Of Mice and Men

1. The two main characters are Lennie and and George who are ranch hands that travel often from job to job. They have the classic yin yang relationship where Lennie the large kind-hearted, simple-minded man who doesn't know his own strength relies on George the clever and much shorter guide who looks out for Lennie and himself. At their new job in California they work under Candy a one handed handy-man (author obviously has some humor) who really likes the boys and offers his life savings to be a part of their dream of owning a small ranch someday. Slim, is a well respected ranch hand who seems to be in charge if not officially, a little harsh but also appreciates the way George looks out for Lennie. He gives Lennie one of his dog's pups from its recent litter that makes him very happy. As a foil for Lennie is the owner's ill- spirited son Curly who is in charge of everything. Curly has an ill disposition and enjoys giving Lennie a hard time seemingly because of his own insecurities. Such as a new bride who is very flirtatious, and with him being a jealous man she is a symbol of no good and bodes trouble when she comes around the workers. Curley suspicious of Slim being in the barn with his wife goes out to check and upon being wrong, goes and takes out his anger on Lennie who breaks his hand easily in self-defense. One evening when everyone is gone Lennie spends time with Crooks, a black ranch hand and doesn't understand how racially they aren't supposed to socialize, Candy joins them and they enjoy each other's company until Curley's wife comes and ruins it. Later on, Lennie is alone frustrated that his puppy died because of his inability to be gentle when Curley's wife comes and comforts him and tells him about her lost dreams and disgust with her current life and marriage. She tells Lennie he can stroke her hair because of his loev of soft things, but he gets too excited and makes her cry out and to silence her her covers her mouth and accidentally breaks her neck. Lennie runs away to him and George's "safe place" and when George and Candy find her body they suspect what happened and realize their dream farm cannot come to be now. George goes to Lennie in the riverbank and they go through their usual dialogue after Lennie messes up except this time George shoots him and Curley's lynching party finds them there and George says he wrestled the gun away, Slim leads George away understand what had just happened.
2. One theme is friendship, Lennie and George are constantly having their bond tested through Lennie's incidents and lack of understanding of his actions. Hope, is also a constant theme. George, Lennie and also Candy's hope for a place of their own and land that can be theirs keeps them working, saving and striving to see this dream come true. Lastly i think Strength is a definite theme. Lennie's strength is his weakness, he cant control in or use it to his own good and doesn't understand its full harm. This keeps him from enjoying the small delicate life he appreciates most. Then there is George's mental strength, it guide him and Lennie and generally keeps them from harm as much as it can steer Lennie from trouble.
3.
- this quote shows a tone of hope "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place...with us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. 
-Candy and George have tone of hope again for their future away from the ranch: 
“We wouldn't ask nobody if we could. Jus’ say, ‘We’ll go to her,’ an’ we would.
 - This quote has a wary tone where you can feel the foreboding in this unneccesary observation of a water snake:           " A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically." 
4.
- Their uneducated ranch-hand dialect was very prominent: "an’ he got nothing to tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so. Maybe if he sees somethin’"
-hyperbole to get his point across: "I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches."

"Tools That Change the Way We Think."

"Back in 2004, I asked [Google founders] Page and Brin what they saw as the future of Google search. 'It will be included in people's brains,' said Page. 'When you think about something and don't really know much about it, you will automatically get information.'

'That's true,' said Brin. 'Ultimately I view Google as a way to augment your brain with the knowledge of the world. Right now you go into your computer and type a phrase, but you can imagine that it could be easier in the future, that you can have just devices you talk into, or you can have computers that pay attention to what's going on around them and suggest useful information.'

'Somebody introduces themselves to you, and your watch goes to your web page,' said Page. 'Or if you met this person two years ago, this is what they said to you... Eventually you'll have the implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer."

-From In the Plex by Steven Levy (p.67)

     I think that extensive internet/technology use has lessened our ability to think. The need to be innovative and figure things out for ourselves has been replaced by searching a "how to..." site that tells us exactly what we need. There is definitely a fulfillment in discovering or solving something for ourselves and at the click of a button it has become rather rare.

      I remember when I was 12 and I had no cell phone, laptop, gamecube or tv of my own and my memories from that time were the happiest of my life. I would spend almost all day outside creating identities, worlds, building tree houses, hiding in fields, running through vineyards it was amazing. I feel like at that time I discovered more for myself than all the facts I've gathered from browsing the web.

     It seems at this point in time where all this information on history, languages, art, places etc. is available the hunger to learn and search for knowledge has been lost. Men and woman in the past dedicated their lives to the solving of problems and questions that drove them to greatness in their insatiable craving for truth, now with all this opportunity at our finger tips we do nothing even fractionally as important with it.

      We should be at the height of human intelligence rather than communication through technology. That is not to say that people today do not possess extreme intelligence, I simply feel that communication and our personal "digital print" has become the priority. Its like the internet has gone from being this unending source of information, to the morning news and chat site everyone uses.

"Who Was Shakespeare?"

-Generally accepted that: Shakespeare was born in 1564, the third child and first son of John Shakespeare and his wife Mary Arden, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. John Shakespeare was a landowner, a merchant, a glovemaker, and a man on a political track. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway and had 3 kids  Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare then moved to London and within a few years he had achieved some success as an actor, a poet and a playwright. The Sonnets especially established his reputation as a gifted and popular poet. Shakespeare became a charter member of a theatrical company, the Lord Chamberlain's Me, His plays were performed at the courts of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. (info found http://www.pbs.org)
-We currently do not know his birthday and we have no idea what he actually looked like. I feel that the moment we hear the name "Shakespeare" a sense of dread and exhaustion comes over students. Even parents remembering shake their heads and say "yup i hated it...just like math."
-When we started reading Hamlet i got none of it...at all...in any way. But after discussing it, analyzing what he is saying, and translating it into modern language i can actually understand whats going on and appreciate the story line. Which is more than my parents and many people who have been forced to study Shakespeare in high school can say.
- My only current struggle is still putting the text into modern understanding and untangling the cryptic metaphors, words, and phrasing so that I can process in the simplest form what is happening.

"To Facebook or Not to Facebook?"

     When Ryan Cecil first made me a Facebook I refused to log into my account. I already had a myspace and really didn't want another because as far as I was concerned social networking was a slow waste of time that just didn't appeal to me. But one day I finally logged on and figured out how to post my first status and was amazed when I got a notification 12 seconds later saying someone had commented! I commented back and suddenly I had 2 notifications about people commenting, I could not believe how fast it was working, I kept trying to end the conversation and log off but between comments and posts it felt almost impossible. This was so much better than myspace and after getting home from school I would spend hours at the computer posting, liking, checking my happy aquarium fish, it was ridiculous. The whole site design in itself was inviting, rather than the dark cluttered profiles of myspace with names like ***cR@ZZyGurll98***, you had a clean white wall, with blue trim with your full name all neat and tidy like an Ikea display.
     I don't think Facebook users always see the risks involved, sure we acknowledge the occasional fight, laugh at the drunk picture uploaded of our friend and try to minimize the cussing because most of us are friends with family members. But none of us consider how we are researched by companies, how our younger siblings are saying far too much and adding people they don't know or how we can be viewed by vague connections we don't know at all. the fact alone that "7.5 million kids age 12 and younger are on Facebook" was something completely new to me and also the aspect of them being far too young to understand proper communication to an audience of hundreds of different individuals makes social networking seem like a pretty dangerous technological playground.

"(Don't) Be Hamlet"

     Hamlet is such a self-tortured individual, the only thing keeping him from taking the easy way out is his fear of the unknown and the consequences of going against his faith and having to face an eternity worse than the life he is living.  His life is a series of passionate outbursts and emotionally driven scenes where he is so trapped between his longing to be right and fear his own madness that he looses control of his thoughts and must talk himself through his mental episode.
    
   One part of Hamlet desires an instant calm to all the raging storms of his life: his love for Ophelia, hatred for his Uncle and his pain as he saw his mother move on so quickly from his father. He wants to put to rest the turmoil inside him, "no more- and by sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand  natural shocks that flesh is heir to." In his eyes death has to be better than all the pain that life carries with it.

     However, in his cry for an escape from this drama he analyzes the possible negative endings that death could bring. The fear of the unknown takes hold, as he considers his beliefs; perhaps there is something greater to fear after death that would be eternally more terrible than life. Hamlet needs to look beyond his imediate focuses on revenge and hatred and see beyond it all there is hope and chance for wrong to be made right. To expose his uncle for the murderer that he is, and see the look of guilt and shame cross his face as he watches his very murder on stage. So he can also see the pain that has kept Hamlet in agony for too long, and so Hamlet can have the closure of knowing that the ghost was right.