The Grandmother Doesn't Change

          [In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, the grandmother is an important character who, although appearing to go through some changes during the book, does not actually significantly change the way she acts.] She seems grumpier at times, and happier at others, but throughout it all, it seems like all she wants is to disagree or go against what people around her are saying and doing. There were two important sections of the book that I think show this. The first is at the beginning with her son. She says she does not want to go to Florida, then she brought her cat that she knew he didn't want her to bring, then she made him go see the house that turned out not to actually be there. She really just wanted to do whatever he didn't' want to do, like on page 1 where it says, "she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind." The second part where it is obvious that she just wants to go against what people want or say and never really changes, is towards the end with the Misfit. It is less clear in this part, but even when she knows she is in great danger, she still disagrees with him, first with how many times their car rolled over on page 14, and then, more adamantly, on pages 15 and several after that when she says "I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell." He eventually starts disagreeing with her, but she sticks to this point until she dies, which is what makes me think that she doesn't really change throughout the story. It is possible that she only continues to disagree to convince herself that she won't die and that her family isn't dead, but it is more likely that old habits die hard, and disagreeing is what she does until the end. 

Group C Oral History Project

          The oral history project that we did for ELA and IHSS this year was very fun, and I learned a lot from it. Interviewing someone was a really cool experience, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be, I kept accidentally responding as I would in a conversation instead of silently listening. I was very happy with my small group for this project, because I felt like we all did an even amount of good work, and we worked well together. Another cool part of this interview, was that I was learning different sides of the story of how Harvey effected different people, especially when I listened to the quotes and stories from the other groups in my class. The transcribing was another really cool and valuable part of this project, and it was also a lot harder than I expected, and I'm glad that my group was able to split it up evenly, because even doing just 7 minutes was a lot.
          The second part of this project was the full class project. This was a lot harder than the first part, not because we had more or harder work, but because it was hard to coordinate and evenly distribute work and ideas to that many people. I found my self sort of in charge, but it caused me a lot of unnecessary, self inflicted stress, and if we did a project like this again, I would make sure to not let myself get so stressed about things that were out of my control. I felt like our group divided the work up pretty evenly, but since we were making a video, not everything could happen at once, and we were kind of on a timeline. We struggled a little bit with the communication of ideas, because our final video ended up looking like two different videos, but I think we were able to fix it, and I am very happy with the final product.

The Difficulties of Moving Back

          When Marjane first moved back to Iran on page 246 of Persepolis, she found it very difficult to fit in. On page 272, she said, "I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the west. I had no identity." I think that there are several factors that played into this feeling of being an outsider wherever she went. First was the fact that she refused to tell anyone about her time in Austria besides what they already knew. I think that she was ashamed of what she did there, especially towards the end of her stay, and, like she said on page 257, she did not want to burden her parents with the information about what she did in Europe. But keeping everything from her family and friends only further alienated her from them because it gave them nothing to connect with her on, and it left her feeling alone and depressed. A second part, that did seem to fade after a while, was that, naturally, she felt very restricted in Iran. And after she had lived so many years with so much freedom in Austria, moving back to a place with such restricted freedoms, especially for women, would be very difficult to adjust to, and would create a lot more difficulty in getting used to Iran again. An additional problem with adjusting to the restricted freedom, was that she had had a lot of freedom in Europe, and had been able to do and experience a lot of things that most Iranian girls hadn't. This further distanced her from her friends. For example, on page 270, when she went on a ski trip with her friends, she told them that she was not a virgin, and they responded with bitterness and aggression.  All of these factors, along with several others, would make it hard for anyone to adjust to a new place, but especially Marjane, who had a stubborn streak throughout the book, and did not seem to really be trying that hard to adjust.

The Influences of Marjane's Family on Her Development/Growth

          I think that throughout the book, Marjane is greatly influenced by her family. Even though she is outspoken, headstrong, and does what she wants most of the time, she is still thinking about her family, and they seem to be in her head for most of the book. She is very obviously influenced by her family when she is a little kid (as most young children are). One example is on page 62, when her father tells her off for listening to what the TV says, she holds that almost cynical viewpoint with her, and later tells her friends not to listen to the propaganda on page 111. I think that although it may seem like her family's influence on her diminishes when she moves to Europe, that it does not, and she is still thinking about what they would want as she matures and becomes a young adult. For example on page 197, when she yells at the girls and accepts her Iranian heritage, she is very proud of herself, and is thinking about her family, and what they said and would say. She is also very excited and happy for a long time before and after her mother visits, showing that her parents really mean a lot to her. I think that because her parents are so influential and important to her, they will continue to play a large role in her thoughts and decisions for the rest of the book.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

          For my book of choice in ELA this year, I read Scythe by Neal Shusterman. It was a dystopian story about a world where death and aging had been conquered. There was no disease, and fatal accidents would only render the people "deadish" before they were taken to a revival center, and were good as new in a couple of days. People could also turn their age back to as low as 21 at any time they liked; this was called turning a corner. The only natural killer that still existed was fire, although their security measures against it were so good that death by fire was an extremely rare occurrence. This society also had no government, it instead had an impartial data cloud called the Thunderhead that kept all of the world's information, and upheld the rules. Most of the oldest people living in this society were between 200 and 300 years old, and since death had been conquered for that long, they needed some unnatural means of death to keep the population under control. Very soon after conquering death, the society created the "Scythedom." The scythes were the "wielders of death." They were trained in all forms of martial arts, weaponry, and poisons, and were tasked with killing a certain number of people every year. They were ordered to show no bias in their kills (about 5 a week), which were called "gleanings." Scythes always wore rings, which gave them the power to grant immunity to those that they wished (also without a bias), and they were not allowed to glean other scythes except for themselves.
          As I said before, this story takes place when this society is somewhere around 300 years old. It centers around the stories of two teenagers: Citra Terenova and Rowan Damisch. These two young people are chosen to be the apprentices of Honorable Scythe Michael Faraday (all scythes named themselves after scientists when they were ordained) where they would train for one year, and whoever passed the final test would become a scythe, and the other could go back to their previous life. However this quickly changed. The scythes held a regional meeting every 4 months (their region was MidMerica), and at this first meeting, it was decided that whoever was ordained as a scythe would have to glean the other as their first act as a scythe. To keep this from happening, Scythe Faraday gleans himself, but this ends up with Citra apprenticed to H.S. Curie, and Rowan apprenticed to H.S. Goddard. They then continue to train until the end of the book where one of them is ordained as a Scythe...
          That is the main plot of this book, but there is a little more that is important to the story. Rowan and Citra were both chosen to be scythes because most of the scythes believed that scythes needed to hate killing people, and have a moral high ground. However, there were some scythes, like Scythe Goddard and his followers that believed that they should be able to kill as many as they liked, and that scythes should enjoy killing people. These two ideals create a lot of rifts in the scythedom, and it creates a lot of tension between different people in this book.
          I really enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it to others who enjoy reading fantasy. The plot was very interesting. It was very detailed, and I really liked how it showed how different groups of people reacted to different parts of society. Their reactions felt very real, and seemed like they were almost exactly how our current society would react to the aspects of this society. I also really liked the setting of this book. This society is very, very far away from what we have today, so it is hard to relate it to yourself, the setting was very relateable because it was set in the US, parts of it was set in a high school, and a lot was set in different parts of a relatively normal feeling city, with a lot of diversity of living conditions and viewpoints. Towards the end of the book, there was a part set in more Southern America, and it was very interesting to see how these two regions reacted to each other. The thing that I did not really like about this book was the characters. I did not learn enough about them at the beginning, so they were very boring for the rest of the book. They did not feel very human. They did not have very much personality. I think that if the author had spent a little more time explaining them before the main story started, and if the author had given them more characteristics they would have been more interesting. They just did not seem very human to me, because all of their personalities seemed to have only one aspect to them, instead of various ones like normal humans.
         Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I am really glad I read it. I would recommend it for anyone who likes to read fantasy and dystopian novels.

My Favorite and Least Favorite Texts This Year

          We read a lot of really interesting texts this year in ELA, and I am very excited for whatever we read next year. I enjoyed all the texts we read this year, but The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was my favorite, and the Shakespearean poetry was my least favorite.
          I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby. I thought that it was beautifully written, and I thought it had a really interesting primary theme. I also liked how we did not know very much about the main characters for most of the book. This really interested me, and it kept me interested as I learned more about each character. I really enjoyed this book, and I really liked that we got to watch the movie after we read it. It was an interesting to see the story and characters in two different medias.
          I enjoyed all the texts we read this year, but the Shakespearean Poetry was definitely my least favorite. I read this while I was studying English Renaissance Poetry. I generally have a hard time understanding poetry, so reading Shakespearean Poetry made it a lot harder to understand, which made it a lot less fun for me to read.

Why Did F. Scott Fitzgerald Write About the Corruption of the American Dream?

          F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote book "The Great Gatsby" during the 1920s, a time that was characterised by wealth and art and fun. It is also known for the American Dream: each person is able to make as much money as inherently possible, and they can end up in any social class regardless of their birth or family.
          I think that the primary theme of "The Great Gatsby" is the corruption of the American Dream. My question is, Why would Fitzgerald write about this during this time where America was flourishing, and he himself was considered by many to have achieved or be very close to achieving the American Dream? At this point in his life, he seemed to have it all. He had one over and married Zelda, and he was very rich because of his writing. So why did he write about the corruption of the American Dream?
          I think that he seemed like he had it all together to a lot of people, but when he was in France trying to write this book, he didn't really. He had a lot of money, but his relationship with Zelda was failing, and he was a raging alchoholic. I think he was writing his failures into his book.

The Primary Theme of "The Great Gatsby"

          I think that the primary theme of "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is that The American Dream is an unsustainable ideal that gives people false hope and artificial happiness. I think that this theme fits all the criteria for the primary theme of  a novel. I think that it is the main message, saying that the American Dream was a corrupt ideal that would never bring real happiness, which was also a broad idea about life in the 1920s. Nick Carraway says several things throughout the book about how it is unsustainable, and keeps getting farther away, but he never really states that it is corrupt or impossible. One quote that is very important, and fits this theme very well without outright stating it is on page 134. It says "so he gave up, and only that dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly,  towards that lost voice across the room." This is also a point in the book where a major change seems to go through Gatsby, the protagonist. He seems to realize that the dream is corrupt, and he will never get to keep Daisy's wholehearted love.

The Climax of The Great Gatsby

          The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is often considered the "great american novel," so of course, this book has a great climax as well. The climax of a book is the turning point of the story, and I believe that the turning point of this story is when Gatsby finally tells Tom that he and Daisy are in love with each other, and he and Tom have a big fight. I think that part of the story was leading up to this point, because eventually Tom had to find out that Daisy loved somebody else. This was also, in part, where Gatsby's dream is realized: first he wanted Daisy to love hime, and now he wants everyone to know it. Also, after this point in the story, the book begins to move very quickly towards the end, causing a sort of chain reaction where Daisy and Gatsby drive home very fast because she needed to get away from Tom, and they hit Myrtle Wilson and don't stop. After that, George Wilson finds out who's car it is, and goes to the Buchanan house, and then Tom tells him it was Gatsby, and then he goes and shoots Gatsby. All these events coming from the climax very quickly bring the story to a close.

The Weather During Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby's First Meeting

          On the day that Nick Carraway invites both Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby to his house for tea so that they can see each other for the first time in a long while, the weather is very stormy. It was pouring, but right before Daisy got there it let up a little. I think this weather was very important and helpful to the meeting. To me, it gave it a much more solemn and alone feel. It felt much more serious, but it also felt like no one else could see or hear the two. Which I think might have gotten Daisy to open up more than if it was sunny, or if there were other people there. Rain makes it dark outside, and drowns out most outside noise, so it would have felt like it was just them, which I think is a very good way for them to meet. They can't get distracted by outside things.

Does Nick Carraway Judge People?

          In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator the story is a man named Nick Carraway. On the first page, Carraway says that he is "inclined to reserve all judgements" about people, and in the first three chapters, it is very hard to tell if this is true. The way the book is written, he seems to assume certain emotions and sometimes characteristics from physical attributes of people. However, I think that this is just the way Fitzgerald described people in his writing. I think that this is different from actually judging (forming a conclusive opinion) the people that Carraway meets. For example, when we first meet Tom Buchanan, Carraway describes his physical attributes, and the fact that he was a football player. Carraway also describes him and his family as "enormously wealthy," which is a fact, not a judgement. Caraway withholds from the reader any opinionative judgements (if he has any) about Tom Buchanan, and I have found that he has done the same for all the other characters we have met so far. He describes them physically, and gives us facts about them, but none of his positive or negative opinions about them.

Why is Othello a Tragedy?

          Othello is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is obvious that it is a tragedy because the protagonist, along with several other characters, dies in the end, but it also has several other elements of a Shakespearean Tragedy. Othello, the protagonist is a high ranking general in Venice, but he has several flaws. The one which eventually leads to his downfall is a combination of anger, rashness, gullibility, and reckless and premature actions. Othello also falls victim to the external pressure of the antagonist, Iago. Othello believes he is doing what's best for him, so he blindly follows Iago's advice, and believes him when he creates huge lies about some of the other characters. In the end, a combination of Othello's reckless anger, and Iago's lies cause him to kill his wife, and then himself.
          Othello fit very well into the structure of a typical tragedy, but I think there was one aspect that did not quite fit. Most Shakespearean plays are supposed to take place in an ordered society, but I think that when the play started, the society was already getting a little chaotic. The play started with a secret meeting between Roderigo and Iago. Iago is angry because Cassio got the spot as lieutenant instead of him. Almost immediately after that, Roderigo and Iago go and try to convince Desdemona's father that Othello has stolen her. It seems to me like chaos is full swung by then, but even at the beginning, the society is not quite ordered.

My Merchant of Venice Challenge Project

          For my Merchant of Venice Challenge Project, I partnered with Morgann, and we designed props and costumes for the Portia-Suitors scene. I sketched my designs for the costumes, and she made a sketch of her vision of the set and 3d designs of the chests. We also wrote an expository essay on why costumes, sets, and props are important in the Merchant of Venice, and specifically in this scene. I think that the creative/visual portion of our project turned out really well. We both worked really hard on it and I think they looked really good, and we had pretty solid reasons behind all of our artistic choices. I think our paper turned out all right too, but it could have been better. Also our process of writing the paper needs a lot of work. I think in the future, our paper will turn out much more smoothly connected if we improve the process of writing it by sitting down together and writing the outline step by step starting with the introduction and thesis. If this part of the writing process is more organized, our separate parts will connect more because we will both be clear what the other is writing, and how to connect our parts to it.

Why are there so many characters?

         In the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, there are a lot of characters. There are a few small ones like Tubal and Old Gobbo, but there are also a lot of big characters, like Salario, Salanio, and a few other of Antonio's friends, that do not seem like they are that important to the story. My question is Why did Shakespeare write all these big parts in his play? I think that one of the main reasons is to make the main characters seem more real, for example, in real life, Antonio would probably have a lot of friends like he did in the play, and Portia would have maids like she did in the play. I think this reality could be achieved without all Antonio's friends being such big parts. If most of them showed up a couple times in the play, but were not huge parts, it would not change the play very much, and it would make it much more clear to the audience. Another reason Shakespeare might have written all these characters as big parts is because he wanted it to be a complicated and interesting story, but I think he has enough interesting plot lines going on in the play, that he could have achieved this complicated play with a few less seemingly unimportant characters.
          These characters may only seem unimportant to me, because I am sure Shakespeare had a reason to write them all, I think it would be helpful to me, and other audiences if he had written a little more about them to show their importance.

Is the Social Order Restored?

          In Shakespearean plays, there is social order at the beginning and the end. The social order in the beginning of the Merchant of Venice, included things like Christians had more power than Jews, Women had no power, etc. But in the end of the play, I don't think the social order was fully resolved. Part of it, Christians having more power than Jews, was still true in the end, but another important part of the social order, men being in charge and women having little or no power, did not get resolved in the text. I think that at the end of the Merchant in Venice, Portia and Nerissa, the women, still had the upper hand. In the end of the text, they were threatening their husbands because they had lost the rings, and they were talking about things they would do when their husbands weren't home, showing that the men did not really have control over them. To the audiences back in the 1600s though, this would not make sense. I think that although this aspect of the social order does not get resolved during the text, the way it was performed in the 1600s would probably imply it gets resolved after the text.

Shylock's Big Speech

          On page 49 of the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, Shylock, the Jewish father of Jessica, gives a speech, making the point that just because he is a Jew, it does not make him any less a human than the Christians. Many people think that this is a strange speech for Shakespeare to write into his play, because up until then, Shylock was portrayed as an antagonist, and was picked on by the other characters because he was Jewish, and in the time period that this was written, that would seem completely normal. But, as I have heard so many times, Shakespeare does not write black and white characters. Shylock only seemed bad because other people spoke badly of him, but I think it is possible that Shakespeare wrote this speech, and everything else Shylock said to the other characters, and the other characters said to him to show that the other characters were not all good. It makes you wonder if the supposed protagonist and his friends are really all that good, and it makes you sympathize with the character that had seemed the antagonist up to this point. It also gives the play an unexpected twist, making it much more interesting. Especially since this is during the climax of his play, I think Shakespeare purposefully wanted to have some unexpected character development, that contrasts with what previously went on, and sheds light on hidden aspects of some of the characters.

My favorite Character So Far

         There are several very interesting characters that we are introduced to in Act 1 of The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare. Some of them include Antonio, Bassanio, Portia, Nerissa, Shylock, and several others. So far, the most interesting character to me, it Portia. One of the main things that interests me about her, is how outspoken she is. Even if it is just to her maid, the amount of scornful remarks she makes surprises me, because I would not have expected women to be that outspoken in Shakespeare's time. So far, she is also, in my opinion, the most clever and witty character so far, which makes her more interesting to me. I like how Shakespeare has written her, not just as the prize of her father's contest, but as a adept young women who has her own ideas about who to marry, and will do whatever she can to keep herself from having to marry any of the "vilely" suitors she talks about.