MAAN-Stereotypes

There are many stereotypes in the play Much Ado About Nothing some of them being gender and class. Women in this world are stereotyped as being inferior to men, and this is shown in the play especially in the relationship between Hero and Claudio. Hero is overlooked and she is hardly asked her opinion, even just an object to be won. This is shown when the Prince tells Claudio “Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won” (2.1.249-250). She is simply shown as an object and not a person. Shakespeare was trying to show the audience that even though someone might not be what they seem on the outside, that is no reason not to trust them. In the middle Claudio did not believe Hero’s word, and I think Shakespeare was trying to say to the audience that one should not disregard someone simply because of their gender.


There is also the stereotype of class that is shown through the comic relief of Dogberry, Verges and the watchmen. Dogberry clearly has not been educated because he keeps using his words incorrectly. When he is talking to the watchmen and he says “Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him” (3.3.55-56). He says “more” when that clearly makes no sense and he should have said “less”. I think here Shakespeare is simply showing what he truly believes, that those of inferior classes will always be inferior. There are many stereotypes in the play Much Ado About Nothing.

Lies

There are many reasons for one to lie. To hide something, to confuse others, or to be mean to others. But are any of these reasons justifiable and right? This is the moral question. In Much Ado About Nothing the characters lie for all of these reasons. In the beginning of the second scene everyone is at a masked party and so they do not know who each other are, and they lie to one another. When Antonio and Ursula enter the scene, Ursula tells him that he is Antonio, and he lies to her and says “At a word, I am not” (II.1.91). He lies to her to hide something, but is this lie moral? There are many times when people lie to others to hide something.

Another common reason why people will lie is to confuse others. There is an entire scene where the Prince, Claudio and Leonato are lying to Benedick, they are telling him that Beatrice is in love with him, even though she is not. The Prince starts off the whole conversation by saying “What was it your daughter told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signor Benedick?”(II.3.85-86). The entire conversation is based on a lie, but is it justified? There are many times in this play that people lie, but are they justified by doing so?

Poem

"The Arrow and the Song" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


1.I shot an arrow into the air,
2.It fell to earth, I knew not where;
3.For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
4.Could not follow it in its flight.

5.I breathed a song into the air,
6.It fell to earth, I knew not where;
7.For who has sight so keen and strong,
8.That it can follow the flight of song?

9.Long, long afterward, in an oak
10.I found the arrow, still unbroke;
11.And the song, from beginning to end,
12.I found again in the heart of a friend.

In "The arrow and the song" by Henry Wadsworth Longefellow, he uses a central metaphor to compare loss and sadness to friendship. In his first two stanzas he talks about how he shoots off an arrow and then he looses it, and how he is not sure where it is going and he looses it and he is sad, but he doesn't know what to do. "Could not follow it's flight" (4). He is puzzeled and he does not know figuratively where to look for it. But then in the second stanza he talks about how he sang a song and it was lost, and he was said but he says "For who has sight so keen and strong,/That it can follow the flight of a song?"(7-8). He is very sad that he has "lost" the song and he is puzzeled again with the song as he was with the arrow.



In the last stanza however, he finds that even though he had lost the arrow it was "still unbroke" (10). And it was the same with the song "from begining to end"(11). But the last line of the poem really brings it together, "I found again in the heart of a friend" (12). I think that what he means by loosing the arrow and the song is that sometimes in a friendship we have arguments and things don't always work out exactly how we have planned, and we are can leave things in a mess. But, as he says in the last stanza, they are still unbroke, which means that the friendships that we had before are unbroke, they are still as they were before we had a fight, and that we need to treasure friendships. By using this central metaphor, Henry Wadsworth Longefellow is showing that friendship can be difficult but it will always be there and we need to treasure it.

1st Quarter

As I look back at the past few months, I think i did relatively well this first quarter. I feel like I imporved my format and how I write a better thesis than I had learned in the past. I beleive that although I have learned much about format and such I have also improved my skills for writing that I already had.
The classroom enviornment that we are developing in our classroom is an envirnment of learning and of being able to share new ideas. I like the enviornment we have because we are not afriad that people will not like our ideas. I think my goal for second quarter is to reach above the standard I left with first quarter.

Outside Reading #5

Jacob shows the growth from childhood to adulthood in the novel New Moon. He makes the transformation from boy to werewolf. There is a huge change in his physical appearance but also in his choice of comrades. Sam Uley is a boy that lives in the same city as Jacob, and Jacob considers Sam to be a ‘gang leader’ but not someone that Jacob would want to interact with. Jacob expresses only negative emotion towards with Sam because Sam has recently stolen Jacob’s friend Embry. After Embry has been taken by Sam’s friendship Jacob tries to explain to Bella “ ‘Embry said that the council actually meets with Sam” (Meyer 173). He says this to Bella to try to make himself believe that Sam is rightly taking Embry’s friendship away from him and that Sam is having a positive influence in the community. Before Jacob turns into a werewolf he believes that Sam is an evil influence on his friend and that he is not at all helpful to the community.
Jacob’s view on friendship changes after he is matured to adulthood. When Jacob is changed into a werewolf, he does not speak to Bella for a long time because he can not tell her what he is. Bella starts to wonder and eventually she gives up wondering and she drives to his house. She bursts in and demands an explanation, but Jacob simply denies the sentiments that he has spoken to her just weeks before. Bella is extremely confused and in desperation she tells him“ ‘Sam Uley says Jacob can’t be my friend anymore’ ”(Meyer 247). But we find out later in the book that Jacob and Sam and the other werewolves are simply trying to help the community and Jacob’s opinions of their doings change drastically. Jacob’s maturing to a werewolf stage changes his perspective on many things.

Outside Reading #4

What most commonly motivates people to overcome obstacles are the other people in their life and those people’s reactions to their actions. One of the major obstacles that Bella has to overcome in the novel is the fact that Edward does not love her anymore. This is extremely hard for her to come to grips with this, and she is in great depression for many months before she is finally motivated by her father, to defeat this obstacle. One day after Bella has been depressed for months, her father Charlie says “’That’s it, Bella! I’m sending you home’”(meyer 94). Charlie and Bella’s mother were divorced when Bella was very young and she has lived with her mother for most of her life but now that her father is threatening to send her back with her mother she knows that she has gone too far. This overreaction of Charlie’s motivates Bella to overcome the obstacle of Edward leaving her.
People are also motivated to overcome their own obstacles by the actions of those around them. At the end of the book, Jacob had to overcome the obstacle that he and Bella could only be friends. The way that Bella starts to recover is becoming friends with Jacob and they he builds a motorcycle for her. To overcome the obstacle that Bella has created for him, he gives back the motorcycle “…what was parked in the driveway next to the cruiser, shiny, bright red, impossible to miss. My motorcycle flaunting itself in the driveway”(Meyer 553). By this action, Jacob is telling Bella that he accepts that they can only be friends. But then Bella responds a little over the top and that motivates him to give to overcome the obstacle that she has set up for him. What most commonly motivates people to overcome obstacles are the other people in their life and those people’s reactions to their actions.

Outside Reading #3

There are many things that cause conflict in our lives. Love is one of the major things that causes conflict in our lives, as demonstrated by both New Moon and the movie we watched in class, the 400 Blows. In the 400 Blows, Antoine does not have a very loving relationship with his mother and this causes a lot of conflict in both their lives. It causes Antoine to have a better relationship with his friend René than his mother. He starts to skip school and other negative things with his friend, however if he had had a good relationship with his mother he would not have done these things. Antoine steals a typewriter because that is what René told him to, and this leads to a huge conflict. His father believes that he should be taken to prison and his mother then has to deal with not having had a good relationship with Antoine that the consequences of her actions. This is an example of a conflict that occurs when love is not present.
In New Moon love causes conflict in the lives of Bella, Jacob and Edward. Bella loves Edward and so when he leaves in the beginning of the novel her heart is broken. But because Bella was left with the feeling that Edward was no longer in love with her, this feeling causes many conflicts. She starts to become friends with Jacob who becomes a werewolf, and little did she know that werewolves and vampires were enemies. They were such great enemies that when Jacob becomes a werewolf one day he says to Bella “Vampires don’t count as people” (310). While he was referring to a vampire that was trying to murder Bella that he and his werewolf pack had killed, Bella knew that underneath everything he was talking about Edward. This hatred has a huge adds immensely to the already complicated conflict between Bella, Jacob, Edward and vampires and werewolves. Bella’s one dream is to become a vampire so that she can be immortal and be able to be with Edward forever. In the beginning of the book, on her birthday Edward asks here what she wants and she replies “You know what I want” (24). So when she finds out that Jacob, her best friend will become her enemy if she becomes a vampire, this raises even more conflict. In New Moon, there is a lot of conflict because of the love that the characters have for one another.