And Again...

... again I look back on some past writings, this time, the whole year's worth.

Wow, where do I start? The year is almost over, having passed in an unbelievable blur of action and emotion. There were essays, textbooks, sports, and friends to deal with, and many, many, blog posts to do. So now the question is: what the heck do I want to say in my final? There are so many different prompts to choose from, 11 of them to be exact. I suppose that, after some though, I’ll choose prompts, 11, 10, and if I have time, 5.

So what exactly are the prompts? Here, have a comprehensive list to go along with your reading:

5. What's my usual revision/editing process? How do I go from rough to final draft?
10. Where do I get my ideas for blog post topics? What inspires me to write?
11. How is the open-ended writing I do on my blog different from the more structured academic assignments I write?

Shall we continue?

So, I’m gonna be awful and go backwards, starting with question 11. My more open-ended writing is much like this post, more flowing and imbued with my voice (whether that is good or bad is neither here nor there). Whereas my more formal academic posts are stiffer, use more “big words” and tend to be (honestly) a bit boring. Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself:

“What does it mean to be college ready? I believe that it’s basically being able to function in higher-level classes, meaning that you know the basic skills for each subject you take, and aren’t afraid to put them to use. Plus you’re mature enough to get along with people you wouldn’t usually interact with, and able to schedule and prioritize. “ (from this post)

Now tell me my posts aren’t boring... and if you STILL disagree... well... then you’re weird. Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that in academics, my voice becomes too formal and I lose a bit, or a lot, of who I am. I lose my humour, I lose... well, I’ve run out of ideas, but you get the point.

Summary:
My more academic posts and free posts differ in that one is more structured, with less of my voice and a more formal tone (academic) while the other posts are more... me. They have my sense of humour and a voice I think I’d actually speak in (free).

And so here I go jumping around again. Following question 11, we jump to question five:
What's my usual revision/editing process? How do I go from rough
to final draft?

I tend to follow a more unconventional writing process. For posts such as this one, where I need to have various quotes and such, I start with the filler, then the commentary, THEN I go back and add in my quotes. After all of that, I got back and tweak it here and there before proclaiming it acceptable. Basically, I work better backwards. I can use this post as an example, I started with my questions, my basic skeleton, then I added in what I wished to say about my writing, before adding connecting paragraphs and now I’m adding in my quotes. Until I add my quotes, in my drafts, you usually find this:

“(insert quote here)” (example in this post)

What happens is that as I write each  post, and the commentary, I have a quote, or section of the book in mind, and until I say what I want to say, I don’t know quite what quote I want, what section of the text I need. Usually, after I find the quote, it all flows quite well and I’m happy with it.

And for my favorite question, #10, what inspires you to write?

Well, a lot of things inspire me to write. Though I don’t have any particular quotes from my works on this blog, I do have some examples for you.

I write about anything that comes to mind, be it something from class discussions, like my post on Evolution... or something like articles I found online. Now, these two are very old posts, posts that I actually mentioned in LAST semester’s final, I talked about them being sloppy and unprofessional. Which is ironic in some ways, because in this post, I’m talking about making my speech LESS professional and more me.

Some more older posts that come to mind when I think of various inspirations are posts like the one on writing style, or the one about movies. Both came from some everyday observations I made. You know, observations are most commonly where I get my inspiration, sometimes, when I’m by myself, or my friends are talking to other people, I sit back and marvel at how people interact with each other, how we talk, walk, everything. People are fascinating, So commonly, it’s people that inspire me to write.

Something else that I actually find hilarious, is what inspires the titles of these blog posts. Some of them are seemingly random, having no rhyme or reason to them, other than that fact that I was lost as far as titles and named them after the first thing I saw.
Such examples include: Oh Look, The Bird's Eating Again and The Cat With The Crossed Paws.

Both are definitely random, and not necessarily my finest moments.

In some other posts, I’ve complained about class discussions, drama, substitutes, and even religion. Most, if not all of the above posts relate to the school discussions and goings-on in some way.

And, my most favorite post of all, my post on the prisoner’s dilemma.

And right about here is where I should wrap all this up.
In conclusion, this year’s writing has been interesting, to say the least, varying from class works to impromptu writings on whatever happens to cross my mind. My writing style is a little, well, a lot, all over the place. And my style changes a lot depending on the subject, and how tired I am at the time. So that’s it... perhaps I’ll see you all over the summer or something, when I finally get bored enough to pick up writing again. It shouldn't take too horribly long for that to happen.

Oh, Those Purple Flowers

In the novel The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, there are two sisters. These sisters, Celie and Nettie, aren’t very far apart age wise, but in experiences, they can be polar opposites. They started in the same place, on a farm with their Pa, (who later turns out to be their step-pa and actually unrelated to them) who rapes Celie when his new wife fell ill. After this, he set his sights on Nettie, but Celie manages to refocus his attention on her, saving her sister, but causing Celie to become pregnant, twice. While traveling their two paths, Celie and Nettie each experience different iterations of the same thing, faith in religion, gender inequality, and general independence.

One of the big recurring themes in this novel is religion, or, more specifically, the faith of Celie and Nettie. After a while of writing everything that happens to her to god, Celie eventually loses faith, seeing as bad things continue to happen to her with no intervention from said god. When she realises that her faith has waned, her first letter starts like this:

“Dear Nettie, I don’t write to go no more. I write to you” (p.192)

Not only does this personify her waning faith in religion, but it shows her unwavering faith that her sister will overcome hardship to return to her. Before she wrote to a god, now she writes to her sister, that says a lot about how highly she thinks of Nettie. Nettie on the other hand, never loses her faith. In fact, her missionary work in Africa most likely worked to increase her faith in god. Nettie expresses this faith when she say this in one of her letters:

“Oh Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing... pray for us” (p. 185)

Here she points out to Celie that not believing in anything is a terrible thing. It pulls a person apart. Is this true for everyone? Probably not. But in these girl’s lives it would appear that their faith is vital. Without it, they won’t wake up the next day and move on with their lives. She also mentions praying... while in these days it just means keep us in your thoughts, I think that Nettie actually meant for Celie to stop and pray to the lord for them, believing that it could help Nettie’s ailing friend.

Within the book The Color Purple there is quite a bit of gender inequality. Women are viewed as not much more than tools for the men. Tools to do the jobs they don’t want to do, things to beat when they’re angry, things they can do whatever they want with. But not all women. In this book, Celie and Nettie start in the same place, but while Celie ends up with one of these heathen slobs previously described, Nettie ends up as a missionary in Africa, doing what she pleases. One brutal and stark reality of this book is physical abuse. Most women are beaten, but only most women. Sofia, Harpo’s wife (Harpo being Celie’s son-in-law), thinks enough of the world to fight tooth and nail with anyone trying to hit her, so when Celie advises Harpo to beat Sofia, trouble arises:

“Then what you say it for? she ast... ‘cause I’m jealous... [why]?...[because you can] fight. I say” (p.40)

When Harpo tries to beat Sofia into minding him, she retaliates, hitting him just as hard as he hit her, and Harpo, being who he is, tells her that Celie gave him this ill-fated advice. And so Sofia confronts Celie, in the hopes of an explanation. It is at this point that we realize just how damaged Celie is, and just how brainwashed most of their society is. Later on Shug finds out about Mr. beating Celie. Why? she asks. And Celie says:

“[He beat me] for being me and not you” (p.75)

and here is where one of our more fortunate characters realizes just how bad it could be. While all of this is happening, Nettie is in Africa, where the missionaries treat women as almost equals, especially the pair of missionaries Nettie travels with. Consequently, we get this stark contrast of Nettie never being beaten, and Celie being beaten constantly.

In this novel , Nettie and Celie both have very different situations. Not all of them pertained to gender inequality or religion though. There are a few points of comparison that would fit better into the miscellaneous category. For one thing, while Nettie gets a chance to overcome the common gender inequality, her sister Celie never gets such a chance. For example, Nettie is allowed to make her own choices in life; who she marries, where she goes, how she lives.

“But Nettie never gave up. Next thing I know [she has] Miss Beasley at our house trying to talk to Pa.” (p. 10)

This exemplifies Nettie’s independence by expressing her ability to fight for something she believed in. She believed that Celie should continue school, but when Pa said no, instead of giving up, she fought. She pushed back, unafraid of the consequences.Nettie and Celie both started in the same place and the same time, which just makes their radically different lives even more interesting. While Celie is raped and bears the children of her stepfather, Nettie manages to escape his attention. When Nettie catches the eye of a widower at church, their paths converge once again.

“She good with children, Pa say... Mr. say, that cow still coming?” (p.11)

Mr. ____ expresses interest in Celie only after he is informed that he cannot be married off to Nettie. While being offered to Mr., with Pa prattling on about her good “selling points”, Mr. has more interest in her dowry, or inheritance. Her dowry was simple, a single cow that she had bonded with. And this single cow, means more to Mr. than the girl herself. So poor Celie sacrifices herself once again so that her sister can lead a better life. However, Nettie has to return later in Celie's marriage to Mr. as something of a refugee... running from their "lowdown dirty dog" of a step father, who, with Celie gone, had advanced on Nettie. And when Mr.’s “affection” for Nettie remanifests and the girl rejects him, Mr. gets mad. He boots Nettie from his house, yelling after her that she might as well be dead to Celie, for all the contact they’ll make from that point forward.

So in Celie and Nettie’s lives, they each experience different things with similar situations such as general independence, religious faith, and gender inequality. With text and examples from the book, this essay has taken a look at each of these things more in depth. And what has it found? This essay has discovered that Celie is unselfish, giving herself up to save Nettie often. We have learned that Nettie is the support that keeps Celie going, that keystone that if you remove it, the whole archway come tumbling down on your head. The author, Alice Walker, did a good job of pointing out to us how childhood beliefs can affect our entire lives, of how the seemingly little thing, can become these huge things we never saw coming.

Sift and Search for That we Cannot Understand

 (Kite Runner Review)
Prompts:
2. For what audience(s) is this book intended, and how can you tell? (in other words, for whom would you recommend this book?)
3. What are the weaknesses of this book, in your opinion?

You’d be amazed at the controversy this book brings to literature circle discussions. The book in question is a novel called The Kite Runner,written by a man named Khaled Hosseini. This book is all about betrayal, redemption, and a twisted war. The main characters are two boys named Hassan and Amir, whom are the best of friends. Because of his roots, Hassan is hurt and humiliated, and Amir doesn’t do anything to stop it. Overcome with guilt for not helping, Amir pushes Hassan away, not realizing that this wasn’t the right course of action. A while after Hassan is hurt, the Russians invade Kabul, their hometown. Hassan having been gone a good amount of time, only Amir and his father are left to flee to Pakistan and eventually America. Amir spends the rest of his life in America, marrying a beautiful woman while living there. After living many years in America, Amir gets called back to his hometown to salvage what he could of his past...

This book is intended for the teenage/young adult audience. This is clearly shown by the content, language used, and length. The content of this book revolves around some very messed up incidents in two children’s lives, things that, if someone younger than (about) highschool age would be horrible traumatized to read. The language is clear and well put together, and lacks (thankfully) redundancy. For example:

“A look of disgust swept across his rain-soaked face. It was the same look he’d given me when, as a kid, I’d fall, scrape my knees, and cry. It was the crying that brought it on then, the crying that brought it on now.” (157)

I particularly liked this scene because of the vivid detail that doesn’t use too many words to convey. It shows pain, a bleary depressing background, and a relationship, all in just two sentences. It amazes me how well authors are able to put their thoughts together like this. I must say I’m jealous. There are other, probably better examples of Hosseini’s interesting writing style. For one thing, the book is in first person, a risky way to write because you can’t have a character know too much before things happen, also because of his mixed use of Afghani and English in the dialogue. The use of mixed languages provides an intimacy to the book, I suppose it makes it seems more like you are in the book when reading it.The length of this book is also an indicator. It is not often that I see children younger than at least middle school age reading books this long. It’s a sorry truth that our younger generations don’t read books much longer than about 300 pages because they simply don’t want to focus on it that long. Because of this fact, something as simple as the length of this book indicates that it’s intended audience is teenagers and young adults.

Though I greatly enjoyed this book, I felt it had just a couple weaknesses. In all honesty, I felt that the conflict with Assef is left unresolved. Sure, Sohrab and Amir triumph in one battle, but the war was not yet won.

“The whole world rocking up and down, swooping side to side, I hobbled down the steps leaning on Sohrab. From above Assef’s screams went on and on, the cries of a wounded animal” (291)

“The screams went on and on, the cries of a wounded animal” This is a perfect example of how they did not conquer the problem of Assef. They wounded him badly and escaped his wrath, but they didn’t find a way of removing him from the back of their minds for a good long time. I’m not saying they should kill him (though after what he’s done...) but the author should have at least found a way of getting rid of him forever. With this things he’s done, Assef would be given twenty life sentences and the death penalty. Am I the only one with the feeling that there’s something missing at this point in the plot? Sure, Amir reaches his goal. Sure, Sohrab escapes. But we never deal with Assef, who brought the original issue from the beginning. From the point where conflict began in this book, the story branches, intertwining with other segments from time to time, but still branching enough for there to be clear subplots and subtext. The Assef subplot (from now on referred to as “Subplot A”) has a beginning, a middle, and no end. Where there should have been an end to Subplot A, there was an intersection between the main plot and the subplot, perfectly reasonable, if the subplot had been resolved there, instead of standing still for the rest of the book, making us wonder if Assef would show up again, patched up and thirsty for blood at any moment. So overall, the subplot needs a bit of work, and this is my main issue with this book, my only complaint.

In conclusion, though I loved this book, I also had issues with it (love-hate relationship, no?). But many pros and cons of this book that were unmentioned were born of the literature group discussions held during class time and I feel that I should have branched out my own writing more into those subjects. Controversy was a popular part of any discussion, as it is in general life. Whether this is a good guy or a bad guy, if he’ll help or hinder, whose fault it was that something-or-other happened, etc. These were just a few subjects in need of recognition that not touched upon in this piece. I fear I’m rambling, repeating myself time-and-time again as I try desperately to convey how important it is to realize it’s not just my opinion that matters, nor even yours. It is the opinion of the masses that will win this battle of controversy in the end.

Society: Is it What it Seems?

The 1937 novella, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck is about a pair of migrant workers, George Milton and Lennie Small. These two are seeking to make a stake and get themselves a small piece of land to call their own. In their world, it is rare to see two guys who are like brothers, who care what happens to the other one, so they are seen as something of an oddity. The main conflict in Of Mice and Men is character(s) vs. Society because George and Lennie are on the run from a community that rejects them because of a single mistake, because of a man named Curley, and ex-boxer turned farmhand who is bitter and ready to fly into action at any second, and because of Lennie’s disability.

So far, George and Lennie have escaped Weed and are in the clearing camping, when Lennie says something that set’s off George:

“You crazy son-of-a-bitch. You keep me in hot water all the time... Jus’ wanted to feel that girl’s dress - Well how the hell did she know you jus’ wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold on like it was a mouse. She yells and we got to hide in a irrigation ditch all day with guys lookin’ for us, and we got to sneak out in the dark and get outta the country... ” (p. 11)

Well, this shows that the main conflict in this book is character vs. society because it mentions how society has a block against trying to understand George and Lennie’s situation. Society believes that they are something of a danger, something that if messed with will (for lack of a better phrase) bite you in the ass. Society sees George and Lennie as a threat, because George is quick and smart, and Lennie, on the other hand, is large and fairly dumb. They believe that there is no way that their intentions are what they say they are. They’re seen as possible con men, judging by something the boss says later in the book. And this girl, this girl did not wait for an explanation, she just screamed and threw the boys into a pot of hot water from which they could have died trying to escape...

George and Lennie have just gotten their job and one of the stablehands’ dogs had puppies. Lennie has been given one, and stubbornly tries to have it sleep in his bed with him. After a sharp reprimand, Slim comments:

Slim had not moved. His calm eyes followed Lennie out the door. “Jesus,” he said “He’s jes’ like a kid, ain’t he.”

    “Sure he’s jes’ like a kid” (pg. 43)

This certainly shows society’s misunderstanding of Lennie’s disability. Earlier in the book, George actually has to tell a lie to get Lennie the job because society doesn’t like “Lennie’s type” He tells the boss that Lennie had been kicked in the head by a horse as a kid, and that his brain damage was not of natural causes. In some ways it makes you wonder why being kicked in the head is more acceptable than being born with a disability, and in other ways it shows people’s intolerance towards those different from them, especially those who “aren’t quite right in the head”

It’s been a while since they arrived at the farm, and Curley is lookin’ for his wife, whom he believes is sneaking around with Slim. He finds Slim, alone, applying tar to a hoof. Slim scares him for his mistake and everyone heads back to the bunk house. The guys are making fun of Curley while Lennie mulls over the prospect of their own plot:

... Lennie was still smiling with delight at the memory of the ranch.

    Curley stepped over to Lennie like a terrier. “What the hell you laughin’ at?” (p. 62)

Wow, not only does this show some underlying superiority problems in Curley, this and what happens next show how the ranch hands are unable or unwilling to mess with Curely too much for fear of losing their jobs. It goes to follow that Curley attacks Lennie, and when no one moves in to help, George orders Lennie to fight back in anyway he can. Lennie crushes Curley’s hand for his trouble. The hands have to scare Curley into not telling on Lennie and getting him fired, therefore showing that society, though not exactly against them, is unwilling to help them because Curley is the boss’s son and can destroy lives with a single word.

Overall this book truly shows society’s inhibitions toward a) Lennie’s disability and b) George and Lennie’s relationship. Curley is one such person in society, rejecting Lennie and George out of hand because they look different, the community in Weeds is another example, and lastly, Lennie’s disability is the cause of much strife withing society.

Destructive View

Thesis: Q is overall unimpressed with the world around him

Q has teenager-like destructive attitude towards the world. After he loses the rest of his species, he doesn’t show as much remorse as he should.

“... period of great death ... long migration that saved me led me through a cemetary of fleshless carcasses ... “ (pg. 97)

Instead of showing large amounts of remorse, he has a sort of destructive tone to to this, he says it matter-of-factly, with an underlying tone of “the deserved it”. He doesn’t even bother trying to bury the dead, give them a proper good-bye... he just seems mad. He’s walking through something of a post apocalyptic world, and he’s not upset. It seems odd no?

Q seems to want to be destroyed, he lacks the confidence in the world to want to stick around. He is explaining the situation before diving into our story, and he says:

“Now there are those those who say the pleasure of decadence, the desire to be destroyed were part of the spirit of us Dinosaurs even before then.” (pg. 97)

Well, well, well... this is yet another piece of evidence that Q is overall unimpressed with the world around him. He tells us that before the dinosaurs went extinct, he felt that they needed to be destroyed, not only needed to be destroyed, but they wanted to be destroyed. He seems to be projecting his own feelings onto the entire species, that the pleasure of a good life means that you want to be destroyed at the same time.

Q doesn’t have much confidence in himself, he thinks the entire world sees him as a monster, he see himself as a monster and doesn’t believe that the young female at the watering hole would accept him or talk to him.

“I could already imagine her desperate scream the moment she saw me...” (pg. 98)

This dinosaur views himself as a monster, something that everyone (including himself) fears. He almost wants the female to be afraid and run, so that it will confirm his ideas about himself, so that he knows there isn’t a reason to keep going. It’s interesting...

So overall, Q is completely unimpressed with himself and the rest of the world, and acts accordingly.