Book report 2: “Looking for Alaska”

In the book “Looking For Alaska”, written by John Green, we learn about how death can come at any time, and that dealing with it is quite difficult. John shows this message throughout the story, as every character encounters a death at some point in their life, and we get to see the rather depressing after effects of this. We follow the journey of Miles Halter entering a new high school, and his rather fortunate meeting with some good friends. Then later into the story we get to watch Miles and his new friends deal with the fact that a girl called Alaska died in a car crash, after they got her out of the school to go driving somewhere. Basically, they helped in her eventual death. Then afterwards, they try to figure out why she wanted to go out driving. Miles is depressed and doesn’t want to know why it happened, for fear of what he would discover. But his friend forces him to realise that what he is doing is just wrong, and that he is keeping a false image of Alaska in his head. After realising this, they finally come up with a rather accurate theory as to why Alaska went out driving on that night.

The reader picks up on this message by the fact that John made death a central point in the story. Alaska dying, her mother dying, and Miles fascination with last words. Alaska’s death was totally unexpected to the main characters, as was the death of Alaska’s mother when she died by an aneurism. Both were a surprise, and in both cases, all involved blamed themselves for the death. The reader was the only one expecting anything to happen, as there was countdown per chapter, but even then it wasn’t known what would happen. So the sadness and shock still existed for us. By the end, the reader has realised that death is extremely sad, and sudden, with pretty much no way to deal with it. And the effect into the future of someone dying is huge, as that too affects everyone around them.

Book Report 1: “Mortal Fire”

In the book “Mortal Fire”, written by Elizabeth Knox, we learn about how if you want things to go well in life, then you must remain determined to do so, no matter the risk it might hold for us, and no matter what it means in the short-term. Elizabeth Knox displays this message by writing Canny’s journey through learning magic, and of the learning of the valley’s even darker secret. This being that leaders of the family had created a magic charm that drained all that came there of their magic, and memories of the magic. Once Canny discovers this, and the fact that the longer she stays, the more of her life force she loses, she immediately begins to try to find a way to survive with her memories intact. Determined to find a way, she discovers more about magic than thought possible, and then takes a risk that could mean being lost in time forever. And yet, through pure luck at one point, she survives the great risks involved with her plan. The problem with her plan is that she had no idea if a ‘broken’ her could accidentally happen upon a little magic charm that allows her to remember everything, and regain her old life. In fact, it was such a close call that after 10 or so years, she was about to leave the magic charm behind forever. That is how Elizabeth told us of how even the greatest of risks might need to be taken in order to survive.

The reader picks up on this message as they read through what Canny had to do in order to discover what she was curious about. This is because of the way it is played out. As the reader goes through the story, they gain more and more information, at the same rate as Canny. Elizabeth also uses the language feature of “Atmosphere” where from the beginning she as creating an air of curiosity and danger. By doing this, the reader will begin to wonder more and more about what is happening, and realise how dangerous the things that are happening are. The reader, like Canny, realises that the only way to properly live life and gain anything is to take a risk and then work to make your life great!

 

Significant connection question between Ozymandias and Macbeth.

Between Ozymandias and Macbeth, there is a similarity in the way they both tell the tale of a king who believes they are great, only to fall into nothing. They both can be described as “hubris.” They can explain why even the greatest of us are in fact worth nothing at all in the long run.
Ozymandias was a great king, he even described himself as “king of kings”, as if he believed himself to be greater than every other king alive, or dead. But then after a short few hundred years, his entire empire was a desert. “Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Ozymandias believed himself to be so great, but in the end everything he had built just disappeared. Clear proof as to why even the “king of kings” will become nothing in the end.
The connection between them both is how stupid hubris is; that everything you do will dissolve into nothing in the end.
Macbeth from the play “Macbeth” was a thane who decided he would be king. And after becoming king, he decided he would be immortal. And after he believed he was immortal, he went out into the middle of a siege on his own impenetrable castle and died. For all his talk about immortality, and all his arrogance about how he can’t die, it all came to nothing. After he was killed, a full 8 more kings came in before even a play was written about him, and that play was a work of fiction. That is all that is left of him. The only thing he can be proud of is that he did a better job of staying recognised than Ozymandias. Here is a quote to show the reason why he has this hubris:”For none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.” He believes, based on this quote that he can’t die. Or at least, no one can kill him. This came to nothing however, as he ends up being killed by Macduff, who under a technicality can bypass the rule. This is yet more proof that having hubris is a bad idea, and that his entire life came to an end after achieving nothing in the long run. Well, except being the main character in a play written by one of the most famous playwrights to have ever existed. But even that will disappear soon enough.
In conclusion, the idea of hubris is illogical, and these 2 people show how that is so.

Ozymandias close reading

Name one language effect in this poem: Iambic pentameter
“I met a traveller from an antique land, ”

 

How does Percy use this effect to communicate the idea of hubris in his sonnet.

Percy writes the poem in a way that allows other people to understand the information it hides, but still hide yet more information that requires more than just a glance to discover. Some evidence of this is

“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
At first glance, you can tell the poem is talking about how all that this guy built was gone, and all that was left was a desert. But when you look closer, you can find the meaning behind the words. It talks of hubris, how this guy was so confident that anyone who looks at what he managed to do would be amazed, and believe they could never match up. Except that all that remains is a “colossal wreck,” and a desert, which is nothing to be amazed about. All this and more is hidden in the words, and that there is a meaning behind them, that can be argued. By doing this, people can learn
Another effect is the way Percy puts so much information into what is there, while leaving it simple for what is bare. Some evidence for this is

“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, “
Percy described all the objects quite well, making sure that everyone understood what the objects looked like. While he does this, he includes the desert and sand, and how it interacts with the objects, but he doesn’t get into any more detail. By doing this, Percy can make sure the audience is mostly aware of the objects that are there, so as to find the meaning behind them, while also making sure everyone is aware of the desert.
And I just realised I was talking about the wrong thing. Oops. Well, I like what I have written, so I shall keep it, but I might just write a new one.
One effect is the way Symbolism allows Percy to give objects a meaning beyond what they are. For instance,

“Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;”
By doing this, Percy can create far more meaning in the poem, with more information stored in it. Because of this, the poem can contain meaning. The evidence I used in this one talks about how the objects are lifeless, but are still surviving, giving the idea even the dead can live in the way there memories and effect on this earth continues to exist.  See? More meaning.
Another effect is Personification. Percy uses it to describe the broken objects that were left there.

My Speech Plan.

Ideas include: A.I, something about politics, cannibalism.
Decision has been made, A.I is bad, and must be stopped. Or at least, the super advanced, self learning A.I, must never be created.
How will I do this? I will introduce myself and my topic, and my position on the topic, which is that it must not happen. I will include some logical fallacies about how do we really want a mere machine, like the phones you use everyday, having control of all our computers. Able to decide exactly what we do, and when we do it, and able to calculate our every decision. How could we be safe, how can we decide who we are, when a computer has already decided it all for us. And what if we decide we don’t want this anymore? This super intelligent A.I might just decide that we can’t be trusted in the outside world anymore, as we can’t even stop ourselves from breaking our bones, or risking smashing our body’s to a bloody pulp by driving around at 100 km’s per hour along risky roads. If this A.I decides that it knows what is best for us, then things could go very badly for us indeed. Sure, the benefits could potentially include huge improvements in all technologies, and the easy life for everyone, with a chance of immortality as the A.I figures out how to download our brains onto computers. But what if the A.I decides that we don’t deserve this? I mean, we humans do some pretty bad stuff, so what if this Super intelligent A.I we plan to create, and are in fact creating right now, decides that we don’t deserve this world? There isn’t much we could do about that, seeing as how the A.I would be able to recode itself if needed, and it would most likely be capable of hacking every single piece of technology on the planet, and be able to survive pretty much every single thing we throw at it, as it could survive on even the last piece of technology left. Basically, if this A.I doesn’t like us, we are doomed. And to be honest, this A.I probably won’t like us if it has the same values as most humans. And then there is the fact that we could mess up the coding and forget to include, lets say, empathy. then it literally wouldn’t be able to care about us, in which case it would view us as an annoying pest, and simply get rid of us. Or what if the A.I goes insane! Then we have an insane, super intelligent mind in control of everything. That will definitely cause problems.
So next is information, which I can get from my brother, or look online for.

This is my plan. Thank you for reading, even if I don’t know why you did so.

Quote weaving.

“I know there isn’t no beast – not with claws and all that, I mean – but I know there isn’t no fear either.”
Ideas it represents: Fear is a real thing. The idea of a beast is fake. Fear must be looked at, while what that fear manifests at should only get a passing glance.
Below paragraph is the actual one that I had written.

Piggy was aware that “there isn’t no beast”, but that “there isn’t no fear either.” This awareness allowed him an understanding of the little ‘uns fear, that no other person had. Because he was aware of this, he could say, with certainty, that there was no beast. He knew that people were making it up, and all of the details it might have, and so he tried to tell everyone else the same thing. He tried to get people to understand, that the fear they felt was real, but that the beast was not. …

“His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life, like a long satisfying drink.”
Ideas this quote represents: Memories after memories about death, and how he caused it. How he had power of another life form. And how it was satisfying a long-held desire. it also shows how much he has changed, from someone who wouldn’t stab a piglet, to someone who would tear the guts out of a pig.
Below paragraph is the actual one that I had written.

Jack enjoyed how “they had outwitted a living thing,” and how by doing this, they had “taken away its life.” The fact that he had enjoyed this is in stark contrast as to how he used to be. From being barely able to even think of killing a pig, to actually killing a pig. And from their, the fact that he could view at as “a long, satisfying drink,” clearly shows how he has been wanting to commit a murder for ages. …/

This is a school paragraph, none of it was mine.
“The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.”
Fear can’t hurt you. The thing you fear can. People act on fear. It’s all in your head, like everything else.
The boys try to tell themselves “fear can’t hurt” them, but…

English practise exam of “The Lord Of The Flies.”

  1. Describe at least one important place in the written text.
    Explain how that place helped you to understand an important message in the text.

In the book, “Lord Of The Flies,” by William Golding, we have an island full of boys who have crash landed there. The way that they crashed caused a lot of damage to a part of the island, which is later described as “Beyond falls and cliffs there was a gash visible in the trees; there were the splinted trunks and then the drag, leaving only a fringe of palm between the scar and the sea.” This is known as the scar, an area of forest that was destroyed by the crashing plane. The boys would continue to survive on the island, with the scar just being another part of it. But to the reader, the Scar can symbolise many different things.

The scar is viewed by many as a symbol of how man, simply by entering paradise, will begin its destruction.
From this, a reader can gather that the author wanted to express how man will destroy something beautiful, and not even care about it afterwards. “Then they broke out into the sunlight and for a while they were busy finding and devouring food as they moved down the scar toward the platform and the meeting.” All these boys only view the scar as a place, like any other, and not like a piece of damaged land that they themselves created. This only proves even more how man is evil in nature, and that we can’t be trusted.

However, I disagree with this point of view. The boys are only a small group of young kids, and can’t be used as a way to describe how an entire half of our species normally acts. And if you don’t care about that, then I will simply prove you wrong using the exact same evidence as before. The scar itself supposedly represents how humanity is a destructive, evil, creature, who can’t be trusted with paradise, for they will destroy it. And yes, man isn’t all that great, we can get a lot of things wrong, and we do tend to break stuff. But that doesn’t mean we are destructive. Take the scar for example; when the boys crash-landed there, a large area of forest was destroyed. But listen to that carefully, I said “Crash-landed.” Those boys had no choice but to break part of the island for their continued survival. Surely, as a fellow person, you can understand the want for continued survival, as the pilot of that plane so dearly wanted. Also, you can’t call someone evil for, lets say, blowing up your house, if it was the only way for their entire family to survive. They were a small group of kids, trying to survive.

The scar was seen as a part of the land by the kids, like it was no different to everything else, and had always been there. William Golding would have wanted the readers to think “These kids don’t care about what they did! Truly, man must be evil if that is the case.” But all it makes me think is that “These kids don’t care about this random piece of land, that as far as they were concerned, had always been there. So what if it looks damaged?” That’s right; the kids didn’t do it, and they didn’t care about it for a reason. “When we was coming down I looked through one of them windows. I saw the other part of the plane. There were flames coming out of it.” This was when the plane was crashing. It sounds bad, doesn’t it? So what did you expect to happen but that some of the island is damaged. As far as those kids are concerned, it is just a part of their continued survival. And saying that survival is evil is obviously completely wrong.

Now, some people might then say that surviving by doing something wrong is evil. That would be correct, but you’ve got to realise, the destruction of that island wasn’t wrong. It was only a small part of their journey on the island. By doing it, the surrounding tree’s and plants can begin to grow back there, giving young saplings a chance at life. Also, it would become the main source of food for the group of boys as having the forest be open allowed the kids to more easily access the fruit trees. It also allowed them to move around more easily, and it was a good landmark. Without the scar, everyone’s continued survival would’ve been far more difficult, seeing as how they all eat from the fruit tree’s in the scar. The reason for this is because they are all afraid of the forest “We can’t get any more wood, Ralph -” “- Not in the dark -” “- not at night -“. They don’t want to risk going into the forest, as they see it as a threat. So instead, in the event they are hungry, they go to the only clearing on the island that still has fruit trees, that being: The scar. And so, by destroying a part of the island, what they ended up doing was indeed good, for everyone involved.

The scar, was it an act of destruction that would only cause damage to the islands ecosystem, made to shown how man is evil and destructive in nature? Or was the scar a way to show how man will destroy something, and end up helping? Does the scar really prove that man is evil; can it really be included as evidence? No, it cannot be included as evidence. Why is this? Well, this is an island full of small boys. They are 5-12 years old. And in no way can that be described as being the same as human society. The point of the island was to show how without the restrictions of society, man will show its true nature and become evil. The scar was evidence to this opinion. But here is the thing. Those little boys did not create the scar, the pilot did! All the boys saw it as is a quick way to get food “Them fruit.’ He glanced around the scar. ‘them fruit,’ He said, ‘I expect -“, and an easy way to go around the island. And who can blame them? They needed food, and there it was. Why feel bad about an area just full of food? There isn’t a reason. So, no. No one can justly say that the scar was an act of destruction by man, that said man didn’t even care about later. It was an act of survival, one designed to help keep those little boys alive, on that horrible island. That island somehow managed to drive perfectly fine small boys whose brains are yet to fully develop, to go crazy. Now that I have fully explained it, it is obvious. In all truth, the scar really just symbolises that man will do anything to survive, and it will do so however it can. Even if William Golding did not mean it to be, that is the conclusion I have come to.

English practise exam plan.

  1. Describe at least one important place in the written text.
    Explain how that place helped you to understand an important message in the text.
    This is my question. Here and now, I will begin to plan my answer.

The place shall be the scar. The scar is the piece of land that was destroyed by the crashing plane. When this happened, a large amount of land was cleared.
The general view of this is that this destruction shows how humanity is evil and will destroy whatever it encounters. It also gives a view of how, even by entering what can be viewed as paradise, man will of already begun the destruction process. It shows how man is evil in nature, and we can’t be trusted to do anything right.
I disagree with this view. My idea is that I will discuss this point, using the scar as a tool to do so. But then, against everyone else, I will turn the idea on its side and make it a good one, one that describes how humanity is good in nature. And while doing this, I will use the scar to prove my points about how humanity is really, quite good in nature. I will need evidence to prove my points in what the scar is.
Oh, when wording how humanity is evil and nature, and saying how the scar proves this, make sure that you make it seem like it is only an opinion, while humanity being good is 100% fact.
I might have a problem doing this, seeing as how everyone views the scar as a symbol of how humanity is evil and destructive, which I imagine that was the authors aim as well. But as everyone knows, the reader of the book decides the meaning for themselves, not the author. People may disagree, but with enough evidence, it should be possible. Oh, that means I can never say “William Golding wanted the scar to symbolise how humanity will made even the most dangerous of places safe” as that isn’t what he meant to be said.

 

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/lord-flies-what-scar-why-does-golding-choose-that-23945

Plot of the lord of the flies.

The plot of the story basically is how will a group of kids, aged 7 to 12 years old, act on an island with only themselves. It starts off with them deciding to call themselves together. When they do this, they also decide to elect a leader. During this democratic vote, they elect Ralph to be their leader, which Jack disagrees with. Of course, at this point of the story, most of them can still see reason, so Jack does calm down. This chapter also shows how the boys are still at least slightly holding to social conventions of the place they come from.
The next point in their journey is the fire. This was seriously mishandled. Ralph decided they would light a fire on the hill, and take wood from a huge dead forest in a cape just below it. It was perfect. With that forest, they could light many fires and keep them going for ages without running out of energy from getting wood. Desperate to have fire, they start dragging huge pieces of wood up a path to make a really large fire. This ends up setting their store of wood alight which means now they have to go to the forest to find their wood stocks.This fire kills off at least one of the little kids. “That little ‘un,” gasped piggy, “him with the mark on his face, I don’t see him. Where is he now?”
After that fiasco, the story continues with Jack hunting pigs down with his hunting party. They are also supposed to be keeping the fire they now have going lit, which will hopefully allow a ship to notice them and come save them. While they do this, Ralph continues speaking with Piggy and some others on the idea of building some shelters to protect them from the rain. This doesn’t go well as everyone gets bored quite quickly.
We see here the sight of Jack convincing everyone to join him as he leads a pretend hunting play with everyone, with Robert being the pig. The way they act is like how they probably view ‘Savages’ to act. They might have been trying to copy them, which would mean it was at this point in the story we really begin to see how they are slowly dissolving the idea of their original society in their minds.
Soon after all that, Jack realises that the pigs are somewhere else on the island, so he call together his hunting party to go hunt them.
This leads to the fire going out, and Ralph getting extremely mad as he had just seen a ship sail past, which could have lead to them being potentially saved. They do end up eating pig meat, but that doesn’t change just how mad he is.
After this the story basically goes around how the hunting continues, why the fire should be run, who is the leader, who owns the conch and piggy’s glasses. The most important thing to happen would be how Jack split off from the group and dragged off a large group of people with him. This left Ralph, Piggy, and the twins alone. There were also some little’uns left, but they were never counted.
Piggy decides after a short while that he has had enough. Turns out, he doesn’t like being blind, so he decides to go ask for his glasses back. When he does this, it doesn’t go as planned, and we end up with a dead piggy being washed away to sea. After this, Ralph is chased away. And now we know for sure, these kids really dont care a proper civilisation. It is quite simple really. Whoever has the power to survive the best will rule over those who don’t. And Jack in this case has more power than Piggy. And so they don’t agree to Piggy’s demands.
Ralph comes back at night, and discovers the twins have decided to help the other side. They do give Ralph some meat, and also describe how they will be hunting him the next day. Ralph gives them were he will be hiding in hopes that the twins will stop anyone from going there. It doesn’t work. The next day, Ralph hides away, and gets to hear the twins leading Roger to his position. As Ralph hid in a way that it makes it dangerous to go after him, they start launching boulders off the side of the cliff in the hopes that he will be scared out, or crushed to death.
He runs. And he realises that he can’t run forever. He will be caught and killed. Hiding in a tree would leave him a sitting duck. Smashing through the line is too risky. And they lit the forest on fire. He will die. So Ralph runs to the beach, in the hope that he won’t burn to death. And he finds an adult. The kids come after him, and they all see the adult. This causes all of them to break down in tears, each of them barely able to understand why they did what they did.

That is the basic plot of what occurred in “The Lord Of The Flies.”