Christopher's Blog

Although I doubt you are still checking the posts I felt it was necessary to write a final post..
Overall I liked the course.
I was introduced to new poets, plays, movies, books, etc..
I was able to practice my essay writing
I learned different schools of thought
I was happy that we didn’t have a take-home test like last semester..
I liked the loose due-dates (to a certain extent)
There’s not much I can say about the course that I didn’t already say about English last semester because they were pretty much the same course with a few changes.

Anyway, as soon as I get my diploma on Tuesday I will officially be through with high school, and that is a nice feeling.
It’s been nice having you as a teacher for the past year.

This was my favourite movie out of the four that we watched from the modern drama unit.

I thought the diologue was extremely clever and I also thought that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were two very well thought out characters.

Now for the questions..
- I feel that the movie both ridicules Hamlet and pays homage to it. This is because for the most part it does stay true to the actual story of Hamlet. At the same time there are certain incidents where it seems like Hamlet is being made fun of. For example when Hamlet is suposedly crazy and is pretending to be a rooster.
- According to the Player’s definition of a tragedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot be considered a tragedy. This is because while Ron. and Guild. (a.k.a. the good) end up unlucky, the bad do not necessarily end up unhappy.
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are lost and not caught up in the action of Hamlet because they can not figure out what is going on. Instead they are trying to observe different scenes and figure out what is suppose to be happening not only with themselves but with Hamlet. The result is the two characters constantly asking questions about everything imaginable.

I wanted to save this blogpost until I saw all of the poets.

There were a lot of poets that I didn’t like and a lot that I liked a lot for different reasons.

Like:
I like Sylvia Plath because her poems are deep and meaninful. I feel that Plath is a good writer because she doesn’t write the kind of teenage angst, high school is so tough, fake depression poetry kind of poems. Her poems are personal, and powerful and most importantly truthful. Daddy and Lady Lazarus are by far my favourites from Plath.

I liked E.E. Cummings because I had never seen poetry done in his style. It doesn’t really feel like poetry, it feels more like a mind game or a puzzle. I don’t get a lot out of his poems in terms of expression and feeling (but that’s not necessarily what he’s trying to do), either way he is original so I appreciate his poems.

Edgar Allan Poe is obviously on the like side… He was probably the first poet I started looking into back in grade four or five, simply because my parents own his complete works. I prefer his short stories, but he was a great poet. I think that his poetry was really the start of confessional poetry because he put so much of himself into his poems.

Finally, Allen Ginsberg is awesome. Just like all the other beat poets, he’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind. Ballad of the Skeletons is truly brilliant because he attacks all of these different topics in a satirical way which is both hilarious and thought provoking.

Said the Junkie skeleton
Can’t we get a fix?
Said the Big Brother skeleton
Jail the dirty pricks

Dislike:
I’m not going to rant too much about this, but I didn’t care for Yeats, Dickenson, T.S. Elliot was alright…
but my least favourite has to go to R.W. Emerson whom I studied in English last semester. I just find him so extremely boring that it’s painful. Clearly he loves nature and is a little bit crazy because he often acts like he is apart of nature.. anyway when I read Emerson I find that he repeats himself a lot because he never seems to go outside the nature theme, and he always acts like he’s some old wise man reflecting on life. Personally I think he’s not creative enough to write about something that matters.

The following is a blog post that I had planned on posting earlier:

The themes in the plays we studied are pretty common throughout the majority of the plays. For example, revenge is evident in the Revengers Tragedy, Titus Andronicus, the Spanish Tragedy.

Race is also an important theme in both Titus Andronicus and Othello. In Othello, people such as Iago distrust Othello because of his race. In Titus Andronicus, Aaron is the most vile, tyrannical and viscious person in the play and he is also black. Obviously Shakespeare did this on purpose because there were so few black characters in any of his plays.

Madness is a reoccuring motif in Titus Andronicus and King Lear. Whether it was Aaron, Tamora, Titus, or Chiron and Demetrius, there was certainly a lot of madness is Titus Andronicus. As for King Lear, clearly King Lear went completely mad.

Overall when the Elizebethan plays are compared a lot of similarities can be found in either themes, symbols or motifs.

P.S. – It could have been because it was the only play that I read out of the 8 that we studied, but I feel that Titus Andronicus was by far the most exciting, shocking, and funny (in a bizarre theatrical frame of mind) “Witness my knife’s sharp point!”

All that’s left for the course is some blog posts, a short essay and the 15% exam. Kind of crazy…

- The Time Machine was very dull… my biggest problem with the book is that it had potential but it never reached the full level of excitement that it could have hit, especially towards the end. When the time traveller finds the matches and weapons it just seemed way too convenient and easy… and the rest of his journey where he sees the giant crab was just pointless….
- The Invisable man was equally dull, but the Island of Dr. Moreau was pretty cool (at least in terms of the ideas). Either way I think I found some common themes that I can use towards my questions/essay.
For example: would people abuse the powers of time travel and invisability if they had the capability?
Is it morally acceptable to experiment on animals and humans? (The Nazis certainly thought so)
Is animal testing unethical? Moreau uses the excuse that he only inflicts pain on animals for scientific research.. is that a good enough reason to cause pain on other animals?

Most of the questions come from the Island of Dr. Moreau because they are great discussion questions since they often involve ethics…
Essay will be completed soon enough!

Today I had my poetry presentation. I don’t feel like writing a lot about this.. but I’ll point out that I was happy with how I did and I think that the class did a good job with participating. Alyssa did a good job with coming up with some activities to keep the class entertained. Other than that I have to say that I’m extremely satisfied that there is no more group work.

So yeah overall it went well.. and I’m happy with the result.

So I’ve been reading the novels and somewhat enjoying them. The fact that I don’t love sci-fi doesn’t really matter though. I have started to develop a thesis regarding three different concepts from the three novels by H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, The Invisable Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau). By the way, apparently they made a shitty remake about the Island of Dr. Moreau starring Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando. *I say it’s shitty because I havn’t watched it and IMDB gave it 4.1 out of 10.

Anyway. The three concepts that I will be discussing are: time travelling, invisability, and the creation of a perfect race. Obviously these ideas come up in the three novels a lot and are very interesting if applied to certain things (such as the government? yeah I think so!). I am certain that I can make a strong essay out of these points and most likely have enough info for at least 6 pages.

In closing, H.G. Wells isn’t my favourite author but I do find his writing very interesting. He takes some ideas that are very unrealistic and displays them to the reader as if they are real but we just didn’t think about it enough beforehand – such as time travelling. So yeah overall H.G. Wells is pretty cool.

I was pretty productive this weekend… The school year is coming to an end and there are only a few projects left and then the final exam. I feel that I’ve done a good job so far and think that the poetry presentation and the essay for the novels should also be good.

While I was working on the Sylvia Plath presentation I was checking out a few different poems. I was initially going to skip “Daddy” because I think it’s her most obvious poem. However when I read “Lady Lazarus” I realized that there are a lot of similarities in terms of allusions, themes (and obviously writing style). So anyway I have now chosen four of Plath’s poems that I wish to show to the class. I just need to get Alyssa’s poems included in the presentation and come up with some activities for the class.

We finished our Titus Andronicus presentation today and I have to say that I am very happy with the result. Often when people present the majority of the class is confused by the characters at the end. However, considering people have never read the play they were able to remember the order of the events in the play, the characters, and deaths. This was really good because it proved that all of our different ways of interacting with the class worked. For example, the slideshow, the videos, activities, discussions and maybe even the little pictures made with paint had a subconscious impact on the students ability to remember everything. I felt more comfortable presenting this topic compared to the post-modernism presentation because it wasn’t as hard to get my point across, and people were therefore less confused. Looking back there isn’t too much I would change. I think as a group we did a very good job meeting our objectives.

Today my group presents Titus Andronicus to the class. I am certain that this will go well because we have our slide show prepared as well as movie clips and activities. I don’t think that it will go any longer than one day but it might.

On May 28th Alyssa and I present our Sylvia Plath presentation. There is still work that needs to go into that project, but I’m feeling less worried knowing that my ISU essay is done.

Other than that I have to write the essay for the novels and I also have to finish the questions for “A Streetcar Named Desire”.