Weekly ELA Blog Post #11

In this weekly blog post, I'm going to compare the hospitality Telemachus received in his travels to the hospitality Odysseus received from the Phaeacians. One way the hospitality they recieved is similar is that they were both told stories about the Trojan War. However, Telemachus heard the stories through simple spoken word, while Odysseus heard them in song from a bard. Another big difference is that Oddyseus arrived alone and in poor condition, so he was cleaned up, while Telemachus didn't have to be because he arrived on a boat with a crew. Another way they were similar is that they were both invited to big feasts. Finally, one last difference is the entertainment Odysseus recieved. He got to watch the Phaeacians play sports and dance, in order to give him good things to tell people back at home. Plus, he was challenged to sports by a Phaeacian. All in all, both father and son were treated very well by their hosts, and recieved great hospitality.

Weekly ELA Blog for the Week of 11/14

In what I have read so far of "The Odyssey" by Homer, the character Penelope, who is the wife of the hero of the story, Odysseus, plays a very important role in the narrative. For one thing, she is Odysseus's main inspiration to come home, besides his land. His yearning for her is what gives him the willpower to leave the opportunity of an immortal life alongside the goddess Calypso. However, beyond just being someone else's inspiration, Penelope also takes an active role in changing the tide of the story. The biggest thing she does in the story is avoid marrying any suitors who have come to marry her in the years her husband has been away. Even as they crowd her home, tire her servants, and kill her livestock, Penelope's resolve against the suitors stays strong, and she finds clever ways to keep them at bay until Odysseus may return and force them from her home. A specific piece of textual evidence for this is that she at one point told the suitors she needed to finish a sowing project before she could marry, and then cunningly snuck in to the room where the project was kept at night and unwove it a little bit to buy time..

ELA Blog Post Week of 11/7

For my ELA blog post this week, I'm going to be writing about a part of the book "The Narrative oftbe Life of Frederick Douglass that really interested me but that we never really got to discuss. What I want to discuss is what happened to Douglass after his master found out about his escape plot. Fron what I learned about slavery and about Douglass's masters throughout the book, the punishment he recieved for plotting an escape seemed insanely lenient.  After all, he was planning an escape, which was about the worst thing a slave could do in a master's eyes, and plus, his plan proved he could read and write. another thing that was seen to be strongly opposed by masters. So, to be sent to live in Baltimore with master Hugh seems way less harsh than what I'd predict would have happned to Douglass. Plus, his old master must have explained his plan and the writing it involved  to Hugh, the man who originally tried to stop Douglass's education, and yet, even knowing that, Hugh allowed Douglass a large degree of leniency. All in all, considering his actions in trying to escape slavery the first time, I would have expected Douglass to recieve more punishment than he did.

On the Relationship Between Education and Freedom in "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"

In this blog post I will be speaking on, as the title suggests, the relationship between education and freedom in "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass". I could probably just copy and paste my blog post from last week, as it's basically on the same subject, but because of this little inconvenience known as "plagiarism rules", I'll go ahead and write a new essay.
So, what is the relationship between education and freedom in "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"? Well, you see, the book is set in the time of slavery, and back then, being educated gave slaves powerful tools to escape slavery, as well as a strong understanding of why they should do so. For this reason, as well as the reason that white people didn't want to see evidence that black people could be equal to them, slaves were often barred from education. As we can clearly see in Douglass's case, when slaves did manage to become educated, they were suddenly empowered both in their understanding of what rights they deserved and in their ability to fight for those rights. On the opposite side of the coin, slaves who never received an education had lots fewer tools to escape bondage, and perhaps also didn't really ever even think to do so. So, how did education and freedom tie in to eachother in the book. Well, in the slaves' case, the former was a path that drastically increased their odds of reaching the latter. As the saying goes, "Knowledge is power."