leaving their lover for war and possibly trying to explain themselves.
Dulce Et Decorum Est:
Sounds like the civil war. I think it is a soldier saying that war is terrible.
Cinderella:
I have read this before! I could actually decipher this one. I find the ending curious however, for it sounds almost like a loveless marriage to me in the end.
London:
Well it was depressing. I think it was about sadness, and how there were no women in it except the lat stanza where they were harlots.
The Chimney Sweeper:
Wow, I liked this. It was very easy to read, and it spoke of dreams, and aspirations, and good things all the while having a sad and dark undertone.
Ozymandius:
Time has no care for those that it pasts by, the ancient remains only a memory, and power, sweet power, destroys like the pomegranates of Hades. There, that's exactly what it means.

I think the only one I had problems with was most likely London. It didn't feel it it had a real..background story to it other than history itself, which is hard to summarize, for though there is indeed sadness and misery, there is also love and joy. Babies are supposed to be happy things, so I was rather saddened by this poem.

A Rose for Emily

This woman was a necrophiliac.

I actually enjoyed how this was written. I liked how it was all out of order and made you actually use your head to figure out exactly what was going on, however, I think that Emily's servant(The Negro) was either her secret lover or a personification of the devil, like Bingo Pajama in The Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robinson, who is this hardly ever seen character, but when he does, this air of mystery comes with him. He's creepy too.
I thought that the allusions to royalty and to people's imagination was an interesting way of describing Emily's life to the reader. It was similar to Yellow Wallpaper because both women went a little off the deep end, and the reader got to watch, or infer what happened. I like how at the end of Emily, they found a silver hair, and of course, a dead guy.

Time is the antagonist within this novella(at least I hope that's what it is). While I was reading, it seemed like there was this specter, something...evil, or dirty. The time line was a mess, and that's why. I could feel this...creepy, almost, graveyard like feeling through the entire thing. Of course, time just HAPPENED to be the theme of the whole story. Poor Emily.

Yellow Wallpaper much?

The Yellow Wallpaper was one trippy novella(?).

Her(the main character) imagination ran away from her due to being "bored" or rather, locked away from everything. I had a similar experience when I was really young. Somehow I managed to convince myself that I had never been outside in my life(even though I had), and was locked within a building with many windows. It was a very odd sensation. So I kind of understand how the main character was feeling. You are filled with this desperateness to get out, and all you have is your mind. It's rather frightening.

I think that Gilman told the story through the captive's perspective because it described exactly how she felt, and the reader understood her descent into madness and how it came about. It was like YOU were the narrator. I think she went mad because she probably underwent postpartum depression, and her husband made it worse by treating her like a child and not listening to her, and then it just went downhill from there.

After reading this short story, I felt very odd. My thoughts were disjointed and jumpy, and I was slightly skittish, kinda like how I am when I hear the Xfiles theme.

It also reminded me of Brave New World where everyone has no stimulation for the mind, and they are all practically children in their thinking processes. Then comes along a "savage" and everything goes crazy.

My blog for my english class.

What if we want to use this to do regular blogs for my friends? Can I advertise my business on here?
Can people create a separate account on here with the same email to do the things asked in the questions above?