Epitome of Imagination

"We feel nothing. We Think the same. We are uniform."

Reading Brave New World made me think instantly of the Cybermen from Doctor Who season 2. Now I bet you're thinking, "Ugh! There Sarah goooessss again," and yes... indeed, BUT hear me out. The Cybermen say the above quote right before they begin their quest to rid the human race of emotion. Therefore becoming cold, no-feeling beings that compartmentalize the galaxy into numbers and equations. Sound familiar? Ha! See there is a method to my madness! This is a very interesting topic for me. I believe Steampunk has also touched on this thought many times. The idea that people can be made better, whether it's making us all the same or giving everyone a mechanical arm, would it really make us so?

There is a movie called Serenity which if you ever get the chance to watch it, please do, but start with the Television series it spawned from Firefly. In this story the government is experimenting on young individuals and trying to make them smart and deadly weapons, but it really messes with the person's mind and health. Along with experiments like this one, they tried to create an airborne chemical that would calm a person down, make them not want to fight or sleep or eat or drink or live. Indeed this chemical backfired and instead of mellowing everyone out it went to the extreme and people began not wanting to do anything anymore. (kinda sounds like this senioritis shindig I'm going through... apart from the death bit. Ain't nobody got time for that.) In the end the entirety of the planet's population was wiped out. Once the cowboy space captain Malcolm Reynolds found out he said this:

"Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better."

There's something to be said in my mind about the human race staying this constant embodiment of imagination and I don't believe we can do that if are all the same. After all as Shakespeare said, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

Brave New World ch. 2-3

 

 
"The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Ford's first T-Model was put on the market." (Here the Director made a sign of the T on his stomach and all the students reverently followed suit.)

You can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about. 


Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob. 

Chapter 3
by 7 years old, they still haven't been able to train out the natural tendencies
in the past there were to be no sexual thoughts until at least 20 years of age.
 This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Mustapha Mond.
Shows how influential Mustapha is:
 He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk–and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk–and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom–all were gone. Whisk–the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk …

Having a family is an absolutely appalling idea

 The world was full of fathers–was therefore full of misery; full of mothers–therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts–full of madness and suicide. 

 every one belongs to every one else

if you let people feel all at once, then you are over it, but when you have to do things in secret or moderately, things come out sideways

Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.
Sane men must lead society 

 Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being.

 We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …" CONSUME

Holy Ford the end of the chapter spirals into the this crazy conglomeration of dialogue 
  
Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime.

 "Suffer little children" Jesus said this and Mustapha quoted it, he is the story's Jesus.

Lit Terms 109-End

Rising Action:  plot build up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax

Romanticism:  movement in western culture beginning in the eighteenth and peaking in the nineteenth century as a revolt against Classicism; imagination was valued over reason and fact

 
Satire:  ridicules or condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general

 

^one of the funniest things!
Scansion:  the analysis of verse in terms of meter

 

 Setting:  the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur

Simile: a figure of speech comparing two essentially unlike things through the use of a specific word of comparison
Life is like a box of chocolates.
Soliloquy: an extended speech, usually in a drama, delivered by a character alone on stage
Hamlet's To Be or Not to Be Speech
Spiritual:  a folk song, usually religious theme





DEATH

Speaker:  a narrator, the one speaking
Watson narrates Sherlock's cases
Stereotype:  cliche, a simplified, standardized conception with a special meaning and appeal for members of a group; a formula story
GEEK AND PROUD
Stream of Consciousness: the style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character's thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images, as the character experiences them


Structure: the planned framework of a literary selection; its apparent organization
     __^__
     I   I   I        <------it's a house
````````````````
Style: the manner of putting thoughts into words; a characteristic way of writing or speaking

Subordination: the couching of less important ideas in less important structures of language

Surrealism: a style of literature and painting that stresses the subconscious or the non-rational aspects of man's existence characterized by the juxtaposition of the bizarre and banal

Suspension of Disbelief: suspend not believing in order to enjoy it

Symbol: something which stands for something else, yet has a meaning of its own

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to convey the experience of another sense

Synecdoche: another form of name changing, in which a part stands for the whole


Syntax: the arrangement and grammatical relations of words in a sentence

Theme: main idea of the story; its message(s)

Thesis: a proposition for consideration, especially one to be discussed and proved or disproved; the main idea

Tone: the devices used to create the mood and atmosphere of a literary work; the author's perceived point of view

Tongue in Cheek: a type of humor in which the speaker feigns seriousness; aka "dry" or "dead pan"

Tragedy: in literature any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic but tragically (fatally) flawed
Romeo + Juliet
Understatement: opposite of hyperbole; saying less than you mean for emphasis
War is cruel.
Vernacular: everyday speech
Yo my homeskillet, what be up wit yo fine self today?
Voice: the textual features, such as diction and sentence structures, that convey the writer's or speaker's persona

Zeitgeist: the feeling of a particular era in history

Treasure Planet

I made this a while ago, but I wanted to re-post it.

BOB1

I didn't really rank them in order from best to worst... but I don't like this method of grading.

Sara: Your lit terms had so much Harry Potter! I loved the David Tennant  for incongruity!
Hayden: very up to date and I like your writing style, your thoughts are clear.
Ruth: I really liked how I could see the comments people have made, that makes things a lot simpler
Michelle: very simplistic and wordy
Justice: Your lit terms were in order, that's nice.
E'Ana: my computer froze twice when I tried to go to your blog, but it looked very tranquil from what I could see.
Landon: I like your facts of the day!
Beka: your voice is clear through your blog. I read the stuff in your voice.
Kathryn: I liked your blog, but mayyybe make the text a larger font? That would help my poor blind eyes a lot.
Kelli: Your blog has your style in it and you have a lot of interesting ideas.
Kasie: I like your remixes
Jenna: I liked you Sonnet, but maybe update a little more.
Owen: I liked your blog, and your Understanding Gertrude post was very intriguing.
Paul: update more
Ubi: your lite terms are fun and your blog gives off a very serious vibe to it.
Madison: Your blog was very bright and nice to look at and you're pretty well updated.
Josh: I like your back round and your quotes
Ryan: updated and I like your SOB post and your musica
Katelyn: very generic
Rocio: good lit terms and I liked your back round
Kayla: mostly updated and a lot of posts
Jackie: I like the back round music :)
Ryland: I like your back round and you're pretty up to date
Laura: updated and good thoughts through out your blog
Will: Fairly up to date
Jessica: needs to be updated more and overall a bit plain
Dylan: ......

I AM HERE

Please explain your progress in this course during the first grading period.  Have you made progress toward your SMART goal?  Have you begun thinking/working on your senior project, big question, collaborative working group, or other endeavor/venture that shows how you're putting this course to work for you?  Document and explain your performance.

Yes I've made significant progress in my smart goal and my senior project. My song for my senior project with Josh Montero is done and I'm going to be handling the music for SNL night. I am having to jolt myself out of this funk that I seem to have landed in, but we'll make it through won't we, my preccccioussssss? I want to get back on track. I do feel under a lot of pressure right now, so my English class has started to take a backseat. There's just soooooo much going on it's quite difficult to disperse my attention evenly.

Lit Terms 80-100

Omniscient Point of View:  knowing all things, usually the third person.

Onomatopoeia: use of a word whose sound in some degree imitates or suggests its
meaning.
Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which two contradicting words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox.

Pacing:  rate of movement; tempo.

Parable:  a story designed to convey some religious principle, moral lesson, or general truth.

Paradox:  a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth; an opinion contrary to generally accepted ideas.

Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form.

Parody:  an imitation of mimicking of a composition or of the style of a well-known artist.

Pathos:  the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness.

Pedantry: a display of learning for its own sake.

Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or  abstract ideas.

Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose.

Poignant:  eliciting sorrow or sentiment.

Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing.

Postmodernism: literature characterized by experimentation, irony, nontraditional forms, multiple meanings, playfulness and a blurred boundary between real and imaginary.

Prose:  the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern.

Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes antagonist.

Pun:  play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications.

Purpose: the intended result wished by an author.

Realism:  writing about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightfoward manner to reflect life as it actually is.

Refrain:  a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a poem or song; chorus.

Requiem:  any chant, dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead.

Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out; denouement.

Restatement: idea repeated for emphasis.

Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order to persuade.

Rhetorical Question: question suggesting its own answer or not requiring an answer; used in argument or persuasion.

Rising Action: plot build up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax.