Blog Post #10

1) “Most Beautiful Work Award” - Which piece of writing (formal or informal) are you most proud of and why? What other skill or habit have you developed (maybe as a reader?) that you are proud of?
-I would say that I am most proud of the short story I wrote for the Tragedy Project. I really liked the setting of the story and would have liked to have gone more in depth with it. My writing and editing skills have definitely improved as a result of writing essays in class and the numerous college essays I've written.
2) “Lesson Learned” - What content do you feel you have mastered? Or, which skill(s) did you enjoy learning and feel that you have had some success in developing? How so?
- As said I have become better at writing. I also feel that I've become better and faster at reading. Atlas Shrugged had very small font, was extremely long, and very complex. This forced me to develop stronger attention span while reading and the ability to read faster. I also became better at analyzing texts. The many annotation we had to write on articles, poems, and novels all helped me to develop this skill.
3) “Lessons I’d Like to Learn” - Which skills would you like to develop before graduation? What content do you feel that you need to know in order to feel ready for college? Do you have any project ideas?
-I would like to improve upon my creative writing skills. I already feel that these are strong but I simply enjoy writing stories and think it would be fun to have an assignment of this kind. I would also like to do another reading focused project. There are many books that I want to read next semester after hearing all of the presentations. 

Week of 12/5-10/10

This week in class we have continued to work on our presentation and abstract for our reading project. So far my abstract has been going well and I think that my partner and I, Stephan, are going to do a Socratic seminar to present our book, Atlas Shrugged. I'm still unsure of how we should run the seminar. Right now we have two potential options. The first one is we could present our findings and Ayn Rand's beliefs on selfishness and then have the seminar where the class would discuss whether selfishness is ever moral and/or practical. The other option is that we have a general discussion on selfishness and morality and then afterwords we present our findings and show Rand's take on it. I feel that both ways have their merits and strengths but I'm unsure which one to go with. Opinions?

Atlas Shrugged Product

For he reading project my group read Atlas Shrugged.Which is essentially an 1,100 page novel that tries to prove that selfishness can be moral and practical. We need to show this somehow in our presentation and we're not quite sure how.
One idea I had was to set up a game that the class would play where by do doing some action they earn pieces of candy and my group would act as administrators. After a few rounds we could then start "redistributing the wealth" by taking candy from the successful people to "support" the unsuccessful ones. We would design it so that as the game progressed the system would collapse upon itself as the successful loose their incentive to work because it's just going to be taken from it and the unsuccessful will loose their incentive because the successful will support them. This cycle is what happened in the end of the novel so it would be fitting. However, I'm concerned that it may be too difficult to design the game, and that it might not work out how we want which would be embarrassing.
The other idea we had was to arrange a Socratic Seminar where a few members of the class would discuss whether selfishness can be moral and/or practical. We like this idea but we are hesitant that the group will just all agree that selfishness isn't moral or practical, seeing they haven't read the novel and generally society looks down upon selfishness. We were thinking that maybe we would sit in on the discussion so that we could make it more dynamic but we feel that that may be a little weird.
Opinions?

Week of 11/13 - 11/20

Lately I have been working on my personal statements for colleges and over the thanksgiving break I have around ten essays or so to write. While working on these essays I have been wondering what makes a good personal statement? Obviously, it has to be personal and show something about you, but what is the best way to show you personality in an essay and make the reader connect with you and want to know more about you? I don't know the answer to this question, otherwise I'd have all my essays done by now. But I think that one way to help the reader connect with you is to include little traits about yourself that are common to all people, thus making yourself more relate-able, such as like a little nervous tick you have or something along those lines. I feel that details like this, though small and seemingly insignificant, are in some ways more real and common amongst people.

Week of 11/8 - 11/12

I have yet to talk about the book I have been reading for Stephanie's class, so I figured I would take a break from writing about tragedies and talk about Atlas Shrugged. Currently, I am about half way through the book and it's really staring to get interesting. Regardless of her political ideologies, Rand is a phenomenal writer. I've realized that throughout the novel she typically will briefly reference a character at one point, then start talking about them more later in the book, and ultimately have at least one of the main characters meet them. It's like she's constantly setting up interactions and events that are unlikely to happen yet happen anyway, and when they due the reader is blown away. This lead me to realize that this plot device is used in many novels and helps to make them extraordinary because so many unlikely events are taking place. It seems common for authors to allude to characters or events so that they can make them cross paths to the amazement of the reader later in the story.
Also, when considering the fact that Atlas Shrugged is almost 1,100 pages I keep wondering how much of the story Rand planned out before she started writing the novel and how much she included in the spur of the moment. The plot is seems so intricate and covers so many interactions between a very large amount of characters I find it hard to imagine her meticulously planning out a novel of this proportions before even starting to write it.

Tragedy Creation

This week in class we have been working on our tragedy essays and I am now starting  write my story. Moving forward I am concerned about how I will make a story so short be tragic. I'm afraid that I am not going to have enough to adequately develop the protagonist so that the readers will actually care about his fate. I also feel that as I'm writing I am going to be tempted to keep writing so that the story will be more emotional. I like the idea of each of us creating our own tragedy, but I would like them to be longer and more substantial. It think it would be awesome to work on them in small increments over the next month so that by the end we have a more dynamic story.
My story is set in post apocalyptic Corinth and is about the leader of the town's past coming back to haunt and ultimately destroy. I'm trying to make a throw-back to Oedipus the King to kind of give tribute to Sophocles. However, even after reading the fifty page I didn't really have a strong with Oedipus or care about what happened to him. Granted, I feel that this can be attributed to the fact that he was a horrible person throughout the play. But even then I feel that if Sophocles couldn't generate enough character development for our class I am dubious that I will be able to any better.

What Makes A Tragedy

This week in class we have been reading essays about what makes a story a tragedy. We read articles by many different authors, all of whom had different opinions. The two readings I liked the most were "Tragedy and the Common Man" by Arthur Miller and "The Greek Tragedy: Doom is Booming" by Lloyd Rose. Miller had the opinion that tragedies were about a character struggling against society to improve or uphold their social status and this battle is tragic. Rose believed that tragedies were a story where you already pretty much knew the plot and you were simply watching the main character suffer, and dramas were stories where you find out what happens and these events bring on feelings of tragedy. Before these readings I always thought that tragedies and dramas were the same thing. I now realize that there are distinctions between the two, yet I disagree with Rose that they are entirely separate entities. I feel that dramas are the evolved modern versions of tragedy that have storytelling infused with the suffering. Dramas are the newer better version of tragedies. Just like films with audio are the improved version of silent films. We still view them both as movies, on the newer films have the advantage of better technology and storytelling techniques. Simply watching somebody suffer with no plot is not as enjoyable as watching a story unfold and seeing the character suffer with each new event.

Thank you Aristotle for Over-hyping Oedipus Rex

As mentioned in my previous post, I was really enjoying Oedipus the King. However, after finishing the play I feel that the ending has somewhat ruined the story for me. While the ending might have been tragic in the Greek sense, I didn't mind it cathartic or morose, which I feel are important traits for tragedies to have. I really didn't have a strong connection with Oedipus by the end of the story because it all took place in one day, and during that whole time period Oedipus wasn't really being the nicest guy. The part where he is also saying goodbye to his daughters seemed as if it was supposed to be tragic, yet since the story never showed him interacting with his daughters until that point the scene really invoked no emotion. In all I feel that the story didn't end with the big bang I was expecting.
Also, this week were assigned a new project were we have to make a tragic piece of media. I plan on making a film because it is my favorite form of media. However, I feel that it will be difficult to make a tragic short film because there will not be a lot of time to try to establish a connection with the characters. One film I felt that did this well was Up. The first few minutes of the movie consists of a montage that is meant to give a background of how the protagonist met his wife, their time together, and ultimately her death. At the end of these few minutes when the wife dies I felt bad for the main character, I would even say it was more tragic than Oedipus the King. I am thinking of making a short with similar traits such as limited dialogue and quick passages of time. What do you think would be best to make a short tragic film?

Tragedies - Week of 10/11

This week in class we have been learning about tragedies and their Greek origins. This has led me to ask the question of what makes something tragic? Personally, I feel that one important factor of what makes something tragic is irony. It seems that in many tragic movies or stories you feel an unexpected sympathy for the characters. For example, in 2001: A Space Odyssey you feel sympathy for HAL when he is being disconnected, even though he is only a computer and has killed many people. In the Boy In the Stripped Pajamas most people would obviously sympathize with the child because he is innocent, yet I still felt bad for his family which is unexpected because his father is a Nazi officer. In The Life Aquatic the movie ends with the main character finding the shark that ate his best friend and saying, "I wonder if it remembers me?" The main character is supposed to like a washed up Jeac Cousteau, and isn't necessarily the nicest the guy. The question he asks is completely ironic and very emotional.
The Greeks thought that tragedies needed to have a character start at a prominent position and then go in a downward spiral. However, many of the tragedies I personally like tend to start after the main character has already gone through their downward spiral and chronicles them trying to rebuild themselves only to fall back down again. I think that it is better because I like it when tragedies end on a sad note rather than having the main character learn the error of their ways and find redemption, as it was common in Greek tragedies. I feel like a happy ending every time is too unrealistic.
What do you think?

I Said I'm Sorry Athens - Week of October 4th

This week we read and discussed the Apology by Plato. Before reading this all I knew of Socrates was that many consider him to be the father of philosophy, he liked stimulating conversation through questions, and that he was put to death for corrupting the youth. After I read the Apology I gained a new appreciation for Socrates. I really liked the strategies he would use to prove his point. He would first ask questions to develop a premise that the opposition agreed with. For example, when he was trying to prove that he did not corrupt the youth he first got Meletus to agree that no man would intentionally try to harm himself. Socrates then used this conceit to show that he could not logically be intentionally corrupting the youth since he would be trying to harm himself. It is these types of logical proofs that are best for trying to prove an argument. I am a member of Model United Nations, and during conferences you are often making speeches trying to convince somebody of your point. In the future I plan to argue in the same style as Socrates.
Another thing I found interesting was the similarities between Socrates and Jesus. Both were given a message by the gods to spread amongst men, both were killed because of what they taught and that they refused to stop, both were poor during their lives, both traveled constantly spreading their teachings, and both had followers that did not write about them until after they died. I don't know whether theses similarities have any implications, but they are interesting to say in the least.
The reading offered a brief insight into classical Greek philosophy, and I hope in future readings we will learn more because I want to increase my knowledge and understanding of philosophies.