A Good Experience With Poetry

                If I think of good experiences with poetry I think of reading Shel Silvverstein whe I was little. We have two books with tons of poems in them, Falling Up and A Light in the Attick. When I was learning how to read I really liked reading those, becasuse the words weren’t hard and the stories were short it wasn’t like reading a book. Also they’re were a lot of made up silly words that I thought were the funniest things ever.

                I can look through those books and see the pictures and for some of them I can remember what I thought when I was young reading them. I remember “Fancy Dive” a girl does a dive off a board into a pool with no water, I thought it was soo funny. “Messy Room” is about a really messy room (obviously) and I remember everytime I would read it I would bring up how my older sisters rooms were always messy like that. But then there were poems like “Hammock” and “The Dragon of Grindly Grun” made me really sad. I was flipping through the book and I remembered looking at that picture so many times and being so sad. For some reason I’ll never forget the poem “Peckin”

Peckin’

The saddest thing I ever did see

 Was a woodpecker peckin’ at a plastic tree.

 He looks at me, and “Friend,” says he,

 “Things ain’t as sweet as they used to be.”

Why I thought this was so funny, I do not know. I just know I loved it and read it over and over, I still have it memorized after all this time. Its so simple but I thought it was hilarious for some reason!

                Writing about this just makes me want to sotp everything and read all these poems. It brings back so many memories, it gives me a little insight to what I was like and what I thought about when I was little. “Hippo’s Hope” is about a hippo trying to fly and there are three endings to it, a happy sad and “chicken”. In the sad ending the hippo breaks all his bones and drowns, and I remember being so upset reading that! I thought that the hippo was real and I didn’t believe my parents when they said that the story was just made up. It’s also really funny to me that I thought it could be true a hippo was trying to fly.

Reflecting on a Memorable Assignment

                We’ve done a lot of assignments this year, and if I had to choose one that stuck out in my mind the most, it would have to be the five-part paragraphs we wrote then had to read in front of the class. I remember doing rough draft after rough draft, working on it so hard trying it make it really good, but the format of it I remember thinking was really hard. I don’t remember what grade I got on it, but I was surprised on that paper I thought you graded pretty nicely.

                I definitely worked hard on that. You gave us outlines and I filled those out, printed it up, then would read over it and mark all the things I wanted to change, and then do it again. What probably made it the most memorable was how we had to present it. I felt really nervous presenting in front of the class, especially my own writing, so I’m sure my voice was shaking. But not only reading it to everyone, but having to call on people so they could tell you all the things that were wrong with your paper. That was definitely the scariest part because we have a lot of really smart people in my class so hearing what they had to say was pretty intimidating. Overall I think it went pretty well, and I did get some good feedback. I know I freaked myself out thinking people were going to judge me pretty harsh but it really wasn’t like that at all people were really nice and I got some good help.

Conflict in Romeo and Juliet

A big conflict in Romeo and Juliet is the conflict between the generations. Juliet has to struggle with her parents not allowing her freedom and forcing her to do things she really doesn’t want to do. When Juliet begs her father not to make her marry Paris, her father reacts very angrily, “And you be not hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,/ For by my soul, I’ll ne’er  acknowledge thee.” (171) This is a great example of the conflict between Juliet and her parents. She is on her knees begging that they don’t forces her to marry Paris, and her father, so unwilling to listen, threatens to disown her if she is not obedient.

                Conflict between people my age and their parents is notorious. My parents talk about how they dreaded my oldest sister’s teenage years because they knew she was going to be a lot of work. I remember a lot of slamming of doors and stomping upstairs done by her. I think more often than not ay my age, people are disagreeing with their parents; ether it’s not having enough freedom or invasions of privacy there is a lot to disagree about. But behind most of those are good intentions on the parenting side and that’s pretty easy to see. I think conflict between parents teaches us good compromising skills, patience, and a good way to practice temper. What my sister didn’t understand is that if you are reasonable and don’t bring too much emotion into it, you are much more likely to get what you want because your parents will be willing to listen to you if you are being respectful and not acting immature.

Romeo and Juliet: It's Everywhere!

                If you think about it, a lot of the Disney movies are based on a Romeo and Juliet theme; There are three really good movies that stick out in my mind. First, think of Malan, she is just a girl who wants to serve in the army to “defeat the Huns” so her grandfather doesn’t have to. She ends up falling in love with a leader in the arm but they can’t be together because she lied pretending she was a man. Next think about Pocahontas, there’s nobody her dad hates more than the white people, because they came over and are ruining their land. The white people really don’t like the Indian chief because he’s causing trouble. They fell in love with the worst possible matches, Pocahontas’s dad even try’s to kill him he hates him so much. My last example is Tarzan, Tarzan and Jane are totally opposite, him practically a gorilla and her a proper smart girl, and yet (similarly to Romeo and Juliet) they just happen to fall in love with an extremely inconvenient person. Also there is Cleighton in Tarzan who is similar to Paris in Romeo and Juliet because they both are trying to marry the girls.

Connecting with Romeo and Juliet

                Reading Romeo and Juliet, I didn’t feel like I connected with either of them. In fact, both of them kind of annoyed me. They are impulsive, moody, and irrational, they don’t think anything through, and everything they do is to an extreme. If I had to choose a scene that connected with me it would be where Mercutio gets stuck in the middle of Romeo and Tybalts fight and gets killed. Although not being stuck in the middle of sword fights, I have been stuck between like two friends fighting. It’s a situation where them fighting has nothing to do with you and you don’t want to be a part of it, but somehow by being friends with them at the same time your guilty too, and get “stabbed.” Mercutio didn’t have anyting to do with the two families fighting, and I didn’t have anything to do with my two friends fight, but me and Mercutio both ended up getting involved!

                I thought it was good for us to read the book at home, but I thought it was a little pointless to re-read the exact same thing together the next day. I feel like I didn’t understand Romeo and Juliet nearly as well as I wanted to because we didn’t really discuss hidden meanings and motifs and characters the way we did for To Kill a Mockingbird or Great Expectations. I wish we discussed it better in class because it’s such a known book and it gets talked about a lot, and I feel like I never really got deeper into it all I understood was surface level stuff. In the beginning it was hard for me to get used to the writing style, but it got easier as the play went on. I used Sparknotes No Fear Shakespeare to help me understand little things, but I never just read Sparknotes instead of reading it.

Pip Quote

I think Pip is referring to the “chain” as a symbol for life. He says “chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers” using iron and thorns to represent a bad life, and gold and flowers to represent a good one. The “formation of the first link” is the thing that started the whole chain, flowers or thorns, that now binds you for good or for bad. I think the sentences before this quote are just as important, Pip says, “This was a memorable day for me, for it made great changes in me. Imagine on selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been.” Pips day at Miss Havishams is that day he wishes he “struck out,” it’s the day that turned his life of gold and flowers to iron and thorns. Pips character changes very negatively after this day. He turns from cute, likeable Pip, to meaner and lying and more judgmental of the people around him. He goes from being happy with himself to seeing something better, then just being completely unhappy that he doesn’t have it.

                I don’t know if I have had any major life changing events, but I can think of some like high-school changing events. In the beginning of middle school I was shy and didn’t really care to meet new people, so I just had my friends from elementary school and I wasn’t making very many new friends. I didn’t have like confidence in my personality; I thought nobody would like me. But then I made a new friend from a different friend group and she became my best friend. Hanging out with her I started hanging out with a bunch of new people, and people actually liked me I was really surprised! I would definitely say that experience could be the start of a “gold chain” because I didn’t have confidence in my personality, but because of that and being able to make new friends I do now.

Wrapping Up Great Expectations

             I think a huge theme Dickens was trying to get across to all his readers was being satisfied with who you are and what you have. As a whole, at some point in everybody’s life you think “wow I wish I had enough money to do that” or “look at how pretty she is, I wish I could look like that.” Unless you feel very proud of who you are, which you should, it could be pretty safely said that many people struggle with thoughts like this often.  I think Dickens really wants people to just be comfortable with who they are and love yourself for your good qualities, I think he showed well that when you go out and try to be something you’re not, your lying to yourself and maybe even hurting the people around you. So denying your true self and how you actually are really does more bad than good. I like this theme; I think it could be easily over looked while reading because you could just be thinking about the characters, but if you think about it this theme really relates to everybody. Especially teenagers have feelings that they need to be better than what they are, people the same age as Pip around the time he decides he wants something “better.” Dickens does a great job of adding this theme, because its only there if you think about it, but it really is relatable to almost all people.

Great Expectations: Thoughts on Reading

                I really liked Great Expectations! I had heard alot of talk about how long and how hard to understand it was, but it didn’t end up being as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t really relate to the story, I think because now when I think of a “gentleman” I think of a guy holding the door open for you, or carrying your books, not just and extra rich guy who has nice things and never has to work. So Pip being a gentleman didn’t really relate to me I think because the times are so different. I liked the way they explained London as disappointing and gloomy and where Pip lived as more of an idea place to live, making you think maybe the grass really isn’t greener on the other side, sometime the simple things really are better. I did like reading Dickens; I enjoyed his style of writing, run on sentences and all. It was often hard to understand what he was saying, I remember not knowing what a bunch of words meant, I think I did solve all of the mysteries without help from Sparknotes, some were heavily foreshadowed and hinted to, like to who Estella’s parents really were. But ones like who the man on the staircase was, I had guesses but I didn’t actually figure it out until it was explained later.

                I actually did read every assignment every night, except for one night I fell asleep reading chapter 19, and we ended up having a quiz on it the next day, so I made sure not to do that again. I’m a really bad procrastinator so I usually saved my reading for right before I went to bed, which I guess isn’t bad because a lot of people read to help them fall asleep, but I often found myself being so tired that I wasn’t reading well I was just looking at the words without actually processing them. Besides that one time I fell asleep, I never had to read anything extra because I skipped some days before. My sisters have both gone to college so I would read in their old rooms because I figured out I’m much less distracted in their rooms instead of my own. I think I had a very good understanding of Great Expectations because I consistently read undistracted, and didn’t rely on Sparknotes or other people to tell me about what happened. Sparknotes has a lot on it, but it doesn’t have a bunch of the little random sentences that were actually really important with themes and motifs.