Blog 121214

i chose the passage at the end of night when elie sees himself in a mirror

1. it made me feel almost empty inside and sad and i chose it because of that
2. it is primarily the loss of innocence but really you can link anything to anything if you try hard enough so
3. at the end of the road when the man dies, he is kind of the same, hes sickened and weak and a shell of who he used to be, but he had lost his innocence long ago
4. "from the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me."

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i liked the book but i wouldnt read it again i dunno all i really noticed was that everyone said it was super sad like so sad like i told my mom that we were reading it to get the permission slip signed which i did get signed but then forgo t at home and when you asked for the permission slips i didnt have it except you didnt ask for it which was a relief oh yeah so i told her and she was like its the saddest thing ever but when we were watching it it wasnt sad? it just wasnt like something i would remember as sad it was just direct and dark but sad and dark arent the same thing and its weird everyone equates darkness and sadness i guess its because dark means lonely for some people but the book wasnt lonely? the kid was never really alone once his dad died a different family took him in i dunno i just expected it to end differently like the boy dies slowly in the mans arms and then the man shoots himself and it goes dark but it didnt it ended on a high note anyway which is just really odd like i just expected more out of it not to say it wasnt a lot i just expected different stuff mostly i mean im pretty much done here but im going to keep typing what im thinkin g about sorta ill filter some stuff i guess but all im noticing is its weird breathing in here it smells kinda weird and my nose is stuffy and this is a different chair than im used to someone just pulled thedoorknob and she put her fingers to her temples when she started talking to you thats a bad sign and shes a senior so i assume shes in creative writing and didnt get a chance to finish somehting i wonder what class shes in this period i also noticed that you play really weird classical music its just its not weird weird its just not anything ive heard before but it all sounds the same anyway i dont like classical music much like harry can play claire de lune and that makes it beautiful i like classical music when harrys playing it i guess but this is kinda boring and repetitive and sounds fake i dont know why oop out of time sorry

Blog 111814

word bank: "the child led him by the hand" "beast" "black" "ancient" "dead white and sightless" "eggs of spiders" "as if to take the scent of what it could not see" "pale and naked and translucent" "beating heart" "low moan" "turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark"

the poem is expressing that the creatures suffering most are those who are misunderstood by humans as inherently evil, like this creature. the child "led him by the hand" so the child knew that this creature was safe and was confident in taking it. The creature must have been safe with the child before. The tone of the poem is trying to convey what the average adult would think if it saw the creature, as in "beast" "black" "ancient" "eggs of spiders" - these phrases all convey situations we fear, things in the dark, things unknown, things known but that have yet to happen, but throughout the poem, all the creature does is act in fear for itself. It looks toward the light, but the words "dead white and sightless" show that the creature is actually blind and can't see without its nose (ex. "as if to take the scent of what it could not see". Beyond this, we see that the creature is actually very vulnerable. It is "pale and naked and translucent", so its skin can't be very thick and it is susceptible to most forms of attack. Its beating heart is visible as in the lines that the shadow show "its bowels, its beating heart, the brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell". The creature cannot protect itself. It has hidden in this cave for a long time. it releases a "low moan" possibly at pain from the light it doesnt normally experience, and it "turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark" as a final show of the creatures innocence and wish for peace, instead of attacking or being defensive, it simply flees without trying to be agressive toward the intruders. The creature is alone and unprotected, but the poem shows that as people we are supposed to fear it because of our own assumptions about appearance. The creature means no harm because it wants no harm done to itself.

Blog 111414

part 1:
there was a lot of stuff about prophets to fulfill her want to be special that was really the thing that had the most of an impact on me and the veil kind of began the end of her dreams of being a prophet and that powerful panel where she wrote "god didnt come that night" and how she had been talking to god and he seemed dissapointed when she said she wanted to be a doctor or lawyer and then he was a loving father again when she confirmed she would do it but in secret and it seems like she felt like god would only love her if she did what she was told and it wasnt like a fatherly love but like the love of someone who loves what you can do and not you yourself so that seems like it could mess her up honestly but in general false prophets probably dont feel that great as a guess i dont really know though ive never met a false prophet. my assumption is that they just want to be happy but thats my assumption of everyone. reminds me of a song called jerusalem about a guy who thinks hes the messiah but thats really different from this book. good song nonetheless. this is really off topic jeez wow ok you just said dont even take time to think just type and theres thirty seconds left and something about sports i didnt quite understand and the taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap of the keyboards is kinda weird and all the fingers look like a looping gif this has nothing to do with persepolis anymore oops.

part 2:
the book seemed really short and kind of hard to tell what was in each frame because it was only black and white and the voice of the writer was a little weird but im used to reading graphic novels so maybe i just read it fast but im not used to reading black and white only especially in this confusing style so it gave me headaches sometimes and it was hard to read because it did that but i guess the book was okay i dont really know that well because we have to keep typing and im out of ideas all im noticing is stuff around the room like mr cheng your water is moving around in the cup right now and im thirsty but the water in this building is really gross like really really gross and i still dont understand the posters on the walls in here, like they seem like imitation movie posters but i wish i knew what the project was for because ok i didnt think this sentence through i dont have a reason im just curious but curiousity killed the cat i guess now im thinking about morocco for some reason and im hungry and baklava moroccan style is my favorite food so now my mouth is kind of watering i love baklava it tastes like how sunshine feels on your skin and its warm but kinda sticky on your hands and its so nice to bite into and it kinda falls apart but thats okay because then you have leftover bits to wipe up and lick off your fingers and the first time i ate baklava was at disney and that night before the park closed i went back to get more and they gave me the whole tray for free because they were going to throw it out for the night anyway and make more in the morning and it was so good and i got all the extra syrup and the taste is almost all in the syrup i feel like a lot of the time there isnt enough syrup but im not one to criticize i like it too much to be picky about it its a shame its so hard to get and its kinda expensive btu for hannukah i asked for a ton of baklava and thats coming up soon so im excited about that...... times up okay

part 3:
Faith and hope are intrinsically linked, and in a situation where hope is forced down, faith will fall apart and something new must happen to bring back faith and therefore hope.

TWIST

-Tone/Mood
-Word Choice ((metaphors, similes, connotation, personification))
-Imagery ((senses, especially sound))
-Style ((punctuation, syntax, etc))
-Theme

"There was the experience of feeling death without dying that came from watching a chicken leap about blindly after its neck had been snapped by a quick twist of my father's wrist"

T- monotonous, but the mood is dark from the subject matter
W- He seems to define Death and Dying really differently, instead of a verb form of a noun and the noun itself like its commonly seen
I- "quick twist of my fathers wrist" and "leap about blindly" are strong action based phrases to put the images of a chicken's wrung head and the following hysteria
S- One sentence, sort of long, with no breaks or commas
T- Dying causes immense pain, but also death seems to be numbed
((Richard's mother is Dying but not dead and is hurting but not numb, the chicken was not dying until it was Dead))

Black Boy Themes

Education amidst ignorance can push youth away from their religious families because as they come of age they realize it might not be as clear cut as their families believe

Authority figures' "justice" being too intense against children wont be fought until a child is educated and begins to question it

topics that stood out, class wise: authority figures, education, youth, isolation, ignorance, hunger

my most vivid childhood memories

when i was in the second grade i remember i told some girl who we played with on the playground that I needed to talk to my friend eliana (i believe we had a falling out we needed to go over or something, i was really dramatic and i really dont remember the circumstances) and that the two of us wouldnt be able to play that day. She got really upset about it and told the teachers that i had "made a schedule of when she could play with her friends". I got pulled out of prayer (which means you REALLY messed up, they never pull you out of prayer) and they sat me down on these couches in an L shape, and i sat on the inner part of one. Two teachers sat on either side, and they asked me if I knew what I had done to get there, and I said no because 1. i didnt realize that specific thing was wrong, especially since i didnt do it and 2. i did a lot of things wrong as a kid, so i wouldnt have been sure which they had been ready to yell at me about. They started yelling at me back and forth and all I remember was just crying and they yelled at me for crying (which is kind of counterproductive).