Literature analysis 3

Civil Disobedience

TOPIC(S) and/or EVENT(S)
1)a) Civil Disobedience is Henry Thoreau's way of talking about the problems with government.  He begins it with saying the best government is a government that is rarely involved, but then states right after, that a government that isn't involved is a better one.  He believes governments are worthless because they cause more troubles to the citizens then they do help.  To stand up and stop this faulty government we have to refuse to pay for it and its good, even if the consequences are jail.  If we don't support the government with our money they won't be able to "support" us.

b) There is a day where men will be able to live peacefully by ruling themselves and not each other.

2) I believe Thoreau choose to write about corrupt government because he always disliked how corrupted society's governments had been over the years, and he believed he knew a way to surpass this corruption and bring internal peace to the people.

3) I choose to read this after reading "Into the Wild" because Chris read Thoreau among other artist and I believed Chris was an extremely wise man for his age, therefore I thought I would start reading books from authors he liked. After I began reading I couldn't stop because Thoreau's ideas made so appealed to my sense so much, I understood what he was saying.

4) I think this book was as realistic as it could get.  He was a well known author and was calling out the faults and corruption in our governments.  He uses the war between Mexico and America for some of his points on how the government puts the people in situations they don't want to be in.  I think that is still true today, since World War II, every war we have been in hasn't been supported by the general populous.  This faltering support is shown in the statistic, even though we have had the biggest military budget we haven't won a war since then because the people we attack are supported by their people.

PEOPLE
1) There isn't character in Civic Disobedience, only a narrator. Thoreau is the narrator and we only really learn about he thinks, nothing else.  He wants to see true freedom in the world, where no one controls each other, but each person controls himself or herself. Through out the scripture we see him set a tone of frustration with the government.


STYLE
1) Thoreau wrote this more as an essay, so it doesn't use tools from fiction writing, but it does use the stream of conscious approach found in the Montaigne's essays.

2) Thoreau uses action to express his thoughts and beliefs in the essay.  This makes the point come across more clear because there is less fluff and crap to fill space.

3) Thoreau references mistakes made by the government to show the tone of frustration in his writing.

4) Thoreau was very persuasive towards the readers because he wants us to side with him and fall to his beliefs of a faulty and corrupt government. He was infuriated towards the government and that is why he wrote about to them in this essay.

5) There were no other resources beside Thoreau in the essay, but I think his writing style appeals to the rebellion in everyone and keeps you reading.

ENDURING MEMORY
 like his idea of living free.  I have no interest in paying the government so they can pay for other peoples needs because I have trouble paying for my own needs.  People expect to much to be provided for them instead of providing for themselves.  I think it is very easy and possible to live with only the things you can pack on your back and a little money in the bank. I could go and travel the world for almost no money.  There are people who let you work on their farms for a bed and food, or people who will let you travel with them so they have company, and even people who open their homes to strangers.  You can live free of the government and other restrictions, you just have to be able to let go of the pleasures from intangible items and technology and find the pleasure in truly living. Even though this quote isn't from this exact essay, I feel like it goes well with the meaning I pulled from this essay, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” -Henry David Thoreau  I believe it means that people go through the motions in life never grabbing what they want deep down and it haunts them all they way to the grave, where they die with a untold story of an adventure they never experienced.

Literature Analysis 2

Into the Wild

1) a) Into The Wild is about a man leaving civilization and going on a journey to find himself in nature. He tried to live outside of the system without our so called necessities. He travels and lives for free but gives back with work and company. He shows that human kindness will get you where you want to go.

b) Attaching ourselves to unessential objects will never allow us to find our true selves.

2) My author chose to write about the journey of Chris McCandless because he was inspired by his story. How a college student gives up everything he owns and goes of on a journey across North America. He wanted to tell the story of Chris’s journey and the people he met. The story was told through people’s accounts of meeting Chris, where you learn how much of a determined, down to Earth person he was.

3)I choose this book because Terry told me about it, and I knew this was a story I would relate to because I want to go on adventures like that. Except minus the dying part. Once I began reading I couldn’t stop, I found all the stories in it so interesting and by the time I put the book down, I was almost finished with it.

  

4) I found this book extremely realistic, because its is an adventure I want to take in my life time. I felt connected to Chris because he didn’t believe he needs all the intangible items to survive and made due with the bare essentials.

PEOPLE

1)I think the author didn't create the character of Chris McCandless, but the people he met did.  The story of Chris is told through stories from other people who had the chance to meet him on his journey or his few journal entries.  Although we are only told the stories that show the better sides of Chris, I truly believe if I had the chance to meet him, he would be a genuinely nice guy that is described by the people he met.  The tone around McCandless is amazement, which makes the readers fall in disbelief of the task McCandless achieved on his own throughout his travels.

2) Chris McCandless- He was an average sized guy, not much mass on him, a lot like me. This tall and skinny man often had a shaggy beard grown out unless he was feeling the decency to clean up for something. When you meet him you feel the confidence in his stature, almost borderline arrogant, yet the twinkle of his eyes show his compassionate side. I would use indirect characterization for him.

Jon Krakauer- We never actually get a description of the author of the book, but through analysis of the reading and the stories he told I infer that he is a tall, athletically built man.  He has always had immense interest in the wild and its challenges.  He challenged himself to accomplish new things, such as being the first person to climb the Devil's Thumb.  Direct characterization would be the best way for me to show him to the readers because he is such a small character.

Russel Fritz- A old man, who is still fit and acts as if he was young.  He is ex-military and lost his family to a drunk driver.  He acts like a hard ass who has everything he wants, but when he meets Chris his life changes. He leaves his home and travels and becomes a different person who goes out to seek adventure and enjoy life. I would use indirect characterization so as he changes it is more an emotional feeling for the readers than if it was direct.

3) I think these people are so interesting because they all have a sense of adventure and want to see the world.  They face challenges for the thrill and excitement they get out of it.  They try to find the deeper meaning in life and avoid stopping where others tell them to.

STYLE

1) He used a journalistic approach to tell the story of Chris. The entire book is split up into accounts from other people about their time with Chris, Chris's journal entries, and Krakauer's journal entries and stories.

2) Krakauer uses little description about places or people and sticks mainly to what happens there and between Chris and the other characters.  The few times he goes deeper in description are when he talks about his journeys. This gives you a more emotional connection to the characters because you get to make up what they look like and are not stuck with a specific image

3)Krakauer uses accounts from people to set the tone of adventure and freedom.

4) His attitude towards Chris's journey was pure amazement.  He finds the fact the Chris was able to accomplish so much with such little experience amazing. He kayaked the Colorado River and Gulf of California, backpacked around the United States, survived through an Alaskan winter in the wild, and touched many people's lives.

5)The story relies heavily on interviews from people who met Chris on his travels.  I think this increases the reader's interest in the story because they get multiple perspectives on Chris and it show's how Chris was determined to go into the wild.

ENDURING MEMORY

This story will leave the idea that all we need in life is inner peace and happiness through living and not intangible objects that give us false happiness.  His journey gives you the deeper understanding of true kindness and how beautiful nature can be.  As I want to go on a similar journey as him to search the world for the answers to my deepest questions, I will use this story as a blueprint of my journey of delving into inner peace and happiness.  As Chris carried around Jack London and Thoreau, I will carry Into the Wild.


At the end of the book, Krakauer talks about Chris's final journals, where he is dying.  As Chris is going through immense pain and suffering and he knows he is not going to be found in time to be saved, he is happy.  Most people would regret what their decision to go out into the wild, but Chris found everything he was looking for and although he didn't want to die, he had all the answer in life he needed before he died.

Intro to Poetry

Summons
by Robert Francis

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.

What is the significance of the title?

I think the title is referring to the meaning of summoning as in witchcraft, where they summon the dead to life, because he is asking for some one to come while he is trying to sleep.  I think going to sleep in this poem means wasting  time and waiting the days for death to come, so he is asking to be summoned from this so called death bed to live and see things on the living see, while the people in their deathbeds miss out.

What is the tone of the poem?

The tone of the poem is adventurous, he doesn't want to sit back and do nothing.  He wants you to come get  him out of boring and pull him to adventure.  He wants to see things he's never seen, feel things he's never felt, be something he's never been, but he is waiting for you to come and convince him to.

What is your mood as you read it?

As I read the poem I feel a sudden urge to go out and stay under the stars with friends, sleep in a little makeshift tent, sit around a campfire, talk about things that you never speak of anymore, and live.

Is there a Shift?  Where?  From what to what?

I think the poem shifts from statements and remarks about what he wants, but in the last line it shifts to a call of action from you by him asking you to persuade him to go out with you.

What is the theme of the poem?

I believe the theme of the poem is to go out and live life, don't waste any precious moments.

Hamlet Quote Essay

"To thine own self, be true" - Polonius

This quote was said directly to Laertes by his father Polonius in Act I, but it relates to more then one character.  It means to be yourself and to follow your own moral compass.  Laertes throughout the play follows his morals of protecting his family.   Although Hamlet is never told this directly it is an inner struggle he deals with through out the entire play. They both stick true to their morals until the very end of the lives.

Laertes was always protective of his family whether it was when he was telling his sister to protect herself from Hamlet, or showing up to the court sword drawn to avenge his father, Laertes kept his morals through all of the trouble he saw as his family died one by one.  As he himself was dieing, he forgave Hamlet, because he found out Hamlet had no intentions to ever hurt Laertes family, which is very ironic as he stabbed both Laertes and Polonius, and sent Ophelia insane after the murder of her father. Yet Laertes morals stood strong through his dying moments he made peace with Hamlet.

Hamlet faces the choices of ignoring all the problems revolving around him or stay to his plan to avenge his father's death and kill King Claudius. He knows what he must do and constant reverts back to questioning if he can truly do this if it is truly him to kill a man. You see this in his main To Be or Not to Be soliloquy.  It after outside forces push on you is when you see what you are made of and that is when Hamlet found himself, he grew the courage to act upon his morals and not entirely on purpose killed the corrupted court officials, like Polonius and Claudius.

Being yourself and sticking to your morals are very valuable traits to find in a person nowadays.  Even though you may be thought to be doing the wrong thing, in the end if you are doing it with the right intentions people will also see it and that is when the light is shown, you come out a good person in the end.