1. The Lord of the Flies is about a group of British schoolboys whose plane gets shot down stranding the kids on an island with no adults surviving the crash; they are forced to take care of them selves. Ralph is elected to be the leader of the group and he appoints Jack to be leader of the hunting group. Ralph is adamant about keeping the signal fire lit and maintained, and it is the hunting group’s job to control it. Jack and the hunter boys focus is on hunting and playing rather then the importance of getting rescued. One day a ship sails by and Ralph is infuriated when he sees that the hunters have let the fire go out. He calls together a meeting that doesn’t go as planned. The younger boys have been having nightmares and many of the boys believe that there is a beast living on the island. When the kids are asleep there is an air battle and a man falls out of his plane and his parachute lands in the trees of the forest. Sam and Eric wake and see it and tell everyone that it is the beast. Jack and Ralph make a journey to see what is going on and believe it to be an animal of some sorts. At the meeting Jack calls Ralph out and appoints himself the leader and encourages people to join him. They violently slaughter an animal in the new tribe and put its head on a spear as an offering to the beast in hopes that it will not attack the boys. Simon sees it and has a delusion where the head, the Lord of the Flies, tells him that he lives inside him and he will never escape. He passes out and when he awakes he goes and discovers the parachute. After his discovery he realizes that the beast is not an animal but an evil inside. When he goes to inform the boys he is attacked and killed by them. The following morning everything goes chaotic. Jack and Ralph fight and Ralph is forced to run and hide in the forest. The boys go to smoke him out and he is forced to go back to the beach. Knowing he will be killed soon he faints. When he wakes up he looks up to see a British naval officer. When the other boys arrive they are taken aback and they all cry and become like little kids again.
2. The theme of the book is that good and evil live with in side of everyone. The boys go crazy with out the adults and structure of their normal lives. The “beast” is not a physical thing like they believe it to be but rather something inside them that has made them act as savage as they do on the island. When the naval officer arrives he is presented as a sign of good. The effect of the presence of an adult is immediate on the boys and they stop fighting at once.
3. The tone of the book is chaotic because the author, William Golding, is graphic and blunt about how savage the boys become with no order.
• “He began to laugh and his laughter became a blood thirsting snarling.”
• “Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!”
• “The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.”
4. Literary Techniques:
• Symbolism: The beast is a symbol of evil, and you find out that the evil is inside all of them.
• Allegory: The entire story is an allegory. The island represents the world and the tribes, Jack’s versus Ralph’s, are like to countries at war.
• Setting: The setting is on a deserted island and with no adults. They have no technology so they must fend for themselves off the island. This story would not have worked if it were in any other place.
• Irony: The fire for Ralph is very important because it’s the only way he knows they will be rescued. For Jack it hasn’t been of importance, hunting has. But in the end it is the fire Jack lights to smoke out Ralph and kill him that gets them rescued.
• Style: The style Golding uses is perfect for this book and helps the reader capture each character. The fact that it’s not told from the perspective of one of the boys is key in this story because it gives a bias view of all the characters.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
"Great Expectations"
I chose this book because I have heard many good things about it and my partner wanted to read "A Tale of Two Cities" so it worked out perfectly.
Research Paper: International Language
Language is the world’s biggest means of communication. Why then, is there not a universal language so that people could understand each other flawlessly everywhere? Foreign affairs concerning all types of matters would be made much simpler. However, we would lose parts of every culture, except for one. Now the question becomes, is it worth sacrificing so much historic culture to make life a little easier; or would having a universal language take away from part of the experience of traveling, working, and studying abroad.
Many modern languages weren’t spoken thousands of years ago. There are “Language Families” meaning that many modern languages all evolved from an older language. According to Merritt Ruhlen there was one language that began all the languages. His findings are based on comparing similarities of different languages and language families. It is proven that we have a common ancestor from Africa “Early Modern Homo sapiens” states that, “Current data suggest that modern humans evolved from archaic humans primarily in East Africa”. If this is true it would be that the mother of the language families is an old African language.
The language families have blossomed into “6912 living languages listed on the Ethnologue language database”. The English Language as a Global Force informs that only Mandarin is spoken by more people than English. Judging by the large quantity of people in Asia, I think it would be fair to say that English is the widest spreading language in the world today. English is taking the world by storm so shouldn’t it them be the universal language? How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think? By Lera Boroditsky says that proven by tests Boroditsky has been involved in that Stanford University and MIT, the language we speak effects the way we see the world. This would be a reason to have a universal language. If we view things similarly wouldn’t it be much easier to solve conflicts of all kinds. On the other hand, there would be less diversity in the world and ideas, inventions, and some creativity would be lost.
Technology is widely programed in English. “The birth of the Internet in an English speaking country has also had a huge impact on this global evolution of the language, with almost 80% of the worlds’ digital information now stored in English.” Is stated in The English Language as a Global Force they bring up the point that the computer languages are based from English. Undeniably this gives English speaking countries and people an advantage with technology and “communicating with the world as a whole.” To conclude, if everyone, English or any language, spoke in a common tongue there would be no one to a disadvantage because of the language they spoke. This could accomplish an array of amazing new thing
Collaboration would be easier than ever. Being able to share ideas with people who are of different dialects is near impossible without a third party. If everyone could easily learn about what others are trying to invent or improve, technology and many other things could develop much faster. People wouldn’t have to take their time getting whatever formula right that someone else has already perfected it. The world could be farther along in terms of technology, medicine, learning abilities and pretty much everything you could think of. It would be much better if the inventers of the world weren’t restricted by communication.
On the contrary, what are the effects of English being so widespread? “I find myself annoyed when Americans tour the world expecting to be understood whenever they speak in English.” States Terri Dip, author of Should English be the Worlds International Language? He goes on to say it is even worse when people from none English speaking countries go to other none English speaking countries and attempt to communicate in English. He believes that, “the prevalence of English is one of the biggest reasons the majority of America’s youth know next to nothing about the outside world.” At first I couldn’t help to be offended by this statement. How does this man know what I know? And then I realized it is true. Many Americans, not age group specific, only know one language, and although you can learn about other countries and say you know all about it, you may know facts but you know nothing of how their culture truly is until you experience it.
Before writing this, I was thinking of the advantages and disadvantages of having a universal language would be. And for obvious reasons, the loss of culture was the biggest bullet point of a disadvantage. And in my opinion, and I discovered also in many others, this would be a huge loss in the world. “If you speak multiple languages, you start to see things in many more shades because some concepts just cannot be translated, directly or indirectly.” States Dip. He continues on to describe how when translating phrases and words from language to language it doesn’t always make much sense from one to the other. He sums it up perfectly by saying, “Our different languages have shaped who we are, our history, our heritage, our culture, our identity. Why should the world have one language when it can have many?” An article by Janafadness called English is NOT the “International Language” really caught my attention because it features a Youtube video of a boy saying why he thinks that English might by very useful for some things, but go out of the tourist attractions and step into the average life of people from other countries, many do not know English, or do not know it well enough to have a full on conversation.
So, in the end, there is no real conclusion. There are just many different opinions that all make very valid and reasonable points, making the topic that much harder. Not one of the citations are wrong in their thinking, but not all of them agree. The topic of an international language has many shades of grey. Whether it will ever happen or not is unknown at this point, but all I can offer in my personal opinion. It was much harder to find reasons of why not to have an international language then why to have one but I hope there will never be one. The consequences are too great for the advantages to ever overtake them.
Many modern languages weren’t spoken thousands of years ago. There are “Language Families” meaning that many modern languages all evolved from an older language. According to Merritt Ruhlen there was one language that began all the languages. His findings are based on comparing similarities of different languages and language families. It is proven that we have a common ancestor from Africa “Early Modern Homo sapiens” states that, “Current data suggest that modern humans evolved from archaic humans primarily in East Africa”. If this is true it would be that the mother of the language families is an old African language.
The language families have blossomed into “6912 living languages listed on the Ethnologue language database”. The English Language as a Global Force informs that only Mandarin is spoken by more people than English. Judging by the large quantity of people in Asia, I think it would be fair to say that English is the widest spreading language in the world today. English is taking the world by storm so shouldn’t it them be the universal language? How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think? By Lera Boroditsky says that proven by tests Boroditsky has been involved in that Stanford University and MIT, the language we speak effects the way we see the world. This would be a reason to have a universal language. If we view things similarly wouldn’t it be much easier to solve conflicts of all kinds. On the other hand, there would be less diversity in the world and ideas, inventions, and some creativity would be lost.
Technology is widely programed in English. “The birth of the Internet in an English speaking country has also had a huge impact on this global evolution of the language, with almost 80% of the worlds’ digital information now stored in English.” Is stated in The English Language as a Global Force they bring up the point that the computer languages are based from English. Undeniably this gives English speaking countries and people an advantage with technology and “communicating with the world as a whole.” To conclude, if everyone, English or any language, spoke in a common tongue there would be no one to a disadvantage because of the language they spoke. This could accomplish an array of amazing new thing
Collaboration would be easier than ever. Being able to share ideas with people who are of different dialects is near impossible without a third party. If everyone could easily learn about what others are trying to invent or improve, technology and many other things could develop much faster. People wouldn’t have to take their time getting whatever formula right that someone else has already perfected it. The world could be farther along in terms of technology, medicine, learning abilities and pretty much everything you could think of. It would be much better if the inventers of the world weren’t restricted by communication.
On the contrary, what are the effects of English being so widespread? “I find myself annoyed when Americans tour the world expecting to be understood whenever they speak in English.” States Terri Dip, author of Should English be the Worlds International Language? He goes on to say it is even worse when people from none English speaking countries go to other none English speaking countries and attempt to communicate in English. He believes that, “the prevalence of English is one of the biggest reasons the majority of America’s youth know next to nothing about the outside world.” At first I couldn’t help to be offended by this statement. How does this man know what I know? And then I realized it is true. Many Americans, not age group specific, only know one language, and although you can learn about other countries and say you know all about it, you may know facts but you know nothing of how their culture truly is until you experience it.
Before writing this, I was thinking of the advantages and disadvantages of having a universal language would be. And for obvious reasons, the loss of culture was the biggest bullet point of a disadvantage. And in my opinion, and I discovered also in many others, this would be a huge loss in the world. “If you speak multiple languages, you start to see things in many more shades because some concepts just cannot be translated, directly or indirectly.” States Dip. He continues on to describe how when translating phrases and words from language to language it doesn’t always make much sense from one to the other. He sums it up perfectly by saying, “Our different languages have shaped who we are, our history, our heritage, our culture, our identity. Why should the world have one language when it can have many?” An article by Janafadness called English is NOT the “International Language” really caught my attention because it features a Youtube video of a boy saying why he thinks that English might by very useful for some things, but go out of the tourist attractions and step into the average life of people from other countries, many do not know English, or do not know it well enough to have a full on conversation.
So, in the end, there is no real conclusion. There are just many different opinions that all make very valid and reasonable points, making the topic that much harder. Not one of the citations are wrong in their thinking, but not all of them agree. The topic of an international language has many shades of grey. Whether it will ever happen or not is unknown at this point, but all I can offer in my personal opinion. It was much harder to find reasons of why not to have an international language then why to have one but I hope there will never be one. The consequences are too great for the advantages to ever overtake them.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Essay
Actions speak louder than words. But it is the occurrences that lead up to actions that sometimes make the action so unthinkable. This is defiantly the case in Jodi Picoult’s book, Nineteen Minutes. Peter Houghton, a seventeen year old high school student is bullied to the point where he brings upon a school shooting. The book goes back and forth between his current life and his past. Picoult finds a way to make her readers sympathize for Peter although he has committed an inexcusable crime.
At first, you simply despise Peter for bringing chaos to everyone, and taking lives of his fellow classmates. But as the book continues, you learn how he was so fed up with being harassed all his life that when he reached his braking point unnoticed, he felt like he had no other way to express his hatred for the people who literally made his life a living hell. Picoult makes your feel sorry for him as you would an abused puppy that learns to bite back. Peter has one person he looks to as a friend, Josie Cormir, and even she is so caught up in popularity that she has shoved him aside in order to keep her status as “cool”.
Although Peter has a tough essence about him during the trial, his true character becomes apparent during the chapters of his childhood up until the day of the shooting. He never provoked anyone to be mean to him, and yet he was the punching bag from the start. By Picoult showing an elementary boy getting picked on for the way he looks, it really gives the reader no choice but to sympathize for him and even to justify his actions. He had done nothing wrong to these kids and yet they never let up on him. Picoult shows Peter at his weakest, which happens to be most of his life, to make one feel bad for him. She obtains something many can not, she makes her readers want to defend a killer.
One could argue that Peter felt so trapped and abandoned by everyone in his life that he wasn’t mentally stable and what he did wasn’t really his conscious self’s fault. Even as the book talks about the ones who were killed and their families, you wonder if their parents knew what kind of person their child really was. How they would be ashamed of them if they knew what they did to make Peter take such drastic measures. Picoult artfully wrote Nineteen Minutes so that the reader would have polar opposite feeling about the same person. Peter is both an innocent child who is bullied everyday and a knowledgeable being who took people’s lives from them.
In the end, Peter is found guilty, as he should be. But you can’t help but still have that little part of you that wishes he got the benefit of the doubt and got a short sentence. Picoult is an amazing writer because of this reason; she makes you feel for someone who did something awful. Over all, actions do speak louder then words and horrible ones blind all the little incidents leading up to them.
At first, you simply despise Peter for bringing chaos to everyone, and taking lives of his fellow classmates. But as the book continues, you learn how he was so fed up with being harassed all his life that when he reached his braking point unnoticed, he felt like he had no other way to express his hatred for the people who literally made his life a living hell. Picoult makes your feel sorry for him as you would an abused puppy that learns to bite back. Peter has one person he looks to as a friend, Josie Cormir, and even she is so caught up in popularity that she has shoved him aside in order to keep her status as “cool”.
Although Peter has a tough essence about him during the trial, his true character becomes apparent during the chapters of his childhood up until the day of the shooting. He never provoked anyone to be mean to him, and yet he was the punching bag from the start. By Picoult showing an elementary boy getting picked on for the way he looks, it really gives the reader no choice but to sympathize for him and even to justify his actions. He had done nothing wrong to these kids and yet they never let up on him. Picoult shows Peter at his weakest, which happens to be most of his life, to make one feel bad for him. She obtains something many can not, she makes her readers want to defend a killer.
One could argue that Peter felt so trapped and abandoned by everyone in his life that he wasn’t mentally stable and what he did wasn’t really his conscious self’s fault. Even as the book talks about the ones who were killed and their families, you wonder if their parents knew what kind of person their child really was. How they would be ashamed of them if they knew what they did to make Peter take such drastic measures. Picoult artfully wrote Nineteen Minutes so that the reader would have polar opposite feeling about the same person. Peter is both an innocent child who is bullied everyday and a knowledgeable being who took people’s lives from them.
In the end, Peter is found guilty, as he should be. But you can’t help but still have that little part of you that wishes he got the benefit of the doubt and got a short sentence. Picoult is an amazing writer because of this reason; she makes you feel for someone who did something awful. Over all, actions do speak louder then words and horrible ones blind all the little incidents leading up to them.
Big Question Abstract
Language is the worlds biggest means of communication. Why then, is there not a universal language so that people could understand eachother flawlessly everywhere? Foriegn affairs concerning all types of matters would be made much simpiler. However, we would loose parts of every cultures, except for one. Now the question becomes, is it worth sacrificing so much historic culture to make life a little easier; or would having a universal language take away from part of the experience of traveling, working, and studying abroud.
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