Hamlet. The other white meat.

What I know about Hamlet is based on what I've learned in pop culture.  Lion King plot is similar to Hamlet's.  Was it his father's ghost? He is a prince? I'd like to thank Freaky Friday (starring America's sweetheart, Lindsay Lohan) for teaching me a bit about Hamlet also.
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon.  He married a woman named Anne Hathaway.  Many call him the father of Modern English.  His venue after he became celebrated was the Globe, a rounder stage.  He wrote in iambic pentameter.
Students frown at the sound of his name because the reading is not as modern as the English we speak today.  This makes it harder to read.  Also, they probably frown because their teachers say "Read this," and then they get essays or tests (jk both).
To make this truly memorable we should read in class as if it were a table read for a sitcom or animated show.

Literature Analysis: Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

For such a highly recommended novel, this plot seemed pretty commonplace but I suppose it's unclear whether the novel was always vanilla or if it were like a prototype for this particular kind of novel.  The novel begins after the death of the founding member of the Joy Luck Club, a group of women and their families who came together, essentially, to hide from the pains of Chinese society during the 1930's and '40's.  She bequeathed her corner of the mahjong table to her daughter and this mother-daughter interaction opens up an analysis of the relationships of all four daughters and mothers.  This technique of direct comparison between Chinese-born mother and American-born daughter is effective in displaying some common elements of relationships such as these.  Some of these elements included a refusal of old Chinese allegories and a dogmatic attitude toward the culture the characters, especially the mothers they were observed in.
The most clear theme to me was the idea that there is always something to be learned from your peers.  The daughters learned from their mothers which one would expect anyway but the mothers also learned some important lessons in individuality and amenability.
The tone of the book was much more grave than the title would have led me to believe.  I suspected lessons taught through comedic and awkward experiences but instead it was taught through tragic recountals.  " Because I was promised to the Huangs' son for marriage, my own family began treating me as if I belonged to somebody else."  This excerpt was provided by one of the mothers who recounted her childhood in a small village.  " She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls."  The protagonist explained the effects of the Japanese invasion of China  on her mother's life incredibly tristfully.  It was comparable to the image of the napalmed girl in Vietnam or the Price family exodus from the village after the death of Ruth.  " You don't even know little percent of me! How can you be me?"  Family dysfunction runs rampant through these characters plots.  The language barrier between Chinese-preferring mothers and English-preferring daughters was only an additional quandary to incite argument between factions.
The edition of book I am reading is the Penguin Books 2006 print in paperback.  This section lends itself to numbering:
Literary Elements
1. Pathos is used on page 99: " Embarrass you be my daughter?"  Her voice was cracking with anger."  The pain of that assumption bares through to anybody with parents.  It makes it increasingly obvious that one of Tan's other messages was that the relationships in Chinese-American families have their own qualities that only made the emotional health of the family more distant.
2. Parallelism was used on page 115: "  I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable. I saw the mother lying in bed in her long flowing robes."  The comparison between mother and daughter in this excerpt was demonstrative of the fault that could be found within the perceptions of either party.
3. Motif was also used on page 115: " 'Then you must die the death of a thousand cuts.  It is the only way to save you."  The death by a thousand cuts was repeated several times, seemingly with the intention of portraying the message that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  The painful experiences these women dealt with were suggested to be strengthening, like a bone that breaks and is stronger afterwards(not medical advice).
4. Metaphor was used on page 40:  "Not know your own mother?  How can you say?  Your mother is in your bones."  This sentimental idea maybe one of the most prehistoric identities a person can have.  The idea that although her mother was dead, she had raised her and gotten into her body with the food she fed her daughter and ideas she had instilled.
5. Symbolism was used on page 77:  " And I turned around so I could find the Moon Lady  and tell her my secret wish."  The Moon Lady was symbolic of the hope that this mother had felt since she was a child for a different life in which she were more in control of and more emotionally in touch with.  Essentially, all the characters felt this way, whether they were the mothers who sought to redefine themselves by individuality they hoped to find in America, or the daughters who hoped to understand themselves without the distancing weight of their mothers' expectations.
6. Imagery was used on page 77 also:  " In the dark water, I could see the full moon, a moon so warm and big it looked like the sun."  This quote was directly before the Moon Lady sentence.  In this, it serves as an example of the pattern Tan created by being descriptive about significant objects that would be symbolic.
7. Foil was used on page 203:  " It was amazing how Waverly still sounded the way she did twenty-five years ago, when we were ten and she had announced to me in that same voice, 'You aren't a genius like me."  Jing-Mei, the protagonist, was never the prodigy her mother had hoped for her to be.  Waverly was a smug chess child prodigy and a smug genius can make anybody look better.
8. Colloquialism could be found sprinkled throughout the entire text.  This was one of the most common:  " Aii-ya!"  Whether the interjection was directly significant to the plot or not was not as important as the fact that it was used at all.  The phrase means something along the lines of " My God!"  The pure emotion that interjections can carry due to their lack of restraint speak to the fact that although the parents do their best to assimilate with American society, including English, they still feel in accordance Chinese values.
9. One cliché was introduced on page 96:  " A small weekend crowd of Chinese people and tourists would gather as I played and defeated my opponents one by one."  It is a common cliché to see a small child playing chess and beating his/her opponents, especially old men.  I believe this cliché was included so that Tan could make the reader understand that some of what most people understand about "tiger parents" is true.
10. Irony was included on page 137:   " So that's how I discovered that Old Chong's eyes were too slow to keep up with the notes I was playing."  The irony of this excerpt is not only that the piano teacher doesn't see her mistakes, but that she abuses this disability while her mother has agreed to clean the house for him in exchange for the lessons.  This further demonstrates the misinterpretation of the other's intentions.
Characterization
One example of direct characterization is when Lindo Jong describes the boy she was forced to marry when she was young.  She says he was scared like a boy who had never grown up. Another example is when Lena St. Clair falls in love with her co-worker.  Direct characterization is used to describe characters who are only being used as means to develop the other characters.  Indirect characterization is used at many times, especially during description of the mothers and daughters when dealing with dogmatic attitudes almost all of them had.  It is also used to tastefully mention minor details about peripheral characters.
Diction was only changed when the mothers were speaking or being spoken of because there would be Chinese words and ideas included.  This also altered syntax by making it a little more curt  for the foreign message to be comprehensible.
Although there was no true protagonist, Jing Mei was probably the most important.  She was dynamic in her metamorphosis from a girl who resented what her mother was trying to make of her to the esteemed daughter who only wished she could have understood her mother before she died.  She was flat though because other characters occupied different aspects of the personality.
"And I knew by the wonder in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant."  This quote illustrates the appreciation Jing-Mei has found by the end of the book.  She ultimately understands the knowledge that her mother passed on to her, symbolized by the jade pendant mentioned in the excerpt.  She was also well-described by indirect characterization, which is the way most of us learn about other people anyway.

Some Edited Notes and a Quiz

These are the notes and quiz we did on pages 64-82 in our textbook
Clickety-click

Vocabulary List #5

Vocabulary definitions and sentences: Clickety-click

A Spoonful of Effort Makes the "Surprise" Quiz Go Down

To be honest, the quiz wasn't that hard for me.  I have the good fortune to be more than decent at recall.  I ain't all that but neither are my notes.  I wrote down most of the important stuff like names and even some good ideas that I put together from a few of the concepts.  I will be incorporating, however, more mechanical notation for bold terms and subject headers and give them their due credit while using their information to mesh some of my own thoughts and observations into a more comprehensive pile of phonemes.

Basically an Exercise in My Favorite Subject

Learning about the history of English and the sprinkle of linguistic theory Dr. Preston added in class has been a lot of fun for me because my favorite thing to learn about is language, whether it be learning a modern one or how it came to be.

Meanehwæl, baccat meaddehæle, monstær lurccen;
Fulle few too many drincce, hie luccen for fyht.
Ðen Hreorfneorhtðhwr, son of Hrwærowþheororthwl,
Æsccen æwful jeork to steop outsyd. Þhud! Bashe! Crasch! Beoom! Ðe bigge gye
Eallum his bon brak, byt his nose offe;
Wicced Godsylla wæld on his asse.
Monstær moppe fleor wyþ eallum men in hælle.
Beowulf in bacceroome fonecall bamaccen wæs;
Hearen sond of ruccus sæd, "Hwæt ðe helle?"
Graben sheold strang ond swich-blæd scharp
Stond feorth to fyht ðe grimlic foe. "Me," Godsylla sæd, "mac ðe minsemete."
Heoro cwyc geten heold wiþ fæmed half-nelson
Ond flyng him lic frisbe bac to fen
Beowulf belly up to meaddehæle bar,
Sæd, "Ne foe beaten mie færsom cung-fu."
Eorderen cocca-cohla yce-coeld, ðe reol þyng. 
=
Meanwhile, back at the meadhall, Monster lurked.
Full of a few too many drinks, He was looking for a fight.
Then, Hreorfneorhtðhwr, son of  Hrwærowþheororthwl,
Asked the awful jerk to step outside.  Thud! Bash! Crash! Boom!  The big guy 
Each of his bones broken, bit his nose off;
Wicked Godzilla wailed on his ass.
Monster mopped the floor with each man in the hall.
Beowulf was in the backroom making a phone call;
He heard the sound of the ruccus and said, "What the hell?"
He grabbed his strong shield and his sharp switch-blade
Stood forth to fight the grim foe.  "Me," Godzilla said, "make the mincemeat."
The quick hero got hold with his famed half-nelson
And flung him like a frisbee back to front
Beowulf belly to the meadhall's bar
Said, "No foe has beaten my fearsome kung-fu."
He ordered an ice-cold Coca-Cola, the real thing.

Color Me Surprised

I definitely didn't think this article would offer any diversion but I found it was a nice read considering it offers a perspective usually lacking from the dichotomy *wink-wink* of its arguments.  Samantha Garrison and I decided to compart this assignment so, if you'd like, you can find the rest of the answers at her blog.

1.  Burkdall's thesis stated that although writing is definitely not as developed or extensive as before, it still holds a certain, nearly interminable value due to its role as a primer for the development of structure in thought and process for multimodal works.

2.  Why wouldn't the media be eager to create such an edgy claim.   The people love controversy and this is just the kind of article that could incite leathery fingertips to undulate like flames across the keyboard, typing hateful, hipster-bashing comments at kittylover42 for mentioning that she's a 90's kid but she still loves reading from paper.  And when people find articles with a little je ne sais quoi, they can talk about them at the water cooler or while they try fend off an awkward silence when they recognize somebody at the supermarket.
      Additionally, I think we're more comfortable dealing in absolutes.  It's harder to remember the deets about a claim that says there is evidence of a shrinking audience than one that says there is no audience at all.

3.  To stop the sea is a godly feat so, clearly, this allusion is a metaphor for doing something impossible.  In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, the protagonist, compares the phrase to stopping the desires of a multitudinous and overwhelming woman.  Burkdall explains that some may believe the progression of the non-literary work to be a tsunami of exclusion, ready to engulf all writing in its path.

P.S. Now I kind of want to read Ulysses though I don't know when that will be, considering we got served a veritable harvest of homework this weekend and its over 600 pages long.

Spiderman: A Marvel Hero Deconstructed

I'm basing my analysis of Spiderman off of the Toby Maguire movies because I'm not familiar with the comic books or the cartoon series.  I chose him because he's the only Marvel hero with real powers, that wears tights my favorite Marvel hero.

Ordinary World: Peter Parker is just an ordinary human chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool.  Then his life gets flipped, turned upside-down.

Call to Adventure: Peter is bitten by a science experiment of a spider.  He gets powers overnight.  At this time, Uncle Ben is worried about how he thinks Peter is feeling a change that everybody experiences.  One might imagine puberty but I think Uncle Ben meant responsibility in regards to your individuality and capabilities.

Refusal of the Call:  When Uncle Ben first tells Peter that "With great power comes great responsibility," Peter brushes it off to win some money to impress Mary-Jane. He also allows the robber to run past him as an act of vengeance for not getting the money he deserved from the wrestling manager.   Everybody looks bad at this point of the Hero's Journey  but I think it is a natural progression of human tendency, that fear of what may be dangerous.  Actually, this tendency probably extends to all animals which explains why such an ancient habit is hard to avoid.

Meeting with the Mentor:  Unfortunately for Peter Parker, his mentor is the dying Uncle Ben.  Now, in the movie the uncle dies after repeating Peter's name, much to the chagrin of my attempted stoicism during the movie.  But, I like to think that the lack of words shared between uncle and nephew serves to emphasize the last thing he really told Peter, the most famous quote out of Spiderman.

Crossing the Threshold:  It happens pretty quickly that Spiderman crosses the threshold.  He does so when he goes after the guy he believes killed Uncle Ben, who is also the guy he let run past him.  The values of this zone are certainly different from Peter's because he carries out an act of vigilante justice by killing a man who had done wrong.  Aunt Jane is good at reminding Peter that certain morals transcend multiple personality disorder.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies:  Then, we find out that the Green Goblin is a bad guy when he tries to kill a bunch of people at the parade, including the girl-next-door.  I'm sorry Miss Watson, the Green Goblin's for real.  In that act we see that Spiderman has few active allies.  Mostly, they tell him to look at his life and look at his choices, which is all mere humans can be expected to do.  Additionally, most of the good citizens of New York City become enamored with the "Masked Menace."

Approach:  For Spiderman's training regimen, he wakes up, eats his wheaties, irons his outfit, and goes to work as your friendly neighborhood Spiderman, protecting the world from devastation.

The Ordeal:  Could it be anything than the Green Goblin iffin' to hurt Aunt May.  Peter is forced to understand that his new role as a hero will affect those around him also.  This realization is a call to arms in regards to the Green Goblin because Spiderman now understands the personal threat this villain poses.

The Reward:  Mary-Jane loves Aunt May just like Peter does, so when they see each other at the hospital, sly old Aunt May takes advantage of the situation and stays quiet while listening to the creation of a new romance being built where before there was only friendship.  Mary-Jane is the one in danger now, because she is the Big Apple of Peter's eye.*rimshot*

The Road Back:  Peter is now engaged in the active pursuit of the Green Goblin who has taken Mary-Jane to the edge of a bridge.  However much of an objectification of women it is, Peter must go retrieve and protect his prize, the thing he went to hell and back to find.  

The Resurrection:  Peter ends up beating the Green Goblin when he dodges some blades that end up killing the villain.  This particular method of beating the bad guy was integral in the justification of Spiderman's character because it made amends for having begun as the guy who killed his uncle's killer.

Return with the Elixir:  Even though we thought that Mary-Jane was the true prize, in the last scene of the movie we learn that the real prize, the one that would benefit not only Peter, but also the rest of society, was Spiderman, the one capable of defending New York City.

Vocabulary List #4

These are a week late.  My B.
Clickety-click

The Joy Luck Club- It's What's for Dinner

Ever since I first learned what The Joy Luck Club was, in what was probably sixth grade, I have intended to read it.  But whether there was another book I was digging more or I had simply forgotten it, I have never gotten around to Amy Tan's acclaimed novel.  Now, as for reasons why, because I can and because I'm interested in getting a little perspective on immigrant experiences coming into the United States.  The Chinese aspect of the novel is, however, a substitute for what I would rather read about.  I have read and been exposed to plenty Mexican immigration stories including that of my mother so, today, I'm asking all o'y'all (if there aren't just crickets reading this blog) if you have any recommendations for books about immigration from India to England, or Indians going from England to America à la Patel.