Literature

Never Let Me Go literature analysis



1. In a nutshell, there are 3 main characters: Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. The story starts with Kathy as the narrator telling how she is 31 and has been a "carer" for 12 years. The three of them are students at an English boarding school called Hailsham where they are taught alot about how to stay fit and healthy. There are "doners" who after 3 donations reach completion and there are "carers" who give the doners emotional support and in essense care for them during their donations.Now the three of them and all the other students at Hailsham are clones and their sole purpose in life is supply humans with organ donations and they are told this from a very young age. They are supposed to be copies of "originals" who look just like them but older.  Tommy has a hard time being creative and struggles with his art, Kathy is very observant and watches those around her and Ruth is extremely social and involved. At the boarding school they have guardians who care for them and they are encouraged to be artistic, a woman refer to as madame collects their best pieces and they think keeps them in a secret gallery. Tommy and Kathy kind of have a thing, but then Tommy and Ruth start having a sexual relationship now as early to mid teens and Kathy stays close friends with them both. Then they move into cottages and are slowly brought into the real world by older students who teach them to be "normal". They begin to hear rumors of deferal or being able to avoid donations for 3 years of you can prove your in love, Tommy begins attempting to create art to prove he is in love with Ruth to show madame. Then 10 years later Kathy is a carer, and Tommy and Ruth have begun donations. Kathy cares for Ruth after her 1st donation that did not go well, she feels her 2nd will be her last. They decided to go find Tommy and hear that Hailsham has been closed. Ruth reveals that her relationship with Tommy was to come between he and Kathy and to make things right gives them madame's address to try and receive a deferal. Kathy becomes Tommy's carer beginning their romantic relationship and they go to find madame. She is with the headmistress and they find that Hailsham was a failed attempt to prove that clones had souls and that was why art was encouraged, she also tells them that clones cannot gain deferal through being in love. Tommy is upset and confused by this news, Kathy simply accepts it, the story ends with Tommy reaching "completion" and Kathy beginning her donations that will lead to completion as well.
2. I feel like the theme is "what makes us human?" Is it love? The ability to create something that reveals the soul?
3." I've developed a kind of instinct around donors. I know when to hang around and comfort them, when to leave them to themselves; when to listen to everything they have to say, and when just to shrug and tell them to snap out of it." ...

9/22/11

"(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.

10/10/11

"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.

10/18/11

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."


10/25/11


How Doth the Little Crocodile



How doth the little crocodile,
Improve his shinning tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile,
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

-Lewis Caroll


This poem is my favorite because Alice in Wonderland was always my most cherished Disney movie growing up. Everything about it excited my imagination and inspired me to dream. I would run outside and try talking to flowers for hours, searched for caterpillars and stayed on the look out for a white rabbit. I wanted to shrink down and explore the world from a whole new perspective and find lands unknown and uncharted. This little poem takes me back to a time when my imagination ran rampant and neither being asleep nor awake could keep me from adventures real or imagined.

1/24/12