Last 9th Grade Blog Post

The last book I read for class this year was Flatlands by Edward Abbott. Personally, I would totally reccomend it. Essentially, the story is about a being living in a two-dimensional world who discovers worlds with other amounts of decisions. While I confess the first half of the book, a description of two-dimensional society isn't for everyone, it was great to think about and read through for me personally, and I'd reccomend it to any other math enthusiasts as well. The reason I'd reccomend the book to all my peers, though, is the second half. It delves in a deep yet easily comprehensible way into some philosophical discussion about dimensions, the limits of human knowledge, and perception. Besides this, there are tied in in the interactions in the main character's community underlying social messages about misinformation spread by authorities, sexism and discrimination, and social hierarchies. While it is a pretty quick read, Flatlands leads to much deeper thought and reflection about many important subjects, and for this reason, I'd reccomend it to my peers.

Blog Post #25

We read lots of interesting books this year. Personally, my favorite book I read was The Odyssey by Homer. The writing style, and the plot as a whole, was very interesting. The many tales of Odysseus's adventures were all fun to read, and in contrast of what I expected going into it, there were really no slow or boring parts at all, the plot was very dynamic and always moving. I believe my least favorite book was The Merchant of Venice. Long monologues and many words I didn't understand were certainly interesting to analyze, but made the story hard to fully take in and enjoy. Also, I guess the plot just wasn't insanely interesting as a whole. It was a nice read though, and ELA as a whole was definitely fun this year.

ELA Blog Post #23

Is the climax the hotel scene when Tom and Gatsby argue, or is it when Gatsby meets Daisy at Nick's house? What central conflict or conflicts are being addressed in the climax, and how is this the turning point of the narrative (story)? Use textual evidence to back up your claims. 

In my opinion, the climax of the story is the hotel scene. Seeing as I believe that the conflict of this story is Jay vs. rich society in Jay's struggle for Daisy's love, the scene where Daisy first shows any negative feelings for Jay because of her views as an aristocrat seems to definitely be the climax. This is the first point in the story in which Jay's plans to gain Daisy's love and get her to denounce Tom actually fail. While the odds have been stacking up against him throughout the novel, this seems to be the first time where he really "fails", where Daisy first consciouly chooses Tom over him. In argument against the other scene being the climax, I'd say that while they do meet eachother, Daisy was already aware of Gatsby's presence near her (page 14), and at least outwardly claims she loved him all along. While there is definitely a huge shift in the conflict, I wouldn't call it a turning point as much as, say, as acceleration. Overall, while I feel this debate is very much open to interpretation, I personally feel the hotel scene is the climax of The Great Gatsby.

ELA Blog Post #22

Hey guys, sorry my Blog Post is late, I forgot I was discussion leader. Here it is, though.

I believe the main conflict in The Great Gatsby is centered around Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy. There are the issues with Myrtle, but those are just a subconflict that ultimately tie back in to the main conflict. Where I feel uncertain is on the subject of how to categorize the issue. It would be hard to call it a conflict between Gatsby's aspirations and the truth about his past because of the fact that Tom is a factor, but conversely, it seems wrong to say it is a man vs man competing for Daisy's love, because even after his apparent "defeat" of Tom, Gatsby manages to still be defeated by the truth about himself. Then again, it was Tom who did the investigation imto Gatsby's life and exposed him, so perhaps it could be said that this really was man vs. man, and Tom simply came out victoriously. This would point towards an interesting theme, seeing as a man who is constantly pointed to as foolish and unintelligent managed to defeat Gatsby, whose single-mindedness ultimately caused him to fall to a man who he was in every other way superior to. In the end, though, I believe the true conflict is in fact between Gatsby and society itself. Even though Gatsby is at least implicitly explained to be better than Tom, he is still ultimately defeated. Why? Because society sees him not for his achievement or his current standing, but for where he came from. From the day each was born, Gatsby already had the odds stacked against him in his battle against Tom for Daisy's love, because he was born lower class. Tom was portrayed as a worse man, who in the end faced the same conflict as Gatsby of striving for a woman who wasn't his, but he never had to fight for Daisy. Daisy overlooked his flaws because she came from a rich society where she learned to pursue a man with money and drive, and that lead her later to reject Gatsby for being an "outsider" to aristocratic society, in just the same way as the people at his parties, who always whispered rumors about his dirty beginnings. Tom may have felt he defeated Gatsby, but ultimately, he was just a device through which societal beliefs, the true antagonist of the story, struck Gatsby down.

Update: I updated my conclusion upon further thought.

ELA Blog Post Week of 4/17

This week, I read chapters 5 and 6 of The Great Gatsby. During Chapter 5, Gatsby finally meets again the girl of his dreams, Daisy. During this whole section, Fitzgerald repeatedly describes the weather. It seems to me as if this weather reflects Gatsby's current feelings. At the beginning, when he's super anxious about meeting Daisy, it rains, reflecting that. Then, as he talks more to her, the sky starts to lighten up, suggesting things are getting better for him. Interestingly, thought, he seems as oblivious to this as to where his own conversation with Daisy has gone until Nick snaps him out of his daze. All in all, it seems like the weather is definitely connected to how he feels.

ELA Blog Post 20

When looking at whether Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, is "inclined to reserve all judgment", it is important to note what this statement means. 

"Judgment", as define by Google, means "an opinion or conclusion". On its own, it seems there is an interesting argument to be made as to whether Nick shows he has any opinions at all. While he must have made decisions to do the things he's done in life, it seems there's a deeper debate as to whether those could be affected be his morals and beliefs, which may or may not constitute opinions. 

However, what Nick specifically says is not that he passes no judgment, but that he reserves all judgement. Reserve has a definiton specifically used in combination with things like judgement, which reads "refrain from delivering (a judgment or decision) immediately or without due consideration or evidence." If we take this into consideration, along with the quote from page two "And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has its limits." which describes this quality of Nick's as "tolerance" and the quote from Nick's father on the first page, we can throw together a mich solider thought on what Nick seems to be claiming about himself. Nick's alleged "tolerance" of people and reservation of judgement, then, should not be seen so much as a complete lack of opinion but rather the ability not to think negatively (and maybe not even positively either) about people or to form opinions about them, and to view people objectively based on what he knows about them and human nature.

In this sense, an interesting paradox seems to appear. It seems he's very good at keeping unopinionated while describing things to the reader. Even when using strong words like "arrogant", he seems to be stating it vey matter-of-factly. He seems to attribute nothing particularly to the word, nothing positive either, he just uses it to describe. It also is cool how well he reserves judgment in situations like the confrontation with the drunk in the library and during Tom's racist speech, which regardless of opinion, would be very polarizing and invoke a reaction from most people. However, where the consistency of his reservation of judgement comes into question seems to be when he actually speaks to other characters. For example, his remark on page 58 in which he speaks to Daisy about her driving skills, saying "You're a rotten driver... either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn't drive at all". While this quote and the rest of the conversation  seems maybe a little patronizing, the fact that one of the best quotes in which it can be argued he fails to reserve judgement is one in which other people's safety is concerned. The words "without due consideration or evidence" at the end of the definition of reserve really seem to come into play here. It feels very debatable, but in my opinion, the fact that he obviously had some knowledge of her driving skill to base his statement on, coupled with the risk of not protesting against her driving, point toward him having due consideration or evidence in order to give his two cents without  violating his promise to "reserve all judgement".

So far, I believe Nick Carraway has succeeded at "reserving all judgement", or at the very least, being inclined towards it, which is what he claims to be. Of course,  he also says this will change later in the story, so I'll have to continue on and find out what happens.

Weekly ELA Blog Post #19

My assignment for my blog post this week was to analyze the play I just read for ELA, Henry V by Shakespeare, and then explain the category of play it fell into, history, and discuss in what ways it did and did not follow archetypes common to this type of play.

Plays are as a general rule divided into two categories: tragedies and comedies. These two categories are the ones I've always known about, so when I found out there was a third type, historical, I was a bit confused. When I went to research this play type, though, what I first saw didn't clear anything up, it actually confused me more. Oddly, almost every search result on Google for "characteristics of history plays" had Shakespeare's name in the title.

Upon further investigation, what I came to find out is that creating classifying plays as historical as supposed to comic or tragic is a very Shakespearean thing. As in, he was one of the biggest advocates for the creation of the label, and not many people recognize it as a category unless they are specifically analyzing his plays. It is generally held that historic plays are more of a mutation of tragedies than their own separate category, despite the fact that after branching off, many histories came to resemble comedies more than tragedies. The reason Shakespeare's plays specifically are often broken up into three categories is that he had a very large number of plays about history that shared common themes and often contained many elements from both other categories, or very few elements from either.
With that out of the way, let's look at the elements that define a Shakespearean historical play. The first is a focus on royalty in history. Almost all his historical plays, Henry V included, center around English royal families in the 14th and 15th centuries (Shakespeare is from the 16th), and touch on commom subjects including rightful lineage to the tutor throne, the sin of taking that throne without a rightful claim, and the moral questions monarchs must face as a result of being so powerful. A notable exception is Julius Caesar, which is not about English royalty, and for that very reason there's lots of debate on whethere it can really be called one of Shakespeare's historical plays or just a tragedy.
Another common theme of Shakespearean historical plays is civil war. While there isn't a civil war per se if you count a civil war as multiple parties in one country waging war, the case that could be made is that the play is set in one country, and the Dauphin and his government are just wrong to try to make Henry's land into a separate country.
Overall, it's a very interesting play, and though the idea of a historical play didn't sound that interesting at first, it ended up being a really cool story.

ELA Blog Post #18

This week I presented my Response Project to "The Merchant of Venice." I think my project went pretty well overall. I was really proud of the wood carving, which was fun to make and looked great. The poem was also pretty good. The way people reacted, though, made me realize it was maybe a little too convoluted. I think I got the recital of it just right though, my practice really paid off. Overall, I'm really proud of my project, and I really enjoyed making it.

Weekly ELA Blog Post #17

In this blog post I'd like to write about something I didn't get a chance to discuss before: how willing Portia was to leave Basssanio's choice up to luck. It seems odd that while she was fine using tricks to fool other suitors into choosing the wrong chest, like placing wine on top of one to tempt a suitor, dhe did no such thing to help Bassanio. Surely there were ways she could have swayed his choice towards the right chest, so the question is: did it not occur to her, or did she believe in Bassanio to choose right? While thinking about this, I realized something. It seems clear, as demonstrated throughout the story, Portia is cunning enough to get her way and not willing to break some rules to get it. I figure that Portia knew she could help Bassanio, but was testing him, because she wanted to be sure he really had what it took to choose right. This would make sense, too, considering it's not the only time she tried to test him, there was also the time she tried to get him to break a promise to her.  This is very interesting to me, because it seems to show that as much as she says she knows Bassanio is the one for her, perhaps she's not that sure, and feels she needs to make sure he's right for her.

Weekly ELA Blog Post #16

In the Merchant of Venice, the character Shylock recieves a harsh punishment for conspiring to murder a Venician citizen. As a modern reader, I find it hard to say his punishment, having to give away half his money to Antonio and promise the rest of it to his daughter upon death, should have been harsher or lighter. I'd say instead it seems it should have been different entirely. Ignoring the absurdity of the court deciding not to take its cut of his money and not to consider the death penalty, I just don't think the punishment was right. As bad as it all seems, Shylock really didn't do anything wrong in his eyes. Surely Antonio could have put something other than his own flesh up as collateral.  Also, its clear the court was very biased against Shylock as a Jew. The way I see it, Elizabethian readers who happened to be anti-Semitic would say his punishment should have been harsher, but those who didn't hate Jewish people probably would have agreed the results of this court case were absurd. After all, this book was written to grab reader's attention and be interesting, not detail a real court case that the author thought was fair. I'd think that as a good author, he probably made the case in the story controversial because that would spark discussion about the book.

Weekly ELA Blog #15

I recently read Act 3 of The Merchant of Venice. In it, Shylock gave a short speech to prove Jews are equal to Christians. This seems odd, seeing as there was such strong anti-Semitism in Shakespeare's time. It seems, though, that this is not Shakespeare trying to make a case in defense of Jews. Rather, it seems he just meant to give the villain a good argument. I think he still meant for Shylock to be portrayed as the bad guy. However, he gave Shylock a strong argument because he didn't want one-dimensional characters. When charactets are "good" and "bad" with no motives, the story is often boring.

Weekly ELA Blog Post for week of 1/30

This week, our ELA class started reading Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". There were a lot of interesting characters we were introduced to right off the bat in chapter 1, but the one that stood out to me the most was Portia, the maiden. In my opinion, it was very refreshing to see a woman standing up for herself in an old novel. It was especially interesting seeing as when we look at how Antonio treated Shylock, it seems Shakespeare wasn't afraid to include discrimination in his story. Therefore, the fact that he decided to have Portia actively try to discourage suitors was interesting. Of course, the fact that Bassanio says he loves her adds another interesting twist to the story. It seems like perhaps interactions between the two will later become central to the story. Either way, from her inclusion and role so far, it seems Portia will definitely be a character to follow as the story progresses.