Independent Reading Project Reflection

By doing the independent group project, I learned about World War I from the Italian’s point of view, because the main character was an American ambulance river serving in the Italian army. The book was pretty thick, and it took me a very long time to finish it. Some of the parts describing the war are really good, because it described the soldier’s suffering very graphically. I believe that this exercise was pretty worthwhile, because I learned a lot about not just the World War I, but also the grim realities of war. I think this book is almost the direct opposite to The Red Badge of Courage; in The Red Badge of Courage, the author put the focus on the honor and glory of war, but in A Farewell to Arms, the author focused on the bad side of war, it described how the main character’s friends died one by one, and how he lost his lover in the end. To make it a better project, I would suggest myself to be more creative. The project Danny made was pretty creative; he taught us the theme of the book The Great Gatsby with simple and interactive “treasure” box.

Contemporary

Romanticism is one of the earliest movements that we have looked at. Some of the characteristics of the Romantic Movement are that it values feeling and intuition over reason, values imagination, shuns civilization and loves nature, and praises individual freedom and the worth of the individual. Transcendentalism is a movement that followed Romanticism. Transcendentalists believe that everything in the world, including human beings is a reflection of the Divine Soul, and that people can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit that is revealed in nature or in their own souls. The transcendentalists also believed that spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality. After the Transcendentalism movement, it’s the Realism movement. The Realism movement is basically a rejection of Romanticism. Almost all of the beliefs of Realists are opposite from that of the Romantics. The Realists rejects the idealized hero of the Romantic Movement, and they focus on ordinary people. They avoid using very florid language, and uses everyday speech patterns. Modernism is another movement. The Modernists rejects the traditional themes, subjects, and forms of earlier literature, and also rejects sentimentality and artificiality. 

Reflect on Your Project

We divided our group project into three parts, and assigned each member a part. My part was to do a poster on the background and basic information of The Handmaids Tale, and a “connection to self” poster that relates the conditions described in the book to my personal experience. The background and basic information poster was pretty easy to do, because all I have to do is research. The connection to self-poster was harder because I had trouble relating the book to myself. After a few hours of ferocious thinking, I found out that I could relate the way the Handmaids are prosecuted in the book, to my experience of being prosecuted. The handmaids were forced to do what they most likely don’t want to do (make babies), and will face severe punishment (death) if they raise any objection. I am often forced to do something that I don’t want to do, too, and I will also face punishment of a different form if I don’t do it. I spent a few hours on each poster, organizing the information, arranging the format, and adding some details. No one in our group took an obvious leadership role, but it was Christine who organized everything. I got my material from bookstores, and I worked at home because I have art supplies at home.

A Horror Story

I think “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is very much a horror story, as it contains all the elements that a horror story ought to have. Some of the most important elements in a horror story are of course the diction and plot. The right uses of words successfully builds up the suspense and nervousness. The right organization of the plot allows the reader to feel suspicious all along, and then still get surprised by the ending of the horror story. I think a surprising ending is also an essential element of a horror story. I was very surprised by the weird and chilling ending in “A Rose for Emily”. I suspected that something dead is inside the house, but I never suspected that it’s a dead person. I think there is a big difference between something scary and something that inspires a sense of horror. I think that “something scary” are mostly things that would be scary if it happened in real life (but will most likely not), but not really scary when you read it; for example, a character meeting a monster is not scary when we read it, but if we would be scared if we actually met a monster in real life. “Something that inspires a sense of horror” in horror stories are usually things that are really terrible that we never imagined existed, but could actually happen in real life. I think that is the case in “A Rose for Emily”. I never imagined someone would kill a person, and then keep that person’s corpse inside her room for more than ten years. Even though that’s a really crazy thing, it’s still possible that it will happen in real life, because we never know what some mentally disturbed people can do.

Homer’s End

I was very surprised by the end of “A Rose for Emily”, even though I suspected all along that something bad happened inside the mysterious house. After Emily died, people found a skeleton lying on a bed in a room in Emily’s house. I think Miss Emily poisoned Homer Barron to death, because she wants to get married so badly. She is afraid that she will lose another chance of getting married if Homer Barron runs away, so she killed Homer Barron before he could even decide whether or not he will marry her. After Homer Barron is killed, I think Miss Emily purposely arranged his body on the bed in a position that looks like he’s sleeping soundly. I believe the most reasonable motive for Emily to kill is that she wants to live in the day of marriage forever, because she yearned for it for so long, she cannot afford to lose it anymore. I think there is an indentation on the pillow beside Homer’s because Miss Emily lies there so much. I also think that there is gray hair on the pillow beside his decomposed corpse because Miss Emily purposely put it there. She sealed the room after a few years, probably because she couldn’t bear the pain to see that Homer Barron is actually dead. She then put the hair on the pillow as a symbol that she will always be with Homer Barron.

Nobel Speech

In Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, h urged young writers to tackle “the old universal truths…love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” I think he followed his own advice in “A Rose for Emily”, too. The six themes: love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice are all reflected in that story. First is the “love” theme, the love of Emily’s father for his daughter, and the love of Emily for Homer Barron are the two most evident examples. Next is the “pity” theme, the villagers pitied the death of Emily. Evidence of the “pride” theme is also seen in the story. Emily’s father is very proud of his family, and he won’t let any one marry his daughter because he thinks no one is good enough for her. Sacrifice was also shown in the story. Miss Emily sacrificed her youth and didn’t try to court with anyone just to live up to her father’s pride. 

Eccentric or Crazy?

In the story “A Rose for Emily”, we see a woman that acts and talks abnormally. She is disconnected from the society she lives in, and does her best to shut anything from the society out. She seems that she doesn’t understand how things work, because when people asked her to pay taxes, she replied multiple times that she has no taxes in Jefferson, and that the people should go talk to a colonel who died ten years ago. When poor people act this way, people usually say that they’re weird, but when rich people act this way, people say they’re “eccentric”. Eccentric by the dictionary definition means “off center”. I think the reason why people describe weird aristocratic people as “eccentric” is because aristocratic people live by a set of rules. People expect the aristocratic people to behave a certain way, so when the aristocratic people behave differently from other people’s expectations, they are considered eccentric. People say Miss Emily is eccentric because she doesn’t act like what an aristocratic lady would act like.

The N-Word

Many books that contain racial slurs such as the well-known n-word had been banned because it contains offensive language. Many of those kinds of books have been edited, and had the offensive terms replaced with similar but non-offensive terms. For example, they substituted the n-word with “slave” in some of the books. I think this is a wrong thing to do, because replacing the word can change the meanings that the book wants to inform. I also think that in those kinds of books, the racial slurs are not meant to insult people, they are meant to teach people reading the book about the situation at that particular time. For example, Mark Twain uses the n-word frequently to teach us how white people treat African Americans in the past. I think it’s wrong to ban these kinds of books, because they are only meant to help us understand the horrible past, and make us believe that using those racial slurs is not good. But what if the books insulted my ethnic group? I think people nowadays won’t really get offended by words that insult an ethnic group in general, people will only get offended by words aimed directly for a specific person, for example: articles that attack a specific person. 

Retreat

In the story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main character retreated from society. She shut her self from the outside world and stayed in her own house. Why would a person want to do such a thing? I think there are some possible explanations for her actions. I think a person would want to escape from society because the society makes them “sad”. If a person’s husband is unjustly tried and executed by the laws in society (ex. Tom Robinson), the person would want to escape from society because the society is too oppressing to her. A person might also escape from society because everyone the person knows has died, for example, Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson isolated herself from society because all her friends have died. She probably escaped from society because she finds the society unworthy to live in. Some people escape from society because they think the society is corrupt and superficial. People who think the society is superficial might go and live in the woods. In my life, I sometimes feel like withdrawing into my own shell, too. I feel that because my everyday life sometimes become too tedious or boring.

Free Write

While the other people have APs, I have SAT subject tests. Although not nearly as hard as the AP Exams, it still takes a pretty long time to prepare. I’m taking the SAT Math Level II and Chemistry test this Saturday, and I’m awfully nervous. Chemistry and math are never my interests, and of course they are never easy for me. The chemistry test took me a very very long time to prepare, because there was a lot of stuff to understand and memorize. The SAT Math Level II test didn’t take me very long to study, but it’s still kind of hard to get 800. Because my parents are both math teachers, they’ve been putting a lot of pressure on my math test. I’m starting to feel more like a junior, since there are a lot of tiring things happening these days. I had to turn in a piece of artwork, and I spent many hours working it. I sat in front of my desk and worked on it for five hours straight, for two days. It’s weird how while some people are very busy and super stressed out, some people are going to the movies and saying how awesome that movie was. 

I Hate Poetry

Why do many people hate poetry? I hated poetry before, so I know the reasons why. In art, most people don’t like abstract expressionism or minimalism because they don’t understand it, they think the artists is just using the name “abstract expressionism “ as an excuse for making very random art. That’s what I thought, too, before I studied art history. Now I like that kind of art because I know their meaning. Similar to art, many people hate poem because they don’t understand it. I hated most poetry before because I think the poet is just writing random stuff down on paper. But after I got to look closely at the poem and tried to understand the poem, I started to like the poem, because I found out that the author actually talked about many things that I myself can relate to. After reading the poem by Marianne Moore, I found out a lot about the function of poem. A good poem does not say, but instead describe to let the reader “fill in the blanks”. For example, imagist poems described scenes of some animals sleeping, walking, side by side on a prairie etc. The poet didn’t tell us in the poem that these are peaceful scenes, instead, we found out the poet is describing peaceful things by imagining the actual scenes.

Horror

What makes a story scary? What elements contribute to a tone of horror? In horror movies, much of the “scariness” is built up by the music. The music is very vital in creating horror in scary movies; music with a very fast rhythm makes us nervous and anticipates that something is about to happen, where as music with eerie music notes heightens the fear we get from watching the scenes. In horror stories, the author can’t use music to make the story scary, so the author has to rely on his diction and tone. Vivid descriptions of what the characters saw is also important, it helps build a picture in our mind. Another element that makes a horror story scary is suspense. When the characters in the story don’t know why something weird is happening, it creates suspense because we start to wonder about the reason about why those things are happening, too. Our imagination runs wild and we think up a lot of scary reasons. In the story The Feather Pillow we read today, the author described how the wife of a man loses blood in her body mysteriously everyday, and finally dies. During the whole story, the man doesn’t know why his wife is dying, and the way the author wrote the story made us as terrified as the man himself.