replacement blog

This is my replacement blog for one that I completely took the short way out of because I was having a hard time understanding something. At first I was having a hard time finding figurative language, but I think that’s because I was looking for ones that I could explain exactly what they meant, instead of just looking for the figurativeness (if that’s a word). Lines such as, “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me.“ I mean, we never saw him suffer. And what does the part about “..and now hear to be in me” mean? I don’t know, but it is still figurative language. The most obvious one I saw I thought was the one about being aware of the dogs. He obviously is not talking about the kind of dogs that go “woof, woof,”, so he is speaking figuratively. The most complicated one I think is “ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain”. This is one that I distinctly remember going over in length about in class. There are so many different ways to take and interpret that, and none of them are right or wrong. That’s what is so beautiful about figurative language. Sometimes I wish God had been a little more black and white with certain things, but then again it wouldn’t be such a beautiful picture and we wouldn’t have to work as hard to get to know him better. These were just a few examples from a book filled with figurative language, and it’s been a best seller for years, you should check it out sometime.

Special Post #2

In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children”, the basis of the story is that a newly married couple with a baby struggling to survive, finds an angel in their yard. It becomes an instant attraction to anyone within driving distance and beyond. It is kept in the chicken coop and not treated with any sort of decency by the onlookers who pay the couple in order to witness the angel. This causes the couple to be able to help their child regain his health as well as build themselves a mansion, all because of the people that came to see the angel. Now, the angel was not exactly treated kindly by everyone, in fact, it was quite the opposite. He was interrogated, burned, beat around, etc. The child ends up getting better and grows up with the angel as a part of his life. Towards the end of the story they try to move the angel inside, but end up bringing it to the barn. At the end of the story, there is a slight sense of hope as the angel regains his ability to fly and leaves the family as he flies into the sunset.

The reason I feel that this text needs to be interpreted is that you could read through it over and over and get something different out of it every time. It’s not a text that I can just sit down, interpret it, and that would be the end of it. Another reason that I chose this text was the fact that I didn’t understand the point to this text at all the first time I read it, so I figured it would help me grow as a reader and a writer to try and interpret it. So here goes….

In couple round about ways, this angel reminded me of what Jesus was to us. I mean, in the story the angel shows up “On the third day of rain…”, similar to how Jesus  arose from the grave after 3 days. The part that struck me though is how the angel handled his persecutors while saving the family and child’s life. Very much like our savior, he took everything without complaining because he knew its what had to be done. No amount of taunting, teasing, prodding could cause him to show emotion, which instantly reminded me of how Christ was ridiculed daily while walking the earth and how calmly he handled it.

A couple things I haven’t figured out quite yet how they tie in yet is why was the angel so old? Why did the neighbor want it dead so badly? Why did the family seem afraid of it?

The main part that I still haven’t decided how I feel about though, is the end. I sway back and forth from thinking it’s a positive ending full of hope, or a depressing ending and a sign of how sometimes we let blessings slip away before we realize they were there. At the end of the story it says “Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she saw him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture….” See, that makes it seem like the woman thinks they will be better off without the angel. Though it makes me wonder if the author is trying to show how we can get caught in how smooth our life is going and not recognize when such a big blessing is right in front of our face. I mean, isn’t it possible that the angel that they found was their guardian angel using a creative way to save the family? If that is the case then its kind of depressing because they treated an angel so poorly for so long, meaning it probably will never come back even if they needed it.

After reading this a couple times, it really started to strike me inside. It made me think about everything I have to be thankful for in this life and how I show my gratitude for those things. Do I make sure to make it obvious that I am incredibly blessed and thankful? Or do I just lock everything up in a chicken coop because I make my own luck? I know that might sound corny but that’s what I got out of this story. Maybe some other day, some other time in my life I might be struck by something completely unrelated. Just as I am sure that other readers got things totally different than I did.

Overall, I never at once thought there was a clear interpretation to this text. As one of my friends put it, “Ambiguity reigns, and the people in the story-like the readers of the story-merely interpret events, never understanding them. Thus the story defies attempts at interpretation even as it stages the human need to interpret. In short, it is more concerned with the fact that we interpret than with what we interpret. It's a fairy tale without an interpretation; rather, it's a fairy tale about interpretation.” I think that sums it up perfectly. The point of the story will never be one specific thing. The simplest way I can think to describe it is to say that the point of the text is to cause you to TRY and interpret, not figure out exactly what it is trying to say.

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings; A Tale for Children”

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings; A Tale for Children”, was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1955. I have a sentence that sums up exactly how I feel about this story: What in the world??? I don’t even know where to start when talking about this story. Part of me wants to think that this was the child’s guardian angel and was just saving the baby in a very different round about way…maybe? But, why was the angel so old? Why were there crabs in the house? What was the point of the spider-girl? Its things like this that make me wonder what the point to this story was (if there was one….). Also, its title “A tale for Children”, really? At what point did this story resemble anything of a children’s book? I felt like many of the characters and subplots were far too complicated and uninteresting for a child to enjoy. I’m not worried that I don’t understand this story though, because I went through a couple people’s blogs and was reassured that I am not the only person who is struggling to comprehend its purpose. Also, why were the people that found the angel so un emotionally attached? Wouldn’t you think if an angel landed in your yard you would want to keep it happy? Because if it is in fact an angel, it could possibly have a lot of friends in some really high places. Although, the world in this story is obviously not our own so maybe an angel meant something different in that culture. In the end, although it seemed very strange and unfulfilling, I couldn’t seem to stop reading it. I found myself consumed with trying to figure out what the purpose of each character was and how it was going to end. So maybe that was the whole point to the story…? Haha I have no idea.

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” was written by Ursula k. Le Guin. To be honest, when I started reading this story I became incredibly bored. I felt like I was being given a bunch of useless information describing these people and that the story was just going to be one big pointless waste of time. You would think, considering that I’ve thought that about the majority of our readings, I would’ve learned by now. I am still not sure what exactly the point to this story is, but at least it improved enough to get my attention. One explanation I read was Andrew said, ”A world without evil would be a fairytale land. Without evil how could we really enjoy happiness?” I can see where that makes sense at first, because it made sense to me when I first read it. But then I started to think about it biblically, and I disagree with what the book implies if they are in fact implying that we couldn’t enjoy happiness without evil. If you look back to Genesis, there was no evil in the garden at first. There was no pain and suffering. Are you going to try and tell me that Adam and Eve weren’t happy? Or that the only reason we are going to enjoy all of the pleasures of heaven is because there will be thousands of others suffering in hell? So I did not find this story, or what I found it to be implying enjoyable or necessary. I’m sure tomorrow in class though I will hear many different views and things I didn’t catch, so I will most likely change my mind. Oh, and one last thing. Why is it called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”? the ones who walked away seemed like they had very little to do with the story as a whole.

world without evil would be a fairytale land. Without evil how could we really enjoy h

Philippians

Well, that week off without blogging flew by. I felt like I didn’t even get a break! Anyways, our prompt for this week was to read St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians and write about the figurative language in St. Paul’s letter. To tell the truth, I didn’t find much figurative language in the book. I actually went through everyone else’s blogs trying to find examples and I like Josh’s the most. As Josh put it, The biggest bit of figurative language I caught was about circumcision. I massive part of Paul’s letters is reconciling the Old Law with the New Law. The Jewish Christians were obsessed with maintaining the Rabbinic Law, of which circumcision was a major part. To Jewish Christians to be a Christian often made them think that they needed to be Jewish, and thus… *ahem* snip, snip. In my opinion Paul isn’t the best one to address this situation considering he is circumcised himself, yet this also makes him the perfect person because he says that he is extremely Jewish (a “super Jew” as Dr. Waddell has put it before). This statement about having “faith in the false circumcision” is not simply a statement about circumcision, but about the entirety of Old Law.” See, I never would’ve have used that example, that’s why this class has been so good for me. Because when I am confused or looking for a new view on something, I can just click through everyone else’s blogs and find something that helps me better understand or interpret in a different way what we’re reading. I am not very good at finding and explaining stuff like this, but if I had to guess, I would say that when it says “Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers…”, he is speaking figuratively. Once again, I am not very good at this kind of stuff, but it doesn’t seem like this was the best passage to read to find figurative language.

The Man Who Came To Dinner....and wouldnt let it end

I went and saw the Southeastern University production of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” on Friday night. Now, let me just say up front that I was completely exhausted from the previous two nights, so putting me in a dark room to watch a play I didn’t want to be at, probably didn’t help my opinion of the play very much. That being said, I thought that this play was way too long for the amount of storyline that was in it. I felt like if they wanted it to be that long with the plot they had then they should have made it much funnier throughout. It just began to feel like we were dragging through it, almost as if just trying to take up time. Now I understand that this is completely my opinion, because it seems like most people loved it, for example, Zac said,            

            `“There were only a few scenes where I desired more to go to sleep than I did             to stay awake, and that’s a lot to me, since I’ve never actually been to a formal             theatre house before and seen a play.  And there wasn’t even really a moment                        where I didn’t want to finish the play.”

So he only found it sleepy at parts, while I felt like there was my own storyline going on throughout the play about whether or not I would stay conscious. That just goes to show it’s a matter of opinion, always. Now even though I did not find the storyline enjoyable doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate the acting. I felt like everyone in it did a phenomenal job. Being able to stay in character for that long can’t be easy and I thought everyone did an exceptional job at bringing each particular character to life.

In the end, I guess it was a good experience for me, but it was not one of my favorite field trips thus far.

11-10-2010

As I said in my annual class quiz on Thursday, I really enjoyed the second half of the play “The Boys Next Door”. I felt like having read the first act and visiting Alliance for Independence that I had a better feel for the characters and could appreciate their personality quirks and humor they provided. I mean did anybody else find the part where Norman and Sheila are talking at the dance about what kind of flowers they are hilarious? I laughed every time we read that scene last Thursday in our small groups!! Also, the part where I believe its Arnold who says “you have personality traits that are not fun Jack.”, or something like that. Just the scenes like that made this play so easy and enjoyable to read for me personally and the humor far outshined the sadness. I even found myself re-reading certain scenes because I found them so funny!!

Another thing, while we were reading this story the thing that kept jumping out at me was just the innocence of each character and how unassuming they are. That is something that I’ve always felt we could learn from people with disabilities, most the time there is no hidden motive in their actions. As I read through this story I felt like I got to know each character better and better with every page because they just seem so honest and sincere. I really want to see the movie now just to see how they depict each character and see how it lines up with what I have in my mind.

Bottom line is, this was by far my favorite reading and field trip we have done so far.  I enjoyed this play so much that I am looking forward to tell my family about it and hopefully finding the movie.