3 Questions

1. Why did Frank choose Jonah specifically to become the next president?
2. What is the significance of the power outage?
3. Why was Frank called Agent X-9?

3 Assertions

1. In both paralleling Bokonon and McCabe and by Julian’s destruction of Newt’s painting, Vonnegut is taking a strong stand against the misconceived notion that things are meaningless.
2. Bokonon puts man at the central of religion, making man more powerful than God. Bokonon considers people important, not ideas.
3. While it is difficult to place the exact motives of Angela and Newt, when they believe they are dying, they bring the Ice-Nine with them. This is the most important item in their possession, even more so than Angela’s clarinet. Their plans for the dangerous substance are not in the least bit pure, and these motives dominate their minds.

1. Question: How does Bokononism try to solve the problem of violent, religious dogmatism?

My Response: Bokononism tells people flat out that it is nothing more than lies, taking away any need to fight for it.  It makes man the center of the religion, so each person is in charge of only his or herself and is supposed to respect mankind. It creates a kind of network but without letting people in on what they’re actual goal is. The religion is very much about teamwork and progressing your karass’ goal, whatever that is. Everything that happens is supposed to be, in some way, progressing towards the karass’ goal, and if it isn’t, then they’ll be pushed back onto the path by God. There is very little concern for doing the “right” thing or for finding or defending any kind of higher meaning.

Response to Spark Notes: We’re back to illusions! They kind of said what I did, though they touched on some stuff that I didn’t. I don’t know if people really accept that Bokononism is based on lies. They kind of seem to forget that.

2. Question: How does Felix mock the prevailing notion that “evil” is humanity’s biggest problem?

My Response: Felix isn’t an evil man, nor a good man. He’s pretty neutral, completely unaware of things like sin and morality. Yet his invention, made out of pure curiosity, resulted in the destruction of the earth. There was no malevolent intent, no desire for control or power. The most destructive man in this book was not evil but instead childlike and naïve. He merely got an idea in his head and tried it out.

My Response to Spark Notes: I’m not sure if I see a drive for knowledge being dangerous so much as a lack of consideration for what the knowledge will lead to. I definitely agree with the idea of the ignorant being just as, if not more dangerous than the evil. Also, I keep forgetting Felix worked on the atom bomb. It’s sort of lost when compared to his Ice-Nine invention.

3. Question: How does the commencement speech delivered at Frank’s high school graduation mock the valorized status that science occupies as a means to discover “truth?”

My Response: When Breeds delivers his speech, he is disheveled, making up for the “genius’” absence. Felix, a renowned scientist, shucks responsibility. He is a child. Breed is an over-passionate, overly emotional lackey who clearly puts science in a greater regard than may be warranted. These people are suppose to identify the “truth”? Which, apparently, is protein. Which makes no sense. It is ironic for the commencement speech to show these brilliant and powerful men at their worst, particularly when Breeds is making such big claims.

My Response to Spark Notes: I feel like the whole protein thing was a joke and Spark Notes missed it. I don’t think by any accounts that protein was the key to life. I also find it odd that they don’t mention Breeds by name (despite the fact that he’s a pretty important character) and that their answer actually has very little to do with the commencement speech.

4. Question: How do Hazel and Lowe illustrate the irrational grouping behaviors of human beings?

My Response: Hazel makes a big deal about being “Hoosiers” and how Hoosiers are always great people who do these big, wonderful things. Lowe is obsessed with being American, to the point that he yells “American!” at the tornadoes. Yet these granfalloons make no difference. They end up alone in the world made of ice-Nine, completely cut off from their other groups.

This was a weird movie. Hamlet really needs to learn how to make movies. His movies are sooooo weird. I couldn’t get over the fact that the actress playing Ophelia was the actress who played in Save the Last Dance. I appreciated trying to bring the Shakespeare movies into the modern day, but this was translated to modern times in a very strange way. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on the entire time, and some characters, I was a bit confused as to who they were supposed to be. And many of the scenes were so over the top that I couldn’t take them seriously. Hamlet was so unbelievably emo and his movies were so ridiculously bad and just…flat out weird that I broke into laughter during almost every soliloquy and anytime his movies were playing. The dialogue was weird, too, and they kind of switched around the story. I’ve seen movies that used modern settings and Shakespearean dialogue, so I know it can be done, but this one just failed.

So, as you can probably gather, I watched the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet. Oh. My. God. Why, oh why, could NO ONE in that movie ACT?! And why did they just cram it all together?! I felt like Hamlet spent the entire first half of the movie just moving from room to room reciting his soliquies while everything else that was happening got left out. Why did they leave out the scene where Hamlet asks to go back to school? Why was he so old? And why, dear God, WHY did he keep KISSING HIS MOTHER?! The scene when he confronted her in her chambers about Cornelius…I was very uncomfortable. The noises and motions were….creepy.

Also, I  didn’t see him as really angry in the play. I imagined him almost mocking everyone else because he was always one step ahead of them. Yet, in this movie, every other scene, Hamlet is throwing someone against a wall.

Why, as well, was the ghost not wearing armour? Why was it so bright the first part of the movie when it is supposed to take place in the evening? It didn’t suit the tone of the movie at all.

Basically, I hated this film. It didn’t fit my interpertations of the play, and I didn’t think it was a good film even taking away the play.

LAME SAUCE.

I am not tragically anything. I am not tragically gay, I am not a victim of my past, and I am not a poor little child grown up in a broken home. I always knew something was odd about me from the time I went to school and the teachers paid extra attention to me, but it wasn’t until middle school that I realized why. It was then that I was introduced to the ideas of other families–families that didn’t fight, who weren’t seperated, whose mothers didn’t act like barbarians. It was also in middle school that I was introduced the labels of gay, straight, and bi. Before, I’d always assumed that everyone liked everyone. It had never occured to me that I was weird because I liked girls. Boys liked girls…why couldn’t I?

But I forget about all of this until someone brings it up. It doesn’t occur to me that I was raised by an abusive step-mom and a never-there dad until someone asks about them. I never think about my not-all-there biological mom or really any of it. I do think about my emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, but it’s hard not to when I still love him (isn’t that weird how that happens?).

Really, though, until someone told me that my life was really depressing, I’d never thought of it a particularly tragic, and even now, I figure, “That was just my life.” I’m still alive, I have great friends, and I think I’m an okay girl.

And as for the being gay thing….I almost never think about that. It still sounds weird to me saying that I’m a lesbian. I hate the labels of the whole thing and the connotations and stereotypes that come with them. I don’t even like to tell people I’m a lesbian; I just tell them I love a woman. Not because I’m ashamed but because I don’t think about it, so why should they? If it affected me growing up, I never noticed.

So, really, I never think about these kind of things until someone else brings them up, and even then, they’re no big deal. The past is the past and now is now. And who I am right now is not who I was before.

On a semirelated note, Roxanne comes back from California today! Yay!

1. Hurston was thirteen when she left Eatonville.

2. She would speak, sing, and dance. This shows she’s very outgoing and full of life. She’s not afraid to be herself and she’s just having fun.

3. She transforms to “a little coloured girl”.

4.  First she uses the metaphor of an operation gone well, and then of a  race, and she is “off to a flying start”.

5. The restoration was the reintegration of southern states into the Union after the civil war. She is saying that the reconstruction was a time when blacks were starting to regain some rights and were preparing to break free.

6. This metaphor represents the jazz music breaking free into something wild and primal.

7.  She describes him as “so pale with his whiteness”. She sees her skin colour in this situation very clearly, not just in how others see her, but in how she sees them. She views herself as different. She is unsatisfied with her friend’s reaction.

8. She calls herself  “the cosmic Zora…the eternal feminine with its string of pearls”. She sees herself as extravagant, yes, but not necessarily scandalous, I don’t believe.

9. She says, “How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company! It’s beyond me.” So I don’t think she’s so much offended as much as she thinks it’s their loss.

10. She views race as a very small part of people, and believes that even if your race were to change, you would still be essentially yourself. To describe skin, she uses bags. I believe she is saying that people are all the same thing, just different coloured and filled with different things.

11. The overall theme is joyful and humourous, with a tiny hint of confusion when she speaks of the jazz club and how white people sometimes react to her.

12. Two major themes that are carried throughout are looking on the exotic and performing. From the begining when she talks about the tourists watching the towns folk watching the tourists to the comparison to a stage and then the jazz club and finally comparing herself to an actress. Life is her stage and she’s going to enjoy it.

1. Extenuating circumstances–things beyond one’s control that make an act less heinous

2. Venturesome–adventurous

3. Proscenium box–the area in theatre between the background or curtain and the orchestra

4. Pigmentation–the colour of living cells

5. “the world is your oyster”–Originally from “‘The Merry Wives of Windsor”, this phrase means that you can basically have anything you want (originally, it meant you had a lot of money and therefore the world was open to you)

6. Reconstruction (as in post-Civil War South)–when the southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union

7. Bully (as in the adjective, like Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace)–very good

8. Hegira–the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 which marked the beginning of the Muslim era

9. Barnard College–a women’s liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters

10. Circumlocutions–a style that involves indirect ways of expressing things

11. Thorax–on an orthopod, the middle region of the body

12. Rambunctious–little kids are rambunctious! Hyper, out of control, just having fun

13. Assegai–a spear

14. Veneer–coating consisting of a thin layer of superior wood glued to a base of inferior wood

15. Peggy Hopkins Joyce–an American actress and celebrity

16. Raiment–clothing

17. Miscellany–miscelaneous items

The people in the Biblical verses are terrified of the locusts—they are a punishment sent by God. They rise from a bottomless pit in a ominous cloud of smoke. They are truly horrifying and destructive, described in warrior attire. Because of their inclusion in the plague and the sinister way in which they are portrayed (not to mention the destructive power they have on crops), locusts have become an fairly common ill omen in western culture. Yet, in Things Fall Apart, the locusts are a great event seen only once every several years. The people of Umuofia rush to watch their arrival in joy. What we view as destruction, the people of Umuofia view as help, and what is described in the Bible as “smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace” is described as a cloud and a “tremendous sight, full of power and beauty”. In the Bible, the locusts are a terrible plague to destroy the Godless man. In Things Fall Apart, though, they are a blessing come as a treat the people of the village. This juxtaposition of the symbolism does a great deal to illustrate the incredibly different ways the cultures view the world.

I’m arguing with myself over two…
Greed and overindulgence result in the destruction of innocence.
The wrong method, even with the best of intentions, can lead to destruction.
I’m still trying to figure out what that stupid horse represents…

I read this story several times and couldn’t quite place what I thought the symbols were for. I understood that the horse was an obvious symbol, but for what? Paul’s desperate attempt to free his family from debt was what I originally understood. Like his obsession with the money and the races, the horse rode madly and yet never got anywhere. I did catch the name allusions–Paul from the New Testament (though I had to look up Paul’s exact story. I really need to brush up on that whole Bible thing. Being non-religious puts you at a disadvantage in literary analysis, I’ve noticed. ^^;) and Hester from the Scarlet Letter (I -hated- that book). There was irony in both of these allusions; while Paul from the Bible’s huge deal was receiving the truth from God, smaller Paul receives betting tips, and while Scarlet Letter Hester loved her child fiercly, money-grubby Hester doesn’t seem to pay much attention to her son. I’ll admit, though, I looked up the symbolism for the rocking horse–I just couldn’t place it! Imagine my relief when I discovered even the literary masters were split on what it meant. I personally found the Freudian reference interesting, though…I still have no idea what it symbolizes.