The Soloist (final)

The Soloist...This is by far the most smile summonning book that I have ever read. From beggining to end, Steve is there for Nathaniel and trys to help him in every way that he can. Although Steve could not cure Nathaniels mental illness, he cured his lonesome by becoming his best friend. It was a good thing that Steve realized curng him was almost impossible, because becoming his friend was so much better for Nathaniel. A story about helping someone is my favorite. It cannot get any better than that.

The Soloist definetely brought up many modern day issues. I cannot beieve the fact that Nathaniel remained homeless for so long. That is proposterous. This goes to show how people only socialize with "normal" human beings. We need more people like Steve who would be willing to do things out of the "ordinary." 

Also, this brings up some medical issues. At first, nobody was willing to prescribe Nathaniel medicine. They branded him"uncurable." We need to start researching into cures for mental disorders because a sufficient amount of people suffer from them.

I am happy that Nathaniel finally agreed to live in the apartment despite the confrontation him and Lopez had. Another thing I liked was the growth of an irregular friendship. This is a good moral that the readers have learned. Befriending people that normally would not have any friends is a great deed.

In conclusion, The Soloist is a book of social positives and negatives. Readers will retain great morals and maybe a slight tear.

Soloist (13-22)

Well, I've made it to about the halfway point. The relationship between Steve and Nathaniel has definetely grown. I belive though that Steve has to stop trying to cure Nathaniel and just be a friend, make him happy. His condition has been going on for too long for it to be chnaged. There is one thing though, I do beleive that Steve should continue to try and get him into the apartment. This way Nathaniel can be safe. I am very upset with the lack of instrumental incorporation into the book. I mean, it is a book based about music. Lopez focused way too much on trying to cure Nathaniel rather than allowing him to do what he loves. That is, playing, hearing etc. things about music. I hope that Steve realizes he can not cure Nathaniel. He should just be there for him and make him happy instead. Nathaniel is a special man, and Lopez can give him the support he needs to continue being that special man just by being his best friend.

The Soloist (7-12)

As the story progresses, Lopez becomes more connected with Nathaniel. They are doing so much more together as Lopez pushes Nathan to join LAMP. This is all good, but I feel Lopez is throwing his life away for a homeless man. Helping him once in a while is great, but he is forgetting about his wife and child. Instead of sleeping at home, Lopez slept on the street with Nathaniel, to me this is unacceptable. Your wife and child have to come first.

Nathaniel's mental state is not getting any better but he is becoming somewhat of a normal citizen. He now can attend a musical performance and is going to join a "home." I hope that Lopez can help Nathan enough to the point where he can live in a decent home. Also, I hope he eventually has a good food supply. Joining an orchestra would be good for him too, this is, if he can keep his mental state to a reasonable level.

Although I want all them positive to happen, I do not think they will. All I believe Lopez can do is continue to be his friend and help him out with things. We will see what happens to Nathaniel and how he turns out in the end as we continue reading.

Soloist (1-6)

This book is very easy to read. I love it! The main characters, Nathaniel and Steve are genius. Nathaniel, just a regular journalist, is going to get hit with the story of a lifetime. He discovers a mental man (Nathaniel) with great instrumental talent. Nathaniel, a homeless instrumentalist, suffers from schizophrenia. This man, gets hit with the opportunity of a lifetime. This concept is great to me, a homeless man getting a chance to become successful.

One day, Steve is strolling around LA, and he spots Nathan. Enthralled, he approaches the lone musician. Startled, Nathan backs away and this is the end of their first meeting. Steve thought what beautiful music being played by a homeless man. He was determined to make this his next story. I am happy to know that Steve isn't just using Nathan to get a good story, he is also trying to get him some mental help. Their next encounters work out quite well and they befriend each other. I cannot get over Steves generosity to a homeless man. This is a critical advertisement to readers. It can show them that good comes out of helping people in need.

Overall, this book is excellent and very readable. Also, it has great moral concepts and would be a good read for all audiences.

The Catcher In The Rye

Holden...What a kid he is. I did not think it was possible to be that miserable and gloomy. Boy did he prove me wrong.

Throughout the book he just complains and complains. For example, when Ackley is in his room he stresses about everything he does.

Why would it matter? You are leaving the campus anyway.

Also, he is the worst with girls. Either he gets played or he screws up. For example, the hooker he got winded up getting Holden beat up

because he acted like and idiot. Another thing, why would you get mad at Stradlater for going out with a girl that you are crushing on if you are leaving the

campus anyway.

Along with his happy attitude towards his roommate and his awesome luck with girls, he also does really well in too. Sike!

He flunks out because he doesn't agree with the teachers. Are you serious? You flunked out of three schools buddy, so obviously its

not the school, its you. School is important, you cant just flunk out.

Finally, he has a bad relationship with his parents too. This is simply because he does bad in school. They do not like that.

If anything, do good in school for your families sake.

In conclusion, Holden has too wake up and realize you only live once. He has to stop being an idiot and straighten his act up

to have a successful and lovable life.

Focus: Were the facts I stated correct?

death of a salesman

Willy is an old tired out wack job. Honestly, he needs to go to bed. He is so miserable because after all these years he is going no where with his job. He is burned out from everything. Retire already old man!
For us as an audience, we should not let this ruin our dreams of becoming successful. He is simply old and tired an has no more juice to take his success to the next level. Unlike him, we are still young and have all power possible. Did I forget to mention that were not blind on the road either?
Willy should had just either stuck with his current job position or have gotten demoted because he is too old to do something bigger. He should of just realized that his boss wasn't going to give him any better position and just left it at that. We cannot blame him for wanting to be respected but he expected to much respect at his job for his age. Overall, his age is what stood in his way. I think he should of accepted that what he had was enough or have found another job.
This story should not crash our dreams in any way. What it should do is help us understand what not to do at an age where you're going crazy and becoming ill.

Note: Please let me know if my analysis of Willy is okay or too harsh.

Third Quater Reflection

Blogging, to me, is a very new experience. I have never submitted my written work electronically. In the past it has always been hand written and then submitted to the teacher. This is not a bad thing though. I enjoy blogging very much. It is very valuable to me. Typing is one reason, I work so much better typing then writing. Also, none of your work can be misplaced if you use blogger. It cant just get up and walk out of the web site. It is stuck there for your teacher to grade. Knowing that my class can see my work pushes me to make my piece of writing even better. I like my writing to be critiqued my fellow classmates. Continuing this method of work is no problem for me. In former English classes I never experienced anything like this. When writing a paper we would receive an outline on what to do. This would sometimes get lost and this was a horrible experience. We would have to go to the teacher to get another one and he/she would complain about it. This isn't a problem with blogger, it is on the website and it will stay there no matter what. We would also have to print our paper, and with this, there was a chance that it could get lost too. Then we would have to print it all over again, wasting our ink. Ink, brings up another problem we constantly have to use it to print papers and when it empties, we have to buy more. With blogger, there is no ink necessary, we simply electronically submit our work. I think the way we blog now is perfect and it is unnecessary to tamper with. When it comes to getting graded, I think we should not get graded on the format of our paper because when it is posted, it goes right into the blogger.com format. There is nothing we can do about this. Doing this type of work has changed our classroom community. We now can look at other classmates writing, this isn't cheating, but simply admiring their work and getting some ideas on how to start your paper.

The first few chapters of "The Great Gatsby" are an introduction to the main characters Nick, Tom, and Gatsby. Nick previously lived in the Midwest and just moved to West Egg. He is contacted by his former friend Tom Buchanan. I feel that Nick is nervous to arrive here because he has nobody except for Tom, who he hardly remembers. Although, the main reason he came to West Egg was to get into the bond business and make some money. Tom invites Nick over for dinner and as soon as he walks in he senses pressure between Tom and his wife Daisy. This is because Tom is said to be having an affair with a mistress in New York. This I feel, makes Nick even more uncomfortable it his arriving at West Egg. It is also in these first three chapters that Nick first lays his eyes on Gatsby, he was on the lawn across the street. In the second chapter, the relationship between Tom and his mistress Myrtle is finally released. Myrtle is a woman in her mid thirty's who lives with her husband Wilson who owns a garage. I like that they have an affair because this gives Gatsby and Daisy a better chance to get together and live happily ever after. The only reason I know that they had a past relationship is because my class spoiled it. In chapter three, Nicks relationship with Gatsby starts. He is invited to Gatsby three day weekend party. He arrives and there are hundreds of people drinking and socializing. This I feel, is so typical. A rich man having a party and half of the people don't even know him, but yet they are there having fun. When this party comes to an end on Monday, Nick sees Gatsby's servants fixing the place up.

Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreets- "To My Dear and Loving Husband"- http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/to_my_dear_and_loving_husband.html

Anne Bradstreet was born in Northampton , England in 1612. Her familys position caused her to gorw up in cultured circumstances and she was very smart for her time. Anne happened to be a very sickly woman. Despite this, she still managed to have eight children. Along with smallpox, Anne soon was a victim of paralysis of the joints. As the years progressed, Anne became even more sick and died on September 16th, 1672 in Andover Massachusetts at the age of 60.
The rhyming in "To My Dear and Loving Husband definetely contributes to the "cuteness" and "happiness" of this poem. It draws you in and makes you anticipate the next rhyme that goes with the previous line you have read. Also the metaphor " I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold" is excellent. It obviously shows how much she loves her husband.

Anne Bradstreets- "Upon Some Distemper of Body"-http://www.annebradstreet.com/upon_some_distemper_of_body.htm

This poem is about Bradstreets body being in pain and from what I got out of it, God taking the pain away. In the first half of the poem she describes all the symptoms of her body being in pain. In the second half, she describes it being taken away by the help of a greater power. I really liked reading this because I am in pain alot from all the physical acitivties I do. This gives me some hope that maybe a higher power will help me out one day. Once again, she rhymes in this poem. Rhyming to me, is a key factor of making a poem good and not boring. Like I said in the previous paragraph, it draws you in and keeps you wanting to know the following rhyme.

"Is there anything about the works of this poet that makes them distinctly American?"

From what I've read, nothing makes this poet distinctly American. She focuses on love, pain, sadness, happiness etc. These subjects do noty make any poet distinctly American. i am not saying she is your average poet, but she is not classified as distinctly American.

Kate Chopin- Reading Journal

Kate Chopin, from what I have read, loves to write about sensitive subjects. Her two stories “Lilacs” and “A Pair of Silk Stockings” are both about a nice, not your “average” woman. “Lilacs” is about a woman who is friends with nuns and “A Pair of Silk Stockings” is about a poor woman. Chopin definitely is a sensitive woman, I can tell from these two pieces.
There is definitely no comparison between writes of the American Romanticism and the American Realism periods. Romanticism focuses on revolting against politics and displaying the beauty of nature. Realism is just straight up modern day stories about random subjects of the modern world. These include stories about money, sadness, happiness, drama between people etc.
From what I have read, Kate likes to focus on happiness and friendship between people. She doesn’t focus at all on politics in her writing. This can tell us that she is big on being happy and enjoying the little things such as the smell of lilacs as in one of her stories. Also, I am sure she had a lot of friends because in her story “Lilacs” the main character Adrienne is very friendly with her fellow nuns. Overall, Chopin is the kind of girl that can be sitting in Starbucks; you can join her, and have a full on conversation.
I think Chopin focuses her stories to either an elderly woman or a teenage girl, I am sorry to say, with no social life. Her stories are just way to boring for your everyday teenage girl. Teens want to read about drama and love, not friendships with nuns and poor middle-aged women finding money on the ground.
As a reader of Chopin’s stories, I am not entertained at all. Her stories bore me to death. I am not much of a reader in general, but if these were the only type of stories out there, I would erase the word reading from my mind. These two stories sent me no message except that a poor woman can have a short time of fun if she finds fifteen bucks on the ground and that being friends with nuns can be fun.
I am going to be honest; the only thing that drew me to this author was the fact that her short story in the textbook was very short indeed. This appealed to me big time. It is only until I found out that the other story I would be receiving from her was very long and boring, that I regretted picking her.
“After a short while, a lay sister came out of the door with a broom, and swept away the lilac blossoms which Adrienne had let fall upon the portico.”
Whoa…that quote up there is the only sad aspect of her two short stories. This is why this particular quote appealed to me. This upset me because the character Adrienne did not deserve to be let down like she was. Oh well, what are you going to do; Kate had to throw a negative aspect in there at some point.
In conclusion, Kate is just a happy woman. I think she does a good job entertaining the non-social teens and the elderly women.

Does Writing Have The Power To Enact Social Change?

Jordans piece is breathtaking. It list every possible aspect of the war and all those aspects are horrible. The war should be terminated, it is completely unnecessary. After reading her piece, I now one hundred percent do not agree with the war. This being, writing can enact social change. It juust did on me. I now despise the war even more than I did. Jordan convinced me that all the war does is take life away and cause more conflict. Her poem I am sure has affected many peoples opinions about the war and made themk feel remorse for ever agreeing with the war in the first place.Overall, this piece especially has the power to enact social change. She states many things that could change anybody's mind about the war. For example when she says "And all who believed some must die they were already dead," this to me means that if you are a believer of the war you must believe somebody should die. If you believe somebody should die you are already "dead" as a person. Who wants to feel "dead" as a person? Not me. So this quote made me change my opinion about the war. This is just one of the many great lines in her peom that could enact social change just like it did for me.

price of a child

I'd Trade It All

I sit here, my family incomplete.
You should be here.
We are missing a set of feet.
I'd trade it all...

I should be sharing this new environment with you.
Instead, You're back in Virginia.
And I have to wipe away my tears with a tissue.
I'd trade it all...

My son is suffering,
And its all my fault.
It hurts like a wound mixed with salt.
I'd trade it all...

Where are you?
Are you okay?
Will we meet again?
I'd trade it all....To be with you my son...Bennie Pryor.