Strategical Speaking.

In The Animal Farm, by George Orwell, he writes about a farm over-running the humans working at the farm, and surviving on their own.  They set up their own government, and the pigs are supposedly the most intelligent, so they run the farm for the most part.  Napoleon and Snowball both had an equal amount of power at the beginning of the book, but both had two very different approaches to different things.  Snowball’s approach to convincing the animals if his point is most interesting, especially considering what happened to him later in the book.  Squealer is the younger pig that plays a role as the messenger between Napoleon’s ideas and actions, and he explains to the other “lower” farm animals why the things Napoleon does and choices he makes is all for the better, and although they doubt him at first, after he finishes talking, they are convinced.

Snowball is constantly in disagreement with Napoleon, and they are constantly arguing about different matters, from what to plant in a field, to what to do with their organization system with the food and other matters.  Orwell describes Snowball as “a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech, and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character” (p.35).  Snowball is much more energetic than Napoleon, and speaks clearly and to the point, and is more creative and invents things, but his personality is not as difficult to undermine and understand; it’s pretty simple and clear, and easy to understand.  One of Napoleon and Snowball’s biggest arguments was over the windmill, and whether they should build it or not.  Napoleon claimed the point that it was nonsense, while Snowball is much more dramatic in response.  He immediately sprang to his feet, and “broke into a passionate appeal in favour of the windmill...Snowball’s eloquence had carried them away.  In glowing sentences he painted a picture of Animal Farm as it might be when sordid labour was lifted from the animals’ backs” (p.64).  Snowball’s way of convincing the animals to support him by voting in favor of making the windmill, was to describe in detail the things that could happen, and the kind of life they would live if the windmill was built.  He was very emotional about the windmill, and grabbed the farm animal’s attention, and made them want a the life that he was describing.  

Squealer sees everything in ways very similar to Napoleon.  He supports all of Napoleon’s ideas, and has his own unique way of communicating with the “lower” animals and to convince them that what Napoleon is doing is right.  Squealer is “a small fat pig...with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice.  He was a brilliant , and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive” (p.36).  Squealer is one of the smaller pigs, full of energy, and very good at convincing the “lower” animals.  Squealer, being younger, gives a seemingly innocent appearance to the other animals on the farm, and has an odd way of convincing the animals of anything, and they claim that Squealer could argue and turn black into white.  Whenever Squealer argues a point, he skips from side to side, and whisks his tail, which somehow convinces the animals to support whatever Squealer is arguing for.  Many times, the animals become doubtful, and start to believe that the things the pigs are doing is not for their benefit, but because they are trying to take advantage of them, since the pigs are smarter.  When settling the issue of the milk disappearing, Squealer was sent out to talk to the other animals.  After telling them what happened and the reason why the pigs took the milk, the animals were still not fully convinced, so he emphasized the purpose of why they took the milk by saying, “Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty?  Jones would come back!  yes, Jones would come back!  Surely, comrades, surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?” (p.52).  He knows that the animals don’t want Jones to come back, so as an excuse for why the pigs took the milk for themselves, he says that their main goal to just keep Jones away from the farm.  Whenever he tries to convince the “lower” animals that the pig’s main and true purpose at heart is to keep Jones and his men away from the farm, and to keep the animals free from human hands and unfair power.  

Last Writing Piece on Garcia Girls

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is a reflection of Julia Alvarez, the author’s life.  Many events in the story are reflected in Alvarez’s life, and the sisters are like her and her sisters (I think they are like her sisters).  Even though this book was quite interesting and extremely unique, the book was complicated and difficult to understand for many reasons. 

I didn't vote to read this book mostly because if its structure.  Its reverse chronological structure and short vignettes is extremely confusing for me, and I personally prefer different books to read.  Because of the reverse chronological story, the book starts with a scene in the middle of the Garcia girls' story of their journey from the Dominican Republic to the United States, and how they adapted to the different cultures.  Alvarez begins the story by saying,

"The old aunts lounge in the white wicker armchairs, flipping open their fans, snapping them shut.  Execpt that more of them are dressed in the greys and blacks of widowhood, the aunts seem little changed since five years ago when Yolanda was last on the Island...The cake is on its own table, the little cousins clustered around it, arguing over who will get what slice.  When their squabbles reach a certain mother-annoying level, they are called away by their nursemaids, who sit on stools at the far end of the patio, a phalanx of starched white uniforms."(1)

 Even though the great amount of detail used on the first page helps the readers visualize what is happening to the characters at the start of the book, it does not explain much about who Yolanda is, where this scene is occurring, and for what specific reason they are there.  From reading, the cake was island shaped, and I was confused about whether the party and cake was for Yolanda's birthday, or for a welcome back party, since Yolanda hadn't been on the Island "since five years ago."  To be honest, I'm still kind of confused about what the Island is.  I think "the Island" refers to the Dominican Republic, but I'm still not sure even after the group discussions.  I asked my group members and a few other friends and classmates about it, and they tell me that they are not sure either and that it is probably the Dominican Republic that it refers to.  As the story progresses, it is still hard to understand the different characters with the changing narrators and perspectives of the story that change between vignettes and even in the vignettes without an extremely clear indication of who the narrator is changing to, and when.  Because we do not know all of the characters like Chucha, the Garcia's Haitian maid who supposedly practiced voodoo and slept in a coffin, and had the only first person narrative in the story.

The book talks about Alvarez’s life in the Dominican Republic and her adjustment in the United States.  It portrays the many difficulties and destitution that she and her family faced as immigrants.  Unlike the Garcia girls, Alvarez was born in New York, New York, but moved back to the Dominican Republic when she was three months old.  In 1960, she and her family fled the Dominican Republic, and went back to the United States. Like the Garcia girls, Alvarez and her sisters were raised along their cousins, and were watched by their mother, maids, and aunts.

Sort of like Carlos, Yolanda’s father, Alvarez’s father was also in risk of being arrested or killed by the government in many different reasons.  Carlos was in risk because he resisted Trujillo's military dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, and because of his political activities, was forced to leave the Republic and escape to the United States. Alvarez’s father was involved in a plot to overthrow the dictator and military ruler of the Dominican Republic.  Because the plans were discovered, He had to flee the country with his family with the help of an American agent, and fled to New York, where they once lived.

Just like the Garcia girls, life in America was not like they imagined it to be.  The sisters and Alvarez missed their family in the Dominican Republic and the respect they had there, and didn’t feel like they fitted in with their thick Spanish accents.  They had little money, and struggled to live with the small amount of money that they held.  They all struggled to adapt to the new American environment, and the extremely diverse and different culture.

A lot like Yolanda, Alvarez wrote poetry.  They both wrote, for Alvarez she wrote both poetry and stories, and enjoyed storytelling, especially ones that they made up on their own.  In their culture, Alvarez’s relatives criticized her for “lying,” because she didn’t tell the truth in her stories, but rather, made up things of her own.

Yolanda often wrote her poems alone and in the dark: "This was Yoyo's [Yolanda's] time to herself, after she finished her homework, while her sisters were still downstairs watching TV in the basement.  Hunched over her small desk, the overhead light turned off, her desk lamp poignantly lighting her only paper, the rest of the room in warm, soft, uncreated darkness, she wrote her secret poems in her new language" (136).

Yolanda wrote her poems during her free time, but only when her sisters were occupied with something else to do, so they wouldn't distract or bother her in any way.  She wrote her poems in the near-dark, with only a desk lamp lighting up her paper.  The rest of the room stayed dark, yet warm, and created a soft darkness that allowed Yolanda to express her feelings, and for her ideas to grow better.  She wrote in the dark much better.  When Alvarez refers to "new language," she doesn't only mean English, which was a new language to Yolanda since she came from the Dominican Republic, where she had only ever spoken Spanish, but she also refers to the language that is different from everyday language that Yolanda used when she spoke.  When she wrote poems, they were much deeper and meaningful than the words that she said daily, and so was therefore in some sense, her new language, that was personally hers, and was understood and interpreted differently by different people. 

Although How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents was not a bad story, I probably wouldn't pick up a book like this to read on a daily basis.  It is complicated and difficult for me to comprehend, and it takes a lot of analysis for me to finally sort of understand what is going on in the story.  The reverse chronological order of the story doesn't work for me very well, and I personally haven't had a good history with vignettes, especially after reading my first book with vignettes, The House On Mango Street, last year.  That didn't make much more sense than this book did.

Afterthoughts

Blogging has been so different from anything I’ve ever done in my life.  It’s the first time where I’ve ever posted anything personal and things that I have written (excluding Facebook posts).   By blogging instead of turning in a hard copy of something I write, my writing has become a bit more casual, but at the same time, I have better thoughts and I express myself more when I blog - especially when I write about things that I didn’t think I would write about.

When I first started to blog, I started off with something that I had already written over the summer for homework.  My second piece of writing that I posted onto my blog was a response to a student blog, where I somewhat analyzed and commented on Stan's blog post about being bullied and the ASTI Constitution.  It was simple writing that didn’t take much time or effort to write about.  Afterward, we had a debate at school, and my partner, Tiffany, and I argued against lowering the drinking age in our opening statement.  I decided to make my blog posts about events and things I hear and talk about, and I opened quite some discussion in my post about the possible ASTI size increase.  Like usual, my procrastination made it hard for me to find a blog post by someone I didn’t often talk to, so I chose to respond to my friend’s blog post about teen movies.  I tried experiment with writing something at a park, which was mostly just a string of random thoughts that went through my mind, and then typing it up as a blog post.  That post, Anything and Everything, confused Mr. Sutherland, so in fear of losing points for a bad blog post, I created a fictional post about a miracle involving a chance for love to come once again.  For the response post that week, I responded to a post about vampires, since I used to be addicted to vampires and I found the topic very interesting to respond to.  My first essay was about Italo Calvino’s “The Dinosaurs,” and it analyzes Qfwfq’s character.  One day, I was really put down in class by one of my teachers, so I blogged about it and how I felt as a result of what the teacher said to me.  For that week, I responded to a post about a teacher that I loved, yet hated.  As the next week slowly rolled by, I continued to talk to my friends, and when I was talking to Amber, the subject of blogs came into our conversation, and she told me about how she made a blog post, which was a letter to our Kylie, who was once our closest friend that we would talk to all the time.  I read it, and it really striked me, so I responded to it by writing a letter to Kylie, and talking about how I felt about the lost friendship too.  Other than that, the week was pretty uneventful, so by Friday night, I was thinking up a subject that I could write about for my blog, and so I decided to write about communication.  When we were writing our Night essays in the computer lab, I decided to do some research about concentration camps, and made a short blog about what I found(mostly about Buchenwald).  The most recent post I have made is my Night essay.

I surprised myself this quarter, because I didn’t expect to like blogging, especially since it meant that I would post the things I write onto the world wide web, where anyone could read it.  It felt a bit awkward knowing my classmates could read and judge the way I write and what I write about, but at the same time, it was comforting knowing that I could see theirs too, just like they could see mine, and they could also give me constructive criticism to help me grow in my writing skills.  When I blog, my writing is more casual than it is if I turn in an essay to Corbally, where my writing is very formal and very structured, with an organized system.  In my blog posts, when I want to emphasize a point, I make the sentences short, for example, in my letter to Kylie, I wrote, “In some sense, I'm mad.  But still, I'm sad.  For me though, I cannot bring myself to tears over this loss friend.  It's not worth it for me.”  I was trying to emphasize my point that I was mad, yet sad, and couldn’t cry over this loss.  If I had written this and it was not posted onto my blog, the sentences would definitely be less choppy, and would flow better.  Also, when I write on my blog, I use a lot of contractions, which makes my writing a lot more casual, because in my final draft of essays for other classes, I cut out all the contractions that I want to use.

Now, when I think about having to write, it isn’t as painful as I once considered it to be.  If it is an interesting topic, quickwrites are very helpful and productive for me, because I can practice writing without stopping for ten minutes, and I am able to write down ideas that I have about the topic that I can use for a blog post, or even an essay on that topic.  

This quarter, I have surprised myself the most by writing fiction and posting it on my blog.  I often blog about events that have happened recently in my life, or I have heard being discussed, but until the blog post, A Miracle, I had never posted a work of fiction onto my blog.  When I wrote it, it felt like poetry.  I never read over what I wrote; I wrote as my mind churned to find the right words to use, and the worlds just flowed out like poetry.  It also really helped that romance, young love, and hope was my inspiration when I wrote it.  In the piece, the narrator reflects that, “We [narrator and lover] would talk about our fears, our hopes, our dreams.  It felt like when we were together, the stars were aligned, and all the wrong in the world became right.  Things seemed perfect; all those problems disappeared, stress relieved.”  When I wrote this, I thought about how I think and feel when I am most at peace, and what my closest friends and I talk about.  I really expressed my deeper feelings and emotions in this piece, with more of my soul in this piece and any of the other blog posts that I wrote.  I did write this somewhat because of the recent events in my life that made me really think about and analyze love and lust a lot more and much more harshly in my mind, than I ever have done.  By writing this post, it opened my eyes to how I felt, and how I really viewed the subject is like (I don’t want to point out the subject.  It is more than just one thing.  If you really want to see what subjects were in the post, go read it and think about it yourself.  It’s left for you to interpret your own way.  even I don’t understand myself sometimes).  

For the next quarter, I want to explore writing some fictional pieces, but expanding the subject to much farther than just love and lust, because I had wanted to become a writer of fiction at some point in my life, and I want to practice writing fictional, as a hobby, and to exercise my mind to think about some things that I otherwise wouldn’t.  I want to make a post about rhetorical questions, and my opinion and thoughts about it, because they are a curious thing, and are interesting to me.  They also confuse me, so I want to get down to the core of it, and to understand them better.  One of my major goals that I have that does not have anything to do about what subject I want to write about or my writing style is to avoid procrastinating the assignment.  When I post my blog post right before midnight, my writing isn’t the best it can be, and I can be a lot more analytical and creative when writing than I am now, since I procrastinated most of the blog post assignments from this quarter.

Adding yet ANOTHER Night essay onto your google reader list

The Holocaust is an event that is often thought about when people hear the words, “Jews,” “Germans,” or “Hitler.”  Even though there are many articles and documents regarding the Holocaust, there are few written first-hand accounts of it.  Elie Wiesel is the author of Night, a memoir of what he faced during the Holocaust.  In the novella, Wiesel mentions the events that occurred, people he met, and the many conflicts he faces, with the conflict against the supernatural the most prominent.  Throughout the story, Elie guides readers through the events he saw and experienced, and he focuses and discusses the great conflict he experiences with the supernatural (God).

Wiesel begins his memoir by introducing Moshe the Beadle, and explains his experiences, conversations with Moshe, and Moshe’s fate. When Moshe first notices Elie praying, the first signs of conflict between Elie and the supernatural appear: “Why did I pray?  A strange question.  Why did I live?  Why did I breathe? ‘I don’t know why,’ I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease” (2).  This is the conflict that Elie encounters with his confusion with religion.  He was uncomfortable that Moshe asked him about why he prayed and cried as he did so.  He is beginning to sense some discomfort with religion and the reasons he felt the way he did.  He is conflicted with emotion to why he did not know the reason behind the ways he felt.  The religion began to confuse Elie, because he could not understand the deep emotions that he felt when we communicated to Him with his hear and soul.  Because Moshe brought up the questions of why Elie felt a need to pray and cry, Elie began to see Moshe often to discuss religion with him.

As the memoir progresses and Elie is forced from his home, then away from his mother and sisters, he begins to feel even more conflicted with his relation to God, the supernatural.  After a SS officer asks Elie and his father for their age, Elie’s father begins to recite the Kaddish, blessing His name and praying that it may be magnified.  He begins to feel angered and says, “For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me.  Why should I bless His name?  The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent.  What had I to thank him for?”(31).  This is the first time in the novella where Elie directly talks about his anger and disappointment at Him, the One that Elie had praised and wanted to have a master to guide him in his studies of the cabbala.  The Jews, who believe strongly in their God, still praise and pray and honor him, even though he did not do anything to stop and prevent the many deaths and torture and hardships that were forced on the Jews for their lifestyles, beliefs, and for being the enemy.  He does not remain much of an influence in Elie’s personal life, because Elie no longer becomes so devoted to Him, because of his betrayal to them, after all the time they spend respecting him and honoring his name.

In the many journeys from concentration camp to concentration camp, many men died in the extreme labor and effort it took, and also from the freezing weather.  On the journey to Buchenwald, Rabbi Eliahou asked Elie if he had seen his son, whom he had stayed with through the three years of concentration camps with.  Elie tells him that he had not, but he soon realizes that he did see him running by his side, and that the son had seen the Rabbi losing ground and falling towards the back of the column, but he began to plow ahead to the front of the line.  Elie reacts to the sudden realization: “...in spite of myself, a prayer rose in my heart, to that God in whom I no longer believed”(87).  Even though Elie no longer believes in Him or honors Him like he once did, he still has the natural reaction to pray to Him to not act like Rabbi Eliahou’s son did to his father.  There is still a religious side in Elie, that loyally prays to Him in times of need, and for hope and guidance in life, but he tries to avoid that side, because he does not believe in Him anymore, because he had stayed quiet in their time of need when the Germans stripped them of all their belongings, life, religion, and freedom.

Throughout the novella, Elie’s belief and respect toward Him, the supernatural greatly changes.  At the beginning, Elie highly respects Him and wants to be able to learn and follow His beliefs and teachings.  After being moved to a concentration camp away from his mom, sisters, and old lifestyle, he is angered at Him and begins to lost his faith.  By the time he is transferred to Buchenwald, he has completely lost his faith in Him for quite some time, but he still prays to Him, somewhat reluctantly, but as a natural instinct.

Digging Deeper into Qfwfq's Character

Thesis: in "The Dinosaurs" from Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino, Qfwfq, or Q, is a character who is frightened and lonely, but curious.

As a dinosaur, Q fought alongside dinosaurs in many victorious battles, but began to make errors, become doubtful, and soon started to become defeated in their fights.  As the only surviving dinosaur, Q traveled until he couldn't find anything, living or dead, and reflects: "I spent many, many years on those deserted plateaus.  I had survived ambushes, epidemics, starvation, frost: but I was alone" (Calvino 97).  Even though Q was able to survive all the things that all the other dinosaurs were not able to, he is the last surviving dinosaur, and is all alone in the world.  He wanders around on a "long migration" as far away from carcasses, the dead, and the living, to escape the remains of those he used to fight alongside.  He is lonely, and continues to stay that way until he decides to adventure down, and meets "a flock of New Ones".

Q is often used to scaring others that see him, so when he sees a flock of New Ones, he is scared of their reaction to him.  Q hasn't seen any living creature for a while, and he admits, "The first time I glimpsed some living beings, I hid" (Calvino 98).  He did not recognize his surroundings when he came down, and already felt lost, so when the New Ones saw him, he was scared for them to see him and run away in fright, like all the other creatures once did when there were more dinosaurs.  When the New Ones addressed him casually, he ran away because of the unfamiliar feeling he got since he was so used to the terror he caused around.  He was somewhat afraid of them noticing what he was, so he ran.  The New Ones were unaware of what dinosaurs looked like, aside from tales that they heard and their imagination, and are unafraid of Q, since they cannot recognize that he is a dinosaur.  Q is surprised that they were not frightened by him, and is curious to see how other New Ones would respond when they saw him.

Q leaves the flock of New Ones and continues to walk on, while reflecting on what happened with the flock of New Ones, and their reaction to him and how they couldn't recognize what he was.  Q "traveled on, cautious but also impatient to repeat the experiment" (Calvino 98).  Q is on edge and a bit frightened if someone realizes that he is a dinosaur, and runs away in fright, even though he was once really used to that.  He was still curious to see the reactions of other New Ones, who do not know of the appearances of dinosaurs, and are not aware of the fact that Q is a dinosaur, even though Q doesn't realize that until later in the story.