Feedback on Blogger

The blogging idea really surprised me. I didn’t think it would be productive when I first heard the idea and had to make an account for it, but as time when on and we got actual assignments to do with it, it became useful and easy to use. I feel that the blogs make my work a little better. This is because I feel relaxed when I write my "papers". It is not the norm, do the work and print it out for a grade because there is more room for you to talk with fellow classmates allowing you to share ideas and thoughts about what we are writing about.
I do think we should continue to blog. It not only helped my particular writing, I think it changed the environment of the two classes. I now know how the other class writes, whereas before I had no insight as to how they were in terms of their school work. Although I am not complexly blinded to how the other class works now, a way that I think will change the environment of the two classes and make it even better is to assign each of us a person from the other class each week to make sure everyone is getting the full advantage of crossing classes. Another positive thing about blogger is that I am the type of person that has my own ideas and I can extend on that, but for the most part am blind to other points of views. Being able to get other peoples’ thoughts and opinions about the same topic I am concentrating on helps me to reflect on my own ideas while gaining new ones.
I really like the commenting part of blogging. It helps me in several ways. First, with the other Google way that we used I most likely different wouldn’t have checked out other peoples pages and actually benefited from them. The comments on blogs being little mini points that go toward your grade actually make me read the works of others. It is also very interesting and helpful when you, Mr. Fiorini, comment our blogs. This makes it personal and directed to me specifically which in my opinion is better feedback then a set structured rubric. Although I like this idea, I think you should tell us your idea of writing before we do any more blogging .I think you should tell us your standards and your writing ideas and aspects of how you would use examples, quotes, correct grammar, and things of that nature. Since we only have them once a week for the most part, in my opinion I think it is fair if these assignments are greater a little harder than the regular homework assignment.
In brief, I think that using this new blogger site really is beneficial to everyone. It not only is a fun, more relaxed way of handing in writing, but in my case it boosts my confidence as a writer. I now make sure that I work my hardest because I know others will be reading and responding to my work. When I get good feedbacks from both you and the two classes it makes me feel happy with the work I do and actually want to do more. Blogger really does make me have more positive outlook on writing in general.

Great Gatsby Post # 2

Great Gatsby was a book that I really enjoyed. It had a variety of characters, topics, themes, and problems that could influence any reader that picks up the book. When I first started reading the book, I didn’t think F. Scott Fitzgerald was that good of an author because it was very detailed, but as I read and got more into the book I came to the conclusion that he is an awesome writer. He wrote to all people and made sure his work would suit everyone’s interest. As I read his personal quotes there was even firsthand support to the conclusion that I made about him as a writer. “My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer...writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.” This is exactly what Fitzgerald said to the New York Tribune in the 1920’s.
Throughout the books there were ideas mentioned that I knew had to have a deeper meaning and weren’t just part of the plot. These aspects were the ones that made me thing and threw me off a little. The kept coming up repeatedly and each time I attached something else to their meaning and put all ideas together. First, the symbol that I pulled the most meaning out of was the green light outside of Daisy’s dock on East Egg that Gatsby could see from his house in West Egg. Since the deeper meaning of the book had a lot to do with the rising and falling of America what Nick compared the light to, fit right it in .He said that the light was like what the settlers views the rising America as. The historical, real life meaning I got out of the green light was that it is similar to the lights that the females and wives of someone in a war or out at sea out up to show that they are waiting for someone. The green light also represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for his future with Daisy. It is the light that will help him reach his goal: make Daisy his again. Another symbol in the book was the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. These are faded eyes on billboard that is over the Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald never really tells what exactly what the symbols represent. He puts the idea out there that the characters generally put a meaning on the things that the reader comes to think are symbols of something. Based on what the character says about the billboard and how they refer to it is how the reader can get its meaning. If it wasn’t for George Wilson comparing the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eclleburg to the eyes of God looking over the people then I personally wouldn’t have gotten such a strong meaning from the billboard. It allows me to think that the eyes are the eyes of god looking over the valley of ashes with applying his judgment to it.
All of the characters had their own unique personalities, but my favorite character in the book was Gatsby. This is because of his multiple personalities throughout the book .I feel as if I got to know him the best because I seen varying sides of him. In the beginning he was more of a shady character that we didn’t know much about, yet one would think you would know more about him at first because his name is the title of the book. The way you found out more and more about him and his life as the book when on was another way that Fitzgerald held my attention and another reason why I thought he was a great writer. Gatsby went from mysterious, to someone that seemed like partier but not very friendly. Next he was best friends with Nick and a lover of Daisy. Gatsby became a very loveable person in m y eyes and when he was killed, in my opinion it was very unexpected and upsetting. “Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.” This was a quote of Fitzgerald in a letter to Ernest Hemingway. This quote could show how he came about the character traits of Gatsby. Gatsby has a big house and the riches, but also by the end you saw his loveable side that showed his charm and made him distinctly different from the other characters. The whole book revolved around the money classes of the East Egg and West egg and his quote refers to riches. Obviously riches were a constant thought of Fitzgerald.
I was a little disappointed at the ending and how Gatsby was killed. The fact that Daisy stayed with Tom instead of getting back with Gatsby upset me. They were apparently in love from a long time ago and wanted to get back and become an item, but in the end she didn’t even acknowledge the fact he was shot. It was random how she just left and went on a trip with Tom leaving her past few days with Gatsby just as a memory.
In brief, I have a lot if opinions about the book, most of them being positive ideas. I really enjoyed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby "Quotes"

--"'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

This quote is directly from the narrator and one of the main characters of the book, Nick. The way the author opened the book up like this was strong and powerful, but misleading at the same time. I quoted this from chapter one, page one, the second sentence. Due to how effective the quote is, the background story behind it, and because I never seen a story open in this way, it really stuck out to me. After reading a few more chapters of the book, the fact the Nick said that this quote has came to be more of a habit that he lives by, seemed to be proven to me. He didn’t judge anything that anyone told him so far. He could have literally showed he had an opinion about Tom, Daisy, Gatsby or Jordan Baker and been a person who expresses his opinion and gets involved in everything , but instead he didn’t . You could tell how he feels since his narrating the book, but the quality of judging people doesn’t show in his interactions with others. The way there is such a powerful start to the book made me more interested in how the story line was going to go. The idea that the father puts out there to Nick is a very good lesson that I think everyone can relate to and should live by. Everyone at one point has judged someone without thinking of the other person’s situation. To me this quote allowed me to relate it to life on general, cheerleading, and my psychology class. In cheerleading, our beginning formation was so unique and out of the ordinary that it drew people in and had people wondering what we were going to do next, which is what this quote does for the book. Also, in psychology I recently learned the term for judging someone based on the generalized knowledge that they have programmed in their head. In brief, this opening to the story blew me away.

--“He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternally reassurance in it that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced- or seemed to face- the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prestigious in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself , and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you, at your best , you hope to convey. “(Chapter 3, pg. 48)

This is another quote that came directly from the barraters mouth. At this point of the story, Nick was already well into the plot and was at a party a Gatsby’s house. We have yet to be introduced to the host of the party, or the main character of the story, Gatsby. This quote is the first set of descriptions that describe him .He already seemed mysterious and shady based on previous descriptions, but this quote doesn’t really allow the reader to get to know his true character. It only leads the reader to have mixed signals about whom and what he is all about. This is Nick’s first reactions about him because this is said as soon as Gatsby introduced himself to Nick. This quote can also be tired back to my first quote found in the first chapter because again Nick was not criticizing or judging Gatsby, but at the same time you can still see all different views that he was able to draw just from meeting him once. The way the author wrote this and the style he used when he italicized “you “and used dashes to stress certain phrases is another writing tool that made this part powerful and allowed it to stand out to me .

Stephen Crane

http://vmlinux.org/ilse/lit/crane.htm (In the Desert)
http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blscranewar.htm (War is Kind)

Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1871 to a religious family. He was the 14th child of a Methodist minister and was named after an ancestor from the revolutionary war. He grew up to be an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. When Crane was growing up he wasn’t too interested in his schoolings at the university, but more so in the field of writing, so in turn he dropped out of school and decided to be a reporter and writer. Ever since Crane was younger he was a very brilliant child and had a strong interest in the way he could use and manipulate words. He was very independent in the way he thought and went about things.When Stephen Crane was three he taught himself to read and wrote letters for his father for his grandmother. When he turned four he was sneaking in around reading James Fennimore Cooper’s novel because his Methodist household was so strict. Stephen wrote his first poem at the age of six, started writing stories at eight, made his first known story at age 13, and even contributed the “York Tribune” at 16. Some of his works that he is most famous for happened when he was 22 when he published his first novel, “Maggie, Girl of the Streets,” which is considered the first work of American literary Naturalism. His second novel, “The Red Badge of Courage” won him an international acclaim. This was about the Civil War even though he wrote it without any Civil War experiences. This shows his strong interest in war. In 1896 Crane accepted the opportunity that was offered to him to be a war correspondent in the Spanish – American War. During his last years of life he lived in Europe with his wife and wrote about issues that he experienced in Greece and Cuba and in the mean time met and built friendships with other writers. Crane died of tuberculous in at the age of 28, but at this point death was no stranger to him. Throughout his life he witnessed five of his siblings die in childhood and his father, Jonathan Townley Crane die when he was only eleven years old.
Stephan Crane’s writings left an impression on the 20th century writers, especially the modernists and the imagists. He was an example of American Naturalism and Impressionism This means his writings were opposite of the Romanics, the time before his. The idea that his poems were based on heredity and environment supports this idea. Crane preferred his poems to be referred to as lines and said the purpose of his poems in his words was to "to give my ideas of life as a whole, so far as I know it.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Crane). In his poem In the Dessert there are many themes. The themes that appear to me are themes that involve being alone and isolated, fear, and relations with nature. These themes also seem to appear in his collection of versus along with In the Desert that makes up The Black Riders. His writing really make the reader think because they go smooth and have a single flow to them until one word is read multiple ways and gives the reader a double meaning to think about . In the Dessert along with the other poems can all be related and made into a whole, but not because of their flow, but because of the common themes travel through all of the parts. The meaning that I got out of In the Dessert was that man doesn’t control fate and whatever happens to him is what is meant to be and is controlled. The final result of things, whether they are big or small most of the time will not be happy go lucky, but rather cruel. According to Crane man must accept life as it is. Cranes writings were a little on the dark side which makes logical sense die to the fact that his past consisted a lot of deaths and war.
Crane uses a lot of metaphors and is able to paint very vivid image in the readers head. His poems were different from the standard poems of that time because they were done in free verse and didn’t contain titles. He tends to be dramatic in the sense that he enforces beliefs and opinions rather than feelings like mot poets do. In his poem In the Dessert there is a significant voice that directs when the specific action that happens. “In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, “is an example of this. His adjectives and description that is given are also important to his way of writing because it is what puts the twist to it all .For example the word bitter in this poem can be taken into consideration and have multiple meanings. If you take it as the environment of a dessert it might mean intense hostility, but if you consider it as a personality type of the bird it might mean strong and sharp. Also, if you take it literal as a food taste, it could mean an unpleasant taste, creating imagery. Narrative is the approach he takes on his poems only he adds the metaphors in to make it catchier. For example, the bird in the dessert with the bitter heart is the symbol for a man that is living life as a victim in a tough situation, but is excepting it.
Another poem that is written by Stephan Crane is War is Kind. This poem is again about one of his passions …war. It simply expresses the feelings of people as hurt and against war, but then his ideas of war turn theirs down and forces the reader to think about how we must be excepting of war and its purpose. This poem showed me another poem of Crows that had the same style as In the Dessert. Both were a little part of a bigger work that was tied in by theme and were written originally without titles. In this poem, what I liked best was how he repeated several times War is Kind to stress the message he was trying to get across. I noticed that this poem is more direct then In the Dessert.
The works of Stephan Crane can be considered American not only because they were written by an American poet, but because a lot of the content of them could be related back to war. In order to be where we are today in America, we needed to have are past. Our past wars are what developed us into who we are and made us the strong, powerful country we are today. His writings show first hand feelings, thoughts, and actual actions that happened during wars America has been in. These works connect directly to our history and can be considered references of the past.
In brief, Stephan Crow was a very powerful writer and although his pomes aren’t what made him the famous American writer that he is, if you read them, they are very catchy. Their meaning doesn’t jump right out at you, but instead are like a puzzle and makes you think and apply facts to gain the knowledge.

Kate Chopin's Reading Journal

Kate Chopin was a famous writer whose works were a main part of American realism. She wrote many short stories in which people can specifically relate to because she makes them realistic and tells of situations how they really are in everyday life. American realism was a time when the writers told a story that boys and girls could grow up with as a guide and made sure the stories relate to the average Americans life. In Chopin’s story’s Lilacs and A Pair of Silk Stockings she did just that. For example in Lilacs Adrienne lived a life of happiness. She had her life in Paris, but still visited the Church where she grew up at every year in the spring. In the End she was forbidden to go to the church anymore because she lived a life that had two sides to it and she wasn’t as pure as the other nuns were. This real life situation where people get rejected because they act like they are someone they are not. In Chopin’s other short story called A Pair of Silk Stockings a problem was brought out that still to this day we come across .She tells a story of a woman who spent all of her money she finds on stuff that she really didn’t need but greatly wanted. She wanted it because having a lot of money just to enjoy wasn’t a part of her daily life style and it was something different for her .Living a day in a life that we know we can’t have is something we can all relate to, and spending money like it grows on trees is another problem Americans seem to have. Although this was progress and Chopin’s writings had messages in them making her be a writer in the Realism time period there were some aspects in her works that could tie back to the previous time period of the American Romanics. The Romanic writers concentrated on nature’s beauty and emotion rather than reasonableness and being realistic. For instance, Chopin made several references to nature. A very vivid description of nature was used when she said “…could hear the notes of birds, just as we hear them now, and the humming of insects in the air.” Also when she describes her walk by saying “ … over the tufted grass down the gentle decline where it sloped toward the broad, flat meadow , and the limpid stream that flowed cool and fresh from the woods.”
Chopin’s stories are stories with meaning, but they have to be deeply looked into in order to get the message across. A theme that I got out of these short stories is that you can’t live a double life and live the life you wish you lived while being the person you truly are. Your character type in one setting cannot differ from your character in other circumstances because that is how problems are caused. In Lilacs, Adrienne acted one way in Paris, but a completely different way when she came to stay at the church. She was more open and on the crazy side in Paris, but at the church she acted as if she was always pure like the other nuns .Eventually this double act backfired on her. She was trying to pretend she lived a life under chastity but in reality she was a dancer and did scandals things. That is another little mini lesson that the story taught about the Catholic religion. In A Pair of Silk Stockings the main character, Mrs. Sommers was a mother who didn’t have a lot of money. When she found 15 dollars she had all intensions of spending it wisely, but instead she got caught up in living in the life she always wanted to live with extra money to just enjoy for herself. Both situations show that if you just live the life that was made out for you instead of changing things around to be someone you were not meant to be then there would be no bad consequences there for you in the near future. This author views the world as one big place where we all have a spot that is made for us.
Kate Chopin’s writings are made for any audience those choices to read them. Her purpose is to teach people a life lesson through a story that people can relate to .Any one can take interest in a story that they relate to. In the case of the two short stories I read from her theme of being someone you are not is something that everyone pretty much goes through at one time or another because it is part of finding out who you really are .Although her writings can relate to any one I particularly think it would be easier for females to relate to her stories .This is supported because the two main characters are females and although the stories have messages males can connect to , the story line itself is more set for girls. The females back in the day when Chopin wrote this didn’t have many opportunities set out for them and neither did the woman in her stories .The woman in Lilacs had set rules to live by and a certain way she had to do things in order to be excepted and the woman in A Pair of Silk Stockings didn’t have much money.
As a reader Kate Chopin’s way of writing is something that attracted me to her stories and kept me interested. I enjoy writing stories and most of the time they come easy to me, but there is always room to better my writing. I believe the way she ties in a message, is humorous and includes real life situations along with creating vivid images makes her a high-quality writer which allows me to read her works not only to enjoy them but to learn from them also.
“How good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh! She felt like lying back in the cushioned chair and reveling for a while in the luxury of it. She did for a little while. Then she replaced her shoes, rolled the cotton stockings together and thrust them into her bag. After doing this she crossed straight over to the shoe department and took her seat to be fitted.” This is a quote from Kate Chopin’s story A Pair of Silk Stockings. I was attracted to this author’s works, especially this piece, because of her feminine ways. Her writings leave me with something to think about. The quote above can be particularly related to teenage girls. Shop till I drop is my motto and as soon as the mother in the story got extra money she seemed to have the same mind set even though she didn’t mean to. She went from store to store buying stuff she really didn’t need, but doing it made her feel complete. This is how a lot of girls of all ages feel about buying new things. They feel like they need it all but from the outside point of view, we already have too much.
In brief, Kate Chopin has writing talents that grab my attention and make me want to read her works, but also shows me an example of a good writer from the time of American Romanics. Her two stories A Pair of Silk Stockings and Lilacs both have themes that I can relate to. I believe I made a good choice when I choose this author.