Solitude

Solitude is defined by dictionary.com as

1.the state of being or living alone; seclusion: to enjoy one's solitude.
2.remoteness from habitations, as of a place; absence of human activity: the solitude of the mountains.
3.a lonely, unfrequented place: a solitude in the mountains.

To me the word solitude means being alone, and conotes feelings of lonlyness and sadness. I rarley associate solitude with feelings of joy or relief, even though I think solitude has different meanings for each person it pertains to. Some people really enjoy being alone, I do not. Solitude can be physical or emotional. By this I mean that you can be literally in solitary confinment, or you can be emotionaly distant and aloof from the people around you. When I think of the word solitude, I also think about "finding youself", and I am reminded of the book Siddartha. People sometimes place themselves volantarily in Solitude in order to have time to reflect on thier emotions and find out who they really are, and what truely matters to them. I have never heard of Solitude meaning a place, such as "a solitude in the moutains", but when used in this way, I feel that solitude means an absence of human activity, and visible animal life. In other words a quiet place where one is alone with nature.

Reflection on Grimm's Brother Fairy Tales - Lit X Topic

I have read the first three fairytales in the collection of short fairytales by the Grimm’s Brothers. So far I have noticed several common themes, including the stereotyping of gender roles and an obsession with royalty and monetary richness. The first three fairytales, The Frog Prince, A Tale of One Who Traveled to Learn What Shivering Meant, and Faithful John all revolve around royalty and beautiful princesses and keep the male and female characters locked in strict gender specific roles. The Females are omitted from most of the stories action, and stay at home in a state of "happy homemaker" constantly cooking, sewing or cleaning, waiting for somebody to come make them a wife and complete their life. The are portrayed as beautiful, delicate and simple minded. For example in Faithful John, The Prince who has fallen inlove with a princess simply from looking at her portrait, steals the Princess from her home. At first she is alarmed, but upon learning that the boy is a Prince who wants to marry her she falls in love with him. I feel that in these stories the term love is tossed around very loosely and often mistaken with infatuation. The heroic males, in contrast to the females are portrayed as strong, powerful, smart and dominering. They always rescue the day and save the girl all before dinner. Their only fault seems to be falling head over heels for women based solely on appearance as demonstrated in The Frog Prince and Faithful John. They are the providers for thier wives and families and as Kings are in charge of Everyone in thier realm.



Another thing that suprised me about these fairy tales is thier graffic fighting scenes and descriptions which in my opinion seem very inappropriate for young children. For Example in Faithful John, The servant John is turned into stone after saving his master, the king's, life. In order to bring him back to like the king must "cut of the heads of both of his children with his own sword and sprinkle [John] with thier blood" (34). Who does that, honestly thats insane?

Comparison of Robbie and Malvoilio

In Part I we learn that Robbie played the role of Malvolio in a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. This is yet another example of McEwan's use of intertextuality. So, why Malvolio? Is Robbie like Malvolio in some way? If so, how? Focus specifically on the Robbie in Part II.

Malvolio, a character in Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, is Countess Olivia's sour steward. He is the sullen, self-obsessed, and melancholic. Malvolio, whose name means "evil-wishing" in Latin, is not just withdrawn from revelry, he is also its enemy. s. Malvolio is abused and ridiculed by the end of the play, but he is also left out of the reconciliations that mark the last scene.
Robbie is similar to Malvolio because he is also the employee of a household and has people he must listen to, and rules he must abide by in order to make his living. In a sense, other people are in charge of and control most aspects of both Malvolio’s and Robbie’s lives. Furthermore, Robbie is seen as a villain because he was accused of rape. Briony’s entire family, and those who think that Robbie raped Lola, see him as the bad guy, or enemy.
By referencing Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and having Robbie play the role of Malvolio, McEwan is not only using intertextuality, but he is also saying that there are similarities between the two characters. Robbie goes so far as to quote Malvolio's lines from Twelfth Nigh, saying ­ "'Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes'" (123). This foreshadowing quotation warns the reader that Robbie, like Malvolio, will prove to be similarly deluded. Because of Briony’s claims Robbie will never be able to reach his goals, until his name is cleared, which is highly unlikely. Robbie, and Malvolio will never reach their true dreams and hopes, its just not in the cards for them.

Revision of Exploratory Essay

In the second draft of my exploratory essay I started my revision process by asking a genuine question and attempting to awnser it. I did this to try and focus my paper more, as well as give the paper more of a personal voice. I do not know if I accomplished adding my personal voice into this essay as well as I would have liked. Sometimes I feel that this paper is half academic, half me just talking my ideas out. I am confused if this is supposed to be the way an explorative essay looks, because the point of it seems to be for exploring your ideas or am I just wrong? Further improvment I made in this paper includes developing my thoughts from my previous draft and putting more stucture into the paper. I moved alot of stuff around in my paper to make it flow better. My first draft was literally one long paragraph, this new draft is split into an introduction type paragraph, my question paragraph, my awnser paragraph, and my concluding idea. I feel that this makes the paper less random, and easier for the reader to get through. I also changed alot of my wording in this draft becuase in my previous draft it was often very vauge and ambigous. I tried to give more examples from the text to back up the points I was trying to make. While I feel that this new draft is an improvment, I feel that I would benifit from rewriting this draf again, and connfrencing before I hand it in. One of the problems I expirenced when rewriting this paper is that we read The Sound and the Fury so long ago and talked certain aspects of it to death, I had trouble trying to find qoutes to back up my ideas. Then after talking to a lot of different kids in the class, I figured out that they were not using qoutes so I assumed I did not have to. I an unsure about wether or not qoutes would add to my paper and help make it stronger. I feel that I myself am a better narrative and analitical writer than exploratory writer, partly because I have not had very much expirence with exploratory writing and partly because I have trouble thinking that way. I usually come up with an idea or main point and then elaborate not the otherway around. I would define myself as a very "in the box" thinker. While I enjoy Enligh and Social Studies very much, I always find myself exceling in Math and Science classes where the material is very concrete and definate. I consider quality work to be something I am proud of. While this might be cliche, I know that if I am excited or dont dread handing in a paper, it is good. If I am not feeling so hot about handing in a paper, or wish I had an extra day to work on it, it probably isnt that good. Suprisingly some of the pieces I am proudest of writing took me the least amount of time to complete. At the end of writing this second draft I think I have learned to go with the flow. I decided to just write down everything I was thinking or feeling and then go through and organize it later. I initially wrote this paper with out any paragraphs, just my thought process. Then I went through and reorganized it, making different paragraphs and putting similar ideas together. Honestly, I have no clue if this new draft is what you were looking for, but I did try hard to write it and plan on conferencing with you before my next draft.

Briony's limitations and how she views herslef

What are Briony's limitations?
Briony is limited in the fact that she believes that everyone will interperate her writings the way she wants them to be interpreted. For example she thinks her brother will understand after watching her play the Trials of Arabella that it is time for him to settle down and get married. She also lets herself see what she wants to believe. For example she has this preconceived notion that Robbie is evil and her sister is good. Therefore when she sees them having sex she assumes Robbie is attacking her sister, and later says that Robbie is a rapist. She lets her mind dictate what she sees rather than her eyes. Briony is also a very selfish character who only considers her own needs. While she might seem like a helpful selfless person because of her desire to help, her desire to help is driven by her need to feel wanted and loved, not the pure need of helping others.

-what defines Briony
Writing defines Briony. A majority of this book talks about her love and passion for writing, as well as how she loves the clearness and certainty or her writings. In my opinion what Briony fails to realize is there is not certainty in her writing because it often makes no sense. Examples include the “ambiguous sunlight” How s sunlight ambiguous? Briony’s actions as always trying to be helpful also define her. This is exhibited through her desire to save her sister, to becoming a nurse, to right her wrong of convicted Robbie of rape. However she is also an extremely narrow minded and impulsive character, which she herself fails to acknowledge. She sees things not for what they are or could be, but rather what she wants to see them as.

-how Briony defines and uses her imagination
Briony definantly considers herself to be an imaginative person. She is constantly writing stories and therefore assumes she has this grand imagination. In reality I find Briony’s character to be close minded, since her imagination sees only what she tells it to see. She defines things in her head, such as who is a good person and who is not. Her imagination does not stray from this course, instead it follows it very closely. I would consider somebody and imaginative person if they imagined and then came to a conclusion, not had a conclusion and them imagined.

Evalutation of Characters from "Reunion" and "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"

Examination of characters:

Reunion –

Charlie – the son in this story seems to really want to love his father. At the beginning of this story he expresses how proud and happy to be with his father he is, however by the end of the story he comes to the realization that he does not like the personality and arrogance of his father. Charlie appears to be shy and soft spoken. He never tells his dad what is bothering him and never shows any signs of embarrassment for the way his father is treating the waitresses and waiters. However Charlie still demonstrates signs of unrequited love for his father. At the end of the story Charlie refers to his father as “daddy” three times in a row. This proves that Charlie acknowledges that his father is his father and it is somewhat of an affectionate term. Charlie is perhaps continually saying “daddy” in order to build in his mind a relationship, full of affection with his father, which he does not have. However ultimately he does not see his father every again, implying that actions speak louder than words and he does not like or value his fathers character.

Father – Charlie’s father is boisterous, arrogant, aggressive, pompous, irritating and self righteous. These qualities are expressed in his interactions with the waiter and the newsstand clerk. He addresses them very rudely. He seems to want to impress his son very much, ordering his underage son beer, and continually stating that he wishes he could have brought Charlie to his club….if only they had more time. His father also seems very unaware of his actions and how they are affecting Charlie. Charlie is obviously remaining quite quiet, and very uncomfortable with his father’s behavior, however his father takes no notice of this. Charlie’s father is good looking, however he does not have a pleasant personality. Furthermore he is often yelling at waiters in a different language, perhaps representing that Charlie does not want to hear of understand the things his father is saying because of how crude they are.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere:

Dina – Dina is a black girl who comes from an area of poverty in Baltimore. She is a loner and very quick to judge other people. She has these enormous feelings of animosity against white people, black people, happy people, people who want to help her… basically everybody and anybody. People are always reaching out to her, and she is always turning them away. Her mother died when she was younger and she did have a rough childhood where money way tight, and these experiences have affected her very much. She is confused about her sexuality and keeps turning her back on her attempts towards happiness. She is smart, witty, and unafraid to stand up for herself and always prepared with a quick comeback to someone’s remark. However she does care a lot about what people think about her. She also comes across as insensitive and nonchalant about important issues, such as Heidi’s mom’s death. In my opinion this is why she is afraid to go forth in her relationship with Heidi. Dina is an intellectual thinker, and as her physiatrist describes her, a pretender. She sees her life as she wants to see it, and when things don’t go as planned she has no problems pretending nothing is wrong. She is afraid or accomplishment and failure and therefore never finishes anything she starts including her relationship with Heidi and her education at college. She is a thinker not a doer. She can sit in a room all day thinking of actions which she would like to do, but has trouble actually attaining and accomplishing her goals.

Heidi – Heidi is a girl from Canada who goes to Yale with Dina. She seems more relatable and real than Dina. For starters she experiences actual emotions and is not afraid to let others into her life. She is a loner but not by choice, people judge her based on her dikey and slightly over weight appearance. She is a nurturer, as demonstrated with her constant and open affection with Dina. Heidi will place her arm around Dina, or give her a hug when she is sad. Furthermore when Dina runs away from Heidi, Heidi stays by her side. This is evident when the girls are talking about their future professions and what they will be. Dina says she wants a library in a deserted town, and Heidi says she wants a phyciatrist clinic in that ghost town so she can help and be with Dina. Heidi is also more sensitive to other people’s problems. She is more open and accepting of herself, and this is shown when she admits that she a lesbian and proud on coming out day. Heidi is slightly self conscious and gives into peer pressure a little more easily than Dina. Heidi did not want to undress because she felt she was fat, and she started smoking cigarettes in an attempt to stifle her appetite so she would lose weight.

Quentin vs. Benjy: relationships with time

Quentin’s relationship to time is very contradicting to Benjy’s view of time, however they both have unnatural relationships with time that most people do not have. Quentin is obsessed with time and its progression, this becomes evident through Quentin’s constant need to look at his watch, to keep track of time, to count the seconds of his life that passed him by. In a way this fear of time and the change that comes with time keeps Quentin from fully living his life, and keeps him in fear. Furthermore everything is very chronological to Quentin while Benjy seems to just connect moments of his life together, time is irrelevant but his emotions are what drive him. The tension between Quentin and time is his unhealthy relationship with progression. Quentin hates change and progression because as time goes on his life becomes more out of control. Caddy, his beloved sister travels down the wrong path, his family’s name looses its good affiliations, and his relationships with those around him become more and more damaged. Quentin is obsessed with order and tradition and as his life goes on he looses control over these things which are clearly not important to anyone else in the Compson family. His disapproval of change is also demonstrated in the fact that Quentin often has many ideas but in unable to ever put them into action and cause any real impact. His ideas are half thought out and perhaps he does not complete his ideas because the idea that he himself could cause change also scares him. All of this tension with time finally leads Quentin to suicide by drowning himself. He does this because he can not deal with Caddy’s promiscuity which he finds appalling, and the decline of the Compson family. Quentin looks up to his dad through out the entire book until learning that his role model dad is a sham and does not believe in any of the things he taught Quentin to believe in. Because Quentin feels so helpless, and like everyone in his life has hurt and done him wrong he feels that life is no longer worth fixing or living. From Benjy and Quentin we are given a lot of insight to the true Compton family. We learn that even though Caddy is making wrong decisions her brothers love her more then anyone eles, leading me to believe she is a very compassionate and loving person. We learn of how awful the Compson parents are, and of how the dad’s morals have slipped with his age. Prior to this generation the Compson family had been well respected, wealthy, and liked in the South, and both Quentin and Benjy are very aware of the decline which their family is experiencing. Furthermore, Quentin and Benjy’s narratives show how much of a mother figure Disley has been to their family.
After reading Time and Timepieces: A Note on Quentin's Section I thought that perhaphs Quentin actually wished to escape his obsession of time. This is evident through him destroying the watch, but when I read it I thought it was just him reacting out of desperation to his life and wanting to stop time, not escape his obsession from it. Also i really liked this sentence; "Quentin's time is not his: it is an external force which compresses and compels him". I think that his idea is what I was trying to write about before, but these words make my thoughts anlot clearer in my own head. I also thought it was intresting when this essay called time Quentin's enemy. I wonder if Quentin himself thought this, or this is just what someone looking in on Quentin's life would say?

thoughts on class discussion about family

One thing we discussed today was how raising a family is full of self sacrifice. To be perfectly honest I don't like children and I don't know if I want to have children, but when I consider my future it always includes me as the mother of a nulclear family. Family has always been the center of my life, I have a great one which I love very much. I cant imagine my life alone, and perhaps the reason I see my future as having children in it is becuase I fear being alone. I have watched the self sacrifice my mom has made to raise her family, and I am not sure I am willing to give that much of myself up. I want to be able to pack up and leave, or just go to dinner and not have to find a babysitter. I see all of my friends having children in thier future, and I would'nt want to be the only single one of my friends. I am not that selfish of a person, I am always there if someone needs me, but I value my alone time, something that would be virtually impossible if I was a mother. I am a real person, with needs, goal and desires, something that i never though of my mother having until recently. I am amazed at how i treated her, I basically thought she was my slave. Now when she cant do something for me because she is out with her friends I am more understanding. With age I know my priorities will change, and maybe having a family is something I will truley desire, but for now my focus is myself and my maternal instincts are lacking.