Semester #2 Blog #13

Quote: "Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting."

Source: Chapter 1, Pg.8, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Original context: At this point in the book, we notice how the author is mostly reflecting back on everything and what happened in the process of trying to figure out what to write for this book. He talks about what he did after the war, and write before he says this quote, he is telling the reader that he went to the University of Chicago and was a student in the Department of Anthropology. He was talking about the things they had taught him, which were that there is no difference between anybody, and that there is nobody that "was ridiculous or bad or disgusting." (The quote above.) He then says that before his father died he told him that he never wrote a story with a villain in it and the author tells him that that is what he learned in college after war. Letting us know that he believed what it says in the quote above and that is why he doesn't have any villains in his story, because he believes nobody is "bad."

I chose this quote because it stood out to me a lot while I was reading this book. In the first few pages we know it is going to be a book about war, specifically WWII and Dresden, and in wars there always has to be a "bad" side or person but in this quote he is saying that nobody is bad. Usually when you hear the word "World War 2" you automatically think about Hitler and the many, many Jews that were killed but what about the other bad people, what about the other thousands of soldiers that were killing each other and killing civilians. I think what he is trying to make people get out of this quote is that there is not one person that is "bad", we are all bad because we are all not perfect and no matter what, we have all done something wrong at some point in our lives. That is why before this quote he says that something else that he learned was that there was no difference between nobody.

Artistic Vision/ Ideas/ Plans: I was thinking of probably either doing a stencil or some sort of small poster. I was thinking of having probably a cartoonish picture of Hitler in the middle and about 2 or 3 soldiers on the sides of him and at the bottom and sort of on the top of it have the quote. Everything will be in black and white and probably some gray. The reason I will have Hitler and some soldiers will be to show how everyone thinks about Hitler when you talk about WWII and the "bad" people. But this quote is saying that there is nobody that is "bad" so it will connect with the overall quote.

Semester #2 Blog #12

As you write your article, what is your engine?

I feel like there are multiple engines in my article. The main engines are: how I began to think of becoming a veterinarian. How internship helped me further think about the possibility of being a veterinarian. What other careers paths I've thought about.

What are the key questions that you are answering for your readers?

-What is the good side of becoming a veterinarian?

-What is the not so great side of being a veterinarian?

-What was internship like? What did it teach me? What did I take from it?

-How did I begin to think about being a vet?

-What are other careers I've considered?

What are the key questions that you are answering for yourself as you write?

-Do I want to be a veterinarian?

-What are the good things about being a veterinarian? The bad things?

-How much do I love animals?

-Do I know what to be when I grow up? Do I have a clue?

If this were a more "standardized" writing assignment, what would the prompt be?

The prompt would most likely be: Think back to internship and write a one to two page article where you express the ideas you have brought back from internship. Write about any great experiences, learning experiences, life-long lessons, or anything else that you got out of internship.

Honors Writing #8

In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie goes through many unfortunate events that transform her to the woman she know is. She is a black woman that experienced racism as well as being mistreated by the men surrounding her. The major theme I was able to see throughout the book was that life is not easy, you have to keep fighting for your own happiness and stand up for yourself for what you want. This theme was shown throughout the book with many different literary devices like characterization, flashback, and conflict.

In the story, we can see characterization as we get to know Janie. Janie was raised by her grandmother, who was born into slavery. She grew up without a mom or dad. Janie faced racism for being a black girl and later on was forced by her grandmother to marry a man much older than her, Logan. But she was miserable because she did not love him. "She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman." She didn’t want to keep this miserable life with Logan, so she ran away with Joe Starks looking for happiness. He promised her that he would treat her like a lady and she would have a wonderful life. But that marriage didn't work either, once again she was not happy. Before Joe died she told him, "Listen, Jody, you ain't de Jody ah run off down de road wid. You'se whut's left after he died. Ah run off tuh keep uh house wid you in uh wonderful way. But you wasn't satisfied wid me de way Ah was. Naw! Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in mine." She had spent almost half of her life with him but she had been miserable. Even though this happened to her she didn't give up, she kept her head high, confident. She kept fighting to find her happiness and true love and that is when Tea Cake came along. Tea Cake taught her how to love and he taught her so many other things that would later help her. He taught her how to shoot, how to play certain games that she wasn’t allowed to before just because she was a woman. He taught her how to stand up for herself because he thought that being a woman and being black shouldn’t stop Janie from doing certain things. Being with Tea Cake showed her what real happiness was like so she fought to keep that happiness, and she fought until the last minute to keep Tea Cake alive, after the mad dog bite him during the hurricane. She tried to keep him alive but it was too late and she had to shoot him in order to save her life but even after he died, she still felt him. “Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace.” Janie shows us through her life experince that you never have to stop fighting for your own happiness, you have to look for it and once you find it fight and stand up for it and for yourself.

In this book we can also see flashback, being that the whole story is basically a flashback. The story starts off when Janie is coming back to Eatonville, the town where she lived with Joe, after Tea Cake died and then Pheoby goes over to her house so she tells her not just want happened to Tea Cake but her entire life story since she was a little girl. Through out the most part of the book, we get to know what Janie has been through throughout her life, because she is telling Pheoby her life experience. Then the book ends when Janie wraps up her recounting to Pheoby. Pheoby is very impressed about everything Janie has been through. That night, Janie back in her room feels at one with Tea Cake and at peace with herself. I think the reason for the book to be written as a flashback is so that we could be better interested to know what happened in Janie's life and why she came back. It was easy for the women and the people at the beginning to judge her and gossip about her because they thought she had a wonderful life since she had a lot of money and sort of envy her but they didn't know all the things she had been through. In the second page it says, “Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times...They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive.” They didn't know what happened to Tea Cake or what kind of relationship he had with Janie. Janie had to stand up for herself and not let them get into her. She just walked past and ignored them because she knew they were lying and as long as she knew what had happened and felt good about herself then everything was okay.

We can see a lot of conflict between Janie and the people around her. Since the beginning of the book we see how there is conflict between Janie and the women at Eatonville. They don't like her because she ran away with someone she loved, Tea Cake. They didn't like her because they didn't like the idea that she was probably happy, and that she had more money than they did. That is why Janie said, "To start off wid, people like dem wastes up too much time puttin' they mouf on things they don't know nothin' about. Now they got to look into me loving Tea Cake and see whether it was done right or not!" Later on in the book, as we start learning more about Janie and get to know everything she has been through, we start to see the many obstacles she faced in her life. In pg.108 the author says, "She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things." Then after telling her entire life story she tells Pheoby that she has been to the horizon and back and now she is happy to be back because Tea Cake is still with her. In pg.230 Janie tells Pheoby, "Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves." This shows how Janie was very independent and she thinks we should each find out how to live for ourselves and live our own lifes. In pg.174 the author says, "Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom." All the suffering and trouble that Janie had to go through her life only made her stronger. It made her more aware of the world she lived in.

From this book we get the theme that life is not easy and you have to fight for your own happiness and for what you really want and always stand up for yourself. No matter all the obstacles Janie faced, she still kept fighting for her own happiness, and she always stood up for herself and for what she wanted. She was a great woman and teaches all the women who read this book that being a woman shouldn't stop us from doing anything. We are strong, independent and we are able to stand up for ouselves and we should never stop looking for our own happiness.

Semester #2 Blog #11

Quote: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...."

Source: Chapter 9, Pg. 179, The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Original Context: In the lines before the quote above Nick says, "I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy..."

At this point in the book, Gatsby had already died and Nick had decided to move back to the Midwest, because he was sick of the East and its empty values. Then one day when he was in New York City he encounters Tom. He told Nick that he had been the one that told Wilson that Gatsby had been the one that ran over Myrtle and he was the one that owned the car and told him where he could find Gatsby. Tom didn't care that Gatsby had died, he felt like he deserved it and he didn't even feel guilty that is why after Tom left, Nick says the quote above. He says that Tom and Daisy are careless and uncaring, they destroy things and do whatever they want because they have a lot of money and it works as a shield that protects them against anything and anyone. They do what they please and let other people pay the consequences while they live their empty lives hiding behind masks of something they are not.

Artistic Vision/ Ideas/ Plans: I was thinking of having each couple of words in different fonts and sizes and colors and kind of stacking them over each other, but in a way that the viewer is able to see and understand what it says. I think the quote might be a little too long so I might just pick the most important words in the quote, and I would most likely do this in photoshop. Or maybe having a visual representation in the background like money or something like that, that represents the quote and the book and the setting in the 1920s.