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.