Conflict in Romeo and Juliet

I think the most important conflict thus far was the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt. In this physical conflict, Mercutio and Tybalt engage in a rapier duel in the streets of Verona. Romeo tries to stop them which results in Tybalt killing Mercutio. In his anger, Romeo challenges Tybalt to a duel and kills him. Romeo is then banished from Verona by Prince. This conflict is so important because it intensified the Capulets' and Montagues' hatred for each other. It also resulted in the death of two characters, and one of the protagonists being banished. Romeo being banished is what a lot of the novel is about, since he can no longer be in contact with Juliet. Another theme that this conflict includes is death, which is important because the play is a tragedy.

This conflict doesn't really have much significance in current times. Situations like this are extremely rare. I suppose hot-blooded murder does happen sometimes, but neither I nor no one I know has been involved in something like this, luckily.

Pip's Quote

The chain that Pip is talking about refers to his life. I think the two different kinds of chains mean different social classes, because that is a large focus of the book, and flowers/thorns are easy to obtain as opposed to iron/gold. It could also have to do with how you live your life- flowers/thorns are wild, grow in different ways, and are easy to break. This could mean that someone whose chain consists of these materials is flimsier and more whimsical then most. Iron/gold is more structured and solid, so perhaps that is talking about people whose lives are very steady and include little risk. The specific link he is talking about is when one day greatly changes the course of your life- like if you met someone who got you a job which you had your entire life. You only met them on one day, but had you not met them, your life would be completely different. This day has altered Pip because now he wants to change his social class, and he is also now in love with Estella. Instead of being satisfied with becoming a blacksmith's apprentice and growing up to be like Joe, he now wants to become a high-class gentleman.

One day in my life that shaped who I am was when I stopped eating meat. If I hadn't became a vegetarian, then I think I would be a lot less healthy.

Great Expectations, the Second Stage

I think that one of the most important events which have taken place in the second stage of reading is when he first came to London. He expected something really impressive, because he associated London with being a gentleman. However, when he finds out how dirty London is, he is severely disappointed. The cause of this disappointment comes from the fact that he associated London with becoming a gentleman, which made him think that it was going to be an amazing place.

Pip's disappointment upon arriving in London goes along with the theme about how upper class isn't as great as it initially seems. When Pip first wants to become a gentleman, he thinks that everything about the upper class is perfect. But as he learns more about becoming a gentleman, he realizes more and more that the upper class isn't much better than where he used to be. Perhaps this is foreshadowing that Pip will eventually wish he could return to Joe and become a blacksmith, instead of learning with no purpose.

Animal Farm Creative Project

Poetry Out Loud: My Poem

The poem I chose to read for the Poetry Out Loud recitation in class is Let it be Forgotten by Sara Teasdale. I think the meaning of this poem is that some things should be forgotten, no matter how beautiful they are, because they will only make you and others sad when they are gone. My reasoning for thinking this is that the things the poet mentions are all really pretty, like a flower or a fire that "once as singing gold." I'm not sure how accurate this is, though, because the poem is so short that its meaning is hard to judge with what I'm given. The poem isn't really very relevant to my life because there haven't been any particularly amazing things that needed to be forgotten, or that should have because they made me sad when they were gone. The closest thing I can think of is something that applies to most everyone, which is your childhood. When you're a child you can have huge amounts of fun doing even the simplest things, and there is usually nothing you need to worry about. But once you get older you tend to forget your childhood. This might be for the best, because if you remembered it better then you might miss it even more and become sad. There may be other, less significant ways in which this poem relates to my life but I can't think of any.

I'm not exactly sure how I'll convey the theme of the poem through my reading. If I read it in a hushed voice, it will make it seem more mysterious or secret, which kind of makes sense because of the verse "if anyone asks say it was forgotten." This verse makes me think that Sara Teasdale is talking about some sort of secret, and if I read the poem in a hushed voice it would make those listening feel that way as well. However, I think it would sound kind of awkward and it might be hard to hear, so I'm not sure if this is the best option. Besides this, I'm not sure what else I could do with my voice to help the poem have more meaning when read. I also don't know what I ought to do with my face and gestures. With my face I suppose it would be best to appear very interested, like I'm telling or being told something secret. I don't really know what gestures would fit with this poem. I feel like anything too exaggerated goes against the hushed nature of the poem, but I really don't know what else I could do. I guess one possibility would be to think of some sort of subtle hand movement that signifies something "being forgotten," and that I could use at every use of the word forgotten. This seems like it could get a little corny and repetitive though, and I also can't think exactly what I should do. Still, I feel I ought to think of something because a short poem like this would be very boring and pointless if read in a monotone voice with no movement.

Something Interesting

In the class discussion of "Lobsters," one of the ideas that a classmate, I forget who, brought up which I thought was interesting was that the poem is sort of showing how death is random. The lobsters in the tank have no idea who will be picked to die next, but they all know that it will happen to them eventually.

However, this does not only apply to lobsters. It is the same for any creature, humans in particular. Everyone and everything that is alive will die eventually, whether it be after a few weeks or hundreds of years. I believe that the author is, in particular, referring to humans in this comparison, for a couple of reasons. The first of this is that throughout the entire poem the author compares lobsters and humans, so why wouldn't he compare them here? Another reason I believe this is that humans have the "most random deaths." While anything can die at birth, or from disease or old age, humans have many other ways in which they are killed. They could overdose on drugs, be run over by a car, be shot by a fellow human... the ways go on. By comparing the lobsters to humans, the author shows just how random and inevitable death is.

So Many Paragraphs, So Many Skills

In order for one to write a great 5-part-paragraph, it is important that your topic is focused, but not extremely narrow. If your topic is too broad then your paragraph may be confusing or hard to follow, whereas if it is too narrow it may become boring or repetitive. In general I think the majority of papers read in our class were very good, but a lot of them had a few errors (I am no exception). I think the most prevalent weakness amongst our classes' paragraphs were the transitions- on a lot of papers they were very weak (next, finally, etc.) and on others they were missing altogether. There were also a couple of other errors, although none of them were as bad as the transitions. I noticed that on quite a few essays, there was some plot summary in the commentary, and there were also a couple of errors regarding the format the quotes were in (problems with conversations in quotes and lack of page number primarily). Overall, however, I am happy with how our class performed on this assignment and hope we will do similar ones in the future.

I was honestly not very happy with my own paragraph. While other students seemed to think it was alright, and I got an OK grade, I feel as if I didn't put much effort into it. While my concrete details, commentaries and transitions were alright, I feel as if I did a bad job on pretty much everything else. I forgot to put page numbers after quotes, I didn't like my introduction and my conclusion was quite short. I also failed to fill out the outline which was due at the beginning of the project, mainly because I had trouble understanding exactly what we were supposed to do with it (that, and I hate using graphic organizers anyway). I'm hoping we won't have to use many of those in the future, although I understand that this is probably a bit much to hope for!