"Allegory of the Cave" Sonnet

When we see, what do we really see?
Is it all real or just make believe?
There's a fine line between the truth and reality
But our mind only lets us see partially.
We are trapped inside the "cave" of our minds unable to see past the dark.
We are prisoners within ourselves unable to see even a spark.
How we crave to imagine the full picture of what's real
Yet, our eyes deceive our minds and make us believe the unreal.
We ourselves are the creators of our world.
If we only see what we want, we only see a swirl.
A swirl of this vast wonderful place,
where the truth and reality are what we have to face.

Can you really stop companies from tracking you?

So we've been talking about filter bubbles and such in class and when I saw this article on my Yahoo, it looked like something good to share with y'all. We all think we are doomed when it comes to concealing our privacy on the internet but this article says otherwise. So here it is. Hope you find it interesting. :)

Literature Analysis #3: Wuthering Heights

GENERAL:
1. We learn that the story of Catherine and Heathcliff is told through the housekeeper of the Wuthering Heights esate. As young children, Catherine and her brother have to welcome in their newly adopted brother, Heathcliff. He soon takes up the job of their stableboy. Catherine grows extremely close with Heathcliff but her brother keeps him at an icy distance. As they grow older, Catherine and Heathcliff begin a romantic relationship, but soon Catherine decides she cannot marry Heathcliff because of his temper and attitude. Heathcliff overhears and leaves the estate without saying anything to anyone. Catherine soon enough marries Edgar Linton and lives with him. All is well until Heathcliff returns and starts to have a love affair with another younger girl. Catherine is outraged and starts to get sick while learning she is pregnant. She dies in childbirth and Heathcliff takes Cathy(her daughter) in and raises her. Isabella soon dies as well as Heathcliff.
2. When Heathcliff cannot have the woman he loves, he turns his attention to revenging his childhood tormenter, his adoptive brother Hindley. Because Hindley never lost an opportunity to demean Heathcliff, the "gypsy" grows up determined to destroy Hindley and become master of the two houses. The fact that Hindley already has a tendency to drink and gamble to excess makes Heathcliff's vengeance all the easier. Without this desire for revenge, Heathcliff would have had nothing to do but pine after Catherine, so revenge becomes a major motivator for his character. On paper, he succeeds in his revenge: thwarting property and inheritance laws, he manages to become owner of the two houses. But by his own admission, revenge loses its thrill in the end.
3. The attitudes of our narrators help shape the tone as the drama unfolds, so that Lockwood's initial curiosity and fascination convey a lighter feeling than after he realizes how sinister Heathcliff is. Whenever Heathcliff is around, the tone tends to grows darker. Likewise, you can tell Nelly Dean really enjoys storytelling, so she tries to sustain a tone of suspense and mystery – that way she keeps Lockwood's, and by extension the reader's, attention. This is what keeps Lockwood up late and what keeps us reading.
4. Symbolism: The old beaten down furniture is a symbol for the dark setting.
Imagery: The dark and stormy setting is an image for the dark tone and evil theme of the story.
Irony: It's ironic how Catherine marries Edgar for his money and status when she has feelings for Heathcliff before and now he has aquired lots of money.
Dialect: The speech of every character is rigid and dark just like the whole setting and story.
Frame story: This story the reader is reading has another story within it as the housekeeper is telling it.
Setting: Setting is very dark which describes the theme of revenge and is evil.

CHARACTERIZATION:
1. Direct: When the narrator first speaks of Heathcliff, she describes exactly how he is and how she feels about him; When the younger Catherine is explaining how much she loathes living with Heathcliff.
Indirect: Catherine is explaining to another character how she feels about Heathcliff and how she cannot marry him; The housekeeper describes the whole story and every character through her words to the traveller.
2. When talking of Heathcliff, the author's diction and syntax is evil and hard. When speaking of Catherine(both younger and older), the author's diction and syntax is sweet and sort of naive in a way.
3. The protagonist is definitely dynamic. At the beginning as a child, Catherine is in love with Heathcliff and only sees him as perfect. As she grows older, she becomes a lot more wise and actually sees Heathcliff for who he is.
4. I felt the complete hatred towards Heathcliff by the end, yet, I also felt sorry for him. Although he did some pretty mean and hateful things, he also did lose the love of his life-his "soul". After Catherine's death, his inner core was wripped out of him. Even though he was so easy to hate by the end of the book, deep down I felt the deepest hurt for him.

Vocabulary #11

1.Affinity- relationship by marriage
"After researching her family history, she discovered there is no affinity between her and her cousin."

 

2.Bilious- of or indicative of a peevish ill nature disposition

"Her bilious attack made her look almost pathetic."

 

3.Cognate- of the same nature
"The twins were cognate to each other."

 

4.Corollary- A proposition inferred immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof
"His corollary proved the point of the other man's story."

 

5.Cul-de-sac - a pouch
"My friend lives around the cul-de-sac."

 

6.Derring-do- a daring action
"The woman's derring-do saved many people and made her the town hero."

 

7.Divination- The art or practice that seeks to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge due

to the interpretation of omens
"Her divination made it possible for her to know what is going to happen next."

 

8.Elixir- A substance capable of prolonging life indefinitely
"The elixir in the fountain made people from all over seek to find it's magnificient powers."

 

9.Folderol- a useless accessory
"Her tons of jewelry are but a bunch of folderols."

 

10.Gamut- an entire range or series
"The gamut of the obstacle course is about 10 miles long."

 

11.Hoi polloi- the general populace
"The hoi-polloi is of African decent."

 

12.Ineffable- incapable of being expressed in words
"My feelings for him are so intense they are practically ineffable."

 

13.Lucubration- to study by night
"Once you attend college, it seems the only studying you get is of lucubration."

 

14.Mnemonic- intended to assist memory
"The mnemonic drugs were needed to access the woman's thoughts she forgot."

 

15.Obloquy- abusive language
"I tend to use a lot of obloquy when I am angry with something or someone."

 

16.Parameter- an independent variable used to express the coordinates of variable point and functions of them
"The parametic equations are always hard because you have to figure out what 'this is for that'."

 

17.Pundit- a learned man
"The man is a pundit for he went to school and got an education."

 

18.Risible- provoking laughter
"Her risible is what made the man fall for her so fast."

 

19.Symptomatic- having the characteristics of a certain disease but arising of a different cause
"The symptomatic disease not only tricked the patient but the doctors as well."

 

20.Volte-face- a reversal in policy

"The volte-face was put in order due to the fact that no one was abiding by the rules."

"To be or not to be..." in Song (by Courtney Welbon)

So I was on Youtube looking up simple readings of the "To be or not to be" speech from Hamlet, and it this was like the second video on the suggested videos. It's actually pretty cool. Very catchy! :)
So here it is!

P.S. Sorry I didn't actually put the video up. I thought the URL would be easier.

Literature Analysis #2: Cold Mountain

GENERAL
1. Cold Mountain describes a young man's jouney back to his true love during the Civil War. Falling for each other before he had to leave, Inman and Ada's relationship was in the peak of just beginning to bloom. But wanted to fight in the war, Inman found himself soon saying goodbye to his love and promising he would be back soon. Time passes and Ada is left trying to revive her father's farm by herself. After hiring some help, and building a new friendship, Ada finds herself still wandering if Inman will come back to her. The immense amount of time being seperated from each other tears Ada and Inman apart from deep inside them. A few months into the war, Inman is wounded and stranded by his own body. This starts his journey, wounded and barely able to walk, back to Cold Mountain where his heart is waiting for him. He finally returns to his love and reunites with her. But only a little while later, Inman is shot by a horseman, leaving Ada alone forever. She is devasted, but by the end of the book, realizes the hardships she has gone through are the ones that make her strong and able to take care of herself now.
2. The theme of this book is definitely that time is hard thing at times, but can also be the one thing that makes change possible. The book decribes how not only does time change these characters but it also changes the culture and land of the time back then.
3. The author's tone is very sincere and heartfelt. His words are soothing to the ear. "He wished to live a life where little interest could be found in one gang of despots launching attacks upon another." "The world was such an incredibly lonely place, and to lie down beside him, skin to skin, seemed the only cure." "But for a while that night, it was a place that held within its walls no pain nor even a vague memory collection of pain."
4. Imagery: "The view was a long one for the flatlands, the hospital having been built on the only swell within eyeshot." Metaphors: The scenery and the endless mountain lines are metaphors of the long journey and hardships both Inman and Ada had to go through to find one another. Similies: "The window was as tall as a door..." Foreshadowing: Inman escaping the Home Guard team only to be shot later. Also, the appearnce of the crow Ada sees is a depiction of death. Symbolism: The crow symbolizing death; the forks in the roads and crossing symbolizing different options for Ada and Inman and Inman's journey

CHARACTERIZATION
1. Direct: When Inman is thinking and talking about how Ada looks to him and how beautiful she is; Inman's depiction of the old man who doesn't talk
Indirect: When Ruby says that Inman's fever is back up she is saying that he's getting worse; When Ada and Ruby are talking about Inman they decribe how he looks and how sick he is.
The author uses both of these to decribe characters by exact desciption using mostly direct characterization because he wants to let the readers know exactly how someone is and what they look like rather than through someone else.
2. The author's diction and syntax definitely changes as he changes from character to character because the book is written in two people's different views. When the author is focused on Inman, the diction and syntax are more strong and brute. Unlike when focused on Ada, it's more sweet and womenlike, yet also strong at the same time.
3. There are actually two protagonists in this book and I would say they are definitely both dynamic for they change throughout the whole story. At the beginning they are both sad, lonely, and depressed characters. Mostly just missing each other and wanting to get back to one another. By the end of the story, Inman has travelled on a long journey and it has shaped him into this even stronger man than before. Ada is faced with Inman's death and the depression could overtake her like before, but instead it makes her even stronger and she can now take care of herself.
4. After reading this book, I came away feeling I had just been a direct witness to these people's whole lives. All the decriptions and feelings piled high up on me really sucked me into the book and definitely made me apart of their own world. At the very end of the book, Ada has just gone through hell and come out a survivor. I felt like I had just gone through all of her troubles as well as her special moments with her. She decribes her life now after Inman dies as loving and full, yet there will always be a part of her that is still with Inman, but she can now live life the way she always wanted to when she was waiting for him to come back to her. I felt like we had gone through the same thing, and maybe I even felt I was her and I had been the one who went through this heartbreaking but magnificient part of my life.

The Tools That Change the Way We Think

I feel like now that technology/media/internet are "taking over the world", it has become such a great friend to us, but can aslo subdue us into changing the way we think and, eventually, the way we act. It definitely changes the way we think based on the fact that we no longer feel like we are hopeless in finding something out that we don't know or understand. We now think that technology and the internet give us a feeling of knowledge even if we don't actually know anything. If I don't know something or can't figure something out, what do I do? Simple. Google. The easy access to information I don't know gives me a feeling of wisdom. I know it may sound ridiculously stupid, but it's true. We feel powerful to have all the information in of the world at the touch of a button or just a click of the mouse. We now feel like we aren't in the dark about things. Media is a great example that sheds light on things we don't know or want to find out. In just a simple clip of a video on the news, we can find out all we needed to know. We have changed the way we look at information as well as our own knowledge. We feel powerful.