Jane Eyre

                Similar to Wuthering Heights, I enjoyed Jane Eyre.  While Jane Eyre is not something I would have picked off a shelf at a bookstore, I was pleasantly surprised by the Charlotte Bronte’s novel.

                The plot was simple, and easy enough to understand.  The novel also gives the reader a taste of what life was like in the past.  While Jane isn’t as strong of a character that I would normally like, I enjoyed watching Jane grow throughout the novel.  Jane tries to follow social conventions throughout the novel, but there are times when she stands up for what she believes in.  As Jane said in the novel, “I would rather be happy than dignified” (Bronte 550).  I was glad when Jane refused to marry St. John even though he kept asking for her hand.  In a way, I think that Jane knew that she would eventually return to Rochester and marry him.  However, I think that she needed time to sort herself out before returning to Rochester.  After Rochester’s wife Bertha was revealed to Jane, she refused to marry him.  This showed that Jane had some respect for the woman that Rochester was married to and she has respect for herself.  I think that it will be interesting to read about Bertha’s backstory in Wide Sargasso Sea.

                Rochester was an interesting character.  He was mysterious from the first time he was introduced to the readers.  Once on piece of the puzzle is found, the reader’s left asking more questions because more secrets and mysteries surround the man.  The reader could never find enough information about the man until the very end when everything comes full circle.

                Lowood School is portrayed by Bronte to be a horrible place that, to me, seems like the closest thing to juvenile prison (and you don’t even have to commit a crime in order to go).  The conditions were absolutely appalling.  I don’t care if Mr. Brocklehurst doesn’t care about the girls that attend Lowood, he shouldn’t have at least made the conditions livable.  Brocklehurst was absolutely no help when many of the girls fell ill.  I think that the school should have been closed down after Helen died, but at least Mr. Brocklehurst was forced to leave and the school came under new management.  If he admired “consistency in all things” (Bronte 47), then he should have had a doctor at the school to ensure that all of the girls wouldn’t fall ill.

                All in all, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the book.  Bronte wrote the novel in a way so that it could easily be understood and not have a translation on the opposite page (no offense Shakespeare).

Paradise Lost

From the beginning of Paradise Lost, Milton declares that the poem is about the first disobedience toward God by humankind.  The poem also goes into the consequences of the disobedience.  The poem opens when Adam and Eve are eating the forbidden fruit and have disobeyed God.  Once the ball starts rolling, the poem starts to get interesting.

            The battle between God and Satan is what drew my attention the most.  The poem focuses more on Satan rather than God, which I find to be an interesting twist.  Having Satan as the main focus gives the reader the impression that he’s the hero, or at least an antihero.  The antagonist being discussed is the thing that influenced Adam and Eve so easily.  In the first book, Milton sets up Satan’s character as a surprisingly appealing character.  I admire that he refuses to back down.  His refusal gives Satan the appearance of the war heroes from the old epics.  I find it interesting that the main character isn’t following the same hero’s journey.  In many stories, the protagonist is trying to save the world, while balancing everything else that life decides to throw at them.  It’s always interesting to see a story through the eyes of the antagonist, or someone who is viewed as the antagonist.

Ariel's Song

“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark.
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell.”

                This is the song that Ariel sings to Ferdinand in order to take Ferdinand to Prospero.  While the first stanza doesn’t have much meaning, the second stanza holds meaning for Ferdinand.  Ariel tells Ferdinand that his father is changing.  Although, Ariel could also be trying to tell Ferdinand and the readers that his father will be turning into the sea eventually.

Throughout the song, various rhyme schemes are used.  In the first stanza, the rhyme pattern is “aabbccdedeffg.”  While all of these are end rhymes,  not all of them are identical rhymes.  Many of these are slant rhymes, such as “hear” and “chanticleer.” 

In the second stanza, the rhyme pattern is “ababccded.”  Similar to the first stanza, the second stanza’s rhymes are end rhymes.  The second stanza also has alliteration.  For example, the line “Full fathom five thy father lies” is the line that I found to have the most alliteration.  The “s” sounds are also present throughout the passage, giving a hissing quality to the passage (sibilance).  The alliteration gives the lines a song-like quality to them.  I would like to see if the song is a form of foreshadowing that will come into play later in the play.

Bressler's Chapter 5

Brave New World is filled with opposites, and after reading chapter five in Bressler's Literary Criticism I started to realize it more.

The Castes in Brave New World are the major opposites in the novel.  The Alphas are opposite to the Epsilons.  Wile the Alphas were given the best conditions while they were being created, the Epsilons were given the worst conditions.  The Epsilons were treated with alcohol and other factors that made them smaller and less intelligent than the Alphas.  However, I think that it would make more sense if the Epsilons we bigger than the Alphas because they have to do the labor for the society.

The Betas and the Deltas are the same way.  The Betas are not as smart as Alphas, but they are still one of the higher castes.  Similarly, while the Deltas are more intelligent than the Epsilons, they are still one of the lower castes in the society.  The Deltas, however, are in between the Betas and Deltas, so they might not be as smart as the Betas, but they're more intelligent than the Deltas.

Brave New World Revisited

I have to be honest.  I've never really liked non-fiction books.  They've just never caught my interest before.  However, Brave New World Revisited interested me, mainly the chapter titled "Quantity, Quality, Morality."

While in Brave New World, the society can pair biologically superior or biologically inferior ova and sperm to create citizens that fit the requirements for each caste.  While there are other factors when creating these people (the Bokanovsky Process, alcohol, protein poisons, etc.), it ensures that the people are to the society's standards.  As Aldous Huxley said, "in our random and unregulated way we are not only over-populating our planet, we are also, it would seem, making sure that these greater numbers shall be of biologically poorer quality."

While in today's society, we can help people born with certain illnesses or defects, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be more careful.  It seems like, everywhere you turn, more and more women are having babies, whether these children were planned or not.  These women have no idea if their children are going to have any birth defects or illnesses.  The only thing that these people can do is hope that their child will be born healthy, if the doctors cannot catch the defect before the child's born.

However, not all of these new lives can be cared for properly.  Some cannot be fed, clothed, or housed properly.  It's sad to think about, since we are fed, clothed, and housed properly.  To think of children, and even people our own age, that can't have basic necessities is almost unthinkable.

Brave New World

My reaction to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was actually somewhat similar to my reaction to Feed.  It felt like a huge wakeup call.  It felt like a mixture of Feed and the aspects from Consumed, both of which the AP Lang class had to read.  The World Controllers control what goes on in their section of the world (though in Feed, I don’t think that there are Feed Controllers or at least ones that stand out) and the infantilization of adults was something that Benjamin R. Barber discussed in his book.

I found the way that they make the people slightly disturbing.  The fact that they are willing and able to split an embryo into 96 human beings is disturbing, though that could be because today’s society probably wouldn’t do that.  I couldn’t imagine if there 95 other people that look like me.  I also find the idea of words such as “mother” and “father” viewed as pornographic or bad words.  It just seems so absurd in this time that it seems unreal.

I think that a world like this one could be a good or a bad thing.  On one hand, the World Controllers make sure that everyone is happy with their place in society and that nothing bad happens.  On the other hand, no one can experience hard times in life that make us better people.  The society also shapes the people in the molds that the World Controllers have set for the people.  These people never have the chance to choose what they want out of life.

Despite the disturbing and crazy parts of the society in Brave New World, I found it a very eye-opening book.

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

I have to say, I really enjoyed "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. O'Connor uses something as normal as a family road trip to Florida and turn the entire story upside down.

In the beginning, the characters seemed, to me, a little plain. It wasn't until the family was on their way to the old plantation that I actually started to like the characters.  They started to feel more familiar as I started to see similarities between the family in the story and a normal family.

I felt that the story started to get interesting after the family stopped at the old diner. After hearing about the escaped convict known as "the Misfit," I knew that he was going to make an appearance at some point in the story.  I car wreck was something that I honestly wasn’t expecting.  However, the appearance of the Misfit was expected.  I did not, however, expect him to kill everyone in the family.  I actually felt bad for the family.  Though this might be because of the connection I felt between the family with, surprisingly, my own (to a point anyway).  I guess the title says it all:  a good man is hard to find.  All in all, I enjoyed the short story.  It was a nice piece that was a quick read.