Week 13

Questions.
1.) The concept of childhood is central in many poems. Using specific examples, discuss the theme of childhood in any two poems studied this term.

2.) Identify and discuss the passage below, showing its relationship to the story as a whole, its revelation of character, and its thematic significance.

The girl looked across the hills.
"They're lovely hills," she said. "They dont really look like white elephants. I just ment the coloring of their skin through the trees."

Answers.
1.) Theodore Roethe's "My Papa's Waltz" and Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" boths have a central theme of childhood. My Papa's Waltz is a poem that reflects on a childhood memory of a father and son relationship. We Real cool is a poem about the struggleing changes faced when leaving childhood and entering adolecance. It is evidant that the central theme is childhood in both of these poems because both demonstrate how a good childhood is the best thing that can promise a bright future. However the children in these two poems had a questional childhood and now have stuggles in their lives. The past tence verbs in My Papa's Waltz show that the persona is refecting on a childhood memory they cannot escape; and the rebelious childhood of the characters in We Real Cool demonstrate not only does a bad childhood bring life long stuggles, but it can take lives as well.

2.) This passage is very thematically significant to "Hills like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway. The speaker of this passage is Jig, one of the two main characters in this story. White elephants are considered bad unwanted objects in many cultures, this passage is when Jig changes her mind about the hills being like white elephants and is directly linked to how she feels about being pregnant. This passage is very signifigant to the theme because this is when it hits Jig that having a child is not a diability nor a sickness but rather a "lovely" thing. This passage is also very revelent to the characters deveopment because it demonstrates when Jig starts to take decisions into her own hands. This is when Jig puts her foot down and pervents her American boyfriend from takeing control of the situation and negitively effecting her thoughts about pregnancy because of his own selfishness.

Week 12

1.) ATTENTION:DUCKS DEMAND MORE CROSSINGS
2.) CANADIAN PARENTS ARGUE: TOO MANY SNOW DAYS
3.) PUBLIC VS. AIRPORT
4.) INDOOR CATS AGREE: NOT FAT ENOUGH
5.) MOOSE COMPLAIN: TOO MANY HIGHWAYS

Week 11

1.) The plain wooden desk was a solid build. White sloppy papers covered almost every surface as if it had never been organized. The intoxicating sent of coffee still brewed in the stale dry office air. The rain pitter pattered on the cold dark window but the air inside the building was very still. The aggravating sound of the cheap plastic analog clock ticking on the wall made time seem to pass extremely and overwhelmingly slow. The background noise was dominated by the noisy traffic racing down the adjacent busy road and the seemingly never ending ring from a telephone a few desks down. It was nearing five o'clock on a dull November Friday and only a few cars remained in the empty wet parking lot.

2.) The desk at the reception was cluttered. Nobody ever seemed to want to organize it. The commotion from the usual office afternoon had dimmed to a dull buzzing. It wasn't very nice outside, just drizzle and fog. It was nearing December so the daylight was beginning to disappear quicker, making the job just that much more boring. There was only a few cars left in the parking lot, people seem to scatter like ants after the last meeting on Fridays. There was a constant sound of traffic from a busy road nearby and the clock was constantly ticking. There was a few other desks in eyesight distance from the reception chair, however they were all empty, leaving an unbearable silence in the air.

3.)The desk at reception always seemed to be cluttered. Its surface was covered with everything from coffee stained folders to fed ex bubble wrap packaging. The rain fell hard from the sky upon the dark black ash fault outside the office but the air inside was kept dry and irritably warm this time of year. The sound of telephones ringing had fallen from a loud roar to a dull buzzing and the printer finally toke a break. The daytime stress and the coffee breath stench evacuated the building with the majority of the employees. It was nearing five o'clock and everybody likes to leave early on Fridays, after all, it is a rock n' roll radio station.

Week 9

1.) Creative option.

Once upon a time there was a young boy named Jonathan. He went to Mary’s town Junior high school and attended Mrs. Clarke’s grade eight English class. It was just days before Halloween and Mrs. Clarke was allowing her students to decorate their classroom with spooky decorations. All this talk about the Halloween season between Jonathan and his classmates was making him very excited to dress up for trick or treating. Suddenly the bell rang and all the kids scattered, flooding the hallways.

Halloween evening rolled around quickly and Jonathan was all dressed up in his goblin costume. Him and his friends Markus and Jack decided to have matching costumes which they planned to scare the younger kids with. It was a misty night, not wet enough to make Jonathan and his friends abandon trick or treating, but just wet enough to dampen the soles of their hidden sneakers. Firstly the boys ran down Crescent Street with their capes and empty pillow cases flapping behind them. In previous years this street had always given out the best candy so they had high hopes in filling their pillow cases fast enough to squeeze in a second trip.

Half way down the street the boys approached a dark house with no decorations, jack decided it was best to skip that house because it didn’t seem like anyone was home. As the boys rudely ran over the abandoned houses wet grass Jonathan caught a glimpse of something with his eye. As he approached it he realized it was a young boy on the ground! Jonathan frantically called Jack and Markus over and without question Markus whipped out his beat up cell phone to call 911. Through all the panic and ambulance lights it seemed like the young boy was gone instantly. Jonathan and his friends being so shook up about the emergency just decided to head home.

A Phone call later that night to Jonathan’s father confirmed that the young boy on the ground was a neighbour. His name was Sam and he had been separated from his friends when he collapsed after having an allergic reaction from a candy. As it turns out he was Sam was going to be just fine. Jonathan was over joyed to hear the good news and immediately picked up the phone to inform his friends. Even though Jonathan didn’t get very much candy this Halloween he was more pleased to know that he had helped somebody and was just going to wait to trick or treat next year.

Week 7

Rainy days.
By: Cassidy Janes

Some

People say that

 they hate rainy days.

They kick and complain

Until the gray sky’s go away.

 All they need is a pair of rubbers

That fit em’ and a little optimism.

For living in this city would be a shame, if

You can’t learn to laugh in

 the rain.

Week 6

My Papa's Waltz
By:Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.


         a small boy    ;
     hung on

          until  he
Slid from the         shelf;  
   mother
Could not unfrown

              he
    battered    one knuckle;

          scraped a 


       palm 

Week 5

1.)

The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke demonstrates how alcoholic parents negatively affect their children’s childhood memories. The past tense verbs in the line “a small boy” make it clear to the reader that the speaker is now grown and is reflecting on a memory. These memories described in this poem are clearly unpleasant because Theodore states “My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself”. This shows how the fathers drinking not only caused problems for him but disrupted the whole family. It is made clear in the line “you beat time on my head” that emotionally the speaker’s memories of childhood were devastating due to his father’s drinking. Every minute he had to tolerate it was torture. Lastly the speaker’s memories became obviously negative once we read line 11 “At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle”. Not only did the speaker’s alcoholic father create bad memories by upsetting his mother but it hurt him emotionally and physically.

Week 4

1.)
There once livd a fish named Jim
Oh how he loved to swim
But then one day
Jim got dragged away
And made a tasty dish of codagratin

2.)

This poem is a limerick. It has five lines and a rhyme scheme of aabba. This limerick is a funny poem about a fish that gets caught and cooked for dinner; it gives death a comical tone. This poem has three feet in lines 1, 2, and 5 then only two feet in line 3 and 4. The rhythm pattern is two unstressed syllables followed by an accented syllable. The skipping sound the rhythm creates, empathises this poems funny tone.

Week 3

1.)

I had never seen the stars so bright

They glistened down upon the sand and sea

Never had I been so warm at night

This land was so foreign to me you see

As I sat there amongst the sand

A wild breeze blew through my hair

Quiet tunes drifted over from the band

There was freshness in the air

The earth beneath me was so alive

I felt invincible for a while

I ventured towards the shore then toke a dive

As the warm sea surrounded me I felt I could swim for a mile

Then I rolled over so unexpectedly, how could it be?

Just another wishful dream

2.)

                The form of this sonnet strongly influenced the content. Firstly the rhyme scheme a b a b c d c d e f e f g g gave me no choice but to use words at the end of my lines that were reasonably easy to rhyme. I saved my more complex language for the internal section of the poem. Secondly writing in iambic pentameter gave my poem a nice skipping rhythm even though every line in a sonnet does not rhyme. Also due to the particular form of a sonnet my poem had to be 12 lines giving me enough lines to create a nice image of a place I have once visited. I don’t feel like the form of this poem influenced the mood, tone or language to any great degree because the form of a sonnet is not extremely strict leaving room for the writer to express whatever mood they may be experiencing.

Week 2

For this weeks blog I chose the creative choice.

            1.) Limerick

There once lived a cat named Sam

Who’s thoughts always consisted of jam

So he ate and he ate

Then it lead to his fate

There was no longer a cat named Sam

2.) Haiku

The snow crunched beneath

Many metal horse shoes

Galloping down the path

3.)The content of both the haiku and the limerick poem I constructed were both strongly influenced by the unique forms that each of these two individual types of poetry have. In the haiku I wrote I was limited to the amount of descriptive syllables I could add to create the right amount of imagery, feelings and meaning haiku's usually have. Due to their short structure and lack of rhythm their stressed and unstressed syllables suggest feelings and meanings making my choice of rhythm crucial for portraying the right mood. I used a reference to snow to suggest winter as the time of year when my haiku toke place, I felt this conveyed a strong sensory experience for the reader. The two couplets that exist in a limerick poem made me chose a simple common name for my cat so it wouldn’t be too difficult to rhyme. Also the unique rhyme scheme (a a b b a) made the words I chose seem happy and have sort of a skipping sound when read aloud.

Week one

1.) After studying McMahan’s variety of critical approaches for interpreting literature I have concluded that the physiological approach is definitely the one I exercise the most. The psychological approach is the most appealing to me because human behavior and mental processes in literature is what fascinates me the most. The setting, language, structure, imagery and character development alone are not overly interesting to me, I like thinking out of the box and into the minds of the characters unlocking the mysteries behind their thoughts and actions.

2.) William Carlos's poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" may not consist of many words however it creates an impressive amount of imagery. This farm-like setting he has created sparked my curiosity. I predict that William himself must have spent time living on a farm or perhaps working on one. The line "so much depends upon the red wheel barrow" demonstrates that William understood the importance to the chickens that one simplistic object like a wheel barrow has. Someone who has not spent time around a farm could not have the experiences or appreciation William expresses towards the red, glazed wheelbarrow in this poem.