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.

Analysis of a photo

Outside Reading #2

There are both positive and negative consequences from rebellion. In the novel Bella is going through a hard time coping with Edward’s loss and so in rebellion she units herself with Jacob. One of the negative consequences that comes from her attachment to Jacob is the miscommunication that they can only be friends. Jacob thinks that they can be more that this but Bella knows that this is not possible. One time when Jacob expresses this emotion Bella thinks to herself “I wanted to cut my tongue out. I hadn’t said one word that was a lie, but I should have lied. The truth was wrong, it would hurt him. I would let him down.” (218) This is one of the negative consequences that comes from Bella’s attachment to Jacob because she is rebelling Edward’s loss.
There are also positive consequences however to this rebelling of Bella’s. One of the positive consequences would be that Bella is not moping as her father, Charlie thinks that she did inbetween Edward and Jacob. This would be the instant gratification of Bella’s friendship with Jacob. One time Charlie asks Bella subconsciously “Is he(Jacob) coming here, or are you going there?” (330) Because Bella and Jacob spend so much time together Charlie just assumes that that is what Bella is up to. There are both positive and negative consequences to Bella’s rebellion of Edward’s loss.

Outside Reading #1

In New Moon, a novel by Stephanie Meyer, it is a sequel to Twilight. The main character is a girl named Bella, she had just moved to Forks in the first book. In this novel is a very determined, but also she is sadened by an even that transpires in the begining of the novel. One of the other main characters is named Edward, who is a vampire but of a special kind. In the first novel Bella and Edward fall in love and Edward saves Bella from an untimely death. But in the begining of the New Moon Edward leaves Bella. This event caused Bella to be quite distressed, she starts to have nightmares but she also excels in her studdies because she does not spend any more time with Edward.
But in this part of the novel that is so sadenening for Bella another young man whom she has met before but they have not had a stong acquantaince until then, starts to play a major role in her life. Jacob is a native American, his father is a friend of Bella's father. Bella's father and friends are starting to worry about Bella until Jacob comes. He brings joy and hope into her life, and she finds it very easy to converse with him. Overall there are many struggles in the book. One being Bella's struggle with the loss of Edward. Another, her easy fascination with Jacob.

Memoir

Why do people write memoirs?What power is there in telling our own stories?

I beleive that people write their own memoirs for their benifit and for other's benifit. One of the reasons why people write memoirs for their own benefit is to able to vent about whatever they were writing about and be able to work of some steam. Another reason why people write memoirs is so that they can remember what they have done in their life so that they can think back and laugh on funny experiences. A third reason why I think that people write about memoirs is so that they can put their experiences into perpective and think through their actions.
I think that people also write memoirs for the benefit of others. One of the ways that it would benefit others is that others could learn from their mistakes so that they would not make the same wrong choices. Or it could have the opposite effect, for example if in a memoir there was a very exciting event one might want to do it in their life as well. Abnother way that writing a memoir could benefit others is that others can lear about the lives of the one who is writing for the memoir just to know some things about them. A last reason why others would benifit from this is that they would be more able to glance into the perspective of the person who wrote the memoir or the time period or circumstance under which they write such a memoir. I beleive that a person who write a memoir to benifit themselves and others in these ways.

Richard hungers for many things in his life. Some of these are hunger for food which leads to hunger for money and hunger for love and learning. Richard hungers for food, which he says most often that he goes without. "There were hours when hunger would make me weak, " (Wright 127). This hunger for for food leads him to need a job to buy food. He has many jobs throughout the course of the novel. One of them is a paper route by a newspaper that supported the KKK, but he didn't realize it when he was selling it. Another job that he had was working for a family before school and after school by milking cows and cleaning and such. He also had many other jobs that helped his satisfy his hunger for food.
Richard also had a hunger for love from his family. Ever since the beginning of the novel we know that his family was very abusive and they did not raise him in a good enviornment. For example when his Uncle Tom and his family come to live at granny's house, Uncle Tom's family avoids him and Richard feels the abusive disregard for him and he hungers to be loved. I think one of the reasons why he wrote the paper that he wrote that was published was because he wanted to be accepted and loved by his family, but he was also seeking education and learning. It seems that through the many times that Richard moves he is continuously in school and he seems to hunger for learning. At the begining of the novel when Richard and his brother and mother are living at Granny's house with that one girl, Richard hungers to learn how to read and he begs her to teach him how to read. Richard hungers for food which leads him to look for many jobs, he also hungers for love from his family and learning.

first blog assignment!!

Is Richard a bad boy? When should behavior be blamed on the person and when should it be blamed on the environment?
Richard in my opinion is not at bad boy because of the circumstances that he is in. His lack of love from his family members and his lack of knowlege are the two main reasons why he does certain things that people might think make him a "bad boy". When he lights that house on fire that is when this is an example of his lack of family love in his home. For if he had had more love in his family his parents probably would have kept more control over him. However he also has a lack of the knowlege that if he take fire out of the fireplace and puts it to the curtains the entire house will be aflame. So in this instance Richard this shows that Richard has a lack of both family love and lack of knowlege.
Another time that Richard is taken for a bad boy is when he says that stuff to his grandmother that is not all that appropriate. This demonstartes a lack of knowlege of what he is saying because it is apparent that he does not know that meaning. Also when his father leaves his mother and his whole family Richard feels the lack of family love that makes him. Richard is sometimes taken for a bad boy but that is only because he has a lack of family love and support and has a lack of knowlege of some things of the world.

welcome

I'm trying to get my blog up and running so i really don't know what i'm supposed to say.