My Big Question

John Locke said that people were born good. Thomas Hobbes was in disagreement and stated that people are born evil. My big question is,

Are humans born good and learn the secrets of evil through others and life or are we born evil and taught to do good by people who love us etc.?

Plato's Allegory of the Cave Study Questions

1. According to Socrates, what does the Allegory of the Cave represent?

According to Socrates, there are three prisoners trapped inside of a cave. They have been chained there their whole life. The cave represents their own limitations. Shadows are cast on the wall in front of them and that's all they look at every single day. They are made to believe that what they see is real. They know nothing else and even though the shadows are put there on purpose, the prisoners don't know any better.  We reject reality a lot of the time and unless we are shown the right way or the truth (the sun) we will never know what is true.

2. What are the key elements in the imagery used in the allegory?

The prisoners represent our own ignorance. The sun represents the the truth. The shackles and chains represent things holding us back, and the one freed prisoner is supposed to represent a philosopher.

3. What are some things the allegory suggests about the process of enlightenment or education?

The allegory shows that when an opportunity is thrown upon you (the prisoner getting freed) you must be willing to take advantage of it. Sometimes you are not offered that opportunity. Do not be fooled by what you see and believe, and listen to those who have more experience than you.

4. What do the imagery of "shackles" and the "cave" suggest about the perspective of the cave dwellers or prisoners?

The shackles show how the men are technically prisoners. They are chained down and cannot even move their head to turn around. They see only what is in front of them. The cave is like the prison, the home to these people that have complete ignorance.

5. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?

In society I think our job shackles the mind. Mainly minimum wage jobs are this way. They use you, turn you into a robot and make it known that you are safe there for the rest of your life. There is no room to grow or expand. They want you in there working for your whole life and hope that you are ignorant enough to stay.

6. Compare the perspective of the freed prisoner with the cave prisoners?

The perspective of the freed prisoner and that of the cave prisoner vary greatly. Those in the cave only see what is presented. The cutouts in front of the fire to create shadows manipulate the cave prisoner. The freed prisoner has seen the sun and therefore knows all. He knows there is more out there than just the cave. He can believe what he wants to believe now.

7. According to the allegory, lack of clarity or intellectual confusion can occur in two distinct ways or contexts. What are they?

Intellectual confusion happened to the freed prisoner when he was released from the shackles. He was not sure what to do or where to go since he had never been anywhere before.

8. According to the allegory, how do cave prisoners get free? What does this suggest about intellectual freedom?

Socrates states that the cave prisoners may only be freed like this: The good fortune to somehow free themselves of their chain; The ability to listen to the freed prisoner and explore the world outside the cave. It is suggested that only by cooperative contemplation combined with individual will and effort that we as people can come to freedom.

9. The allegory presupposes that there is a distinction between appearances and reality. Do you agree? Why or why not?

There is an immense distinction between appearances and reality. Things are not always what they seem, as a matter of fact they are not. The shadows were not what they were portrayed to be and it was all a distortion in appearance. 

10. If Socrates is incorrect in his assumption that there is a distinction between reality and appearances, what are the two alternative metaphysical assumptions?

The alternative to Socrates assumption would be that everything is what it appears to be. Everything is concrete and there were no illusions or trickery.

My Sonnet: A Sonnet On Hate

A Sonnet On Hate

No deep abyss of ocean drowns like hate,
Entombing all within its murky depth,
Consigning struggling hope to lose all breath
And plunge, submerging to her final fate.
No lofty mountain climbs to hate’s full height
Which no appeasing plea can ever scale
And reconciliation can but fail
If she should try surmounting in her plight.
No spreading sea is wider that hate’s breadth
Which no barque of compassion tries to cross
For it is sure to founder, with the loss
Of innocence, condemned to dismal death.
But hate itself can swim, and climb and sail
Away, if love returns to reconcile. 

C Richard Miles

Fall Vocab List #10

Aficionado- a serious devotee of some particular genre, thing, person, etc.


Browbeat- to discourage or frighten with threats or a domineering manner; intimidate


Commensurate- able to be measured by a common standard


Diaphanous- Of such fine texture as to be transparent or translucent


Emolument- Payment for an office or employment


Foray- an initial venture


Genre- a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like: the genre of epic poetry;


Homily- An inspirational saying or platitude


Immure- To confine within or as if within walls; imprison


Insouciant- carefree or unconcerned; light-hearted


Matrix- a substance, situation, or environment in which something has its origin, takes
form, or is enclosed


Obsequies- A funeral rite or ceremony


Panache- a grand or flamboyant manner; verve; style; flair: The actor who would play Cyrano must have panache.


Persona- The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one's public image or


Personality- as distinguished from the inner self


Philippic- a bitter or impassioned speech of denunciation; invective


Prurient- unusually or morbidly interested in sexual thoughts or practices


Sacrosanct- Regarded as sacred and inviolable


Systemic- Of or relating to systems or a system


Tendentious- having or showing a definite tendency, bias, or purpose: a tendentious novel.


Vicissitude- A change or variation

Literary Analysis #2 The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

GENERAL

1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read, and explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).

Nick Carroway, the protagonist, has recently moved from the Midwest to get his career started in New York. He lives on the island of West Egg across from East Egg where his extravagant  friends Tom and Daisy live. They gossip and party a lot, and Tom is cheating on Daisy with a lady named Myrtle Wilson. Everyone knows except for Daisy and Mr. Wilson.

Nick lives next door to a mysterious man named Gatsby, who throws legendary parties, but no one knows anything about him. Nick becomes friends with him and learns that he is in love with Daisy. They almost married when they were younger, but he was too poor and decided to wait. He gets with Daisy again, and they have an affair.

Tom is suspicious of this, and he tries to prove that Gatsby is not who he seems. Daisy becomes enraged at Tom's superior chauvinist attitude, and says that she will leave Tom for Gatsby. However, she then finds out that Gatsby is not the respected pharmacist he claims to be. He gets his money through bootlegging.

Daisy then refuses to leave Tom for him, and makes him drive her home. Daisy is at the wheel when the car hits someone- coincidentally, Myrtle Wilson, Tom's other woman.

Mr. Wilson discovers his wife's affair, and asks around about the car that hit her (it is bright yellow and immediately recognizable). So, thinking that Gatsby hit her, Mr. Wilson goes to Gatsby's house and shoots him, and then shoots himself.

Gatsby dies alone, because no one shows up to his funeral except for Nick and his father. Tom and Daisy go to Chicago and Nick never sees them again.

2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid clichés.

Of the many themes in the novel, the one that stuck out to me the most was the shallowness of the upper class. Those who live in West Egg are the newly rich and they are vulgar, gaudy, and lacking in social skills. Gatsby lives in West Egg and his bright pink suit, his large mansion, and his Rolls-Royce all help to prove the point of being overly flashy. On the other hand, In East Egg are the rich old timers. They demonstrate taste, class, and charisma. The characters who live in West Egg are so used to money helping them get their way and at the end of the novel Gatsby realizes that isn’t the case. Because of his constant need of attention from Daisy, Gatsby does illegal things to get rich. His mansion, his car, and his money are all attained because he wants Daisy to love him again. Gatsby ends up dead because of all his efforts to impress Daisy.

3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).

This description of Tom Buchanan is an example of a threatening tone

            “He had changed since his New Haven years.  Now he was a sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.  Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward.  Not even…his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing…It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.”

            He forms an impression of Tom with his choice of words—hard, supercilious, arrogant, cruel.  There is no mistaking Buchanan for some gentle giant. The words have strong meaning used to represent how intense Tom is.

           

            A few paragraphs later, Fitzgerald’s tone momentarily creates a different mood as Nick walks into the beachfront living room in the Buchanan mansion.  Daisy, Tom’s wife, and her friend Jordan Baker are waiting:

           

            “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.  They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back after a short flight around the house.  I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.  Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.”

            The tone here is inquisitive and wanting to know more just like the reader is. It is not all knowing and makes it seem as we are finding things out as everyone else is also.

            Throughout the whole book the tone is similar but in the last passage it shifts dramatically. The tone is more down to Earth and demonstrates a negative view on the “American Dream” This is the last passage,

“Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. 

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgasmic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

 4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner Paperback Fiction, Published by Simon & Schuster

CHARACTERIZATION 

1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of indirect characterization.  Why does the author use both approaches, and to what end (i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a result)?

One example of direct characterization would be when Nick is describing Tom Buchanan. He says, “He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body-he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage-a cruel body” Pg.11

Another direct characterization example is when Nick is describing Daisy. He says, “The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise-she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression-then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth-but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget.” Pg.13

One example of indirect characterization would be when Nick is describing Miss Baker from the way she responds when told that Gatsby wants to speak to her. The passage reads, “She got up slowly, raising her eyebrows at me in astonishment, and followed the butler toward the house. I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes-there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean, crisp mornings. ” Pg. 55

The last example of indirect characterization is when Nick is looking around and sees a woman crying while playing the piano. He is wondering why she is crying and another woman says “She had a fight with a man who says he’s her husband.” Pg.56

The author uses both approaches to characterization because it gives the novel variety when new characters are introduced. Too much of one style would get banal and the effectiveness is equal in both ways.

2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?

Scott F. Fitzgeralds syntax stays the same throughout the whole novel as it is pretty clearly understood. What does change however, is the diction. Whenever Gatsby speaks, it shifts to much more playful words. He constantly is calling people an “old sport” and is done lightheartedly. An example would be when Gatsby is talking to Rather.

“Don’t mention it,” he joined me eagerly. “Don’t give it another thought, old sport.” The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. “And don’t forget we’re going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o’ clock.”

3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic?  Flat or round?  Explain.

Nick Carraway is the protagonist and the narrator. Nick is definitely a dynamic character and in contrast, Gatsby is a static character. Nick came to West Egg with a sense of disapproval for the extravagant type of life and

Nick Carraway is the protagonist and also the narrator. He gives us an inside scoop on the action as he is close with both Daisy and Gatsby. However, he should be considered a round and dynamic character. He expresses many emotions throughout various events in the novel and he has problems of his own. He is human like and deep. This clearly demonstrates how Nick Carraway is a round character. Nick Carraway can also be a dynamic character. Above all other characters, Nick is the only one that seems to truly learn a lesson from all of the unfortunate events. He is the only one who realizes the seriousness of the situations in the novel, especially surrounding Gatsby's death. Nick takes the responsibility to help arrange the funeral for Gatsby even after he died, even though he does not have to do anything at all. 

4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a person or read a character?  Analyze one textual example that illustrates your reaction.

After reading this book, I truly felt as if I had lived in West/East Egg for about a year. The characters were developed well and going on this journey of meeting everyone was well worth it. One textual example that proves that the characters were like real people is here. Nick is asking Gatsby’s butler if Gatsby is okay.

            “Is Mr. Gatsby sick?”

            “Nope.” After a pause he added “sir” in a dilatory, grudging way.

            “I hadn’t seen him around and I was rather worried. Tell him Mr. Carraway came over.”   Pg.119

This passage shows that the characters are human sense they have some emotions. Nick cares about Gatsby and went to go visit him, as real friends would do.

Tools That Change the Way We Think

"Back in 2004, I asked [Google founders] Page and Brin what they saw as the future of Google search. 'It will be included in people's brains,' said Page. 'When you think about something and don't really know much about it, you will automatically get information.'
'That's true,' said Brin. 'Ultimately I view Google as a way to augment your brain with the knowledge of the world. Right now you go into your computer and type a phrase, but you can imagine that it could be easier in the future, that you can have just devices you talk into, or you can have computers that pay attention to what's going on around them and suggest useful information.'

'Somebody introduces themselves to you, and your watch goes to your web page,' said Page. 'Or if you met this person two years ago, this is what they said to you... Eventually you'll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer."

-From In the Plex by Steven Levy (p.67)

Answer this not-so-simple question: How does extensive Internet/media/technology use change the way you think? Focus on your memory, your ability to concentrate, your sense of time and priorities, and the subjects/topics that interest you most. If you find "thinking about your thinking" difficult to assess, try the following strategies: compare yourself with older people who did most of their formal learning before smart phones and 2.0 existed; compare yourself with contemporaries who don't use those tools much today; read up on what education leaders and thinkers have to say about generational differences in thinking (and remember to cite your sources).

The expansion of internet and social networking sites have dramatically increased over the past ten years. People are now on their smart phones for a good part of the day, even me, and I believe that has a negative impact on society. The way we think, or lack of thinking, changes due to all of the devices that occupy our time and even minds. The main affect of Google / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram etc. is that these sites are a HUGE DISTRACTION. Most kids in high school probably check their phone an average of 20 times a day during school and it has even become a problem in the classroom that the devices are distractions. They cause students to not spend as much time on their homework and in turn, receive bad grades. Sense of time is almost non existent when on your phone and priorities are all out of whack, homework moves down the list and your phone moves up. Honestly, if for one day I didn't have any electronics I would probably get all my homework done at a reasonable time. I also would get an adequate amount of sleep, but due to TV and Facebook I get less sleep than I should. I get distracted so easily and these newfangled things are to blame. Also, they give us a false sense of knowledge and our study habits have gone down the drain. Whenever we don't know something now, we turn straight to our trusted friend Google for help. We start to type something in, and what do you know.. Google even reads our minds! It's crazy how a computer can know what we are thinking and unfortunately a lot of people do just that,they let Google do all the thinking for them. We have lost our skills to solve problems on our own and think in higher ways because we rely so much on the internet. I also believe that thinkers from the past such as Aristotle and Socrates are so much better at thinking than we are! They did not check their smart phones every five minutes and when there was a problem, they sat down and solved it. That's the way that things should be but technology is a thing of the future and we need take advantage of it. Make the computer work for us, don't let the computer work you.

Fall Vocab List #9

Abortive: failing to produce the intended result


Bruit: spread a report or rumor widely


Contumelious: scornful and insulting behavior

Dictum: a formal pronouncement from an authoritative source; a short statement that expresses a general truth or principle


Ensconce: establish or settle


Iconoclastic: characterized by attack on established beliefs or institutions


In medias res: a narrative that begins somewhere in the middle of a story rather than the beginning

Internecine: destructive to both sides in a conflict


Maladroit: ineffective or bungling; clumsy

Maudlin: self-pitying or tearfully sentimental, often through drunkenness


Modulate: exert a modifying or controlling influence on


Portentous: of or like a portent; done in a pompously or overly solemn manner


Prescience: the power to foresee the future


Quid pro quo: a favor or advantage granted in return for something


Salubrious: health-giving, healthy; pleasant, not run-down


Saturnalia: the ancient Roman festival of Saturn in December; an occasion of wild revelry


Touchstone: a standard or criterion by which something is judged or recognized


Traumatic: emotionally disturbing or distressing; relating to or causing psychological trauma


Vitiate: spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of; destroy or impair the legal validity of


Waggish: humorous in a playful, mischievous, or facetious manner