Technology

Online learning I feel will always be different from in person or even a hybrid class. The reason why I say this is because with an online class, there is no face to face or group talks, it’s just all through a computer. This is my third semester doing online classes and I can definitely say that I do miss doing classes in person but do like online classes as well. First thing is, online classes are convenient because you can be at home, in your pj’s just doing homework. The environment, for the most part, is quite and you don’t have to face people that may annoy you. Here’s the down side, you don’t really get the chance to become friends with anyone like you would if you lived on the campus or where just even taking classes on campus. You miss the people interaction or the funny jokes that can happen during lessons. I may be reflecting on high school too much, since it wasn’t that long ago for me graduating this year and all, but there are just some things that the online classes miss because of it not being in person.

I think that the benefits of taking an English class online is not having to listen to lectures and just starting on the assignments. I’m sure that there are teachers how make the lectures fun and such but from my past experience, most are quite boring. Sorry in advance. Also a benefit of online is not having to read the stories out loud in class with everyone else. I know someone is going to bash me for this but when the teacher decides that the whole class should read a story out loud or listen to the book on tape, it’s not fun. It’s not the fact that a person my read slower than another, that’s fine with me. It’s when you get to a person that doesn’t even care to be reading the story or when the person on the tape is just droning on and on. Who wants to be in that type of situation? I know I don’t.

I’m not sure if this is technology but I think that the website Blogger.com was very beneficial to me. I never was a person to blog before and didn’t really have an interest in them but throughout the semester, this site has been very fun. I think its way better than doing discussion boards because it’s more interactive this way. People can personal their own profiles and when you look at another person’s page, you can find out a bit about them; like you would if you were meeting them in a classroom.

I may in the future look at the websites I go onto and see if they do any blogging because it’s always fun to talk to people on a topic that you are both interested in. and why not? You may find out that the person you are talking to is a friend of yours, someone you like, and so on. (High schooly I know, but hey it can happen).

http://howtoblog.org/

Presentation

Using a blog

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Reflection on the Course

My reflections of this class

Well, for one thing I can definitely say that my essay writing skills have improved. In high school I would get okay grades on my essays but even though I would work hard on them, I never felt my writing skills improve. This English 102 class has definitely made me push the boundaries and see how much further my writing could go. An assignment that really put this into light was the Essay on the book Frankenstein that included the three articles as well.

My challenges in this class would include the essays but another thing that challenged me at the beginning of the semester would have been doing the blog posts. It was a new thing for me and even though I have a facebook and used to have a myspace, this was something slightly different and I go confused on how to post links to include them in the posts or to put the links correctly when sending them in for grading. As the semester progressed though, I began to get better at them and then posting became such a breeze. I liked how you could personalize your profile and make it so people will see that the items on the page reflect who you are. Overcoming this was weird at first because of using an outside source but when each week there was a blog post that needed to be done along with comments on others, I gradually learned what the right way was and what I should not include in a post.

Yes I have met many of the learning outcomes that were posted in the syllabus which is surprising. Not that I do not like English as a class or as a whole but there are just some things that I found hard to understand and I’m a native of the language. Lol. But even still, I have learned how to phrase certain things better in sentences and how some things are necessary while other can be left out. I have the greatest understanding of how to analyze a book and give a synopsis instead of a summary.

Zombies......not a fan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie

What I think shocked me the most to learn from this article is how when during wartime, the amount of people going to see zombie movies escalates. I’m still a bit confused as to why this is. Is it because the story line is simple? Or maybe it’s because they are already seeing carnage from the TV so people want to see it in the movies as well? That last one wouldn’t really make much sense and so Kyle Bishop points out something very interesting within the first paragraph. Many movie producers and writers are influenced by what happens during wars. Such as the introduction of certain weapons in WWII, they later turn up in movies such as Godzilla and Them! What makes wars so “likable” to the movie industry? It’s a very weird and complicated question but I feel it needs to be asked. Back onto the subject of zombies, I am honestly not a fan of zombies movies or even tv shows with zombies in them. I feel that they are very cheesy and have no real story line. It’s always the same thing, infection of virus that hits almost everyone in the world and now zombies have been born and are attacking anyone that is still human. The storyline, if you can even call it that, has never been changed and thus has made any further zombies movies that have been made boring to watch and very silly. The only ones that I find tolerable are Zombieland and Shawn of the Dead. The only reason I like them is because they make fun of the other zombie movies that are trying to be serious about the subject. Which is why I think they fail in my point of view because they are trying to be too serious about it; make them a bit funny and I guarantee a better response.

Final Project Draft

Delaney Abajian
Final Project
Cline
11-4-11

Vampire’s vs. Human Emotions

Pitch black night, dark alleys with dead ends, blood splattered on cobblestone ground, and the piercing screams of the innocent. Look up to the shinning moon and see a bat hanging from a lamp post or telephone wire, its eyes staring right at the next victim. Vampires have been seen as creatures of the night for many centuries and many believe have passed themselves off as humans, never to be found out about. Vampires now seem to appear in everything, movies, books, Halloween, music videos and TV shows. Most of them come out being stereotypical but others dive into the true development and give their own spin on vampires. Using vampires and their actions is a form of personification based on the human emotions system. The emotions that we experience everyday are portrayed through vampires, the most prominent way being through words.

There are many novels that have vampires being the main character or in some cases all the characters entirely. A book that not only has the stereotypes but puts a different spin from the others is Vampire Kisses. This is a book series that surrounds the life of a teenage girl named Raven and her town of “Dullsville”. Being surrounded by people that constantly made fun or ridiculed the way she looked; she was made to have a thick, closed in shell until one Alexander Sterling moves into the mansion on top of Benson Hill. “His long black hair lay heavy on his shoulders. His eyes were dark, deep, lovely, lonely, adoringly intelligent, dreamy. A gateway into his dark soul. He, too, stood motionless, breathing me in. his face was pale like mine and his tight black t-shirt was tucked into his black jeans, which were tucked into monster-chic punk-rock combat boots” (Schreiber, 55). Raven is meeting Alexander formally for the first time, and from seeing the title of the book, the reader assumes that Alexander is the vampire and that Raven will find out eventually but the descriptive words that Schreiber uses, such as “dark” “deep” “lonely” “intelligent” and so on, the readers for now only see him as a Goth boy. This fits in with vampires taking on the form of humans and blending in. The character of Alexander represents the human emotions of sadness and longing. The wanting of human beings; how we are always trying to find that one thing that will complete our souls and make us whole.

To go into more depth with the common knowledge that humans have of vampires, the next quote explains something that Raven finds when searching the mansion basement, “I found a dusty rolled parchment with a faded family tree. There were long unpronounceable names of duchesses and barons going back centuries. And then at the bottom-Alexander. But no dates of births-or deaths!” (Schreiber, 96). Vampires are most commonly associated with having aristocratic family backgrounds where the family trees would have usually only dates of birth and not of deaths but Schreiber has it so this parchment has neither. This piece of information was to strike the reader with a bit of confusion because it is something they are not used to seeing when they think of what knowledge they have about vampires. This human emotion would be confusion and doubt, with a slight bit of anger at not knowing the answer to something. Humans are quite competitive, so when something does not go their way, they tend to become confused and angry and then start to doubt their intelligence. This is something that a vampire would never do and thus, they use this as a power against their human prey. Portraying this form of emotions through a vampire shows that humans have many forms of weakness and are not perfect.

Towards the end of the story though, Raven makes this startling realization, “As I turned to leave, I noticed Ruby’s monogrammed compact on the doorstep and picked it up. I opened it to smooth my lipstick. I saw the Mansion’s open door reflected in its glass. “Sweet dreams,” I heard Alexander say. But he didn’t appear in the mirror. I turned around. Alexander was clearly standing in the doorway. But when I checked the mirror again, he was gone!” (Schreiber, 193). Fantasy is powerful and in many ways can be used in forms of manipulation to get what is desired. In this case, they desire was that Raven wanted Alexander to be a vampire and just as she was settling into the fact that he wasn’t one, finds out that he actually is one. Vampires in books and movies have been shown using fantasy, usually against female victims, as a tool in getting what they desire which is the blood. Luring the girls into thinking that they are something wonderful and that the sweet sugar of words pouring from the vampires lips is only for them, and then are under the vampires spell in which their blood is then taken from them, leaving the girls for dead.

There are catch phrases that are used when people talk about relationships. Such as, “I just want them to love me for who I am” or “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The following is one that can only be used in describing a vampire, “I want a relationship I can finally sink my teeth into” (Schreiber, 120). As cliché as it may sound, it gives the most obvious but funny hint that Alexander is indeed a vampire but it also eludes to something else as well. How Alexander wants a true relationship, for someone to see him for who he is and not what he is. This is so similarly related to humans and their wants for a relationship, that there truly is no difference. This is pure and comes from the heart. This is where both humans and vampires can be seen as the same, both want to be seen for who they are, not what they are.

Fleur Adcock’s poem, Instructions to Vampires, brings out the old fashion side to the vampire and how humans visualized them. The last two lines of the poem are as follows: “and on the soft globes of his mortal eyes/etch my name” (Adcock, lines 11-12). The poem as a whole is about a vampire drinking the blood out of its victim be seeing that there is more to the victim than the vampire saw before. So the vampire decides to make him either his underling or a vampire like himself. Using words like “desiccation” and “cauterize”, shows where she wanted the time period to be, maybe 17th or 18th century; possibly even earlier.

Though not many human emotions are present, the only one that can be seen on the surface is a small amount of compassion. Though this poem can be taken in one of two ways; one could be that the compassion is for the fact that the vampire is letting the human victim just die and not have to live an undead life. The following quote explains this, “I would not have you drain/with your sodden lips the flesh that has fed mine, /and leech his bubbling blood to a decline” (Adcock, lines 1-3). This could be the compassion of either wanting to give the victim eternal life or letting them die in peace.

While on the topic of vampires in poetry, there is another one by Hermine Pinson named All-Around Vampires. This brings up vampires and shows that they are a problem but then show that they are nearly impossible to find, “Vampires come out in the daylight now and shop at Bergdorf's or the flea market or that greasy barbecue place. They hold down nine-to-fives, three-to-elevens, eleven-to-sevens at Exxon, Penney's, City Hall…” (Pinson, lines 18-22). Vampires integrating into the human world and society but still deep down inside true to the beast that lies within; this is what the rest of the poem gives the reader but it leaves it void of one thing, emotions. What are the emotions of the humans; of the vampires? If it went in deeper to see that vampires show many forms of human emotion, just in a different way, then there would be more feeling than just hard, cold facts. But maybe, that is the emotion; being hard skinned and cold toward others. These are not very likable human emotions but emotions nonetheless. Vampires will do what humans cannot, “Vampires face up to actual ugliness” (Pinson, line 31). Strength, is not a human emotion but an action that humans possess and many times, they do not want to face something that they will not like or are too afraid to do so. Vampires though have the will to do so, since they live for centuries on end and have seen many a bloody thing, so not only do they have the stomach for it but the strength in order to get through the “ugliness”.

Vampires portraying humans are not only in writing but on the screen as well. There are many movies that show vampires where the emotions of greed, anger, and lust play a dominate role but somewhere love and the want to belong also come out in the open and probably more openly than a human being would do so because they don’t want it to be known, where a vampire is going to come right out and show it. Books and poetry are going to be the most dominate places where the reader will have to see the situations of vampires vs. human emotions; then see what is real and what is being personified to portray what humans won’t show.




Works Cited
Schreiber, Ellen. Vampire Kisses. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Adcock, Fleur. Instructions to Vampires. The Eye of the Hurricane. Bloodaxe Books Ltd. 2000.

Pinson, Hermine. All-Around Vampires. Callaloo. The John Hopkins University Press. 1988.

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Schreiber, Ellen. Vampire Kisses. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Vampire Kisses is the story about a Goth girl named Raven that lives in a suburbia hell hole, where no one understands her. One day, a boy named Alexander Sterling moves into the old mansion. He’s tall, dark, handsome and understands Raven for who she is. Though the people in Dullsville have a different opinion which causes wild accusations and leaving Raven’s world upside down. This story represents how vampires translate into current day novels. Ellen Schreiber turns the typical stereotype into a form of fantasy that many vampire loving girls could ever hope for.

Adcock, Fleur. Instructions to Vampires. The Eye of the Hurricane. Bloodaxe Books

Ltd. 2000.

This poem describes a vampire taking the blood from his victim but killing the victim completely. Leaving just enough life for the victim to become his slave or a vampire like himself. I saw him because the voice of the poem seemed very much like a males even if the poem itself was written by a female. This will be very helpful to my project because it explains first-hand what the victim experiences and how sometimes, they don’t always die. It is something known that a person in high power can make anyone their slave, this is nothing different except for the fact that their lives are taken and replace with immortality. This short poem portrays how vampires symbolizes the hidden emotions and desires a human can have.

Pinson, Hermine. All-Around Vampires. Callaloo. The John Hopkins University Press.

1988.

This is another poem but it shows how vampires can be just like humans. Going to work, getting a cup of coffee and so on. People get biased opinions on subjects and sometimes will never change their minds or admit to the fact. Whereas the first poem can represent that vampires are the hidden emotions and sometimes desires of humans, this portrays vampire as being nothing different but the same. The only difference being that vampires are immortal and humans are not.

Final Project IDEA!!!!!!!

http://www.squidoo.com/real-history-of-vampires

I plan on doing Option #2 for my final project. The reason why I chose this option was because in the beginning of the semester, I was told that we would be doing things about monsters and that it would be the surrounding theme. So when option 2 gives me the choice of what kind of monster I want to do research on, how could I refuse? Though the monsters that I am generally interested in are vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches, warlocks, and etc. But being the total nerd that I am, I will be doing my research on vampires. Yes, I know that it has been done before but that’s just it. So much research has been done on vampires that the materials for it are limitless. I’ll just make sure that my paper is different than all the rest and won’t put anyone to sleep (hopefully. Lol). The primary texts that I will be using is the novel series Vampire Kisses by Ellen Shreiber. She brings a different spin to the vampire stories that we all know so well and makes it her own. She does include the stereotypical things that most of us are accustom to seeing in vampire novels but includes other things that have not been brought out into the open. The in-text citations from these books will help me give the readers a better understanding of what I mean. What I hope to accomplish with this project, is to give people a better understanding of vampires as a whole. I don’t want the reader to be thinking about the things they have seen in movies or have read in books but I want them to be thinking back in time, we’re talking about centuries of time here. Where a form or breed of vampires may have existed and are unfortunately misportrayed in many ways, movies being the prime suspect. The type of research I will do is through the databases at our school, Yavapai Community College. Already I have found great information to support my paper. Most common terms to search with would be “history of vampires” or “vampires” just by itself and also one more being “vampires and movies” to so how far south the movie industry has taken the history behind vampires and made them stereotypical.

MId-term check in

October 17, 2011


Dear Laura,

It is the halfway mark of this class and it always surprises me how fast the time flies. There are many things that I have improved on and still some in the process of being fixed. My biggest success in your class would probably have to deal with the blog posts. I have always posted my responses right onto blackboard and so having to not only go to another website to post my blog and responses was something new and different to me but I feel as if my critiquing style has grown and my responses are coming out clearer and in a manner where it will be helpful and beneficial to the person I am commenting on. My biggest challenge in this class so far would have to be the essays. It’s not on the essay as a whole but certain parts such as, making it too personal or not having the paragraphs flow into one another without confusing the reader, are some of the things that I have been working on and am hopeful when it comes to my final project, have been fixed and resolved.


The readings in this class have affected me a pretty good amount. Sometimes in English classes, the reading is either very interesting or very boring, but I feel that the articles that you have had us read and the book Frankenstein along with the articles in there, have redeveloped my way of looking at a story and to try and see just what exactly the author wants me to pull out from their story and have a clear understanding of. I feel that this had benefited me not only in this class but in my other writing classes that I am taking at the present moment.


The literary analysis is different because the writing classes that I have taken so far are for either writing fiction or just giving my opinion on something for a discussion board. Though my Creative Writing class did have me go into a bit of literary analysis, to look at a story through the lens of a writer, not a reader. There has been more of it this semester in the classes I am taking but this English class builds more onto it and expands the amount that can be seen and accomplished.


My goals for the second half of the semester are to continue on strong with my blogs and responses, make sure that I read as a writer, bring interesting and creative things into the classroom and to have an amazing final project. I hoping that the fact that diving in head first for my research and topic that the outcome will be something to be proud of. I hope to keep the A that I have in this class to the end and keep improving on my writing skills.


The piece of work that I am the most proud of would be the analysis of a poem. I loved the poem “Lady Lazarus” and just couldn’t pick any other one to do the assignment on. The visuals hit me hard and I knew what I would talk about and try to have others in vision and see what they might see differently from the first time they read the poem. I had to check back at the assignments tab to see what has happened before this week because I’m starting to forget all the assignments that have been in this class already and we are only halfway through. I’m looking forward to the second half of this semester and what other assignments it brings.

Sincerely,


Delaney Abajian

Draft of Essay #3

Delaney Abajian
Cline
ENG 102
12 October 2011

Feminism

The bond between a mother and child depends on the will of the mother and how close she is with the child. If the mother neglects her child, the child will do one of two things. The first and most likely thing is that the child will not understand what is happening and at some point will develop feelings of anger and hatred. The second option would be that the kid copes with what has happened and moves on with their life. Unfortunately in the book Frankenstein, the creation tried to choose the second option but in the end became the first. The parent-child relationship with Victor and the creation was never established, so the creation set out to destroy everything that Victor loved and cared about since the creation had no one to feel that way for him. There are some relationships throughout this book that worked and some that didn’t. The ones that worked are Victor and his mother, Victor and Clerval, and Victor and Elizabeth. The ones that end up becoming either ineffective or nonexistent are Victor and the creation. This also can be related to the difference between Mary Shelley’s bond and Victor Frankenstein’s bond since one cared very deeply for their creation while the other didn’t.


“I need not describe the feelings of those dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for ever-” ( Shelley, 25). Even though this is Victor talking about his deceased mother, it calls attention to the fact about children who are cared for and treated with kindness by their mother’s, end up showing sympathy and emotions that would not be there if the opposite happened. It shows that Victor’s mother was a nurturer and that she placed her family above all else. This corresponds with Victor and the creation. What could have started off in a loving and nurturing relationship ended in estrangement and dislike of both the parent and the child. Victor speaks of despair at the loss of his mother but the creation tries to speak about the despair of being forever lonely and not having the care of a parent.

Clerval is another example of how Victor has a parent-child relationship whereas the creation does not. Though Clerval has no relation to Victor, other than being his dearest friend, the following quote has Clerval taking on a tone of a brotherly role. “My dear Victor,” cried he, “what for God’s sake, is the matter? Do not laugh in that manner. How ill are you! What is the cause of all this?” (Shelley, 37). Clerval is showing not only his concern for Victor as a friend but in the course of a brother like figure as well, since he has known for a great period of time. This is probably why Mary Shelley had the creature’s next victim be Clerval because he would have seen and noticed how close of a person that Clerval was to Victor and begun to feel emptiness inside of him. The emptiness would keep filling him until he took away from Victor what the creation himself wanted more than anything, a companion.


Ellen Moers brought up amazing points as to how Victor and Mary Shelley were somewhat alike but also different in the way they approached certain situations. Both wanted to create life but each had a different way with dealing with the consequences of what happened after the creation had gained its life. “In February, 1815, Mary gave birth to a daughter, illegitimate, premature, and sickly…The baby died in March. “Find my baby dead,” Mary wrote. “A miserable day.” (Moers, 221). Moers goes on to explain that after the birth of Shelley’s first child, that even though it was born premature and sick, Shelley tried everything she could to nurse it to better health and keep it alive even though the effort would be in vain. This is where she differs from Victor. Victor indeed wanted to create life and that he most certainly did, but when his creation was complete and it was alive and moving, he became scared of what he had done and fled away from the scene immediately. He ran away from the thing that he saw as grotesque and ugly and would not even try to help the creature that he brought life to.


This seems to be where Shelley even got the idea of having something like this become the main storyline for a novel. “Mary Shelley was a unique case, in literature as in life. She brought birth to fiction not as realism but as Gothic fantasy, and thus contributed to Romanticism a myth of genuine originality. She invented the mad scientist who locks himself in his laboratory and secretly, guiltily, works at creating human life, only to find that he has made a monster.” (Moers, 217). Moers could not have better explained it than with this quote. Frankenstein brings to the reader not only birth but originality as well. Birth was not common for female writers but Mary Shelley brought it the forefront of her story and had it carry throughout as it continued on, pointing out the failing parent-child relationship between Victor and the creation, that would in the end result in the deaths of them both.


“As long as domestic relationships govern an individual’s affections, his or her desire will turn outward as love. But when the individual loses or leaves the regulating influence of relationship with others, imaginative energy always threatens to turn back on itself, to “mark” all external objects as its own and to degenerate into “gloomy and narrow reflections upon self” (F, p.32).” (Poovey, 254). Here is another reflection on the difference between the relationships that Victor had and the ones the creation will never learn to know about. Well he did learn about the relationships that the DeLacy family had but that was only through observation and not through real experience of his own. The creation started off with having a happy outlook on life and that he would one day be able to feel love and compassion from humans as he felt for them but as soon as he realized that this was not going to happen, he went into a gloomy and narrow reflection upon himself.


Moers and Poovey talked about how the mother side of Mary Shelley had an impact on the story Frankenstein and that feminism comes out greatly throughout this book in the characters of Caroline and Elizabeth but also somewhat in Victor as well because of wanting to “create something” and “bring life” to it. “Recently, however, a number of writers have noticed the connection between Mary Shelley’s “waking dream” of monster-manufacture and her own experience of awakening sexuality, in particular the “horror story of Maternity” which accompanied her precipitous entrance into what Ellen Moers calls “teen-aged motherhood” (Gilbert & Gubar, 226). Critics of Mary Shelley in the beginning thought of her form of female gothic style as bringing something that shouldn’t be introduced into books but with time, newer critics see why it was brought into the book and why it was the main point. Bringing to life her story of her first child and representing it with the characters Victor and the creation. It brought to the forefront the reality of pregnancies during that time and how much of an effect it had on the mother if she did indeed lose her child.


I thought the story of Frankenstein was only just about a mad scientist creating a creature and it turning out hideous but in reality finding out that there are many themes behind it and within the text itself that my outlook on it as a whole is different now. The one that stuck out to me the most was when I had finished the story and read the article “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother”. Ellen Moers explained in depth the relation to Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein. That the death of her first child caused her to begin her story of Frankenstein. I believe that Shelley’s purpose for writing this novel was to introduce a form of birth into a story and take it to where no female writer had gone to before. She wanted not just Gothic but she also wanted the Romance side to it to make it seem like everything would be okay only for it to be crumbled to pieces. Mary Shelley definitely goes into great detail when explaining the different stances that she takes in this story dealing with parent-child relationships.







Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1996. Print


Moers, Ellen. “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother.” New York Review of Books. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976. 214-44. Print.

Gilbert M. Sandra and Gubar Susan. “Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve.” The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. 225-40. Print.

Poovey, Mary. “My Hideous Progeny”: The Lady and the Monster.” The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984. 251-61. Print.

Female Gothic:The Monster's Mother

Frankenstein Article

Ellen Moers’ “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother” brings to light how Mary Shelley used the parent-child relationship within the story of Frankenstein and how Mary Shelley was comparing the monstrous creation that Frankenstein had made, to the birth of her first child. I’m not sure when Ellen wrote this article but I’m assuming it was in 1976 for the “New York Review of Books”. Ellen goes in depth with Mary’s relationship to Shelley. That Mary was a “daughter, mistress and a mother” as well as a Gothic writer and that Frankenstein is women’s literature. Even with the horror and grotesque details in the story, Frankenstein is still considered woman’s literature. Also how Gothic writing styles where used more often in women writers and that the most gruesome tales were indeed written by women.

I feel that Ellen Moers focused more on the parent-child relationship in Frankenstein where I spent more time wondering who exactly was going to die next. I wanted to know more about what was going in Victor’s mind whereas Ellen wanted to know more about Mary Shelley herself and how this book related to her own personal life in a way. I saw that there was the abandonment of Victor from the creature and how the creature wanted to be accepted by the family that he watched everyday but I believe that’s the closest that I came to being similar in my reading to Ellen Moers. Yes, I did learn something from the article but it wasn’t about the book and it wasn’t about writing an literary article, I learned more about the author herself Mary Shelley. I learned that she had lost her first born child, a little girl, and that this had influenced her in her writing of Frankenstein. Writers are often known to use personal experiences in their stories but I feel that this was something that is not seen too often, meaning something so personal to the author herself. Yes this would make a good article to use in Essay #3 because of the in-text citations that could be used to explain and relate to the book itself.

http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/mshelley.html

Reflections on Revisions

http://www.youtube.com/user/richardnixon55

Well what’s funny is that my writing process actually takes two different stances since it depends on what kind of writing I’m doing. If I’m doing an essay, then the writing process will be a bit more restricted and trying to not go off topic, which I am still having a problem with because of my second type of writing. This would be my fiction writing where my writing process completely takes a 180 and it’s easier going and less restricted. I kind of already have a bias for essay as it is because of having to do many throughout not only elementary school but a great many in high school. People always ask me for help on their essays and I say I will help you as much as I can but I may not be the best person to ask. They at first always say but you write so much, how can you not be good at essays? And this is where I have to correct them because essays and fiction are two completely different subjects and my approaches to them are not similar in anyway.

With an essay as I have said before, it’s more restrictive and with the revision process, it’s always following the instructions of the teacher, making sure I have everything that I possibly need in the paper, look for grammar and spelling errors, then turn it in and wait for the teachers response. Where with writing fiction, I take an immense amount of time, rereading my paper, searching for ways to reword a sentence or make sure that it flows properly along with the fact that I have a broader range and less restrictive way to work. This doesn’t mean to say that I don’t take my time with essays either and that I just rush through my work. I always revise and try to see where certain things may have gone wrong but I just know for a fact that my heart isn’t really full on into the subject. How sad is that? Revising always brings good benefits whether it be an essay or a story of fiction. It’s very important to do and is always crucial to the writing process as a whole. Some people to have different ways of doing it.


Some of the revisions I plan on making in my paper are making it clear who the speaker is instead of just saying it or her. It makes it unclear to the reader and I sometimes to have the habit of doing this. I will also go through my in-text citations and make sure that they are correct. I wasn’t sure how to do lines from a poem so I wasn’t sure whether to include the word “lines” before the number or numbers so I’m glad it was brought to my attention. When typing out more than one line to a poem, to put a backslash so that it’s know that it’s still a part of what I’m quoting but so that the lines do not run together into a big blob. Casual language, yes this is a problem of mine because I am so used to just writing fiction now that it comes naturally to me when writing anything else so I will definitely change that so that it is a school appropriate essay. The last thing, and I really do hate when I do this, is going off topic. Where I’m trying to make it sound cohesive but ends up going off topic anyways. It’s still a work in progress but I will achieve it!

Passage from Frankenstein

"A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic structure, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch. the filthy daemon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? (Shelley, 48).

I thought it funny because before this line came up, I thought that it might have been the monster that killed his brother. Which then I thought, what a clever but sad way to use irony. And then this line came up and I thought, well what do you know? I might actually be right. I feel that this is important to the novel since it shows how human error can bring to light the mysteries of a tragedy. Unfortunately in Victor’s case, it would be the death of his brother. His own mad creation could have killed his brother. This would then cause not only mental damage but emotional damage beyond repair. To think that he might be the cause of his death and possibly others could eat him up from the inside out and could possibly lead to suicide. I will be sad and happy if I’m actually right in my assumption. This also brings the importance of how things may happen for a reason and it becomes a chain of events that can only be stopped by undoing the original thought, which in this case, the only person that would be able to end this would be Victor himself. Though he may be very reluctant to do so since he fears the monster that he has created and all the research that he put into it at the cost of his own life expense, but then that could be the even trade off if done correctly. To repent for the life of unknown lives that could have been lost to this creature, Victor can give his own to trying to put an end to his creation and keep it from ever hurting another human being.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Frankenstein

Draft of Poem Essay

Analysis of Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus is a poem that seems to confuse many readers the first go around of reading it. Since there are so many forms of imagery in this poem, one may read a line, but then become confused when they read the next. So then, you must re-read it again and again, at least 4 or 5 times should do it, to fully comprehend and get a clear image of what’s being said. Everyone will have their own interpretation of the images they see, so here’s what I found in reading this poem 4 to 5 times.

In the fourth and fifth line, it says, “A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade” (Plath, 4-5). By first glance, one may see that the person in this poem may have been Jewish and locked away in a Nazi concentration camp. But then to move onto stanza nine, it says, “What million filaments, The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see” (Plath, 25-27). This may confuse readers because then one might think that the lady is not in a concentration camp but in a circus show and is known as the freak of the show. And then throughout the rest of the poem, your mind is stuck on the circus act and how this might outrage the lady and inflict on her emotions that are being denied the right to show themselves and speak up. The lady wants to die and let that be the end of her nightmare, but “they” bring her back and put her back on display for all to see.

She calls herself, “The big strip tease” (Plath, 29). As she is being put on display against her will. Then what also makes it seem like a circus show are these next couple of lines, “For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart—— It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood” (Plath, 58-63). Saying that there is a charge for these items brings forth even stronger within my mind the image of a warped and twisted circus with this lady being the main attraction. What also gets me with these two stanzas are that I picture the lady being wrapped head to toe in bandages sort mummy like if you will. To have slits for eyes, like a cats, and have scars old and new all over her body that you would see where bandages are falling apart at certain spots on her body. All in all, a form of monster that’s still human in some sense but plays the role of being half dead and half alive.

This poem seems like it would fit perfectly well, in the sense of imagery and wording that is, in a Stephen King novel. He is known for turning something that could be completely off putting to most, into something even more gruesome but in a way where it’s elegant; if that makes any sense at all. I don’t mean to say that it sounds pleasing to the ears, but that it’s not as gory, well for this poem anyways. There is a part of this poem that I do not understand and feel that it’s a bit out of place in this poem because it throws different images into the reader’s mind. These lines are the following, “A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling” (Plath, 76-78). It doesn’t seem to fit with the circus act theme that plays throughout the poem and then the images just still onto single objects, the ring, a cake made of soap and a gold filling. Where does this apply to the poem? I have no clue and it certainly throws me off whenever I go back and re-read it again.
Since I have talked much about imagery, let’s also talk about something that is underlined throughout this poem but one would not see it unless they read close enough. In some form, there is dialogue. Now of course, there are no quotations telling us that a person is indeed speaking, but this entire poem is of one lady, telling us what is happening. So in fact, the entire poem is one set of dialogue! Though in this case, it would be called a soliloquy since it is only one person speaking and it’s really to her-self that she is saying all this to. The readers are more of like an outside audience looking in at her “life”. A line that really captures this meaning of dialogue is, “And I am a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die” (Plath, 19-21). She is not only giving a slight description of herself, but is also showing the monstrous side of her by comparing herself to a cat with nine lives.

She also mentions other “monstrous” figures such as Lucifier, God, Doktor and Enemy. Doktor could very well mean the person or person’s that keep bringing her back to life and how she mentions Lucifier and God because in truth since she has been brought back from the dead, she can neither go to heaven nor hell. And her Enemy are all of the above plus the people that come to see her as the freak show. She considers them all enemies, which is why at the ending, it says, “Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air” (Plath, 82-84). This stanza here brings together just how much anger and animosity she has built up and makes one wonder if next time she is brought back from the dead, will she release hell onto the people that do so? I hope so would anyways.

Though I speak about dialogue, imagery, I believe, is the most important thing that this poem provides. With such vivid details and words that bring to the fore front of the mind images in which you have either seen before or never thought you would see in your lifetime or ever thought existed. Who of our generation would know what a “Nazi lampshade” looks like or “a right foot as a paper weight”? It’s gruesome but our minds let the information sink in and try to create what it might look like, and the outcomes will always be different for each person since each person sees things differently.

In the end though, this poem requires quite a bit of thorough reading and repetition of certain lines because you may read it once and see something but then read it again and see something completely different. As for me, this poem brought a macabre circus to mind with Lady Lazarus as its main attraction and this was done with all of the lines of imagery and descriptive words throughout the poem.


Works Cited
Plath, Sylvia Lady Lazarus, from Collected Poems, Harper Collins Publisher, 1960.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961

Poem I felt strongly about

The poem that I connected to the most, in a weird kind of way is Lady Lazarus by: Sylvia Plath. The first time I read this poem, I found it a bit repulsive but interesting. So I read it again and again and after the fifth or sixth time of reading it, I saw certain lines that pulled at me strongly and was wondering why. I think the only way I can explain this is by first pointing out the lines that got to me in the first place.

“Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies” (lines 28-30).

Now this stanza can be interpreted in many different ways. I certainly took it in many different ways at first, but then I saw that it connected with an emotion that I feel strongly about. I am in general a very shy person and I don’t liked to be put on the spot that often or at all really. So when a teacher would praise me for doing something right and they did it….in front of the whole class, I would shrink away and curse at the teacher under my breath. It made me feel like all eyes were on me, making me the “big strip tease” as the line says and it became embarrassing. The poem itself has a different meaning for this stanza and I think that it means that this woman would be put on in a show for all to see, like in a circus act. This next set of stanza’s explains it quite well;

“For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood” (lines 58-63).

It creates more of the circus act atmosphere, even if it is a macabre form of it. This may be why I like it. It seems like a poem that would be used in a Stephen King novel. I tend to go towards the unusual and not normally liked by people. But I think this why people like me as well, because I go for the weird and unusual. I like things that go into heavy description and create an image into my mind and make me see something that I have no prior knowledge of but know that somewhere, it exists. In this case, a woman that has nine lives and eats men.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961

Difference of Summary and Analysis

The difference between a summary and an analysis is actually quite clear just sometimes hard to put into words.

A summary can mean many things such as the summary of a book that’s on the back cover, giving the reader a bit of insight into the story to hopefully grasp their attention and make them want to read more. It can also be a summary of what a person read, like in an English class the teacher will want a summary of a chapter that was just read or a summary of someone’s presentation. A summary is just a brief explanation that when the next person reads it, allows them to understand what’s going or what might happen if they continue reading. It can also help to give a summary when describing something on a website to give the reader a heads up on what’s going to be on the site itself. I’m going to insert an example of both actually of how a summary is on a website and for a book all at once. This link will take you to the Barnes and Noble website, where I have chosen a book and in the overview section, it gives me a quick summary of what the book is going to be about:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/maid-sama-volume-1-hiro-fujiwara/1101050315#Details.

An analysis is taking a piece of writing and looking at it through the lens of a writer and not a reader. Though you can do it as a reader, it is often better to do it as a writer so that you can get a better grasp on certain areas such as the author’s writing abilities and what kind of writing methods do they use throughout the piece. This tends to come up in Creative Writing classes. Since you are taking the class to study and become a better writer, what better way to do it than analyzing another writer’s work and learning off of them. An analysis can also be used in science, politics and business but for the sake of the subject, let’s stick with writing. This following link will give you an analysis that was used for The book of Ruth.

http://bible.org/article/literary-analysis-book-ruth.

Good Writers and Good Readers

Delaney Abajian

Eng102

Nabokov thinks that a good reader should not read with his heart and not with his brain but should read from his spine so that the reader can still be a little aloof and a little detached. The reader should have an imagination, memory, dictionary and some artistic sense. That a reader really doesn’t read a story, they reread it instead. I do agree with him because what his says makes perfect sense. When he said to pick four out of the ten for what would make a good reader, picked the four that he picked out, though I think that imagination and memory are the most important out of them all. I do understand that reading from the “spine” is where the real action takes place for a reader but I must impose that the heart and brain should also work together with the spine. That way there will be different angles to the story and in the end should come up pretty cohesive.

I believe that I reader must have a form of imagination and a good memory. The imagination because what is the purpose of reading a book if you are not willing to try to create the story in your mind while reading it? It just doesn’t make any sense. It would be the same as reading something and then blindly signing away and saying that you understood what you just read when in fact, you don’t. This must be the writer coming out of me in some form or another. I also think that memory is a great characteristic that a good reader should have because throughout a book and storyline, there will be certain points or information that a reader will need to remember so that when a part comes and the information is needed, the reader will know and not become confused. I think in general, it’s nice to have a good memory because it also works in the same effect for writers.

I think that I am a good reader, with some need of improvement in certain areas because I will pick up a book and look at it, then decide whether I want to read it at all. I can be very picky and that is a downfall for a reader because then you are blocking out other stories that could be good but I will never know since I have it in my mind what I like and don’t like. It makes me narrow minded in the sense of the word. So being more open would be a good thing but also keep in mind what I like and dislike for that too is important for a reader to have, in small doses that is.

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