Literature Analysis: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Here's the literature analysis I worked on with Justin Thompson and Kris Green.  If, for whatever reason the Prezi isn't working for you, here's a link.

Brave New World II (Chapters 2-3)

Following the structure of society laid down in the first chapter is a description of the children's indoctrination.  Coupled in stark contrast with "erotic play", it makes for two shocking chapters.  As with the setup of genetic engineering, Huxley's goal here is to create a seemingly ludicrous scenario (in this case, one that most readers would presumably find disgusting) that seems completely fabricated.  Then, he seeks to reveal over the course of the rest of the novel that these abominations are not so far-fetched after all.

This is also mirrored in the dialog, which jumps between characters in different conversations.  The jumps become increasingly rapid until eventually it is just flashed snippets of each line.  The dual conversation reveals an anomaly in the system -- Bernard.  As one group talks about the virtues of everybody belonging to each other, Bernard is painted very clearly as an outsider in another.  A few important things can be gleaned from this.  For one, the society is not "perfect".  There are, for whatever reasons, people that do not quite fit in.  Subsequently this also introduces conflict for the first time.  In a way, this marks the beginning of the plot.

writingas5pectatorsport

 I found a bunch of these on Christa Weston's blog (good job getting so many people to write!).  Take a look at her blog if you've got a shortage of essays.

Conor McNamara
Conor has an extremely..."intense" writing style.  From the occasionally coarse language to the scathingly caustic pop-culture references, it's pretty easy to pick out Conor's writing from a group.  With that in mind, I would advise keeping the audience in mind.  Practicing a little more moderation would probably be wise for something like the AP exam (I have no idea if he typically does).  That said, Conor's violent style is also one of his strengths -- the essay certainly has character.  It would be a shame to lose that to an AP grading rubric.

Hayden Robel
I'll be honest, I couldn't really read all of the essay.  By that I mean I could really only see the pre-write structure.  Regardless, the structure looks fine for the restricted amount of time it was done in.  It's certainly more elaborate than my "two word phrases and arrows" strategy.  Also, it seems like Hayden got a lot of writing done in such a short amount of time.  I personally find the time constraints to be the hardest part of essay exams, so being a quick thinker is certainly beneficial.

Alex Lane (blog)
Call of the Wild was an unexpected but extremely appropriate choice for the prompt.  I like the ideas that Alex got down onto paper, and there's plenty of depth in the novel he chose to support a full length essay.  The pre-write leaves a bit to be desired, but it's not like mine was any more extensive.

Bernardo Gonzalez (blog)
I can see pretty clearly where Bernardo was going with his ideas, but unfortunately the essay never really got started.  I'm guessing this can be attributed mostly to the pre-write taking too long.  In that case, simply keeping an eye on the clock would do wonders.  It seems like Bernardo had all the right ideas, but just didn't have enough time to get them onto paper.

William Boerger (blog)
Given the time limit, Will got a lot of content down on the paper, both in terms of pre-writing and the essay itself.  The introduction sets up a clear stance, and I like where the essay was headed.  There were a few nit-picky grammar errors, but I'm pretty sure everybody makes those with so little time to write.

"Sphinx Says Write"

Actually, when I was essay ambushed (by Kris and Justin), they didn't even say "Sphinx Says Write."  I did it anyway.  Because of the time restraint, I essentially just rehashed my A Tale of Two Cities essay.  Also, I wrote this before finding out we would be reading Brave New World in class.  Happy coincidence, I guess.  I left all my bizarre grammatical errors in for your enjoyment.

I was filmed writing this, but Kris and Justin haven't gotten around to editing it or doing commentary.  I'll make sure to post a link once they do.

Edit (4/18/13):  So, they never got around to it.  Oh well.

Prompt:

(1971) The significance of a title such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is easy to discover.  However, in other works the full significance of the title becomes apparent to the reader only gradually.  Choose two works and show how the significance of their respective titles is developed through the author's use of devices such as contrast, repetition, allusion, and point of view.

Pre-write:

Para 1 --> Brave New World --> Sarcastic, ironic/satirical look at future

Para 2 --> A Tale of Two Cities --> duality themes, etc.

Essay:

Sometimes, despite what is always taught, people judge books by their cover.  Before the reader knows anything of a story, there is an initial impression given by the title.  Often the title provides a surprisingly in depth look at the novel's theme.  Both A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley have titles applicable in this way.

A huge theme of A Tale of Two Cities is duality -- the concept of disparate pairings existing alongside of each other, and through their contrast, elevate each others.  In its most fundamental form, this theme can be boiled down into the title.  There are two cities, each one contains a different type of people.  Similarly, there are foils strewn throughout the novel that expand on this (Darnay and Carton, for example).

In the dystopian classic Brave New World, the title has a completely opposite m

Brave New World I

I was excited to learn that we would be studying Brave New World.  Because I had enjoyed 1984, I was looking forward to reading the book before this year even started (in fact, it was my first literature analysis).

The first chapter does a very good job of setting up the general mood of the story, even if it does seem a bit confusing at first.  It is instantly evident that Huxley writes of an ambiguously future society (zeitgeist!).  Besides this there is some early characterization of the population's general attitude.  Most importantly, the students are portrayed more or less blindly copying down the information told to them. The adults take a distinctly mechanistic approach to life.  Everything is reduced to the numbers of a highly refined scientific process.  The brief glimpse of the caste system is perhaps the most important introduction of the chapter.  Knowing how the story develops (I'll admit, I didn't fully reread the chapter, I just skimmed) is interesting.  Compared to the rest of the story, the first chapter is pretty impersonal.  Most likely this is just because Huxley is establishing the setting.

First Quarter Review

The main focus of this quarter for me has been the senior project.  Once in a while, I get "assigned" projects and ideas instantly start flowing.  This is one of them.  A number of different concepts (both from me and my friends) have been flying around for the past few weeks.  Already, we are more organized and more prepared than for any other group project we've done together.  If we don't burn out by the end (which is actually very likely) I have tentatively high hopes for what we can do.  As far as required assignments go, I'm pretty sure I have them all done.  I have been essay ambushed already, we just need to put the video together.

Next quarter, I hope to start putting the pieces together on our project.  We're at a tentative stage right now between concept and production.  Once we take the plunge and start getting content done, I'll feel more confident in our ability to follow through.  My goal, more succinctly, is to finish the senior project with quality -- not a last minute rush job edited at 4:00 AM.  It'll be the last big endeavor of high school for me, and I want to make it count.

I have a small suggestion for the course:

Take away "close of business" as a due date.  I very rarely actually get my assignments posted at a reasonable time, but it is almost always before class the next day.  I feel like COB adds unneeded stress.  There's a bizarre sort of security in knowing that if worse comes to worse, I can always pull an all-nighter.

Also, I like seeing my classmate's blogs featured on the main course blog.  I don't regularly check up on everybody's blogs, so it's cool to see the highlights.

BOB I (Best of Blogs)

Most of these ratings were made by snap decisions and first impressions; feel free to argue your case! Also, it's important to note that three different people did the ratings. While we tried to judge on about the same level, standards may vary slightly.

The following was done by Justin Thompson, Kris Green, and Joshua Ng.  We looked through the blogs and rated them from 0-10 rather than do individual ratings (we assumed a lot of the rationalization would be similar).

A score of 0 indicates that there is essentially no work done for the class.

A score of 5 indicates that the person has done some work, but is missing major parts, or the work done looks particularly rushed.

A score of 7 indicates that the blog contains almost all the work assigned, but really not much more.

A score of 8-9 indicates that the blog has everything required, but also has additional content (or the content is especially well done).

A score of 10 indicates that the blog is near perfection.  There is additional content, and it all done with very high quality.

Lit Terms: 109-End

Justin, Kris, and I finished our Prezi (finally).  Check it out!

Rising Action:  plot build up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax
The heroes walked...and they walked some more...then suddenly, a battle!

Romanticism:  movement in western culture beginning in the eighteenth and peaking in the nineteenth century as a revolt against Classicism; imagination was valued over reason and fact
Revolutionary idea: there's no gravity!  Wait, no.  We're not on Earth!  Yes!

Satire:  ridicules or condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general
Animal Farm by George Orwell

Scansion:  the analysis of verse in terms of meter
Since meter is a system of binary oppositions in which syllables are either marked or unmarked (long or short; stressed or unstressed), a binary code is all that is necessary to transcribe it... --T.V.F. Brogan

Setting:  the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur
It was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

I Am Here

I haven't actually progressed with my specific senior goal, but I have done things in a similar light.  Although we haven't made much progress on the Project Greymatter game, I have started work on our Senior Project, which fulfills the "big project" that I wanted to do.  Whenever we do video projects for school, it always ends up being haphazard improvisation.  For the final one of the high school, we wanted to change that.  We're starting a couple months early and actually planning out the scenes, for once.  So far, the project has sated my appetite for a large collaborative endeavor.

Regarding the course as a whole, I still feel like I'm pulling off some high-wire balancing act.  There's a lot of facets to the class.  All of these, plus responsibilities from other classes and recreational activities have me constantly switching modes.  However, the pace has been more relaxed overall, and I think I've recovered enough from last semester's stumbling to move on full-force.

Lit Terms 83-108

I think the lit term numbers got mixed up somewhere along the way, so the first/last couple words may be not for this week, sorry.
Here's this week's Prezi that Justin Thompson and I made!

Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its meaning.
BOOM!

Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradicting words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox
Pretty Ugly

Pacing: rate of movement; tempo
Some books are over so fast the reader is left dumbfounded.  Others...are like Grapes of Wrath.

Parable: a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth
The parable of the Good Samaritan

Paradox: a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas.
If I went back in time and killed one of my direct ancestors...then what?

Lit Terms 56-81

Here's the vocab Prezi Justin Thompson and I made.

Genre:  a category or class of artistic endeavor having a particular form, technique, or content

Gothic Tale:  a style in literature characterized by gloomy settings, violent grotesque action, and a mood of decay, degeneration, and decadence

Hyperbole:  an exaggerate statement often used as a figure of speech or to prove a point

Imagery:  figure of speech or vivid description, conveying images through any of the sense

Implication:  a meaning or understanding that is to be arrived at by the reader but that is not fully and explicitly stated by the author

Collaborative Literature Analysis: A Tale of Two Cities

Here's a Collaborative Literature Analysis I did with Justin Thompson. Let us know if there's any holes to fill!

Summary:
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens is difficult to summarize without trivializing it.  Speaking in very general terms, it is a story of love -- whether it is between lovers, family, or friends.  The story takes place in the late 18th Century, a time when fear of revolutionaries was at an all time high.  Within this social conflict, Lucie Manette attempts to revive her father after his years of unjust imprisonment.  Along the way, the lives of several individuals become complexly intertwined.  With revolution erupting and old secrets coming to light, "friendships" become tested and the happy band of protagonists become splintered by the destructive force of mob rule.

The Time of My Life

I wrote on Friday's journal topic (which I forgot to turn in, again...) that I planned to pursue discussion of my SMART goal during the class "Free Play".  Predictably, my plans got hijacked.  Luckily, it was still a somewhat productive discussion.  We ended up discussing Justin Thompson's nature blog, which I am a co-author and sorta-editor for (I just do superficial grammar checks at my discretion).  The bulk of what we talked about was publicity.  What direction did Justin want to take the blog?  He expressed a desire to make the blog more professional before sharing it.

A couple ideas were thrown around regarding publicity, from Facebook sharing to Reddit posts.  As far as content goes, we also mulled on the idea of theme weeks.  Early in the year Justin covered a number of snails over the course of the week, included the scaly foot gastropod, a personal favorite of mine.  From this spawned a running joke of the blog's "Snail Week", analogous to Discovery Channel's Shark Week.  Given that one of the difficulties of writing for the blog is deciding on a research topic, we figured that themed weeks would be doubly useful.

We also considered branching out the blog to cover other topics, such as biology and genetics, rather than just unique lifeforms.

Literature Analysis: Three A.M.

Summary:  Three A.M. by Steven John takes place in a city of an indeterminable time near our own.  Following a lethal pandemic that killed a majority of the population, a dense mist has descended on the city.  This mist is nearly impenetrable, and quickly warps society.  The result is a world characterized primarily by its grayness.  Citizens keep to themselves, and all quietly fear what lies in the mist.  Thomas Vale, the protagonist, is a private detective that takes the stereotype to the extreme.  At the story's start, he is characterized mostly by his cynical gruffness, as well as frequent abuse of alcohol and pills.  For some reason unbeknownst to him, he wakes up at 3:00 A.M. almost every night.  The story is centered around a case given to him by a woman named Rebecca Ayers.  While the details are slim, and he rightfully has suspicions, the pay is good enough that he doesn't care.  Vale is quickly finds himself entangled in a complex conspiracy far bigger than him.