The Death of A Soldier

The Death of A Solider

Wallace Stevens

Life contracts and death is expected,as in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days personage, imposing his separation, calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial, as in a season of autumn, when the wind stops,
when the wind stops and, over the heavens, the clouds go, nevertheless,in their direction.

The poem shows that death always occurs to someone no matter what. Also, it shows that death doesn't leave anything if you die, as time flows, you want to memorized by anyone. This is showed by 'Life contracts and death is expected…'. Even if you die, the world just flows on as nothing happened. This in the poem is showed by 'The clouds go, nevertheless, in their direction. It is a very depressing poem but I think this poem is a very realistic poem. I think it might be written in a time where there was war or it is during war because the author mentions soldiers instead of just people. Though this poem is negative and depressive it is interesting how he expressed his ideas metaphorically. The example would be: ' As in a season of autumn. The solider falls' this means soldiers die like the leaves fall.

Funeral Blues

I think this poem Funeral Blues is a poem which a guy loving another guy (gay). And I think that it is saying how much this guy loved the other guy by using expressions such as 'he was my North, my South, my East and West..'. The author could be same as the persona or may be it could be written in a perspective in which the author is pretending to be a guy loving another male. I think this poem shows depression because his lover died. He is saying there is no hope in himself anymore because of the death of his lover. By this poem he is showing both how much he loved this other male person and also how much he is depressed to face his lover's death.

Totally Like Whatever

Written by Taylor Mali
Subject: Bad use of language - young people (teenager)
Taylor Mali is saying that teenagers don't know how to express themselves and they lost the ability of speaking in a formal tone.
I didn’t understand what the writer was trying to say.
'…it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY' is the phrase I didn’t understand
'…to disguise the fact that we've become the most aggressively inarticulate generation'
I agree with the poem because actually these days teenagers tend to speak in a more informal tone and in the past, there was slang but not badly as it is nowadays.
Advice to the teenagers that use of formal language is needed and you should use it. Also it could be a warning that formal language is need for teenagers.
Talks about slang, uses as he writes
Language doesn't fit with our traditional idea of 'poetic language'
Addresses current issue by 'mocking it'
Making fun of a way of speaking
He (author/Persona) likes language
Subject: Express yourself and be confident about your ideas

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night

Personally, I think this poem is to convince people who are about to die and I think it includes his father. The author thinks that everyone should try their best to live before they die because you only live life once so it is precious. This poem is metaphorical; light being living and night being death. If it is a metaphor the title 'Do not Go Gentle Into that Good Night' shows don't accept death so easily. Also since this poem is written in Villanelle form, this is to strongly emphasize the idea of this poem. I think there is more meaning to this poem however, I do not get every part of the metaphorical phrases. But however, I think the main point of this poem is to 'fight to live' and 'do not accept death easily'. I think the important phrases of this poem is the repeating parts which are 'do not go gentle into that good night' and 'rage, rage against the dying of the light'

About the Commentary Planning

a) I do not care whether or not I do or do not share my outline with anybody else.

b) I think Mr. Doubt is doing this because people could correct each other when they look at other people's plans and also Mr. Doubt can't look at all of them in a short amount of time so in order to save some time, he might do this activity.

c) I am not dying to use the outline to write an essay however, I would like to use my outline to write a commentary because the outline makes the commentary more organized and also I have all my ideas on the outline.

Chapter 17 Holden

To summarize, in chapter 17, Holden was waiting at the waiting place and saw girls and was observing them. Then 10 minutes after the meeting time, Sally came and they went to see 'The Lunts'. After watching 'The Lunts' Sally met someone that she knew and Holden wasn't happy about this. Then, they went to ice-skate. After ice-skating, they sat down and Holden started saying that he is sick of this city life and wants to go to the country side. Sally says that they are two young and this conversation led to an argument and the date ended.

In this chapter, we can realize that Holden is jealous that all the nice looking girls are with all the 'phoney guys' also this is once more emphasizing that Holden really like girls a lot. Also after watching 'The Lunts', Sally meets a person that she knows. Holden is jealous about this because it seemed like the phoney guy was going to ruin his date. In pg 114, Holden said "Why don't you go on over and give him a big soul kiss, if you know him? He'll enjoy it" In addition to being jealous of phoney guys, Holden doesn't like the life in the city and was fed up with the school life that he had. Holden said, "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school, and all that stuff?"

Duck motif paragraph

Ducks are a motif representing loneliness. Holden in the book Catcher in the Rye mentions about the ducks to a taxi driver called Horwitz when he was going to a bar that Ernie owned. Holden might have been worried about the ducks because he could have thought that the ducks are similar to him in a way because the ducks can't stay in one place the whole time because of the season changing as time pasts. Like the ducks, Holden couldn't stay in one school because he was keep on flunking so many subjects and just decided to give up. A quote which represents how Holden has interest in the ducks is when Holden said, "The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves- go south or something?" This quote shows that Holden is wondering where the ducks go and might have interest in them because they might feel like they have no place to settle like Holden at that point of the book.

Summary of David Lodge’s ‘Skaz’

To start off the writing there is a part of the book ‘Catcher in the Rye’. David Lodge starts with defining ‘skaz’ which is the sound of the language. Skaz comes from jazz and scat. The writer J.D Salinger uses first person narration meaning ‘I’ am Holden and you as the reader of this book. In the book ‘Catcher in the Rye’ the writer uses colloquial speech (conversation-like speech) so it sounds like the reader is talking in real. Although it sounds like colloquial speech, really it is just created and in normal life, a person wouldn’t use this kind of speech that J.D Salinger used. David Lodge made a comparison with this book and an American literature tradition called the ‘Huckleberry Finn’ written by Mark Twain. Lodge mentioned that Holden Caulfield is a descendent of Huck Finn but Holden is in a situation where he is more educated and sophisticated and affluent (his father).

After analyzing the book as a whole (how they speak, narration, etc) Lodge goes on by talking about Holden’s narrative style. The reason why Holden’s narrative style sounds so colloquial and teenager-like is because it is easy enough to indentify. It is easy to understand the text because Salinger put repetition; which is especially slang/informal words such as ‘phoney’, ‘killed me’, and ’old’. Also J.D Salinger put hyperbole which is simply exaggeration. Some examples could be ‘smoking himself to death’. Also sentences are uncomplicated and all the sentences are lacking finite verbs. There are lots of grammatical mistakes throughout the piece to show that a teenager is speaking. There are invariably in his characters.

Summary of Chapter 7 and 8

Chapter 7:

 

After fighting with Stradlater, Holden goes to Ackley's room and annoys him and talks to him because he felt lonely and he wanted someone to talk to. After talking with Ackley, Holden just decides to go to New York and go into a hotel because he felt lonely in Pencey and he didn’t feel like staying in Pencey. So, Holden just shouts "Sleep tight, ya morons" and walks out of Pencey. The reason he doesn't go back in his home is because his parents doesn't know he was kicked out of school.

 

Chapter 8:

 

Holden thought it wasn't a good time to take a cab so he just walks to the train station to go to his destination. He gets on the train and though the train was pretty much empty, some woman sits next to him. The woman recognizes that Holden goes to Pencey and Holden figures out that it is the mother of Ernest Morrow. He lies to her saying that his name is Rudolf Schmidt and lies about Ernest how he is doing in school and last of all lies that he has a tumor in his brain so he is on his way for the operation. Then Morrow's mother gets off the train saying good luck on the operation.

Paragraph about Protagonist

Characters: Aeolus (main character), Cerberus (three headed dog), Eurystheus (king), Hermes (messenger), Hades (God of underground)

Aeolus lives in Greece but speaks English because his parents are English and he likes traveling but he has a problem which is he is not brave enough to go to an adventure. Also he doesn’t like the fact that everyone can’t communicate because they all speak different languages. At this time, England was only the country which spoke England. Not even Scotland, US, Wales and Ireland spoke English. Aeolus wants to make it so that most people can communicate easily with one another. The only method was to unite the language. Aeolus works under a king of Greece called Eurystheus and Aeolus collects the material that the king wants him to collect and works as a servant of the king.

8 Steps of Hero's Journey

Characters: Aeolus (main character), Cerberus (three-headed dog), Eurystheus (king), Hermes (messenger), Hades (God of underground)

The Call: Aeolus finding out that Eurystheus has the potion of language which Aeolus wanted because he wanted a united language.
The Threshold: Aeolus starting his adventure to find the invisible helmet.
The Challenge and Temptations: Aeolus finding out that Hades the God of Underground has the invisible helmet but he is afraid to go down to the undergrounds. The Abyss: Hades asks him to do a quest to receive the invisible helmet and the quest is not possible to do if you have the braveness of Aeolus.
The Revelation: To achieve his goal, Aeolus attempts the quest.
The Transformation: Changes his thoughts about facing something.
The Atonement: Receives the helmet. He asks Hermes to pour the potion over Europe and when he did the wind blows it to Britain and that is how all people in Britain speaks English.
The Gift and Return: He learns that he should face his tasks in order to gain something he desires.

What about the world you live in makes you uncomfortable?

Nothing can be perfect in our lives. There are always some things which make us feel uncomfortable about the world we live in. As for me, the two things which are uncomfortable about this world would be language and time. Language is different throughout the whole world. If I am in another country and the mother tongue there is different from the mother tongue of my country, I would have disadvantages of living in that country. Partially I wouldn’t have entertainment that the people in that country have. For instance, even with TV. It is hard for you to watch a show which is in German and your mother tongue is English. Another disadvantage would be that it would be hard to adapt to different countries because of language. For example, if you are trying to go to Spain but you can’t speak Spanish, you wouldn’t be able to adapt well. This is because you can’t communicate with them and since you can’t communicate, you can’t socialize and since you can’t socialize, you can’t adapt.

Not only language makes me uncomfortable about the world I live in but also time. There is one main reason why time affects my life negatively. It is because no one can control time. We can’t control time but the time controls us.

Summary of Greek Myth: Persephone

In Mt. Aetna, some fire breathing giants were struggling to get free. So, the God of underworld Hades, went up to check what happened. Aphrodite the God of love saw this and ordered her son Eros to shoot an arrow to Hades to clear his darkness/ evil mind. Eros shot the arrow at Hades and when Hades got shot by the arrow he saw a woman and fell in love; that woman was Persephone. Hades kidnapped her and took her to the underworld with him and made her eat four seeds. At that time Hermes went down and took her up by the orders of Zeus. Since Persephone had four seeds, she had to go down for four months. Because Persephone's mom is the God of harvest, when she was depressed because her daughter went, winter happened and when she came back she became happy and that is why spring came so this event created the four seasons.

Summary of Wulbari the Creator

Wulbari the God had a court which was composed of animals and these animals were there to protect God. The leader of this court was called Ananse the spider. This spider was a very good trickster and he even tricked God. He tried to overcome or be equal to God by tricking him and this fact was spread throughout the court and eventually went into God’s ears. Wulbari called Ananse and gave him a task. The task was to bring something. Wulbari went off but he didn’t know what something is. So, he called the birds and took one feather off each one and disguised as a colorful bird and went back to God. The God was talking to other members of the court which were dying to know what something is. So, God told them it was the sun, darkness and the moon. After Ananse heard this, he brought the sun, darkness and the moon to God and when he took out the sun, everyone who looked at it became blind.

2 Pictures for the Creation Story

This is the Togo flag. This flag is related to the Ananse spider story because this story originally came from West Africa, Togo. This story is well known in the whole of West Africa and is used as a story telling device by many people.

This is a picture of a sneaky spider which is the captain of the court which God set up. It is called Ananse and this spider tries to overcome God or tries to prove that he is equal to God. So, God Wulbari gives him a task to bring something. The spider disguised into a bird and overheard what something is and proved that he is equal to God.

The Voice of Christopher

Christopher is such a unique character because of his voice and one of the features that make Christopher so special is digression. Digression is when someone is not talking about the essential topic but other topics which are not related. In the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time page 8 lines 8 to 15 when the policeman asks Christopher many questions about Wellington the dead dog, Christopher gets confused and just starts thinking about Uncle Terry and the factory he owns. Digression was one of the ways the author of this book Mark Haddon used to express that Christopher has Asperger’s Syndrome. When someone has language problems for example when someone takes everything literally and when someone has social problems are a sign of Asperger’s syndrome. In this case in the book, he had social problems.

Another feature which makes Christopher Boone such a unique character is idiomatic language. Idiomatic language is a phrase which has a specific meaning and it is not literally understood. Mostly used by native speakers of that language. It is not that he uses idiomatic language a lot but it is that he can’t understand any metaphors or idioms. In the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time page 19 line 17 to 21 shows that Christopher can’t understand idiomatic language. This is another way the author Mark Haddon showed that Christopher is a special character. People who have Asperger’s syndrome tend to take everything literally and don’t have a wide understanding in language.