My Slaughterhouse

          Kurt Vonnegut writes a book called Slaughterhouse-5 that portrays postmodernism.  The book is all about a guy named Billy Pilgrim and the stories that Kurt Vonnegut creates using Billy breaks down the fourth wall.  The stories that Billy talks about are not in order inside the book.  This book is a great example of postmodernism.
          Throughout the book Billy is telling all of the stories that have happened in his life.  While he tells the stories, he keeps switching from one to the other.  The book is not in chronological order at all because of the way Billy will just switch to a different story randomly.  This relates to postmodernism because postmodernism is all about things not being in chronological order.
          This book also does a good job at breaking the fourth wall.  Some of the stories that Billy talks about in the book are very bizarre and aren't related to real life at all.  The stories that Billy said about Tralfamador are very odd because it is a whole new world that he talks about.  Billy also seems like a time traveler because of the way he keeps switching all of the stories.  This book is very confusing and so is postmodernism in some ways.
          Slaughterhouse-5 defines postmodernism in many ways.  It explains how much postmodernism can confuse the reader by not being in chronological order.  Postmodernism can also create curiosity for the reader because the reader wants to hear things they haven't heard before and this book provides very interesting things for the reader.

Reflection

My performance in English class today was awful.  I was better off just not even showing up.  I embarrassed myself because I had nothing to write about and my mind went completely blank.

MAP

          Edgar Allan Poe's life was nothing but a series of unfortunate events.  His life was full of loneliness and depression.  Although he had a very cold life, he was able to live to the age of 40 and was able to express his life through his very famous writings.  His writings are very intimate with his pain in life and they give me a better understanding on how good my life really is. Edgar Allan Poe is a very courageous man for not taking the easy way out and being able to write about the difficulties he was having in life.
          The life of Edgar Allan Poe was very dark and lonesome.  He lost both of his parents at a very early age and was sent to live with John Allan.  He never had any close family and as many people could understand, he felt very alone and sad.  When he got older he moved away to England to attend school and while he was there, he tried to pay off his debt by gambling which took him into more debt.  In advance to all of the debt, he had to withdraw from the university and he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
          After he was in the army he moved to Virginia to live with his widowed aunt and cousin and started to write full time.  He became in love with his thirteen year old cousin and married her.  She died at a very young age by the cause of tuberculosis.  One of his most famous writings was called The Raven.  This story expressed the decline of his sanity.  To many people at the time his writings seemed crazy and people thought as if he was on drugs.  His writings were very intimate to how he felt about his life.
          His life was full of mishaps and did not have a happy ending.  Both of his parents died before he turned the age of three.  He was sent to live as an orphan with his aunt and uncle named John and Frances Allan.  His life was full of debt and he was robbed of many things such as the lives of the people he loved the most.  When he died at the age of forty, he was found on the side of the road unconscious.  Some people say that he died from congestion of the brain.  His death will remain a mystery forever because his death records have been lost.
          In the last week I have learned a lot about Edgar Allan Poe.  Although I would rather learn about a more fortunate author, Edgar Allan Poe has really inspired me.  His life has taught me a lesson that life can be very dark and depressing at times but no matter what happens, you have to just keep moving.  As bad things happen you have to try and improve.  Eventually Edgar Allan Poe died right where his life was, in the gutters.

MAPLAN

My plan remains the same but I have changed my modernist author to Edgar Allan Poe.  My plan is to write an essay on my blog and post my research that I have found about my author.

APPLIED MODERNISM

 

 

          Farenheit 451 is considered a modernist novel.  Farenheit 451 was all about the future and things that were completely irrelevant to the present time.  The author was trying to get the point across that we need to make change.  The novel was different from most stories because it was all about books decaying.  Farenheit 451 was a modernist novel that is very different from most novels people read.

 

          The author wrote about books being burnt which had nothing to do with anything in real life.  Firefighters are used to put fires out but in this book, it was all about firefighters burning books down.  The usual good guys were the bad guys in this book because they didn't believe that books were good.  They were afraid of change but Montag wanted change.

 

          The theme of this story was about making change and taking a stand against something most people don't believe in.  The author talked about Montag wanting to find out if books were really as bad as people said they were.  Montag wanted to make a change and do things that other people were to afraid to do.  The author was trying to tell the reader that it's ok to make changes and that the people closest to you can be the ones holding you back the most.

 

          This novel was way more different than any other novel and it wasn't something that people normally think about.  This was a bizarre story that the author created to give a very good and valid point to the reader.  He wrote about books being burnt and a bunch of other crazy things to really get the point to the reader.  The author created this novel to make the point clear to the reader that we need to make change in the things that we do in our life.

 

          Farenheit 451 is a strange but very good and life changing novel.  The author was a modernist because he wrote about things that aren't normal.  He wrote the novel in a different way so that the reader would understand it better.  It wasn't a normal novel about how simple life is, it was all about how things really were in the blind eye.  This was a modernist novel because it was all about change.

MY MODERNIST

I chose Fitzgerald, F. Scott because I like the way he was a free-thinker.  He gained esteem from fellow authors such as Ernest Hemingway.  In a lot of his writings he wrote about what him and his wife Zelda were going through.  He wrote a lot during the Jazz Age.  He is also considered a member of the  Lost Generation.  His most famous writing was The Great Gatsby.

The First Seven Years

I enjoyed reading this story and the twist that it had in the ending.  When Sobel left I didn't quite understand why so I felt as if there was something more to just leaving randomly.  I thought it was weird that Sobel felt that way about a girl that was 16 years younger than him but he must really love her if he only worked at that job for her.  I feel as if he wasn't working for a wage but he was working for her love and attention.  When I understood why Sobel left and when Miriam explained how Max had no soul, I feel like Sobel and Miriam are a good match for each other.  For Sobel to do so much for a girl it clearly expresses that he has a soul.

Vocabulary: Spring List 5

Brouhaha- an outrage
Cloy- Disgust or sicken with an excess of sweetness, richness, or sentiment
Demeanor- Outward behavior or bearing
Deference- Humble submission and respect
Enigmatic- Difficult to interpret or understand; mysterious
Definitive- Done or reached decisively and with authority
Bumptious- Self-assertive or proud to an irritating degree
Choleric- Bad-tempered or irritable
Bulwark- A defensive wall
Curtail- Reduce in extent or quantity; restrict
Adamant- Refusing to be persuaded or to change one's mind
Profligate- Recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources
Mawkish- Sentimental in a feeble or sickly way
Thwart- Prevent from accomplishing something
Onus- Used to refer to something that is one's duty or responsibility
Requisite- Made necessary by particular circumstances or regulations
Mollify- Appease the anger or anxiety of someone
Sartorial- Of or relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress
Presentiment- An intuitive feeling about the future
Impromptu- Done without being planned, organized or rehearsed
Forbearance- Patient self-control; restraint and tolerance
Remit- Cancel or refrain from exacting or inflicting

SPRING POST 1: MUSIC AS LITERATURE

I believe that music can be considered as literature because most music rhymes and provides a story much like poems do.  Literature is writing with expression of a character.  When we describe the things we are writing it is considered as literature.  Poems and songs are very similar because musical artists are the poets of our time.  Poems aren't as popular as songs but they are very similar.  Novels are different than peoms and songs because in songs or poems, the poet chooses words carefully to explain something in a shorter way but still providing very valuable information.  Rappers are similar to poets because they choose their words carefully but rappers write/rap to a beat.