English Journal 10/2/12. "Young Life"

Claims:
 -The man shot the deer
 -Bartlett is illustrating stereotypical "Redneck" America
 -Bartlett is praising stereotypical "Redneck" America

Support (to each claim, respectively):
 -The deer doesn't appear to be alive, and the man is holding a shotgun
 -The man owns a shotgun, a pickup truck, and hunts, all stereotypes of a redneck
 -The dead deer, the powerful position of the shotgun in the painting.

English Journal 11/9/12, "2+2=5"

Subject: Loss of free will? Conformity?
Tone: Negative, "devil's way"
Theme: The strong pull of conformity on society, even on the strongest

English Journal 10/25/12, "The Loss of Innocence"

Innocence is the lack of knowledge or lack of acknowledgement of evils in the world, whtever those are for you.

Loosing innocence is whereby one either gains knowledge or acknowedges the eveil, whether specific or broad.

I, honestly, have no idea about what symbolizes the loss of innocence or the loss of anything for that matter besides the obvious representation of the nakedness trying to be covered up by the woman on the right. After this point, I'm going to punt. The falling petals show the descent of the person from an innocent person to that of the world.

English Journal 10/22/12, "Don't You Want Me"

What's going on:
     A man basically made a woman's career, and loves her. He sees this as love. The woman, however, was going to do something with her life, and this guy happened to the vehicle, so she doesn't see this as love.

How is it possible to have such conflicting views on the same situation?
     Everyone has his or her own views, values, or other things the want to protect, including their ego.

English Journal 9/27/12, "Blackbird"

Symbols:

Blackbird = people struggling for civil rights in America

Broken Wing = wrong done to these people

Dead of Night = hope in darkness

English Post 9/26/12, "Shame"

The subject is the author's previous treatment of his love. The tone is a feeling of remorse. The author is regretting a past action or actions. In the refrain, the repetition and magnitude (boatloads) of shame demonstrates a regret of past actions.

English Post 9/6/12 "Semeadores"

S - Workers/ Farmers

N - The artist (Diego Rivera)

A - The people who don't work in the fields (middle, upper classes)

P - To portray workers working, perhaps who are working to hard, as one of them is bent double from the strain of his work

English Journal 9/5/12 "Good Old Desk"

Subject - His desk and its many good qualities

Narrator - Harry Nilsson; his only bias appears to be towards his desk

Audience - Anyone who will listen to his praise of his desk

Purpose - To laud an everyday object that's dependable


The Desk is a symbol for God (Good Old Desk)??
Originally, I thought it was a silly song that was just for fun, but now that I know about the symbolism, it makes a little more sense and is a great deal more meaningful.

English Journal 9/4/12

The Pinch of Poverty
(Painting)

Subject-
Poverty; affected families

Narrator-
(No narrator)
Bias; cares about poverty

Audience-
Middle to Upper classes which either ignore, glaze over, or don't know about poverty

Purpose-
To expose the world, specifically the wealthier parts of it, to poverty and its affects.


2 Artistic Choices:
-The brighter colors of the flowers and the baby wrap contrast sharply with the rest of the painting, which has much duller colors, which I think is used to draw attention to this presumably impoverished family, and how it should be noticed.
-The positioning of the girl in the foreground, who is stepping forward and away from the rest of the family, shows how much independence many children in poverty must show to support their family, further exposing the affects of poverty.

English Journal: 8/20/12

How do you define culture?
     Culture is what you are exposed to and what you absorb from your surroundings (like it or dislike it).

What makes up a person's culture?
     What they are exposed to. This can include literature, spoken stories, music, points of view, political perspectives, etc. You develop opinions about what you're exposed to, regardless of whether or not you like it.

Is culture intrinsic or extrinsic?
     Extrinsic; you can only react to what you've been exposed to.

English Journal: 8/17/12

Facts:

1. There are three people in the painting
2. The seats are gren
3. There is a special today

Claims:

1. The policeman is talking and lecturing the boy
2. The boy seated right has run away
3. This painting is of the '40's or '50's

The Pearl Response 2

The last 50 some pages of the book start off with the one moment we've all been waiting for: Kino finally gets to sell his pearl and begin his life of wealth. However, the dealers would only give him a fraction of what it is worth, and so, instead of staying and bargaining, or taking the small fortune they offer him, Kino plots to leave this town and go sell his pearl at the capitol, a scary place many miles away. What I find interesting is that Kino could've easily stormed off and come back another day after seeing that the dealers were lying. But instead, he ends up preparing to leave for the capitol and murdering someone. I just wonder why Kino didn't keep a more level head through all of this, and I think it is Steinbeck telling us a moral of the story: wealth, especially potential wealth, can drive us to let our emotions control our actions. I like how Steinbeck subtly shares this moral without coming right out and stating it.

Additionally, a question I have that has been left unanswered. How was Coyotito killed?? I thought that Kino moved and struck the man with the rifle before he could fire and silence the "coyote." But then when Kino and Juana walk back into town, Coyotito is dead, which left me wondering. And finally, who are the men that Kino kills or injures throughout the book? It's never revealed who Kino slashes in the doorway of his house, or who he kills on the path leading to his house, or who the two trackers are, or who the man on the horse with a rifle, who we seem to pay particular attention to, is. All this uncertainty could've been cleared up in a sentence or two at some point when the book wrapped up, but instead Steinbeck chooses to leave them nameless, which is interesting and as a reader quite frustrating.

The Pearl Response 1

Steinbeck starts his story with the songs that Kino experiences. The songs are simple, and have been heard by people such as him for many centuries. I like how Steinbeck starts the story by introducing a concept that pervades throughout the whole book. I think that without this introduction, a reader would have to waste time later on trying to figure out what he is talking about.

Additionally, what becomes of the seven small pearls that Kino hands the doctor's servant? Maybe I read this wrong, but does the doctor just keep them? I don't recall the servant handing them back to Kino. And then Kino just let's the doctor take the seven pearls which he has worked so hard to get? Granted, they're small pearls, but still, those are his livelihood, pretty much everything he has to live on. I don't think this is an intentional choice by Steinbeck, but it makes me wonder why it happened this way nonetheless.

And finally, I find it interesting that this pearl can change the fate of this entire town; everyone could benefit from Kino's new found wealth, as Steinbeck shows in the beginning of chapter III. Everybody from the lowly beggars all the way to the wealthy doctor can gain from this "Pearl of the World." Because of this good feeling I as a reader get from the good this pearl can do, I, as a reader, have a more intense feeling of hatred toward the stranger who tries to steal it.

Pygmalion Response 2

Well, having finished the play, it's interesting to look back on my first post and to see how many things I've figured out since then. Firstly, that Shaw is writing in a time where public schooling did exist, how ever crude and generally unavailable it was, a slight difference from what I wrote previously. Secondly, I found out why Shaw includes the mother and daughter in the opening scene, as they play a key role in Act III. The mother and daughter, who we now know as Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill, are (ironically) present at Liza's, "first appearance in London society of the professional class."

Having made my peace with my previous post, I'll move on to the rest of the book. One of the first things from Act III that I became aware of is a sense of knowing how beautiful Liza looks like without having actually seen her at the reception. As a reader, I need not see a picture of what Liza is wearing as she walks through the room or see a video of her walking through the crowd to know how stunning and elegant she looks because as I reader, I know all about Liza and how hard she has worked for this. I hardly need a description to know that she looks absolutely gorgeous, because Shaw has done a marvelous job revealing this character to the audience. Also worth noting, Shaw is able to skip the entire 6 month process of Liza's learning and still is able to convey that Liza has worked as hard as possible and even before her first appearance in higher London society, we know that she will be a lady. I think it's amazing that Shaw can develop a character such that we know her so well that we can infer about the present results of past actions and even about future actions.

And my final word on the play is how Shaw chooses to the play. He leaves the future in so much question. The dialogue between Professor Higgins and Eliza leaves me as a reader wondering whether or not Eliza is ever coming back. As a reader, I am unsure whether or not Eliza is being serious or sarcastic, and I guess we'll never know how it turns out. I find that very intriguing and at the same time extremely frustrating that Shaw ends the play this way.

Pygmalion Response 1

Well, let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, so I've been told). I read as far in as the first few lines of the preface before noticing a very startling connection between the book and everyday life today. In the preface, he comes right out and says, "the English have no respect for their language," something that has been said to be true of many of today's youthful English speakers. I found myself in awe of the timelessness of this particular piece of advice, how Shaw wrote something almost a hundred years ago that rings so true in a modern context. Shaw was, of course, writing about a problem specific to his time; a time before standard public schooling. Multitudes of people had been speaking English since it's creation, but of those many, a very elite few fully understood the conventions (grammar, spelling, reading, writing, etc.) that formed the language. These days, the problem also appears to be a profound lack of respect for the English language; such things as text messaging language and emoticons show little respect for the many hundreds of years that the English language has been developing.

Another emotional response I experienced was an increasing sense of confusion as we drew to the climax of the first act when the crowd is gathered around The Flower Girl (Liza). So much is going on, so many people talking, so many different people, that in addition to my confusion, I began to feel overwhelmed. At the point when I thought I was going to have to put down the book for a few minutes, the rain stopped, and the crowd dispersed. Thinking back on it, I find it pretty amazing that Shaw is able to overwhelm me in a matter of a few lines. In my everyday life, things such as commercials and movies and other modern media try so hard to overwhelm my to get me to do something, and Shaw effortlessly does it in just a few lines of literature.

Lastly, I wonder why the woman and the daughter are in this act at all. I felt like they were going to play some higher role with Liza, at that point The Flower Girl. Because we start out with this extensive dialogue between the mother and daughter, I began to feel as though they were a part of the play and it would be the gentleman and the man taking notes who would walk away never to be seen again, not the mother and her daughter. Which also brings into question, is the man who is called Freddy really the mother's son?? Because if she is, why does it appear that she leaves him to go to use some other transportation without him in company??