Sydney's Blog

For our final post of the semester, write about anything having to do with the Odyssey about which you have not yet written. I have not yet had a chance to just talk about how great Telemachus is! Odysseus, his father, disappeared when Telemachus was an infant. Penelope, his mother, was so sad and depressed at the thought of her lost husband. He had this life for 20 years. He grew up like this, went through his teen years like this. He was the prince of Ithaca, and the king had gone out to war and was then lost at sea nowhere to be found. Telemachus comes to the realization that his father could be alive, and he has never met him. So, why not go on a secret life-threatening quest to find him? He knows his home is in chaos, with all these men, (who are only a little bit older than him) taking advantage of them and trying to marry his mom. He also knows his dad can fix all of this, so he decides to go and bring him home. He finds Odysseus, who is at first disguised as a beggar. S...

In book 19, why do think Odysseus is so harsh on Eurycleia after she recognized him? When Eurycleia discovers the beggar is actually Odysseus, (because of the scar on his foot), she is filled with joy. She looked towards Penelope, who didn’t even realize she was in the presence of her own husband. Athena diverted Penelope’s attention away so she wouldn’t realize it was Odysseus. He grabbed her by the throat and threatened to kill her if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. “I’ll tell you this and I swear I’ll do it: If, with heaven’s help, I subdue the suitors, I will not spare you-even if you are my nurse-When I kill the other women in the hall” (Homer 305). He is trying to have his plan play out exactly how he wants, and he is worried her telling someone will ruin it. However, he knows the gods let her learn the truth for a reason, and he trusts the gods. Eurycleia understands he doesn’t know who to trust being gone for 20 years, so she calmly says, “I’ll tell you this and you remem...

    Find 3 examples of formulaic language and explain how you might think these might have been helpful when singing or speaking the Odyssey in oral tradition. “Assuming this girl’s form, the owl-eyed goddess spoke” (pg. 85) - Athena being one of the main goddesses in the Odyssey, she had many names. They all had to do with eyes, gray, or owls. Because the Odyssey was passed on orally, it was important for people to be able to understand who the characters were. So Athena having a nickname signified she was an important person in the story, versus someone who was just called by their greek name because they weren't as big of a roll in the story. “Dawn spread her roselight over the sky.” (pg. 106) - In a story, the beginning of a new day is always important because it gives a frame of reference to the audience on the amount of time passing in the story. Dawn is referring to the sun coming out in the morning. So instead of saying, “On the next day” they made it flow more wit...

In the first four books, we are also introduced to Telemachus’ mother and Odysseus’ wife, Penelope. Using textual evidence, discuss her roles in the story so far.     Penelope being the wife of Odysseus and the mother of Telemachus, she already plays a big part in the story. Medon, her herald, tells her that the suitors are planning to kill Telemachus on his secret voyage. “When Medon said these things, Penelope felt that her heart had been unstrung. Her eyes filled with tears, and she was unable to speak for a long time.” (Homer, 65). This was the first she was hearing that Telemachus had left on a voyage to find his father who everyone thought was dead. She was heartbroken by the fact that Telemachus had snuck off, but also by the fact that the suitors were going to try and kill him just to get the riches and treasures of Odysseus, including his wife.     “And Penelope spoke to them through her tears: ‘Hear me, my friends, for the god on Olympus has given me pain...

Frederick Douglass was constantly abused growing up. Almost every master he had was not very nice. They have whipped him, he talks alot about them whipping other slaves right in front of him. He was not treated fairly at all. The majority of his masters were rude, unkind, uncaring, and just not very nice people. For example, Colonel Lloyd put tar on his fences just so slaves wouldn’t take food to keep them from starving. If they were caught, they were whipped. Some of the masters just went into the fields and started whipping people. Slaves would have gashes on their backs all the time. Frederick Douglass was strong and brave through all of this. He talked about how he sang with other slaves to help him cope, and he was brave enough to face his past again to write his autobiography so that other people knew what he went through.

In the time period that, "Narrative of the Life Of Frederick Douglass" was written, black people did not have the same rights as white people. Going to school is a privilege, and black people did not get privileges. You get privileges when you have freedom. For white people going to school was normal, and they didn't think anything of it. However, if a black person went to school, they were EXTREMELY lucky and this was also very rare. Because they were slaves, they were working all the time, they didn't have time for school. That is why there were many adult slaves who didn't even know how to read or write, things nowadays the majority of people know how to do. The first Amendment is freedom of speech, and without an education, black people could not speak up about anything. They weren't thought of as people as much as they were thought of as tools. Tools did not need an education. This autobiography gave me a perspective on how lucky we are to get an educatio...

People who are white have always been free or had the ability to go to school and get an education. However, people of color have been slaves, which means that they were not free. During part of the 1900's, if you were a person of color you were a slave. If you were a slave you did not have the option to go to school, normally. If the children of color could not go to school, how were they going to learn how to read and write? They became adults who couldn’t read the newspapers they saw other people reading. They grew up and never even learned how to write their own name. If you are a free person, you have the opportunity to get an education on reading and writing. There was a time when people of color did not have that opportunity, and the lucky few who did never took advantage of it.

Slaves were treated very poorly and back then anything they did was bad, whether it was a major thing or a minor thing. For example, (in the beginning of chapter 3), slaves were never allowed to steal fruit from a garden. The master had a special garden where he grew all his fruits and any slave to tried to steal the fruit was whipped by the chief gardener. For the master to know if the slaves stole fruit, he covered his fences in tar. This made it so that if a slave tried to get any fruit, he would get tar on him and that showed that they were trying to steal fruit. Some masters were nice, and some of them were extremely rude and didn't care about their slaves at all what so ever. In this example, the master is really harsh and will punish the slaves harshly for minor things. Slaves were supposed to live in poverty, and be workers for the white people. They couldn't own things white people owned, they couldn't do things white people could do. When a black person did anyt...

When I went to the MFAH I took a photo of a painting by Auguste Renoir called Girl Reading. Auguste Renoir lived from 1841-1919, and he made this painting in 1890. This is a French piece. The Victorian era was following the Romantic Era, and some of the characteristics of this era were: Religious skepticism, whimsical imagery, etc. This was a time when England was at the peak of it’s power, because of Queen Victoria, which is why this era is called the Victorian Era. The painting I chose shows a young girl in a red dress sitting on a comfortable chair reading in a room with a very colorful background. This painting represents a little bit of feminism and the innocence of the little girl. It also showed the freshness and animation of the artist’s image and shows very warm, peaceful imagery. Although this painting wasn’t created in England, the Victorian Era also impacted it.

The Arrow and the Song By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882) I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight. I breathed a song into the air, It fell on earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song? Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend. Describe 3 major characteristics of the sub-genre that you chose and apply that knowledge to one of the poems in your sub-genre. The Victorian era poetry has many different characteristics. 3 of them are: This poetry was written when England was at its most powerful state. These poems were generally religious. These writers were generally known for their quirky wording, mystical interrogation, and verbal embellishment. This poem was written while England was in power....

Choose one of the poems that we have studied in the reader, and analyze the title. How does the title relate to the rest of the poem, and how does it create meaning? Provide examples from the poem to support your claim. THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. By: Gwendolyn Brooks The title We Real Cool is also the first line in the poem. We thought this poem is about teenagers who make bad choices such as drinking gin, not going to school, meeting up at bars, etc. They think they are being cool when they are really just killing themselves. This title sums up what the poem is trying to say, and it helps create imagery for the poem. For example: The lines, “ We real cool. We left school” is a great example of what the poem was trying to show, which is these teens were trying to act cool by doing things that were bad for them. Another example, “THE ...

Write about the concrete imagery that you noted in your journal/notebook during the trip to the Kusama Exhibit. Remember that concrete imagery appeals to one or more of your 5 senses.     When I went to the Kusama Exhibit with my group, we were only in each room for a couple minutes, but it was so worth it. We went in the first room for about 5 min. And it was extremely colorful. There was an audio playing of a poem the author was reading out loud. When the poem was being played, and I was surrounded by all the colorful tentacles, I imagined me being in my own dream and the poem was my conscious. In my dream I was underwater, and the tentacles were various creatures in the ocean. I was in the deepest part of the ocean, and I didn't recognize any of the creatures. My conscious had this eery, calm voice, telling me to just relax and follow the sway of the tentacles. The blue color scheme reflecting off the mirrors made me feel like following the conscious and the tentacles wou...

    Earlier this week, I went to the Amazon Exhibit at the HMNS to learn about all of the tribes that lived/live in the Amazon. The topic I will be focusing on is the rituals that the certain tribes had.     The Yanomamo Tribe ate banana soup with ashes as one of their yearly rituals. When someone died, they brought their body into the rainforest, covered it with leaves, and left them there for a while so the bugs could eat their flesh and tissue and everything except their bones. When all that was left was bones, the tribe burned the bones, collected the ashes, and mixed them into a banana soup that the entire tribe had to eat.     One of the most common foods for the Ye’kuana Tribe was manoic, or what we now call yuka. They are in the shape of sweet potatoes, but they are white on the inside. This was their best resource of carbohydrates. Some of them were poisonous back then, but they all looked the same. So how did they get rid of the poison? They sma...

A poem is a form of writing using conventional English in an artistic way to create metaphorical lines that tell a story or opinions. Prose use conventional English but not in an artistic way. People generally use prose to write essays. Prose are written in paragraph format as opposed to poetry, which is written in lines. Prose communicate facts, while poems are full of depth and trying to tell a story. Sometimes poetry is used to express feelings, prose is not. Although poetry and prose are different, they are both common forms of writing.