Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

So I just want to say sorry that I'm blogging so late, but I'm glad to see that I'm not the last one. I finished the book right before I had to go to work for 6 hours and am now just getting to it. Anyways here it goes. Sir Gawain is a superhuman, epic-type hero because of some of his characteristcs. His superhumanness (I don't think thats a word) isn't as dominat as Beowulf's was. He's not like screaming that DON'T WORRY I CAN SAVE THE DAY! Sir Gawain shows that he is heroic by being brave courage by stepping up and taking the place instead of King Arthur since he feels he is of less worth than others. Sir Gawain is flawed by lying. He lies about the girdle. He was selfish, flaw, and wanted the girlde to save him. I don't think that the Green Knight is evil, but he is definately not totally good. He is more deceitful. This kind of shows that there is a little good and evil in everyone. I'm not quiet sure about the use of green, but I think it has something to do with starting over. It kind of plays into the New Year's Day. Both symbolize a new start, like in the spring when everything starts to turn green again and New Year's resolutions made for each year to start something new for the year.

Jack Kerouac's Scroll

Today Montana and I ventured out to the IMA while we were "job shadowing" my mom. And I am proud to say that we did not get lost or have to use the GPS. However, Montana could use some work on her map reading skills, nevertheless we got there.

Anyway, this scroll at the IMA is set in this display case that is about 30 feet long probably, but this isn't even with the whole scroll rolled out. I believe that his work, On the Road, had around 6,000 words and was written in about 21 days. (I think thats write. I may have just made that up, so don't quote me on that.) His logic behind writing on the scroll was that he didn't want his work to have any breaks in it, paragraph, chapter or page breaks. This is kind of smart but kind of just crazy. If you think about it if everything was written straight through like that your mind would not stop after every paragraph or chapter and think a complete new idea was about to come along in the writing. Your mind would just continue reading and never create breaks in the work. This could almost give you a different meaning of the work. He just went against the normal setup for writing, which was probably why he became so famous in literature.

So apparently Montana took a video of me, not a picture, so thats why I have a video not a picture! So Montana is right in the video when she says, " I don't think it took.".And we took it sideways, obviously, & I can't turn it! WOW! And we're in AP! We're special for sure!

ur AP een' shirts

In case anyone didn't hear I am going to try and run up and figure out the whole shirt thing tomorrow after school, so if you have any ideas that would be fantastic because if not I am just going to run in and pick it. So if you have a good idea please share! O and if anyone has a good idea for colors, that would be great too. THANKS!!

Beowulf

So since no one has really started blogging on Beowulf, I guess I will blog now since there is no one else to comment on. So I can't say that I enjoyed Beowulf, the first or second time, but I think I might have understood it better this time around, which is a good thing I guess. I'm not sure that I got some of the little stuff throughout the book, but I am pretty sure I got the overall idea, I hope. So here goes nothing. Lineage played a major role in the Anglo-Saxon culture. People were mainly known by who their father was. If your father was a heroic figure in society, then it was almost expected of you to also be a heroic figure. For Grendel, lineage did not help him. Since his lineage went back to Cain, he was thought to be unloyal and could not be trusted. The mead halls in Beowulf represent a place for gathering, a place for stories to be told. This plays into how Beowulf was passed down through oral tradition. It shows how the mead halls was a central key on how Beowulf is still able to be told/read today. I think that the Christians values were dominant because there were more of them expressed. The monk writing these letter for letter played a role in this because they had a more Christian based thinking. Well i guess thats all I got folks. Hope it makes some sense and not just random thoughts jumbled into one blog. See y'all tomorrow!

Romeo & Juliet

I am proud to say that I finished my last book on my summer reading list today. I can't say that I loved it as much as everyone else seems to have, but I will say that I enjoyed it. I think that knowing the basic plot didn't make it as interesting to me, but o well. I did enjoy the humor and play on words, that made the book more interesting. I have no clue what I will write my paper on so any suggestions would be appreciated, but overall I liked Romeo & Juliet but I don't think I loved it as much as some of you might have.

the CATCHER in the RYE

By far, this is my favorite book I have read this summer. If you haven't read it I would highly suggest you reading it. It reads really fast and keeps you interested. It is about this boy, Holden, who has just been kicked out of one of the many prep schools that he has attended. He doesn't want to go home before his parents find out he has been kicked out yet again, so he decides he is going to hang out around New York until then. He is battling this inner thought if he should go home. One random question that he continues to ask taxi drivers and other people he meets is "Where do the ducks go when the pond is frozen in Central Park?", which is kind of like where can you go if you can't go home? This is kind of what I am going to write my paper on. Anyways I really liked the book, and I am very proud to say that I have one more book, Romeo & Juliet!

Two Down, Two To Go

I just finished The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I thought it was a pretty good book. It read really fast which is always a plus. Its about this group of friends who are really never happy wherever they are. The book starts out in France, which was confusing because my French skills aren't so hot, so I didn't understand the french sayings. They eventually travel to Spain, and even though my Spanish skills aren't so hot either I was able to understand most of that. It was you basic year one Spanish. But anyways, they travel to Spain where they go to see the running of the bulls and many bull fights. The one woman in the group claims to have fallen in love with one of the bull fighters, but she seems to fall in love with many people. By the end of the book they all end up going there separate ways after the festival. I really didn't like the ending but o well. There is a lot of drinking in this book which leads me to think that Hemingway was an alcoholic. I just googled it and found that he was a very heavy drinking and committed suicide and was said to have purchased the weapon to use at Abercrombie & Fitch, just a little FYI for everyone. But I liked the book and I think in my paper I will compare France and Spain and like what they represented to the characters, unless anyone else has read it and has a better idea.

Emma by Jane Austen

Well this was my first book I started of my summer reading list, and I finished it about a week ago. Even though Emma swears she herself will never marry, she seems to have a strong interest in trying to find her close friends around her a perfect match. She seems to enjoy taking on the role of match maker even though she is really not good at it Her first person she takes upon herself to find a match for is her friend Harriet. Emma feels as though Harriet should marry someone of high social status, which comes very apparent when a local farmer proposes to Harriet. Emma then persuades Harriet to not accept the proposal. Emma continues to try to play match maker and it always seems to go wrong. Towards the end she starts to realize that she really isn't so good at the whole match making thing but everyone ends up happy in the end. I really don't have any ideas about what I am going to write my paper about, so any ideas would be great! I thought about discussing the role that social status played in the whole supposed "perfect" match. But overall I thought it was a good book. It starts out slow but gets faster when people start getting matched up I guess is what you could call it.

My Summer So Far

So my summer so far has been pretty crappy. My eclipse has some broken part, i don't know really whats wrong with it but all i know is that it will not get me from point A to point B, so me and my parents went out and got me a new car. I got a grand prix and i liked it a lot..... at least for the first couple of days, until i apparently got bad gas somewhere between brownsburg and Avon right after getting the car and it screwed my car up. So this car is also no longer allowing me to go anywhere either. so pretty much right now I HATE CARS!!! i still have to sell my eclipse so if u know anyone who would like an eclipse and fix it up call me! And to my fantastic day i had to wake up at the crack of dawn and go take the SAT which could possibly be the most boring thing i have ever done in my life. I hope and pray that i got a good enough score so i do not have to go through that torcher again, but somehow i feel i will be sitting in a desk taking that test again and will probably end up blogging about it also. So i played in my first softball game in almost 3 years.... we lost 15-0. we had one really bad inning (btw i was sitting that bad inning) I ended up getting to pitch 3 innings and i must say i didn't end up doing half bad for not pitching in about 3 years. So i have started my first book Emma by Jane Austin. It is pretty good so far, which is about the first 5 chapters (i still have a long way to go). So i have decided that Emma probably should stay out of other people's business because if people want to be together they will probably end up together. I feel like she is kinda just getting in the way and making things complicated and adding drama. but who doesn't like drama? DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA!! Right now she seems to be very confident in herself, almost to confident in everything she does. Who knows maybe this will be one of the books where the character changes dramatically or maybe she will just keep getting into other people's lives and forcing relationships and ruin these poor people's lives???? or maybe not?! BTW this just in my car is going to be taken to a pontiac dealership to make sure this new car is going to be fixed and running right, which is very good news so i can maybe actually get out of this house and do something other go to practices and games or work at DQ. The only possibly good thing that happened today was running into P-dise at the Starbucks in Barnes & Noble in Avon. Well i hope everyone is having a better summer than i am and enjoys the rest of it!