After Winter break, we started reading a new book by John Knowles called A Separate Peace. It follows two boys, named Gene and Phineas a.k.a. Finny that go to a private school called Devon with other boys such as Brinker and Leper, in the U.S. during World War II. They're best friends and do everything together. Gene is the smart one of the two, while Finny is the more athletic one. They seem too be completely opposite from one another, but you know the old saying; opposites attract. While the boys seem to have so much fun together, Gene believes that there is something wrong about how friendly Finny is. He believes that Finny is plotting too ruin his studies, and makes out their friendship to actually be a competition. Due to this belief, Gene did something that he would regret. While on a tree with Finny, he jounces the limb causing Finny to lose balance, fall, and shatter his leg. Due to this injury, Finny can't ever play sports again. And although Finny seems to know that Gene jounces the limb, he refuses to believe that, even after Gene told him he jounced the limb. After this, Gene realizes that his competition with Finny wasn't a competition, but an actual friendship with a great friend. But his mistake is coming back to haunt him. Brinker has set up a meeting in the Assembly room of Devon to figure out what actually happened at the tree, and why Finny really fell. While the truth seems too be coming out, Finny can't handle it and he storms out of the Assembly room but trips as he is going down the stairs. This is where we stopped reading. By what I've read so far, it seems that all the peace at Devon has disintegrated in the flames of war that is spreading like a wildfire. The fire is growing bigger and stronger and destroying everything in its way. Conflict has grown between the boys, and it is eating them alive. They can't handle the pressure of joining or not joining the war, and seeing what happened to Leper has struck fear into them. The war has affected everyone and the boys are now feeling that affection. There is a war going on in the world we live in today, and even though it seems to not be affecting us, it is. The United State's economy has suffered due to the war in Afghanistan. I have an article here that gives us the negative effects on the economy that the war has: http://fritz11235.hubpages.com/hub/How-the-Wars-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan-Have-Affected-the-US-Economy. A great man named Howard Zinn once said, in an interview, that "War is an addiction. And the U.S. must get out of the habit of war." Here is the full interview with him, http://m.democracynow.org/stories/9882, and I also added a video of one of his speeches about the war that can be found at the bottom of the blog. I agree with Howard Zinn. We must get out of thinking that we must be a military superpower. Why do we have to be a military superpower? Why can't we be a philanthropic superpower? Instead of dropping bombs on other countries, why don't we drop supplies of food and water to the countries that need them? War isn't the answer to all our problems, and the negative effects on war outweigh the positive. Let's not spread hate across the world, let's spread peace. That is my blog and thank you for reading it.
This is my fifth blog of Honors English this year. We haven't been blogging for about a month now due to essays other things. My last blog was on the sixteenth of October and at that time, we were still reading Lord of the Flies. Now we have finished Lord of the Flies, we have started reading The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, a play by William Shakespeare. This play takes place in ancient Rome and is about a military leader named Julius Caesar who seeks more power. The people of Rome praise him and all his actions. But some close friends of Caesar don't like what he might become and plot to assassinate him. We have just passed the part where Caesar is assassinated, and we are now on the scene where Brutus gives a speech followed by Marc Antony, Caesar's closest friend, who some even believe him to be Julius's son. We know for a fact that Antony's speech will be much more powerful then Brutus's speech and all of the conspirators who shook hands with Antony will die, thanks to the information given to us by Mr. Keating.
One of the symbols of the Illuminati: The Eye of the Pyramid
On a real world note, this play is about the desire for power and what it leads too. I believe that power can lead us to do irrational things and everyone has the desire for power whether big or small. For example, some believe that there is a secret organization called the Illuminati, who control the government and seek new world order. There are documentaries and books about the Illuminati and how they plotted historical events from the assassination of JFK to the attacks on 9/11. Some believe that the Illuminati controls things from the media to the music industry. It is also believed that music artists like Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Lady GaGa are a part of the Illuminati, and they have hidden messages in their music. There are many articles on the internet of the Illuminati and this is one of them, http://www.therundown.tv/headlines/discuss-this/the-music-industry-and-the-illuminati-jay-z-beyonce-rihanna-lady-gaga/. I have also added a ten minute video at the bottom of this blog about the Illuminati and their origins. No one knows if this organization is real or not, but if they are, it shows how sick and twisted our minds can get for a taste of control and power. Another example would be the infamous Adolf Hitler, and his massacre of the Jews, for some power and world control, which lead to his death. And one more example is the recent events in Libya and Qaddafi. Due to his desire to keep the throne and hold power, which caused a revolution, he died. Just like Julius Caesar, both of these men died due to their desire for power. These examples show how the lust for power can blind a person's rational thinking and cause them to do irrational things. Thank you for reading my fifth blog of this year, and I hope that you enjoyed it.
This is my fourth blog in English class, and will probably be the most difficult one due to the fact that we didn't do much in this week. We didn't do much due to the PSAT's, and other interferences. On the first two days of the week, we actually read Lord of the Flies, and those days were very productive. We are near the end of the book, and the boys are starting to lose control. They have expunged Simon by brutally beating him, thinking he was the beast, when in fact he was trying to tell them that the beast was just a dead man with a parachute. And as Simon was killed, the "beast" got blown into the ocean and drifted away. The death of Simon symbolized all hope being lost because we see him as a Christ-like person that was the only one who knew that there was no beast, and now that he is dead, there chance of figuring that out is very low. This act of murder shows that the boys have completely lost control and have been taken over by man's essential illness. We also watched the introduction to the movie for Lord of the Flies, which is posted at the bottom of this blog, and as doing this we tried to point out different sounds and pictures, and their significance. As doing so, the classes received a candid comment from the infamous Adrian Camarena, basically saying that maybe there was no significance to the photo's and sounds and the director just wanted to throw them in. This comment was quickly replied to, by Mr. Keating, saying that even if the director didn't mean anything with the sounds and pictures, that it is our job to find the significance in them on our own, which is a very well-stated reply. Furthermore, for the first time, we got in our book club and spoke about the outside reading book that we were reading. This actually
helped me understand a copious new amount of things about the book I am reading, All Quite on the Western Front. We also took the benchmark this week as well. It was 20 questions which were fairly easy, and didn't trouble me at all. Also, I personally learned about something new that I have never heard of, the Lucifer effect. After hearing about the Stanford prison project, and how it had to be ended prematurely due to the fact that prisoners became depressed and guards became sadistic, I became very interested. I learned that there is a book that is all about the Lucifer effect, called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo. I hope to one day read this book and understand more about the Lucifer effect and how harsh environments cause good people to become evil, and how even the best of people have can be taken over by man's essential illness. They also have a whole website dedicated to the Lucifer effect, here it is: http://www.lucifereffect.com/. That is my blog for this week, thank you for reading it.
This is my third blog of the year and as I mention in all my other blogs, I am improving, both on my writing and creativity. This week in English, we continued to read Lord of the Flies by William Golding, which I am enjoying so far. So far, we have read almost half the book and I still have a copious amount of questions, like will Ralph be able to keep power as the chief and keep everything under control? And what is the beast? Or is it even real? Although the twins saw what they believed to be the beast, describing it as a large thing with wings, that was very furtive and agile, but was actually a dead pilot's body and parachute being swayed around by the wind, I still have a feeling that their is some sort of beast on the island which hasn't been discovered yet. We are also seeing a new side of Jack, which Ralph isn't to happy about. Jack seems to be taking matters into his own hands, and kind of rebelling against Ralph's rules, taking some of the boys with him. If Ralph can't control the situation and loses all power, their chances of survival will be slimmer then they already are. They need to work together if they want to have a chance at surviving, and with Jack, who is irascible, and Ralph not getting along very well, things look bad for the boys. Jack isn't the only on changing though. Piggy seems to be changing as well. He is starting to stand up for himself against Jack. He is not just sitting there, letting Jack push him around, and this might backfire, because it might cause Jack to do harm to Piggy. This is bad because the boys need to start getting along and they need to work together to survive and get off the island. Just like the old saying goes, "There is no I in team". Teamwork is the essential tool to victory, which for the boys would be getting of the island. For example, a soccer player doesn't win a World Cup alone; he wins it with a team. Same goes for basketball, football, and even surviving on an island. There are many reasons why teamwork is important and I found a great article giving some good reasons: http://www.the-happy-manager.com/why-is-teamwork-important.html. This article gives eight reasons why teamwork is the best work, and better then individual work. When managed properly, teamwork can be very effective and help you with any type of situation. That is why Jack, Ralph and everyone else need to start working more as a team rather then individuals in order to survive the situation they are in and get off of the island. If they don't then things may turn out for the worse and they might not get off the island, yet alone survive. That is the end of my blog for this week and I hope that you enjoyed it!
This is my second blog for English class. I am finding these blogs very docile so far. This week, in English we started reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding out loud in class, which is a very bizarre and uncommon for me. To me, the book is not an insipid book but rather very interesting. It starts off introducing Ralph, a handsome, well-built boy who is stranded on an island with a group of boys, including Piggy, a gregarious boy, and Jack, a tall and ugly boy. All of these characters seem to play a major role in the book, and have unique characteristics. We also got the essay prompt, which I have never gotten before finishing the book, so I was kind of shocked to receive it. The prompt read "Analyze one of Golding's characters in his novel Lord of the Flies. Specifically, describe Golding's process of characterization, how does Golding characterize an individual during the novel?". We are taking notes that will help us answer the prompt and I have a feeling that at the end of this book, I will have all the notes I need to write an essay on characterization. Unlike my first essay on To Kill a Mockingbird, which I wasn't able to complete in the time I was given. Furthermore, I looked up any real life events that connect to Lord of the Flies, and I found an article about 16 people who were stranded on an island in 2003 in Tibet, here is the article: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200309/22/eng20030922_124673.shtml.
They faced a severe shortage of water, and some of them had caught the cold and had high fevers. There were worries that the rescuers wouldn't have been able to reach the group in time, because the island was in a mountainous area. I find this story to resemble Lord of the Flies because they are stranded on an island just like the Ralph and the boys and they are short on water. I read many stories about people being stranded on islands in danger of dying and I realized that the events that take place in Lord of the Flies, occur in real life too, and there are actual people who die due to being stranded somewhere without the tools that they need to survive. I believe that as humans, we need to be aware of this and not just think that it's all fiction and only happens in books or movies. Everyday, someone gets lost or stranded without food or water, and they can't contact anyone for help, and us as humans need to work harder on finding these people instead of leaving them to die. To conclude, I look forward to reading Lord of the Flies next week, and to learn more about characterization and the characters. That is my blog for this week, and I hope to keep improving on it as the school year progresses. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoy the next one even more.
I've been in Honors English 10 for eight days now, and I can tell you that I have learned many things in those days. At the beginning of the school year, more specifically, on the first three days we learned more about our classmates and we learned about the class. We also learned how to use Google Docs and had a small assignment on how high school is in the modern world. I can't say that the first three days of school were extraneous, but they weren't as important as the first full week. On the first full week, we started to learn new vocabulary words, which were divulge, abet, dogmatic, insipid, and extraneous. I believe these words will come in hand when I am writing my essays. That brings me to the major idea of the week, my essay on To Kill a Mockingbird.
This past week was centered on picking a theme for our essay and how to create a perfect introduction paragraph to fit that theme. We had to pick between three themes: racism, childhood innocence, or rural poverty. The theme I chose was racism because it is still a major issue in today's world and I know more about it then I do about the other themes. We started off by learning how to create a hook sentence that will grab the readers attention, then we transitioned to the story background, and learned how to introduce the book and give examples from the book that relate to our theme. Finally, we learned how to create a thesis statement that flowed with the rest of the paragraph and stated what we were going to talk about. All of this is going to help me a lot when they day to write my essay comes and it is going to make it much easier for me. As I start to learn more on how to construct the perfect essay, it's starting to become easier for me to write not just essays, but many other types of writing, like blogging. That brings me to what we learned next, how to create and write a blog. At first I thought it was weird that we would be blogging for English class, but after starting to write this first blog, I realized why we are doing it. I am starting to see that the skills it takes to write a blog are similar to the skills it takes to write an essay. We aren't just blogging for our grade, we are blogging because it will help us become better writers and help us write much better essays. Blogging is just a more creative way to write and everybody needs some creativity in their life. I love being creative and that is why I am looking forward to this school year in English. I am also looking forward to learning new writing skills and vocabulary. That is the conclusion to my first but definitely not last blog, and I hope to become a better blogger as the school year progresses. That's all folks!
After Winter break, we started reading a new book by John Knowles called A Separate Peace. It follows two boys, named Gene and Phineas a.k.a. Finny that go to a private school called Devon with other boys such as Brinker and Leper, in the U.S. during World War II. They're best friends and do everything together. Gene is the smart one of the two, while Finny is the more athletic one. They seem too be completely opposite from one another, but you know the old saying; opposites attract. While the boys seem to have so much fun together, Gene believes that there is something wrong about how friendly Finny is. He believes that Finny is plotting too ruin his studies, and makes out their friendship to actually be a competition. Due to this belief, Gene did something that he would regret. While on a tree with Finny, he jounces the limb causing Finny to lose balance, fall, and shatter his leg. Due to this injury, Finny can't ever play sports again. And although Finny seems to know that Gene jounces the limb, he refuses to believe that, even after Gene told him he jounced the limb. After this, Gene realizes that his competition with Finny wasn't a competition, but an actual friendship with a great friend. But his mistake is coming back to haunt him. Brinker has set up a meeting in the Assembly room of Devon to figure out what actually happened at the tree, and why Finny really fell. While the truth seems too be coming out, Finny can't handle it and he storms out of the Assembly room but trips as he is going down the stairs. This is where we stopped reading. By what I've read so far, it seems that all the peace at Devon has disintegrated in the flames of war that is spreading like a wildfire. The fire is growing bigger and stronger and destroying everything in its way. Conflict has grown between the boys, and it is eating them alive. They can't handle the pressure of joining or not joining the war, and seeing what happened to Leper has struck fear into them. The war has affected everyone and the boys are now feeling that affection. There is a war going on in the world we live in today, and even though it seems to not be affecting us, it is. The United State's economy has suffered due to the war in Afghanistan. I have an article here that gives us the negative effects on the economy that the war has: http://fritz11235.hubpages.com/hub/How-the-Wars-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan-Have-Affected-the-US-Economy. A great man named Howard Zinn once said, in an interview, that "War is an addiction. And the U.S. must get out of the habit of war." Here is the full interview with him, http://m.democracynow.org/stories/9882, and I also added a video of one of his speeches about the war that can be found at the bottom of the blog. I agree with Howard Zinn. We must get out of thinking that we must be a military superpower. Why do we have to be a military superpower? Why can't we be a philanthropic superpower? Instead of dropping bombs on other countries, why don't we drop supplies of food and water to the countries that need them? War isn't the answer to all our problems, and the negative effects on war outweigh the positive. Let's not spread hate across the world, let's spread peace. That is my blog and thank you for reading it.
