Pride and Mrs. Dalloway

This novel really spoke to me in a unique way. It seemed to be a picture of how pride can totally control and shape a persons life in so many ways. It shows the internal struggle that most of us have to address each day, and how much people are willing to sacrifice for the ones they love, even their life as Septimus did.

Got to keep Going!

We only have a few weeks left of class left, but I am having a really hard time concentrating on school. I guess that with the beautiful weather outside, and the wedding date getting closer, I'm a little frazzled. I have really enjoyed the works that we have read this semester and I have been inspired to do more independent reading myself.

Blog for this past week

I wanted to sort of ramble about the Joyce's short story "The Dead." I really liked how this story encompassed a lot of different plots all wonderfully woven together. I just honestly liked to read it. I'm not sure if that was because of the humorous and very dominate women of the piece, or the romantic storyline of the sickly lover, or the epiphany that Gabriel has at the end of the tale. I think it was all of this and more. I will try and read more of Joyce.

This is weird

I tried three times Sunday night to post a blog, and for the life of me could not get signed on to my account.

The past week (when I didn't post a blog), a was working really hard on our group website. I'm a perfectionist, so of course I was very frustrated when the thing didn't come out looking super amazing. It's serviceble enough, and since this is my first time building a site, I decided not to take it to hard.

Next time I build a site, I would like to have more time to learn and fool around with html formatting rather that using a webwizard like geocities thta only has a limited amount of choices.

William Butler Yeats

I like this poet. He seems to be able to create complex emotions in his works without addressing them directly. In his poem "Sailing to Byzantium." I felt very sad for the speaker. The speaker is old. He sees the eternal art of the ancients and knows that he can never even come close to becoming permanent as they are. He knows he will die, and this fact is reminded to him over and over as he is surrounded by the cosmopolitan city he travels through.

Life is passing, art is forever. We saw this theme in Keat's "Ode to a Nightingale," but in a more positive sense. I think the speaker of Yeats poem, was addressing art in an almost jealous nature.



I must confess that I have not finished reading all the way through Great Expectations. It has become a sort of a surprising pleasure read (who would have thought), and I resist the urge to Spark note it out, because I really have enjoyed the first two thirds.

This weeks is devoted to finishing my web page.

Dickins and his social commentary

I feel sad for the characters in this book, especially Pip. He thinks that all of these social advances will bring him happiness, but they don't.

I feel like that in much of especially American society we try to achieve material goods in the hopes of filling the void in our lives. Satisfaction is a rare thing to find in this world.

From reading the posts on Estrella and her self awareness, I realize that few people have the sympathy that I have for her. She has been brainwashed by the only guardian she ever knew, and while some argue that she could change her attitude if she wanted too, I don' think, that she thinks, that this is a possibility.

I wonder if there has been a paper using psychological criticism on Estrella.

Expectations

I remember vaguely reading Great Expectations in high school. The number one thing I remember about it was that I hated it. Now when I pick up Dickens book, I do so with a hesitant enthusiasm, wanting to continue the story, but afraid I'll remember why I hated it so much.
I think what initially threw me off of Dickens was his plain style of writing. Although the language is simple, there is a lot of it, and it was hard as a sophomore in high school to take all of those words in. Now that I'm older, I can appreciate not only the masterful construction of his sentences, but also the careful way in which he creates the plot, and the distinctive voices of the characters.
I also have developed an unexpected sympathy for Estrella and the bitter woman she lives with. Their seclusion, and the hardships they endured, though not the same type as Pip and Joe, deserve some sympathy if not pity on their part.

I finished my essay on time, but I think that given the chance, I could have expanded the paper into a twelve or fifteen page research project. Something to think about.

I love the Victorian Age

I think that there should be a movie made out of the Goblin's market. There probably has been. Rosetti really brought that scene to life for me. I felt like the poem included all that I love in one convenient piece: love, a curse, goblins, miracles etc. I have to remember that having Lizzie as the heroine, with no make counterpart in sight, would have been pretty modern during Rosetti's time.

My group finally has a topic for our website:Frankenstein. I am a little worried that some members of our group have not responded on the wall, but I'm sure we will get everything done in time. It's hard having a group project and not being able to see and know the people that you are working with. Right now I am trying to get everyone together so that we can be on the same page..haha.. for the project.

I think that I will do my next paper on this poem.

Another day another Era

I think I will enjoy the Victorian Age of literature. There is so much intrigue and political strife and revolts during the historical time, the literature has to be good. I read a post today that really made me think a little different about this era. Someone made the comment that because of all the problems and changes that the world was going through during this time, they clung to Romance, as something consistent and familiar. I'm not sure if she was correct, but reading Elizabeth Brownings poetry seems to be a bit of an indicator of truth.

I am sort of sad to be through reading Frankenstein. I think that I will do my personal wedb page over the book and perhaps Mary Shelly and her background as well.

FRANKENSTEIN

Reading this book has changed my image of the creature. No longer is he the green giant with plugs coming out of the side of his head. He is human in a terrible way.
I think that the scariest thing about this novel is the deterioration of Victor's mind. Because Shelly puts the reader in the same brain with this man, it's frightening to see what he sees.

I feel like the real monster in this novel is Victor himself.

yay

I love the feeling of understanding a poem. I felt that when I was rereading Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," I really connected with the author. By the end of the poem I was sad for this talented and tortured man. I read the poem to my roommate expecting the same rush of feeling but she just turned and looked at me, "that's a nice poem," was all she said. I think that every so often you come across a piece of art that really moves you. This poem was mine.

John Keats

I just finished reading "Ode to a Nightingale." It seemed that the speaker of the poem was wanting to die, so that he could be immortalized through his poetry. Several of the stanzas refer to sickness and in line 24 I could not really figure out if this line was specifically referring to a hospital, or just the world in general. Was John Keats sickly? I wasn't sure, so I started to research him a bit. I read several of the letters he had written in hopes of learning more and was captivated by his simple prose.
I think that I will go and read more about him.

Oops

The funny thing about online classes is.....you have to really watch what you are doing. I found out only a few hours that I was supposed to be posting on this site at least once a week. Oops.

I am having a fairly difficult time with the material we are studying in this class. I think this is due to the fact that I am taking an advanced composition course. When I look at one of the poems I have to fight off the instinct to begin bracketing all the clutter that I find. I know that they are poems. I know they follow different rules. But I still want my red pen anyways.

I am eager to move on to prose. I want some concrete images and solid facts. I want to know what is going on in the things that I read.

I find it hard to keep up with the lofty and literary language that many of the other students are using in their posts. I imagine that it sounds like a literary response is supposed to, but the amount of actual information could be put into no more than a few sentences. When I look through my previous posts I find the same thing to be true of myself.

January 8

I am glad that this blog was easier to make than I thought.