Journal #12: Antigone

Anouilh creates a tension between truth and lie. Particularly when Creon admits the truth about Polynices and Eteocles, the tension between Antigone and Creon increases. When Antigone finds out that Creon may have buried Polynices, Antigone second guesses her actions. Maybe it was not worth dying for. She doesn't trust Creon anymore because he lied to her and the entire city.

Journal #11: Antigone

The chorus starts the book as a narrator. He(?) tells the events that have happened but does not get involved with the audience or the story. As the book continues, as tensions grow, the chorus gets more involved. The Chorus starts to play with the audience and gets more emotional and involved in the story. The audience and readers get entangled in the play and tied up in the mystery when-there is none. We all know what will happen but the Chorus plays with us and gives us reality checks. This is so we (as viewers or readers) think about this story in our own lives.

Journal #10: Antigone

Prior to Nurse finding Antigone sneaking into the house:
Eteocles and Polynices both die after Polynices attacks the city.
Creon throws a royal funeral for King Eteocles and becomes King himself.
Creon sets Polynices' body to rot on a hill with guards standing around instructing the city that if anyone try to bury Polynices, they will be killed.
Antigone sneaks out to go bury her brother's body.

Anouilh adds more details as you read farther into the story. This lets the reader (or audience member) create ideas of the characters and develop the characters in their mind as they learn. This makes the story more interesting because people find things out with the characters in the play. It also makes it seem more realistic because you rarely know everything that is happening in real life.

Topic Sentence

Mother compares people to different kinds of flowers in order to express her opinions and feelings towards them without using harsh words.

Journal #9: Blood Wedding

1. The past of each character affects how they live their life and the interactions they have with other character. Lorca tells the past of the characters and the events they have lived through shape their life. For example, Mother no longer trusts Leonardo and is scared for her son to leave because her husband and other son were both killed by Leonardo's familia.
2. Society shapes decisions of many people and sometimes society can only do so much until the person thinks for themselves. This is shown mostly through Bride because she is pushed to marry Bridegroom by the people close to her like Nurse and Father while she really loves Leonardo. The reason that the story turned out badly was because her true feelings came out. If she had admitted her love for Leonardo before the wedding was planned, the deaths could have been avoided but because society pressured her, there was no choice.

Journal #8: Blood Wedding

The set changes throughout the play go along with the mood and tone Lorca is trying to create. Act one starts with yellow rooms that create a happy, light hearted tone. Act 1 Scene 2 is in a pink room with lots of flowers which also indicates a delicate, innocent mood. Scene 3 also is in a lightly colored room but the characters are wearing dark clothes. Throughout the play, the sets gradually become darker and "scarier or more mysterious". The set slowly leads up to the climax of the play where the death is.

Journal #7: Blood Wedding

Which characters appear to be miserable in the play and why?  When and how do the characters express their misery? What do the characters desire and what stops them from going after what each desires?


The Mother is very miserable in the play because she doesn't want her son to leave her because her husband and other son have already died. When her son gets married, he will leave her alone and she can't stand the idea of losing all of the men in her life. She shows most of her misery in the first scene when talking to her son and also some when she is talking to the neighbor. She also doesn't like the Felix family and they are a big influence on her because she hates the whole family and any time they show up in the play, she gets very angry.

Journal #6: Blood Wedding

• When and how does Lorca break the fourth wall?  What is the affect of reminding the reader that the events on the stage are not real? 

Lorca breaks the fourth wall by making the play obviously show that it is not real. His biggest way he does this is through the poetry and songs in the play. I am sure that the culture when this was written was not like high school musical where they break into song at random points. The Mother-in-law and the wife are singing to the baby in the play which may have been a normal baby lulllaby that was popular during that time period but what struck me was that they switched off the lines at different points. The singing at the wedding was another thing. I think that Lorca put this in the play to remind that the audience that it is not real. He also could have done it to draw them to the more important aspects of the play.

Journal #5: Blood Wedding

The biggest archetype in Blood Wedding has to do with the roles and behaviors of women. It is most obviously shown through the mother of the Bridegroom. She shows the normal stereotypes of mothers in that society and most. She doesn't want her son to get married because he is going to leave her and she is scared and sad that he is leaving. She is also very protective which is mostly because of the death of her other son and her husband. She is constantly talking about how much she misses her husband and other son and how much she hates their killers. She matches the archetype of women also because she doesn't leave the house. She works indoor and she just raises her children and cleans. She also wants grandchildren that are boys and girls so there are hard workers and also girls she can teach to cook and clean and sew.
I think Lorca is embracing the archetype and rejecting it. He does characterize the mother as a caring mother but does not throw her to the very edge to say she is too overprotective. But in certain points, the mother is very overprotective. I don't think he is saying it is bad or good but that he is pointing i out and showing there are goods and bad things about the different archetypes. Not just women's roles but all of them that he talks about.

Journal #4: Blood Wedding

One of the symbols I saw in the first scene that helped create the characters was knives. The scene starts as The Bridegroom is going out to the vineyard and he asks his mother for a knife to cut the grapes. This sets up the characteristics of the mother. She goes on a rant about knives and how horrible they are. They should have never been created because they murder. It also explains that her husband and other son were both murdered. The knives that appear from the first page are a big part of the book which ultimately lead to the death of Leonardo and the Bridegroom.

The other symbols that started to appear were plants like flowers or orchards. Mother describes her husband by saying he smells like carnations. She also says "my dead ones, covered with weeds, silent, turned to dust. Two men who were like two geraniums!" (7) She asks what the bridegroom would do with her at the vineyards and asks if he would hide her under the vine leaves. This implies death because people bury their loved ones under ground when they die. Lorca uses plants throughout the play to set a mood. He sometimes uses nice and pretty flowers to explain the good people or to create a calm or happy mood. Vines or weeds have connotations of nakedness or death which appear when talking about dark things throughout the book.

Journal #3: The Wild Duck

I think that most of all and most obviously, Gina and Gregers are most at fault for everything that happened in the final act. Gina should not have let this lie go on for so long and should have been honest from the start. If she had told Hjalmar the truth about Hedvig from the beginning, this may have never happened. Gregers is also at fault because he had no business to get into this lie. He gave Hedvig the idea to kill the wild duck. He still thought that he was right even after she died, but that it hadn't ended the way it was supposed to. 


Hjalmar is partially to blame because he did not treat Hedvig with respect and love when she most needed it. He did not understand that although he did not create her, he was still her dad and he didn't act like a dad. He pushed her away when she most wanted to give him love. He took the responsibility for her death and blamed himself 100%. He said after they found her dead that he wanted to tell her how inexpressibly he loved her (215) but she died before he could tell her what she needed to hear from the start. 

Journal #2: The Wild Duck

With the motif of sickness, Ibsen is using illness to explain what happens when you are surrounded by lies. He ties in decay because that's what happens to you emotionally. When surrounded by lies, it is hard to know what is the truth. The sickness most common in the book is blindness in Hjalmar, Werle, and Hedvig. Their lives are mostly lies. Hedvig doesn't even know that Werle is her dad because she cannot "see" the lie she is living. Hjalmar doesn't "see", until Gregers makes it apparent that Hedvig isn't his daughter and Werle is supporting her with money by passing it off as his photography pay.

Journal #1: The Wild Duck

Option 2:
The first character that came to mind when I read that prompt was Gregers Werle. Gregers sees all of the different facades and lies that are going on in the story. He knew even when he was younger that Gina and Old Werle were having affairs and he knew immediately that Hedvig was not Hjalmar's child. He found the lies in people and decides that it is his duty to reveal all of the lies.
Another character that I saw creating false facades is Gina. She has lied about Hedvig her whole life and plans to keep it a secret. She does everything to keep the secret about Hedvig just that. A secret. When it starts to unravel she tries to cover the truth once again and keep Hjalmar in a quiet perfect world hidden from the scary truth.

Journal #3: Brave New World

By the end of the book there is a lot of criticism of The World State by John the Savage. He continues to bring up the absence of natural things like Religion, love, fear, emotions, art, etc. The criticisms highlight the  things that were abolished to make a perfect world. Art is a big thing in the savage land and there is no need for it in the world state because the only emotions they should feel is happiness and complex art will alter those mindsets.

The setting in the ending of the book is in the World State but it now has a different feeling to it. Now that John is in the World State and all of these criticisms are brought present, it feels like a different place. The contrast of this perfect world and the savage world  make a different mood of the story although it is still the same place.

The language in the last part of the book is similar to the first part while John still talks with an influence of shakespeare and the diction is still similar as it is throughout the book. But near the end when John kills himself, the language is used to highlight the fear and confusion of civilians in the World State and ends the book with them running in different directions because of their confusion.

Journal #2: Brave New World

The farther into the book I get, the more I notice things like Shakespeare. John has the complete collection of Shakespeare and uses the stories to explain things he finds in his life in the book. Shakespeare is not a big part of the book but as the story grows, John turns to it more and more.

The setting in this part of the book is very different from the first part. The book moves from the world state to the Reservation where the "savages" live. This change in setting also highlights the differences in our society that the savages live in and the "World State." The savage society has all the things that are important to us now that the world state had to give up to be a "utopia."

The Language Huxley uses in this part is important to understand the savages John and Linda. The flashbacks are used to explain their history so it is easier to understand where John comes from when he wants to go to the World State. This Language along with the use of Shakespeare by John make the differences of John, the reservation, and the World State more obvious.

Journal #1: Brave New World

In the first third of the novel there are a few things I noticed. The Motif of the word pneumatic appears throughout the first part of the book. Pneumatic means of or pertaining to air according to dictionary.com. When Huxley uses the word pneumatic, he uses it to explain Lenina or her chair. More generally it is explaining women and saying that they are as important as furniture. This emphasizes the idea of having sex with anyone and everyone. Sex could also be a motif. It is mentioned throughout the book and very casual here in the beginning. It is frowned upon if people don't want to have sex with others.

The Setting in the beginning is in the London Hatchery and Control Center. This sets the society and explains it very well by starting the book with a tour. It explains the setup and organization of society along with the main goals and rules in the society. We understand from the beginning that having sex is encouraged and not looked down on by the society.

The language used in the book is also interesting. Huxley uses casual words to explain the children who "play with each other." The casual word choice highlights the views of the characters in the book. They are all taught the normalcy of playing with each other in sexual ways and it is not strange.

Journal #5: The Stranger

Johnstonism
1: Follow your own path, but let others pave it: Learn from others' mistakes. Don't do things because other people tell you to but do it because you want to. That being said, it is important that you don't decide to do something stupid when you have seen someone else do it and ended badly. Learn from what others do and then make your own decisions based on what is best for you, not what other people think you should do.
2: Faith: It is important to believe in some higher power. I believe in God because if you don't have anyone to look to in times of trouble, you will give up. God is there to offer comfort in hard times. When something happens that I cannot control myself, I look to God to help it turn out well.
3: You are not better than anyone: This is very important to live by. Why should people respect you if you don't respect them. Just because you are well dressed and have a good education does not mean you can look down on them. If you do look at them differently, it should be with admiration that, even though they have had a hard life, they are sticking through it and will keep on going.
4: Look to the Future: It is important that you live in the moment and appreciate life as it happens but what is perhaps even more important than that is to look to the future. If you are only living in the moment and not towards the future, you may get stuck in a hard part of life and think there is nothing left to do but end it. Looking to the future will help show that there is always a way around problems if you want to move on.
5: Respect your life and do something great: God has given you the gift of life and it is important not to waste it. Do something that will leave a footprint in the world. Be someone they talk about in 200 years. Be the person who cured cancer or stopped world hunger, not a person who wrote a mediocre paper on some book in high school. Leave a foot print that will help the world prosper.
6: Do things for others, not yourself: Be charitable, help the old lady cross the street, tutor the girl in the back of math class for free. It will pay off for you later on in life and it will help them now. It only takes 2 minutes to explain a concept to someone after class, it only takes 50 cents to make someones day. Or be an anonymous donor, whether you buy a meal for the car behind you in the drive thru or you donate $400 to a local music program. Help others because it is right, not because you are forced.
7: Let others learn from your mistakes: This is the flipside of principle 1. Pave someone else's path and tell them things you have done wrong. Admit your wrong-doings and let them know what you did and how you felt. Help others create an even stronger and happier life than you had.
8: Don't blame others: If something bad happens, assume it is for the best. When your grandmother dies, maybe you will meet the love of your life at her funeral. Don't blame God for punishing you. If you fail a group project, think about what you can do better next time whether it is you should work harder or encourage your partners to help you. It is not always someone else's fault.

Journal #4: The Stranger

At the end of the novel, Mersault understands the world. He realizes that the world is indifferent and that the world and himself are actually very similar. Up till now, Mersault felt very disconnected to the world and he thought there was no point in living. At the end of the novel though, he realizes that he is happy. When he looks back on his life, he is glad about everything he has done and realizes that there is a meaning to it.
I don't think Camus is trying to make us agree with Mersault. I think he is just trying to show one way to look at life. His word choice at the end of the novel did not seem persuasive but more informational. I think he wanted to merely show readers what Mersault believes and make them understand instead of jumping to conclusions that he has no feelings and does not care about anything.

Journal #3: The Stranger

I think there are many reasons Camus split the book into two parts. The most obvious reason to the reader is to split Mersault's normal life with his life in jail being accused. Camus uses part two to go farther into Mersault's thoughts and to create more of a sense of him. In part one, he seems very passive and does not think much of his life but when he is in jail, he goes deep into his life and really thinks about everything in his life. Camus does keep sleep as a motif in both parts. "Then there was sleep (...) the last few months I've been sleeping sixteen to eighteen hours a day" (79). However, The diffferences between the motif of sleep in the two parts is, in part one, Mersault is always sleepy or drowsy and wanting to sleep and in part two he is sleeping 16 to 18 hours a day.

Journal #2: The Stranger

In The Stranger, Camus uses the sun throughout the novel. The sun is mentioned at happy times in the novel like when the day was beautiful. "I was absorbed by the feeling that the sun was doing me a lot of good" (50). It makes Mersault comfortable and cheers him up. But the sun also creates problems and indicates trouble. Mersault explains the pressure he felt when about to confront the Arab on the beach, his "forehead swelling under the sun" (57). The sun creates a pressure and makes Mersault uncomfortable.