Weekly ELA Blog Post #13

This week I will be blogging about a subject that really interested me in the Oddysey that I never got to write about before. That subject is the little blocks of italic text sprinkled throughout the book.

I didn't think much of these through most of the Oddysey, but when they became particularly prevalent in the last few books, I decided I'd like to look into them all a little more closely and figure out why they were there. What I noticed is this: all of them seemed to be similes or metaphors comparing the story's characters and their recent or current actions to other things. More specifically, though, they seemed to always be compared to animals, and always either a predator or a prey. In the case that characters did particularly noble, brave, or heroic things, they would almost always be compared to a predator chasing, killing, or gloating over its prey. On the other hand, if they were doing something cowardly or being killed, they were compared to prey being hunted, or in some cases herd animals being slaughtered.

I thought these little interjections made the story more interesting overall, and analyzing was overall very fun to do. That's all for this week.

Weekly ELA Blog Post for the week of 12/5

My class has recently been reading "The Odyssey" by Homer. At the part we are at, the hero of the story, Odysseus, has just recently returned to his homeland that he is the king of after being away for 20 years. He is in disguise, however, so nobody knows he is back, and he is able to find out the opinions of the people he used to know without bias. 

Two of these people in particular are his swineherd, Eumaeus, and his goatherd, Melanthius. Interestingly, their attitudes as a whole seem to be almost polar opposites. Eumaeus is very kind to Odysseus when he first arrives at Eumaeus's swine hut, and even though he believes that Oddyseus is just a poor beggar, he shows him much generosity, allowing him to sleep and eat in the swine hut for a few days before Telemachus orders take Oddyseus to the city to beg. On the other hand, Melanthius, who Odysseus runs into on his way in to town, is a rude and mean man who scorns Eumaues for even helping the beggar, and is even as bold as to kick Odysseus when he gets in the way. The other big difference between them is their attitude towards Oddyseus and his family in particular. Eumaues praises and reveres the family, and even shows his angst at Oddyseus being gone. Melanthius, on the other hand, jokes about Oddysseus having died at sea and expresses his hope that the suitors will kill Telemachus.

The question is, now that Oddyseus knows how both of these men feel about him, what will happen to them once Oddyseus takes back over his kingdom? I believe that Eumaues will probably recieve gifts and praise from Oddyseus. I don't think he'll be promoted from or relieved of his job as a swineherd, though, seeing as that's he's been doing his whole life. Plus, I can't think of any jobs it would make sense to promote him to. On the other hand, I think Melanthius's fate will be like his attitude: the opposite of Eumaues's. In fact, I believe that his punishment will be death, possibly a painful reason. There are a couple reasons I don't think he'll have a lighter punishment like demotion or exile. The first is how Oddyseus treated Irus. The only thing that kept him from killing Irus with one punch is that he didn't want to make the suitors suspicious. Plus, he did nothing to stop the horrible fate the suitors said they planned to exact on Irus, which included his genitals being mutilated. The second reason is that Oddyseus clearly has very few reserves about killing. Other than a single, ineffective warning to one suitor, there is no sign Oddyseus has any concerns with slaughtering all the suitors. The final reason, and probably the most significant one, is that, even though he managed to reserve himself in the end, Oddyseus seriously considered killing Melanthius on the spot on his way to his home.

This is what I believe will happen to Oddyseus's swineherd and goatherd soon because of what he learned about their attitudes. I'm assuming, though, that he will succeed in taking back Ithaca, but since he has Athena helping him, I'm pretty sure he will. Unless, of course, after the suitors are defeated, Telemachus turns on him and murders him. I have no idea why this would happen, but it sure would be interesting. That's all for this blog post, though. Adios.

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."

Weekly Blog Post 10/24

In "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an Amerocan Slave", Douglass speaks about how when he learned from Mr. Hugh that literacy was the key to freedom. There are a few reasons why this is true. The first is that it proved that black people were equal to white people, which in turn made it harder to justify keeping them as slaves. One of the defenses of slavery was that black people were not as capable as white people, so keeping them as slaves actually benefitted them, but when it was made clear that they were just as intelligent, they could no longer be dehumanized. Also, literacy gave slaves a powerful connection to the outside world. Without being able to read and write, they could only communicate with and learn from people they could speak with in person, in other words, people near them. However, once they could read and write, they could educate themselves with books by people from all over the world and, though it would be very difficult to get them sent, write letters to anyone. Finally, literacy allowed slaves to read written works that argued against slavery, which in turn lead them to loathe it and be more passionate than ever about freedom. In short, being able to read and write had a strong connection to freedom for slaves during Douglass's time for many reasons, all of which had to do with the empowerment that came with it.

What was the reason for the harsh punishment of slaves for minor offenses?

In "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, we learned about the harsh punishments slaves recieved for small offenses. The question is, why is this the casse? Well, the easy answer would be that slave owners wanted to keep the slaves under control through fear. However, while I believe that was definitely a factor, I don't think it's a story. First, as Douglass pointed out, many slave owners were very cruel and just enjoyed giving out punishment. Also, there is another important factor he hints at. When he talks about his new master, he explains that even though at first she was very nice, soon, she became cruel. While he doesn't go into more detail, this makes it clear that many slave owners just gave out harsh punishment because they had the power to do so. Perhaps this points to a greater issue with humanity, but the point I really widh to make is that keeping slaves under control was not the sole reason for slave owners dealing out harsh punishment for minor offenses.

MFAH Romantic Art

I recently visited the MFAH to see paintings from the era I'm studying, the Romantic Era. The painting I chose to write about is "Coastal Scene with Shipping and Cattle" by Thomas Gainsborough. I feel it really represents the Romantic Era well. One big reason for that is that one of its central subjects is the cows. See, in the Romantic Era, big cities started to emerge. Therefore, people often reminisced about simple country life and nature. The cattle in the picture clearly represent this, because of course cattle farming is a simple lifestyle.

Weekly ELA Blog Week of 10/3

A Poison Tree

by William Blake

I was angry with my friend; 

I told my wrath, my wrath did end. 

I was angry with my foe: 

I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears, 

Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles, 

And with soft deceitful wiles. 

And it grew both day and night. 

Till it bore an apple bright. 

And my foe beheld it shine, 

And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veiled the pole; 

In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

"The Poison Tree" by William Blake is from the Romantic Era of poetry, which has a few central characteristics. The first is the common themes of emotion and imagination. This is reflected in the poem, as the main topic is anger, an emotion, and it stems from the imaginative idea of a tree sprouting from anger. The next characteristic is use of common or simple subjects as well as just vocabulary in general. That fits, as the main symbol in this poem is just an apple tree, and though it's a little odd for us in the twenty first century, the vocabulary of the poem is still noticeably pretty basic. The final characteristic I'll mention is that poems from the Romantic Era are often strongly opinionated and one sided. "The Poison Tree" clearly shows this, as the speaker clearly hates the foe and is glad to see him harmed by the poison apple.

ELA Blog Post Week of 9-26

I am analyzing the theme of "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou. I believe the message she wishes to convey in this poem is that beauty is more than skin deep. She talks about "them", and how "they" wonder how she's so beautiful without being a perfect model of what is considered physically attractive. For example, when she says "Men themselves have wondered/ What they see in me" she's saying even she doesn't fit what men consider good looking, but they are still drawn to her by her other traits. These other traits that are mostly more than just what is traditionally considered attractive, and she lists them in the four lines after every line that says "I say,". Most aren't physical at all, like "The need for my care" and "The fire in my eyes". There are a few physical ones, like "The arch of my back" and "the curl of my lips", but they could also be results of a good attitude. Either way, I believe it's clear the theme of the poem is that true beauty is more than meets the eye.

Metaphors in The Young Man's Song

The author of The Young Man's Song uses metaphors to add meaning to the poem. He writes about how he's flipping a penny to decide whether he should fall in love. Of course, this is just a metaphor for his almost random decision that he is suddenly the right age to be in love. Of course, he ends up realizing love is a convoluted thing that wraps him up and confuses him. You can tell by the wording he uses when the subject of love comes up ("crooked", "shadows eaten the moon", etc.) that he has negative feelings about it. The penny is a metaphor for how randomly and uncontrollably the he's thrown into this scary thing called love. In short, the metaphor changes the meaning by showing how falling in love was not really an event within the speaker's control.

Recently I attended the “Out of the Amazon” exhibit at the HMNS. It was an exhibit on the cultures of the many people living within the Amazon. While there I learned lots from the artifacts that were there, the written information, the videos, and the docent. As I toured the exhibit and took in all sorts of information on things like the food sources, rituals, clothing, housing, and just culture in general of the Amazons,
though, I noticed something odd.
I first caught wind of it while the docent was showing us the chairs that shamans sat in, which were shaped like animals to capture their spirits and give their power to the shamans who sat in them. This was very interesting in itself, but as the docent answered a question from another student and I took a moment to take in the chairs, I noticed a photograph behind them. It seemed at first to be just a photo of an Amazonian man carrying a few baskets. Something else caught my eye, though. The man was very clearly wearing a watch and a pair of jeans. How odd. I asked the docent about it, who explained he had probably traded something with tourists or anthropologists for it. That's when it hit me. This man, with items from another culture, reminded me greatly of what I had read about in “Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes, the Anthropology of Museums” by Michael M. Ames. The specific term for what I was noticing is, I believe, cultural appropriation.

It became so clear now that this is in fact exactly what I saw. This man, from a completely different culture from mine, holding an artifact from United States culture. Just as in Ames’s book, I’m almost positive that there is very little, if any, representation of US culture down in the Amazon to explain to them the significance of the watch in our country and the ways time telling affect our society. Plus, it's very possible that a very unfair trade when down when the man came into ownership of the watch. He most likely traded off some item that they have plenty of in his tribe for something as significant as a watch, basically an embodiment of the American factory system we're based on. Plus, since he’s the one in touch with his tribe members and he understands the economic system there, he could potentially make a very unbalanced deal and his American trade partners would have no idea.

I think these next 2 pictures really demonstrate how unjust this system is. We trade off everyday objects like boats, which the Amazon people take and use for their own gain, and in doing so change their own culture to the point where traditions like Yākwa are affected, and then they turn around and give us their own everyday objects, like fishing nets, which start to appear in the lives of common people here by showing up in the museum exhibits the public sees, and so our culture which was previously untouched by Amazon culture is tainted by it.
In short, what I saw at the HMNS visit was evidence that many Amazonian people are appropriating our USA culture while at the same time filling our country with fragments of their own culture.

The author and the speaker in a poem

- [ ] Just as figurative language and structure are important parts of a poem that a reader must understand to derive meaning from the poem, so are the author and the speaker. The first step to understanding these two elements is to understand the difference between them. The "author" of a poem is simply the person who typed, wrote, or in some other way created a poem. The "speaker" of a poem is the character, real or made up, who's personality forms the poem. In other words, it's the character who's personality the reader comes to understand through reading the poem. The challenge in differentiating between the two is that many times the speaker of the poem and the author are the same person, the important distinction being that the speaker is only a part of the author's personality, not his, her or their entire person. Take an example where the author and the speaker are not the same person at all. For example, say I were to write a poem from the perspective of a character named Fred. The author is me, as I created the poem, and the speaker as Fred, because if you were to read the poem and gather information about the person who's perspective the poem was being told from, the information you gathered would describe Fred, not myself. The complication is when an author writes a poem from his, her, or their own perspective. If I do that, for example, it might seem at first as if the author and speaker are equivalent, as they are both Hunter. What has to be understood is that while I myself am indeed Hunter, completely and thoroughly, the speaker is only as much of Hunter as can be understood from the poem. One simply cannot encase all of one's self into a single poem. As I write a poem about an event I experienced, the speaker may share experiences, emotions and even a name with me, but he is not all of me. He is a separate person from me, who's only thoughts and experiences are the ones that can be learned about by reading the poem. If I am usually a sarcastic person, for example, but I write a very sincere poem that never involves or references my sarcasm, then the speaker of the poem is not a sarcastic person. In short, the speaker is only a persona created by the author, though it may bear very strong resemblance to the author or the author's past self.

Example

This is a test blog post.