Four Years

After four years of high school I have been expected to read many works for class and on my own. My favorite book I read for fun was The Hunger Games which may be a popular opinion that could be redundant to read and hear about but I think the concept was very well written and could have easily worked for my research paper but I did not think it would be a good choice because so many people would want to use it. I think the series could become a classic as we are seeing the Harry Potter series slowly work towards that status. After a few generations it may be up in that stature for its style and content. Jennifer Lawrence played Katniss for an excellent performance and she is certainly one of the top stars of today. Much of the book has a futuristic concept and I think could still be entertaining for the future generations. That is my favorite  book I read in the four years outside of class. My favorite one in class might have been The Scarlet Letter which is an odd choice but I feel I know that story the best and I have used it for a lot of my papers. I do not relate to the story but I think it has a large lesson behind it which maybe relates to how I feel about life. It shows that what is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right. That is how I live my life. The Puritan society is very different and adultery is not right or popular but how she bounced back and made the community better with her presence is something notable. Hiding the truth is easy until it eats away at a person's soul. Owning up to sins can prevent torture and death of the soul. Dimmesdale drove himself mad for keeping it a secret. Hester worked hard in the community to negate her wrong and Chillingsworth died because he could not get revenge which is irony and karma.

 

 

 

Both are masterworks that I have enjoyed reading and learning about and I hope to one day walk into my kids' room seeing them reading these books that I have read and enjoyed.

 

 

 

Your typical Gatsby blog post...

So... Leonardo DiCaprio is Jay Gatsby. I am outraged with myself I have not seen the movie yet! But the book is one of my favorites. Leonardo has played many roles where his character is mysterious yet attentive and luxurious so he certainly is perfect to play Mr. Gatsby. I feel that Jay Gatsby will be a combination of Cobb from Inception and Jack Dawson from Titanic. He needs to be as mysterious as Cobb but have the ability to love Daisy as much as Jack loved Rose. Jay throws his legendary parties for one reason: to impress Daisy, the woman he met in 1917 that he loves. The trailer gives me a great impression to how Leonardo plays his role, but I definitely need to see the movie for a full judgment. I am sure I will love it! At times the book made me want to just go to a party to have fun but the sentiment behind it all draws in the reader. Jay's secret story that few knew about is one that I wanted to know and liked. But my biggest question about the movie is can Spiderman actually play a decent Nick? Tobey certainly has played in other movies but isn't known by anything other than Spiderman. He did not get the call back for the newest Spiderman movie which I have not seen (possibly because of his age and the new storyline) but can he pull it off? He will have to be nosey but relaxed and find his way into situations unexpectedly. I guess that suits Spiderman. Always spying on people but being relaxed when he's not in his suit keeping his identity secret. Now there is only one way to see the book in action... buy a ticket.

What is a research paper?

Research paper. The mortal enemy of most students. Or the task of cramming in a lot of information into a well organized essay by a certain due date. The idea of a research paper does not freak me out because I know what kind of writer I am. I always wait until the last possible minute on purpose. Junior year I wrote my research paper on my phone on a two hour bus ride going to a baseball game. My entire team made fun of me and some of them panicked for me in fear I would not finish. But knowing how I am, I finished with ease. If only Google Drive had an app sooner, that would have made my complications much simpler. This year I thought about my topic and gave it a week to simmer in my mind. I did not need any sources because I thought of three things I could tie together that I knew a great deal about.

 
But how are they related? Post-apocalyptic wars occur in the future and these are results of what those wars have done. The government systems organized in the aftermath all want to diminish the lesser man's knowledge of pre-war times and the ability to retaliate and overthrow the leaders. The writers and developers all saw a future of similar quality. Many of the goods and valuables are called pre-war but are things that would most likely be considered retro today. Everything pre-war in Fallout 3 is from the 1950s and 1960s but all of the historic references are accurate. The Book Of Eli has two of my favorite movie stars, Denzel Washington and the always fabulous Mila Kunis. In preparation of this essay I went for the harder two forms of art to come up with and I thought I would be creative by using my favorite game. But I also knew that it's merit would be questioned so I had to explain that it is actually very educational. I have learned a lot for things from playing the game because of all of its references. It gives me a huge appreciation as video game player. I went with the future war concept and thought of The Book of Eli because I watched it not that long ago. Then I needed a book and searched on Google for a post-apocalyptic book and did not need to go through the list when I saw 1984 appear first in the alphabetic list. I actually read the book a few years ago and made a comparison between it and Fallout 3 when I got the game but never put much thought into until the paper. I think I wrote a pretty well organized paper for not needing any sources due to my knowledge on all three works.

Thoughts on AP

Well after a full Senior year, AP Lit has come to a close. Thoughts on the class? Everyday was certainly a new adventure. I learned a lot about various things, literature for most but other irrelevant things. To many of my classmates surprise I did not use my iPad to search for answers I knew. I used it many times to look up words I did not know and to validate some of my points. Debating its purpose was certainly fun with some of my classmates that would joke saying I could not use the iPad for the AP test. I knew I could not use it but I knew I would not need it either. It was just a tool for me to use. The test was not as awful as I had anticipated. I felt that the multiple choice was a hit or a miss with some of the questions because the difficulty level did vary. I did not know some of the words so I made an educated guess. Essays were fairly simple in my opinion and I lucked out on the open ended question. I wrote about Their Eyes Were Watching God which I familiarized myself with again just days before the exam to participate in the Literary Deathmatch in class. I will be honest in saying I did not read most of the books but I made sure I knew the material well enough to understand its importance and be able to write about anything on the books. I think that it takes a good writer and a good understanding of more than just the plot of a book to be able to accomplish such a task. I can write on anything and make a case whether I know what I am saying or not and it could be very believable for most readers. This is precisely why I want to write a book one day after I develop an original idea to write about and have produced. I will also need time to sit down and do it... But taking AP Literature has given me an appreciation for the work put into writing. A unique style allows for most authors to stand the test of time and that is what I want to do with some of my works even though writing will be more of a hobby than a primary job. Some may find it odd that someone wanting to be an engineer would want to write books but I find it to be unique and have an aspect of being well rounded.

After thoughts

Giacomo Leopardi was the perfect selection in my opinion. He is not originally English and I can understand some of the references and allusions due to my experiences as an Italian student. His name popped up in my Italian class after I chose him while the Italian exchange was gone and I had a substitute teacher. I am glad I chose him as my poet to study also because I felt that he has some fantastic work. Read and spoken in both languages. I was capable of writing a majority of my paper in only a few short hours. A few revisions required the most of my time but I felt I understand the poems fairly well. They were very well written which helped determine the appropriate meanings behind the words. I wish to one day travel tonItaly and possibly study, and thanks to this paper I can say I know quite a bit about one of the greatest Italian poets of the nineteenth century.

My conquest continues...

I needed to annotate my other three poems and read them in both languages too. I chose Scherzo, To Himself, and L'infinto. More and more I began to realize how much pain and suffering the man went through emotionally and physically. To Himself is about him talking to himself about dying because he has done all he needs to do. To me that is very sad. As I read the poems and annotated them I started to realize making the focus of my paper about how the languages work together to make the poems great poems would have been too complicated and very short. The poems are how they are interpreted and it seems that they will be interpreted about the same way in different languages. Most translations seem more literal and lose some meaning which is true, but the difference of the poems in the two languages seemed too minuscule to talk about, partially because my thought process is in English so even as I read in Italian, I understand in English. I had to take a different direction with my paper and just wrote as if the poet were an English writing poet for meaning and structure but I wanted to make it clear that the sound is completely different and usually better in the original Italian. My written paper did not take that long.

First poem encounters

Giacomo's most popular poems are combined in I Canti which is Italian for the songs. I scrolled through all the poems that were listed on one particular website in a random order. I decided to choose two fairly short ones and I knew I needed a longer one. I looked for my final one by cross referencing for one of the important ones or more well analyzed compared to the rest. L'italia was the long poem which I read in Italian first. I surprised myself with how much I initially understood and I looked up the meaning for some of the more intricate vocabulary in the Italian language. Then I read it in English. I realized that things in your own language seem less original or appealing. It's may be common with most people as we are stimulated by things that are new or different. That may just be human nature working with my thought processes. I learned a lot about Giacomo as a person from this poem. He lived a lonely life, yet he was very patriotic because the love for his country was the only love he could ever encounter during his life. His parents were cruel and practically neglects him and his siblings in patently ways. He was at war every day with his health and he would not let that bother him. He would die for his country if he needed to. This poem also show boated his classical knowledge as he mastered Latin, Greek, and somewhat Hebrew as a young adult. I admired L'Italia and the symbolism and passion behind Giacomo.