Masterpiece Update!

Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted a masterpiece update but I finally have a plan! Last summer, Hannah and I went to the Boys and Girls Club and demonstrated fun science experiments. At the end of the session, we made a promise to come back and now we'll be able to keep that promise! Hannah, Sierra, and I will be putting on a three day camp for two hours a day during spring break. Hannah plans to have a soccer camp and Sierra plans to do a fashion related activity. I've been going back and forth on what I want to do with the kids from doing more science experiments to having story time or maybe having like a future me workshop where the kids could discover different aspirations. I thought back to my childhood on what the greatest memories were and when at school I had the most fun and also thought when I have the most fun at school today. The key word that came to mind was "interactivity." I loved playing with other kids, building blocks together and playing duck duck goose. And today, I love when we have socratic seminars and when we participate in teambuilding activities. My point being that instead of having a science demonstration or me talking about the future I want it to be all about the kids and engaging. I want to revisit my childhood and do little crafts with them, play duck duck goose and competitive games which like candy prizes. Something to get the kids excited and get to know each other.

"Dover Beach" Analysis

Title:

The title is referring to the beach that the author is observing 

Paraphrase:

"We find also in the sound a thought hearing it by this distant northern sea" We revisit different memories that is reminded by the similarities of our current settings

"But now I only hear it's melancholy, long, withdrawing roar." Only the harsh, cold waves coming in and out can be heard.

Connotation:

"moon-blanched" the night is whitened by the moon light

"naked-shingles of the world" the raw emotions of people without the layers to hind behind 

Attitude:

The attitude is melancholy, reflecting, and also pleading in a way to go back to the past life of the beauties in humanity. 

 Shift:

"With tremulous cadence slow, and bring the eternal note of sadness in."

In awe of nature's beauty at night but then shifts to a melancholy tone. 

"Sophocles long ago heard it on the Aegean" shifts to an even darker mood with a reference to human destruction

Title Revisited:

The title isn't just referencing to a specific beach but what it's contents symbolize: cliffs, gleams, pebbles. 

Theme:

Learn to trust one another in the dark world we live in, as only love preserves "where ignorant armies clash by night." The night life represents the dark world we currently live in.The transition from the scenic beach at night to the dark, cold waves and "grating roar of pebbles" take over the night like humanity losing trust in one another. 

Tobermory Explained

The tone of Saki's Tobermory is contradicting from pessimistic to optimistic. He starts off creating the lifeless setting, but then puts the attention on Miss Blemley's house party filled with guests. The focus is then put on Mr. Cornelius Appin who has a "negative personality." The tone is shifted once again when Mr. Appin's is seen almost as a spectacle of entertainment and is ridiculed when he explains his "scientific discovery." The talking cat, Tobermory speaks. The guests seem intrigued but with caution and then rage when he reveals the personal talk that was held in the room. They are scared of their greedy secrets being revealed. The  shifts back and forth. The themes include selfishness and

"If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said Clovis, "he deserved all he got." 

I'm not really sure what this line if supposed to mean. I think this line in the context of the tone and theme is like a last laugh for Clovis at Mr. Addin for trying to show that he is better than everyone else at the house party. I also think this could mean that he got what he deserved for trying to do something, human speaking on animals, that wasn't yet accepted or experimented and trying to control things in a way that shouldn't be controlled.

Literature Analysis #2

Looking for Alaska by John Greene

1.  Miles Halter is socially awkward and has no friends when he leaves his home for a boarding school, Culver Creek in Alabama. He has an interesting passion of memorizing last words. His roomate is immediately aggressively friendly who is known as the Colonel. He nicknames Miles, Pudge. He also meets the beautiful Alaska Young who he is immediately attracted to but finds out she has a boyfriend. Pudge begins to adapt to life on the campus with his rebellious friends who pursue rebellious lifestyles smoking, drinking, and breaking rules, but Pudge manages to keep interest in his religion class as well as maintain stable grades in other classes. However, he begins to fall more into the life of Alaska and her obsession over the labyrinth as well as her mood swings and transforms into a somewhat different person. Pudge also befriends Takumi and Laura with whom he forms a brief fling with. Alaska and the Colonel are known for pulling off pranks and Pudge, Takumi and Laura take part in their master plans putting blue hairdye in the Warrior's hair products who are the rich stuck up kids, setting firecrackers on campus, and changing the Warrior'a grades that would be sent home. One night, the Colonel, Pudge, and Alaska hang out in Alaska's room completely drunk when Pudge and Alaska start to make out but eventually fall asleep. Alaska awakes to pick up the pay phone line which is a call from her boyfriend. She returns very upset and insisting she leaves. They help her by setting the firecrackers in a different direction while she drives off. The next morning they find out she died in a car accident. The Colonel and Pudge  feel responsible and obsess over finding out the truth behind her death. They try different things including asking questions to the police officer who owned the car that Alaska drove into but learn that she directly drove into it without even swerving. They even try drinking as much as the toxicity level that Alaska had that night to see if they were as unconscious enough to not even swerve. Their last resort is her boyfriend, but give up with the only clues being that she had lilies in the back of her car and that she didn't even swerve when hitting the cop's car. They do however carry on her legend of pranks by hiring a stripper as a speaker for their annual guest speaking. Pudge is able to conclude while looking at the payphone that the lilies drawn on there were the lilies that Alaska drew which were in the back of her car that night. She was going to her mother's grave as she had once mentioned a while ago that her mother died the day after they went to the zoo together. Her death still remains a mystery but Pudge is able to move on and accept her death.

2.  Themes of the novel include obsessions and relationships. Pudge had an obsession over last words and Alaska had an obsession over the labyrinth of life. These two obsessions in a way foreshadowed Alaska's death and it's complicated nature. The relationships in the novels were very important to the story's development in creating strong friendships that were tested.

3.  The tone of the book was melancholy and negative anticipating Alaska's death. "Although I was more or less forced to invite all my "school friends" i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria of my public schools, I knew they wouldn't come." 

4.  Diction pg 3

"She festooned our living room and green and yellow streamers, the colors of my new school."

Overstatement pg 9

"Unfortunately, the shower seemed to have been design for someone approximately three feet, seven inches tall, so the cold water hit my lower rib cage."

Reflection pg 20

"The phrase booze and mischief left me worrying I'd stumble into what my mother referred as "the wrong crowd," but for the wrong crowd, they both seemed awfully smart

Foreshadowing pg 44

"Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." 

Setting pg 64

"I vaguely remember Laura standing in the doorway, the room dark and the outside dark and everything mild and comfortable but sort of spinny, the world pulsing as if from a heavy bass beat."

Symbolism pg 88

"So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

Hyperbole pg 114

"The thousand-yard stare of intoxication, I thought, and as I watched her with an idle fascination, it occurred to me that, yeah, I was a little drunk, too."

Personification pg 148

"The cold wind buffeted against the door..."

Metaphor pg 148

"...and I sat in my bed and thought of the Colonel out there somewhere, his head down, his teeth clenched, walking into the wind."

Imagery pg 171 

"I picked up a blue chair and threw it against the concrete wall, and the clang of plastic on concrete echoed beneath the bridge as the chair fell limply on its side, and then I lay on my back with my knees hanging over the precipice and screamed."

Theme pg 220

"But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin cannot end, and so it cannot fail."

1.  Direct characterization:

"I stared, stunned partly by the force of the voice emanating from the petite girl and partly by the gigantic stacks of books that lined her walls."

"But even in the dark, I could see her eyes -- fierce emeralds."

Indirect Characterization:

"And we'll call you... hmm. Pudge."

"Still, my mother persevered, awash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years."

2.  The author's diction does not change when focusing on the character, remains descriptive and dark.

"She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die."

3.  The character is round and dynamic. Miles begins with being unsocial and very proper to a rebellious and confident with his friends. He is fully developed as a character through the descriptive language, reflections and innermost thoughts.

4.  I feel like I met Miles because I was really able to relate and sympathize with his raw emotions after losing Alaska. I was able to relate to him even more as he goes through the awkward phases of adapting to college for the first time and sharing his sadness and struggles. The sudden questioning of life after experiencing the loss of a close one.