How does Bokononism try to solve the problem of violent, religious dogmatism?

Bokonism makes everyone equal, and tells it’s followers that religion is full of lies. It tells the truth people want to hear while showing how the world really is, in a twisted sort of humor. Also, the fact that everything is just kinda jumbled together in absolutly no order. There is no beginning and end to Bokonism, not only just because Bokonon never finished the books until the end of the world. The fact that Bokonon gave something for the people of San Lorenzo to live by, gave them something to work for until the end of the world. Bokononism also outlines the fact that even with something to follow, people often stray from their beleifs or create a sub-beleif to follow. For instance, “Papa” carried on the tradition of hunting Bokonon despite also beleiveing in Bokononism.

How does Felix mock the prevailing notion that “evil” is humanity’s biggest problem?

During the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, he plays with a cat’s craddle, a foolishly simple child’s game, and he attempts to play with Newt but mostly traumatizes him. Felix didn’t act like a scientist but more like someone lost in the world with nothing to drive him to the science behind the bomb. For instance, at a crucial point in the building of the bomb, Felix started to study turtles. Felix also had no understanding of the concept of doing wrong, thus his ease at building something he knew would kill hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. He just did as he thought and was asked out of curiosity and intruigue by his own actions. The goal he strived to reach was learn something else about the world like many young children or an infant. He investigated and asked more questions than he answered, and he also carelessly created things that are lethal to the world.

How does the commencement speech delivered at Frank’s high school graduation mock the valorized status that science occupies as a means to discover “truth?”

Breeder had been the supervisor of the Manhatten Project but the only thing he and the other scientists discovered was a way to destroy mankind. In a sense, Breeder had valorized science that kills people and destroys what society and mankind have built. “Papa” ‘s idea of truth also rested in science, which, in the end, destroyed the world. In a sick twisted way, the commencement speech, indirectly from the atomic bomb, identified that to discover truth, is to discover death.

What does Mona symbolize about the human character?

Mona’s character shows the instinctual human view of the world. In death and in times of great pressure, she shows a placid facial expression, taking no direct reaction to events happening around her. Instictually, she is similar to the bare basics of human nature, and that is self preservation. She takes things in strive, and the only thing she really desires is the necessities. Food, water, shelter, clothing/ ability to take care of herself, and something to base her life off of. The only thing she really has no desire for is sex, which she only views as an act of reproduction, much like the houspets in many homes accross the world.

(I only saw the second half of the full text version so this is what it will be on)

I thought that the interpretation of the film was very interesting and from a political view, like the Moggs essay we read. It was very very detailed, and interactive. What I found most interesting was that all royal characters were blonde with blue eyes and that Ophelia was blonde as well. To me, this shows the characterization of all those who had very close ties to nobility (i.e. Ophelia and Hamlet’s relationship). I also found it intersting that when she was singing, it showed a flashback of a memory of her and Hamlet participating in matters of the sexual kind, which ties into the idea that Ophelia could have been pregnant.

Seeing the full text version (or even the last half of it) helped me to understand the dialect between characters a little bit easier and I could understand what was going on a bit easier.

I also found parts a bit more humorous than if I had just read them to myself. Like when Horatio and Hamlet were talking with each other, in Act five. I found that very funny because Hamlet, to me, seemed very gossip driven.

This film production of the play struck me as odd, strange, and portraying the play with a very interesting twist. It was kind of disturbing. I felt that this depiction portrayed Hamlet as nothing but insane with the tendancy to be smart. However, Claudius seemed to be something of an ambiguous tragic hero, who had foully gained the throne but had the whole hearted intentions of protection for the people of Denmark (when he sent Hamlet away to England). Gertude is portrayed as the naive woman, who has innocence in all of her actions and the reasoning behind her actions is stupidity. Ophelia’s character is stubborn and strong, like how I’ve portrayed her while reading, but eventually goes off her rocker.

I felt that the Zeffereli (spelling?) version focused most on insanity and made ambiguos parts not so ambiguos. He captures the characters, as I pictured them, with the actors well and helped to fill in the scenery that Shakespeare has provided for the reader to follow.

[sorry for being a tad late....computer issues]

Alice Walker words in her essay that her search for Zora was  a moderatly painful experiance. The way she words it all, though, is magnifically sculpted as to bring beauty to pain. Walker found herself feeling many emotions of which she did not shed easily as a respect to Zora Neale Hurston.

I felt that Walker’s essay was very direct to the point. It had many contrasts which to some people can be overwhelming. Walker uses her language to paint the scenes of Florida for the reader to feel what she felt in her journey to find the grave of a woman of great acheivement. In the end, I felt angst that not much could be done as to the aide of giving Hurston a grave fit for a queen, aside the simple grey stone bought and three weeks afer purchase placed on her grounds of eternal sleep. The essay was very emotional and made me really think about what matters in life. Family, honest, people, and finding the way to survive and be happy. From what Walker found out, the miniscule amount of information, Hurston live a fulfilling life of happiness and trial. Walker also discovered the tresures of life, as Hurston saw it, in the Florida horizon as she reached one ship of her own hero’s journey to reach a happy ending to life.

ANSWERS!!!!!!!

1. Zora was thirteen.
2. Dance, talk, and sing. She would have done it all for free. Zora is curious, outgoing, and very vocal.
3. “a little colored girl”
4. She uses an operation and a race
5. Just after the Civil War, the period in which the South was rebuilt and the Union and the Confederacy became the United States of America once more. She was saying it was a race to get to freedom
6. A lion or big cat of somesort
7. His skin remains white and unmarked by the colorful emotion within the music. Her skin is multiple colors and not just one. No…she feels he should have openned his ears and heart instead of only his mind.
8. Better and classier. Not entirely. Hurston feels she has similarities with Joyce but sees that there is a definite barrier between their two personalities and life styles.
9. No. She’s indifferent about her life and sees it as living and living to the best of her abilities as an American citizen.
10. She views it as something that must be chossen and must be accepted. She uses a bag full of miscellaneous things. People choose their bags and dump them out and put the things back in. She feels that how people see things are choice.
11. Sassy
12. Nature, Art

Literary Devices

repetition

diction

frame narrative

Vonnegut incorporates repetition into his novel Slaughterhouse Five. The repetition of the phrase “So it goes” makes anything extremly depressing seem like it doesn’t matter or that it is insignificant, including death, the bombing of Dresden, and Billy Pilgrim’s near death experiance. The repetition of these three little words after any sad and horrific event creates the illusion that nothing really matters and it’s all just a giant board game that can be played over and over. Time and time again in the novel, Vonnegut incorporates this phrase to give the reader the idea that nothing in life is really worth fretting over and life is just one big blob that can be disected over and over because the parts fuse together again.

Billy Pilgrim’s name can be a symbol to this idea that life is always continuing and always merging together. Billy is a common name, often thought as a young child or someone immature. Through the novel, Billy is depicted as a crazy man who is obsessed with the thought of time and the thought of Tralafamadore. These childish ideas furthur emphasis the symbolism of the name Billy. The fact that Billy is often thought of as being a child also arises during his relapses into the memories of World War Two. Billy is depicted as comical and foolish, with no wisdom and having no place in the war as a soldier, however there he is. Children shouldn’t be in the war because they are immature and don’t fully understand the concept of a gun killing people quite yet. Billy Pilgrim seems immature with his clutsy movements, his use of the Cinderella boots for shoes, and the curtain as a toga, not to mention the women’s coat as a hand warmer. The whole appearance is comical and childish, The definition of a pilgrim is a person who journeys to foreign lands. In the novel, Billy Pilgrim travels to fight in World War Two where he travels through Germany. Billy has the intention to travel to Montreal for an optometrist convention but crashes in Vermot. Billy appears to be a pilgrim because he is always traveling to foreign places and foreign countries.  As the reader reads the story, all of Billy’s travels merge together and the reader is able to view them all. The idea of life being this blob with all of these incidents fusing together and not worth fretting over appears in the ideas that none of these places have any significance. The tone of the novel implies heavily, through syntax and diction, the insignificance of Billy Pilgrim, life, and travel.

The diction of the novel is  simple. The reader is able to follow the novel with near one hundred percent comprehension. Vonnegut uses short and simple words which are easy to comprehend. Vonnegut also uses simple words in a complex place as to provoke thinking, and to force the reader to pay full attention to the task at hand.

Well…..the book is quite interesting. Vonnegut’s style in the novel was hard to catch and slightly difficult to comprehend when first openning the text, however upon furthur reading, the reader is able to submerge in the narrators mind. Vonnegut uses frame narrative to tell the story from a more revealing view, allowing the reader to see cause and effect of war. The plot is well formed, and has a good basis. The use of repetitive phrases helps to emphasis points, and  to catch the reader’s eye. It is a very stable novel, and easy to read once the first slippery stepping stones are crossed. The characters are interesting and fun to follow.

I felt that I could have described the scene a bit more and read the poem a bit better and had a more open mind to the poem. I felt rished, however, and so I just wrote what I was definante about and even some ideas that I had not completly formed all the way through. I should have wrote more how the concrete details helped support what I was saying and I felt that I put in a lot of filler to fill up space, and time. I did like the fact that I talked about the hawk being a symbol of a harrier to time, and that I provided some sort of support to what I felt was the theme of the poem, the fact that I had finally included a theme statement, and that I had a complete thesis instead of half of one. However, I should have been more prescise and less drawn out with my thesis statement, and focused a bit more on the scene of the piece and described why I felt it was a dark setting and how that added to the theme. I felt pretty good about what I wrote, however I have a lot of room for improvment.

I consider myself a Puyallup tribe member, despite the fact that I am end of the blood line. I know many Native men, and almost all of them have the same sarcastic, bad mouthed, and faint of heart humor that the voice Alexie gives to “War Dances” has. I don’t see this piece as literary, but I think it just might be. To be honest, I’m not really sure. The voice of the piece reminds me of my own grandfather, who like the main character, is sarcastic, and states the truth as he sees it using just as colorful language.

I felt connected to the piece, and understanding why the old man sang to the blanket the healing song, and I understood why the father sang another different one, and why the two sons sang with their fathers.

I enjoyed the story, because it was written in a modern aspect of Native American cultur. A lot of the young people within tribes see the old ways as just that, and ignore their Native roots, saying “Screw that, I have better things to do”. The ones that keep the cultur alive are the ones that put up with the old man that sings the healing song with his father, and doesn’t ask his people to change to fit the new ways, and to fit the now but lets the old ways mold his or her character into a beautiful personality. What most people don’t realize, which I picked up on immediatly in the story, is that only Natives like to be called “Indian” by other Natives. It’s a joke to us, and kind of an old mockery toward the white man that called natives “Indian”. In Alexie’s story, he makes it a point that only the two Native sons with the traditional fathers called each other “Indian”. The brother-in-law didn’t and the wife didn’t. It’s an inside joke everyone knows. Even the dying Indian with the alcohol problem, and the one with the lumpy brain.

Gooseberries, oh disgusting Gooseberries. Human happiness is nothing but a curtain of illusions, and is misconceived with wealth.

Yet happiness is such a sought out thing.