Category: Unit 1: To Change, or Not to Change

I think that A Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the best book that we read in term one. I  also thought, that the book started out different then how i thought based on the title of the book and from reading the blurb on the back. Then it got good and then in the end with the whole Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde being the same person made the book go from an 8 to a solid 7. After that I thought that, in the beginning the book was going to be about some old people who ended up doing little hobbies to pass the time, but I was just about completely wrong about that one. The feeling that I had in the end when we found out that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were the same person, it was a little weird since I have never seen or experienced this sort of thing happen in a book but it was also kind of refreshing that the author Robert Louis Stevenson put that detail into his book. It was also cool how the author made it seem that Mr. Hyde was doing something to Dr. Jekyll, but really that was not happening at all and  when the author made it so that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person. Robert Louis Stevenson really made two really good different characters, Mr. Hyde being a really stone cold, dark person and Dr. Jekyll being a well known scientist/doctor, but later on in the book Dr. Jekyll begins to become tormented and starts lose control of what he was doing. When Dr. Jekyll created Mr. Hyde it was so he could have a dark side and a light side but after that later Dr. Jekyll started to lose the like of being Jekyll and was more interested in being dark and tormented, so then after that when he lost control over switching between both people he decided just to end Mr. Hyde from all existence to never see the day of light again.

After reading Master and Man, I quite think overall it is a very good story, But I personally struggle a lot to follow it because I don´t understand it very well, the vocabulary that Leo Tolstoy uses in the story was a little difficult for me to understand, I usually get the plot of the story in which the man named Vasili Andreevich and Nikita, his servant get into a journey and get lost when trying to arrive to a town, for me it was really boring that most of the story is about both geting lost along with their horse, during all the story I tried to catch up and try to see character development in both characters, that was the only thing I founded interesting during all the story.

The play “Our Town” was a really nice play, I really enjoyed watching it, I liked more watching it that reading it, because when reading it I really could not understand it very clear, while watching the play it was really confusing when actor used imaginary objects, but I liked that because it really makes you think and analyze the situation of the play using our own imagination and creativity. Although is not my favorite type of books I think it is a really nice play that is worth watching it, The actors did an amazing job, their expressions and body language in acting was very accurate to the character played, also I was really surprise because of the different type of narrator, as he could talk and interact with actors, I think is really cool that the stage manager was a real part of the play, overall I give the play a 7 out of 10, for me it was boring at the very start, and I would change a little the houses layout because for me it was difficult to understand what scene was, But I like how this play requires and makes you have a critical thinking and see and understad life in many different perspective, in this case on people in a different time.

I really enjoyed reading and watching Our Town, the story was kind of hard to follow at first, but the more I started to read the book the easier it got. Watching the play and seeing the characters use their imagination while using props was interesting, and showed that anybody can write and direct a play without spending lots of money on props for different scenes. The Stage Manager would come in from scene to scene, preventing me from deepening my thoughts about the characters and their lives. Wilder made Grover’s Corners feel like it’s our town by giving us an clear view into the lives of the Gibbs and Webb family. The story and play both showed how people grow, fall in love, and eventually die by saying that Wally died from an appendix burst at camp, and showing us how George and Emily grew to falling inlove with eachother, and having Emily die due to childbirth.

Many things change in the book such as, George, Emily, and even Grover’s Corner, by the end of the book the Stage Manager tells us about how people lock their doors now, considering a breach of safety and trust in the citizens of Grover’s Corner.

By the end of the story and play, Emily realized that she took life for granted, and squandered life when she had it. After watching, it even had me thinking about life and why we should make the best of every day that we are here on earth, because we never know when it’s going to be our last.

Our town was a nice play. I enjoyed reading it, and even more, watching it. I would recommend this book for the next class because it is very interesting. I will give it a 7.5. The ending was a bit sad and depressing. But overall, it was a nice story. The plot was thought out pretty well for a play as old as this one. The actors added to the vibes as the bodied their roles perfectly switching tones exactly when they needed to and their body language also seasoned the acting too.

I would change the house layout. We didn’t really get to feel that it was a house because it was just a couple pieces of furniture in the middle of an open stage. Although we could use our imagination to see the actual intended lay out of the houses, it would have helped to have a couple walls surrounding it.

I would not change the actors, as they played a key role to the delivery of the lines and the display of expressions shown by the characters they played. The acting couldn’t have been much better that it was and that is the reason i wouldn’t change it.

Once again, I recommend it, especially the actual play, and critical thinking is needed to completely understand it.

I found that Our town was a great book/play to read and watch. I liked how the actors used imaginary props, it made things much easier to imagine and envision in your head. Another aspect of the story was the meaning at the end about how people take even the smallest things for granted, this really makes you think about how much more things you should appreciate and be happy about in life. I liked how the town was very calm and everyone knew what was going on, it gave the place a more sense of a community. I enjoyed seeing what life was like back in the 1890-1900’s and the way people interacted, it’s way different then now. My favourite thing about the book is that it had a play to it. After you read the book and pictured the story in your own head, you got to see what it was like from the perspective of acting and this completely changed everything. If I could pick a next class book I would pick any book which had a series of movies to it or a play to it so that we can watch the show/movie/play and read the book. This was my favourite book so far out of the 3 that we have read so far (Master and Man and The Story of Joseph) I rate it an 8.5 out of 10.

Our town by Thorton Wilder was an interesting story. One of the things I liked about this story was how they were able to make a play out of very little props. I like this because it made me focus more on the play that what would have been going on around if there had been more prop. What I found interesting how the stage manager was multiple characters in the story. This was interesting in this story particularly because the stage manager was kind of like a character that could see the audience and interact with them. Another thing I like about this play is that even without all the action that we see in movies today they were still able to make it interesting by adding other small features like what is happening in the town and the jobs of other characters. One of the parts I found was interesting was how the stage manager tells us how some people die. At the start of the book he tells us that Mrs. Gibbs dies from pneumonia. I did not like this because whenever I saw Mrs. Gibbs I knew she was going to die later in the story. It also spoils the surprise of finding out she dies. I liked the play more then the book because it helped me get a picture of what the characters look like and a better sense of what is happening. But overall I like this story.

To me the book our town by Thornton Wilder was not that good. It was pretty boring for the whole play and there wasn’t anything exciting happening in any of the acts. When I was watching the end the play I thought that it was weird that there were talking ghost in the end. They could have at least made them standing instead of them sitting in chairs. I did like gorges character though only because he plays baseball which is one of my favorite sports and he was said to be a very good Picher and I am a very good Picher to. I was surprised when Emily died in the third act. I did not think that she was going to die at all in the 9 year time skip. I thought that they were going to have a big fight and break up like I was not suspecting her to die at all. I did like the life lesson about being more mindful and thankful about life because most people in the world just don’t really care about how special life really is and how you should be thankful to have it. I would probably not read the book ever again. That is my personal response on our town by Thornton Wilder.

Diego

MY personal response to our town

I thought that the book Our town was pretty good i enjoyed that the book was talking about a play and a story at the same time for example in the book they had a stage manager and a Narrator and a stage that they would keep talking about however at the same time there is a actually story line like any other book has. The book was very simple and easy to follow it doesn’t take a lot of thought to understand which is nice to read when your tired or when you want to calm yourself. There was still a nice plot twist at the end which was surprising and sad i felt that the plot twist added a nice surprising touch to it and made the book a lot more interesting. Our town as a movie i also really enjoyed i liked reading in the book and then watching what i just read on a tv it makes it so much easier to really picture and understand what’s going on. Overall i really enjoyed this book and it is my favorite out of the other English books we have read this year i would rate it a 8.5 out of ten.

I found Our Town to be a meaningful play, even though I had mixed opinions about it while reading it. Initially, I felt the story lacked action as I tend to read stories with storylines and plots focused on drama and tension and many plot twists which resulted in me often waiting for something more significant to happen in the story.  However, as I continued reading, I became more engaged with the lives of the characters especially when events such as the wedding of Goerg and Emely took place As their storylines began to combine. something I also enjoyed was the use of foreshadowing from the narrator or just from the character’s actions. However, I found the ending is what really changed my mind about the book, as it left a strong impact on me. During the funeral scene, we discover that Emily has died and the story shifts, we see two perspectives those who have passed and the living, And that’s when I realized that the reason the book’s beginning focuses on the resident’s ordinary life is because is due to the foreshadowing that nobody appreciates the simple, ordinary life until it’s gone. we can see this in the end when Emily realizes all the things she is saying goodbye to. “Goodbye to clocks ticking….and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths….and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize.” Overall, I thought Our Town was a good book, but it was the ending that made the book more interesting.

I thought that master and man was an interesting story, but not really for me. I enjoyed certain characters and thought that it was well thought out and had a good plot, it was just an interesting execution. It was confusing and I can’t think of any particular part that stood out to me, except for when Nikita said, “Now either a lazy woman or a dead one has left her clothes on the line.” I just thought that it was a funny statement. It is definitely not something that I would recommend to anyone. It was really just rather boring, and didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. Overall I would probably rate it a 2 out of 10.

This play was really different from others plays, this play had a really weird start and they acted without things so they act with nothing, it also had a really big plot twist, the narrator was really diferente form others because he could talk with the actors and interact with them, he also some times he was part of the play doing a kind of role what is really weird for a narrator to do because they always just tells us what is happening in the play but this narrator was in doing both so he was talking about the play and the setting but he also was a kind of character in the play. I think this play is boring at the beginning because it just tells the story of 2 families and how the daughter of one family and the son of another family gets marriage what it a little boring because there is nothing interesting that happens, then the plot twist make us fell sad because Emily dies and in some kind of way we saw the whole story of Emily and George love and then Emily died suddenly what is a really sad thing. We see in the play how Emily is remembering the whole life she had and all the good memories she had, she regret everything because she did not enjoy enough the life she had so this play teaches us that we had to enjoy every single thing that is happening right now.

After reading the book Our Town and watching the play I had multiple opinions on it. Out of the 3 stories we have read during this unit, this book was my favourite. This book was something that I have never read before. I have never read a book that was in a script/play format so that was kind of cool to read. I found it cool how they had the stage manager be a real part of the play. In my opinion he was the most important part of the story because I think that I would have been lost in the story without him talking. Another part of the story that I found cool was how the story was so set apart. Each act was years apart and talked about completely different things and situations that happened in their life at Groovers Corners. I did like how they did this because he allowed some of the scenes to have more detailed and it allowed us to get a better understanding of what was actually happening. Something that I thought was interesting was how they included so many people in the play. In the book they didn’t have to many people talking. But in the play there were many people in the background scenes and all over the town which I thought was interesting and a good detail.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder in my opinion was a good book for me if felt like it was a really quick easy read and taking notes not being to complicated with big words or over explanation, I like the plot twins at the end and how we get to see the writers point of view on death and how he made it out to be a really nice peaceful thing with an option to go back and relive some days or to go back to there grave with the rest of there family or friends. In the actual play I love the acting and the feeling even tho they are using props to put the house together but not for the scenes is really cool and pretty and is a good example you don’t need a whole bunch of fancy equipment to make or put on a good show. The story was very sweet in a way where it touches on a lot of sensitive topics but not at all in a disrespectful way and in a way where if it fits in with how we normally talk about them in our normal lives. IN my opinion the book is a good 8.5 I would recommend reading it but I don’t think it would be my first decision

I found the play “Our Town” quite enjoyable. It was cool to see actors improvise with little to no props. Emily and George’s character development was charming and emotional, especially when George visited her grave. The emotions near the end made me think about the future and living in the moment. I loved the plot and the role of the stage manager; it added to the play and made it easier for the readers/audience to understand what was happening. The creator (Thorton Wilder) did a very good job of creating a play that includes multiple emotions. I think the meaning of the play is also very important. Saying that we live life without necessarily appreciating what it has to offer, which is true in my case. I didn’t understand the play while reading it, but once we watched it, it all made sense, which I’m happy about. I love that it had no violence and simply just showed the readers/viewers what it was like to live in Grovers Corner, but the author still made it interesting to read and watch. The play highlights the importance of family, community and ordinary life which I also think is very important.

Our Town Thornton Wilder, I think this book was alright, the very beginning was good then towards a quarter way through the play it was starting to get a bit boring. I did enjoy How the play was presented, it was interesting how the actors used no props. The acting on the other hand was…. fine, sometimes I felt they used the wrong emotion; at the end Emily was way to happy when she just had died along with her little brother, Mrs. Gibbs, and lots of other people she knew, and watched her family stare at her with grief. The costumes were very well put together during the time period. Speaking of time period I like being able to read and understand what the people were saying, personally “I” is better than “thy”. I also found the conflict between Emily and George captivating. My favorite part of the book was the wedding, I found it funny  and realistic on how nervous everyone was. Getting to the end when half the people died was sad, rushed, and a little confusing (In my opinion) In conclusion I found this play pretty good, I liked the concept and how it was layered out. I would give this book an 7-7.5 out of 10. I would could I would probably read it again.

Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, I give this book and play a 6.5 out of 10. I didn’t really like it because it’s not something I would normally read or watch, but after watching it I think its good that we read it for english because it wasn’t that bad. I think the effect of not having props or sets is that you can really focus on what they are saying, read along, and analyze what they are doing instead of having props and sets to distract. I think that the role of the stage manager is to be a narrator and really explain what they are saying and even guide the characters so that they understand what is happening. I did notice that some of the characters and especially the stage manager break the “fourth wall” quite often. I think this is because they are trying to almost pause the play and explain then continue or like they are talking right to you. Compared to the book they are obviously very similar because this book is almost like a directors script, but in the play you get to see the people and maybe you imagined them differently, and you get to hear their voices and how they act. I enjoyed the play more because of this.

After finishing Master And Man, I didn’t really like it. I found it challenging to understand the context of the story, especially since some of the language used was in Old English, which made it harder to connect with the characters and their intentions.

However, there were a few elements of the story that I liked. All of the characters added a unique personality to the novella, while their interactions kept me interested in the story.

Overall, while the novella didn’t click with me, the character dynamics showed a glimpse into the human relationships between characters that I found exciting to read.

I thought I thought Master and Man was an okay novel but I tought it was pointless when two full-grown men got stuck in a snow storm, Vasili was acting childish and not wanting to go with someone because he didn’t need it and I think you should always go with someone and I thought it was not smart to go out in a snowstorm.

I am going to write about a dream I had recently:

It started with me in the grand library in the US that we went to (Portland, Oregon) and I went into one of the side rooms to ask where the bathrooms were. The lady pointed down to one of the other rooms. As I started to go down I noticed she was following me. She then guided me to the left. The sign on the entrance said emo and lounge. When she led me to the bathrooms on the other side of the room I realized it was filled with goth, emo, and punk rock people sitting in chairs with tables reading or talking quietly. When we reached the bathroom and went in, I realized instead of having the stickman and woman logos, I had a pink rockstar lady looking to the side on one and a blue rockstar dude also looking to the side. When I entered I noticed everyone that was there was an emo girl. Just as I was about to go into the stall when the lady dragged me out and we ran out and across the room. We then stopped in front of a pink door that said Good girls and a blue door that said, rebellious boys. When we entered the girl side the room was huge like Eiffel Tower tall and wide. The bathroom stalls were huge too. I felt like an ant in a normal bathroom. I started walking towards the end to find a normal-sized play mat and two babies in diapers were playing there. Then I went to one of the stalls to finally go pee and the lady was in the stall next to me. Thankfully the toilets were normal size. Just as I was finishing the lady started poking her head under the stall. I shoved her head back on her side. But later she came back so I grabbed her by the neck and I started suffocating her, but then that wasn’t doing anything to her. I shoved her back on her side and she came back again, so I pinned her to the floor and I started punching her because I didn’t like that she was being creepy and then I threw her over the giant stalls to hers And then she came back so I put her over my shoulder and then like a Javel and toss champion, I threw her over the wall and into oblivion. I was thinking at the at time that maybe I should be on the rebellious boy side. I was worried that she might come back to bug me again or just follow me so I left the bathroom and instead I ended up going to this party that was supposedly Elon Musks launch of something. I started eating a bunch of water melon slices while I was there but for some reason I was also looking for Lyla and Maya. I found her dancing. Then I started looking for Lyla but I instead found Elon Musk reading a book called wonder. I walked up to him to ask him what he was reading. He said it was a book of wonder. Suddenly Lyla appeared and she was reading a book too and then she said ‘personally I prefer fantasy’ then Elon musk got up and hugged a half human half goat person that was bigger than him, had Weird lines of lava running across his body and no pupil or iris. He introduced him as his son and me as his other. He asked me to stand on this small volcano that looks like just a crack in the ground and on his command to yell at the top of my lungs, he also ordered my brother to stand next to me. On his command I yelled at the top of my lungs and a huge rush of blue lava came from behind me. I turned into the blue version of my brother.  Suddenly a huge piece of rock floated to the sky. Elon Musk announced that to would be a battle between the brothers to decide who would take over the company. Who ever hit the ground first lost. As soon as he said go, my brother started launching lava spheres at me and rocks. He would pull  giant rocks from the ground and throw them at me, but thankfully, I was good enough to create a shield of lava. I tried to throw rocks back at him, but my aim was horrible and I couldn’t create big rocks Like him. I tried using a lot of sphere, but that didn’t work suddenly he charged at me and attacked me head on. Thankfully, I was able to dodge which led him to go to the edge, but he didn’t fall over. He kept on trying to throw more rocks at me, but what he didn’t realize was, he was taking the rocks from the ground under his feet. I took advantage of it and started throwing the little rocks of my own at him and trying to block his attacks with my small lava shield. The little attacks threw him off balance until I was able to push him off myself. I wanted him to get back up using his lava jets from his hands because that would be breaking the rules, but he didn’t in the end but I still won.

At the beginning of the story, I found it boring and hard to read because not much was happening. However, during the middle, it started to get easier to read and more interesting. At the end, I began to get hooked and started to wonder what would happen next in the story. And when Vasili gave his life for Nikita I changed how I felt about the book because I was not expecting that plot twist. My favorite character, I would say, is Nakita. Even though he is a drunkard, he is nice to everyone and sticks with Vasili even though Vasili was rude to Nikita and pushed him away on multiple occasions. But I also really liked Vasili because of his character development.

I didn’t like Master and Man. First of all, it’s not interesting, It doesn’t have a point, its just about two people that want to get to Goryachkin and they ended up in Grishkino, twice, and that is all they talk about for the whole novella which makes it so boring. It is also so long, they talked about how the road was snowy for a whole chapter, there is nothing interesting about it. I also don’t understand most of it, because there is a lot going on at once but at the same time there is nothing going on, its so confusing. I didn’t like any of the characters, not even Nikita, I think he relies a lot on alcohol and his drinking problems really affect his life. I also don’t like Vasili Andreevich, I think he is really selfish and doesn’t care about people, except I thought he was nice for giving up his life for Nikita.

When looking at the story as an overall, it thought it was well written because the author was able to include lots of details with very intense scenes and he used imagery very well as I was able to imagine scenes clearly. I think this story really emphasizes the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover”. I think this because when I saw the title of the book and looked at it, I thought it was most likely going to be a boring book with content that I wouldn’t understand. But as I began to read it more and more, I started to gain some interest in the book and about the characters. I thought that the character development throughout the story was interesting because I had a feeling that Vasili was going to have a change of heart and he did. I did find it shocking though that at the end of the book Tolstoy had Vasili die and have Nikita stay alive. It was an ending that surprised me and something that I didn’t expect. Something that I did dislike about the book was that the grammar and some of the word choices were hard to understand. I found that on some sentences I was confused on what Tolstoy was trying to indicate and they seemed backwards, or words were out of place. But that is how old English was and how they wrote. All in all, I liked the story as I thought the plot was interesting as well as the character involvement.

Master and Man was an interesting book and I enjoyed it. The book had a very interesting story line that was easy to follow. The characters were described well enough that as a reader I could understand the point they were trying to make. I liked that the author did not rush to finish the book but rather took his time and painted a word picture of what was going on in the moment. It made me feel like I was there witnessing it. I liked that the story had a good build up and explanation of why Nikita behaved a certain way and why Andreevich did the things he did. I liked the internal monologue Andreevich had that told us he was going in circles literally and emotionally. I liked the ending to the story because I did not think that is how it would have ended. I was surprised that after all the greediness and selfishness Andreevich showed, in the end he turned out to be a really great human being. He didn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself so Nikita could have a longer life, or so he had hoped. I liked that Nikita apologized to his son for his wrong doing, it showed great courage on his part. He understood that his drinking had led him down a dark path, and he loved his son more than he loved the drink.

 

My overall personal response to the book “Master and Man” was that it was an okay read because it was easy to foreshadow what would happen like when they but it was also boring. One of the reasons why I liked “Master and Man” was because it was more on the side of an easier read. My favorite part in the book was when they got stuck in the snow for the last time at the end of the book.

I found the overall book was a little more on the boring side, only till the end it got interesting. In fact, the end was the only part about the book I enjoyed. Though the book had a sad ending, it was good. I did not enjoy how most of the book was set in one place, I wish more would have happened. I found some parts of the book quite confusing; from what what happening to where the setting was. I did enjoy learning about the characters, from what there job is to what life a home looks like. I was taught few lessons on life in general, I even found my self grateful for what I have in life. I think if the book was written in a more common era I would have enjoyed it more. If I could read the book again I probably wouldn’t.

I enjoyed Leo Tolstoys “Master and Man” novel to a certain extent. I believe it is a fantastic novel for those who enjoy a good fictional story about the bygone days, like me. However, I did not find this particular one amusing to read, as I had a hard time understanding what the story was about. When the story started to progress and get more interesting near the end, I enjoyed it more and more and started to understand who the characters were and what effect they had on the story. The end of the story was a good way to end the book because it showed that Vasili could be a somewhat good person and, despite all of the egotistical behaviour, he still saved Nikita’s life by laying on top of Nikita to keep him warm. The subtle humour made the story more enjoyable and made it feel more like real life rather than just a fictional book. I would’ve liked to know more about Vasili’s past and how he came to be. I feel like it would enrich the story to make it more enjoyable.