Journal Blog #3

In the book "The Last Song", Ronnie was forced to stay with her father whom she didn't speak to for 3 years. Throughout the book so far, Ronnie was not fitting in and the only person that was supposedly her friend framed her. In the beginning of the book, the friend of Ronnie's, Blaze accused her of trying to get with her boyfriend, Marcus. But the truth was Marcus was harassing Ronnie but he twisted the truth and told Blaze, Ronnie was harassing him. Blaze took this seriously and when she went to meet Ronnie she framed her and made it look like Ronnie shoplifted at a store. With all these complications, Ronnie felt that the only way to make it all go away is if she left. The decision of leaving and going back to New York would not only impact her father but also her brother. Leaving her father would mean their father daughter relationship would be once again distance and they would not talk as much. Not only will she be leaving her father but also she would be leaving Will. Will is the guy that she only met a couple times but those couple times were 'magical' and if she left, she would have never knew what that would have become. Each decision that is made not only impacts you but also every one else, which is why for each decision you should always think outside of the box and consider others.

Journal Blog #1

For this cycle of Lit circles of decisions, I am doing the book "The Last Song" By Nicholas Sparks. In the novel, I am at the point of where we readers are just getting to know the characters and how they got to where they are in the setting of the book. The essential question that I chose is "How do one's decisions impact others?" This question relates to the book "The Last Song" because the main character Ronnie made a decision to not speak to her father for 3 years. The reason was because he left her family and marriage in a rut while trying to pursue his music career. The decision of not speaking to her father for that long not only affected her father, but also herself, mother and brother. Not speaking to her father also lead to bad behaviours towards her mother and started to hang out with the 'wrong' crowd. She is in denial of missing her father and she made that decison to stop something that she really loved: playing the piano. "All right. how about this? I'm not going to play the piano for you." This quote is the first thing that Ronnie says to her father and as she still is as angry as she was 3 years ago. This storyline connects to a family member of mine, my cousin, who had a lot of problems with her father as a teen. Although the only difference between the story and my cousin is that my aunt and uncle didn't split up. So my cousin and my uncle never got along at all ever and finally when she moved out she never spoke to him again because she never really understood the fathers point of view. Like Ronnie, my cousin was misunderstood and did the things she did to get attention. As I continue to read the novel "The Last Song", the book really intrigues me on the decisions and actions that Ronnie takes and I hope to see the development of the character and she makes more decisions.

How does the media shape our view of the world/ ourselves?

The articles that I read were "The Rwandan Girl who Refused to Die", and "The Children of the Rwanda's Genocide. In comparison to the articles, "The Rwandan Girl who Refused to Die" impacted me the most compared to "The Children of the Rwanda's Genocide". This is because the first article was the story of Valentina and the killings of families in a church. It surprised me how horrific and inhumane people are by the massacre of children! It's upsetting to me how much they have witnessed and how few survived the massacre. I feel really bad for the children because they are forced to be independent at such a young age while here in Canada the time we actually leave our parents and be independent is probably 20! And here we actually have parents to guide us, support us and be there when we need them. But its disappointing because we don't take advantage of the fact that we do have our parents here and unlike the children in Rwanda, they witnessed their parents get brutally murdered and have to live with that for as long as they can survive.

The way that the author portrayed the articles was that they tried to hook you with the setting and environment that the children live in. They used symbolism and imagery and explained the places that the children lived in. For example: "When I first saw her nearly three years ago she seemed more shadowlike than human, a skeletal apparition lying on a camp bed in a country where corpses littered the roads and fields." The authors set the mood of how they felt about their experiences and portrayed it in their writing. I truly did feel how painstaking it was for the authors to witness the children and even interview them as well.

The articles are different in a way that in the first article, the author actually heard the experiences first hand from the girls experiences and even from one of the murderers of the massacre in the church. But in the second article there wasn't as much feeling and pity as there was in the first article because I felt like it was just all statistics in comparison to the actual experience of the children. The way that the authors conveyed evil was in the text the first article included one of the murderers and viewed his point of view to compare to the child's view of it all and it showed that he was forced to murder all those people to protect his family. In the second article the author portrayed evil through all the facts and showed how inhumane the murderers are and made us feel pity in the children for how much they have to go through life without the support of the parents. "The family structures that used to support the child no longer exist," The most evil thing that anyone can do is take away the parents of a child, which is what Rwanda armies and militia did, which is why we have all been contributing to help the children by developing foundations such as UNICEF.

The media shapes our view of the world to be just like how Canada, Europe or the USA is. They don't often or ever portray the 3rd world countries, which they should. Here in developed countries, we take advantage over our lives from food to the people who love us. The people in Rwanda have lost all the support of a home and a stable family but we here complain about our parents and the food we eat. The children of Rwanda would give anything to see their parents again and will do anything for food. Overall we should appreciate the fact that we could go on the computer and do our homework on there and that we actually have an education with desks in classrooms and whiteboards to write on. But we don't, because the media is corrupting us and instead we could be contributing to help the Rwandans.

Why do people do evil things?

The story of "The Cask of Amontillado" impacted me in a way how evil a person can be and not be punished. I did some research of this short story and after 50 years Montressor was never caught and was never punished. Some techniques that the author used in the story were metaphors, symbolism, jargon and many more. The author used these techniques to show the darkness and evilness of the story to show how manipulative Montressor was: "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul". Does evil or fear lead one to the following; experience of violence, infliction of violence and/or observation of violence? I believe that in this case of this storyline, it was evil that lead Montressor to murdering Fortunato because it states that he insulted him in a way that lead him to murdering him. This impacts me in a way that cannot be explained because why would people kill for revenge? For me that is way out of the line and instead of killing you could easily just leave it and try to do better than them in something i don't know, but I guess it just depends on the person.

The cask of Amontillado summary

The short story that I read was "The cask of Amontillado". I think that this was a very intriguing piece of writing with evil, manipulative schemes in the story. At first when I first read it I did not fully understand the context with all the different words but I googled the words I was not familiar with and I now know what it was about. The only negative of this short story is the fact that it was short and not enough information was in the story to make it even better than it was like what was the reason why Montressor murdered Fortunato? Did he do something that bad that made him deserve a murder like that? Overall I really enjoyed the plot and storyline.

response

You have some good points about how power has corrupted Macbeth. I like how you showed what he was like at the start adn then you have begun to show what he has changed into.You may want to explain after each point how this is an example of his quest for power corrupting him and changing him. See pink sheet in class for more details. Overall good understanding of Eq.

How does power corrupt?

In the beginning of the play of Macbeth, Macbeth hears a prophecy that he is going to become king. But he realizes that his friend who is the king at the time is standing in the way of making the prophecy come true. He tells this to Lady Macbeth and she convinces him that the only way he will become king is to murder King Duncan. Macbeth was once a well mannered man who led the armed force to victory, but because of these prophecies, his life and reputation was ruined. He murdered King Duncan and after that, any blood shed after that did not affect him. In act 3, Macbeth heard another prophecy that Banquo is a major threat to his power because he suspects he murdered King Duncan for the throne. He does not want to take that chance of loosing his power, even if it means taking his friends life. Macbeth then took care of Banquo by sending two murderers out to murder Banquo and his son Fleance. Banquo ended up murdered but Fleance escaped. At the Feast, Macbeth finally feels guilty for murdering King Duncan and Banquo and hallucinates and sees Banquos ghost. Ever since that night he finally feels guilty and starts realizing what he has become. Therefore, Macbeth having power and wanting to keep it corrupted him and it ended with a loss friend.