My Life in a Blog

This is gonna be my last post for 2016, so i'm gonna keep it nice and simple. Last week in class was kinda hectic. We had a snow day Monday so our plans had to be rearranged a little bit. Through the week we finished reading The Crucible. At first I didn't quite understand the satirical aspects associated with the book, and I couldn't understand what it was trying to illuminate. But after our socratic seminar on Friday, i understood the meaning of the book. It had a great amount of exaggeration, social irony, and it basically highlighted the mistreatment of women and the accusations associated with them. My classmates explained how throughout the book Elizabeth was always the weaker submissive character, but at the end of the book, she switched roles with John Proctor and took the dominant role. That was an example of irony because it showed the drastic change between roles in their relationship. After having the socratic seminar the book is much clearer to me.

This week in class we continued our venture into satire. I think i'm finally starting to understand what  satire is really meant to be. It is meant to highlight an area of concern in our society by finding all the wrongs and  explicitly mentioning them in a humorous tone. To be completely honest, i'm having a little trouble finding the satire in The Crucible. Either I don't fully understand the language that the book is reading, or i'm not paying close enough attention to the piece at hand. We read some more satire pieces in class and annotated and wrote a synthesis piece about how articles relating to mass hysteria connect to The Crucible. My article was about this group of girls in New York who was convinced that they were under a spell of some sort. On the contrary though, it was a mind game that they were playing with themselves. The whole witchcraft concept of this piece really interests me, and I can connect it back to APUSH, and the Salem Witch Trails.

So this week in class we started a new topic. We started to drift away from the constant pursuit of the American Dream and started to focus on Satire. Satirical writing is like writing with a comedic, ironic, and sarcastic lens to highlight social or political issues in our world. Honestly, I am a little bit worried about this piece of writing. I am already an extremely sarcastic person and use a lot of comedy when I talk, so I am afraid I will use too much sarcasm and effectively make my piece ineffective. I don't want my writing to become a joke, so I will have to have a lot of practice with this theme. So far, I like the pieces of writing we've looked at, and enjoy the lens itself.

This week in class we officially wrapped up The Great Gatsby. Throughout the week we looked at various synthesis essays and analyzed the way they were written. Aside from analyzing the way they were structured, we planned a rough draft for an essay and wrote an in class essay on Friday. The prompt, shockingly, had to deal with the American dream. The prompt had you use at least three sources to describe the uncomfortable truths of the American Dream and to what extent those truths were reached. I personally wrote that the uncomfortable truth of the American Dream was that no matter how hard one works, success is never guaranteed to the extent of having to give up happiness, having to change morals, and turning towards materialism. I used Gatsby, GAPsby, and Serving in Florida as my three sources and wrote a strong synthesis essay on the dream. I was actually very excited to write about this because i have a very strong opinion on the topic.

         I guess all good things must come to an end right? This week in class we concluded our study of Gatsby and the American Dream. Throughout our study of the dream, the most important message that I pulled away was that in reality, there is no set "dream". The American Dream is simply a manipulation of one's wishes and goals. It is something that manifests in your mind, but can never be explained or put into words. For example, in The Great Gatsby, the American dream is portrayed in several ways. Gatsby has more money than he can count, wealth and knowledge beyond ones capacity, but he lacks happiness, which holds him back a lot. His dream is to have Daisy by his side and to once again be happy. To another person, the dream might be to have enough money to feed their family and to put a roof over their head, while to yet another person the dream might be to have a BMW or a mansion or luxury. The dream contains so many variations that it is almost impossib...

This week in class was a strange one. We discovered many new things in our piece of literature, "The Great Gatsby". Not only did we elaborate on the ideology of the book itself, but we more closely looked at the fiction choice and the connections to the American Dream. Looking at the dream from an outside perspective, the dream itself includes happiness, prosperity, and great health. After close reading chapter 5 from "The Great Gatsby", pulling an article on the economy of America, and an article called "Serving in Florida", I came to a conclusion. I realized that the American Dream is not one uniform dream, it changes and molds to fit everyone's desire.  In our book, one of the main characters Daisy is said to be living the American dream. She is married to Tom, therefore giving her a family; Tom is a wealthy man, which gives her all the prosperity that she wants, but sadly she is not happy. She meets Gatsby and realizes that she is not content wi...

Welcome back to yet another week of fascinating conversation, and exquisite writing. :) This week in class we started to discuss an old traditional novel known as The Great Gatsby. This book is known as a classic and so far, I would definitely recommend reading it. The setting of the book takes place on Long Island, specifically on two peninsulas, East egg and West Egg. As discussed in class, the ideal of the American dream should be strongly portrayed through this novel. Already, I have noticed a connection between the American dream and the East and West Eggs. Looking at the characteristics associated with each Egg, east Egg seems to be where the original American Dream is grown, and on West Egg, people have to work for their money.        East Egg, or the side with old money, has inhabitants that have money inherited over generations and generations. Everything is simple in East Egg; the buildings are huge, lined with white trim, clean areas and overall weal...