Poetry Packet Themes

#1: Love is not about looks, it's about how two people feel about one another deep down.

#2: If risks are not taken and what is wanted is never known, there is no way one can get what one wants.

#3: One must rise above what is feared to overcome that fear.

#4: Youth does not last forever so on should have fun and enjoy time before it is gone.

#5: There are things that were once young but grow old and then have to be let go.

#6: Time in not created but enjoyed.

#7: Anything requires learning and practice to become great.

#8: If power to create goes to waste, a time will come when that power is gone.

#9: Only when one is happy with their deeds will their true beauty shine.

#10: Power in a person is always lost and regained in another.

#11: A day will come when each person will cease to be, so one must live everyday with the things they love.

#12: There should be a time in everyday when one acts like a kid again.

#14: One should love with the entire heart and then even more.

#15: All things come to an end.

#16: Death is a part of life that, when accepted, makes the process a little bit easier to understand.

#17: The way one perceives the world determines one's happiness.

#18: The truth is not as sweet as reality.

#19: Problems are not solved by blocking them out.

#20: To see something truthfully, one must take everything in seeing it exactly the way it is, without influence from anything else.

GOW Action Project

One day while my parents were watching the news I was sitting doing my homework when I hear “Pink slime. Could it be in the beef you had for dinner tonight?” When I heard the name pink slime, it caught my attention immediately. I just thought: “How could anyone possibly put that into our food? It doesn’t seem right!” I did some research and found that the “proper” name for pink slime is lean finely textured beef (LFTB). This kind of made me laugh and think that they tried to give it a name to make it sound much better than it actually is kind of like the proper name for a garbage man is a sanitation engineer. I came to find that this pink slime is an additive to beef products which consists of ground beef scraps, fat, and connective tissue. It is treated with ammonia gas to kill bacteria, grounded up, and flash frozen for use as an additive to beef products.

For my Grapes of Wrath Action Project I decided to contact the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). At first I was going to contact the FDA because that’s what I heard in the news but after doing research I found that the USDA was in control of this product. I want to know how pink slime is USDA approved, how “healthy” it is for people to consume, and how that if it was in products that no label had to be present on the packaging. I found that Tom Vilsack is the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for the USDA but nowhere could I find his contact information. I decided to email other parts of the USDA and hopefully work my way up to contacting him. The National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, Labeling requirements for meat committee, the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, and USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline each had a separate email to ask questions, so on Thursday April 5^th I emailed theses four different parts of the USDA to hopefully get my answers and/or be given contact information of someone higher in the company. I checked my email on Friday night to see if I had gotten any responses and I had one. The email was from the labeling requirements for meat committee. It thanked me for my concern and explained a few things but most importantly said: “When any form of lean finely textured beef is blended into ground beef it will not be labeled. Because it is 100% beef, LFTB is not singled out as a separate ingredient on ground beef packages”. I was happy to have gotten an email back so quickly because I didn’t expect one to come so fast or at all. However, I was not happy with the answer I received. I do not believe that LFTB is only beef. When I did my research it said that it contained connective tissue. The connective tissue is from the cow but that doesn’t make it beef! The next time I checked my email was the following Friday afternoon because up until then I had no internet access because I was in Florida. I had not received any other emails from any of the other contacts I had emailed. I decided to go back to the USDA’s website and search for people to contact and not committees. I emailed five people from Office of Data Integration and Food Protection asking the same thing I had asked the committees. I checked my email on Saturday night and had not heard anything back from any of them. I checked my email again today and still have not heard anything back. I am determined to find the answers to my questions.

This project connected very well with The Grapes of Wrath. I found that trying to find the person in charge and contacting them is very difficult even in our time with our advanced technology. The tenant farmers from The Grapes of Wrath did not have the technology we do today to email people and such. I became very frustrated when I did not get the answers I wanted to any at all and I know the tenant farmers felt the same way. I think that you assigned this project so that we would get frustrated (not that you wanted us to) and feel how the farmers felt. I think that only when you go through the same obstacles in life, can you truly relate to someone and empathize with them. I think this project allowed us to feel how the farmers felt and created a connection with the novel.

Chinua Achebe Essay Response

Chinua Achebe proclaims that Joseph Conrad was a racist and that he showed this in his novel Heart of Darkness. Achebe even comes right out and says “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist”. One thing that caught my attention that Achebe said was about how “Conrad chose his subject well—one which was guaranteed not to put him in conflict with psychological predisposition of his readers or raise the need for him to contend with their resistance. He chose the role of purveyor of comforting myths.” What Achebe is trying to say is that Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness with a racist attitude because that is what readers have learned as they grew up. When a reader reads something that they know to be true, it boosts their confidence and makes them engage into the book better and then a connection grows between the reader and the book. Achebe believes that Joseph Conrad was racist in his novel to lure readers into his book. I do not agree that Joseph Conrad was racist in his novel, Heart of Darkness. Even reading Heart of Darkness I didn’t stop and think that Conrad was racist because of what he wrote. I think that this is just one story that can be told. I believe that what was thought and said in Heart of Darkness of the native people was true to what some white settlers really thought. I didn’t while reading the novel think that the author himself was racist, but some of the characters in the novel were. There were some parts in there where I just had to stop reading and was like wow did that really just happen? I thought that Conrad was trying to show what had happened to convince people that it was very wrong by showing how bad it was, all the thoughts and feelings the white settlers had for the natives. As an author or anyone really, people are going to try to take what you say and twist it. Not everyone is going to agree with you, and Achebe obviously does not agree with Conrad. Achebe may see Conrad’s novel as racist because of who he is. If Achebe was from the same background as Conrad, would he still see the novel as racist? I don’t think he would, only because you have to see both sides of the story and Conrad was telling one side of the story, and it was the way that white settlers had thought of and treated the natives of Africa.

The Awakening Literary Criticism

“The Awakening and the Failure of Psyche” by Franklin

The author’s thesis statement is “The Eros and Psyche myth
is a useful pattern to illuminate the labor toward self of the human hero with
the accompanying inner and outer threats to the attainment of selfhood”
(Franklin 142). Franklin compares the myth of Psyche with Edna Pontellier’s
struggle in The Awakening.
The author makes many valid points to back their thesis. First
of all Franklin compares how Robert leaving Edna is the same challenge that Psyche
faces when “Eros flees Psyche because of his fear of the matriarchy’s taboo”.
This situation is very similar to the reason Robert left to Mexico to get away
from Edna because he was scared of what his feelings toward her would cause because
he knew that it was forbidden. When Robert is in Mexico, Edna experiences pain
of separation which begins her quest to obtain any information about Robert she
can get. This is just like the myth because it is Psyche’s version of her quest
and labors. Edna is also like Psyche because when she learns that she is not
mentioned in any of Robert’s letters she almost succumbs to a mood of hopelessness
and is tempted to rest. In the myth of Psyche, Psyche is specifically warned
not to stop but to only continue on her way because she will be faced with
things that will try to stop her. Overall, the author provides many valid
points in how this novel and the myth of Psyche are similar.
I believe that the argument was presented very well.
Franklin provided many examples of how both Psyche and Edna go through the same
difficulties as Edna makes her way through sexual and self awakenings.
I agree with the stand that the essay writer takes. Although
I am not familiar with the myth of Psyche, Franklin provides many examples of
how Edna goes through all of the same conflicts that Psyche has already been
through. With all these detailed examples, Franklin makes it very difficult not
to agree with her stand.
An interesting view that I came across while reading this
literary criticism essay was how the society in The Awakening could be
seen as matriarchal. There was a quote from the novel that I had not remembered
or realized as I was reading that could have a major impact on the novel: “The
mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle…They were women who
idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege
to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels”. I
thought this was important to the way we looked at this work in the feminist
perspective. I agree that the women in this novel seemed to be in charge or
more important. The men were only mentioned very blandly while the women had
major roles and could take care of themselves and their families.

The Yellow Wallpaper Reaction

My reaction:

The story at first came off as suspicious as to why a
husband would keep his wife locked in a room by herself for three months. As
readers we learn that the woman believes herself to be sick when her husband
and brother who are physicians do not agree. We are never told what is wrong
with the woman, but it seems at first as if she is suffering from depression. I
believe this is why I felt it suspicious as to why her husband left her in
solitude especially if he is a physician. If someone is suffering from
depression, you would always want someone to be with that person no matter
what. Being alone for three months can make no one come out of a state of
depression, it can only make it worse.

Significance of Yellow Wallpaper and Woman Behind it:

I wasn’t sure if the color yellow had anything to do with
the significance, but I could not find a meaning behind the color yellow. I
think the wallpaper signified the fact that she was locked up. Wallpaper covers
the wall locking the wall it’s covering up. The main character experiences what
seems to be hallucinations. She sees a woman behind the wallpaper trying to
break out but cant because there are bars in the wallpaper and if she sticks
her head through. I think this woman she describes is herself. She wants to get
out of the room her husband insists she must stay in. There are bars on the
window which are keeping her from escaping through the window. I think that she
is going crazy from being alone all this time with no one to talk to.

Relationship between Woman and her Husband:

I believe that the woman’s husband knows that something is wrong with her. He wants her to get better but
he doesn’t know the solution or what it is that is wrong with her. From the
woman’s point of view it doesn’t seem that he cares much for her, but I believe
he really does. I think he is scared of what is going to happen to her. I
believe that there may have been an incident that lead him to put her in a room
all alone. She may have tried to kill herself because in the story she even
says that she would jump out the window but then convinces herself that even if
the bars weren’t there that she wouldn’t. I think she is trying to convince
herself that there is nothing wrong with her and she is not sick.

Ethan Frome Article Summary

“Frozen Hell: Edith Wharton’s Tragic Offering” by Samuel Fisher Dodson

Dodson’s thesis statement is “Wharton fused the sterile
environment of New England with Ethan’s inability to communicate with others
into one of literature’s darkest tragedies.” The author categorizes Ethan
Frome as a work of modern tragedy. Dodson believes Ethan to be the ‘hero’
in this novel. Modern world tragedies “contain
only real people who make mistakes, suffer, and die or endure” (Dodson, 309). In Ethan Frome, Ethan is the morally
good person who suffers through his own wants and passions only making others
happy but not himself. Ethan is unable to do anything for himself if that means
hurting someone in some way in the process. For example he wanted to finish his
education but his parents got sick so he felt he had to help them before he
could help himself to an education. Arthur Miller suggests in “Tragedy and the
Common Man” that tragedy exists “when we are in the presence of a character who
is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing- his sense of
personal dignity”. This fits in perfectly with the story of Ethan Frome.
Ethan could not do anything he wanted. He wanted to run off with Mattie and
start a new life where he could pursue his dreams but then there was Zeena. He
could not leave Zeena with only the farm. He knew there would be little or no
chance she could sell it to support herself. Ethan may have thought that by
taking his own life that he could have a sense of personal dignity.

Dodson had backed up all of his thoughts with significant support
from the text. He told what a modern tragedy was and then explained how he
thought the novel Ethan Frome fit into this category backing his thoughts
with quotes from the text. I agree that Ethan Frome is a work of modern
tragedy. In the beginning of the novel Wharton describes Ethan as having
everything a hero would have and even mentions that her work was that of a
modern tragedy. He helped everyone by putting them before himself but his flaw
was that he could not communicate with anyone to be able to have the power to
help himself. Throughout the novel, Ethan Frome had done everything he could to
help others. He gave up his education to help his parents when they fell ill
and he gave up his dream of moving out of Starkfield to become successful when
Zeena fell ill. Ethan could not communicate he just did not know how. He and
Zeena had only had their first fight in their entire seven years of their marriage.
They had not talked to each other before to be able to fight. Then when Mattie
suggested they should die together, running into the tree, he could not communicate
to her that it was not a solution to their problem, so when along with it.
Ethan felt like this was an escape from all the stress in his life pleasing
others but not making himself happy. The hero was Ethan Frome but his flaw was
the inability to communicate. The result was the suffering that not only did he
bring for himself but also to Mattie.

My question to everyone is: was Ethan Frome truly a morally
good person? I do not believe so. Although he did everything he could to help
people, he did not always think of himself first. First of all he had thoughts
about Mattie when he was married to Zeena and even kissed her. He thought only
of what he wanted. He didn’t seem to care what would happen between him and
Zeena. Then, when the pickle dish broke instead of confessing to Zeena what had
happened he tried to hide it. When Zeena found it broken he lied to her to
cover up what happened. Another thing I thought was morally unjust for Ethan
was the fact that he tried to kill himself with Mattie. He had not thought of
others before himself. He wanted to get away from everything but he didn’t think
of what could happen to Zeena if he did die. She would be in the same position
unable to provide for herself if Ethan died or if he ran away with Mattie.
Lastly the first immoral thing I think Ethan did was propose to Zeena. He had
not thought about what would be good for her; he only wanted someone there with
him so he would not be alone.

Sonnet Number 94

This sonnet was very difficult to understand, but from what I
got out of it, I believe it can relate to everyone. Before the shift the speaker was showing the
difference between strength and resistance or temptation. I think that he meant
that in order to show strength, you much go through weakness. For example, in
the first line it says these people have the power to hurt but will not. The weakness/temptation
is to hurt, but the fact that they will not shows strength. When people resist
temptation, the speaker says that they will receive heaven’s graces. Then after
the shift, the speaker talks about how this relates to a flower. If the flower
meets with an infection/temptation, the speaker says that “sweetest things turn
sour by their deeds”. I think this means
that anything sweet and innocent can be tempted and easily changed to something
far worse. The last line clarifies this saying that when flowers fester they
smell worse than weeds.