Jessy L's blog

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a story of the Jazz age. I chose to read this book from others telling me it was a great novel to read. As I found it hard to grasp and follow throughout many other would say different.

Throughout the first half I the book I had a hard time trying get the point of the story through my head. I felt the plot was vague and it couldn’t relate it so much to my life to have it make more sense to me. The main point of the book about Gatsby trying to get his love back from another man is well told. After explaining the details of his life before and without Daisy I was then able to connect more the book and understand where the main character was coming from. The American Dream is quite relevant it this book as well. Gatsby grows up from an unspoken background which makes us want to help him to achieve his dream. This gives him motivation to succeed in life from his mistakes made. After this fact he is faced with the objects of happiness and wealth to go with his American Dream.

I give The Great Gatsby three out of five stars. I thought the American Dream was portrayed greatly in this piece which helped me to connect it to other things. Even though I had a tough time trying to get myself to read this book after a while of reading I could understand the main points of it.

Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes may have some poems with similar theme but in I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman and Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes, there are different themes that are shown in different ways. In Langston Hughes’s poem the theme is The American Dream. He shows The American Dream by talking about slaves and African American people who didn’t have the rights the whites did earlier in history. In line 5 and line 10 he uses parentheses to show that someone is talking about what American has been to them. Hughes uses connotative language in “ancient endless chain” (line 26) to show us that this person is a slave. They don’t know what the true America is like because they do not have the rights to know. This poem is saying that in today’s society some people think that The American Dream is a materialistic thing. We should think about things that are more important than those and remember what America has fought for, for us.

Walt Whitman uses concrete and abstract language to show us that people do what make them happy. He uses the word “singing” in the phrase “I hear America singing” (line 1) to show us that everyone uses their expression in their own way. He also uses anaphora in lines 2-11, when he starts the lines with the word “The”. The word “The” supports that it starts with the people, and they do what they want to be happy. The theme of this poem that people do what they want to be happy still goes with the theme of The American Dream. People may have their own American Dream, and everyone’s is different and has a different view of it, but to most people it just means happiness in their own lives. The diversity of people in our society shows that we all work together to be what we want in our lives.

Throughout all of the conflicts, the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is about being human.

When a father has died in a terrible tragedy, there is always someone left behind. Being left without a father can be hard and some might find different ways to cope with this. Oskar does this by using something of his fathers to find someone who knows more about his death. He does this by dropping his whole life to find a key that was his father’s, with the name “Black” on it. This leads him through many obstacles to find out what information this key held of his father.

As humans we always want answers. We always continuously ask what things mean and why things happen. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close shows how we will not give up trying and questioning until we have found the answers we need.

“Mr. Black stuck his elbow in my side and asked her, “Do you know anything about this key?””

People always find a way to solve the questions they want to get the answers to. This drive in people to keep going pushes them more to find alternative ways to solve their questions. The narrator uses this struggle of Oskar to show us that there are many ways around conflicts you run into. She connects with the father and the son to make a distant connection between the two of them. The love that was forgotten to say is motivation throughout to find out how his father died.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close can also be related to the book The Hunger Games. Both of these books have a distant love in them. Even though the overall point of the games was a fight, the love was there and they kept trying to get back to each other. Both of these books can show that it is humans who have to sacrifice for a cause.

I gave this book a 4 of 5. At points this book was hard to follow, but it always came back with a great explanation of the events that were occurring.

All of these events and situations show us that we are human. We sometimes have to sacrifice ourselves or some part of us to find out the answers that we want.

The song “Devils and Dust” by Bruce Springsteen is related in many ways to the book, The Crucible. The theme of this song, like the book, is that fear and faith can control who you are. The line “Fear is a powerful thing, baby” (Springsteen), is repeated many times throughout the song. I think that in the book, Procter will be stopped by fear in saving his wife. The song also says, “We’ve got God on our side/ We’re just trying to survive” (Springsteen). I thought of this to be Procter and his wife, that they know that they’re not witches and so does God but that they are just trying to survive with the court and doing what they think will get them away alive. This goes back to the theme of fear; if Procter and Goody Procter being fearful will stop them from standing up for themselves. In The Crucible at the end of Act 1, people were calling out people who they have thought to be seen with the devil. In the song, “I got my finger on the trigger/ But I don’t know who to trust” (Springsteen) no one know who to trust either. People have “their fingers on the trigger” pointing at all the witches but when in all reality, they don’t know who the witches really are. The tones of these two pieces are also a lot alike. The tone of “Devils and Dust” is saying that, “Fear is a powerful thing, baby/ It’ll turn your hear black you can trust” (Springsteen). This shows that the power of fear will take god out of your soul and put the devil in it, but the song also says that “I’ve god on my side”, which shows that faith can be there to overcome that. This is all the same in The Crucible as well. They all need to have the faith in god, and get over the fear that may be there to save them and loved ones of being accused of witchcraft.

Throughout CyberEnglish I know that I have learned a lot and developed a lot of skills that could be useful in later high school years. Because of having written in our blogs so much I have become a better writer. I have learned to do more then just write, but connect to what I am writing too. These skills and many more I have acquired through this school year, and they could really help me with future jobs and other related things too.

Another skill that I have gained through Cyber English is the change in the way I write. After about a quarter of Cyber English, I noticed my writing began to change. In the beginning of the year, I was always just trying to make my writing relate to the teacher that was it, but now I feel that my writing has moved farther to other types of audience. I think this is good because after all the schooling I won’t be writing to a teacher, but more of an audience that wouldn’t want to grade me. This is why I have noticed improvement because I have learned how to write and what to write for and it has changed my writing more then anything.

Hyperlinking is another thing I have learned this year in CyberEnglish. This has showed me a lot of things and helped me with the reading of hyperlink too. I think that this is very helpful because of all the websites like Wikipedia that have all the hyperlinks that most people don’t know what to do with. These are things that we could also use in later writing if we are writing about something that may be hard for some people tounderstand. Learning this was a huge help to reading other websites.

Some things that changed really surprised me. My work habits have changed so much. I have learned not to procrastinate and just do my work as it is assigned. I have also learned to organize myself since juggling a lot of assignments are not an easy thing to do. I didn’t think that I could change into this kind of person because I have been procrastinating all through my school years. I think that gaining this skill will help me reach so many other goals, and also help me not just with my writing but with other things like having a job and a life later on. I think that if this skill wasn’t gained now I would have a very hard time with later years of school.

Looking back on this school year, I wish I would have been more responsible and tried to do my work to the one-hundred percent that I know I can do. I think that was the hardest part of this year was just getting down to the work and doing it to the best ability I could. I am happy to where I came through the year and all of these things I have learned and all the skills I have gained will help me and stick with me forever.

In our newspaper project we worked hard on learning about making a newspaper and teamwork. The newspaper we wrote is based on the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We hope you enjoy reading the The Maycomb Journal.

I am currently reading the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I have really connected to this book, so for my genre piece I have chose to write about which character I would like to be. I would like to be like Katniss for many reasons, one including the way she acts with the skills she has.

Katniss shows a lot of maturity in these books and it really makes me look up to her as a person. She has a lot of nerve for as young as she is to get married to save her family and friends, and also shows a lot of respect as a leader. Through out the whole first hunger games they were in, she had to stick for herself. She also had to think a lot when Peeta and her paired up and Peeta was injured. I think that a lot of people can look up to Katniss even though she is a girl. But just because she is a girl, doesn’t mean that boys can’t look up to her as well. She shows a lot of qualities that a boy can look up to such as her hunting. Her being able to shoot a bow better then anyone in the hunger games puts her to an advantage that anyone would want to take. Katniss makes herself stand out, but not in obnoxious ways, she shows everyone what to be afraid and who she is without any fear inside her. I think that if I were like Katniss I would a life that wouldn’t be made around all the bad things in life and what is bringing me down, but made by what’s inside of me and how I can be who I am and show others that too.

Report cards to me mean a lot more then a good or bad student by just their grades. I think that report cards show if you have learned what has been taught in the class, but I think they don’t show the true work and thought that has went into the work that has been done. In CyberEnglish I have learned about some things that may not be shown in my report card, like how we read and connect to the books we are reading, and the effort we put into the things we write for our blogs. I think because we have read 2 books chosen by our teacher it gave ourselves a chance to see what else we like to read. The quizzes we took may have been a hard thing to see if we really read the book, because if we had a hard time reading it, it would also be hard to be able to write what we read. Also the effort that we put into our writing in hard to show because no one really knows how hard the writer works on a piece, except themselves, and if the grading is harder then it could make it seem like they have tried less then they could have. Report cards to me are very vague on what they are saying, they should show more of what we do and not just the grades we receive.

Atticus really shows that ordinary people can act in courageous ways, especially in hard times, because even though he had to be the one to stand up for Tom Robinson he took it for the team and tried his hardest to prove him innocent. With Tom losing the case, Atticus still had to go through some hard things that really showed him being the bigger person. When Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the corner and spit in his face, he made the best of all choices. Atticus let Bob call him all the names he wanted “without batting and eye” (217) said Miss Stephanie. This really shows that Atticus can handle the hardest situation with the utmost respect, and it also shows that he can act in courageous ways without being some special person.

The main Character Katniss in the Hunger Games series is quite like Scout in the book To Kill a Mockingbird in many ways. Katniss is a very tom-boy like girl. She has to hunt and fish to keep her family alive and away from starvation. In this same way is Scout, she loves to play outside and get all muddy with her brother and neighbor. Katniss also has to face many adult like situations, like being in the hunger games themselves. All the brutal killings and thinking smarter then her opponents are some things she really had to take seriously. This makes her life change so much. It changed when she got back to her hometown, she is supposed to act lady like in front of the camera from the capitol and not be the person who she really is there at her own house. In the same way Scout had to face going to the court and seeing what her father is truly like to save someone’s life. This really showed Scout the side of people that she has never seen before, and made her change as a person as well. Also because of her aunt Alexandra staying with them, Scout has to act lady like because that is how she says girls should be acting. This is a side of Scout that she isn’t used to because she is usually just being like the boys and  not having to drink tea and do other things that women do. Both main characters, Katniss and Scout, can’t show who they really from where they are at in the book, and these two characters really should speak up for who they are and what they like because for right now they are just kids, and have all the time in the world to change to ladies.