All Nighters.......

So this is my two cents for this all nighter study session with Sam. Now every one always talks about how pulling all nighters and cramming sessions are completely horrible and you should never do them, but come on you are talking about teenagers here. The one who reigns over our souls is the great and almighty power of procrastination. Yes this has been a long time to stay awake and completely unhealthy but I feel this is one of the few times I can place YOLO appropriately in my school work. Being as we both might regret this by tomorrow when we are taking the test I feel that for now this is really helping us review. Apart from giving us more hours in the day I feel it really helps us prepare for the future. Those college days when we need to pull these all nighters left and right. AP class would not be complete with the full imitation of a college experience now would it? haha

Lit Anal: The Kite Runner

Refreshing Sophomore year time! haha(:

 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is about Amir and his struggle to cope with things that happened when he was a boy and his attempts to make them right.  He grew up in Afghanistan with his friend and servant, Hassan.  Amir and Hassan did everything together and Hassan would protect Amir at all costs if it ever came down to it.  That winter, Amir wins the kite fighting tournament and Hassan runs to collect the kite only to be raped by a few other boys.  Slowly Amir and Hassan drift apart and Hassan and his father leave.  Amir and his father flee Kabul when it is invaded by the Soviets and move to California. Here, Amir meets and marries Soraya and they try and fail to have a baby.  Amir goes Pakistan where he learns that Hassan has been killed, but has a son, Sohrab, in an orphanage.  He rescues Sohrab but gets badly hurt in the process. After he recovers, Amir and Soraya try to bring Sohrab back to the U.S. to live with them. Sohrab tries to kill himself and fails. He becomes severely withdrawn and only smiles when he wins a kite battle back in the U.S. And Amir runs the kite for him.

 The theme of this novel is really all about redemption. “There is a way to be good again,” is one of the quotes that seems to haunt Amir throughout the book and what drives him to try to fix everything that happens.  He regrets everything that happened between himself and Hassan and wants to do everything he can to try and make it right.

 The authors tone throughout most of the book is very tragic. While there are uplifting and happy parts, the main tone is one of despair and loss.

 “I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba.”

 “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

 “That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.”

Symbolism - 

 The pomegranate tree - The pomegranate tree serves as a symbol of Hassan and Amir’s friendship.  As long as Hassan and Amir’s friendship is strong, the tree blooms, and produces fruit, and is healthy.  But as soon as the boys start to drift apart, the tree withers and dies.

"Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul." "Those words made it formal: the tree was ours."

Irony - 

 Amir wants to be like his father and make his father proud, but instead he ends up possessing the traits of his father that are unwanted.  He, like his father, betrays his best friend.  Amir constantly has to deal with the unintended consequences of his actions that he took when he was a child and almost every action has a negative consequence.

“My body was broken—just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later—but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.”

Foreshadowing - 

 A lot of the major things that take place in Afghanistan, reoccur when Amir is grown up.   He has to deal with the rape of Hassan’s son, realizing that he betrayed his best friend just  like his father did, and the most well known foreshadowing; Amir running Sohrab’s kite  for him.

“For you, a thousand times over.”

CHARACTERIZATION

Hassan's Indirect and Direct characterization

"...even in birth, Hassan was true to his nature: He was incapable of hurting anyone." (p. 10)

This is one line through which Amir indirectly characterizes Hassan as a person. We see through the chapters that Hassan is a very loyal person and could never hurt anyone. Proving to us that this statement is true.

One Direct characterization is in Chapter 1 where we are told that Hassan is harelipped and it is something directly on his character.

Being as one of the characters is the narrator of the story he doesn't really change his tone. He keeps his tone very mono tone due to the story being told in one point of view only.

All the characters in this story are very dynamic characters. As they go through the struggles they now have to face a lot of their mentality changes. The characters are not the same as the story progresses and its easy to follow that they are going through difficult times and that is why they are now struggling. At the beginning of the story however seeing as Amir controls the story I think the story seemed to make the characters flat but as time passed and incidents like the rape and so on, I think the dynamics of the story really changed.

Through the whole story I felt a lot of different connections and emotions. Seeing a close friend go through a hard time, I think we have all felt something like that at one point. I think in the end I some what knew the character but at the same time I don't think it was realistic, or as realistic as it could have been. Yes there were many parts that were related to situations somewhat like I have been through but the setting and the way of thinking these characters had did not match my sense of reality. I think the biggest effect would be the geographical aspect. However I did like the emotion portrayed in this story.

Sonnet Analysis Part 1

The opening line poses a simple question which the rest of the sonnet answers. The poet compares his loved one to a summer’s day and finds him to be “more lovely and more temperate.”

The poet discovers that love and the man’s beauty are more permanent than a summer’s day because summer is tainted by occasional winds and the eventual change of season. While summer must always come to an end, the speaker’s love for the man is eternal.

RESOURCES:
Here is where I found most of this analysis. There is a further analysis on this webpage but I believe those two lines summed up the poem well at the tip.

Big Question

Now... my question always seems to become controversial and is answered mainly on a persons beliefs and morals. The Question is... Even though there is evidence that spirits live among us, why do people still question their existence?
By their I mean ghosts and by evidence I mean things like medians who exist. If you visit one I think people have become believers but some people close themselves off to that option.
That is my big question. I(:

Vocab Week #11

VOCAB REMIX IN PROCESS
Affinity- relationship by marriage
Bilious- of or indicative of a peevish ill nature disposition
Cognate- of the same nature
Corollary- A proposition inferred Immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof 
Cul-de-sac - a pouch
Derring-do- a daring action
Divination- The art or practice that seeks to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge due to the interpretation of omens 
Elixir- A substance capable of prolonging life indefinitely 
Folderol- a useless accessory 
Gamut- an entire range or series
Hoi polloi- the General populace
Ineffable- incapable of being expressed in words 
Lucubration- to study by night 
Mnemonic- intended to assist memory
Obloquy- abusive language
Parameter- an independent variable used to express the coordinates of variable point and functions of them
Pundit- a learned man 
Risible- provoking laughter
Symptomatic- having the characteristics of a certain disease but arising of a different cause 
Volte-face- a reversal in policy

Sonnet

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: 
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines, 
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; 
But thy eternal summer shall not fade 
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; 
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
~ William Shakespeare

AP Hamlet PLN

So after a long search into countless pages where discussion took place here are my top five. The reason for these I have chosen is the fact that they all seemed like sources a teacher would use. Seeing as we have read through the play these resources will help every student know the break down of Hamlet. When you can fully comprehend something to the point where you can break it down and explain it to others then you have mastered the material. This is why I think these sources I have posted here will really help those of us who have yet to master Hamlet.


HERE is a full outline for teachers that are looking further into Hamlet and a teaching plan. I think you can easily take this and self apply to study habits.


Mind Map... Great to sort out your major ideas,

Look around on this blog! It's another class looking for some good resources like us!

http://shsaplit.wikispaces.com/hamlet_review_1 

Multiple Choice Test Good help for anything!