Thinking Outside the Bun...er..Box

This is hell.  And this.  And this one fa'real.

First, let me admit that Estelle would have been my first target.*sigh of relief*  Feels great to get that off my chest.  Now, Sartre creates hell in an unassuming room with a situation of discomfort.  This discomfort was extreme enough to get a person to kill another.  Well, at least try to.  Everybody in the room was uncomfortable with strangers around because they knew an infinity together would mean letting them in on their secret insecurities.  I guess, in summation, I'm saying that Sartre's uncomfortable hell is the lack of self-acceptance which is also the limit of our thinking because we become preoccupied or stubborn.  Sartre's hell can be escaped on one's own up to a point where self-improvement becomes reversal of introduced qualities, but it is easier when there is somebody judging you.  Simply put, you can't please everybody.  That's why you need self-acceptance.  The "escapability" can be seen when the door opens for Garcin.

Plato's hell is inescapable without the imposition of an outer influence.  That influence can be a new idea or a teacher.  It doesn't matter.  But the way he sets the allegory up like a jail makes it clear that you don't get out on your own.

What confuses me still is the signifance of the bronze ornament in "No Exit."  Garcin touches it everytime he's being reflective.

Input? Pretty please with assorted toppings?

Life is a Highway to Hell

That's not what I got from Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit."  Actually, the title of this post is a nod to something hellish to my tastes.  The song Highway to Hell and all other songs similar to hair metal.  I haven't heard them all so, for now, I think it's an evil genre of music.

1.  Since I grew up watching cartoons fairly often, there were inevitably scenes depicting hell.  Cow and Chicken comes to mind.  These cartoons had nothing to compete with since the mass I was attending at the Catholic church was designed for us grade school kids to mope through without too much violent imagery (besides the holy man nailed to beams above us.) Anyway, my image of hell is burnt to a crisp.  There are casual flames spouting from the purple/maroon ground.  Come to think of it... it's lonely.  I guess that's what little me was afraid of.  That's what hell would be, right?  A place where all your greatest fears exist in harmony.  Your mind would be in hell, even if your body were unscathed.  I'm sure any human would go insane living in Sartre's hell.  Even if we didn't need the sleep or other worldly necessities, the boredom and aggravation would be too much for the mind to accept.

2.  Hell, like I said, would be a place that we are afraid of.  Whether that place be mental, emotional, or physical is irrelevant because anything without moderation would be something to fear. Squidward's hell

3.  The dialogue was almost the only thing here so the clarity of the image in my head is unexpected.  I had to look up second empire furniture though.  The sense of place he creates in the dialogue is a place of frustration.  Being in a room you don't like with people you like even less is the pits.  The idea of staying awake for eternity is similarly the pits because I don't even like staying up through calculus class.  If I only had math and econ classes or they extended hours past anything humane, that would be hell.  Garcin seems apprehensive and unwilling to believe that hell could be so simple to create.  He expected torture devices made of metal, not fainting couches and an arrogant French woman.

Allegory of The Cave Sonnet

Shadows seem clear to those who've not seen more

Shackles are comfy when they're all you know

Deep down in ignorance. Where is the door?

You'll never find out lest you're pushed to go

A familiar shape returns underground

Like a n00b teacher coming into town

Resistance and pain are what's to be found

Give them a new light. Don't let them back down.

But ultimately, this must be their choice

No matter how much you've learned from the sun

Walking out of the cave, earning a voice

That job isn't yours. It's theirs to be done.

Create a trail to the world outside

Make their raw ankles an unshackled guide.

I'll Sit Down in My Thinking Chair

Plato was quite the thinker if his ideas are stilling being dismantled and superglued thousands of years later.  I know.  Captain Obvious.  But what ideas from today are gonna make it to the future?  Is this question too big to be a Big Question? Idk, brah.
Anyway, here are my "The Cave" answers.

1. The Cave represents the fight to be enlightened, whether that be a conflict with yourself or the forces that made you ign'ant in the first place.
2. The most important images of the allegory were the shackles, the shadows, the sun, and the cave(duh).
3. The allegory suggests that enlightenment is something to be attained and retained; embraced and shared with all you see lacking it.  Because of this, some people want to shove it down your throat with good intention.  Plato seems to suggest that enlightenment is supposed to be experienced and passed on despite the resistance the teacher may encounter.
4. The perspectives of the prisoners are forced and predetermined like the range of movement their shackles.  Caves are pretty finite unless they're in Vietnam so the extent of what the cave dwellers can know shares that trait.
5. Conditioning shackles my brain.  I went to a leadership conference with Calvin Terrell and one exercise we did was to flash words like "slave" or "drunk" on the screen.  We had to tell him the first kind of people to come to mind.  You can see where I'm going. :(
6. The freed prisoner is ashamed of what he sees as the reactions of his fellow cave dwellers.  Plus, he sees the whole world even though it hurt in the beginning.  The shadow watchers, on the other hand, are lame ducks.  They are dogmatic and provincial. *nods in self-amusement for using vocab*
7. Intellectual confusion happens when you first see the sun a la Ace of Bass and you begin to wrap and stretch your mind around all the shiny, new ideas.  The other is when you're going back to the darkness after being enlightened and having to consider the comprehension of your non-enlightened peers. Think privileged n00b teacher going to teach at an inner city school.
8. The spelunkers are compelled free and dragged out so I guess Plato meant that you don't just decide to be free-thinking but that there is a force; idea, person, or otherwise, that can make you think freely like the tweeters that started the Arab Spring.
9. There is a difference between appearance and reality.  Things don't always look like what they are.  If a stranger walks in and sees our class on its phones, he doesn't think bloggers.  A lot of Chinese people see the internet but have no idea what the event at Tiananmen Square was. 
10. When reality and appearance are the same we find that nothing is a lie.  We can take everything for face value.  We also find that thoughts, as personal interpretations of a constant, can lead to discovery of the core values of the community that is experiencing that reality.

What's the Big Idea?

My big question.  I have lots of them and when I heard of this assignment last year, I was hella stoked.  Of course, when we're actually given the assignment all my curiosity and ideas fall to the wayside.  Wateva, I guess I'll stick with my bread and butter: languages and learning them.
My Big Question is: What are the obstacles of language learning that can be met after getting older? or thereabouts...

Herman Melville's Benito Cereno

Yesteryear, Mrs. Nylander, as a final act of her instruction, allowed us to take all the books from her room.  Classic Carol.  I was in the last class so I got to scour the leftovers and went home with a few books, one of which was a collection of Herman Melville novels.
1. Captain Amasa Delano and his ship meet another ship seemingly captained by a Spanish-Chilean, Don Benito Cereno (FYI his name is Benito, not Don which is a respectful title).  On Cereno's ship, are also many Africans destined to be slaves.  Delano notices that all social interaction on the ship is awkward, notably between the captain and his Black servant, Babo.  Additionally, we see the figurehead is covered by a tarp and written beside it is "Sequid Vuestro Jefe" which means follow your leader. Foreshadowing much?.  Anyway, after a while, we see a relationship between Babo and Cereno that is unlike that of a slave and his master.  This one is more like a companionship.  At the end, we find out that all the awkward could be chalked up to the fact that the slaves had revolted on the ship and killed their master, tying him to the figurehead.  Now, they had taken control and commanded Cereno to sail them back to Africa.  Babo is the ringleader which explains why he always kept close to Cereno.  He is put to death like many unwieldy slaves of the day and oddly enough, Cereno, clearly a sufferer of compromised mental health and Stockholm syndrome, dies soon after.  That's that.
2. The theme of the book was definitely to question the truth.  Delano, a seemingly salty sea-dog whose judgment most people would never question didn't get that there was a mutiny going on right in front of his eyes.
3.Considering Herman Melville lived in the era of slavery and its abolition this may have been a warning to keep a better eye on what's going on farealz.  Additionally, the writing took plenty of liberty with its description of the slaves as inhuman.

• "This is an uncommonly intelligent fellow of yours, Don Benito, " whispered Captain Delano across the table."
• "But tell me, has he so far as you have known him, always proved a good, worthy fellow?"
• " 'Because they have no memory,' he dejectedly replied; 'because they are not human."

4. Literary Elements of Benito Cereno

• " Rudely painted or chalked, as in a sailor freak, along the forward sentence, ' Sequid vuestro jefe.'" This was probably the most outright presentation of foreshadowing.  On a boat full of slaves and a master, it's clear who the jefe is. The fact that it was poorly written leads one to believe that it was an afterthought.
• "Yes, this is a strange craft, a strange history, too, and strange folks on board.  But- nothing more." Blatant irony is strong in this statement.  The audience is yelling at Delano, voice of this statement, that something is indeed going on here, but he's like the drunk guy in a scary movie, oblivious.
• " Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor and ended by looking down on the deck."  This simile explains the state of Cereno's mind.  It's clear by now that he isn't all there but Delano brushes it off.
• " His last glance seemed to express a calamitous, yet acquiescent farewell to Captain Delano forever." During the monologue that this quote comes from, it is reflected upon that Benito Cereno is acting strange and it is becoming clear that there may be an ulterior reason for it.
• I won't be providing another textual example for the motif of preconceived notion that is the savage.  The best quote is the one I used to answer question 3.  The savage is the idea that the slaves are typically unintelligent and cowardly.  This is all very dehumanizing so it is easy to see how Delano could come to the conclusion that the slaves are idle.
• "These tops hung overhead like three ruinous aviaries, in one of which was seen perched, on a ratlin, a white noddy, a strange fowl, so called from its lethargic, sonambulistic character." This one is definitely symbolism for Don Benito.  He is like a zombie of captivity by Babo.
• " Ere long it seemed hard to decide whether she meant to come in or no--what she wanted, or what she was about."  The personification of Cereno's ship went beyond calling it her to giving it wants and desires with their own levels of ambiguity to match those of the actions that were occuring aboard her.
• " Battered and mouldy, the castellated forecastle seemed some ancient turret, long ago taken by assault, and then left to decay."  This imagery is heavy in the very beginning of the book, likely to emphasize the condition of the boat and describe its fort-like traits which lends itself to hosting a siege.  Additionally, this provides a good transition into describing the figurehead.
• " The noisy confusion of the San Dominick's suffering host repeatedly challenged his eye. " This quote is pretty moody.  Seriously, you get the feeling of how awkward the whole situation is.  If you've seen the scene in Hancock where he rescues the liquor store owner from the thieves, this is what it's like, only Delano isn't a bamf with superpowers.

Characterization

1. Direct characterization

• "Captain Delano's surprise might have been deepened into some uneasiness had he not been a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and repeated incentives."
• " But the debility, constitutional or induced by hardships, bodily and mental, of the Spanish captain was too obvious to be overlooked.

    Melville's use of direct characterization was not entirely necessary even though it came more often than most authors would use it.  That is because he also was good at intertwining indirect characterization with the plot.  

     Indirect characterization

• "While Captain Delano was thus made the mark of all eager tongues, his one eager glance took in all faces, with every other object about him."
• " What! have you saved my life, Señor, and are you now going to throw away you own?" 

     Melville uses the reactions of others to characterize Delano as a man who looks worthy of respect and gossip.  Unfortunately for Delano, my opinion of him relied mostly on his lack of understanding in regards to the mutiny.  Were I to consider the characterization alone I would have thought him an admirable seaman.

3. Captain Delano is certainly dynamic.  He is, by the end of the novella, much more apprehensive in his consideration of things.  I suppose that means he is less happy-go-lucky than he had been when there was nothing in his mind to suspect.  What a boring book.

4. " Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the black met his voiceless end."  This quote applies to the death of Babo.  He and Captain Benito Cereno are the ones I felt I had met, however passingly.  They were certainly not the most intriguing characters and Delano was even less.

AP Hamlet PLN

If there are eyes out there that don't know what the inside of our school classroom looks like PLN stands for personal learning network.  It's not just gonna be mine though.  Y'all can have some too.  It's a compilation of resources to help us learn.  We begin with Y'ung H or, as others may call him, Hamlet.

This one is a museum but Hamlet hasn't changed so any perspectives or questions that you see here are still valid.
Here's another dinosaur.  Actually, I just realized that and I feel like some ki'na fool for trying to invite the author to use our learning path. Wateva.  That message will probably land in the cobwebs of an inbox far from the eyes of judgment and embarrassment.
Bookmark this PYT because it has not only a collection of tools that relate Hamlet to other works but also similar work on other literary feats like Candide and Brave New World.
Are these people us? No.  But they're doing something along the same format as us and that familiarity can make it a cool environment to collaborate...with strangers.
After the jump you will find a blog that has summaries of the scenes of Hamlet so if you couldn't read the whole thing, you could read that lil' bit.  Noice! Also, it seems to be a collection of resources for many AP subjects so that's cool too. TTYL