February Blog

In the poem The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the persona has views that many people today would consider uncommon. For one this couple seems to be spontaneous. While you might think that a lot of relationships today are spontaneous, think about it. Most couples do the exact same thing every week. Work nine to five every day five or six days a week. Relaxing on sundays. Even if they do something different every sunday, thats only being spontaneous 1/7th of the time. That doesn't sound very spontaneous if it happens on a specific date every week. Also, if you've read relationship advice, there was probably something in there about keeping it spontaneous. Its in there as advice because most people do it. Its something that in our busy society we want to do, but can't. So this couple seems to have a firm grasp on what it means to be spontaneous by talking about their "one night cheap hotel" visits and their "oyster shell" dives.

Another concept that is unique about this persona is the perception of time. While most people say that "life is too short to cry" or whatever, this persona thinks that life is long. "There will be time, there will be time" is not the average advice someone would give you. We tend to rush through our lives because we are always looking forward to something. "I cant wait until I'm 18 and then i can vote", "I can't wait until I'm 21 and then i can drink" (happy new years) "I just want to be married". We are always just waiting for something better to roll around and not enjoying the life we are living at this very moment. Maybe this persona is enjoying his life in the moment and thats why it is so much longer for him.

Tragic Hero Unit

We recently finished the tragic hero unit in literature. A tragic hero is a hero who falls from a great height because of a major, usually secret, flaw. Although we don't recognize people in society as "tragic hero's" that doesn't mean they aren't there.  After cycling great Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour De France titles, he was diagnosed with cancer. Even though cancer is not a controllable flaw, it let to his downfall.  Many people disagree as to what happened after his treatment and whether his blood doping was because of the chemotherapy treatment, or for the illegal use in cycling. For the sake of argument, we'll say that it was used illegally. Even after he had climbed back to the height of his old cycling days, the accusations of drug use ripped him back down. In this case, blood doping was his flaw. Here Lance demonstrates an excess of confidence. By returning to ride again, he regained his heroism, but in untraditional hero form, rose only to fall again. This rises the controversy of fate. Was Lance and every other Tragic hero destined for failure from the start? We saw that even a man who could overcome the tragic fall and returned to be a hero was only struck down. Was it lances fate to not be a hero forever? Personally i think he had a good run. Winning 8 tour de frances is a great place to end ones heroism. If that is the best fate can do to hold down a hero, i think that proves just how powerful fate is. The human will will always be stronger than fate.

10/31/12

Halloween Blog:
    In class we have just finished discussing the hero unit. We read Beowulf and Grendel. Even though these novels are about the same thing, we get two different vantage points and overall a more complete view of what happened. From Beowulfs side, our perfect hero, we see a terrible demon tormenting the human race and trying to snuff out every last human being, tribe by tribe. Then the heroic beowulf  comes and destroys the foul beast in one day. However from Grendels view, we see a much different story. Grendel is an underling who is barely squeezing by. He sees the humans ravaging each others towns and leaving the dead to rot. This is absurd to Grendel who is a carnivore. All of the food he scrapes up is devoured immediately. He sees the humans as wasteful beasts. His attacks on the mead hall are not unwarranted, but rather as punishment for the humans stupidity. This is extremely relevant to our society today. Whenever we hear a story that shocks us, we normally assume it to bo true. Most of us done question the other half of action. The story of Grendel is all about his side and is mostly in his defense. So i think that but us reading this book, it will hopefully open people up their eyes when it comes to truth. Another thing these stories bring up is how easy it is to take sides in a battle. Because we read Beowulf first, we were all TOLD that Grendel was an evil demon that killed for fun. It would be interesting how our minds would have accepted Grendel differently if we had read Grendel first. Maybe some people would have seen Beowulf as the villan destroying a mere creature of habit?

A Black President...Really America?

With all the hustle and bustle of the upcoming election I found it rather troublesome that some Americans are looking way too deep into the presidential hopefuls. Of course each candidate has their own policies, standards, ethics, values, personal wealth, blah blah blah blah. What we really should be looking at is the "visual ethnicity" as I like to call it. (People generally avoid the term "racial profiling" like its MSNBC news). As most of my fellow pure bred Americans have probably already noticed, our current president is unfortunately black. Being raised somewhere outside of the country, I don't care what his birth certificate says, he was probably raised by wolves in some 3rd world country. Men running the streets with machettes and guns ablaze. We can only imagine what he had to do in order to escape that foul place.
As you all know, jesus, being a supreme and almighty human being, was white. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, it is simply a fact. As too is it common knowledge that white people are more intelligent and generally use more critical thinking than our lesser African brethren.  So why on Gods great earth would we have a less intelligent, inferior beast roaming the white house? If jesus was the only person who was truly without sin, does it seem reasonable that we should put the polar opposite of His greatness in charge of the greatest fifty states that ever was? Maybe the reason that we have all the internal violence we do is because of pure hatred toward that sinful man up on his throne in the white house. Think about it: the disciples didn't have a crazed black man controlling them. They had a white man looking after them and look how spectacular they turned out. The facts are all around us people. We just have to be brave enough to look into the face of his lies. If we don't take care of this problem, it will turn into a full blown infestation. And lord knows I don't want one up at the preachers stand telling me and my thirteen children about the lord almighty!