The Odyssey

One part of the odyssey that has stuck out a lot to me is the strong female character that Penelope plays. She shows that she is able to handle herself while her husband is gone. This is shown when Penelope tells the suitors that when she is done knitting she will chose one of the suitors to become her husband. Then later you find out every night she was undoing the progress of what she was making to stall having to chose a suitor. I was over all very impressed by the way Homer portrayed Penelope and the way she carried herself throughout all the struggles her life threw a her. Some people would say Penelope showed weakness when she was crying or how she was sad during the book. However, I found it powerful how she was so sad and going through so much and was still able to push through and not give in to the suitors or act rude towards anyone.

In Book 17, there is a lot of foreshadowing of what will happen to the suitors. Find three examples of this (quote them in your post), and explain what you think this means for the fate of the suitors.

There are many times where the future of the suitors is brought up in book seven. The quotes seem to be predicting the death of the suitors. The first quote is, "sowing death for the suitors." That quote seems to be saying something along the lines of planning the suitors death. The next quote is from the part of book seven where Odysseus was going to ask the suitors for food to see which one of them was a decent person. Then Odysseus said, "Not that the goddess had the slightest intention of sparing any of them." That quote was saying that even if there was a decent suitor Athena was still not going of spare any of them from her punishment. The last quote is, "That means death will surely come to the suitors." That quote was from when Telemachus sneezed and that was a sign to Penelope that death would come to the suitors.

What role has weaving played in the story so far? There are many examples of women weaving - what is the purpose of this? Provide textual evidence (quotes).

So far the idea of a women weaving has been brought up in the book multiple time. It is always being done by a woman and it seems the women are weaving for many different reasons. One woman seemed to be doing it for the obvious reason of making clothing for her child. Another woman, Penelope, used it as a way to stall having to marry one of her suitors. Penelope said to the suitors when she was done with making her robe she would marry one of them. The suitors later found out she had been lying, " every day she would weave at the great loom, and every night she would unweave by torchlight. She fooled us for three years with her craft." That is how Penelope used weaving to avoid getting married.

The proem is the very first part of the Odyssey. It begins with "Speak Memory -" and ends with "And tell the tale once more in our time." The proem sets up many of the major topics/themes of the Odyssey. What do you think you might be able to tell about the topics/themes of the Odyssey just by reading the proem? Use evidence from the proem to support your claims.

The proem at the beginning of the Odyssey is explaining what happened to Odysseus in very little detail. It is like giving a head start into what the book will talk about. The topic within the proem and throughout other parts of the book that stuck out to me the most is the kind of person Odysseus was and how people viewed him. Farther into the book it talked about how important Odysseus was to the people in Ithica and seemed to portray him as a good person. The proem also discusses the kind of person Odysseus was. The proem says, "As he struggles to survive and bring his men home but could not save them, hard as he tried." That part of the poem shows how much Odysseus cared about his men and makes it clear Odysseus was a fighter and unwilling to give up on himself or his men. The proem starts the book off by giving clues into the topic of what kind of person Odysseus was and some of the things he went through.

Final thoughts on Frederick Douglass

The book, "Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass," was an autobiography about Fredrick's life as a slave and his journey to freedom. My favorite part of the book was when he said, “Whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to think of plans to gain my freedom,”(Douglass 58). I wondered why improving your conditions make your urge to escape stronger. Why would being treated better by people make you want to get away from them? Then I realized, the more freedom he was able to have to more freedom he wanted. In my opinion, that is a natural human response. He was deprived of human rights for most of his life and the more he found out what life should be like for him the more his was willing to fight for it.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Dover Publications Inc, 1995

How is education related to human freedom?

Freedom is having the right to act as you wish without anyone stopping you. Having an education has a lot to do with freedom. People with freedom are able to receive an education. People who don't have freedom are usually kept from receiving an education. People with an education are then prone to more opportunities later in life and will be able to create a happy life for themselves. Having the ability to receive an education without someone stopping you is a human freedom. Like freedom of speech, which allows people to say what they want, having the freedom of education allows people to learn what they want.

Why is the ability to read and write a statement about freedom?

The ability to read and write can be interpreted as freedom of expression. Having the freedom to write down what you want and be able to share others ideas through reading was definitely something the slaves did not have. If the slaves had been taught to read or write they would have been able to learn that the condition they were in were not okay. Being able to read and write shows that you were taught by someone. Being taught by someone meant the slave was being treated as a human which did not happen. If slaves had been given freedom of expression they would have not obeyed. Having the freedom of reading and writing would have given the slaves a reason to fight back.

Why were slave families separated? How did it benefit the master?

In the first chapter of, "Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas," he talks about being separated from his family at a very early age. The separation of families would affect the development of the child greatly. This was done to break all connections that the master's slave had. The master would do everything he could to dehumanize his slaves. If the slave felt more like property than a person they had little emotions and would work harder. The slaves wouldn't have compassion towards others because they didn't learn to love their families. Slaves and their families were like strangers to one another.

Ancient Poetry at MFAH

Last week during ELA I found a clay vessel that used to hold wine, oil, and other liquids. This vessel shows combat between two soldiers. One side shows a younger soldier wearing a pleated chiton and a sword over his right shoulder. The other side has an older soldier who is falling backwards and seems to have been stabbed in the leg. This pottery is from 490-480 BCE which is from the time of Archaic Greece. The poetry from this time depicts a lot of war and combat which obviously had an influence on this art piece. Poems from that time period also explore the importance of learning to fight.

Describe three major characteristics of the sub-genre that you chose and apply that knowledge to one of the poems in your sub-genre reader

There are a few main characteristics of an ancient lyrical poem. The easiest one to distinguish lyrical poetry is the fact that they sound like song lyrics. They have a sort of tempo that makes it possible to read in a song rhythm. The lyrical poems also talk a lot about emotion and expressing feelings. 

The poem I chose to use as an example is a poem by Mimnermus:

What is life, what is sweet, if it is missing golden Aphrodite?

Death would be better by far than to live with no time for

Amorous assignation and the gift of tenderness and bedrooms,

All of those things that give youth all of its coveted bloom,

Both for men and for women. But when there arrives the vexatiousness

of old age, even good looks alter to unsightliness

And the heart wears away under the endlessness of its anxieties:

There is no joy anymore then in the light of the sun:

In children there is found hate and in women there is found no respect.

So difficult has old age been made for us all by God!

This poem expresses a lot of anger. I interpreted it as being angry about how life changes as you get older. The author also clearly has strong feelings about death because in line two it says, "Death would be better by far." This is showing how strongly the author feels about. "the gift of tenderness and bedrooms," because the author would rather be dead that to not have time for those things. The main characteristics I had trouble finding in this poem was the lyrics because I couldn't find a rhyme pattern and that is normally what makes a poem sound kind of like a song.

How Does the Title Relate to the Poem, and How Does it Create Meaning?

In the poem, " This is Just to Say," the title of the poem affects how you interpret the poem quite a bit. The speaker of the poem is saying they had eaten someone's plums and they were sorry. However, you get the impression they aren't really sorry because the poem title is, "This is Just to Say." To me, that doesn't seem like the speaker is truly sorry and seems a lot like the speaker just feels they need to say something about eating the person's plums. Now, if the name of the poem was something more along the lines of, "I Truly am Sorry," I might have been able to imagine the speaker was actually sorry. This is also a poem where over analyzing it is really not needed. Some poems don't have some deeper meaning you need to look for. This poem is just stating what happened.

How Does Enjambment Change a Poem?

"We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks.
This poem is about someone who is too cool for school and does crazy things after leaving before they die. There is enjambment used consistently through the entire poem. The enjambment doesn't only make the poem look appealing because it is so different, it also changes the speed you read the poem. When I read the poem the pace I was reading slowly sped up. For me, the enjambment changed the meaning of the poem because I was reading it as after you leave school to begin your life things speed up really quickly and then you die at the end of it all. I think the author of this poem used enjambment for two reasons. Number 1 being it makes the poem really stand out because it is not very common to see enjambment used as much as she did. Number 2 it makes you think harder about the poem. Since the poem is very short it could be easy to just read and forget about it, but because there was so much enjambment you start thinking why would she do that.

Into the Amazon: Life on the River

For class on Monday morning we went to the HMNS to see the, "Into the Amazon: Life on the River," exhibit. I really didn't know what to expect because I didn't previously know anything about the amazon or the tribes that live in it. After the tour I was super impressed by everything I had seen and really want to learn more. I thought it was super cool that we weren't looking at ancient history, we were learning about stuff that has happened in the past 100 years.
The shrunken heads that we saw in pictures and in the case are what stood out the most to me in the exhibit. The Shuar tribe is the group of people who shrunk the heads of their enemies or invaders. The Shuar tribe is a feared tribe because they are very hostile. The heads that were shrunken were almost always men because men are the one who went hunting and would protect the tribe. The women would stay home to gather food, keep the fire going, and watch the children. The shrunken heads are made of the head of their enemy or an animal, such as a monkey, if the enemy's head was not obtained. The animal heads were used to teach children the process of shrinking a head, and to show tourist. The tribes would show the tourist monkey heads and tell them it was a human head.

How:

• Decapitate the human or animal.
• Take out skull and brain.
• Threw the brain and skull into the river as an offering to the anaconda.
• Sew close the mouth and eyes to keep away the vengeful spirit.
• Fill with large rocks to keep its shape.
• Soak in hot water. When the head is smaller than the rocks replace them with sand.

The men will then keep the head with them after shrinking it for good luck in battle. Having a shrunken head is also a sign of power. Even though having a shrunken head is impressive to have each person h=can only have two.

After our tour I asked our docent how they actually got a hold of these heads. She said that there is a man named Adam Mekler. Adam Mekler stumbled into a large quantity of artifacts from the Amazonian rainforest and people around the world began to know him as, "The Amazon Guy." He was approached by many people to give him things that they had got during travels and eventually his collection got really big. He then went to the museum and told them all about what he had and the museum decided to make an exhibit. His supply is where a majority of the artifacts in the displays came from. He has also written a book about the things he has collected.

These are a couple photos I took at the exhibit.

The Difference Between the Speaker and the Poet

What is the difference between the speaker of the poem and the poet, and why is it important to understand this distinction?

When a poet it writing a poem they are not necessarily writing from their point of view. The speaker of the poem is the person or thing in the poem speaking about their life while trying to get a message across. The poet is the one creating the character in the poem. It is possible for the poet to be writing about themselves, and that is the first thing our minds go to when reading poetry. Oh, this person wrote it, it must be about them. However, if you are able to distinguish between the two then you are able to understand the poem in a more creative way instead of thinking of it so literally. Being able to distinguish the person or thing being described in the poem can help you understand it better.