Reflection-Civil Disobedience

I would like to start out my blog by saying that I liked reading this story a lot. The reason behind me liking to read this story is that it gave us Henry David Thoreau's view on government. I would like to start out with the first sentence, "I heartily accept the motto, That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically" (Thoreau 1). This is explaining to the reader that he believes that we should not have a government. Now that does not mean he does not like government, it just means that he believes that we should not have one or we will eventually not need one to guide us. I find this interesting because what would the world be like with no government? I would find it to be kind of chaotic in my view. Anyway, here is another quote from the story, "But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, (4) I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it" (Thoreau 1). This is just another example from the story where he talks about how he thinks we should have a "better" government. This could mean a better organized government or anything around that. Here is another quote from the story, "...for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage" (Thoreau 1). Here is a quote where I found it interesting, I interpreted this quote as the government makes the laws, but in the final product, we the people are the ones who in fact make the decisions. It is sort of like how we make the decisions, I now realize why we wrote a journal over breaking the laws, it is because this story like I just said, says that the government makes the laws, but we are the ones who decide what to do.

I find that this story falls under the Transcendentalism period because a characteristic of this period is it is very political. And as you can probably tell, this story falls under that very nicely because of the fact that it is all about the government and politics. "The Transcendentalists drew upon romantic thought in the formulation of an organic aesthetic, the foundational Transcendentalist theory that language and art are expressions or translations of nature and that human and universal meaning is to be found in the forms of nature" (Wayne). This is a quote from the criticism that I found and Wayne talks about how Transcendentalism connects to nature in some way and that is a characteristic that is used in the story. "I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right" (Thoreau 3). As you can see Thoreau used the season of summer and connected that to his friends and neighbors behaviors. He uses nature in some sort of way. Thoreau does a good job with introducing the Transcendentalism period to us.

Bibliography

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Romanticism and Transcendentalism." Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Thoreau, Henry D. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Richard Lenat, 2009. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.

Journal 26

I find that in some cases it is alright to break a law once or twice. The only way I find that it is alright to break the rules is when there is some kind of huge earthquake or any kind epidemic. I mean if there was a huge earthquake and you were basically trapped inside your house and you needed food, I would go to the store and get some food and supplies that all of my family needs. I am not going to just wait in line to go and get food when there is a huge earthquake happening. Also, I think it is alright to break the law when your wife is about to have a baby. You are at home and your wife is coming down the stairs and saying she is having a baby. You can not wait for anything so you drop everything and you have to race to the hospital. You have to speed to get there and you are going to have to go through a couple of red lights. Another instance where you are alright to break the law is when somebody goes into your house without being invited. So a robbery and you take a gun and the other person has a gun. You are alright to shoot that person because they broke into your house without consent. Another instance is when a person is hurt in some kind of way. Say if your little girl had a seizure you would do anything to help her out so you can save her life. It is another way to speed or go through red lights. You might get pulled over but I find it acceptable to break the law that way. Overall, there are a lot of ways that I find you are able to break the law. Even though you could get pulled over, I think it is OK to break the laws only in these situations.

Refection-The Minister's Black Veil

I have to say first that I really enjoyed reading this story. I do not usually enjoy reading these stories out of the book, but this one I did enjoy reading it. The reason I enjoyed reading this story over the other stories is the fact that it had some mystery that I enjoyed to read. Mystery was a key aspect during the Dark Romanticism period. This story had mystery within it just like this quote, "When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper's door. The first glimpse of the clergyman's figure was the signal for the bell to cease its summons. But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face? cried the sexton in astonishment. All within hearing immediately turned about, and beheld the semblance of Mr. Hooper, pacing slowly his meditative way towards the meetinghouse. With one accord they started, expressing more wonder than if some strange minister were coming to dust the cushions of Mr. Hooper's pulpit. Are you sure it is our parson? inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton" (Hawthorne 280). This shows a great deal of mystery because Mr. Hooper who is the minister, is wearing a Black Veil over his face. He has never taken it off and people are beginning to wonder if it really is Mr. Hopper. Another characteristic that this story uses is the imagination factor of the Dark Romanticism period. We can use the imagination part in this story because we can imagine in our heads as to what this man looks like in person. Wearing a black veil over your face, you can not tell what his face looks like. Another characteristic of the Dark Romanticism period in this story is the fact that there is tragedy. The tragedy in this story is that Mr. Hooper dies at the end, which shows another characteristic of the story.

The psychological factor in this story is the fact that everybody is determining if this is a bad thing or a good thing that is over his face. Just like a quote in the story, "I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper's face was behind that piece of crepe, said the sexton. I don't like it, muttered an old woman, as she hobbled into the meetinghouse. He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face" (Hawthorne 281). I do not really find the reason as to why they are saying he is bad. If I were them I would go up to him and take of the black veil and let him reveal himself. "Edgar Allan Poe, as well as other critics, have suggested that Hooper wears the veil as penance for a "specific sin" (Wright). This is an example from the criticism where Wright is describing a theory that critics have come up with for Mr. Hooper having that black veil over his face. In this story, Hawthorne does a good job with handling the Dark Romanticism period and tying it in with this story.

Bibliography

Wright, Sarah Bird. "'The Minister's Black Veil'." Critical Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 280-289. Print.

Journal 25

You can have a lot fears throughout your lifetime. I know that I am sixteen and I am still scared of any kind of spider there is out there. Fear can be defined as an emotion that comes from danger, evil, or pain. Say if I had a broken leg and I was in track. I would be in fear that I would never be able to run again depending on how much the pain is and how badly I had broke my leg. There was one time that I really felt fear and I will never feel the same about spiders ever again. I was at my old house playing in the backyard and we had a huge backyard back then. My sister and I were playing on the play set that we had when we were little. It was really hot outside and I did not know what I wanted to drink so I started to head inside when I stopped right under a tree because my sister asked me to get her something too. So I was about to head inside and my sister says STOP really loudly. I did not know what to do and that is when I started to get scared. I thought that she might be mad at me or there is something that is not good that is about to happen. She said look up and I swear it was the biggest spider I had ever seen. It was black and red and I thought it was a black widow. It was literally a centimeter away from my head and I just stood there. I can tell when I am really scared because I do not move when something scary happens. I just stand in one spot and wait until that scary thing goes away. Well my mom came right over and took that spider away from the top of my head and I think that that is where I started to hate spiders with a burning passion. That day is a day that I really felt fear. Fear for me is a bad thing. When I think of fear I really don't want to have to do anything that has to do with fear.

Reflection-Pit and the Pendulum

When reading this story, I can tell how this can be resembled as a part of the Dark Romanticism period. It has some tragedy in it which is one of the characteristics in the Dark Romanticism, and it also has some mystery within it as well. The mystery first comes at the beginning of the story where he is talking about his death. "I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence--the dread sentence of death--was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears" (Poe 263). The mystery in this is you ask yourself he is dying or will he live? That is what I got out of this first paragraph of the story. This story is talking about death and the act of dying. Which when I am reading a story I really do not want to talk about death and dying, but yet that is what the Dark Romanticism period. This story could also appeal to the Romanticism side because it is very detailed in what the story is saying. Here is another quote from the first page, "They appeared to me white--whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words--and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness--of immovable resolution--of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips" (Poe 263). I typed this quote because it can resemble a little bit of the romanticism aspect that we are talking about last semester with the description. Another quality of the Dark Romanticism period is the idea of death and just mourning over the fact that he is going to die. It is kind of that emotional aspect that we are talking about last class with the poems.

The psychological factor in this story is the questioning he is having with himself. He is always questioning what is real and what is not. He always seems to have visions throughout the story which sometimes he is unable to distinguish what is happening. "In this story we find the most explicit statement in Poe's fiction of his sense of the blurry line between dream and reality. The narrator considers that although when we awake even from the soundest sleep..." (May). This is an example from a criticism I found on this story. There does seem to be a "blurry line between dream and reality" (May) in this story which makes it part of the Dark Romanticism period. One last quote, " It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour, (for I could take but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward" (Poe 269). This also talks about the dream and reality (May) that the criticism is talking about. "The Pit and the Pendulum" shows a great deal of the Dark Romanticism period throughout the story.

Bibliography

May, Charles E. "Alternate Realms of Reality." In Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 96–97. Quoted as "Dreams and Reality in the Story" in Harold Bloom, ed. Edgar Allan Poe, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 1998. (Updated 2007.) Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe

Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 263-273. Print.

Journal 24

There was one time that I was so spooked and it was when I was having a dream. When I was young, I was sleeping and I was having a dream. Basically like any dream anybody has they think it is real. It is even worse when I was young. I was in a room with my little sister and we had a bunk bed. So me and her shared a room. I was on the top and she was on the bottom bunk. Anyway, I was having a dream and there was thunderstorm happening outside. So when I was dreaming there was also a thunderstorm happening outside. I was in the same setting and everything and it was as quiet as can be. There was nobody around and it was just me staring at the wall in the darkness. I could tell it was raining, because I could hear the pitter patter of the rain outside. I got really scared because I was young and there was a storm out in the outdoors. So I was just sitting in my bed, chilling, and all of a sudden I heard a little bit of thunder out in the distance. I was thinking that hopefully it would not happen again, I just sat there for a second and thought about if I should leave for my mom's room or not, then all of a sudden the thunder kept getting closer and closer and I could not move from my bed. I was not able to move and I got really scared. Then the thunder stopped and I just waited for some huge thing of lightning and then something started to laugh outside and a huge BOOM! came and I thought I peed my pants. It kept laughing at me and I did not know what to do. I finally almost got out of my bed because then it let me go and a huge white glove that was on a hand came through the window and I just stood still. Then it saw me and was reaching for me and I woke up. I woke up and went straight for my mom's room and told her the whole story. She was half a sleep and probably did not even listen to me. So I had to remind her that next morning. Still to this day my family makes fun of me for having that dream and whenever there is a thunderstorm outside when i'm about to sleep I always think about that dream just to think of how scared I was.

Edgar Allen Poe Reflection

I read the poem "Alone" by Edgar Allen Poe. When I read this poem at first, I really didn't realize what was going on. I kind of just read through it just to get an idea from it. Then I read through it a second time and I realized what was really going on. Now I realize why we read through them a couple times in class just so we could get it more smoothly. From my point of view, it seemed like ,at least in the first four lines, he talked about his childhood. Throughout those first four lines he says that, "As other's were: I have not seen As other's saw: I could not bring My passions from a common spring" (Poe Lines 2-4). In this quote he talks about how he was not like the other children. How he did not find the happiness that other children had seen. His passions did not come out the same ways as the other children's passions did (Lines 1-4). This kind of shows or portrays the dark romanticism period because it shows that every man has a true deep side inside of him. Another quote is "My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone" (Poe Lines 6 and 7), this resembles the dark romanticism period because it kind of gets you into that tragedy mind set. What I mean by this is that when he is stating about his sorrow and how he could not awaken his heart to joy (Lines 6 and 7), it kind of makes you sad and feel bad for him. He could not get his heart up to the same level as he was sad. Another important quote in this poem was "And all I loved, I loved alone" (Poe Line 8), this is such an important quote because it gives you a sense that he was lonely and he enjoyed all the things that happened in his life alone. Which could be one of the reasons why this poem is called "Alone". That quote also could make him confused about his life and what goes on around it. Which brings me into another quote from the story, "Then-- in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life-- was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still" (Poe Lines 9-12). This quote shows that his life was a mystery and had so many question marks around it that he could not of even answered. Mystery is a good characteristic of the Dark Romanticism period and Edgar Allen Poe shows a great characteristic in his poem. The last quote I am going to put into this is the last part of this poem is "From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold" (Lines 15 and 16), this almost brings a sense of happiness to the poem which this comes at the end of the poem. In this poem it shows a great deal of characteristics that came from the dark romanticism period and Poe does a good job with combining the main points of the Dark Romanticism period into his poem.

Bibliography

Poe, Edgar Allen. "Alone." The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore. LFC Hosting. 5 Aug. 2011. Web. 17 Jan. 2012.

Journal 23

I have watched a lot of scary movies in my lifetime. One scary movie that I have just recently watched is Insidious. This movie is about a boy who is possessed by a demon and cannot wake up. Obviously the parents are scared for this little boy because there has been no sign of a coma or any other medical treatments for this little boy. So they hire a person who specializes in this demon stuff because they are starting to figure out that it could be some sort of demon that is trapping their child inside the boys own dream. They finally get everything ready and they start to talk to the boy. They try at first and it did not work and then they tried one more time and the demon started to do weird things with this boy. The boy got up possessed and started wrecking things, this was basically the most scariest part of the movie. After the movie I was so scared because at the time I was not used to watching scary movies. When I was about to head to bed, I just started to think about the movie and if it would happen to me. I think the techniques that Insidious had used is the real-life situations. Even though I really don't believe in that sort of things there are people out there that do believe in that and they could get really freaked out about this stuff. Luckily for me I don't really believe in ghosts or demons. I could be wrong but I hope not. I mean just thinking about this movie gives me the chills. Overall, the movie that this technique uses is that they use the real life situations like demons and ghosts and dreams which could be a real-life situation. Overall I had found Insidious to be a really hard movie to watch because the fact that it may be a real-life situation just makes me think more.

Journal 22

I was on top of the mountain
I was getting ready to head down
When I noticed that their was a den
Also there was a little town
When I needed to drink from a fountain
There was no water around
It was so cold outside that I felt the need to drown
When I started to head down the hill
I realized I was bound
To head right into a mill
I tried to steer right
But nevertheless I somehow got down to the bottom of the hill
After my great sledding experience I took a bite
Of a great hamburger that was made by Bill
On my way home I started to think about my day
Oh I had so much fun on the hill
Even though I didn't get to have any pay
I still had more fun than I would at home eating my pills
When I finally got home,
I was really ecstatic to see
My dog and my pets from inside their dome
When I first saw them they had to go pee
When my pets came in it looked like they had foam
Around their mouths, but realized they were excited to see me
So this ends my great day
Wow what a wonderful scene
I 'm not ready for May
But hey I can be lean

Journal 21

It was a snowy scene. It was Christmas and my family and I were warm around the nice, cozy, fire. I was playing a game with my family and I looked outside and it seemed to be a blizzard. I asked my mom if it was supposed to be a bad snowstorm, but she replied as it was not supposed to be bad. So we continued playing our game and it continued to look white and snowy outside. I asked my sisters while looking outside if they wanted to go out and play. They answered very polietly no, and we continued playing our game. After we finished our game it still continued to snow heavily. I decided that I was going to go outside. I headed outside and the first thing I noticed was that the wind was very forceful and it made the outside even more cold than it already was. I decided to stay outside because that is the kind of person I am and played in the snow. I noticed two little circles in the window of my house and I realized that it was my sisters. I waved to them and of course they waved back to me. After playing in the white, fluffy snow for a while, I decided to head back into the house and drink some hot cocoa. I was so in love with the snow that while drinking the cup of cocoa I just sat on my couch inside and looked out into the dark, fluffy, snow storm. While enjoying my hot cup of cocoa, I noticed a tall, dark figure standing in the front of our house. Of course I could not see it because it was snowing so heavely outside. When the figure started to get closer I realized it was my dad. I opened the door and ran in my bare feet across the snow-filled ground to give my father a hug. Once I realized what I was doing, my feet started to get cold from all the snow and wind that was freezing, and dusting around our front yard. This is my story of a snowy scene.