Great Expectations: The First Stage

The quote refers to Pip how his actions forever got him into his situation. Just having contact with Miss Havisham altered his life forever, for she is the one who introduced Pip to Estella. She herself is the sole purpose of why he wants to change. He wants to be with her but she was trained to ruin him. He thinks if he changes, she will love him. All he wants to be is the upper class, which he is the exact opposite. And the only way he would reach that goal is to leave his past life behind him.

Today, I am who I am only because of one important day. My "chain" day started the first day of 3rd grade. Previous years before that, I went to a private school where everyone knew everyone, and all together, the school had about 50 kids. But when I came to a public school with over 500 kids, I felt overwhelmed. Everything was a change. A cafeteria, big assembly's and overfilled classrooms. That day and that year forever changed me to get used to real life. Although I was very young, I learned so much about what it was like to have changes in my Life.

The Importance of Being Earnest

My group topic is on dishonesty. Since I found out that my two partners had chosen to explain the low and high levels of lying, I decided the only thing to do was explain the importance being dishonest within the story, title, and how it develops the characters. Lies would consist of sarcasm and plain old lies. My paragraph should come first of the three because it will give ideas of the theme, which will be explained by the next two points.

Just to verify, the three points that will be in my paragraph will be how dishonest affects or is explained in the:
1.) Title
2.)Story
3.)Characters

Commentary will consist of my point of view of the story and the characters reactions. I explained what the lies mean and how they affect what is within the play.

Victorian Research

From the Victorian research, I gathered enough information to relate it to the play. One key subject I found in the research as well in the play is on the subject of marriage. Women got married young and men married a little under their middle age. Also men worked for their family and social status, while the wives did house work and looked good for their husbands. I found that in The Importance of Being Earnest, these examples are clearly shown to show the average people of the Victorian society.

In the play, Cecily is a 18 year old girl that is expecting to get married, which was not uncommon. Miss Prism tries to teach Cecily to be smart and proper, by making her study German. During the Victorian era, if a woman was smart or intelligent, she would have a better chance of being with a man of higher status. Algernon says that marriage is more business than pleasure which was mostly true after a man and woman of the Victorian age are married, which is another example of the facts of the the Victorian age and of the play.

New Year's Resolution

This year is a brand new beginning. This year I want to make sure to get all A's. I am doing good in my classes but in order to keep it up I really need to be consistent with everything. I just really need to stop procrastinating because that is my biggest problem. It seems like I do all of my homework after nine and I finish it all but not until well into the night.

Other things that I can do to get good grades is to finish as much work as possible in class, and study for tests well before test day. I really want to do good in school and make my parents proud but I must work a whole lot harder in order to achieve all of my goals. I really need to focus for the rest of the year so hopefully I will develop an actual schedule for the next three years.

Power Corrupts

Poetry Out Loud.

I watched "Unknown Girl In The Maternity Ward" by Anne Sexton, and as performed by Amanda Fernandez. Her performance was way beyond of what I could think a girl her age could ever accomplish. The way she conveyed her understanding upstage was as if she had that same experience. I thought her understanding was great but she did go a little over the top on dramatization. She could have mellowed her emotions a little more to make everything seem more natural. She looked as if she had been on the stage her whole life and did a great job of making the poem's meaning shine through.

I saw that the poem was about a mother who was to young to support her child, and that she must put it up for adoption. All she wants is the best for her baby and she wants to leave the bad emotions of the father behind her. The mother is extremely sad about her unfortunate situation, but knows that giving the baby away will be the best for everyone.

Mockingbird Motif

In the beginning of the year, I barely knew any literary terms at all, including a motif. But as we went over terms, I found out what a motif was and when we finished To Kill a Mockingbird, I then had a complete understanding for a motif and how to find it by analyzing a story. I now know that a motif is a reoccurring symbol in a book.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the motif is a mockingbird and how it is a sin to kill one. It is a sin to kill a mockingbird because a mockingbird only makes beautiful music and never causes trouble. Boo Radley is one mockingbird because he is seen as being evil by the town, and that it would be like killing him if he was forced to come out because the city found out he killed Bob Ewell.Tom Robinson is the other mockingbird because he was found guilty for raping Mayella even though he was crippled and everyone knew he had not done anything wrong, which shows the other motif: justice vs. injustice which is made from prejudice between white and blacks.