My Mind in a Map

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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

·         Tom Joad recently released from jail for manslaughter, travels home in Oklahoma.

·         Oklahoma affected by dustbowl

·         Meets Jim Casey- former preacher, doesn’t see all in life as holy- who goes with him to his home

·         Sees his home deserted, learns that everyone has headed to California because there is nothing really left in Oklahoma

·         Finds his family, packing to head to California, where they hear there is work and arable land

·         Grampa Joad dies during the journey to California

·         Travel in rickety used truck

·         When they’re almost there, they hear that there may not be as many jobs as they’ve heard, and that there arnt enough jobs for the amount of people migrating

·         Noah and Connie abandon the family, fearing that they’ve gone for nothing

·         Locals are hostile towards the immigrants from Oklahoma, call them Okies.

·         Jim Casey arrested for attacking police officer

·         The camps they arrive to work in a way to keep the immigrants dependent on the owners, and very poor so they have no option of leaving

·         The Joads live in a government camp for a while, but leave after they think the police are going to shut it down.

·         Find jobs as fruit-pickers, run into Jim Casey who has been released from prison. He has been rallying workers, therefore has the police after him.

·         They later have him killed in front of Tom, who kills one of the police officers, and then has to go into hiding

·         The family has to move again cause of Tom, until one day Ruthie tells their neighbors that her brother is nearby and is a fugitive

·         Tom is warned and leaves to assemble the workers

·         The season for picking is over, and fear ensues that there will be no work

·         Rose of Sharon who was pregnant over their journey, gives birth during the flood to a stillborn child

·         The family finds shelter in a barn where a child and his dying father are taking refuge

·         Realizing she can help him, Rose of Sharon feeds the man, as she is now producing milk because her body was prepared for the baby which passed away.

Tom Joad- Jailed for manslaughter, released at beginning of novel. Strong thoughtful, but because of prison has a mentality of only caring of the now. Changes into someone who cares about making a better future. Creates unions for the field workers. Learns from Casey, who teaches him of brotherhood and how a single person cannot have a very profound effect on the world. Begins to care about the well-being of others more than himself and his family.

Ma Joad- Loving mother figure, as Pa becomes less of the head, she assumes his position.

Pa Joad- The trials faces by the family make it hard for him to continue being the head of it. Really loses this position when after he cannot get a job, escapes into his mind. Character doesn’t grow, but shrinks over the novel.

Jim Casey- Former preacher, acts as mentor to Tom. Thinks of holiness of life, not of the afterlife. Organizes the migrant workers, which leads to his death, but Tom Joad takes over where he left off.

Rose of Sharon- Begins the novel as a high spirited rambunctious girl, whose pregnancy changes her into a women. Helps others live, even after just losing her own child.

Discussion Notes

• Internet brings people closer together who have the same questions
• Communication, lets more people connect from various places which allows questions to be answered by more people more quickly
• Open-mindedness is good
• Freedom creates more creative thinking, structure can hinder it
• Do what you love, but also love what you do?
• People don't always want or know what to do with freedom if they've never really been exposed to it.

These concepts can help later because I know know to be open minded and get answers from the interwebs. I will be more creative afterwards because of the new found freedom, but without the rewards and structure it may be more harder to get the initiative to learn some things. But I'll be able to look up things that interest me and love it, because it's what I'm doing.

They can maybe help with the AP test because I can get answers to questions from some other resources. But really these ideas will help more in the future, because these ideas seem more about how to use freedom and learn on your own, not learn the specific criteria set in front of you as with the AP test.

I can participate more in conversations. I don't enjoy doing that, it's better to watch everyone else try and come up with answers. There's something to be said for someone who can sit and listen, and that why I feel obliged to do it. To me it's easier to learn just listening, as against the idea of our conversation that is. I can involve myself more into the learning network so that my listening will be more effective, that is one way I can improve the information exchange.

Poetry Analysis Remix

“Sonnet 1” Edmund Spenser

1.       Dramatic Situation- Poet writing about his love for a woman. It’s sad, but happy in a sense that it’s meant for the women to read the poem.

2.       Structure of Poem- Sonnet, iambic pentameter

3.       Theme-Poet wants to be seen as if he sees his love

4.       Grammer/meaning- Proper English, very loving

5.       Important images/figures of speech- “Angles blessed look”

6.       Important Words in Poem- “Leaves, Lines, and Rhymes”,”helicon” (sacred site due to greek gods)

7.       Tone- Sad from poets perspective, happy from the readers, His lover/lady

8.       Literary devices- imagery, metaphor

9.       Prosody- The flow of the poem makes it seem as if the poet were speaking from his heart, which in fact he is. The last two lines however sum up the whole poem.

“The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” by Christopher Marlowe

1.       The shepherd wants to express his feelings to his love

2.       Pastoral Poem

3.       Love

4.       Very descriptive and emotional

5.       Sheep, nature, the pasture

6.       Shepherd

7.       The tone is very warm and loving

8.       Imagery, rhyme scheme, imagery

9.       The structure (Pastoral Poem) shows how the author wants to show how nature and living a simple life is the best. (Go sheep!)

“Sonnet 39” by Sir Philip Sidney

1.       He can’t sleep, but he really wants to, describes sleep and why it’s awesome.

2.       Sonnet, iambic pentameter

3.       Escapism- describes sleep as an escape from life that we all can use

4.       Descriptive of what it’s like when you sleep, where you sleep, who desires it

5.       Bedroom, darkness, escape

6.       Sleep

7.       Admiring, he admires sleep

8.       Imagery, metaphors

9.       Examples of why sleep is awesome and how it makes problems and the world around disappear. Theme of escapism (freedom) juxtaposed why the structure of the sonnet (constraint)

The Things they Carried Literature Anal.

1.       The Things they Carried by Tim O’Brien is the story of a Vietnam veteran writing a book about his time in the war. He recollects on past experiences and the experiences of his fellow squad mates in the various chapters with him narrating as though he were going to be writing his book. Along the way he tells of the burdens that soldiers carry with them, physical but also emotional and mental, like guilt, fear, and anxiety. This helps him convey his messages about the burdens put on by warfare and why people tell stories. He tries to show that we tell stories so that we can keep alive the people and things that we’ve lose in our mind and in the minds of others, as the soldiers hope to do with their comrades. And about how with storytelling, if you want to effectively get a truth across, you often must use lies. For instance, when recollecting memories, while the major events may be true, the events leading up may be all made up, not to embellish, but so that the important ending is better understood.

2.       The major theme of the novel is about burden that soldiers carry. They’re not just physical but emotional and psychological. Losing their friends and having the constant fear that they could be killed at any time has a toll of them, and they begin to be weighed down not just by their gear but by their minds as well. This causes soldiers in the story to shoot themselves to get out the war, joke about the deaths of others to try and seem unaffected, and even to commit suicide when they are home because they feel as though now they have no purpose and guilt weighing them down.

3.       The tone in the novel is sad. He seems to solemnly be writing the stories and that it’s difficult for him to narrate the memories of himself and his comrades.

“If you weren’t humping, you were waiting. I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and heat and endless paddies. Even deep in the bush, where you could die in any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist that caused stomach disorders. Well, you’d think, this isn’t so bad. And right when you’d hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you’d be squealing pig squeals. That kind of boredom.”

Here we see him talking sarcastically almost to try and describe the fear that they felt, with a somber back tone as well.

“And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war… it’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.”

Here O’Brien’s sadness come through when he writes about how people don’t care enough to even listen to their stories, and leave them to face them alone.

“I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war.”

Here O’Brien writes about his sadness and how he felt cowardly for not running away from the war. Which is ironic, because that is cowardly as well, but he didn’t stay to do his duty, he stayed because he didn’t want people to think badly of him.

4.       Some literary techniques important to this novel are irony, point of view, imagery, mood, and symbolism.

You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets and metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination of rounds, the while phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare.” It is very ironic for him to describe instruments of death like this as beautiful; though they bring death they also bring beauty. Confusion like this leads more to the confusion placed on the soldiers who are there.

Point of view is something very important to this story in every regard. The main character is ahead in time, writing his novel, though he flashes back to various events that happened to him and his comrades and tells of them from and omniscient third person. There are a also a few of his memories that he tells in first person. This allows the reader to see and feel the emotions of all the characters, but also in some intense situations get down and feel what O’Brien felt.

“He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole.” Here O’Brien creates a vivid image for the reader of the person he kills. It shows the burdens that the soldier feels, and how he remembers all the things that he has to do because of his job as a soldier.

“There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I’m left faceless responsibility and faceless grief.” Here the mood of grief is ever prevalent, and we see how O’Brien feels about seeing the dead, but being too afraid to look into their faces, and how that has haunted him more than anything else.

The Vietnamese boy that O’Brien killed two quotes ago is an important symbol. It symbolized how people feel about how people feel about the horrible things they see and do in war. O’Brien talks on and on about who he thought he was, how he thought he could be someone just like him and in blink of an eye he took his life. He is horrified by this, and cannot accept that he may have had part in taking the life of another, and though never tells how he feels, shows the grief and pain he feels.