Animal Farm Comic

Jackson Hille "Forgetfulness"

Jackson Hille recites Forgetfulness by Billy Collins. The strongest aspects of his performance were his pose, body language, inflection and dramatization of the piece. The way he inflects the different lines of the poem and animate his face and body movements convey the hilarity of the poem and his understanding that this was a more lighthearted piece. He paused at just the right dynamic points to let the jokes and meaning sink in.

Like I said the poem is more lighthearted and funny, less dramatic or significant like some others. The author is making fun of the innocuous things you used to know that have since slipped away from the mind. I think that if the reciter used a different tone and inflection you could take the poem as a serious reflection on forgetfulness instead.

Motif: Mockingbird

In the beginning of the year I thought I had a fairly good idea of what motif was. I didn't. I had one dictionary.com definition I got for the glossary we had to do to get in to Honors, I called it good and ran with it. Actually I learned what motif is when we began comparing what we said in our glossary definitions and combined them together to get a slum idea of of what it was. I finally 'got' what motif is when we read To Kill a Mockingbird and I realized it was a hidden thing that recurred in the book.

The motif in To Kill a Mockingbird is the mockingbird and how killing it is a sin. The mockingbird never does harm to anyone and represents innocence in the novel. The motif comes up when major events that showcase themes in the novel happen and the mockingbird fleshes it out and brings out the deeper meaning in the important events. An example is the Robinson case, the mockingbird is Tom and this bring out the theme of injustice v. justice.

Symbolism Extra Credit

Some back round information on this jellyfish picture before I go in to its symbolism; the Irukandji is 2.5 centimeters in diameter and has venom powerful enough to cause excruciating muscle cramps in the arms and legs, severe pain in the back and kidneys, headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting, high heart rate and blood pressure, often leading to a stay in the hospital. The point is its a mean SOB in a fragile unassuming shell.

During the dramatic reading I was Judge Taylor. He's getting nigh onto seventy years old, he appears to sleep during long court sessions and rules his court room with the proverbial iron fist. Like the jellyfish his bark is worse then his bite(like how I mix dog metaphors with jellyfish?).

Memories

I was afraid. In one of my earliest memories that's all I can feel. I was four, maybe five, so my sister had to be about nine at the time. I was still living in Tacoma. Laura was pushing me on the swing set in our backyard and I was laughing and I was higher in the air then I'd ever been before. Thinking this was as close to flying as I'll ever get. We were so happy and acting just like sister are supposed to; Laura wasn't ignoring me and I wasn't throwing a fit. One push to hard was all it took to unseat me and send me tumbling to the ground.

Landing on my back, I stared at the slowly spinning blue sky above me and was afraid. The wind was knocked out of me and my lungs burned, my ribs throbbed and my ankle was sending shooting pain up my leg. Laura screamed, and running in the direction of the house, told me she would get Mommy to help. I made a few tenative moves to sit up but that made my lungs and ribs hurt in an even more agonizing way. I was afraid that something was broken, I was afraid because I didn't know what was happening or why it hurt so bad. Then my Mom was there and I could let her worry and be afraid instead. Nothing was seriously wrong and I didn't need to go to the hospital but that's my first memory of being afraid or hurt. Its branded itself in my mind, my first glimpse of real pain and fear.

Robinson Crusoe: Motif

I read Robinson Crusoe and the literary feature I'm doing my graphic organizer on is motif(yes
I know in my last blog post I said it was tone but, alas I was mistaken.) The motif is that God controls or influences every major event that happens in the novel. Providence is the glue that binds all the rather improbable scenario together. The author most likely uses motif to try and convey the symbolic message that is the story of Robinson Crusoe, that if you sin and fall from the ways of God you shall be punished. Over and over Crusoe crosses the line of right and wrong and God forgives him, only once is a small penance required before Crusoe is once again excused.

The author, Daniel Defoe, was also a Puritan during the Restoration so obviously anything he wrote would be a little biased toward the omniscience of God. Defoe most likely wanted the novel to have an understandable message about God that would be blatantly obvious to any reader.

For the outside reading project I am reading Robinson Crusoe. This was written in 1719 so the writing is a little tedious and and full of horribly unnecessary run on sentences. My copy is 482 pages long and Crusoe finally got on the island on page 70. I had a no difficulty getting in to the book because events happen so fast in the beginning that they almost trip over each other, but when he becomes stranded the pace slows way down. A strong feeling I have says I am going to have a hard a time reading the almost two-hundred and fifty pages that he is completely alone and doing nothing exciting.

Of the five literary elements the most prominent is tone. I thought it would be imagery since he talks all about the necessary things he has to build to survive, but he doesn't describe things; he lectures about them. Robinson talks very introspectively most of the novel so any of the other traits were fairly rare and it wasn't hard to choose the most dominant one. The tone is pretty much the same for large chunks of the book but when an event is about to happen or Robinson makes some intellectual breakthrough the tone suddenly shifts away rather dramatically.

An idiolect reading environment is not quiet; when I read I turn the radio on, not too loud but loud enough to hear the words. Quiet distracts me, if I don't have noise around I start wondering were everybody is and what their doing and why I'm not there. Therefore I can read almost anywhere and not be to distracted, not the car because I get sick but the bus, that's cool.

I don't do anything special when I start to read, no ritual I follow every time. I just read when I read, no Hooked on Phonics tricks or a certain place I always sit in. The only special reading trick I can do is that I can remember exactly were in the book events happened: how far along it is in the book in what paragraph and how many sentences in. I remember the way almost all the pages are laid out, how many paragraphs there are. My memory is almost photographic when it comes to books. Its handy when your annotating or if your bookmark felt out.

The first pages are supposed to catch your attention and interest, if they don't somethings wrong; with you or the book. Just a hint, its probably you. When I have to read a book but I'm not hooked by the second chapter, I have to keep toughing it out. The book has to be read and the assignment done, whining and procrastinating isn't going do that. The first picture book I read was fiction, so was the first chapter book, and novel, and classic I read. Now it just seems that's the genre I always read. Non-fiction isn't necessarily bad, its just that non-fiction doesn't have any of the things in books I find exciting. Lets admit non-fiction isn't full of mystery, romance, scandal and fight scenes.