Candide lives!

From Candide, Chapter XXIII:

Talking thus they arrived at Portsmouth. The coast was lined with crowds of people, whose eyes were fixed on a fine man kneeling, with his eyes bandaged, on board one of the men of war in the harbour. Four soldiers stood opposite to this man; each of them fired three balls at his head, with all the calmness in the world; and the whole assembly went away very well satisfied.

“What is all this?” said Candide; “and what demon is it that exercises his empire in this country?”

He then asked who was that fine man who had been killed with so much ceremony. They answered, he was an Admiral.

“And why kill this Admiral?”

“It is because he did not kill a sufficient number of men himself. He gave battle to a French Admiral; and it has been proved that he was not near enough to him.”

“But,” replied Candide, “the French Admiral was as far from the English Admiral.”

“There is no doubt of it; but in this country it is found good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to encourage the others.”

Today, we merely fire such people, usually:

SAN DIEGO — The captain of a San Diego-based aircraft carrier battling an outbreak of COVID-19 on his ship was fired as commanding officer Thursday, days after his letter decrying conditions on his ship became public.

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly announced the firing during a Pentagon news conference.

“At my direction, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Capt. Brett Crozier, was relieved of command by a carrier strike group commander, Rear Adm. Stuart Baker,” Modly said.

Capt. Brett Crozier wrote a letter late Sunday asking the Navy to remove 90% of the crew of the Theodore Roosevelt to halt the “ongoing and accelerating” spread of COVID-19 on board. That letter was published Tuesday by The San Francisco Chronicle and generated headlines nationwide.

On Wednesday, the Navy announced it was moving almost 3,000 sailors off the ship and working to find space on Guam for more.

Modly said he wasn’t sure whether Crozier leaked the letter personally, but he said Crozier didn’t do enough to ensure the letter didn’t get out, saying it was copied to many people outside the captain’s chain of command.

“It was copied to 20 or 30 other people,” Modly said. “That’s just not acceptable. He sent it out pretty broadly and in sending it out pretty broadly he did not take care to ensure that it couldn’t be leaked.”

That, Modly said, demonstrated “extremely poor judgment” in the middle of a crisis.

—https://www.omaha.com/news/national/captain-of-uss-theodore-roosevelt-fired-over-leaked-letter-asking-navy-for-help/article_435110f2-ecf6-55ff-b6a4-5bd26a2a78e0.html

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April 1st Independent reading journal

Continuing with Richard Wright’s novel black boy. On his way to aunt Maggie’s house in Arkansas, Richard notices that the train is divided into two parts-white and black passengers. Out of naive curiosity, Richard wants to see the white part, but his mum refuses and becomes annoyed. He asks his mum about Granny’s blood and race, which irritates Ella. At the same time, Richard himself is also angry because no one talks to him about race relations in detail.

There was, of course, a vague uneasiness about it all, but I would be able to handle that when I came to it. It would be simple. If anybody tried to kill me, then I would kill them first.

(p. 49)

I like this passage because I can really feel the outpouring of anger from Richard at that time. He has a preliminary understanding of race relations at that age, especially racial discrimination against blacks. On that basis, he also has his own opinion about this sharp problem, like he knows he is colored and has heard that colored people were killed and beaten by the white, but he doesn’t give up and is determined to do his best to understand and solve this difficult problem, which is the attitude I like.

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Independent Reading 01/04/2020

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando is a story about 6 kids named Scarlett, Lucas, Kirsten, Sarah, Adam, and Max who all went missing on their first day of kindergarten. 11 years later 5 of them have returned but none of them remember who max is and why he didn’t return. This makes Max’s younger sister Avery very curious about where her brother is and why he didn’t return with everyone else. She has been asking the others who went missing about her brother and none of them remember who he is. At one point in the story she is talking to Lucas when she realizes that there is actually not a lot that she members about her brother either.

She felt like she was digging deep and hitting stone. Then felt a strange panic about how much she had forgotten, just in the course of a normal life. People who were gone only lived on in your memory if you had memories. Why hadn’t she held on tighter? To Max. To everything.

P.138

I like this passage from the book because it really shows how this had effects on everyone and that is was really hard for everyone to full understand and remember what had happened. Even the people who were close with max didn’t have a lot of memories of him because he had bee gone for such a long time.

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A Dolls House

The play A Dolls House was written by Henrik Ibsen and is a play about complicated romance. I notice throughout the book that Torvald treats Nora like she’s his doll. Torvald had many nicknames for her such as “money bird”. Torvald treated Nora more like an item rather than a person besides the fact he would give her handouts of money. It seems that relationships around that time were based on pay incoming social status. For example Torvald always made sure that Nora was on her best behaviour when they were around other people. I could tell that Nora had much stress about wrongdoing around Torvald like when she didn’t want him to see the information about the loan that she made to save Torvald’s life. I think this is interesting because Torvald would rather have higher status and not have his wife save his life.

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A doll’s house in my perspective

A doll’s house is a very classic play of a common marriage, where the wife (Nora), loves to spend money and is very excited because her husband got the position as director of the bank. An old friend of Nora’s (ms Linde) arrives at her visiting house, after a long time of not seeing each other, they begin to talk to make up for the lost time. Soon after, a man named Krogstad arrives to find work with Torvald. Krogstad extorts Nora because she discovered the loan fraud she made to save her husband’s life and threatened to tell her everything if she doesn’t get Torvald to keep her job at the bank. this story shows a woman’s dependence on her husband and the machismo of the time. In the end, the story takes an unpredictable turn with Nora leaving Torvald because she wants to be free and to find herself as a woman.

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IRJ April 1

The book shattered written by Erik Walters tells a story about a boy who gets a job at a homeless shelter for his school service hours and meets a man named Sarge who served in the Rwandan genocide and tells his story to the main character Ian.

When I see them I don’t see branches, I see limbs… human limbs… I see arms and legs, cut off and stacked like firewood because that’s what I’ve seen. Those are memories that are seared into my mind.” (p. 164)

This quote is important to tell the story because it gives a deep description of how Sarge sees things. Seeing regular trees and remembering all of the fatalities in the genocide must be challenging for Sarge to cope with. Because of his time in the genocide it has effected him strongly and influenced him to becoming homeless. I anticipate that near the end of the story Ian will encourage and help Sarge too climb back up onto his feet again.

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Independent Reading

In the book “The summer I turned pretty” by Jenny Han, she writes about a girl who loves going to her summer house, spending time with her mother and her brother but mostly sing all the way to her summer house. She had a very difficult life because her father and her mother got divorced when she was 8 years old, she needed the love of a father and a mother together so she had lots of problems with her personality, she describes she experienced a lot of family violence at a very young age, she talks about how music makes her feel in other world  and helps her forget all her problems. Arriving to the summer house things turned different.

I found my favorite station, the one that played everything from pop to oldies to hip-hop. Tom Pretty was singing “free falling’.” I sang right along with him. “she’s a good girl crazy ’bout Elvis. Loves horses and her boyfriend too.” (p.15)

I liked this quotation because it make me feel related, I love too sing in my car all the way to a destination it make me feel happy and excited, also I adore to listen all type of music but specially oldies.

In this book we can assume she’s a girl with family problems and she knows what things makes her feel relaxed and good, after she arrives to her summer house something happened that make things different with her personality and with the relationship she had with her family. Here is where the trama begins and all the story changed.

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A Doll’s House Review

During a Doll’s House Ibsen raised different questions about marriage and romance, he tries to show us how people sometimes marry for different reasons other than love. Christine was in love with Krogstad but she decided to marry Mr. Linde just for money and even though the only purpose of that relationship was for money at the end she ended with none, this is a clear example of how this relationships with alternative motives usually never work.

Another example of the many relationships that failed during the play is the one of Anne-Marie. The father of her daughter never supported them forcing her to give up a relationship with her daughter just to look for a source of income. This example is totally different but it also shows how someone abandon a relationship of love for money.

Last failed relationship was Torvald and Nora, The relationship they had was a totally a lie since the beginning, they just care about what society think about. At the end they show us clearly when Torvald ask Nora to stay so that people don’t see him badly and have a good reputation even though the relationship was totally broken since the beginning, she left him no matter what society thought. and this is the last example of how different motives may influence the decision of committing on to a relationship.

 

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A Doll’s House

Henrik Ibsen talked about a very thing important thing that people don’t talk often about, “marriage”. In his play A Doll’s House he shows the difficulties and troubles of maintaining a romantic relationship and the motive behind them. To begin with our two protagonists, Nora and Helmer. Their hole relationship is fake, they loved the idea of being together but didn’t even really knew each other. They were together for years without have a single serious conversation. When they were together they would both play a different role, Nora being a doll that would dance and look up to him. So Helmer was like her master giving her little animal names and controlling her very move.

Second of all we have Christine, she had the chance of going steady with a man she truly loved but left him for one with money. This raised different questions, the first is that how much do we as human value love and wealth and which is more important? And this I think is one of the messages that Ibsen tries to transmit in his play. He did this by showing both Nora and Christine go thru relationship where they were wealthy but unhappy.

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How artists increase impact by contrasting form with content

Artists of all sorts contrast form and content to increase the impact of their work on the audience. Here are some examples.

Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time:

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him down stairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.

Hemingway’s low-key, matter-of-fact description increases the horror of what he describes.

John Keats, “In drear-nighted December”: Here Keats uses a sing-songy rhythm that might be found in a nursery rhyme, but the content of the poem is tragic.

I
In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy Branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

II
In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy Brook,
Thy bubblings ne’er remember
Apollo’s summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

III
Ah! would ’twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any 
Writh’d not of passéd joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbéd sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

Musicians can do similar things. Here is Stevie Wonder using a musical form from an 18th century European court—chamber music—to sing about the horrors of life in an urban ghetto in the 20th century:

And here is the Kronos Quartet using the instruments of chamber music to play Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” (If you don’t know Hendrix’s original version, you should find it on YouTube before you listen to the Kronos Quartet’s version.)

So, what does all of this have to do with Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House? Plenty! Ibsen uses the comfortable, familiar form of a “well-made play,” a form that was immensely popular in the 19th century, just as TV situation comedies were immensely popular in the second half of the 20th century. Put very simply, the form involves typical, middle-class people; plot complications; and then a clever twist that puts everything right at the end. The characters were usually stereotypes.

Ibsen takes this form and puts into it radical, challenging ideas about women, marriage, money, sex, social hypocrisy, etc. A Doll’s House caused widespread outrage when it first appeared in the 1870s, and a good deal of that impact comes from Ibsen’s clever use of this old artist’s trick: using a form that leads the audience to expect one sort of thing, and then giving them something very different.

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Independent reading April 1st- Andrea Ita

The book “YOU” by Caroline Kepnes is a novel that talks about a guy called Joe that works at a bookstore and becomes obsessed with a girl called Beck and he is her stalker and does everything in his power to be with her even if it means killing people who he thinks are an obstacle and are toxic for beck´s life.

“Everybody is always striving to be better, loose five pounds, read five books, go to a museum, buy a classical record and listen to it and like it. What they really want to do is eat doughnuts, read magazines, buy pop albums”. (page 4)

I really like this quote because Joe (the main character of the story) speaks the truth about how society is in real life. He tells this to beck right at the moment that she meets her because when they were at the bookstore Joe had to deal with a very rude client and Beck was there watching, so when she gets to the cashier to pay for her books , she asks Joe if he always deals with people like that and they start having a conversation and he answers one of her questions with this phrase.

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The dream of a black boy

 When Richard expresses :

leaving Memphis to realize

he talks about his impossible dream of becoming a writer because of how difficult it is to be black these days. When Richard’s boss learns that he wants to be a writer, his reaction is not positive. Sadly, the black community had almost the same reaction as the white community when learning of Wright’s dream, his friends don’t understand, and his family doesn’t believe in him.

          The resemblance in the reactions of these two communities to Richard’s aspiration shows how blacks are oppressed in the author’s culture. Black Boy clearly shows racism in America and its effect on blacks, but Wright also tries to criticize his community for being influenced by racism and affect their relationships with each other, though not all of them are, Wright touches him a family that he doesn’t tolerate Richard’s way of thinking and they don’t accept Richard’s dream.

          At the graduation ceremony, Richard is afraid of him at the beginning of adult life as he knows it’s going to be more complicated for him. Richard decides to defy the corruption that the director commits, but this only left the community worse. Finally, Richard accepts that the only jobs they may have will not go beyond normal for their race. Still, Wright indicates that what he did at graduation may have had some positive effects on the community, as he says some people applauded, shopped hands and invited him to parties

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HL “Candide” Posts: General Feedback

Most of you made only a minimal effort on this assignment: a short paragraph or two with some general remarks about the story.

In a good personal response, you need to include quotations and page citations. You need to discuss more than just one or two incidents from the story. You need to dig deeper into the philosophical questions raised by the story. You need to analyze the *way* the story is written, and how that connects with the story’s content. And you need to edit and proofread your writing.

Only one of you met that standard, and I urge all of you to read that post and learn from it.

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Candide really late personal response

The philosophical and satirical story of the famous French writer of the Enlightenment “Candide” was created in the late 50s of the XVIII century. Criticism of the philosophy of “optimism” has become the central theme of “Candidу”. In Candide, as in other Voltaire’s short stories, the main thing is not the heroes’ life, but criticism of society, the judgment of the church, the court, royal power, wars, and many others. We cant call this novel narration of the main character’s life as Voltaire content is not a private fate, but a philosophical idea concerning the world as a whole. My personal opinion on this novel is the same as on Hamlet. To understand what the author is trying to tell the audience, the reader has to think wider and “read between lines”. I still have my doubts about how I feel about this novel.

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Independent Reading. Paz Vera 15/03/2020

Continuing with the book,The catcher in rye, explains to us how he comes to feel due to all the drastic changes he experiences

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.

We can appreciate how it is that Holden wants to establish connection, with people, places or situations, since in his life he has not been able to do it due to all the changes that appear so quickly, not feeling a connection for him. it makes him feel even sadder.

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Independent Reading. Paz Vera

The catcher in the rye by J.D Salinger, is a story about a young man of seventeen, has been to several schools from which he is expelled or is changed by his parents since he is not a good student. After being expelled from the last school in which he was after failing, he decides to leave there on his own and spend those days alone without returning home so that his parents do not find out what happened and thus not be punished.

He moves through the streets of New York where he meets different people and tells how he feels and what places he visits and we know more about his life.

I was only thirteen, and they were going to have my psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them. I really don’t. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie.

After the death of his brother Allie, he angrily breaks all the windows, and his parents want to send him for revision because they think he is wrong, but in part all the anger and frustration he feels is understandable.

 

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Doll house

A key question brought to light in this play is “Do the characters in relationships/marriages actually love each other?” Throughout the play we see that Torvald and Nora seem to be in a happy relationship, but through the play we see that Torvald sees Nora as his toy, or as the title says, a doll. He does not love her, but he rather sees her as a trophy, and instead of loving her, he admires her, saying things about her for example she’s something “worth looking at”. Nora’s idea of a marriage is that whoever has the power in the relationship, has control over the marriage, which Torvald ultimately has, as he is the one with the money.  Nora ends up leaving her husband, due to her finally coming to the realization that she is being utterly controlled by Torvald, similar to the situation with her father, who treated her like his doll. She wants to become educated, and vows to become independent in her own actions. She married Torvald not for the sake of love, but for other reasons, like security and financial purposes. A good example of a true relationship is the one between Mrs. Linde and Krogstad. These two are not together for their own needs and wants, but for each other. They depend on each other and truly care for each other, rather than using each other to each’s benefit.

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What questions about marriage and romance are raised by Ibsen’s play?

One question from A dolls house is how important is love in a marriage? and if people do not marry for love what are their reasons? I think that these questions mainly relate to the relationship between Helmer and his wife Nora. I think that in their situations they were married for more reasons than just their love for each other. In this play it seems that Helmer is more about him being happy in the marriage than his wife. He mainly just tries to manipulate her for the things he wants without truly caring about her and loving her, this is what I think caused their marriage to be unsuccessful even though Nora tried everything to make it work because she wanted it to work.

Another example of how people didn’t always marry for love was the relationship between Mrs. Linde and her husband. It is shown that she didn’t truly love her husband when she is talking to Nora about how he died and she explains that she docent even have a sense of grief or loss. Mrs. Linde later explains that she married him because she needed the money that he could provide her with to take care of her family.When her husband died everything related to his business collapsed leaving Mrs. Linde with nothing. I think that the reason she did not feel any sense of grief or loss when he died is because she wasn’t really in love with him but instead she had married him for his money. This meant that his death did not have an effect on her emotionally.

Another question from this play is can romance effect a friendship? which is shown between Dr.Rank and Nora. Dr. Rank had been very close friends with Nora as well as her husband Helmer. At one point of the play Dr. Rank confesses to Nora that he is in love with her, thinking that she feels the same way towards him. Nora ends up being very surprised by this but she does not feel the same way towards him. I think that because Dr. Rank was in love with Nora and she has a husband and just felt that Dr.rank was het friend it caused them to develop a more awkward relationship. I think that the romance did end up having an effect on their friendship.

 

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Personal Response to Voltaire‘s ‘Candide’ -Kelvin M.

Voltaire’s novel: “Candide, or Optimism”, was a very intriguing read. What particularly caught my attention was the discussions of different ideologies it presents forth the readers.

It’s most discussed ideology is optimism, practiced by the main protagonist Candide and his teacher, doctor Pangloss. 

“Optimism,” said Cacambo, “What is that?” “Alas!” replied Candide, “It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.” 

Candide believes deeply in this ideology and always thrives on spreading it to everyone around him. These scenes are when the clashes between ideologies occur, such as with Martin. This pessimist scholar joined Candide during his travels and eventually ended living together with him, they often produce intriguing dialogues, clearly presenting their difference in ideologies:

“You’re a bitter man,” said Candide. That’s because I’ve lived,” said Martin.”

 

“But for what purpose was the earth formed?” asked Candide. “To drive us mad,” replied Martin.”

Candide, Pangloss, and Martin are the three that most often display their philosophical ideas, and on the last chapter of the scene are enlightened. The last chapter is also when Voltaire uses Candide to present his own philosophical idea: We must cultivate our garden.

I related most to Martin during the reading of the novel, but I too felt enlightened by the quote: We must cultivate our garden. Always in life, we judge, interpret, and argue over concepts and ideologies while we ourselves have not yet cultivated our gardens. Each and every individual has gardens to tend to, and it must not be forgotten the fact that it holds priority over the world outside of it. Voltaire’s message is not weakened through its comical development and style but amplified due to the work’s sarcastic nature. It is from the absurd and surreal story and characters that the world is portrayed, sarcastically, more realistic than that of many other novels. And from that realism, it’s ideologies not only pose significance to the time when it was written, but also to our modern society. With the help of the internet, it is no doubt that now more than ever, we hold the privilege of expressing and presenting ideas to such a massive audience at such little expense, but before doing that, shouldn’t we all cultivate our own gardens?

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Personal Response to Candide

The part that I found to be the most interesting about the book was how Candide was kicked out of his castle and all of a sudden and was all of a sudden burdened with everything that the outside world forced upon him. He was shocked and for him it was very overwhelming to have all these responsibilities. I can relate to that because especially in grade eleven and twelve the workload can seem like a huge burden. At one point in the book, Candide had a mental breakdown and was not able to handle all of the responsibilities of living in the outside world and having to support himself without other people to rely on to help him as much as living in the castle. Candid felt overloaded with the reality of the outside world and sometimes even in grade 11 all the work and everything can feel like a huge burden so I can see where candid is coming from.

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An Answer to Hamlets Question

To be or not to be, that is the question. I believe the answer to this changes for hamlet throughout the play. At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is extremely sad and depressed. He is quoted as saying “Denmark’s a prison”. This shows the Hamlet feels trapped. I think this is one of the main reasons that hamlet is really depressed at the beginning of the play. This almost makes me feel bad for Hamlet. Imagine that your dad gets killed and then your uncle marries your mother. That would make anyone extremely sad. Towards the end of the book hamlet starts to feel little better and takes all of his anger out by killing his uncle and a couple of other people as well. This makes me feel sad as people die but also god because it gave hamlet a chance for revenge.

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Justins IRJ March 15

The book Shattered by Eric Walters introduces two characters Sarge and Ian who eventually become friends. Sarge regularly teaches Ian about his experiences in the Rwandan Genocide. Sarge is not a regular soldier ,he is a peacekeeper and his main objective is to try and restore peace between a conflict in the field.

“A soldier must be willing to sacrifice his life for his country in times of war and there is a very thin line between peacekeeping and war … a very thin line!”(p. 99)

This quote is important to the text because it means a soldier must be ready to loose his life in order to protect his country. Peacekeepers jobs are to try and keep peace but sometimes wars got out of hand and challenging to keep peace at bay.

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Justins IRJ March 1

The book Shattered by Eric Walters explained the view of a soldier from the Rwandan Genocide. The main characters are Sarge who caught in the genocide but is now an alcoholic, and Ian who pursues to learn about his story by working at a homeless shelter and learning about sarge.

“I’d seen bodies before. Ive live’d a long time. Ive served in the military in places around the world where death isn’t sanitized and hidden away like it is in this country.” (p. 125)

This quote is significant because it teaches the reader that in many places everyone sees death regularly accepts it fo being a regular part of their day. Differently in America if you saw someone die it would be a big deal and effect a person strongly.

 

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What questions about marriage and romance are raised by Ibsen’s play?

The first question about this topic raised by this play would be “what role does love play in a marriage?”. From the right value point of view, the true love in a healthy marriage focuses on satisfying the needs of the spouse, not selfishly satisfying our own, which means love is the most important foundation of marriage. In this play, the breakup of marriage between Torvald and Nora greatly expresses the importance and value of love in marriage. As we can see, there was no real love between the two. Torvald just likes the feeling of being in love, and he has never been considerate of each other. He treats Nora like a doll because he has a patriarchal ideology. For example, he gives her many nicknames randomly, such as “spendthrift”, “squirrel” and “skylark” and so on. He begins manipulating Nora’s life according to his will and liking after he gets the name of the house. He never put himself in the other person’s shoes, but always put himself at the center of a marriage supported by false love. That’s why his true nature comes out so quickly when he finally knows the truth about Nora. Such lack of love along with manipulation and disrespect eventually ruined their marriage. The only loving person in their marriage is Nora. She shows love in her husband’s imperfections. She is desperate to behave like a doll in their home. She makes the necessary sacrifices, even forging her father’s signature and giving all the credit to Torvald. In spite of this, the marriage eventually fails because one side of love is not enough to sustain the marriage. In a word, love is never complete in this Doll’s house, which directly results in the breakup of marriage. As Nora sees the true face of Torvald from the change of his final attitude, she realizes the reality and makes up her mind to be free from the oppression, which not only indicates the end of this fake marriage constructed by fake love, but also expresses once again the concept of true love laying a marriage.  For the other characters, Krogstad and Mrs. Linde are unhappy in a marriage based on need rather than love. Likewise, Christine and Mr. Linde are not happy too because their marriage also bases on necessity ( Christine has to find a wealthy husband in order to raise her old mom and two little brothers).  Dr. Rank had never been married, and it was revealed that he had been quietly in love with Nora for years.

The question of ” what are the roles of men and women in a marriage?” should also be considered in this play. As we can see, sexism flows beneath Nora and Torvalds relationship one based on stereotypes. Their roles in the marriage are defined by what men and women are supposed to do rather than what might work for the couple as individuals. Torvald represents the belief that women should accept lesser status and value than men. But Nora represents the masses of women who have given up their unique identities in order to conform to societal stereotypes. In the end of play, we clearly can see that women are the victims of marriage. Torvald reveals the low regard he has for women incapable of seeing Nora as her own person with her own thoughts. Nora knows she has no choice except to leave Torvald and her sexist marriage in order to find herself. The same problem applies to other female characters in this play. In order to feed her mother and two brothers, Mrs. Linde feels the need to abandon her true love, Krogstad, and marry a richer man. The nanny Anna-Maria has to abandon her child and feed herself by being a nanny. As she tells Nora, the nanny thinks she is lucky to get a job since she was a poor girl who had been led astray. Therefore, while men refuse to sacrifice for the sake of their fame and status, thousands of women sacrifice themselves in marriage, which is totally unequal. All in all, in the context of marriage, men and women must be equal. They may not need specific roles, but they must be mutual.

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Doll House

Ibsen raises questions about marriage in A Doll’s House such as should two people marry for love or for wealth? Anne-Marie’s husband did nothing for her, so she was forced to leave her daughter so that she could work and survive. Christine marries for money instead of love and eventually loses everything. Dr. Rank loves Nora but Nora is disturbed by his confession. Christine and Krogstad loved each other, but Christine broke his heart and married someone else for money. She returns to recover her relationship with Krogstad. Nora is Torvald’s doll. He treats her more as his possession or toy than his wife.

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Independent Reading 15/03/2020

In the next part of the leaving by Tara Altebrando there is a new mystery introduced about Lucas and his father. When Lucas returned home and his father saw him for the first time he fell from where he was standing which caused him to die. There was no one else around who saw exactly what happened but Lucas is now being questioned for returning to kill his father. His brother wants to believe that Lucas didn’t kill their water but is unsure of what he should think.

“I don’t know, man. You’re my brother and I want to believe you and be normal.”Wiped his nose with his bare arm. “But how do I know? How do I know you didn’t kill him? How do I know how to even act around you?”

I like this passage form the book because it is something that I agree with, I think that even in difficult times we should always want to and try to believe and trust our families.

 

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Candide – Personal Response

In Candide, written by Voltaire. The protagonist, a young boy named Candide, endures a journey that represents how children feel as they transition into becoming adults. So many “firsts” in your life come as a young adult, but with all the good things we experience, there are always worse things to counter them. Candide definetely endures these worse expenses all too often. From being brutally tortured by the Bulgars, to getting so close to death he was practically half in limbo already.

Right from chapter 1, Candide falls for Cunegonde. This is their first time falling in love, which is something most people experience as teenagers, or so we think. However, their love is somewhat bittersweet. In the last chapters, Candide expresses how he wants to marry Cunegonde, but her brother, the new Baron, does not approve which results in his death. The two also have to endure a long journey to be together which can sometimes translate to modern day problems.

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To be or not to be

To be, or not to be, means if it is worth it to be alive. In my opinion, this depends on lots of factors. People tend to say that obviously, the right choice is life. Usually, people overlook the fact that all of us are brought into this world, not by choice. Then everything is down to your luck. Maybe you can be born in a rich family and enjoy some privileges, while you could perfectly be born in a family where you are destined to starve to death. In Hamlet´s case, he was born in a rich family, he had a lover, and he could do whatever he pleased. However, it appears that his life is terrible when he feels hate towards Claudius. The answer to his concern, in my opinion, is very clear. Only because you had one single inconvenience in your life, that doesn´t mean your whole existence is pointless.

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Personal response

I found this book to be extremely unappealing to me. These stories that are being told, in my opinion, are too forged. Across the book, we can tell how this individual is experiencing a stroke of terrible luck, over and over. It is repetitive. He gets drafted as a soldier, he gets beaten between other things. Never the less, the one part I enjoyed in the book is Candide´s optimism. “Optimism,” said Cacambo, “What is that?” “Alas!” replied Candide, “It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.” Even though we could consider Candide as probably the unluckiest foe on earth, this tad of optimism that he has is quite lovable. It keeps the story afloat and that is what kept me reading, despite what I mentioned before.

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Candide Personal Response-Isaac Carmelo

I loved reading the book Candide and all the stories that were told throughout the book. My favourite thing about the book was that it was very short and compact and we got the same amount of events of a normal book in a third of the size. Sometimes I wish that I could have a bit more detail in some of the chapters as they are all very short and could easily be made 10 times longer than they each were.

I really saw how Candide was portrayed as a very good man when he shows his loyalty to the woman he wanted to marry. He shows that the looks are not important to him and that all that matters is about the feeling. He fell in love with the most beautiful girl ever and as time went on, she became very ugly and he still wanted to marry him.

“his wife became uglier every day and grew shrewish and unbearable” pg 115

Candide is a good spirit and even tho he loses all his money (jewels and gold from the red sheep), he still keeps on going. Candide being a good man and being stupid are very interchangeable, when Candide is needing a ship to go across and the sea, the merchant keeps raising the price on him and he keeps agreeing. It could be that he is stupid but also it could be he would want to help the other person. Later on in the chapter the ship with the sheep on  sinks leaving only one sheep alive and so it would not have mattered on how much Candide payed the person, but the merchant got more money and it wouldn’t have mattered to Candide.

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Independent Reading March 15

Using his imagination, Richard creates superstitions and magic possibilities. He tells himself things such as

If I placed a safety pin on a steel railroad track and let a train run over it, the safety pin would turn into a pair of bright brand new scissors.

(p. 71)

I like this passage because it makes me laugh and it reminds me of weird things that I used to make up when I was younger.

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March 15th Independent reading journal

Richard gradually learns to read by thumbing through children’s books, and he learns how to count from one to one hundred from a delivery man. From then on, he begins to realize vaguely that the relationship between whites and blacks is so tricky. After what happened in the first grade, and after his father persuaded the judge to abandon him and his family, poverty forced his mom to send Richard himself and his brother to an orphanage. Richard changes a lot there:

Dread and distrust had already become a daily part of my being and my memory grew sharp, my senses more impressionable; I began to be aware of myself as a distinct personality striving against others. I held myself in, afraid to act or speak until I was sure of my surroundings.                                                                                                                                                                                         (p. 30)

I like this passage so much because this is a soliloquy of the author about the inner world of his youth at that time. I not only sympathize with his situation, but also feel the cruelty of reality. At such a young age, he experiences all kinds of deception, abandonment and injustice, which is really tough for him to live actively. When Miss Simon tries to win his confidence by using many ways, he just feels her words have no effect because of the resistance and distrust of everything in the world. That’s so horrible.

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Personal response to Candide- Andrea Ita

I found the book “Candide” by a Voltaire very interesting, not only because the author talks about different themes such as love, religion, social classes and philosophical point of views, among others, but also because of how the author writes this story by using symbolism, imagery and allegory. The imagery that he uses help describing the setting were the story takes place, it happens in Europe and Latinoamerica and the way he describes places gives us a perfect idea on what to imagine. The allegory that he uses when he talks about gardens is something that I personally thought that left a good message on readers. He talks about gardens in several passages of the book, for example when he is found kissing Cunégonde and his uncle tells him that he can no longer be in his family’s garden. Candide at the end of the book tells us how important gardens are and he compares them to life, he says that the way you grow your garden is like the way you keep on buildup for your life.

 

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Candide [ PERSONAL RESPONSE ]

Even though the plot of the book “Candide” is not quite my cup of tea, I appreciate the message it brings along. Candide, to me, seems like a naive and gullible person who is a likable character throughout the book. Although at times I feel as if Candide makes a fool out of himself, there are two things I have always admired about him, which is his optimism towards life and loyalty towards Cunégonde. Candide never gives up on hope and always tries to move forward at all times. Despite Cunégonde’s beauty eroding into ugliness, Candide remains faithful and ends up marrying her. There is, however, a problem to his faithfulness, Candide does not want to marry Cunégonde, at least not anymore, by marrying her and living with her until death is unfair for Cunégonde as well. Having to marry a person that does not want to be with you seems to me as something that you will regret later on in life. This also reflects on Candide’s traits as he is someone who does not think much in details of his actions and consequences.

A quote by Candide that stands out to me is “but we must cultivate our garden” (p.119). Even though in Candide’s situation, he is talking about his actual garden, this prominent line has more meaning to it than just growing gardens. The garden Candide refers to represents life in its finest form. This concludes his quote telling us that we must further improve our lives through effort, similar to how Candide will try to grow his garden.

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A black boy in withe society

          In this part of the book, Richard talks a lot about religion and his relationship with it, he also talks about his relationship with some boys who are also black, he met them in his neighborhood and the constant struggle that African Americans have to live in a racist world. We can easily see Richard’s position on these problems.

 As Wright describes the way of life of the Arkansas child reveals the pain a black person has to live in a racist white society. These children try to express how difficult it is to live this way and as they try to confront this situation with self-confidence, but the oppression was so much that it was very difficult to sustain it since they started living with a lot of insecurity, even Wright says that between them

frantically concealed how dependent we were upon one another

The boys constantly fight to stop inequality are useless and this only led to problems with their parents, but they like to feel some control, even when they know it doesn’t last long.

 Richard begins to have constant problems with Addie related to God and religion. Addie expects Richard to do everything she wants, but he clearly won’t let that happened. At one point Addie hits him and accuses him of eating her nuts, he tries to deny it, but he confesses, Addie gets angry and tries to hit him again saying that he had lied, but Richard stands firm, he expresses that he is always going to stand like that because

I simply could not feel weak and lost in a cosmic way

 With all this, we can realize how radical racism was in those times and as Richard’s position is very different from those other children of his age can take, so far, he has proven to be very firm in the face of racist oppression of the people. We understand that even though they are no longer slaves, they are still very difficult times for African Americans.

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Candide personal response

To me, Candide is a lot more entertaining than the other books we have read this year. There is way more action, and I actually understand what the characters are talking about most of the time. I also liked how there were things that happened to Candide that will happen to me eventually in my life, like when he was forced to leave home and go out in the real world. I also liked how there were so many little pieces of European history that Voltaire added to the book, but they made sense with what was happening in the story.

I think one of the most important things in this story was that Candide is very gullible and innocent, and because of this he is duped and taken advantage of by a lot of people. For example, when Candide is trying to take the boat to Venice with all of his servants, baggage and sheep, he asks the Dutch merchant how much it will cost to get to Venice, and the merchant says ten thousand piastres. When Candide agrees without even thinking about it, the merchant thinks that Candide is very rich, so he says he cannot take Candide for less than twenty thousand. When Candide agreed to this too, the merchant drives up the price to thirty thousand. Candide pays the merchant, and then the merchant puts the sheep on board. when Candide followed in a small boat to get on the ship, the merchant hoisted sail and went off with all of Candide’s valuables. I think the reason Voltaire had scenarios like this in the book is to tell us that there will always be people who try to take advantage of you in one way or another, and you need to be careful and pay attention.

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Candide Personal Response

Voltaire’s Candide is an exaggerated example of what happens when you leave your childhood home. Candide grew up in a castle with a girl he loved, and he git run out of that castle because of it. This can happen to people now a days and I a sure it does however most people just get to the age that it is just appropriate to move out and start living on their own, with some exceptions. Once Candide gets kicked out he starts running into problems he has to get himself out of and people he has to deal with. At first he tries to do everything by himself. I feel like that is a common response to moving out and growing up is people think they can and should do every thing independently, even though you should ask for help. People don’t ask for help and they end up learning it the hard way and eventually figuring out that it I a lot easier if you just ask n the first place. Candid eventually learns this after begging people in the streets of Holland. A man warns him but he doesn’t take his advice and ends up having human waste dumped on him which was like what a lot of people call a ‘reality check’. These commonly happen and they are an eye opener and help people realize that they need to change what they are doing. After that Candide starts getting help when he needs it and does a little better. More events keep coming up which will happen in life as well but he stays positive which is something most people struggle with including myself but it is something you have to do or you’ll start wanting to give up on everything. Candide never gives up hope even though everything he thinks is good turns out bad. He learns a lot of lessons similar to the lessons we learn today such as money management. At the end of the book after everything he goes through, he learns to settle with what he has, and to stop arguing with everyone. Which probably will end up happening and is probably something people have to do quite often.

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Candide Personal Response- Angelina Blacklaws

My thoughts on this book changed many times throughout the book. At the start, it was sort of funny and a different kind of book then what we have read in class. This made more sense then the others books we have read because of the words used as well as the size of the book.

The most important thing that I got out of this was how loyal of a man Candide was. Cunegonde was beautiful when they met but over time she became ugly but that did not change Candide’s plan to marry her. It really makes you realize that their is so much more to a person then just looks. For example it is said “his wife became uglier every day and grew shrewish and unbearable” pg 115 chapter thirty.

I think it is easier for us to relate and enjoy this book because we are actually not to far off from the age of Candide. with other books we have read, the characters are usually much older so it’s harder for the students reading to understand everything that is going on.

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Independent Reading. 2.

Although it has been a little difficult for me to read 2 books at the time, I managed to go over the first key idea of The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi.

If, when you were a child your parents used to tell you every day, “if you don’t wake up early, then you won’t be a successful person in life”. You will grow up believing it, and therefore waking up early every day of your life. If you, someday meet someone who is not successful in life, then you might think “oh, he probably doesn’t wake up early”. But, psychology says that these types of assumptions are the result of our past experiences and beliefs. A good example is a kid who was bullied in school, he grows up, carrying his trauma with him.

we tend to live from our pasts experiences, but we don’t realize that we are free to decide our own future and do whatever we want.

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Personal Response: Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet -Kelvin M.

Reading the essay  Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet, I noticed many interesting details about the original play which I did not realize during my first read. Avery important idea that the essay conveyed to me is the writer’s answer to Hamlet’s iconic question: “To be, or not to be”. The Writer analyses the entire play, and through the line: “The readiness is all”, came to a conclusion: Let be. This is really quite inspiring as many times we discussed in both English and TOK classes about death: would we ever be able to embrace death? Would those around us embrace our deaths? Would they change from the way we die? And the age of which we die? Another example is exactly how simple the plot of Hamlet is. Understanding that there is a short, condense version of Hamlet with a runtime of merely five-minutes really start to make me think about the plot of the play. Thinking about it once again, the plot is actually a very simple and nowadays cliche revenge plot, but Shakespeare managed to bloat it up into the complete runtime without boring the reader at a singer scene, always entertaining and engaging.

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Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet’s Question

In the essay “Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet’s Question” by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, the authors talk about an specific line in Hamlet which is “To be or not to be”, the line is explained and they also explain why there is a reason why the play is that long, the authors show us if the play was five minutes long and it just does not make that sense as the original which is very long.

When people read the line “to be or not to be” I do not think that most of us really understand the situation as what Hamlet is trying to say, I think he is contemplating if all of the things he goes through is worth it or if he might just kill himself. I see this very true because for some people life might be suffering all the way and because of that people might want to take their own life.

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Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet’s Question- Isaac

In the essay “Let be” by “Simon Crutchley” and “Jamieson Webster”, they talk about Hamlet’s question of to be or not to be. When most people read this passage, they don’t fully understand everything behind what Hamlet is saying. They think it’s just to live or to die, but in fact it is much more in-depth than that. What Hamlet means by his speech is that if he thinks that way he feels at this moment will go away and that if it will get better and that if it’s worth to go through all the pain he is feeling right now. Hamlet is very smart and when such a tragic thing happens to him, he thinks about it rather than acting, and thus doing so, coming to the question of to be or not to be. He knows that he can not go back to what he had before and he knows that he had a very nice life before and so he is not going to kill himself if it’s just momentarily that he will have such harsh feelings. Hamlet tries to understand if the ideas that he has of the nice times will still be there and so he wants to wait and see if  he can still have them. If Hamlet would be stuck with those feelings all his life, he would not want to life. Why would he want to live if he was not happy and he would stay with those feelings. Everyone always says that life is the most valuable thing, but  thats only true if you are happy, if you are sad or depressed, you don’t want it. When Hamlet says to be or not to be, he means will he be happy in life again or not. To be, to be happy, and not to be, not to be happy.

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To be or not to be

Basically this article is about Hamlet’s question “to be or not to be”. This phrase represents the essential question of human experience, troubled against the tensions that occur between will and reality, so that life and death become options to consider. Hamlet is thinking about life and death, pondering a state of being versus a state of not being, basically being alive and being dead.

And if you analyse Hamlet’s question you could see why his thinking about life and death. On the one hand life is a lack of power, at the mercy of fortune. But, death is powerful, allowing the defeat of fortune. In addition, to die, action is needed in life, making the proposition hopeless. And life after death is an unknown, possibly worse than life itself. It is the great question that Hamlet asks about human existence in general and his own existence in particular: a reflection on whether it is better to be alive or dead.

 

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Let Be – An Answer to Hamlet’s Question

In Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet’s Question, The author specifically talks about “Hamlet’s Question”. Most readers are confused when anyone mentions “Hamlet’s Question” because throughout the play, so many questions are raised.

            In this article specifically, the author is talking about the question raised during one of Hamlet’s soliloquys. “To be, or not to be. That is the question.” Although it seems to have a quite clear meaning behind this soliloquy, you must understand the heartbreak and events that Hamlet has experienced beforehand to understand what he really means. He has experienced his father’s death and many other heartbreaking moments throughout his life. In this quotation, he is referring to the thought of killing himself. He is in a deep rabbit hole of depression and he is on the fence about whether he should just end his misery or not.

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Let be: Answer to Hamlets question

To be or not to be, that is the question. In this case, this is actually the question. In my opinion when I hear this speech by hamlet, I feel like I know what he means because it is the most well known of his speeches. In reality it is just one of those things that the whole time I did not know the answer to.

To start off, once you know the meaning of “to be or not to be” it makes it easier to state your opinion. During the reading, my conclusion to what this means is basically “to take my life, or not to take my life”, which I suppose makes sense hence all the things happening in Hamlets life. In situations like these it is normal for that question to cross the minds of those in pain but of course I hope no one does more then only think of it. Even though Hamlet had a rough time and it could take his pain away, it would just take Hamlets pain and put it on someone else. Then in the end that pain is still there no matter what you do. So it will never be worth it. My answer to this question is “not to be”.

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March 1st Independent Reading Journal

After punishment and a few days of rest，Richard recovers from fever and moves with his family to Memphis, Tennessee. His dad works as a night porter and doesn’t like Richard makes noise when he is asleep in the daytime. One morning, Richard and his brother, playing with a noisy stray kitten they have found outside, wake his father. His dad just explodes: “Kill that damn thing!” Richard knows that his dad has not really meant for him to kill the kitten, but in order to have his first triumph over his dad, he just do it. Finally, his dad feel mad, but Richard reminds him of his words. However, his mom knows what’s going on and punishes him to bury the kitten alone that night, which fills him with shame and terror. After his mom prays, Richard is so afraid:

I open my mouth but no words came. My mind was frozen with horror. I pictured myself gasping for breath and dying in my sleep. I broke away from my mother and ran into the night, crying, shaking with dread.                                                                                                                                                                                  (p. 14)

I like this passage because this is a vivid illustration of his inner fear, and I can fully feel how much terror he has after his mom prays for the kitten. In fact, at the time, Richard is filled with guilt and begins to realize how wrong and evil he has been in killing kitten, especially when his mom says “do not snatch the breath of life from me…” Like he begins to associate himself with the kitten he had killed, that’s why he behaves like that.

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Let it be

I agree with the statement that actions and thoughts cannot be bridged. It defines the augury and omen, it foresees the course of events. The play perceives the reaction of the audiences such as Claudius, his conscience is caught and caught redeeming himself by praying. Hamlet’s decision on not killing Claudius while praying is him thinking that it will make Claudius the innocent, his self-awareness has made him spare Claudius’s life.

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Let Be : An Answer to Hamlet [ Personal Response ]

The essay written by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster made me understand even more about the play and the morals of the plot. What I found interesting is the five-minute version of Hamlet. It shows how the plot of the play is supposedly very simple. It is Hamlet who makes the plot long enough to make a play due to his hesitance and his indecision. The essay emphasizes Hamlet not putting actions to his problems and seems to always be fantasizing as he keeps making up excuses and being stuck in his thoughts. A fascinating quote from the text “If thought kills action, then action must be thoughtless”. The writer gives an example of Hamlet overthinking too much as well as being careless of his actions. When Hamlet kills Polonius by accident, he did not think twice to do so, even without knowing whether it would be Claudius or someone else. However, when he has the chance to kill while Claudius is praying, he over analyses and makes an excuse for not being a good time. This tells us how much our thoughts conquers our actions. I like how the writer describes self-consciousness as a “curse” and “extraordinary insight” has companions of “melancholy, alienation, and paralysis”. While Hamlet has a lot in mind and is self-conscious of everything, this curse causes his depression. The writer’s answer to the question “To be, or not to be?” is “Let be”. This allows me to connect some of the dots of how Hamlet is trying to express that we mere mortals will never know of the future and that “the readiness is all”. This stood out to me since it partially explains the long-awaited killing of Claudius and how Hamlet feels as if he is finally ready to take action at the end of the play. 

 

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Independent Reading Journal March 1st

One morning, Richard’s mother had told him that there was no coal in the house. He was informed that he had to wait until the coal she order arrived. Once the coal man had delivered the coal, he made a fire for Richard and asked him how much change he owes. After Richard tells the man that he doesn’t know how to count, the coal man teaches him how to count.

He counted to ten and I listened carefully; then he asked me to count alone and I did. He made me memorize the words twenty, thirty, forty, etc., then told me to add one, two, three, and so on. In an hour’s time I had learned how to count to a hundred and I was overjoyed.

(p. 23)

I like this quotation because of the happiness that Richard felt after learning how to count. It reminds me of when I was younger and I enjoyed going to school and learning things similar to this.

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“Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet’s Question- Andrea Ita

I think that in the essay “Let Be: An Answer to Hamlet’s Question” by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, the authors are describing their thoughts on Hamlet and the way that they understood it.

I personally felt like they summarized Hamlet in order to make the reader understand better what they want to express at the end of the essay, so they explain how they imagined each act of Hamlet. The authors’ way of writing this was very organized because they explain each part and have different topics of Hamlet discussed. What I also liked about this summary of each act, is that they explain the reason why they are doing it, they tell the reader that we could all imagine a five minute version of the play, however there is a reason why the play is so long and it is divided in many acts and categorized into a melodrama.

Something I found very interesting about this essay was also that they compared the play to different books such as “Alexander the Great”. The authors explain how this comparison is relevant on how Hamlet lives his life and how also the “To be or not to be” speech talks about everyday thoughts and at the end of the essay the writer tells us how society and human beings need theater, especially dramas like this and “tragedy” in our lives in order to have something to live for.

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Independent Reading 01/03/2020

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando is a story about 6 kids who went missing on their first day of kindergarten. Eleven years later 5 of them have returned and none of them have any memory of what happened or who the other boy was.  When one of the kids max, dosent return it leaves everyone confused and questioning what happened to him. When Scarlett, another one of the children who went missing, she  returns home and looks through photos of all the kids who went missing 11 years ago and she notices that something isn’t right.

But Scarlett was looking back at those photos of the victims…and counting, and..”wait.” Six photos. One of her. Then Lucas. Kirsten. Sarah. Adam. She pointed at the last one. More confused than ever before. “Who’s Max Godard?”(pp. 39-40)

I like this passage from the book because it is the first point where the mystery of what happed to the 6th child, and why no one knows who he is, is introduced. This added mystery makes the book more interesting and it makes me want to continue reading to find out what happened.

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personal response- let be- an answer to Hamlet’s question

I found the ideas that Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster used while writing this essay very intriguing. I found it interesting how they talked about Hamlet not being able to make up his mind about killing Claudius, and how they used Hamlet as a key for the inward self in a world that is insubstantial and rotten. the imagery they used while writing this essay was also very interesting. I liked how they talked about the line, ” there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”. What Hamlet is saying in this quote is that God knows about everything, and that all living things, even a bird , will eventually die. I also liked how they brought up really big, serious questions that are in Hamlet, like whether we are really ready to die when the time comes.

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After Independent Reading

After written by Anna Todd, is a story of a young girl going to university, she has a perfect life but she had the bad luck of being set up with a roommate that is the opposite of her, she started dating one friend of her roommate, totally different to her with tattoos, piercings and he is a bad guy, she fall in love with him but what she doesn’t know is that this was part of a game he has planned for her. I loved this story because it makes me feel related and I understand what a young girl is going through.

“My life before him was so simple and decided now after him is just… perfect (p.15)”

I liked this quotation because it makes me think that in life you need to get out of your comfort zone and if we never try new things we will never know what life is about, we need to experiment ourselves to know what is right and wrong.

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My independent reading. 24/02/2020.

The courage to be disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi, is a novel that shows a Japanese philosophy to achieve real happiness, stating that happiness depends on each human individual and not of past traumas or others. Ichiro creates an interesting book format by establishing a conversation between a teenage-college student and a philosopher. One of my favorite quotes of what I’ve read so far is:

That’s what it means to live in your subjective world. There is no escape from your own subjectivity. At present, the world seems complicated and mysterious to you, but if you change, the world will appear more simple. The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are.

I like this quote because, for me, it means that we have the freedom and the ability to choose how to live our present, and based on that we will feel or not “enough”.

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Black Boy Independent Reading

Black Boy, a book written by Richard Wright, is an autobiography, which tells of the author’s memoir of his childhood when he was listed as a black boy in the southern United States of the 1920s and 1930s during the great depression. It’s a representation of African-American life in those days. In this book, we can compare what society was like in these times with how it is now and that’s what makes this book so interesting to me.

“But this new hunger baffled me, scared me, made me angry and insistent (p. 14).”

I like this phrase because it’s a direct approach to “hunger,” which is one of the main themes in part 1 of the book. In this sentence speaks of the hunger that she feels now is different, that she is afraid of this new sensation and that makes you angry, I think what cake to refer to this is that she is not hungry for food but of revenge, this gives a more interesting twist to the book.

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“Black Boy” Independent reading

Black Boy is Richard Wright’s powerful account of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South.  In chapter 1 of Southern Night, Four-year-old Richard Wright is upset in his grandparents’ house by his mother’s order to keep him quiet. There is nothing better to do. Richard plays with a broom and lit the straw that is scattered in the fireplace. Watching them burn and then he decides to light the curtains and see what they look like when they burn. When the fire get out of control, the frightened Richard runs out of the room and is hiding under the burning house for fear of punishment. Then, he begins to think about it:

Was my mother afire？Would my brother burn? Perhaps everybody in the house would burn! Why had I not thought I those things before I fired the curtains?                (p. 5)

I like this passage because this is his truest inner monologue at the time. I can well understand that feeling of guilt. As we can see，in the face of the uncontrollable fire, he has begun to reflect on his wrong behavior, and he begins to feel guilty and think about his family. This is also a growth in his heart.

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“Black Boy” Independent Reading

In this novel Black Boy written by Richard Wright our protagonist, a boy named Richard is constantly in struggle with his parents. This little boy defies them from the begging when we committed a terrible mistake when playing with the curtains. Once we realized what he did he decided to hide instead of facing his actions.

 I crawled under the house and crept into a dark hollow of a brick chimney and balled myself into a tight knot. My mother must not find me and whip me for what I had done  (p. 5).

This was only the first time we saw him challenge the authority and not take responsibility for his actions, since not long after they moved to Memphis he did it again. When his father was trying to sleep and told him to take the cat away. Our protagonist took it in a literal meaning and killed the kitten.

“Being sorry can’t make the kitten live again, she said” (p. 5).

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Independent Reading 22/02/2020

 A Dogs Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron tells the story of the different lives that a dog has through the point of view of the dog in each one of its lives. Through each of the lives it explains how the dog finds its purpose for that life and that in every life they have a purpose that is different form other lives.  At the end of one of the lives the dog Bailey his purpose in that life when he says

My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy. I didn’t want to cause him any unhappiness now-in that way, I decided it was probably better that he wasn’t here to see this,. though I missed him so much at that moment the ache of it was as bad as the strange pains in my belly (pp. 165-166).

I like this quote because although it is at one of the saddest parts of the book it shows how dogs care about their owners and want them to be happy. In this life Bailey knew that his purpose was to be their for his owner and to take care of him so as he was dying this quote showed how he would no longer be able to continue with this purpose in his life.

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Justins journal practice

Shattered written by Erik Walters. The main characters father is requiring his son go to an interview for volunteer work. It is crucial for him to get the job to acquire the credits his civics teacher has required him to graduate.

“The streets themselves were dirty and stern with garbage”  (P. 8).

I like this quotation because gives me a clear image of  where he is. He anticipated that his interview would be in a nice building but he ended up down an old dirty street for his interview.

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Independent Reading Journal Practice

Black Boy is a book written by Richard Wright. The mother of the protagonist, Richard, sends him to the grocery store to buy food for his family. However, while Richard is walking to the store, he gets attacked by a gang of boys who beat him and steal his grocery money. This occurs twice, but when Richard comes home after being beaten by the same boys for a second time, his mother says:

“take this money, this note, and this stick, go to the store and buy those groceries. If those boys bother you, then fight” (p. 17).

I like this quotation because I believe that a person should stand up for themselves and Richard’s mother is trying to teach this very important lesson to him.

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