SuperGlo

 In Room we’ve seen a lot of defamiliarization of things in the world. It’s got me thinking about things in real life and how I might see them in different ways. I got home from school today and my mom was working on a puzzle and my first thought was how weird that must seem to Jack. He would probably wonder why the picture was broken up in the first place and then wonder why people work so hard to put it back together for no reason. Then I began talking to my mom and dad about Room (the book, not the location) and they wanted some examples of defamiliarization in the novel. I thought it would be fun to make them try and guess what certain descriptions actually mean, and thought it would probably be tricky since they aren’t accustomed to Jack’s language of things like when Jack is outside and says, “Up close the trees are giant giants, they’ve got like skin but knobblier when we stroke them. I find a triangularish thing the big of my nose” (Room 211). From the context, I know Jack i

In class we’ve been discussing a lot what it would mean for Grant to succeed in his mission. He is supposed to make Jefferson feel like and act like a man before he is killed, which is a daunting task. There are a lot of different ways of interpreting success specifically with Jefferson and him becoming a “man” before he dies, it is possible that him walking tall and proud to the chair could be seen as a man or maybe him leaving a legacy behind would mean he is a true man. I think that those things could count as Grant’s success with Jefferson, but it is important to measure Grant’s success overall based off of how he acts in the years following this experience. We see throughout the story that Grant feels some sense of guilt or responsibility for Jefferson being in the cell and being considered by the community a “hog”. This guilt of Grant’s comes from him participating in the system that tells young black students not to learn anything useful in school. Grant says he teaches readi

This contains SPOILERS for the last TWELVE PAGES of the book!! Throughout the story  As I Lay Dying , there was a lot of question about whether Anse was on a noble journey or if he was just going to town for his own selfish reasons. It seemed at first like maybe he was being a good husband. At the beginning of the journey he makes a lot of reference to Addie having a “dying wish” to be buried in Jefferson. We later learn that Addie asked this as a type of torture from beyond the grave for her family, but Anse doesn’t know that. So at first I felt some pity for Anse, his wife had just died and he wanted to do one last romantic gesture for her. Anse also made a big deal of his children “flouting the dead” by all wanting to go to town for their own reasons (like Cash and his carpentry job or Jewel and his horse). Meanwhile, we know that Anse is going to town because he wants to get himself a set of teeth. While this is an understandable need, it is hypocritical of him to be upset a

In class, we just watched the movie “O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?” and compared it with how Homer’s  The Odyssey  story progresses. I saw the movie about two years ago for the first time before ever really knowing the story of  The Odyssey , so it was really interesting to see it now and be able to have a new perspective after having read  The  Odyssey . I remember when I watched it for the first time, I made the connection between the sirens in the movie and what I knew about the sirens in the real story. My dad also pointed out to me the connection between Big Dan in the movie and the Cyclops from  The Odyssey . Those were pretty much the only similarities I was able to detect before understanding the full plot of the epic poem by Homer. Watching the movie after having read the poem, however, gives it a whole new fun perspective! I never knew that Odysseus was coming home to face a bunch of suitors, and that that was a large part of the plot of the actual  Odyssey.  So now, seein

            As a class we’ve discussed the trend throughout  The Odyssey  so far that shows Odysseus as an unreliable character. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to us as the very first line states that Odysseus is “a complicated man” (1. 1). The storyteller intentionally makes it very clear to us that Odysseus will not always do the right thing, but despite that he’s still the hero of the story. We’ve also discussed that in books 5-12 (the wanderings), Odysseus is narrating much of the story to us. Since he is the only witness to his stories, he could be embellishing or twisting the truth to make himself more of a hero.             One of the characters that comes off poorly in his story is Eurylochus. Eurylochus is first described as causing destruction to the journey by requesting that the men stay at the island of the sun god because they’re tired. Odysseus describes that after Eurylochus’ speech “I saw a spirit must be plotting our destruction” (12. 297). Odysseus describing h

            The movie Ella Enchanted is similar to the story of Cinderella in some ways, but has different elements from your typical fairy tale. It is about a young girl named Ella who, when she is born, is given the “gift” of obedience from a fairy. The gift is actually more of a curse, but isn’t much of a problem when she is young until her mother dies and her father remarries an evil woman. Ella’s evil stepmother and two stepsisters find out about the curse and then use it to control her life. This is all Ella’s “Ordinary Life”, she is just living at home with her awful family. Then, Ella goes to a rally and runs at a full sprint into Prince Charmant (friends call him Char) on accident. He thinks she’s strange but asks her to go to the ball with him, she refuses because she hates what the King (Char’s evil uncle) is doing to the land. This refusal to go to the ball could be considered the refusal of the quest, but also her Hero’s Journey is about so much more than Char.