Alissa's Blog

Realism Across the World (625-630) Due to empires expanding and new methods of transportation and communication, the world grew closer together in the 19th century (625) Literary movements were able to spread fast Charles Baudelaire in Paris, had an impact in  Nicaragua and Japan Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had an impact on Germany Thomas Hardy had an impact in Britain One of the most influential movement in the 19th century was realism It began in Britain and France and spread worldwide (625) In example, Higuchi Ichiyo, published fiction at the end of the 19th century and departed from Japanese literary conventions  She focused on poor characters in the city as they struggled to make choices "She added colloquial speech and lively dialogue that sounded more natural than the speech of traditional literary characters" (626) Realist writers around the world share crucial aims and characteristics meaning they told the unvarnished truth about the world The revolutiona...

The week before spring break is always tough... but this week definitely tired me out. As I mentioned before, I am taking 5 classes this semester and since this is the week before spring break, you can imagine all of the exams and projects and essays I had to do. I also had jury duty this week so that definitely took up two days out of my week. I also have been working early morning shifts so that has been sucky too. This week was hell but I'm proud to say I got every single assignment done. Even if that means I was up until 2am doing assignments. I also have Saturday school for my Political Science 010 class and I had a group presentation due yesterday and I could not be more than happy to have that over with. I don't really mind speaking in front of people but the work for it was a lot. I'm also proud that I got my weekly readings, analysis, blog comments, and project plan all done for this class this week. I didn't miss a single assignment this week so I'm pretty...

Compare and contrast elements of two different texts. For my project plan, I'm thinking about writing about the comparison and contrasting themes from two different texts. The texts I think I'll use is Ghalib's poems "Now Go and Live in a Place" and "It was Essential" and Dickinson's poem 449 "I Died for Beauty." All three poems have the same theme which is based on death, but they speak about death in a different context. Ghalib's Now Go and Live in a Place  & It Was Essential - Ghalib talks about death on the fourth line of the poem about "no watchman to keep you safe," I think he meant he was wishing for death, which is coincidentally the same wish he wished for in the last line of his poem "It was essential." In that poem he says, "It's my destiny to continue to wish for death for a few more days" (598). These two poems compare in a similar way because Ghalib seems to be wishing for death as...

My progress is improving from where I was at a couple weeks ago. I had missed a whole week of assignments because I had stuff going on but I'm definitely on a better track now. If I just keep on completing my assignments on time and do some of the extra credit here and there, then I should be okay. The class assignments I enjoy most are the reading notes because the reading can be very interesting sometimes. I've done more than a few extra credit assignments up  until now and I plan on to continue doing them to improve my grade.  For the second half of the semester, I'll participate in conversations more and catching up with the classmates I've left blog comments on. Mistakes I'll be avoiding is thinking missing one assignment won't hurt my grade because then I'll keep letting assignments slide. Next thing you know I'll be missing a whole bunch of assignments and that's something I definitely don't want to happen, so I'll for sure avoid that...

Close Reading of Ghalib's poem, "Now go and live in a place" (591) Although this poem is a short one and only has a total of 6 lines. Lines 1-4 stand out to me because of the harsh comments he makes. He says, "Now go and live in a place where no one lives- and no one who fathoms your verse, no one who shares your speech. Build yourself a house, as if without a wall or gate- no neighbor to keep you company, no watchman to keep you safe." We don't know who exactly Ghalib is talking to or about, but it sounds like he doesn't want this person to have a good and sharing life. He wants this person to suffer alone and isolate themselves from the world and isolate themselves from any human contact. In my opinion, I think the poem was meant to be about himself to escape his problems. Because of Ghalib's terrible events that happened in his life, he was severed from human contact. If Ghalib were able to isolate himself from the world, he wouldn...

Ghalib (587-601) "Ghalib is probably the most frequently quoted poet of the 19th and 20th centuries in India and Pakistan" (587) His popularity only grown since his death nearly one and a half centuries ago He wrote haunting love poems in a style that still seems contemporary  His words and emotions attract young and old lovers everywhere He's a descendant of Turkish military settlers in north India  In 1822, Ghalib stopped writing verse in Urdu and switched to Persian as his only poetic medium (587) Much of his adult life was bitter disappointments  1827 through 1830- he tried in vain to to secure a British pension in Calcutta 1842- he failed to get a position as Persian instructor at Delhi College 1847- he was arrested for gambling in his home and imprisoned for 3 months Ghalib's value as a poet also rests on his larger cultural position (590) He was one of the last figures on a seven-century tradition of Persian writing in India [Now go and live ...

At the Crossroads of Empire: Vietnam, China, India (537-546) Emperors need to persuade their own subjects to value the mission of empire Rulers depend in part on on the use of words, on rousing rhetoric to gain broad support in order to conquest (537) Because of the need of persuasion, writes play a crucial part in the making and keeping of empires New imperial administrators disrupt long-standing ways of life with imported rules They exploit local resources including the people and they assert the superiority of the conquering state (insisting on wiping away values and traditions they see as backward or primitive in favor of their own ways of life) (538) The occupied people felt outraged where violence and rebellion rose against the foreign invaders This support is easy enough to rouse at the beginning, but it can get difficult if the conquered people begin to believe that the conquering power is too strong or too advanced to unseat Writers in South and East Asia in the 19th...

1 of 3: Think about a theme you see running in your life and choose a reading that discusses this reading. This topic would be great to do because it forces you to relate to the reading and that's the best way to understand and fully grasp the concept of a reading. For example, I am currently struggling with stuff in my life just like anybody else in the world and I'm not fully sure how to deal with it so maybe I will come across a story that has the same theme going on. You get to explore the connections between the two and that sounds like a fun and tricky topic to do. 2 of 3: Compare and contrast elements of two different texts. This topic sounds hard but if I compare and contrast a character from two different readings then it might be a little simpler. Or if I can't find a character to compare and contrast to then I can compare and contrast a theme. 3 of 3: Pick a subject: love, work, freedom, etc. Then choose two selections and discuss how that subject is discus...

The reading and writing assignments aren't too bad. Sometimes the readings can be a bit difficult and I have no idea what I just read but then I read other people's blog post to get an idea. My favorite reading so far is between Moliere: Tartuffe and The Song of Ch'un-Hyang. It's pretty funny because both readings are from week 3. I guess you can say I enjoyed that week's reading the most. The reading notes do help for the analysis because I can pull up my notes and re-read it in case I forgot something. I haven't discovered any new reading/writing strategies. I like to stick to my plain bulletin notes because it helps me focus and keep my notes organized. I've been taking my notes like that for a long time and I just learn better that way. My biggest accomplishment in this class so far is taking the time to do the reading on my spare time. I've missed a few assignments because I'm just so busy with work and other classes that I forget sometimes but ...

Percy Bysshe Shelley (395-401)  Only small portions of Shelley's work found its way to publication in his lifetime He reported having escaped several attempts at assassination (395) "a beautiful ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain," as the poet and critic Matthew Arnold put it in 1888 (395) Shelley's work is still considered controversy For some, he is looked at as the "fiery radical who bravely flouted convention and inspired generations of revolutionary thinkers" and as a "self-serving egoist who destroyed the lives of women he loved" Others viewed him as a "philosophical poet-aristocrat who crafted beautiful and dreamy poetic reconciliations of humans with their world" (395) Shelley came from a wealthy and aristocratic English family His father was a member of the Parliament who held to a strict standard of respectability In 1811 (after only 5 months at Oxford University), Shelley published a pa...

Emily Dickinson (480-490) With the unlikely combination of innocence and sophistication that Dickinson mysteriously become one of the best-known American poets (481) Some of her works reflected the pain of "unrequited love and erotic desire" No scholar has been able to determine the name of the one-or ones-she loved In the 1850's, she began to write about serious issues of the day like from slavery and women's rights to the violence of the Civil War Shakespeare, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, and Charlotte Bronte were her foremost inspirations (481) After her death, her sister, Lavinia, discovered almost 2,000 poems stashed away in a box Dickinson's use of punctuation  was most striking because of her dramatic dashes and the manuscripts suggest that they are even more innovative than they look on the printed page (482) She also often capitalizes the nouns she uses in her poems to carry out the deeper meaning or significance of t...

Weekly Review Where do I even begin? This week and the past couple of weeks have been so tough. I am currently taking five classes, including this one, and it is only getting more overwhelming for me. I have so much homework due every single day and it is quite hard to complete everything on time when I work almost full time. I barely have time to do anything at the moment and it's very frustrating. I've been falling a little behind in some of my classes because I forget things are due or I just simply don't have the time to do them. Especially since this is my last semester at LMC, since I'm transferring next semester, I have to pass all of my classes. I cannot fall behind and I refuse to fall behind. I'm just going to have to try and set my time strategies in because things are not really working out in my favor right now.  My plans for next week and my other classes is to get my work done on the days I have off from work. I either get one or two days out of th...

Melville: Bartleby The Scrivener (293-325) - Literary Analysis Bartleby at first came across as little to no character. He at first seemed to be an amazing worker for the lawyer at Wall Street. He would write all day and night, unlike the other workers who also worked for the lawyer. Bartleby's character seemed very mellow to me. He was good at what he does, but gently refused to do certain work when asked. The lawyer had some documents that needed examining and had asked Bartleby if he can be the one to examine them. Bartleby's response was, "I would prefer not to" (305). The lawyer was amazed on how calmly Bartleby rejected his request that he couldn't even be angry about it or bring himself to scold at him to do the job. He says, "With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but i...

Dessalines: Liberty or Death (36-39) Saint-Dominge was the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola It was the jewel of the French empire in the 18th century sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton were fertile sources because of the 500,000 slaves that produced these wealth for France (36) the people of Saint-Dominge debated topics like natural rights, freedom, and equality  the colony's freed blacks, white plantation owners, and the poorer white pop. began to fight among themselves over poverty and privilege the slaves rised against oppression, causing a rebellion the slaves launched a war that would last up to more than a decade under the leader , Toussaint L'Ouverture Toussaint L'Ouverture joined the French Republic and defeated the British and the Spanish (36) second-in-command, Jean-Jaques Dessalines, took charge of the revolution He successfully defeated troops in 1803 and "proclaimed a new nation, which he called Haiti" and had himself ...