Tobermory Explained?

So the last line, German irregular verbs. Well this line comes right after we learn that Appin was killed by an elephant who was being, according to the newspaper, bothered by a man.(Appin) I thought that there was a distinct parallel between Appin and Tobermory. Appin was directly characterized as having cleverness and Tobermory was definitely clever. So the people, just as they only saw Appin as entertainment and not a person, that's how they saw the cat.

Huxley Essay

In Aldous Huxleys prologue to Brave New World, he gave his character two choices, "an insane life in a utopia or the life of a primitive in an Indian village." Huxley decided to give his character only these specific choices. But Bernard personifies the equivocation of both these choices. 

So what does that mean? Well the first choice given by Huxley represents the person who knows what's going on in the middle of the so called utopia. The other represents the man decided to leave the utopia, but has a harder life socially, economically, etc. So Bernard represents the middle ground of theses two ideas. Bernard is characterized as queer and melancholy by Lenina and given the excuse of "alcohol in his embryo." Which is very situationally ironic. Because when we hear Bernard's thoughts about Lenina's promiscuity, "like meat, so much meat." So we know that Bernard knows. So he epitomizes this outward conformity and inward questioning. Because Bernard also participates in an orgy and soma thing. But again he exhibits inward questioning. During the main ritual he could only think about some lady's eyebrows, and doesn't participate. 

So what is Huxley tying to say? Well I think that Huxley used Bernard in this way to make a connection with readers who who can identify with it, hopefully inciting a desire to change the real world.

Are cell phones the new "Opiate of the Masses"?

Karl Marx once said that "Religon is the opiate of the masses." But the purpose of this post is not to argue for or against Religon but to apply that idea to our present day. I think that Marx and Huxley saw many of the same things in this aspect. We know this because of the prevalence of "soma" in Brave New World, a drug that makes you "happy".(however artificial that happiness may be) In Brave New World soma is described very specifically, by its chemical contents, which for the majority of his audience, probably made no sense at all. I think he did this deliberately, to give soma a little ambiguity. And I think that he gave it this open endedness to make it applicable to any other type of "opiate." So I was thinking today about Marx's quote at school today and if it applied to our present day. And then I looked around. Not everyone but a lot of people Seem to be on their cell phones a lot at school. And I know it's just one perspective at one school but I imagine that it's pretty widespread. So then I thought, 'that's it, that's our device to escape and be 'happy'. And some people might say, 'well it makes me happy, so who are you to say what I can and can't do, ...etc.'well I'm not the only one who thinks this. There is a great video called Louis Ck hates cell phones,

Louis CK Hates Cell Phones - YouTube

m.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

Now I think that this so called happiness is fake, and like Holden Caulfield, I don't like goddamn phonies. No but really, when people are on their phones at school ( in my own personal experience) they are on twitter , snapchat, instagram or something similar. And I mean that's all good and great but like some Greek philosopher said,"everything in moderation." I see some people with over 70,000 tweets, that's kinda sad. And that's an extreme example but I hope you see the point and how I'm trying to tie this all together. And the other thing about being on your phone constantly is that it creates a social barrier. I see it all the time. And again I'm not the only one. I'll cite Louis CK again because I think he's a genius. In one of his comedy sets he says," and the guy was on his personality killing phone." And the context is that he saw some newly married couple at store and the guy was just on his phone, and his wife was trying to talk to him. That, to me is the perfect example of what I'm trying to say, phones give us a certain comfort zone, but at the cost of isolating ourselves. So maybe we should try to work on it.

What I learned from playing That card game today in Class

Well the actual game was called Bullshit because you basically have to call people on each other's bullshit. So what I learned from it. Well we can draw many parralells to life. Like an obvious one is the symbolism of it all. People set up social barriers between themselves to conform. Just like we put the face down and keep the truth hidden. So I guess the game is an allegory for what we all experience.

what's the story?

Why do I think that Dickens wrote Great Expectations. Well like the guy from the doors said," he has a concert going on in his head and he;s just trying to wite it down," or something like that. But I think that Dickens just wanted to share that image in his mind with the world. Just from hearing how he wrote and acted out his characters, I can deduce that he was very passionate about his work. So obviously he wanted to share that. So thats why I think that he wrote it.

Lit Terms

Circumlocution- basically beating around and around and around the bush on a ceartain subject

Classicism- literature written by the greeks and or Romans

Cliche- something that's overdone

climax- the apotheosis of action in a story

colloquialism- a word that is not formal or literary

comedy- any story that has a happy ending or funny stuff

conflict- the action in a story between the protagonist and antagonist and, around which all plot revolves.

connotation- things associated to a word that go beyond the dictionary definition

denotation- straight up dictionary definition

denouement- the falling action of a story

dialect- a specific variation in a main language, usually regional

dichotomy - a division between two opposite things.

elegy- a alment for the dead, a poem for serious reflection.

Comparing Catcher in The Rye and Great Expectations

So in the opening sentence of JD Salinger's Catcher in The Rye, he mentions how," David Copperfield and all that crap," an allusion to Dickens book David Copperfield. So I read the Wikipedia on David Copperfield and it sounds kinda similar to what I've read so far in Great Expectations. So why is Salinger trying to distance his character from David Copperfield? Well like Dr Preston said today, Pip realizes that his expectations have always been there, and that everyone borrows them at one time or another in life. So it's like a big cycle. I think that Holden Caulfield wants to distance himself from that probably because he feels it's goddamn phony! No but really it seems to take away free will and the ability to choose your goals, etc. So when Holden says, "Where do the Ducks go?" I think he's talking about the realization that his goals were never his, and now he seems to have no direction in life. Salinger obviously put this allusion at the start to keep this on the minds of his readers. 

AP Siddhartha questions

1) What does enlightenment look like in Siddhartha? Well I think that the answer to this question is quite obvious if we just look at the overall theme of the passage. Siddhartha wants to be individual and be free from the constraints of his social class. So Enlightenment would be Siddhartha realizing he that there is a future for him outside of these constraints.

2) What purpose does self-denial serve in this passage? Well we can make a pretty strong parrallel to Hamlet here and all the performative utterance stuff that he goes through. In the simplest terms, saying it and doing it are two different things.

3) What role does self indulgence serve in this passage? I believe that everyone has free will. So what some people may look at as Siddhartha indulging in breaking cultural conformity, I see it as a guy making a choice to do something different, and misconstrued as being indulgence.

I got all these questions from schmoop!!!!!

Masterpiece... Where I'm at so far

So my masterpiece topic stems from a lack of understanding in the world. I believe that if people got to know each other there would be significantly less hate and negativity in the world. It all started when I was watching the movie Platoon, with Charlie Sheen in it. There was a scene where he says, (pardon my language) "she's a human being man, fuck you!" when he sees his some other soldiers raping a vietnamese girl. I decided to give you all thhis context because Platoon is a great movie and That scene really stuck with me. I mean i try to see everyone i meet as a human being, with passions, desires, regrets and feelings. But we can also reciprocate this. We can sometimes put up walls and intentionally isolate ourselves. And another "thing" that can articulate this better than I can is when that Knsas City Chiefs safety killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide quaterback Brady Quinn said some really powerful stuff. I think I'll put this all together in a presentation or something.