Journal Due 5/26/14

Critique your novel of choice. Did you like it? Is it well-written? Did you connect with a particular character or plot line?

I am really glad I read The Golfinch by Donna Pratt. The figurative language made it so that I could picture everything that was said, even though I've only been to New York a few times and have never been to Las Vegas. I think that the author did a great job of developing the characters. For example, in the beginning of the book, the reader only knows what Theo's dad is like from Theo's flashbacks and descriptions of him. Later on in the book, when he goes to live with his dad, the reader slowly learns more about his dad so that he seems like a realistic person. The one thing that I really did not like was the spelling and grammar in the book. There were several occasions where words were misspelled or there were run on sentences. Donna Pratt is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and I was surprised and disappointed in the fact that her book hadn't been copy edited well.

Journal due 5/12/14

Write a character sketch of the main character(s) in your novel - the primary protagonist and antagonist. You should include information such as age, gender, appearance, primary goals, personality traits, and backstory.

Theodore, or Theo as everyone calls him, Decker is a fifteen-year-old boy who lived with his mother in New York City. He gives the impression of being a good kid, but the book starts out with him and his mother going to meet with his school because he was suspended. He's a very smart kid, but he doesn't do his work, so he has average grades. When the book starts out, he doesn't really have an appreciation for art, but he has a great eye for detail once he starts working in an antique store in downtown NYC. He is bitter because he feels that his mother's death was his fault, despite other people telling him that it wasn't his fault. He has good intentions, but oftentimes, like when he took a painting from the museum because it was a dying man's last request, he doesn't make the best decisions. He's fairly trusting of people, which is interesting because a lot of the time people pull away from society when they lose a loved one like he did. I think it will be interesting to see how his willingness to trust people he just met continues as he grows into adulthood.  

Journal due 5-5-14

This ad is made by Maybelline. I would definitely say that the target audience for this ad is women because the only thing in the ad other than the product is the face of a woman using the product. This woman had a flawless face and yours eyes are drawn to hers because they are outlined in black and bright blue. There isn't much else that distracts you from her eyes. Her hand partially covers her mouth, but it doesn't really pull your attention away from her eyes. The message of the ad is that is you use their mascara, you will have very thick, long, eyelashes. However, if you look closely at the bottom left hand corner of the ad, it says that her lashes are "styled with lash inserts." This means that it is probably extremely unlikely that your eyelashes will actually look like the models even if you use their product.

Blog Post Due 4-21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHiJ7v18-EM

This mostly uses appeal to authority. They use Alec Baldwin to talk about using Hulu and how great it is watching tv on Hulu, but he isn't an authority on what watching tv does to your brain. Also, they use black and white a little bit because they give you a choice between watching tv and turning your brain to mush or not watching tv at all. They make it seem like it's not possible to watch tv for a short amount of time. There's also a little bit of slippery slope because they make you think that if you watch tv your brain will definitely turn to mush.

Blog Post due 4-14-14

In Rap Lyrics on Trial, they use ethos, pathos, and logos to convince the reader that using rap lyrics in court should not be allowed.

They mostly use ethos to discredit the witnesses and the people okay with using rap lyrics in trial. For example, "...testimony from witnesses who changed their stories multiple times." This makes it sound like the witnesses didn't really know what happened.

They used logos to show statistics of rap lyrics in trials. "Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey found that in 18 cases in which various courts considered the admissibility of rap as evidence, the lyrics were allowed nearly 80 percent of the time." They use logos in this case to show that using rap lyrics in trials is a problem around the world.

I didn't think that pathos was used as much as ethos and logos, but it was still there. They used to pathos to make you feel bad rappers and feel like it's unfair for them to use rap lyrics in trials. "One common tactic is to present a defendant’s raps as autobiography. Even when defendants use a stage name to signal their creation of a fictional first-person narrator, rap about exploits that are exaggerated to the point of absurdity, and make use of figurative language, prosecutors will insist that the lyrics are effectively rhymed confessions. No other form of fictional expression is exploited this way in the courts."

Blog Post due 2-24

Who is the Merchant of Venice?
I think that Antonio is the Merchant of Venice. It would make sense that the Merchant of Venice would be the protagonist since it's the title of play, and since Shylock is the antagonist of the play, that would make Antonio the protagonist, and thus the Merchant of Venice. I think that the conflict between Shylock and Antonio is the main conflict of the story. The deal between Shylock and Antonio happened in the beginning of the play, so it makes sense for it to be kind of the main thing throughout the play. Once the deal has been made, Shylock spends the time up until the trial wanting Antonio not to be able to repay him so that Shylock will be able to kill Antonio. The definition of an antagonist is someone who is opposed or hostile towards someone. To me, trying to kill someone makes you both hostile and opposed towards them, which would make Shylock the antagonist. On the flip side, a protagonist is the main character. I think a better definition would be the person who opposes the antagonist, and Antonio seems to oppose Shylock the most, which is why he is the protagonist and therefore the Merchant of Venice. Also, its the MERCHANT of Venice, which doesn't mean that it has to be an actual merchant, but it would make more sense for the Merchant of Venice to be an actual merchant. Antonio seems to be the main merchant in the play.

Journal due 2/17/13

Is the Merchant of Venice a comedy, tragedy, or a tragicomedy? 

I think that the Merchant of Venice is a tragicomedy. There are some funny parts, especially with Portia's suitors and their self-confidence in their abilities to pick the right chest, but I think that a lot of the play has had some underlying tragic tones in it. If Antonio doesn't end up being able to pay Shylock back the 3,000 ducats he owes, then Shylock gets a pound of his flesh, which isn't really very funny. Also, some people think that Antonio likes Bassanio, and if that's true then it's kind of sad that Bassanio would rather be with Portia. 

Journal due 2/10/14

2) How is Belmont different from Venice? How can we use the Green World theory to interpret this? 

In class we talked about the difference between the Green World and the City World. We said that Belmont is part of the Green world and Venice is the City World. I think that Belmont IS part of the Green World in the Merchant of Venice, but since it's also a city, in another play it could be considered part of the City World. In the Merchant of Venice, Belmont is where Portia and Nerissa are, while Venice is where all of the men like Bassanio, Lorenzo, Shylock, Gratiano, and Antonio. All of the business transactions and stuff like that happen in Venice, and the romance happens in Belmont  as the suitors try to win over Portia and play the game so they can marry her. Belmont also has intergenerational strifes because Portia is kind of upset at her father because he made it so she can't choose her husband if she wants her inheritance. These strifes may not be resolved because Portia's father is dead, but she may come to terms with everything he did. Venice has a lot of social hierarchy that Belmont doesn't have. Most of the things we read about happening in Venice were about money or how Jews and Christians disliked and didn't trust each other, while things that happened in Belmont so far were about romance and family issues. 

Journal 2-3-14

In class, we watched the Crash Course video on the Renaissance and whether it was a thing. John Green argued that because it didn't really affect people who weren't upper class, it shouldn't really be called a thing.  I don't really agree with John Green about the fact that the renaissance wasn't a thing. The renaissance is just a name for some things that happened during a time period. In, fact some historians call it the Early Modern Period instead. Just because it didn't affect a lot of people like women, Jewish people, and pretty much everyone who wasn't rich, it still caused a lot of expansion in the arts and science.