HTRLLAP Chapter 4

All sonnets sourced from sonnet.org

Arthur J Lockhart - Lux et Umbra

In the black flower of midnight--at the heart

And midmost auricle of secrecy,

There lies the golden fire-seed that shall be

The day's broad blossom. Softly fall apart

The silken leaves of dreams; and lo! thou art,

Sweet morn of expectation, dewy-drest!

While all the spectres that the dark infest,

Soon as the East doth his keen lances dart,

Show angel faces. Why avert the shade--

The solemn vigil--the mysterious power,

Filling the soul with awe, stirring the clod,

Bidding the bones to quake? 'Tis thus arrayed

In dusky calyx lies heaven's shining flower.

Our Angel leads through gloom to show us God.

Squarish: check.

Rhyming pattern: lines 1-8, and lines 9-14. It's Petrarchan!

Message: Good can come out of darkness.

Katharine Lee Bates

Tree of Song

An idle tree, whose timber builds no ships,

Whose wilding growth is all unfit to trace

Trim parallels in park and market-place,

Yet precious for the fragrant dew that drips

From blowing sprays to comfort fevered lips,

For lilt of hidden birds, for changeful grace

Of leafy shade that sunbeams interlace,

For heaven's dear blue about the spiring tips.

The world's great highway takes no heed of it,

Though paths wind thither through the April green.

The earth's blind forces feel no need of it;

Yet was there shaped, before the shaping hours,

A subtle league and sympathy between

This rhythmic tree and all effectual powers.

Squarish: check.

Rhyming pattern: Irregular distribution of some -ips and -ace. It is Petrarchan because she changes a little on line 9, indicating a topic for the first 8 lines and a change for the last 6.

Message: Even if society perceives you as worthless, you're not.

William Baylebridge

Flesh and Spirit

No! 'twas the questing dream that first achieved her--

More sensed for knowing no material part,

More real that no false outward eye perceived her,

Too gross, but that pure eye within my heart.

Nor feigned I, as my spirit so embraced her,

These arms encumbered might; ah! could they too,

Would she not fade as vision e'er effaced her,

As loves in this weak flesh so often do?

In flesh she might escape me, might expire

In the vicissitudes through flesh that range;

But, being the shadow of my heart's desire,

She could not pass beyond me, could not change.

O paradox! Want food--you are richer fed!

Lack the coarse crumbs--you find diviner bread!

Squarish: check.

Rhyming pattern: oh look! ababcdcdefefgg. SHAKESPEAREANNNNNN.

Message: I have no idea. You think he's talking about a woman, or is it food?

HTRLLAP Chapter 3

          There are several essentials to the Vampire story, including an older man with outdated values, a young female, a stripping away of her youth, continuance of life force for older male, and the death or destruction of the woman.

The only vampire novels I'm really familiar with are the Twilight series which I read along with everyone else back in middle school. Here we go.

Old guy: 100+ year old Edward Cullen, with a set of 100+ year old values to match.
Young Female: Stupid 17 year old Bella Swan.
Youth Stripping: Bella can't feasibly be youthful when she has so many dang problems, including her obsessive love for Edward, her depression when he leaves her, struggling vampire and werewolf relationships, getting chased around by crazy Italian vampires, marrying Edward when she's not much older that 18, getting pregnant with his monster child that literally almost kills her, and eventually becoming a vampire herself. Stressful life.
Life Force Continuance: Edward is basically rejuvenated when Bella shows up and he has someone to talk to that isn't his "parents" or "siblings."
Death/ Destruction: While Bella unfortunately never really dies, her human form does get destroyed when she is turned into a vampire for real.

But really, Bella is the vampire. She strips Edward of any youth he as left, basically ruins his life for a few years, he is her reason to continue living, and she destroys his peace and happiness.

Boy, did I hate this junk.

HTRLLAP Chapter 2

Meal: The meal on the train as Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, and Effie return to the Capitol from District 12 in The Hunger Games.

The meal, despite being huge and rich, is horribly uncomfortable and awkward. Katniss and Peeta have a complicated history with food (he fed her once while she was starving), and hence are not very comfortable around each other. Haymitch isn't comfortable for anyone, being a drunk. Effie makes the situation worse, because she is from the Capitol and is essentially and idiot, thinkin the Hunger Games are a wonderful thing, causing Katniss and Peeta to resent her. As Foster says, we as humans are really only comfortable with eating around people we know and trust, so putting four essential strangers with different personalities, lifestyles and beliefs in the same train car full of food is not about to be pleasant.

HTRLLAP Chapter 1

Quest-pects (Quest Aspects):

1. Quester

2. Destination

3. Stated reason to go

4. Challenges en route

5. Real reason to go

I shall apply these to my favorite quest-ish movie: Shrek (the first one. the sequels all sucked)

1. The quester is Shrek. A middle aged (?) ogre, not too pleased with the whole being forced to share his land with idiotic fairytale creatures thing, has little self confidence, but is fairly boastful.Consequently, the questee is Fiona.

2. His destination is the castle. He has to go to the castle to retrieve Princess Fiona so Prince Ugly Short Guy can marry her. 

3. He's told to go so he can get his land back all to himself. Which in my opinion, he should have just clubbed Prince Ugly Short Guy on the head and taken back what was rightfully his, but then this wouldn't be a quest.

4. Challenges and Trials: Donkey. Everything about Donkey. The attractive lady dragon, some lava, etc. The quest back to the castle has some more entertaining challenges, such as the musical number with Robin Hood and his merry men and Shrek gets arrowed in the butt. Also, the whole Fiona is an ogre complicates matters.

5. Real Reason: I think Shrek really wants to go on this cross country adventure to explore something that isn't his swamp which is kind of overrun right now. He wants new experiences and excitement. On the way back, the reason is loooooooooooove. 

HTRLLAP Introduction

          Memory, symbol, and patterns all affect the reading of literature by letting you know what to expect. You can take your memories of something you've read previously and apply them to what you're reading currently to get a feel for the piece and perhaps give you a good chance at guessing the story. However, this may cause a different interpretation of the piece you are reading based on your ideas from the last one. Symbols affect reading literature by helping the reader put together the deeper meanings of what the author was trying to subtly convey, be it through metaphors, analogies, or other literary devices. Lastly, patterns help the reader understand basic plot lines in literature by relating them with similar works. Example of a literary pattern: boy meets girl, they fall in love, some struggle happens, then they overcome all the odds and end up together again (Nicholas Sparks, you may want to diversify your storylines juuuuust a bit...). The recognition of these patterns helps understand more difficult pieces of literature (Tolstoy, I am looking at you) by comparing the difficult piece to a pattern you know and love from easier works.
          A time when my appreciation of a piece was enhanced by understanding symbols was this silly little junior-high level book whose title I have completely forgotten, but love all the same. It's basically about this girl who's mom is dead and her dad's an alcoholic and she has to take care of her siblings when all she really wants to do is go to college and be a writer (which she eventually does, yippie!). The symbols in the piece really helped me appreciate what the author was trying to convey. The drowning of a girl in a pond was sexualized by the use of the water in said pond, and when they dredge her body out, she's totally pregnant. All dead and gross and stuff, but pregnant. At least the guy who drowned her (her lover) was sentenced to a whole lot of jail time for killing two people (because this was the early 1900s in Vermont and fetuses were people no matter what age, religion and all). Also, the whole college thing was a symbol of freedom for our main character (name also forgotten) because she could finally do what she wanted, not just cook and clean all day for her unappreciative drunkard papa and perfectly able to cook for themselves siblings.

Eveline Freewrite

          Perhaps one of the scarier things in life for those of us still in high school is the impending COLLEGE. While this sentence doesn't make a lot of sense - college being a noun and not a verb which would belong at the end of that sentence - it's still very true. College is the biggest leap of faith many of us will ever take. You're leaving home, and everything you're familiar with, to go to a big place far away to learn stuff that you don't even know if it will benefit whatever career you end up in. How terrifying. Choosing a major is basically choosing what to dedicate what feels like the rest of your life to, at 18 years old. I, at 18, am still pretty clueless as to what I'll want to do when I'm 30, 40, or 50. I have to get an education, though, so I'll pick something. Perhaps Biology, or Geology.
          The Dorm Room. A tiny space to share your most intimate personal things with someone you've never met for a whole year. How will you wake up on time? Will you hate each other? What's the bathroom situation? This is something I'm personally terrified of. Here at North, there's always a bathroom within a one minute walk, but I don't know how that will be up at Northwest. Crap. Literally.

Growth as a Writer - End of Semester One

           This semester in College Comp has really affected my writing. After cranking out four essays and a language presentation, along with five critical analyses, a reader/writer profile, various journal entries, a cultural event review, and other miscellaneous free writing, I have learned a lot about my writing and myself.

            After reviewing my Reader/ Writer Profile from August, I realized that my strength is most certainly NOT being able to write a presentable paper in a pinch. I need revision time! The one paper I had to write in a pinch (the culture essay), I got a C on. I don’t know what I was thinking. I now think my biggest strength is getting down to the bottom of things in research; I will dig and dig and dig until I find what the truth is. My weakness is exactly what I said was my strength: speedwriting.

            I think my writing has best improved by making my writing more interesting to read, I think my persuasive essay is much more interesting than my personal narrative from the beginning of the semester. However, this might be because I think just really find sex education interesting, but I have really made an effort to make my writing more interesting for the reader, and not just for me. I feel like the biggest mistake I find myself repeating is trying to write last minute, often either because I’m busy or don’t take advantage of time I have earlier in the assignment.

            I use most steps of the writing process, especially various drafts, sometimes up to three separate documents basically saying the same thing but with different wording. I do need to spend more time on revision, and let go of the fact that not all of my first drafts are perfect, because most of them are really, really bad and need serious overhauling before they get turned in.       

            Showing versus telling is continuing to be difficult for me, but I think I did it best in the personal narrative in my descriptions of Venice and the Right-Angled Woman. I tried to put the reader on the islands, actually looking at this woman, instead of just having a sketchy mental image from my not-so-great telling. I think I didn’t do this very well in my culture essay, and that probably contributes to why I didn’t get a fabulous grade: I basically just described my views on death and burial practices. I didn’t really know how to put the reader into a position of being dead, but I think if I was given the opportunity to re-do this, I would definitely give it a better shot.

1.     I think my very best piece of writing was my personal narrative, and not just because I got a 94% (of which I am very proud, thank you Mrs. Brownlee), but because I had a lot of emotion going into it. I felt sorrow for the woman and her physical predicament, guilt for not helping her, and a decent amount of confusion. How could this poor woman be almost immobile and begging for coins in one of the most beautiful places on earth? I went about writing this piece to looking at the pictures my mom and I took while there, to trigger some memories of the actual city itself. The best paragraph is where I describe the poor and use her as the main example and focal point of the essay, and the worst paragraph is probably the super short conclusion. I needed to find a way to wrap up my feelings about the woman.

2.     The most difficult piece was probably the persuasive, because I had such a hard time finding information on sex education in LPS, which I needed to able to persuade the district to change their policy to include a more comprehensive approach. I couldn’t persuade them to change it if I didn’t know what they already did. While I eventually found enough information to write my dang paper, I had very little time left before it was due. Whoops.

3.     I would do some serious overhauling of the culture essay. It wasn’t put together well, needed more information, and the intro (“death is like a casserole”) was weird and strange. At the time, I thought it would grab the reader, but now I think it would just make them go: “What the heck. NOT reading this.”

While I’ve put a lot of time into this class and have missed countless hours of watching television and relaxing, I am very proud of all I’ve accomplished this semester, and I’m really glad I decided to take the class. I think I would have perished of boredom in anything else. I’ve really learned about myself as well. I learned I couldn’t crank quality things out at the last minute (which is what I’m still trying to do now, writing this in 3^rd hour before it’s due. Not my fault though, I had to work all weekend. (Okay, it’s totally my fault. Should have worked on it Friday.)) I’ve also learned I work best when I don’t have distractions such as everything on my computer…. I need to turn off the wifi when I work, or else I’ll never get anything done on time!