Great Expectations Chapters 7 - 11

For chapter 7 I chose the couplet "...whatsume'er the failings on his part, remember reader he were that good in his hart." (pg. 42) This couplet was very clever thing to come up with on Joe's part, especially since he never went to much school and came up with it all by himself.

For chapter 8 I liked the quote "Her contempt for me was so strong that it became infectious, and I caught it." (pg. 55) because that was a main role with one of the characters in the book and it can be a true fact in real life as well.

For chapter 9 I liked the quote "If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to it through going crooked." (pg. 65) because it is great advice and very thoughtful of a quote, once again, from Joe.

For chapter 10 I enjoyed the quote "...and then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was." (pg. 71) because it showed the impact it made on Pip at that one moment. The action of the stranger caught Pip quite hard by surprise and this is able to show that in one sentence.

For chapter 11 I chose the quote "The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me." (pg. 81) because it was an interesting comparison the old lady made between mice teeth and life. You can see from this statement that life had not been good to her at one time or another.

Great Expectations Chapters 1 - 6

For chapter 1 I thought the quote "As I never saw my father or my mother...my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones." (pg. 1) was interesting. This shows what an imaginative boy the main character was. He takes the time to sit there and ponder what his parents can look like and make decisions on his own.

For chapter 2 I chose "I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you were." (pg. 8) as an important fact in the book, it seems, and even in real life. Children are no walk in the park and the main characters sister found this out, though it was quite unwillingly on her part.

For chapter 3 I thought the quote "In all of which particulars he was very like the dog." (pg. 17) the most interesting comparison between human and animal. With this thought though you can easily see how ravenous the man was but also see that the boy was thoughtful as well.

For chapter 4 I thought the quote "...be grateful, boy to them which brought you up by hand." (pg. 23) interesting to see that that thought is still used today. Respect was what they were talking about at the time and I found it quite amusing how I could see myself being in a conversation of a similar thought today.

For chapter 5 I chose "Then, the ends of the torches were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with him." (pg. 36) because Pip once again shows quite a comparison between a live human being to something else.

For chapter 6 I thought the quote "In a word, I was too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong." (pg. 37) was a very thoughtful insight. Not only for Pip in this case though, but also that is a very good explanation of how many of us act when we do something wrong.

Shakespeare and Macbeth

     After reading Macbeth I found I was reminded, once again, of how much Shakespeare enjoys killing people in most of his stories. It seems that if he isn't making it comical then it has to be tension filling with the use of death. Othello is also a good example of this. Besides that I didn't think Macbeth was too bad of a story. It kept me interested on what would happen next and it was a different kind of story because of the fact that a main character becomes a insane murderer fairly quickly at the beginning of the story. I have to admit though, Lady Macbeth started to annoy me due to the fact that she would give her husband so much trouble about being a man and tell him to do the bad deeds yet she wasn't even following through to what she said she would do herself. Next thing you know she is going around, unable to really sleep, feeling guilty even though she was the one to push everything forward in the first place. She bit off more than she can chew and was quickly becoming a hindrance more than a support for her now evil husband.
      I also ended up wondering what kind of twisted view of a 'man' they used to have back then. From what I got from the story a lot of people thought that if you were able to never show sadness and can kill someone then you are considered a man. That is a little twisted, in my opinion, but the entire story of Macbeth seems to be filled with twisted people anyways. I loved the fact how Macbeth went to the witches and got the prophesies which left the reader wondering how the story will end since it seemed impossible for those prophesies to happen. I thought it was clever how Shakespeare handled that in the end.

Saving Thanksgiving

     Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a group of mischievous goblins hiding amongst the humans. Thanksgiving was coming up and the goblins became angry because they were jealous of all the happy little children in the world. They wanted everyone to be miserable like them, so they hatched up a plan to ruin Thanksgiving for all the kids in school by making their turkey dinner become gross with out anyone realizing it until it was too late.
     In order to do this though, they needed to get strong magic, so they decided to go and steal Santa's apple juice. They knew Santa's apple juice had special magic in it so they went to the north pole, stole his apple juice, and came back to test out their spell. They poured the apple juice on the elementary school's turkeys they were planning to use for lunch. Instead of the turkey becoming gross tasting, though, the turkeys became zombies and started roaming the school, biting anybodies fingers that tried to catch them. The children, in a desperate attempt to stop the finger biting zombie turkeys from roaming the school, wrote letters to Santa, promising to be good children for the rest of the year if he got rid of the finger biting zombie turkeys fast.
     Santa, receiving their letters, realized that the goblins had done this with his missing apple juice. He flew right over and poured his special grapefruit juice over the finger biting zombie turkeys. They instantly turned back into normal turkeys and Thanksgiving was saved.
     Before Santa left back to the north pole he wisely said "Now, don't steal things that don't belong to you. It can get you into big trouble." With that said, Santa Clause took all the mischievous little goblins with him to the North pole. To this day the little goblins no longer steal Santa's apple juice and work in the back of his workshop, preparing the coal for all the naughty little boys and girls.

Beowulf

     Needless to say, the movie was completely different from the story. The movie seemed to go on about the religion Christianity and how great it was opposed to the Pagen religion. The book did have references to both religions but besides a few references to how great Christianity is, overall it wasn't a very important matter. The religions, in my opinion, weren't that big of a matter that the movie tried to make it out to be. The point of the book was to get rid of the killer monster, not to convert all the people who hear it.
     The people who created the movie tried very hard to insert twists to the story to keep it interesting. They made Grendel almost human and even added a baby Grendel in the story as well as having the baby's mother being the town's witch. They also had a major problem of not being able to catch or find Grendel. It was no longer just about this evil monster that killed people, it was a angry looking guy, known as Grendel, who was avenging his father's death.
     The changes they made to the move weren't very effective overall and it left me feeling like it dragging on unnecessarily sometimes. Between going on about the religions and the attempt to somehow keep it interesting for viewers with random twists to the story, they lost my attention. They payed so much attention to things like that that when they actually killed Grendel and his mom it ended quite fast compared to the rest of it. I did like Beowulf's personality better in the movie then in the story though. He was more human and humbler in the movie when in the story he was unnaturally amazing and proud.

Writers

It seems as if the day will be just fine,
Then comes out all the things that we don't seek.
Now it's as if life just ran out of time
And now things look so down and bad and bleak.

Nothing will work, things come up to and end.
Wars, death, and pain and torturous strain stand aground.
They laugh in glee for all the pains they send
Then the search for any hope that can be found.

From strain and stress, unwillingness, came hope.
They slipped it in, sudden, quick and quite slick.
We see what's wrote and seem quite able to cope.
They grin and laugh with evils wrath. Another trick.

Tortures pleasure be it wimp or fighters.
This is all that occurs while with writers.

Spoiled Alert!

    It seems as if all respect is deteriorating out of society gradually. There could be many things that could be causing this, and I could be wrong, but I think the youth are being very spoiled. Now, in the 20th century, everything seems so easy to come by that the youth seem to just expect things to happen. You see this everywhere, in school with their work for example. Exactly how many high schoolers have terrible grades because they don't want to do their work?
     The youth constantly need to be entertained and can do so with all the technology that is around and is given to them, but that leaves trouble for the teachers when they actually have to sit there and listen to them. With things given to the youth it seems their respect is going down with it, as if they should be given just what they want. Because all this spoiling is going on the country will deteriorate as well. As long as the parents let the kids get away with what they do then the kids won't know how to act the way they should. How are they supposed to get along in society by themselves if they can't learn how to act and just expect things to be handed to them?
     Parents should be more strict to their kids in certain areas, or at least set rules and teach them to respect adults the way they should. It's getting more out of hand and that is not helping anyone. They need to see and understand that there are consequences to their actions not only in the real wold but in the home as well. Parents are not the kids friend. They are supposed to be a teacher and parent, not just giving the kid what they want with no boundaries, as if the child is entitled to be given what they want.