End of the Year Showcase!

Prezi English Final

Project Plan Update

Project is going good. Originally our idea was to make a simple boring Prezi with no life. I wanted to make it more interesting by having each idea connect with each other and compare the new to the old. Eli, Connor, and Whitney need to email me their thoughts and research to put in our Prezi. 

Project in Progress

In class on Wednesday the 22 I discussed my final project with my group (Eli Esparza, Connor Albright, and Whitney Houg). We talked about what we needed to do individually to finish by the deadline.

Best of American Lit

After some thought on the specific area I did well in during the course I narrowed it down to Fahrenheit 451. I felt like I best understood what was going on during the book because we spent a lot of time on it but I also liked reading the book. Another topic from the course that I think is the best is we could collaborate with our classmates like you would collaborate with coworkers and bounce ideas off each other and work with each other cohesively. Learning how to express our thoughts and interests into our work is a tool I will carry with me for the rest of my life that I learned in American Lit this year. 

Brag Sheet

ACADEMICS

 • Renaissance (3 years)

 • Scholar Athlete, 4.0 (3 years)

SPORTS

 • Scholar Athlete, 4.0 (3 years)

 • Varsity Soccer (2 years)

VOLUNTEER

 • Good Sam Club and Camp (2 years)

 • Special Olympics (1 year)

 • Patterson Road Elementary Silent Auction and Family Fun Fest 

Derby Reportage

I find it so interesting how Hunter S. Thompson tells his experience at the derby to tell what happened there and when he was meeting different people. The dialogue with some of the characters has colorful language and isn't something you typically see in journalism, but it made me feel like I was there having the conversations and hearing how people really are. Thompson doesn't discuss the actual events in the derby as much as the typical journalist would and that makes gonzojournalism so intriguing. Reading the article tells you what happened at the derby and how people are rather than what the outcome of the derby was. 

Johnny Cyberpunk

This is a very confusing story. All the technology references and new short words that Gibson makes is unique to his style of writing and makes this piece a cyberpunk story. The lack of chronological order makes "Johnny Mnemonic" a postmodern story as well. The spelling and grammar errors I think were placed in the story on purpose but who knows. This style of writing seems like fiction but also so real. 

FUTURE ME

I used futureme.org to send a letter to myself (via email) one year in the future. I did this last year as an English assignment also. I think it is so cool and interesting to see what you were thinking about a year ago (or whatever you set it to) and in what ways you have grown and how you have and haven't changed that much. I can't wait to get my letter next year!! 

My Slaughterhouse

Post modernism broke the rules of literature. This style of writing is about breaking the fourth wall, not having chronological order, and using satire go tell a story I a funny but real way. "Slaughterhouse-Five", by Kurt Vonnegut, is one of the first postmodernist books that conveys the postmodernist elements throughout the story.

Kurt Vonnegut breaks the fourth wall in the first sentence of the book. Vonnegut is talking directly to the reader and says, "Listen:". Using the technique of breaking the fourt wall brings the reader into the story. In postmodern literature talking directly to your audience is normal but it was a new and confusing concept to readers if early postmodernism. 

"Slaughterhouse-Five" is a sorry about Billy Pilgrim time traveling though his life. Billy met the Tralfamadorians and started to become "unstuck in time" having no sense of time is postmodern. Billy Pilgrim travels in time from the war, to his daughter's wedding, to present days, and back to the war. A story with no sense of time is difficult and frustrating to follow for most readers. 

Vonnegut uses satire, parody, and humor to tell a story about war. This element of postmodernism is used for readers to laugh at what is confusing and makes no sense in life. Postmodernism makes fun of what can before this style of writing fiction mixed with nonfiction.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the postmodernist writers. In "Slaughterhouse-Five" he uses breaking the fourth wall, no chronological order, and satire to tell his story about Billy Pilgrim being "unstuck in time".

So It Goes

Part of my groups postmodernism project! Really excited how it is turning out!!! :)

SCHLACHTOF SIEBEN

Vonnegut says humans are machines
We all act the same
Waving-(medieval times) show that you aren't holding a weapon
-(present) you are "programmed" to
Dirty little limerick to a hanging
Elbe?
It is illegal to spoon the syrup
Somebody is coming
I have a feeling someone is going to get caught

Favorite quote: "...and he dreamed millions of things, some of them true. The true things were time-travel." This jumped out to me because the book is about Billy being unstuck in time and traveling in time to different parts in his life. Billy having a dream about time-travel and saying it was true caught my attention.

SCHLACHTOF (what's German for 6?)

The number 6 in German is sechs

"Listen:" - how the book (Ch. 2) starts

Why is there a Blue Fairy Godmother??

Lazzaro did a gruesome thing I don't want to say to a dog :(

Lazzaro is also demented, thinking about killing people in torturous ways

Billy has seen his own death many times

"Their address was this: "Schlachtof- fünf." Schlachtof meant slaughterhouse. Fünf was good old five."

SCHLACHTOF FUNF

Billy knows he is going to be abducted

Unstuck in time watching WW2 films

Billy asks, "Why me?"

Billy on travels most to certain times; daughters wedding, the war, and the "present"

Billy is blamed for Weary's death even though they were in different boxcars

Why does Billy go back to childhood memories?

"Valley of the Dolls"- Earth book on Tralfamadore

ex-captain Eliot Rosewater

Billy travels back to his wedding night

Kurt Vonnegut is in the war?

a boys mother thinks Billy is insane talking about Tralfamadore with her son

THIS IS ABSURD

Absurd- unreasonable

Something in my life that I find truly absurd is how your actions in the present can impact your future immensely.

SCHLACHTOF DREI & SCHLACHTOF VEIR

Discontinuity
 "Where have all the years gone"

Coital- adjective- referring to sex

androgyn- blending of the sexes

chaplin- religious officer in the military
 How can a rabbi be a chaplin? Chaplin can be any religion.

date on the license plate- 1967

John Birch- Baptist missionary in WW2
Earl Warren- 14th United States Chief of Justice

poverty- hot, destroyed what little they had
being a prisoner of poverty was like being a prisoner of war

Billy is neutral in all situations

Why was he weeping?

Billy's life seems boring, lonely, and empty

Billy is a POW, stuck in a train, helmet as a toilet

SCHLACHTOF ZWEI

Who is Billy Pilgrim? - son of a barber from Ilium, New York

"So it goes." repeated after a tragedy/death

Billy's family thinks he has gone insane

"plumber's friend"- plunger

Weary is demented talking about torture weapons

I'm not enjoying this novel because of the lock of (chronological order) time.

Billy doesn't have a helmet in the war, Weary (fat kid) thinks he is the leader.

Who is doing the talking?

Pilgrim- traveler to unknown places

First got unstuck in time, 1944

SCHLACHTHOF EINS- one slaughterhouse

• Author is the narrator and a character in the book
• "So it goes" comes up at specific moments
• Book about war and Vonnegut remembering the past
• Mustard gas and roses (poisonous and deadly but sweet and romantic)
• No sense of time (no chronological order)
• Interesting how he uses crayons and wallpaper to organize his memory (significance of orange crayon for firebombing?)
• Vonnegut is anti-war but was in the war
• Is the whole book going to be him talking about writing the book and war?
• O'Hore doesn't want her children to join war because she is afraid they will die
• I don't understand what the title stands for

The Modern Great Gatsby

(my modern remix of The Great Gatsby)
Marissa was a beautiful young lady who lived in the city. She had a boyfriend, Holden, who was self-centered and careless but would do anything to keep him and Marissa together. Marissa loved Holden once, she is the materialistic type who is also careless, so you can say they are perfect for each other. Before Marissa dated Holden she was in love with Jeremy. Jeremy and Marissa dated and were their high schools "it' couple, no one ever thought they would break-up. After graduation Marissa and Jeremy went to different colleges and tried to manage their long-distance relationship. Never seeing each other Marissa gave up on Jeremy and moved on and started dating Holden.
  At their high schools five year reunion Marissa brought Holden and Jeremy, crushed, showed up alone, staring at the love of his life with another man. Holden didn't like Jeremy because Holden knew that Jeremy still loved Marissa and Holden was in denial that Marissa still loved Jeremy. The reunion lasted a couple days, the first night was a welcome back party, the second day was a luncheon, and the third day was another party.
  On the third night Holden and Jeremy started yelling at each other and got in a fight over Marissa. Jeremy claimed that she didn't love Holden and Marissa threatened to leave Holden. Holden took Marissa by her wrist and pulled her to their 2013 BMW. Jeremy left as well and followed them to their hotel so he knew Marissa was safe.
  The next day Jeremy tried to call Marissa hoping she wanted to get lunch before she left town but she never picked up her cellphone and he knew he had lost her again.

The Great Gatsby Essay

 In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is the confidant. He listens to Gatsby's life stories leading the reader through the story. The narrator's curiosity about Gatsby is part of the sympathetic listener role in a confidant character. Nick is also a character of other purposes as well; he is the narrator and everyone tells Nick what is going on.

 Nick's character leads us through Gatsby's world by Nick being so interested in Gatsby's life and becoming his good friend. Having Gatsby and Nick be neighbors but also having different personas intrigues Nick into Gatsby's life. Nick's truthful and reliable traits support his character as the confidant , Gatsby's mysterious character opening up about his life to Nick makes the plot more understandable for the reader. Jay Gatsby is a mystery to everyone else but Nick because Gatsby opened up and told Nick all his life adventures.

 Having Nick be present in the plot brings the story together and makes the situation seem more real. Nick knowing all Gatsby's secrets and about the love triangles brought the story to a real dimension of how twisted society can get. Fitzgerald writing Nick as the narrator instead of a different style keeps the novel in perspective of one person's ideas who isn't from that area and is new to East Egg. The reader and Nick are both new to the East Egg lifestyle and how everyone is connected.

 With F. Scott Fitzgerald writing Nick Carraway as the narrator and being the confidant in the novel, The Great Gatsby, the reader understands the tone and theme better. Nick's character accomplishes displaying the type of life everyone wanted to have and the real people behind the fancy clothes. Carraway's character guides the reader through Jay Gatsby's world better than Jay Gatsby would.

MAP

      

http://prezi.com/a-tudtotk4nh/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-a-tudtotk4nh&rc=ref-35759923

Wallace Stevens lived from 1879-1955 and wrote from 1914-1955. Wallace wrote mostly poems and some essays. He is apart of the modernist genre. I believe his purpose for writing was to get his thoughts out of his head and to express what he was feeling in an artistic way. I really enjoyed reading through some of Stevens pieces and the rhyming scheme he uses in all the poems I read made it easy to read but the content made you think. I am amazed at the diction he uses in his poems, the words he chooses are complex but powerful. My favorite poem by Stevens is "A Postcard from the Volcano" and my favorite Wallace Stevens quote is "It can never be satisfied, the mind, never."