Week 12 Essay

This week for my essay topic I decided to focus on the different styles of poems and rhyming. I remember learning them in elementary school but have since forgotten them. The English Nursery Rhymes unit utilizes many of the different rhyming patterns, so I thought the essay this week would be a great opportunity to review them. 

One of the patterns is the ABAB pattern. This is where the first and third line rhyme and the second and fourth line rhyme. This is often called the alternating or interlocking rhyme scheme. An example of this rhyme scheme from the English Nursey Rhymes unit is the nursery rhyme Simple Simon. It reads:

Says the pieman to Simple Simon,
"Show me first your penny."
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
"Indeed I have not any."

Another scheme is the AAXA pattern. This style has all lines rhyme but the third. This seems to me like it would be a bit harder of the patterns to write because you have to time the out of place word to fall into the third line of the rhyme. An example of this type of pattern can be seen in the Tales section of the Nursery Rhymes entitled Babes in the Wood. It reads:

MY dear, do you know,
How a long time ago,
Two poor little children,
Whose names I don't know,

The pattern AABB is a very commonly used in rhyming because it is an easy pattern to follow.  The first two lines rhyme and the third and fourth line rhyme. An example of this type of pattern is present in the common nursery rhyme Rock-a-Bye Baby.

HUSH-A-BYE, baby, on the tree top;
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock;
When the bough bends, the cradle will fall;
Down will come baby, bough, cradle, and all.

 

Rock-a-Bye Baby nursery Rhyme, source: blogspot

A strategy used to break up the monotony of having multiple lines in a row rhyme is to follow the XAXA pattern. In this pattern, the first and third lines are “wild cards” that do not rhyme with each other or with lines two or four. This pattern is not as common, but there was a nursery rhyme I found that utilized this pattern. The nursery rhyme reads:

Jack's mother came in,
And caught the goose soon,
And mounting its back,
Flow up to the moon.

Another pattern to add some interest is to end the last line with a non-rhyming word and following the AAAX style. In this pattern, all of the first three lines rhyme with each other and the last line is the un-like line that does not rhyme. This pattern can be seen in the nursery rhyme that reads:

You shall have a fishy,
In a little dishy;
You shall have a fishy
When the boat comes in.

Week 11 Essay: Wisdom in the Looking-Glass

This week after reading the Through the Looking Glass Unit, I decided to focus my Essay topic on the idea of wisdom. I also throw some random ideas in about the idea of wisdom as we age.

Throughout the stories, especially in the last stories QueenAlice and Shaking and Waking, we see where the idea of wisdom is tested through riddles. The Red and White Queen are constantly asking Alice questions of what should be simple addition and subtraction but they add a twist to it. A dig minus a bone is a temper. Because when a dog loses his bone he is angry and what is left is his temper. The frog in this story also tricks Alice when she is trying to have someone open the door when she knocks. The frog replies by asking what the door is asking for it to need to be answered.

These concepts stretch our idea of wisdom. We often get stuck in the tradition wisdom that addition and subtraction are easy athematic equations. Rarely would someone answer a subtraction problem in the way that the Queens present them to Alice in this story. It goes to show that we can often become so narrow-minded in our interpretation of certain things. We let our wisdom be filtered or focused on the real and not the abstract. I think the riddles in these stories try to show us that: that we have wisdom and imagination but we must stretch ourselves to think in that abstract way. It is not natural to us.

I also found it interesting as I was reading the story to think about the wisdom I gain from the story now vs. when I was a kid. As a child hearing about Alice in Wonderland I thought about a magical cat and this great kingdom, which was pretty. Now, I realize the depth of the story and the message it was trying to convey. It is interesting to see how our perspectives change as we age. 

Alice in the dream-like world, illustration by John Tenniel

Week 10 Essay: Analyzing the Rabbit

Rabbit hides in brush as he plans his next trick, source: wikipedia

This week in the Cherokee myths unit, I noticed that every story included in the set of 26 stories included an animal. Some animals were reoccurring; such as the rabbit. And others had smaller roles in single stories. For this weeks essay blog post I decided to focus on the importance of animals in Cherokee culture. I specifically decided to focus on the role of the rabbit who constantly is tricking and fooling the other animals to get his way.

The rabbit is in multiple Cherokee myths and is always the trickster. He is jealous of the otter for having the best fur, so he tricks him into jumping into the water and steals his coat. The possum supposedly had the best tail, and the rabbit got jealous so he had the grasshopper cut off the fur. He is jealous of the deer and wants to win the set of antlers, so he tries to cheat in a competition. When he is bitter about losing the competition, he then tricks the deer into letting him shave his teeth down so that he can no longer eat anything but plants. The rabbit is always jealous of the other animals for what they have. He can not stand not being or having the best looks, so he constantly tricks the other animals. I found it somewhat strange it was a rabbit, because to me, rabbits do not seem like the typical cunning and sly animals. The myths and stories I always heard about rabbits were usually little bunnies. As in the “Tale of Peter Rabbit” and “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny” where you end up feeling sorry for Peter after he gets chased out of the garden and his clothes taken away. I did not find myself feeling bad for the rabbit in the Cherokee myths because he was very rude and hostile towards the other animals.

            There seems to be only one story included in the set where the rabbit is on the other end of the tricks. The Tarapin fools the rabbit in a race by stationing other Tarapins that look identical to the real one throughout the course. The real Tarapin is near the end of the course and he crosses the finish line before the rabbit. In this myth, the rabbit was fooled and not doing the fooling. According to the myth, rabbit stew is prepared and scattered on the path the night before a game so that the other players become tired and lose the game just as the rabbit did. I found it interesting that in this myth the rabbit somewhat gets revenge for all of his other tricking he does in the other myths.

Week 9 Essay: Opposites

For this weeks Essay I decided to try something new and do the Cartoon Essay option. I spent some time looking through the different cartoons and this one made me giggle when I read it, which is always a good thing to be able to draw emotions in such a quick time.

Yesbody Cartoon by Rick Detorie

When reading this cartoon, it took me back to the days of learning antonyms and synonyms. I just wanted to ad un- in front of every word to make it the opposite of a word. I always wanted to say that I was unsad. I still to this day do not understand why unsad is not a word. If you want to say the opposite of happy you could say sad or unhappy. But, if you want to say the opposite of sad you can only say happy. It made no sense to me as a kid learning the rules of opposites. I can definitely relate to the little kid in the picture. You have always been taught that yes is the opposite of no so it seems logical. I think that kids actually think more logically than adults sometimes.

I tried to follow the thought process of the boy and see if he was trying to say that a person had no body and the opposite would be that yes the person had a body. So this would be thinking in terms of describing physical characteristics of a person. You can also take it as looking at the word nobody as an adjective with a negative connotation. He is a nobody- not important, not exciting, a downer. And a yes body is the opposite- someone important, someone exciting, someone who says yes to adventure. Based on the expression of the boy in the images, I believe the second explanation is what the cartoonist was aiming for. In the nobody image the boy has a gloomy look on his face. In the yesbody image he is smiling.

This cartoon reminds me of the struggle learning all of the rules of the English language and of the pure creativity we have as children. We start thinking there is only up and down. Then they throw left and right at us. And then they expect us to think in diagonals and opposite angles. This cartoon made me laugh at remembering how simple it all used to be.

Week 7 Essay: Analyzing a Recurring Motif

For this week’s essay I am focusing on the reoccurring theme I have seen in two of the past units I have read. The theme is the idea of “wanting what you don’t have.”

A want button where you can press what you want, Image source: LaBLog

Last week one of my favorite stories from the Japanese FairyTale (Lang) unit was The Stonecutter. This story follows a poor stonecutter who happens upon the magical spirit of the mountain one day when he is cutting stone. He wishes he is rich and the spirit grants his wish by giving him a palace to live in. But this is not enough. When he sees a prince who has servants to shade him from the sun, he wishes to be a prince. He wants what he does not have. But this was not enough power for the prince. He wanted to have power over all the earth, so he wished to be the sun, but when the clouds covered the sun and cast the earth in shadows, he wished to be a cloud. And when the cloud stormed and destroyed the village but did not damage the mountain, he wished to be the mountain. Until, one day a stonecutter came by and began to chip at him for the stone. He then wished to be a man and he was content for the rest of his days. Through the journey, he constantly wanted what he did not have. He was never satisfied with what he had to start with until he saw that, in the end, it was what he wanted most.

This week one of my favorite stories in the unit Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki) was the tale entitled The Man Who Did Not Wish to Die. The man named Sentaro does not want to die and part with all of the splendors he owns in this life. He had heard tales of there being an elixir of life that would make him last forever and he decided he must have it, so he sets out to Mt. Fuji to find the hermits who possess it. In order to obtain the elixir and live forever Sentaro must become a hermit. Sentaro has been spoiled his whole life, and the reason he seeks the Elixir is in order to live this grand life forever, not a life of being cold and hungry and barefoot. So his next option to live forever is to venture to the land known as Perpetual Life where the people live forever. But, the people there have heard of Paradise, a magical place you go to only when you die. So Sentaro, who came from a land where you do die wanted to find eternal life and the people who had eternal life only wanted to die. This shows a perfect example of people wanting what they do not have. Luckily, for Sentaro it was just a dream and he soon realized that he did not want to live forever, and returned from Mt. Fuji to his land where he would eventually die.

Week 6 Essay: Analyzing The Stonecutter

For my essay this week I decided to analyze and discuss one specific story in the Japanese Tales Unit (Lang). It was one that as I read it, I appreciated the story for the lesson it was teaching and how the story swings back full-circle to end where it started. The story is The Stonecutter.

            The story begins with a poor stonecutter whose art is being able to carve stone and pick out which types of stone are best for different purposes. He goes everyday to the mountain to cut the stone and has never seen Spirit of the Mountain who supposedly helped the men become rich and prosperous. The story introduces how the stonecutter did not believe in the spirit and then actually provides foreshadowing in the end of the second paragraph “But a time was coming when he learned to change his opinion.” This sets the stage for how the reader can see that the spirit of the mountain will probably come back into the story at some point.

            In the next paragraph, we see that the stonecutter’s luck begins to change as the spirit hears his request to be a rich man, and upon returning home, the stonecutter’s wooden hut has become a palace. His first wish had been granted. Later, the stonecutter sees a prince with a golden umbrella being used to hide the prince from the piercing sun coming down. The stonecutter, sweating from the intense heat, was jealous and wished he too could be a prince. He was envious.  He wished for what he didn’t have. The spirit heard his plea and turned him into a prince.

And here is where the big central message comes. He was rich and now a prince “But yet it was not enough.” It is a typical of the human nature. Many times when we want what we can’t have, as soon as we get it, we are not satisfied and want something else.

The stonecutter then goes one a power-craze. He wishes to be the sun, but then the clouds hide the sun. So he wishes to be a cloud, but then the stone withstands his rain. So he wishes to be a rock. “And the rock he was, and gloried in his power.” The stonecutter was finally content and proud that neither sun nor rain could overpower him. Until one day when a stonecutter came and begin chipping away at him. He cries out “'Is a mere child of earth mightier than a rock? Oh, if I were only a man!” And the last wish is granted as he is turned back into a man.

“His bed was hard and his food scanty, but he had learned to be satisfied with it and did not long to be something or somebody else. And as he never asked for things he had not got, or desired to be greater and mightier than other people, he was happy at last and heard the voice of the mountain spirit no longer.”

The last paragraph perfectly explains the story. The man learned that he could never be happy if he was always chasing something else. He could not find happiness in always yearning for more and never appreciating what he had and who he was at the moment. The spirit of the mountain represented his selfish hunger, and after he learned to be content and grateful, the voice went away. 

Man on Mountain, Image Source: Pixabay

Week 5 Essay: Women in Persian Fiary Tales

One of the Essay topics to choose from was the role of women in the stories. In some of the past tales, women have important roles and even are the main characters, such as the Arabian Nights unit. But, this unit did not have strong female characters, or paint women in the most flattering light. In the Persian Tales unit, there were women who turned into wolves and killed their innocent husbands, such as in the tale The Wolf-Bride. And there were wives who manipulated their husbands and other family members into doing terrible things. 

            One of the most interesting cases I read was in the story The Wolf-Aunt. In the background information provided, it mentioned that in Persian culture, the sister of the husband is viewed as somewhat evil. The children are taught not to like their aunt on their father’s side. The author’s note states there are two types of aunts, “the mother's sister (khala) whom he is taught to love, and the father's sister (amma) who spoils him and who is kind to him, but whom his mother tries to teach him to hate and fear.” The tale is told to children for the specific purpose of teaching them to be fearful and distrust their amma (father’s sister). It was so strange to me to think that children are taught to dislike one of their family members, because I have always been taught that your love for your family should be unconditional. They are family.

            One of the other stories that really stuck out to me where the women’s role stuck out to me was in The Boy WhoBecame a Bulbul. The woman in this story said "You two ought to lay a wager to-day and agree that whichever of you collects the more firewood should cut off the other one's head." This seems ludicrous for a mother to say that her husband and son should make a somewhat friendly wager in which one will have to kill the other. I could not believe a mother would do that! But, there is an important detail that I believe makes a significant point. She is a stepmother. In many fairy tales I am familiar with, such as Cinderella, the stepmother is not described in a favorable way; although usually not to this extent. I thought it was interesting to draw the similarities of how stepmothers are often portrayed negatively in fairy tales. 

Cinderella was forced to live in unbearable conditions by her stepmother, image source: wikimedia

Essay Week 4: Humans to Animals

This week when reading the Arabian Nights unit, I noticed a common theme with many of the stories Scheherazade was telling in order to save her life: people being turned into animals as punishment for their wrongdoings.

In the Story of the First Old Man and of the Hind, the husband has an even wicked wife who despised his mother and son. He had to leave for a year, and in this time, the wife practiced witchcraft in order to turn their son and slave into a calf and cow. Luckily, when it came time to slaughter the calf and cow, the man was stricken by the tears of the cow and the loyalty of the calf to lay by his feet. The man spared their lives. A fairy living on the land told the man of his son and slave being turned into the calf and cow by his wife and requested that if she turn them back into their human form that the wife be punished equally. The wife was then turned into a hind (deer). The story explains that a hind was chosen as the animal to take form because it was not as dreadful looking or misbehaved, and therefore the the family could still keep her close by. 

First Old man with his wife the Hind, source: blogspot

The next story in the unit, The Story of the Two Black Dogs, also included two brothers being turned into dogs after they betrayed their brother. Their brother had been nothing but kind to them and once he married a lovely woman and was very happy with his life the brothers became jealous. They tried to drown him and his wife by pushing them overboard a ship. To the man’s surprise, his wife was a fairy who rescued them and requested the two brothers be killed. The man said he did not want them killed, but the fairy wanted them to be punished so she transformed them into two black dogs where they would remain in that shape for ten years. It does not say why dogs were chosen as the animal as it does in the story of the hind, but I believe it was for much of the same reason. In the two brothers being dogs, they were allowed to remain by heir brother’s side but still had their punishment of living their next ten years as animals.

In the story of the Young King of the Black Isles, a young king was betrayed by his wife whom did not love him. She was a wicked enchantress that hated her husband for requesting she stop mourning the loss of one of their slaves who she truly loved. In her rage, she destroyed the land of the Black Isles and turned the people of the town into fish. “The fish of four colours which are in it are the different races who lived in the town.”  In this story, the people did not do anything to deserve being turned into animals, but the people suffered the punishment the wife wished to bring on the King of destroying the land he governed. 

Week 3 Essay: My Writing Career

 

My typical essay writing setup (with coffee of course) Source

Being a student gifted in the areas of math and science, writing has always been a struggle for me. I believe I have great ideas and thoughts but always have a hard time expressing them. I also hate the formality of grammar, most likely, because I do not understand all the rules of commas and punctuation.

            In high school, I was part of the Gifted and Talented program where we focused on creative thinking and writing more so than the other English classes. We often did verbal analysis of literature through class discussions, inner-outer circles, class debates, and reenactments of scenes. We wrote papers, but it was not the core focus of the class. Each Friday, we had “Deeper Reading Fridays” where we analyzed song lyrics, music videos, and current poems. Our reading curriculum included books such as Water for Elephants and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo along with the classics like The Great Gatsby and Brave New World. The writings that surrounded these readings were not your typical essays. Often we would do short stories or recreate the central themes and symbols of the readings in a new original story, much like we do in this course. I enjoyed this type of writing rather than long essays or short analytical essays such as those we had to write for the AP exam. 

            Coming to college, I had one credit of my English and Composition done from passing the AP test and only needed one more course. I took an expo course titled Food and Power and loved the curriculum. I am a foodie at heart and a self-proclaimed chef so this class covered material I was interested in. That was the only reason I was able to endure that class. The ten page research essay and analytical essays were not my favorite, but at least I was writing about interesting material. My ten-page paper analyzed the culture of wine and I found it very interesting. Since this course, I have not written anything of that length in my college career. I am a Health and Exercise Science major and most of my classes are science courses with labs. There is not much writing and I am thankful. Most of my writing for my major is in my elective classes where we do one page analyzes on research articles in the field. Although I am glad my major does not require much writing, I am thankful for the skills I was able to learn in high school. 

In my future profession I will no do much writing. As a physical therapist you often have to write notes to the physicians documenting a patient’s progress in rehabilitation, but most of these notes are shorthand medical terms.

Week 2 Essay: Analyzing Ovid 1 Unit

I am so happy that I started the semester with the Ovid 1 Unit but the only downfall is having the other units interest me just as much as this one did. I have always been interested in Greek mythology and decided it was a good place to start the semester. The first story of Deucalion and Pyrrha was not my favorite. I found myself getting somewhat confused and had to re-read certain parts of the story to make sure I was getting all of the details correct. The notes were definitely helpful. It was nice being able to read a little summary with hints to look for in the story. For example, in the story of Io I probably would not have picked up on the creation of the peacock. However, since the notes in the beginning mentioned it, I knew to look for the details in the story. I can honestly say that all of the other stories I enjoyed. The second half of the reading seemed to contain the more dramatic and exciting stories, in my opinion. The stories contained more symbolism and imagery that drew me into the stories. I feel like I knew more about the personality of the characters in the stories like Echo and Narcissus. I never knew the creation of the peacock, the echo or coral and found these as some of the most interesting things I learned. The only thing I would have maybe liked to have in the notes is the explanation of different symbols: whether physical or colors. My overall goal for the class is to expand my knowledge of the cultures of different people and lands through the use of myths and folktales. Although I knew many of these myths already, I gained new insights from the stories this time around. I think I would like to do another Greek mythology unit next, but also do want to break away from what I am already familiar with. I recommend this unit to anyone who wants to gain more knowledge about Greek mythology and fears it might be too complex for them to understand. The notes by the professor and the language of Tony Kline, the translator, were simple to read and easy to follow. Overall, I am very happy I started with this unit because it was nice to have content that was somewhat familiar to write about as I navigated how to write the blog posts and assignments. 

Juno and her sacred bird, the peacock: Source