Class Eval.

1. During the course of this class I have definitely grown in my understanding of literature. It was hard at first to really look into a piece of literature and pick it apart but the more we did it the easier it became. I started to be able to look critically and draw questions from the text. My writing improved because I genuinely had questions and ideas that I believed and it did not feel like I was writing a paper on a book but on my feelings of the book which was interesting.
2. The text I responded to the most positively was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. I really liked the novel because the story was interesting and it was fun to read. I was interested in this novel the most because it was my favorite type of literature, a novel.
3. Graphic novels have made a way into my definition of literature. We spent so much time as a class picking apart the different elements of graphic novels and all the work that goes into making one that I don't see how it isn't literature. The multimodality, symbolism, icons, gutters--everything put together made the graphic novel what it was at the end. I can't not appreciate the authors of graphic novels and I believe they should be called literature.
4. I really enjoyed the response papers because they didn't have to be too long and it was basically all opinion based. The least favorite for me would be the research paper and the other paper because they tok the longest to write, but that wasn't even bad. I enjoy to write papers so I liked this class. The discussions we're sometimes dragged out but we had a lot of good ideas that we went over in class.
5. I definitely feel more prepared to think critically about different texts. This class really has taught me the right questions to ask and how to find the answers with in the text. I didn't expect much more out of this class because I can not interpret literature much easier.

ehhhh...

I don't like it. The pictures, the text, everything seems to be making fun of Shakespeare's creation. I think William Shakespeare wrote beautiful plays that we're meant to be challenging to understand and funny to the audience. When Gaiman's text says
"Now, fait Hippolyta our nuptial hour draws on apace; FOUR happy days bring in another moon: but OHH, methinks how SLOW the old moon wanes!"
The language in Shakespeare is hard to understand but the wait Gaiman says "methinks" destroys the language presented in Shakespeare's plays. I dislike the introduction of some alien type people. It seems like they are there to kind of explain whats going on in the panels to come but they used an audience of aliens to do it. That completely degrades Shakespeares work! Gaiman might be trying to be funny to the readers but I find it quite obnoxious. Once again the word "methinks" was put into a phrase said by the alien, it's irritating. After the alien is done talking the story line comes right back into play picking up where Helena and Hermia are having a conversation about Demetrius. A lot of content was skipped over due to the annoying aliens, and I feel that content is needed to understand why Helena is so persistent on having Demetrious. I do not enjoy the way the play is set up. I get very confused with the random alien creatures and the story lines keep jumbling together. Part of the play seems to be a play put on for people and creatures and the other half is actually happening...it's just confusing and awkward.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: Helena Soliloquy

How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:

At this part of Helena's soliloquy she is saying that she is just as good as Hermia and Demetrius does not see that. He does not know that Helena still loves him but he knows that he is in love with Hermia. He focuses on Hermias beauty when Helena knows that she is an ugly person inside. This is when Helena questions cupid...

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:

Helena is questioning why Demetrius is looking only with his eyes and not his mind because he just see's the beauty on the outside of Hermia. Helena feels that Demetrius is being rash with his decision to marry Hermia.

For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.

This section talks about how when Helena and Demetrius were together he looked onto Hermia and instantly he gave up every promise, or oath, that he had with Helena and that he was hers. So when he was with Hermia all of his promises melted away and meant nothing.

I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

Here is when Helena decides that she will tell Demetrius about her running off to marry Lysander at his Aunt's house. He will then go into the woods to find her. Helena hopes that Demetrius then will fall in love with her if she follows him into the woods.

Shakespeare

Along with many others in the class, I did not understand the play very much. The language was extremely hard to follow and the large amount of characters and plots did not help very much. The relationship I tried to look into was between Oberon and Puck. Oberon obviously over rules Puck in any situations, Puck follows Oberon's requests. Oberon and Puck try to make everything right by using the potion from a flower.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.

This potion is the basis for a lot of the plays conflicts. Puck accidentally puts the potion on the wrong person's eyes, Titania falls in love with Bottom who has a donkey head. I find it odd that the play ended by just being a dream but that also helps with the ridiculous events that took place. Thats really all that I got from the play. It was very confusing to read through and I lost track of who was who a lot.

I'm trying to decide what topic to focus on, I have a couple of ideas. Self image and influence of religion are two topics I'm looking at. A thesis for self image would be...

Over the course of time the popular media has distorted the definition of "beautiful".

A thesis for religion would be...

Christian fundamentalism breaks down relationships in a family because of the overindulgence and obsession with being holy and pure in God's eyes.

If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them. I'm stuck.

Persepolis

When reading Persepolis I noticed many similarities in the panels and the poem On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam. Both texts seemed to have the similar normality of murder and war going on around them. In the panels on page 29 Marj's father is taking pictures of people being killed in very violent ways. He is standing in the back just watching. There also is another set of panels on pages 14-15 that are pictures of a cinema burning down. The text says that the doors had been locked from the outside right before the fire, the police were there but wouldn't let the people burning inside be rescued, it took the firemen 45 minutes to get to the scene. While the father is explaining this story he is nice and sound in his bed speaking with his wife. It seems to be that it is just another day during the Islamic Revolution and they are just accustom to the murder that happens around them. The father has no emotion when speaking about this horrific situation that has taken place. Just as in the book, the poem by Hayden Carruth, also plays down murder and war as if it is just the same thing happening on another day.

and not one
breath was restored
to one

shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not

one
but death went on and on
never looking aside

except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.

This selection shows the lack of emotion that Hayden had at the time of war. She practically had to be shaken to make sure that she was noticing what was going on around her. She said not one breath was restored to one shattered throat mans womans or childs. This shows that anyone was being killed, there were no exceptions, however Hayden still showed no emotion. It seems like war has been a part of her life for a very long time that she forgot how to feel. The same thing happens to the characters in Persepolis, they become so used to hearing about people being murdered everyday that they have no initial reaction. During these two texts the characters, and authors, involved seem to be numb to death. They take death as just a normal event that happens every day. To answer the question of how does conflict transform, forge, deny, identity? I believe that any type of conflict whether it be war and death, or pregnancy and birth, changes your life forever. You may try to not let things get to you but eventually you have to deal with what is happening in the environment around you. Conflict shows who you really are by how you deal with it.

Blankets

In the text blankets I found it interesting that Craig always turned certain things into demons. This happened throughout the book whenever he thought something was wrong. An example of this was on pages 16-17 when Craig's father is putting his brother, Phil, into the cubby room because they were being too loud upstairs. There are two panels next to each other, the first is the Dad going into the small cubby room and opening something that looks like an alligators mouth. There are teeth coming off of it and it looks like the mouth is being pushed more and more open. In the back of the picture Phil looks terrified of where his Dad is putting him. In the next panel however it shows that the "mouth of an alligator" actually is only a cot being unfolded. I found it interesting that the author made the cot seem like such an unplesant thing. I think this is because the two boys had "sinned" and the cubby room represented a "hell" to the young boys. It was seen as a punishment to go into that room and especially alone, since they slept in the same bed through their childhood. The author has a theme going through the story that whenever something seems to be bad, or a sin, it turns into a creepy demon. Another example of this is when Criag drew a picture of a naked woman on the bus. His bus driver contacted the parents who then talked to Craig about the picture. In a panel on page 208 the woman in the picture started to scare Craig. Craig was scared of this picture because he knew that God did not want him to be drawing naked women and it was a "sin". There also was a panel,on the same page, where Craig was looking at a picture of Jesus and Jesus' back was turned to him. This symbolized that Craig had sinned, and he was afraid of that. The demons continued through Criags life. When Craig was visiting his friend Raina he was staying in her sisters bedroom and thought of a story in the bible. It was of a woman who bled for 12 years and when she touched Jesus she suddenly was cured. Jesus asked "Who touched me?" For some reason after thinking of this story Craigs imagination went wild. On page 223 there was a picture of the stuffed animals in the room, all of them have really big eyes that look crazy and each one is asking "Who touched me?" I find this really interesting because I don't necessarily find the coorilation between the story and the stuffed animals. I assume, from the pattern in the book, that Craig has thought of something unholy. I don't exactly have an interpretation for this panel, I just found it very odd.