Hester Prynne: the outcast

Hester Prynne in this chapter is shown to us to be outcast-ed by her community except for when someone of high class needs her home made cloth and designs. Because of Puritan Law, the lower class had to wear clothes and accessories that never stood out, but the upper class ignored this, and called for Hester's handiwork with her sewing needle. In this chapter we also find out that Hester stays in the colony in an effort to be cleansed of her sin(adultery), by being punished in the place where she committed her sin. In my opinion I didn't really like this chapter, I felt that the story got almost nowhere besides telling us where Hester was staying, the sex of her child, and that she wants to pay for her sin, not run from it, which could've taken about 5 pages not 30 plus.

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter so far in the book seems to paint a very dismal almost evil picture in my mind, the image of the older women condemning Hester, the prison with the bush just out of reach, but in comparison to the movie, the book paints a better picture. Somewhere/sometime you (mr cook) said that Hawthorne had a relative that served as a judge for the Salem Mass. Witch Trials, who you said Hawthorne was not very proud of, to a degree he would change hes name, and I think I can see a compensation of the relative in Mr. Dimmesdale. Mr. Dimmesdale is the young guy who tries to talk Hester into telling of her "partner"; Dimmesdale is said to be well respected in the town, and to me seems very respectable and has a proud appearance, maybe a contrast to the old relative. Rodger Prynne/Chillingworth to me seems psychotic, he talks in an intelligent and sane tone, but his syntax and plans seem totally insane. I feel like Rodger is going to in some way torture the father of Hester's baby, once he finds him. Hester also seems strange to me, in the book it says she holds her baby almost as a shield, not in a maternal way, but in the movie I don't really see that shown. So far the story is ok, getting better in my mind.

Essay work

So far I have gone back and read some of the Decleration and read some of Thoreos(sp) civil disobedence. By reading these works I am trying to find some examples of the american government developing into different forms and how its specifications were created. Right now I am not exactly sure how I want to approach this essay, but I am using these works to also show how strongly independant and nationalistic the new so called americans were. Im planning on talking about at most three people in my essay, so im sure I have alot of outside research to do.

Poets actually work????

I will start off saying that I have not read the entire preface yet, so my opinion and calls may be totally off. I believe that Whitman is trying to say that the job of the poet is to capture the beauty and uniqueness of the new developing America. Whitman lists tons of things that the poet needs to capture, and I feel like the poet needs to take the images he sees and not just record them as text, but paint history as beautiful well written words.

Leaves of Grass?

The first thing that caught my attention to in this piece is the title, "Leaves of Grass". After reading the first three paragraphs I'm thinking that the title connects to the concept of America being built up and represented by its people, not its government... people being the grass and their represention or view by others the leaves. In these first paragraphs, Whitman gives the reader and extremely positive and almost overdone picture of America. Americans he says are rough, rugged, hard workers, sympathetic, loyal, and most of all hold their freedom as a precious right, not a gift. Whitman to me seems terribly honest unlike the majority of the other people we have read, who seem to use sarcasim as a second language, so to me, and also Emerson, Whitman appears to be the first true American Poet.

Thoreau

Thoreau writes this piece to inspire people being oppressed by their govrnments to rise up and act to change it, but his ideology seems different than that of Ghandi and MLK. Ghandi and MLK chose to "fight" for what the rights that their govrnments were not giving to their people, but they never actually fought, but practiced "civil disobedence". This idea of protest without violence to invoke change doesnt really seem to be in Thoreau's work, unless im overlooking something. To me, Thoreau is saying that if someone is feeling oppressed by their government on some major issue, that they must rise up and change that government no matter what the cost. Thoreau also talks about the concept of people serving the government, mainly the army, begin to "serve" their government without a conscience, blindly taking orders, this he says, is deconstructive. To make is short, I think the main theme of his work so far is that people need to follow their heart and act to perserve morality, but the problem is that people always have differing views about what is moral/ethical or not.

Thank God its Over

Spending all this time on this one piece of Emerson's, really woke me up to realize that my reading comprehension is not perfect. As I worked at understanding about how a scholar should live his life and how he should contribute his the larger system he is a part of, I began to understand the piece as a whole. The very end stresses the importance of the American scholar to break away from their European influences and create their own ideologies. Creating their own scholarly pieces/works would set America apart and let it grow into the nation of freedom and equality that it was predicted to be.

Gman,JFK, and MLK

These three men were persecute and attacked for doing exactly what Emerson said to do, to act on the knowledge they had collected. Throughout the lives of these men, they faced negative responses from the majority of the demographic they were appealing to, but as Emerson instructed, they continued to spread their messages, and ultimately were permanently removed from their worlds. These men exemplified the concept of putting the fear behind them to tell the world of their knowledge, even though they knew they were putting their lives in direct sights of their enemies. Its hard to believe that men like Ghandi and MLK were both shot trying to promote the message of peace and love to all the man kind; its strange that the people we revere as the greatest of men were not the ones who made the most money or grew their government the most, but its the people who are killed in cold blood like Ghandi and MLK. This makes me rethink about what it means to be a scholar, Bob Marley to many people was an ignorant pot head, but he sang and spread a message of loving everyone and treating everyone with equality (like Ghandi and MLK), a message I take seriously. So what my question is what defines a scholar?

Mind Contorting Syntax

After reading and discussing about Emerson's piece, I feel like the concept is there for us to grap, but Emerson's word choice and writing is too filled with fluff which hides the purpose of the paper. Emerson uses this paper to address the scholarly community, and to explain their purpose in the system called man kind. Man kind is made to work as a system that involves every person and profession, and if one branch fails to work in sync with the others, destroys the whole system. Compared to the human body, Emerson says the scholars of the world act as the brain of the system, collecting and implementing knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the "body". But as the scholars sit around and think and ponder, they stop actual implementing their knowledge and isolate themselves from the rest of the "body", which causes problems. I'm not totally sure what else to blog about, but I'm positive that if we take the rest of this work and try to break it down and word in a way that is more similar to the way we are used to, we can grasp the concepts well

Emerson

Emerson was a poet, intellictual, and man that expressed his mind through his writing. Emerson believed that mankind worked as one large system, that when exposed to personal gain soon deginerated. Comparing the system to a human body, Emerson says that all people must remember they are all part of this body, and that if they forget and start to work only for personal gain, the system will fail. Later in his life, Emerson began to write on a number of subjects, but stressed the topics of balance, nature, and freedom. Having an American write and fight for freedom influenced the majority of the writers and even poets after him.

Occom and Apess

After reading both pieces from each man, I found few similarities. Both Apess and Occom speak in a very formal english style that most have come from their advanced studies, but their tones are very different. Apess is speaking in a tone filled with anger and an attitude condemning the white man, while Occom speaks with sympathy and pity for the "poor Indians" who were all ignorant in a white man's education. I'm not exactly sure how to compare these two men and their ideologies, except that they were similarly educated, but used their educations for totally different purposes. Apess is trying to express the equality of all men and saying that no race is superior, but Occom feels pity for his ignorant "brothers of the flesh", who seem to be inferior to him because he has a white man's education and a job in the white man's world. I feel that these two indian men are grew up similarly, but ended up using their knowledge and beliefs differently.

A Native American Outlook

As I look at this society with all its shinning glory and presentation, I feel as though it lacks some major aspects that my society back home holds center stage. We as a tribe seem to have very different customs when it comes to hospitality, manners, and treatment of others; when a starving person is on your streets, you either ignore them or give them small change, but in my village, if a starving person is on the road we bring them into our home and feed and cloth them as if they were our family. I think our standards and biefs on treating others is very differnt, we treat everyone with equal respect, while ive seen your people be hostile and even violent towards someone because of the color of their skin. This society might be much farther advanced in technology, but its people are regressed to the manners and personality of the earliest people.

Boot Camp to Survive the Past: Advice from the Colonial Era

I think if somehow a white male colonist was dropped into our time, he would give us a description of the colonial era that would beat any history textbook. This "living" evidence from the past could give a description about his time and life that would give it an actual "human" feel, not just a bunch of adjectives that mean very little to us.

What did I do?

During this "project" I did the best I could to do to take the information james gave us and make it short and simple so that when people read our section of the study guide they aren't fighting through needless amounts of fluff to get the basics about one person. I also typed some things up, but Jenny did most of that, while either me and james told her what to write. Basically I bounced back ideas of what to write with james and wrote some of it down. I think for the most part we all did an equal share of all the work.

Website/studyguide

I think the way we broke up into groups will make our work go by faster, but I don't like the idea of splitting up the aspect about the colonial era. If the colonial era is the most broad and important aspect we should all have equal involvment so everyone understands, not just a select few. I like the idea of having an online study guide but if it gets to the point where we have to work on it on our own free time I'm sure most people will stop adding to it, so a few people who want to keep it up will have to do the most work.

Food Inc

After watching Food Inc my outlook on mass produced food has changed for the worse. While eating at Mcdonalds recently, the first thing that popped into my head as I looked at my hamburger was a image of cows being crammed together in a pen shoulder to shoulder, covered in flies, and standing in their waste, waiting for their turn to become my food. Even though I thought of this terrible image, my stomach and taste buds over rode my brain and I ate that hamburger. I'm trying to say that even though the facts are shown about our mass produced food, the facts are not disgusting enough to break our desire for fast and cheap food.

Sustainability and Freedom

The prompt for our essay was very vague as always, but this year I found a more indirect way to address it. I based my paper on saying that the prompt was incorrect by saying that freedom and sustainability were not compatible, so i said that the choice to be sustainable comes from freedom, but to succed one most sacrifice some luxeries from their freedom. I like this prompt, but a prompt with some detail would help to make a more concrete argument.

Anne Bradstreet: A Woman!!!

Anne Bradstreet writes as though she is just a mere woman writing poor quality slop that is no comparison  to the men poets of her time. Anne uses an amount of sarcasm, that is almost funny, to point out how unrecognized her potential and skill as a writer are, and how unrecognized all women are in society. I like how she refrences the Greeks and Romans and how they viewed women as virtually equal in most things, and even suppiorier in the arts; she also says that these people were the penicle of human achievment, so basically, "hint hint, nudge nudge" about womens' worth.

Christian Charity?

This essay about unconditional Christian love ended with a summery sentence that said to me that its possible, but most people only love to receive some sort of reward or benefit. I slightly agree, greed is part of human nature; it fuels our ambition and drive to be successful in life. From that one small section, Winthrop to me sounds very much like a realist.

Welcome World

This is my first blog, I have set everything up, but I have yet to add anyone to follow it.