Setting the stage

There aren't many stage directions in Shakespeare so the bulk of the directions are inserted in the text itself. One example of this is at the end of most scenes when it is the appropriate time for the character to make their exit, there will be some sort of line addressing audience. One example is in Act III, Scene II, when Baptista makes his exit and he says to Tranio, who is dressed up as Luncentio, "She shall Lucentio. Come gentlemen, let's go." Lines like that are repeated throughout the course of the story to signal a character's exit from the scene.
Shakespeare's plays as opposed to T.V. scripts have much less stage directions. A T.V. script has more stage directions and things are meant to be acted out a specific way. There are certain things each character must do at a certain time that is intricately pointed out in the script. In Shakespeare's plays, the stage directions are not as explicit as in a T.V. script. The directions will be pointed out in the text rather passively. This makes it possible to see the same play acted out differently each time because the stage directions aren't as distinct.

Petruchio's Demeanor

Petruchio’s cruel actions aren’t justifiable at all. From the very beginning it’s clear that his intention is not for winning Kate’s affection but rather winning the dowry that she comes with. He sees marrying Kate and taming her as a game and he’s willing do whatever it takes to succeed at this game. He treats the wedding as a joke by showing up late and wearing his questionable clothing. It’s so bad that Kate’s father said he wouldn’t allow Kate to be married unless Petruchio changed is clothing. He answers back by saying that Kate his marrying him as a person and not his clothing so therefore it shouldn’t be that big of a problem. In addition, Petruchio is constantly acting like a tyrant and is abusive to all surrounding him. He demonstrates his blatant disregard for other’s emotions and wellbeing time after time. Petruchio shows no respect for his servants or his newlywed wife. He is constantly yelling at his wife and his servants and he even goes as far as to striking his servants for doing nothing wrong at all. Kate tries to pull him back during the scene where he’s angry at all his servants but he just ignores her altogether. By the end of Act IV scene I, he tries to justify his actions by saying that all his actions aren’t done in vain and they’re all for the goal of taming his shrew of a wife. He claims that treating her like dirt will eventually turn her into a lady as well as a good wife. Petruchio is determined to treat her inexplicably in order to change his wife from her current state into an obedient wife. It appears as though he tends to take things further than they should be taken. We do see in the end though that his methods did indeed work and the Kate who was once a shrew is no more. She did in fact change into a better wife then all the others. She is the only woman that comes to her husband’s side at the end of play. Even though Petruchio’s methods did end up working, his actions were fairly questionable. He practically tortured her until she changed in the woman he wanted her to change into. It was cruel and selfish for him to do that. The ends did not justify the means in this case.

Eveline

Eveline’s epiphany is that her expectations were far too great. She had this vision that if she went with Frank, her whole life would change for the better. Eveline believed that this was the change she was looking for and that this change would be a turning point in her life. She felt that if she left and got married, she would earn more respect in society and that in turn would allow her to live a better life. Eveline wanted her life to improve dramatically and believed that this was moving away with Frank would help her accomplish that goal. She sought respect from the society she lived in. Her vision was that if she left with Frank her life would drastically improve once she gained the respect she sought after. She believed this whole heartedly and so that’s why she wanted to leave with Frank so badly. As she prepared to leave however she wasn’t at the point mentally where she was ready to leave her family and her whole life behind even though she was disrespected in her current surroundings. The world has always been fairly patriarchal with a few exceptions. Equality is great thing and society itself tries to be equal even in this day and age not everything is considered equal. Men are still more power than women to a certain and extent and that just isn’t fair sometimes. Eveline lives in a society where that’s all that is preached. Women are expected to be housewives and just take care of the family in her society. Her dad treats her brothers better than he treats her due of the fact that she is a woman. When the time came for her to finally set off and leave, her eyes were finally opened. She realized that even if she went with Frank, nothing would really change and that her life wouldn’t be much better off. Society wouldn’t just change itself because she moved away and got married. She had an epiphany that the drastic change she desperately wanted would not be that simple. That’s the reason why she couldn’t leave and that is the reason why she stayed behind in her banal life.

Sympathy for Gregor

Kafka wants us to sympathize with the protagonist of the story of couple reasons. The first one is the obvious one and it is that somehow Gregor, who is just an ordinary man, managed to turn into a “monstrous vermin”. The other reason is that as time progresses, Gregor’s family turns on him. They start to treat him less and less like their son and brother and more and more like the vermin that he has transformed into. The passage that I think is especially sympathetic is the part where Gregor’s dad threw the apples at him.

“A weakly thrown apple grazed Gregor’s back but skidded off harmlessly. However, another thrown immediately after that one drove into Gregor’s back really hard. Gregor wanted to drag himself off, as if the unexpected and incredible pain would go away if he changed his position. But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay stretched out completely confused in all his senses. Only with his final glance did he notice how the door of his room was pulled open and how, right in front of his screaming sister, his mother ran out in her underbodice, for his sister had loosened her clothing in order to give her some freedom to breathe in her fainting spell, and so how his mother then ran up to his father—on the way her loosened petticoats slipping toward the floor one after the other—and how, tripping over them, she hurled herself onto his father and, throwing her arms around him, in complete union with him—but at this moment Gregor’s powers of sight gave way—as her hands reached around his father’s neck and she begged him to spare Gregor’s life. “

This passage makes us sympathize for the protagonist because it shows that his dad has completely turned on him. It is saddening to see that his dad to do such a thing. His mother had to fight his father in order to save him. This is a strong point in the story because it’s an eye opener to see the father commit such a serious offense. It shows how his family is beginning to get sick of him and want to be rid of him. That in itself should make the reader sympathetic for Gregor and the situation that he is in.

The Cask of Amontillado Paragraph

Original.

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is a chilling account of one man’s determination on getting revenge. Montresor is hell bent on making Fortunado pay for the “thousand injuries” in which was inflicted on him by Fortunado. Montresor accomplishes his revenge by leading his victim into the catacombs. He then chained him up and left him there to rot for half a century. It remains a mystery what Fortunado did to deserve such a heinous death. Whatever the circumstances though still doesn’t justify what Montresor ultimately did to Fortunado. Montresor was a man that sought revenge and in the end, he achieved his wicked goal.

Revised.

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is a chilling account of a man’s selfish goal of seeking revenge. Montresor is focused on making Fortunado pay for the “thousand injuries” that have been inflicted upon him by Fortunado. Those “thousand injuries” were never explicitly made clear by Montresor. Nevertheless, Montresor continues with his goal for revenge on Montresor by leading Fortunado into the catacombs. Fortunado then chained him up and left there to rot for half a century. It remains a mystery what Fortunado did to deserve such a grim and heinous death. Whether the circumstances though, it still doesn’t justify what Montresor ultimately did. Montresor was a man obsessed with revenge and in the end, he accomplished his twisted goal.

In my revision, I kept the basics of my paragraph there but I changed a couple minor things. I changed Montresor’s “determination on getting revenge” into his “selfish goal of getting revenge”. I changed that because there wasn’t anything that made it seem like he was determined or that his whole life was leading up to this moment. It just seemed like he was being cruel and selfish and he wanted to exact his revenge. I also added a sentence stating that the “thousand injuries” were never explicitly made clear. I thought it was necessary because it tells the reader more about the circumstances. The rest of the paragraph remained in tact with a couple minor word changes.

Young Goodman Brown

I do believe the story agrees with the assertion that evil is the nature of mankind. Throughout his trip through the woods, we never truly know if this is all really happening or if it is all just a dream. Nothing in the story gives us concrete evidence that these events actually occurred that night in the woods. It remains a mystery to our protagonist because he himself does not know whether the witch meeting was a dream or not. He wakes up the next morning questioning the validity of what he thinks he witnessed. But even through all the ambiguity, the story still ends up with Brown having doubts about the town. Brown himself ends up angry and bitter because he believes the people of the town have sinned by taking part in such blasphemy. He’s still never really sure but just the though of it being true changed his view of the town. The guide’s claim that “Evil is the nature of mankind” stays with Brown until the end of the story and he lived out the rest of his life believing that statement.

Miss Emily's Facebook

Networks: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
Sex: Female
Hometown: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
Relationship Status: It’s Complicated
Looking For: Friendship

Activities: Not paying taxes.
Poisoning others.

Interests: Not paying taxes.
Poisoning Others

Favorite Music: Slow Jams

Favorite TV Shows: The Simpsons (makes me think of Homer)

Favorite Movies: None.

Favorite Books: Romeo and Juliet

Thesis

Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” makes use of Holocaust and Nazi imagery in order to compare her struggles with the men in her life to the struggles the Jews dealt with during Holocaust.

Parody

Our discussion in class about “The Wild Swans Skip School” parodying “The Wild Swans at Coole” by William Yeats and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks got me thinking about the effects of parodies. Are parodies a good or a bad art form? Are parodies all in harmless fun or are they offensive? Parodies usually take the core and structure of something and then switch it around. They usually are used to poke fun of a certain subject but, at times they are used to pay tribute to something. The first person that comes to mind when I think of parodies is Weird Al. I remember a minor controversy involving a popular rapper at the time. Coolio had a song out called “Gangster Paradise” that he took very serious. The rapper put a lot of his emotions into the song and so when Weird Al parodied it into “Amish Paradise” that’s when the controversy started. Weird Al did offer an apology to Coolio and the two did end being okay with each other. There are some that view parodies as humor and some that see it as being rude and offensive. I’m one of the people that view it as comedy. I think parodies are hilarious and I love being able to see, read, and hear them.

My Bad.

My Bad

I have taken
your girl
she was at
your mom's house

I think
she was probably
waiting
for you there

My bad dude
she is amazing
so sweet
and all mine

For my parody, I chose to tell the story of me taking another person's girlfriend. I tried my best to imitate the form given by "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams. There are minor changes here and there but all in all I kept the structure in tact. The syllables in each line of my parody are the same as the syllables in the original poem. I think it's a pretty shady thing to do and I don't condone doing something like this, but I just thought it would be funny for this assignment. My poem has nothing to do with the plums mentioned in the original poem but it does relate with the theme of asking for forgiveness from someone. The speaker in the original is asking to be forgiven for eating the plums but it seems like the speaker is trying to rub it in by saying how great the plums were. In that way, it doesn't seem like a very sincere apology. I did the same thing by saying that although I'm sorry for taking his girlfriend, I'm still going to rub it in his face by saying shes amazing and sweet and that she's all mine now.

Daddy Imagery

Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is a poem that certainly contains a great amount of imagery. Holocaust images are used to describe her father and her lover. This demonstrates her disdain for them because when you compare someone to something as grim and terrible as the Nazis and the Holocaust, it shows how much you despise something. She uses words that inscribe emotions felt when talking about the nazis such as "swastika", "panzer-man", and "facist". For this a poem, the image of someone being tied down comes to mind. The image i chose is an image of someone with their hands tied together by a rope. I chose this image because to me, it represents the idea of being controlled by someone that the poem conveys. Plath is controlled by the men in her life and her life is greatly influenced by them. Both her father and her lover have done her wrong and she hates them for doing so. The picture relates because the men in her life are tying her down and controlling her life.

Free Response

Our discussion of My Last Duchess caught my attention in class. The poem is mysterious and the question of whether or not he killed his wife kept crossing my mind. To me, the poem feels like its a murder mystery. It's gives off the vibe that he killed his wife and he's proud of it even though he really can't say much about it. I remember reading this poem in high school and it caught my attention then as well, so I was really excited about hearing more about it in class.

Poetic Form

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73”

The second quatrain in prose:
In me you see the end of a day
After the sun sets in the west
The night then comes and takes the light away
Sleeping marks the end

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare is composed of three quatrains as well as one couplet for a total of 14 lines. There is an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Each of the three quatrains talks about a different subject even though they all have something in common. The first quatrain describes a season coming to an end while the second and third quatrain describes a day in addition to a person’s life expiring.
The form of the sonnet is intricate to the meaning of the sonnet because transitioning from one quatrain to another enables us to see changes in the duration of something’s existence. The season is considered to be a long amount of time, while the day is relatively shorter, and then we have the fire which has the shortest existence of the three. All three quatrains deal with something that must eventually come to an end. What poetic form accomplishes that prose does not is that with poetic form, you're able to play around with words (rhyme for example) while in prose, things are stated in a more straight forward and formal way. In poetry, you don’t have to follow the rules of grammar and punctuation. You’re free to express yourself without any boundaries. When writing in prose, grammar and punctuation is a must in order maintain the structure needed.

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