This Semester

I thought this semester in Lit was going to be more difficult than it was.  I had really struggled with the literature portion in high school, and I think the part that saves me in this class is writing the papers.  I am not that great of a reader to say the least.  I enjoyed all of the papers we had to write when I found out what I was writing about.  The gists tended to help me out a lot in that area.  It is going to be hard to balance this last paper while mid terms are going on and I have atleast 4 tests this week, and other activities going on.  This class has been good and I will just have to see how I am able to do on the mid term tests.

"Drown"

I decided to read "Drown" by Junot Diaz, and I am not exactly sure why.  It just seemed liked the most intriguing title to me.  The Setting of "Drown" is very descriptive and adds very great detail to this story.  It takes place in the run down and poor part of the city in New Jersey.
The point of view in this story is from the first person point of view.  This gives you plenty of information on the main character, but does not however, give me as much as I may have wanted to learn about the other characters throughout reading the story.  I really enjoyed reading the story, and I do not think I would change either the setting or the point of view.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "The Birthmark"

The characters of these two stories had a lot of similarites and differences.  Both stories had motivated, static and foiled characters.  Both stories also had consistent characters throughout the story as the main characters in "The Birthmark" attributed equally, and in "Bartleby, the Scrivner" they remained true to character.  Most of the ideas of both characters were plausible.

The plot of both stories would have had a different outcome if the author would have changed the plot structure.  The plot structure in Bartleby's story had a lot to do with background information and character, while the "The Birthmark" had to do mostly the basic chronological order.

Racism

I do agree with some of the discussion in class, however, there is distinct levels of racism to me.  I believe that the way a person presents himself to you is a huge part in how I judge someone, not skin color.  I have multiple Hispanic, Asian, and Black friends throughout high school.  I also have an Asian and Hispanic cousin. I don't believe I judged people based on color of skin, however, racism clearly exists today.  There are plenty of brutal and extreme cases, but for people to say everyone is racist is judgmental.

Twitter

The fake aliases that can be so easily created concern me a little bit.  They have not effected me, and I do not know if they ever will, but the fact that the possibility could come up during a future job worries me.  It is too easy for people to create profiles that aren't themselves on sites such as Twitter and Facebook with no consequences.  These profiles although on Twitter are used for humor, they can be used for bullying.  I just hope I don't have to deal with a fake me.

First paper

We started off this semester with my hardest paper of last semester.  It was still difficult to write for me, but I was fortunate to think of the topic that I did right away thanks to the discussions in class.  I had an easy time writing my basics in the paper, but I failed to explain a few of my quotes in full detail.  Although I missed a crucial part of the paper, it was a easy part to plug in because it was all of my own words.  I thought this paper was much easier than last years that I had written, and the citing was brought back on memory pretty easily.  Overall it was difficult, but not overly difficult.

The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis dissapointed me right when i started reading it.  At first I was just believing it was just about a man who was transformed into a bug, and it became a sad story to read.  Gregor used to be the provider of his family even though he was just the child, and now he has became rejected and useless.  The story had a deeper story to tell with symbolism throughout with the apple, violin, and picture frame.  Also, I thought it was interesting how the story pointed out in the end how the sister of Gregor transformed throughout the story as well.

Work Cited

1. Barret, Andrew. "The X-Factor in Zamyatin's 'We'." Modern Humanities Research Association 80.3          (1985): 659-72. J-STOR. Web. 30 Jan. 2010

2.Beauchamp,Gorman. "Technology in the Dystopian Novel." MFS  32.1 (1986) : 53-63. Project Muse. Web. 30 Jan. 2010.

3. We. Trans. Natasha Randall. New York: Modern Library, 2006. Print.

--I was unsure whether or not for the first cite to change We into italicized font because the title had it in quotes  instead.