Category: Senior Literary

The book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, is a wonderful story about greasers. I think that this book might be one of the best books I have ever read. It’s a great book that has described greasers perfectly as characters. The way that this book is written is wonderful. It manages to constantly pull you back in every single sentence. The story gives you these incredible characters that you become easily attached to. It manages to give out the background story of many important characters so well without interrupting the flow.

There are so many great characters in this story. There are basically two groups that don’t necessarily get along. There are the Greasers and the Socs. You automatically get sucked into the world of the Greasers as a group and so you start to not really like the Socs. I think the Socs might be one of the greatest antagonists I have ever read in a book. They genuinely strike you as people that you want to get away from the main characters.

In the story, we follow Ponyboy, a 14 year old boy who runs track. As soon as you understand that these people are all about 14-20 you begin to get sucked into this world that has horrible kind of situations. It manages to pull us in because it doesn’t spare us the straightforward areas in this story.  Sodapop Curtis is 16 and Ponyboy’s brother. he dropped out of school and works at a gas station. again, just small aspects of a character brings the reader right into where they are and what is happening. The author writes these characters so well and it manages to keep our attention. Johnny Cade is Ponyboy’s best friend who is 16 and lives with his abusive parents. I think that even though abuse is considered very cliche now in writing, I believe that this book writes about how abuse can cause kids to act certain ways because of what happened to them and how they were raised. Johnny is a great character and he is written very well, he just came from a bad area in his life. Darrel, known as “Darry” is the oldest brother in the Curtis family. He is 20 and basically leads the gang. Darry is one of those characters that are tough but is a very loving character. He cared for his two younger brothers when their parents died from a car crash.

There are so many great characters in this story. I appreciate how well written every single character is and how the author doesn’t seem to care about what people think because he does not shy away from serious issues. The writer understands what makes a great character and he does. I think that there is just a perfect balance of protagonist and antagonist in this story. Enemies are very well written here and the plot of the story is so well thought out and well executed. I think that many people should read The Outsiders. I highly recommend it.

 

“It’s hard to get right when the free folks out there are more trapped than the criminal folks in jail. I just want to be free” (Brown).

Yet again, I found myself reading another work from Mr. Kiese Laymon. This week, I read an essay entitled, “Teaching White Students Showed Me the Difference Between Power and Privilege”. This work was found on his website under the extension of essays. I originally began reading another essay, which was going to be the topic of my blog; however, this essay caught my attention the second time around of searching for a piece to analyze.

The work itself was everything I expected as far as a powerful message being delivered, which as I said in my last entry, Mr. Laymon does a fine job at. Mr. Laymon speaks of the connections formed between him and a man in Poughkeepsie, New York, as well as observations as an educator, and the links between the two. The essential message within the text is the repetition of the “black cycle” of supporting “white folks”, and how, as Mr. Laymon states it, “Americans with the least access to healthy choice and second chances are given the harshest punishments” (Laymon).

The piece is in no way a work that slanders any race per se, but it is honest in the view and foundation of the social structures that we as Americans have experienced so long, and how we have come so numb to the feelings of society we find being slandered comfortable. I would say that this piece touches my inner activist. I personally love works that are blunt and aware that the world we are in is crueler to some more than others, and there are not as many people as it should be who are trying to change this because people are turning a blind eye to what does not affect them negatively.

The only downsides of this essay were a few missed opportunities that I feel Mr. Laymon could have explored. In my opinion, the best way to explain without spoiling the work itself is that he speaks of a student and the student’s characteristics, but he never speaks on the student’s own comments or how the student reacts to the circumstances he is born with. I believe him being an educator, then he would most definitely see his student’s comfortability in his life or his self-awareness to the standards.

As far as the writing, on a positive note, the essay is written in the form of a story; however, it is embedded with personal thoughts and logic from Mr. Laymon. The work itself is not long, but for its length, I am very impressed with how well Mr. Laymon packed so much depth into the essay. So many well-written points and lines were put into it that it makes a very rich read. I most definitely recommend this work to any who are interested, and I encourage writers to read more works from Mr. Laymon. If you would like to read this essay, click here.

Once again, I have found myself reading another Kate Chopin short story. What can I say? I think I’ve become addicted to this interesting woman. This time I chose the short story titled “Desiree’s Baby”. A friend introduced me to this story, so I guess it was just fate. “Desiree’s Baby” is a great short story. The central story is about miscegenation (inter-breeding of races), and the setting takes place in Louisiana.  Just to refresh your memory, Chopin was strongly Pro-Confederate during her life. It’s safe to say how she already feels about miscegenation; however, the story’s empathy towards the subject was quite surprising.

The story begins with a subtle flashback to the abandonment of a child, Desiree. Madame Valmonde took her in and claimed her as her own. A very prominent and rich white man fell in love with Desiree years later, and they were married. Eventually, they had a child together. The conflict is a racial crisis between a husband and wife.

It is written in the third person omniscient, playing into the thoughts and emotions of all three main characters—mostly Desiree. As the conflict is introduced in the story, the mood changes. It’s a very abrupt change which worked well. At first, the author had me confused at the time, but I eventually came to a realization.

Chopin does well with having sensitivity towards the emotion of the wife. In a way, she kind of displays the hurt she feels because of identity. In this story, I feel there’s no bias present towards the conflict. The author places herself in the shoes of every character and displays what she thinks they would feel to the best of her ability, which is very appreciative. I love the way Chopin incorporates the Louisiana lifestyle in the story.

Some things I found unattractive of the story was the lack of metaphorical descriptions as I see in her other works. This story was full of literal descriptions, not leaving much up to the imagination, and that’s something I enjoyed about her other works. I also didn’t agree/understand the ‘wrapping up’ of the conclusion. With that being said, the actual ending was amazing, a definite jaw dropper. There was the numbering of the paragraphs, and I didn’t know if this was the actual structure or if the website placed them there. I found the numbers quite distracting and unnecessary. Throughout the story, all of the text was in chunks, and the last section was very small.

In conclusion, this story definitely tops the others I’ve read by Chopin. It’s very well written and emotionally stirring. It really does leave you thinking ‘wow’. I know it did for me. I would definitely say this is one of my favorite short stories now.

If you’re looking for something great to read in under ten minutes, “Desiree’s Baby” is the answer. You’re in for a good treat. Click here to read the full story, and see the very nice portrait that goes along with it. You can thank me later.

I very rarely find myself incredibly moved by a personal essay other than mine. No, I’m not saying this arrogantly, but I always end up with very tragic personal essays. “The Home That Made Me Doesn’t Exist Anymore” is an inspiring piece of nonfiction work. This essay incorporates a myriad of social disconnections and victims of stereotypes. When the word victim comes to mind, our brain automatically thinks of a person, a human being. However, places and homes can be victims too. There have always been the poor, middle-class, and high-class standards of living. We have a definite picture of how each of these classes lives. When you see an apartment building with chipped paint and a broken window, those are signs of poor or middle-class habitats. It is too often people are judged by the place they lay their head at night, cook dinner for their children, or bathe the day’s dirt away. A home is a home.

In this essay, the main character is the writer, and it travels through her young years to her present self. She is an African American woman from Chicago, which is the setting of the essay. There are many descriptions that give the piece great visuals and a sense of the Chicago lifestyle, more specifically the way she saw Chicago. In the beginning, the little girl is naïve about the place she lives and doesn’t understand why others see her home differently. As the piece progresses, she becomes more and more aware of the faults in her surroundings. For example, the once crystal covered playground is now shards of glass from liquor and beer bottles. It takes a very harsh but gentle turn because the narrator understands now.

There are a ton of great verbs used in this piece such as shimmers, affirmed, ensconced, mythologized, bathed. The writer does very well with progressing the story with interesting words. There also nouns that stood out to me such as haints and maws.

While reading this essay, it became an emotional journey for me. I felt what this writer was feeling and saw this world through her eyes. She gives this place that everyone looks down on admirable characteristics. “Our neighborhoods are broken in so many ways, but there is light here as well.” That was one of my favorite lines from the entire essay because it embodies so much character. It adds depth to the setting and the personality of the writer. This essay also dips into the division of races. “I didn’t learn whiteness as a default, or the limitations placed on those who exist outside of it, until I was much, much older.” This line is powerful because it shows that sometimes you have to learn the hard way of the inequality of the world, and in a way, you must accept it.

Another great thing about this essay is the constant references to other writers. She explained how they were introduced to her and the importance or impact they had in her life. Overall, I wholeheartedly enjoyed reading “The Home that Made Me Doesn’t Exist Anymore.” If you’d like to give it a read, like always, just click here.           

How to Love, How to Work

Chapter 9-11

Chapter 9; “When should you act more extroverted than you really are?”

This chapter begins with a quote by William James:

“A man has many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares.  He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.”

The quote summerizes the basic thought the chapter is based off of.  It explains the free trait theory veru simply also.  This chapter poses the question “Do fixed personality traits really exist, or do they shift according to situation.?” The Free Trait Theory says we are born culturally endowed with certain personality traits, such as extro or introversion.  However intoverts are capable of acting like extroverts when working on “core personal projects”.  These are things people find personally important- loved ones or anything this person values highly in their life.

This Chapter includes a checklist to see if you are a high self monitor or not.  A high self monitor plays to audience.  They ‘monitor’ their social behaviour more than low self moniters.  Low self monitors go by their own internal compass.  They are less sensitive to social cues and behaviour changes.

Chapter 10

The Communication Gap

‘How to Talk to Members of the Opposite Type’

This chapter begins with a quote by Carl Jung:

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

This chapter tells how introverts and extroverts react to one another.  The book says that introverts actually attract extroverts, as extroverts tend to attract inroverts.  Opposites attract, in other words.  The chapter opens with an example of a couple that is introverted and extroverted.  They love eachother, however the fights they have are normally about social events.  Unsurprisingly the extrovert wants people over constantly, while the introvert does not.  The two admire one another for their opposite strengths.  The extrovert feels grounded will the intovert feels alive.  I good dynamic for a relationship, whether it is frienship or being a couple.

The book also talks about the dynamic of understanding portrayed emotion through each personality.  When arguing intoverts typically get flat toned and sipassionate, whether it is sad news or angry news.  This is hard for extroverts to understand because all they see is a dispassionate person that does not care.  When really, it’s the opposite.  Introverts care too much, typically and do not know how to accurately portray that emotion without breaking into fits of complete vulnerability.

Chapter 11

On Cobblers and Generals

‘How to Cultivate Quiet Kids in a World that Can’t Hear Them’

This chapter begins with a quote by Plato, The Republic

“With anything young and tender the most important part of the task is the beginning of it; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression more readily taken.”

This chapter explains how if extrocerted parents are given an introverted child, they often think something is wrong with this child.  However in another household, this kid would be a ‘model child’.  It really does depend on the understanding of the two types of personalities.  It starts with a story once told by Mark Twain about a man in search of the greatest general to ever live.  This man went all the way around the world, and by the time he found the guy someone told him the greatest general ever had died.  The man pays a visit to the pearly white gates and talks to Saint Paul.  The man tells Saint Paul he is looking for the greatest general that ever lived.  Saint Paul points to a regular looking man.   The man says “That’s not the greatest general to ever live!  I knew him when he was alive, he’s just an old cobbler.”  To which Saint John replied with “No, he was not a general, but if he was he would have been the greatest that ever lived.”  This is supposed to show the importance of letting talents flourish.

In conclusion, the tone was factual, but it is biased for introverts.  It refers to extroverts in a sort of outsider way.  I immensely enjoyed this informative concept and structure of the book.  Each paragraph began with a quote and a story as an example of the topic.  It was a very well written book, and I would recommend it.

This book was based on a young girl who had moved to a school district and came to regular school after being home schooled her whole life. She didn’t know how to fit in with the other kids and did things completely out of wack. She didn’t really pay much attention to the fact that people were judging her and instead stayed the way that she had always been. She also named herself according to what sounded good to her. She didn’t stick to one name, she didn’t care that it wasn’t normal.

We see a romance develop between star girl and the main character. This is quite interesting because the main character has opposition to her in the beginning of the story just like everyone else did and then somehow down the road was drawn to that difference. I love the idea of this romance, it was so different than most romance is conveyed in books. This honestly added in so much of a plot and individuality to the work. I also like the idea of him wanting her to change, and not liking the way that she is simply because she didn’t fit in with everyone else. He was helpless to the idea that she wouldn’t change who she was just for him.

The stargirl was selfless throughout the book. She didn’t care what people thought of her, and she almost seemed to not have an ego at all. She only wanted to make other people happen, not herself. If anything, helping other people made her happy. I enjoyed this aspect of this character because it’s something you don’t really see much in other books. You almost have to root for this character, and I always got lost in thought thinking about how it must have felt to be helpless if only for just a moment.

I really like the fact that throughout this entire book there was always some kind of surprise that I would never expect. I didn’t lose interest in the book because every time I turned the page there would be some image sticking in my mind that I couldn’t get out of my head. At some point the idea of a wagon that she kept rocks in was brought up. She placed rocks in the wagon for each time that something made her happy and took it out each time it made her sad. This was a really good example of the surprise that came in this book.

This book still resonates in my mind. The end of this book tied the whole thing together and gets the reader thinking about literately everything that happened in the book all on one page. We think about the fact that this young girl who was so weird had so much of an impact on a school that she was only in for one year. Her leaving almost makes us want to understand why she left in the first place. I wanted to see more of her, to understand what made her act so weird. Most of all I wanted to know what she would do next.

The Overview:

Macbeth is a tragic play written by the infamous William Shakespeare and allegedly first performed in 1606. It describes the dramatic fall of the titular Macbeth from revered war veteran to psychotic king. After years of war, Macbeth is declared a war hero. Then he comes across three witches who make for him a startling prophesy: Macbeth will become first, Thane of Calder, then king. He dismisses the witches, until immediately after,  he is named Thane of Calder. This starts a Domino Effect, until Macbeth becomes mad with power and plagued by guilt over the terrible things he has done to achieve it.

The Diction:

As one would expect of anything of Shakespeare’s, the diction is very, for lack of a better term, Shakespearean. It was, for me at least, next to impossible to read and understand simultaneously without prior exposure to Elizabethan language. I would most definitely advise reading aloud, as that is how it is intended to be heard, and is far easier, though still tough, to comprehend.

Potential Turn-offs:

For me, there were many turn-offs. For one, it seems like even the great Shakespeare isn’t perfect. There are subjects that are brought up and dropped later in the story as if they never existed. The problem is, besides the obvious creation of a major plot-hole, is that when you include prophetic elements in a story, you had better fulfill it. Obviously, there are going to be loopholes in it, which makes the wording of the prophesy crucial. There are also abrupt changes in character that bothered me greatly. The story is also far too political for my taste.

An Appealing Factor: 

I’m thinking really hard to come up with even the smallest thing that I enjoyed in Macbeth. The best I can come up with is the smart mouth of Macduff’s son, Macduff’s loyalty, and savagery of Lady Macbeth’s reasoning. I won’t give any spoilers, but not all of the aforementioned  traits survive to the end.

(BONUS) The Hype:

Supposedly, Macbeth is Shakespeare’s second most popular play, right after Hamlet.  I haven’t read Hamlet, but I’ve seen loose adaptions of it. I’ve also read and seen Romeo and Juliet, another famous play of his. So, I went into Macbeth completely ignorant of the plot and hoping to enjoy it as much as I did Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. The only thing I knew about Macbeth was just the bare bones of Lady Macbeth’s characters, and I was looking forward to it. And I must say, I came out of it more disappointed than ever. There is discontinued plot elements, a terrible character’s de-evolution, and if I hadn’t been had an audio-book to listen to, I wouldn’t have understood a word. I wouldn’t have even kept reading.

My Rating:

I don’t think I’ve ever been so let down by such a hyped up piece of literature. Without a doubt, I am never going to read Macbeth again. I’ll give it 3 stars out of 10, and I’m being generous.

A Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a play by Eugene O’Neill. The play is about Mary, Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund. These four characters are very smart and seem very wealthy. The father, Tyrone, is extremely cheap and stingy, he is a businessman that buys land and rents it out, but he gets scammed a lot by in his mind, a friend, and he is into the theater and Shakespeare. The mother, Mary, has a bunch of things that happen to her. She is very caring, but she has a troubling past of mental and drug problems. She starts showing signs again in the play of mental illness and the characters become worried for her. The older brother, Jamie, is a very interesting character. He is kind of like the mentor to Edmund and he sleeps with prostitutes and drinks a lot of alcohol. He shows a lot of signs of jealousy at Edmund, he also seems very angry. The younger brother, Edmund, is kind of like the baby in the story. He talks a lot about philosophy, writers of philosophy, poetry, poets, and he also drinks a long with Jamie. He is sick in the play and the mother worries about him, but he seems content with his sickness. Edmund has signs of being very pretentious and stuck up.

I think that the idea in this play is very good and unique. I think that the stage directions in this play is extremely well thought out and great. The stage directions throughout the play definitely add a very strong feel to the play and gives a good punch to the story. They are very detailed.

I like the idea of the story and the play is very well thought out and put together well, but I did have some problems with the story. I think that the author had so many ideas for each character that he felt he should put in, that it seems more of a grocery list of problems and characteristics. It all kind of jumbles together and dos not necessarily work with the effect that the play has ultimately. The plot is very slow and it does not seem to build up for me. It was lacking action or even intense moments in the play. When a character revealed a big thing that happened, it’s more glossed over and there seems to be no reaction or turmoil from what they revealed. The big reveals of the mom, Edmund, and Jamie did not have a big effect of a big reveal of what was happening because too many hints and reveals was scattered throughout the play. The reveal didn’t have an effect that it should have had because all of the reveal was scattered throughout. I understand that the mom is very crazy and many of the characters seem crazy, but in this play, so many things were repeated more than once. At times a character would say something to another character that they already told another character, but it was done multiple times and that specific strategy even got repetitive.

The play has a great story and it is well put together, I just feel that it lacks excitement.

 

This is a story about a young boy who started off quite normal. He lived a normal life, his parents were still together, his sister was a smart girl, and he didn’t have any home troubles. He wasn’t bullied in school, and he had friends that he enjoyed spending time with. His best friend’s name is Aaron and he spent most of his time at Aaron’s house watching TV and smoking.

We later see his character start to transform into a boy who is struggling with depression over something that he did not understand. From what we know about him there was no real reason for him to become depressed.  Something in his mind just clicked at a party when his friend starts to date the one girl that he was attracted to. We find out later on that his problem really was a chemical unbalanced problem instead of having some traumatic story to his problem.

This story was structured and written very well. I was drawn to the story from the very first page when it starts out with “Its hard to talk when you want to kill yourself.” This really brought me in to wanting to read this story because the subject is touchy and many people especially in this day and time can relate to that in some way. I loved the idea of it being a chemical imbalance because usually people think that there has to be a reason behind being depressed, and they mark off people who have problems with depression as just wanting attention. The story also has a way of showing the characters thoughts very well. The way he talks to himself shows us the destruction of his mind slowly and we can clearly see his age throughout the dialogue he has with himself and the “army guy” that is in his head. He refers to himself as soldier and the man that is in his head seems to always push him forward into doing certain things that need to be done. The use of this gives us so much about this character and really moves the story along.

The place he is placed into when he tries to kill himself really brings more into the story. He makes new friends, and he surrounds himself with people that are like him. I think that the idea of him being where he is with the people that are like him opens him up to the idea that he isn’t as crazy as he thinks he is and shows him that he isn’t alone with his feelings.

There are so many real characters in this story. We see development of all the characters in the ward that he is in. Ranging from a character who is a sex addict to some that are really mentally insane. We also see a character who just wants to get back on his own feet, and have his own home. This was all real to me, and this book really cleared some things up to me about what depression really is.