Honors English 3 - My Answers

1. Memory affects the reading of
literature by causing the reader to refer back to their memories of
previous happenings to “predict” how a story will end. Symbol
affects the reading of literature by causing the reader to believe a
thing possesses more than one meaning whether or not it truly does.
Pattern affects the reading of literature by aiding the reader in
looking beyond the written text – should there be a pattern within
the story a reader could note that pattern down to look at the bigger
picture. One time when my appreciation of a literary work was
enhanced by symbol was when I read the book The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring. The
Fellowship of the Ring, the namesake of the book, is literally a band
of adventurers who seek to destroy the Ring. But, the Fellowship also
stands as a symbol of the opposition against the Dark Lord Sauron,
which increased my appreciation of the book and of the entire series.




2. The five aspects of the QUEST are as
follows: a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there,
challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there. Easily
enough, The Lord of the Rings is a QUEST. We have a quester (or
questers) in the form of the Fellowship. The place to go is Mordor
and the stated reason to go there is to destroy the Ring. Challenges
and trials en route include the Fellowship being displaced among the
land of Middle Earth, Frodo, Sam and Smeagol encountering the Ring
Wraiths from time to time, and Frodo's struggle with bearing the
ring. Finally, the real reason to go to Mordor is to save Middle
Earth through whatever means possible.




3. The Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice
in Wonderland is a wonderful
example of communion. The Mad Hatter doesn't have a tea party,
though, but holds an entire conversation with Alice and the Hare
instead. The lack of tea at the beginning of the party is a sign of
rudeness as marked by Alice, however, it is soon remedied by a
plethora of riddles in the end.




4. The essentials of the Vampire story
are as follows: an older figure representing corrupt, outworn values;
a young, preferably virginal female; a stripping away of her youth,
energy, virtue; a continuance of the life force of the old male; the
death or destruction of the young woman. A perfect example of the
Vampire story is the story of Adam and Eve. The older figure is the
Devil, having existed before Adam was created, in the form of a snake
which is corrupt by its nature. The virginal female? Eve. She loses
her youth (and, well, Adam does too) when they bite from the Tree of
Knowledge/Forbidden Fruit. The 'life force' of the Devil, that is,
its growing love to derail humanity from the path of God, is ever
fueled by the success in its attempts to trick Eve into making Adam
eat of the Tree. And the young woman is destroyed when she falls from
Heaven, becoming a normal human with a normal lifespan.




If Square Then Sonnet *5.





6. Intertextuality is defined as the
relationship between texts and how one may be related to or
influenced by another. Three examples that have helped me in reading
specific works include Ender's Game + Ender's Shadow, the Lord of the
Rings trilogy, and of course The Adventures of Tom Sawyer + The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The fact that they all deal with the
same subject matter allows me to continue reading with a ZEAL for
reading each text...when I began reading the first LotR book, I
couldn't stop. Knowing that there was a related text, a continuation
of the text even, I couldn't help but pick that one up. The same can
be said for Ender's Game as well as Tom Sawyer.




7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
alludes to practically every work by Shakespeare.
The very title of the work, Brave New World, is directly ripped from
a quote in the Shakespeare work The Tempest.
A character in BNW, John the Savage, relates to characters such as
Othello via their skin color differences as well to Hamlet, as both
characters feature someone sleeping with their mothers. BNW basically
breathes Shakespeare.





Or Bible *8.





9. The movie A Cinderella Story
easily reflects the original Cinderella story.
The former takes the archetypes of the latter and puts them to great
use. Sam Montgomery (the “Cinderella” in the former) starts out
in a less-than desired world [much like the Cinderella archetype],
then slowly but surely reaches a much better disposition after
meeting her extremely rich boyfriend, Austin. Sam's own stepmother,
Fiona, practically screams the Evil Stepmother stereotype. Overall,
the former deepens appreciation for the latter in ways untold before.




10. In a land bereft of love

Filled with hate and other such
elements

I found myself struggling

to keep back the hordes of Hades




As I kept facing my family

Back turned in disgust

I learned a dark secret

That of two-faced mistrust.







11. The weather in the book The Lord of
the Rings The Return of the King has had a profound effect. The hot
weather in Mordor only bears down upon Frodo and Sam's beings,
causing the quest to destroy the ring to be that much more harder.
The airless battlefield right before Aragorn and the company make
their final stand for Frodo shows that the end may truly be coming.




12. An example of the regular violence
found in literature is in the book Ender's Game.
When Ender confronts Bonzo and attacks him, all he is doing is
beating the living snot out of him. He goes so far as to actually
kill him though he doesn't know or believe it at first. That's just
straight violence. An example of metaphorical violence is also in
that same book – when Andrew and his fleets are playing the
simulations in the command school simulators, he is literally killing
buggers though he doesn't come to know it 'til later.




13. The fence in “Araby” is
literally a boundary, but symbolizes to the reader that the narrator
simply cannot reach Mangan's Sister no matter how hard he tries.





14. Ender's Game is quite obviously
political. They live under the perceived threat of the buggers where
they then go to “schooling” which is literally war disguised as a
bunch of games. Then, when the bugger fleet is all but destroyed,
they're freed from the tyrannical lifestyle they once lived under.







15. Anakin Skywalker can be seen as a
Christ figure. He wasn't necessarily crucified though he did suffer
the loss of his arm and legs, as well as being burnt all around [1].
He was in agony at many times (e.g. when he lost his battle against
Obi-Wan Kenobi) [2]. He was definitely self-sacrificing as seen in
Episode VI where he singlehandedly took the brunt of the Emperor's
Force Lightning rather than allow Luke to die [3]. He did make use of
speeders and often traveled on foot [8]. He did spend a bit of time
alone in the wilderness of Tatooine, specifically when attacking the
fiends that killed his mother [11]. He had a confrontation and
succumbed to the devil known as Darth Sidious and was tempted with
power to protect his loved ones (I.e Padme) [12]. In a way, the
Emperor could've been seen as a thief of sorts, and Anakin under the
guise of Darth Vader was last seen with the Emperor [13]. Anakin was
a very forgiving fellow although he did have grudges at times [17].
And finally, he redeemed himself fully on the second Death Star by
bringing the Emperor to his ends [18].




16. Flight signifies escape and freedom
in the book The Lord of the Flies. A plane that crashes on a remote
island in the Pacific Ocean literally meant escape and freedom from a
nuclear war for a few choirboys as well as some other children.
Ironically, they found that being practically alone on an island
evoked a greater danger than that of the nuclear war; the dark side
of humanity.




17. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the
Clones features Anakin Skywalker and Padmé
Amidala on a very personal scale – at first they're nothing
but good friends from their previous encounters in Episode I, but in
Episode II they're seen as pretty much in love with each other.
Anakin grows from a brash, prone-to-acting-without-thinking character
to one who desires nothing more than to protect the ones he loves
(although he still prefers to act without much thinking). Padmé
evolves from a stereotypical councilwoman to a woman of love for her
man. This whole affair also causes Anakin to become more suspicious
of people, as a Jedi is not supposed to become a slave to their own
emotions.




18. A proper example of a baptism scene
in a literary work is in the book The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, where Huck and Jim both
travel up the Mississippi River. The two lose their previous
thoughts/perceptions, for example Huck stops using racial stereotypes
(he frequently uses the N word among other words) and starts to think
more on how each ethnicity is different from another in a more
positive light. Jim on the other hand, Jim left a life of slavery and
contempt to simply be free as a bird from there on out.




19. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
The Mississippi River in all its grand exquisiteness, the graveyard
what with its description of being well...a graveyard, McDougal's
Cave (where Rebecca and Thomas get lost together), as well as the
whole of St.Petersburg itself. All of those are four different areas
in that Foster would classify under geography, as they literally are
part of the geography of the land itself.







20.John Keats (1795-1821) TO AUTUMN.


SEASON of mists and mellow
fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring
with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the
thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d
cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To
swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel;
to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the
bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer
has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen
thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may
find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair
soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow
sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy
hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And
sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head
across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou
watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs
of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy
music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And
touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir
the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or
sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud
bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble
soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering
swallows twitter in the skies.





John Keats uses the season in this poem
in a very meaningful way – the entirety of the poem from the first
stanza to the last is spent displaying the beauty of Autumn. The
gifts of autumn, detailed by such phrases as “with fruit the vines
that round the thatch-eves run; to bend with apples the moss'd
cottage-trees”, are noted as ever plentiful. In all, the poem is
used to convey the message to the reader to appreciate fall for what
it is “Where are the songs of Spring? […] Think not of them, thou
has thy music too”, for what takes place during the season “and
gathering swallows twitter in the skies” , and for what the season
bears “with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run”. It
is a marvelous poem.




21. Archetype as defined by me:
anything so commonly used to the point that it can be used or seen as
a template for other things. An archetypal story would be Sleeping
Beauty. I can apply it to Cinderella – both feature a
damsel-in-distress (a waif archetype character), both feature that
one character who seeks to serve as a roadblock or a massive
hindrance, but both stories turn out good for the main character.




22. Darth Vader, a character from the
Star Wars series, has many physical imperfections. His face, no, his
whole body is burnt all around. His arms and legs are missing after a
duel with his former mentor. What do all of these signify? Giving him
multiple chances. They show that Darth Vader, known as Anakin
Skywalker in some parts, has messed up time and time again.





23. Prince Prospero in Edgar Allen
Poe's Masque of the Red Death dies of the eponymous disease, the Red
Death. The Red Death is effective symbolically as anyone who gets it
dies soon after, and this could be seen as a representation of either
Death itself or even the Black Plague. / Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo
and Juliet dies of a disease: his “love at first sight”. The
'disease' is very effective plotwise – it misguides each and every
one of Romeo's actions up until the climax at which point his undying
love for Juliet causes him to commit a suicide in a situation that
doesn't actually exist.




24. Act 1 Scene 1 of Romeo and
Juliet, Sampson states “'Tis
true, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust
to the wall; therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and
thrust his maids to the wall.”




Back in the time of Shakespeare, people
would laugh and praise that line, thinking not much of it. However, a
reader in the 21^st century would berate the line as it
clearly says 'women, being the weaker vessels'. Better articulated,
21^st century readers would find the line to be as sexist
as the sun in fact is yellow at high noon. Contemporary readers,
however, would basically approve of the line thinking it is perfectly
okay, that it describes women perfectly.




There is the stench of sexism in that
line that 21^st century readers would find via women
apparently being weaker, though there is also sexism following that
line: Sampson clearly states “therefore
I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the
wall.” Sampson is basically saying that women, as the weaker part
of humanity, are the ones who are to be raped; men in their latent
strength can never be raped. This is most definitely not the case,
especially in the 21^st
century.




25. Romeo and Juliet is a heavily
ironic literary work. In the final scenes of the play, Romeo sees
Juliet, who is really asleep, and assumes her to be dead. He proceeds
to kill himself, though she wakes up just moments before he dies.
Juliet later kills herself, and the irony is the fact that while they
were to be together in happiness initially, they're together in death
in the end.




26. My results were absolutely poor in
comparison to the three examples. Nothing I thought the story meant
lined up with the examples in the slightest of manners. The essay
does not add anything to my appreciation of Mansfield's story.




27.The motif of the Beautiful Princess
is used in so many literary works. Cinderella what with the eponymous
princess, Sleeping Beauty and , Beauty and the Beast and Belle, the
list goes on and on and on. The idea seems to signify that a woman of
exceptional beauty, or rather, ability to allure even a common man,
should be given whatever she wants when she wants it simply due to
the fact that she contains beauty in her very essence.