A Seperate Peace

The past few weeks we have been reading A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. The book is based on World War 2, but a very big problem underlies the main one of deciding whether or not to enlist; and that is the complicated friendship of the main characters Gene and Phineas (Finny). Gene originally believed that Phineas was secretly plotting against him, and so he ended up making Phineas fall out of a tree, breaking his leg, and effectively ending his athletic career. Gene realizes afterwards that Phineas has never been anything but a true friend to him, and then, the guilt being too much, he attempts to tell Phineas the truth, but Phineas shies away from the thought. I do not like nor dislike this novel; it simply doesn’t interest me, and so i look forward to the next book. I realize that my thoughts about this matter reflect life itself: there will be things that interest you and things that don’t, you will have to endure some of them in order to get to the good parts, and thankfully most are truly worth waiting for. I think high school is a smaller, less meaningful version of this. A regular high school day will be like this, you will sit through boring classes in order to get to the classes that you look forward to (like Mr. Keating's of course) and break and lunch, but at the end of the day it's worth it because you are that much closer to finishing school. Another thing about the novel that reflects high school would be the pressure that comes in your senior year. The pressure to receive all of your credits, to apply to colleges, and the pressure to be accepted. The boys in the novel are all facing the fact that they have to choose whether to enlist in the war or continue on with their education. Teenagers these days are subject to all kinds of pressure that comes from every direction. Some get it from their parents, some from teachers, some from friends, some just pressure themselves, but either way high school is stressful, and it’s the immature teenagers that have to deal with all of the fluctuations in this part of life. Graduation gives instant gratification though, and comes with a sense of relief and relaxation. That is something that the boys in the novel cannot say for themselves, because whatever experience they choose to do after graduating will not bring relief, because it will be marred by the war.

 The stress and pressure of education and what to do with your life follows every generation that has to make the choice: no matter if the choice is enlisting in the army during a war or applying to college after having goofed off for most of high school. There have been many studies on the matter of stress affecting the health and well being of people with high levels of it. This link talks about stress for all of the different generations. War or no war, stress is a big problem in America.

Julius Caesar vs. The Hunger Games

We started reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar last week in English, coincidentally the same time I started to reread—I like to read and I ran out of new material—a newly famous series called The Hunger Games, by Susanne Collins. I noticed a few relations right off the bat, such as some of the character names: Caesar, Cinna, Brutus, Portia, even Plutarch; and so I started to read with new eyes. The gist of The Hunger Games is that there are twelve “districts” under the power of the Capitol. A while back there was a war in which the districts attempted to revolt, but the capitol won, and destroyed district thirteen, resulting in a crackdown of discipline and only twelve districts. The Capitol decided that a suitable form of punishment for the districts’ rebellion would be The Hunger Games, which is where a girl and a boy under the age of eighteen from each district are chosen to go to the Capitol and fight to the death in an arena full of awful ways to die. Now, the hunger games themselves don’t relate to Julius Caesar, but the ensuing revolt absolutely does. The rebel leaders in The Hunger Games remind me of the conspirators in Julius Caesar, whether their intentions are valid or not is a mute point, but both want to see their (future) leader dead. In the upcoming essay I will argue the side of the conspirators, because after reading The Hunger Games I know exactly what they feared Caesar would become, (even though they only had his arrogance as proof of his future tyranny.)  Though both groups claim that the assassination will be to protect their country/ end its suffering, there is another motive underlying their reasoning, power. In The Hunger Games, the person in control of the rebellion is President Coin, and at the end of the last book we discover that there is hardly any disparity between her and President Snow when she kills innocent people in order to end the war with her ending up on top. In Julius Caesar the two main leaders are Cassius and Brutus, Cassius had to plant the idea of Caesars being unfit to rule in Brutus’s mind, along with boosting his ego with fake letters of admiration, abetting him to go along with the plans of the conspirators; but once that set in, Brutus decided that he wanted power, and suddenly, his friend was no longer fit for the job as well as he was.

            In the two examples I’ve shown, the governments are corrupt, and doomed to always run in a bloody circle. In the United States government—though no mutiny has occurred—we have our own problems that are currently cascading out of control. Our economy is crashing, with people getting not only restless for change, but starting to take action, as with the “occupy wall street” movement. Mutiny is not the goal of this movement, but fair treatment of the people in economy and government. In Caesars day, government (not monarchies) was just getting started, and was becoming a very beneficial system for the people, and it was working. But now, people are ready and adamant for a change that doesn’t involve having so much power being held by those who misuse their positions for selfish needs and personal greed. Change truly seems inexorable if we wish to sustain from violence in our haste to create a better economy.

This week in Honors English, we did a couple reflections on chapter nine, which is an utterly anathematic chapter. The boys have descended into practically complete savagery, it is extremely disturbing to read about, especially given that it is meant to express the authors idea of what would happen to mankind without common sense and laws to keep everything in order, is sickening to think about. And in some ways, children have the right idea about the way things should go, so if this disastrous situation was brought upon adults, the outcome would be unthinkable. However, presently history is being created in the United States, and this will be something for future textbooks. It’s called the “99% movement” or “Occupy Wall Street” and though it is just beginning, it already has millions of American citizens eager to join in the protests, in order to hopefully change our terrible economy. This relates to the book when you think about the troubles caused by the conflicting ideas between Ralph and Jack. Now it’s not exactly a “citizen vs. the government” scenario, but the boys are facing a situation, where the rules they had for themselves that used to be working just fine have started crumbling right before their eyes, which is exactly what is happening today, In the very town of Napa, and millions of other towns across the nation. This is extremely monumental, in both the book and real life. In the book; it’s monumental because it has caused two groups to form and the oh-so symbolic conch, to become completely meaningless which--needless to say—is going to mean the beginning of total and utter chaos, unfortunately starting with the death of the most innocent and bright little boy on the island: Simon. Simon had the greatest insight out of every other character,--piggy coming in as a close second, but still not holding a candle to Simon—but Golding chose to kill him off, which we as readers can only take to mean that things are now going to go from bad to worse. The scene of the barbaric murder was a candid, foreshadowing further misery to befall the island as we sprint towards the climax. In real life; this protest is monumental because for over 250 years the government of the United States has lasted longer than any other government in the world in all of history, and the last thing this country needs is for a civil war to break out, but hopefully we will be able to keep this a peaceful protest, and strictly political when it comes to deciding the changes that will lead to the reform of the economy.

On Friday we watched the trailer of the introduction for the original film of Lord of the Flies, it was full of symbols that are later given further thought in the novel, such as the sound of drums and school children singing, and images of rockets and fighter planes. The images reflect the environment that the children were coming from before the crash, and the sound of the drums in particular are played to a beat that connotes a tribal sacrifice of sorts, which couldn’t be more spot on when it comes to the animalistic state of mind that seeps into the minds of the developing brains of the young boys.

The novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding has already evolved dramatically since we first began reading it in class. At the beginning it was all fun and games; no parents, a whole island to themselves, just a bunch of innocent little boys, what could go wrong? Then it got a little more serious, they voted on an authority figure, (Ralph), and decided that certain precautions needed to be made, such as shelters, a fire on the top of the mountain to signal other ships so they can be rescued, a group for hunting (lead by Jack), and a specific spot for bathing. It first started to go downhill when Jack let the fire go out and there just happened to be a ship passing by. Jack, being irascible, did not appreciate the castigation that was obviously in his future if he didn’t appease Ralph, who was fuming at having lost a chance of being rescued.  The next thing to happen was more subtle, it was not noticeable at first but then slowly it was apparent that Jack was developing a very copious posse, the emaciated children were being drawn to the person they felt could protect them--since he was the hunter, and they were all jumpy about the talk of a beast on the island—and Ralph slowly started to devolve, losing his authority and becoming merely “the boy with the conch” as far as his authority was concerned.

The story started with a bunch of young innocent boys, who are not even slightly aware of the seriousness of their situation. It really reminds me of our prompt for the summer reading assignment, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. One of the topics for analysis happened to be childhood innocence, which is exactly what we are witnessing here.  In “TKAM” the main characters: (Scout and Jem) grow through the novel,  shedding their innocence, and learning the ways of society, however we haven’t--and most likely won’t--see any signs of this happening in “LOTF” due to the lack of parental guidance and supervision.  The children’s minds are derailing, and they are forgetting (or ignoring) all prior knowledge of social graces and more importantly, the difference between right and wrong.

I have chosen Jack as my character of interest for the assignment on William Golding’s characterization in the novel. Jack is very complex, starting off as an utter prick, head boy of his choir and obviously belongs to a high social class. Then we see his desire for being in charge, he wants to feel power over everyone else. Now just recently we have seen how he plans to gain that power: not through rationality like Ralph, but through fear, intimidation, and the promise of protection. By becoming the islands hunter, he gives himself an air of being able to fight anything, which comes in handy because the littlun’s are all worked up over the “beast.” Jacks sudden transformation into a hunter with more animal instincts than human, relate to the novel Life of Pi, that all students of Mr. Title’s had the pleasure (more or less) of reading. The main character, Pi, holds off for as long as he can before he is forced by starvation to kill his first living being--a little fish--but after that is over it becomes natural to him. His instincts for survival override even his faith in three religions. It brings up a very curious topic, how long does it take for someone to reach their breaking point, in which they resort to killing and going against God in order to stay alive? The human brain is, unsurprisingly, the most question generating part of the body. There is so much we still can’t even fathom about its inner workings. Like why don’t we use our whole brain? What would happen if we did? And then there is all the stuff it already does for us, like give us emotions, control our bodies, store memories and knowledge, etc. These studies have been going on since the times of Greek Philosophy; things like neuroscience, psychology, and sociology. The complexity of it all blows the minds of all those who care enough to read about it, it appears that we will never understand everything about this world, but where’s the fun if there are no mysteries in life?

Lord of the Outside Reading Novel

This week we have been given an outside reading book, (even though we only read it in class) the novel is The Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding. In the novel, a gregarious character with an unknown name divulges his nickname from the past, to a boy named Ralph, stating that as long as the other children don’t call him that he will be fine with anything else they find suitable. However, he went against the boy’s wishes, and subjected him to ignominy, by revealing to the other children the unspoken name (Piggy). I'm quite sure that if I had to meet Ralph, I would find him perfectly anathematic. There are two symbols that are introduced in the beginning of the story, and they are piggy's spectacles, and the conch shell used to summon the other children.

Ralph acts like a bully towards Piggy, but when he meets Jack he is perfectly respectable and kind. This demonstrates Ralph’s character as being one who is very focused on social class and the obvious air of leadership that has so far only been shown by Jack and himself. For the essay prompt, I am choosing to focus on the characterization of Piggy, when he was first introduced in the novel I thought he was going to be an absolute sweetheart, and that thought hasn’t changed yet.  

            Another thing that happened this week was the forming of our “book clubs” in my group is Krista Kisabeth, Juliet Swann, Haley Kastner, and Angie Gervasio. For our book we have chosen a literary fiction novel, (recommended by Mr. Keating himself) Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. The story is set back in the 1800’s with the main character of course being Jane Eyre, who is a broke orphan, with a hopeful spirit, and a hardworking body of mind that helped her secure a spot as a governess in the house hold of a seemingly menacing man, Mr. Rochester.  However, opposites attract and the two characters form a deep bond, and begin to fall in love, but there is a secret lurking in the back of Mr. Rochesters mind that could easily threaten their future together.  This catches me as something odd, and almost wrong. Not having read this book yet I can’t judge very much but it reminds me of the stories about girls who get kidnapped and then their captors trick them into thinking that the situation they are in is natural, because they don’t know any better. Such as this story, that hit the news a while back. Now the situation in this novel most likely has NOTHING to do with my far-fetched connection to a current event, but i had to try haha. Oh and Our class is in second place efficiency-wise, GO 4th PERIOD!

To Kill A Mockingbird

This is the first full week of class and already i feel like we are learning how to improve our skills in writing. We've been told to write an in-class essay on To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the prompt is to choose one theme out of the three choices "childhood innocence", "race relations", and "rural poverty". we have looked at a couple of examples and have started our intro paragraph, and we have drafts of our hook, background info, and thesis statement. i have chosen Race Relations, which is a never ending topic in the world. Currently racism is still going on much less than in the novel but still ever-present, especially in the south. we covered some major ideas this week, one in particular really stuck with me because Mr. Keating divulged to the class that it was something we would be using it throughout the whole year, and it was the "stairs" the step by step process to getting an A on any essay as long as you follow it precisely. I am very excited about English this year, i feel like the class is not going to be insipid, like most english classes, but stimulating and very educating (of course). Mr. Keating is giving our class loads of valuable information , that is really helping me personally feel like a better writer, I enjoy reading my classmates work because it makes me look at mine and see if i did anything similar or as well as they did. By the time I have fully matured hopefully I will be able to write like this, and if by some miracle that actually happens, i will owe it to my highschool english teachers, and to Mr. Keating's staircase.