TALE OF TWO CITIES LECTURE NOTES

• Dickens's friend wrote a play called "The Frozen's Deep"
• Plot-line finds itself similar to Tale of Two Cities; Dickens played a role in the play
• "It was the best of times... it was the worst of times"
• The novel revolves between France and England
• Dickens wrote about revolution to warn his modern society
• Dickens "wrote as he went along"
• There is a creation of a world in the late 1700s along with many equally powerful personal stories
• The lecturer reads excerpts from the novel

WHAT'S THE STORY?

Ask any high school student why Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations, and they'll tell you "because he was crazy and wanted us to suffer studying him."  I'd hate for any literature fanatic to glance at my blog, but it's true.  Of course, Charles Dickens wrote his novels for reasons most authors write, but the literary elements he used within Great Expectations might draw his audience's attention to what might be his real purpose.
In Great Expectations, Magwitch was first characterized directly by his ragged, brutish appearance.  To add more shape to it, Dickens provided diction that would indirectly characterize Magwitch's impression.  Threatening to rip out Pip's innards if he were to leave Magwitch to the authorities, the escaped convict outdid himself by making an absolutely horrid first encounter with the protagonist.  Maybe hoping to become an expert in characterization, Dickens wrote this novel, because another example lies within his main character, Pip. By corresponding Pip's advancements in society to his growing age, the novel serves as a bildungsroman.  Phillip Pirrip is even a funny name for a character as Dickens was known for a creative humor when characterizing the roles of his books.  Phillip "Pip" Pirrip is clearly seen here as an alliteration - yet another literary element that justifies Dickens's approach.
It's no mystery why novelists write - to better themselves by utilizing their techniques a little differently with each new experiment until they snag a "best-seller."  Even so, the joy that the creative pen draws forth might do the trick as well.

LITERARY TERMS 3

• Exposition: writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation
• Expressionism: a technique of distorting objects and events in order to represent them as they are perceived by a character in a literary work
• Fable: a brief story illustrating human tendencies through animal characters
• Fallacy: any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound
• Falling Action: the consequences following the climax of a piece of literature; occurs before the denouement
• Farce: a form of low comedy designed to provoke laughter through highly exaggerated caricatures of people in improbable or silly situations; traits of farce include (1) physical bustle such as slapstick, (2) sexual misunderstandings and mix-ups, and (3) broad verbal humor such as puns
• Figurative Language: a deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect; similes and metaphors are the most popular forms
• Flashback: a method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary
• Foil: a character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character
• Folk Tale: stories passed along from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth rather than by a written text
• Foreshadowing: suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative
• Free Verse: poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet
• Genre: a type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features 
• Gothic Tale: a type of romance wildly popular between 1760 up until the 1820s that has influenced the ghost story and horror story; the stories are designed to thrill readers by providing mystery and blood-curdling accounts of villainy, murder, and the supernatural
• Hyperbole: the trope of exaggeration or overstatement (tropes are twisted meanings of words)
• Imagery: the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature
• Implication:  the relation that holds between two propositions, or classes of propositions, in virtue of which one is logically deducible from the other
• Incongruity: not harmonious in character; inconsonant; lacking harmony of parts
• Inference:  the process of arriving at some conclusion that, though it is not logically derivable from the assumed premises, possesses some degree of probability relative to the premises
• Irony: "saying one thing and meaning another"

LIT TERMS REMIX 1-5

1.  CIRCUMLOCUTION

2.  CLASSICISM

3.  CLICHE

4.  CLIMAX

5.  COLLOQUIALISM

LITERARY TERMS 2

• Circumlocution: roundabout or indirect speech or writing, rather than short, brief, clear writing
• Classicism: the principles or styles characteristic of the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome
• Cliché: a hackneyed or trite phrase that has become overused
• Climax: the moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved
• Colloquialism: a word or phrase used everyday in plain and relaxed speech, but rarely found in formal writing
• Comedy: any play or narrative poem in which the main characters manage to avert an impending disaster and have a happy ending
• Conflict: the opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on
• Connotation: the extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary
• Contrast: opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness
• Denotation: strict definition of a word as found in a dictionary
• Denouement: the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot
• Dialect: the language of a particular district, class, or group of persons
• Dialectics: the art or practice of logical discussion as employed in investigating the truth of a theory or opinion
• Dichotomy: division into two parts, kinds, etc.; subdivision into halves or pairs
• Diction: the choice of a particular word as opposed to others
• Didactic: writing that is "preachy" or seeks overtly to convince a reader of a particular point or lesson
• Dogmatic: asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated
• Elegy: in classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem dealing with the subject-matter common to the early Greco-Roman elegies--complaints about love, sustained formal lamentation, or somber meditations
• Epic: an epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry that contains an epic hero invoked by a muse who goes on an epic journey
• Epigram: a short verse or motto appearing at the beginning of a longer poem or the title page of a novel, at the heading of a new section or paragraph of an essay or other literary work to establish mood or raise thematic concerns
• Epitaph: an inscription carved on a gravestone; the final statement spoken by a character before his death
• Epithet: a short, poetic nickname--often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase--attached to the normal name
• Euphemism: using a mild or gentle phrase instead of a blunt, embarrassing, or painful one
• Evocative: a phrase that calls forth a feeling intended by the author

LITERARY TERMS 1

• Allegory: a symbolical narrative; extended metaphor
• Alliteration: repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound
• Allusion: a casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification
• Ambiguity: in common conversation, it is a negative term applied to a vague or equivocal expression when precision would be more useful
• Anachronism: placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period
• Analogy: a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based
• Analysis: a philosophical method of exhibiting complex concepts or propositions as compounds or functions of more basic ones
• Anaphora: the intentional repetition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect; 
• "We shall not fail.  We shall not falter.  We shall not flag."
• Anecdote:  a short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event
• Antagonist: a character or force that opposes the protagonist; the bad guy
• Antithesis: using opposite phrases in close conjunction
• Aphorism: a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
• Apologia:  a work written as an explanation or justification of one's motives, convictions, or acts
• Apostrophe: the act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present like speaking to Death as if it were a person
• Argument: a statement of a poem's major point--usually appearing in the introduction of the poem
• Assumption: hypothesis, conjecture, guess, postulate, theory
• Audience: the person(s) reading a text, listening to a speaker, or observing a performance
• Characterization: an author or poet's use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to create in the reader an emotional or intellectual reaction to a character or to make the character more vivid and realistic
• Chiasmus:  a literary scheme in which the author introduces words or concepts in a particular order, then later repeats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order

HACKING MY EDUCATION: WHAT IT REALLY MEANS

So for the longest time, Dr. Preston has over-used the word "hack" especially when discussing our educational goals and mindsets.  I finally got the picture and did a little research on what he truly meant and stumbled across a couple TED talks that you might find simplistic yet interesting.  Hacking our education is easier than what you may think it means, but our society is nowhere near accepting it as a practice... at least not just yet.

AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA

A.)  I was browsing Google and I found these five questions on Siddhartha:
1. Siddhartha features substantial activity and narrative action. At the same time, it is about one man’s largely internal spiritual quest. What is the relationship between the internal and exterior worlds of Siddhartha? How does Siddhartha negotiate these worlds?
2. Herman Hesse’s novels before Siddhartha focused on alienated young men who rejected the cultures of their upbringings. However, these other novels did not feature the spiritual elements of Siddhartha. How do the spiritual elements of Siddhartha make it different from any other story of an alienated youth?
3. Most literary scholars agree that Siddhartha was prompted by Herman Hesse’s fixation on Eastern spirituality. Is there a case to be made that Siddhartha is designed to celebrate Eastern religion? Is Hesse’s treatment of spirituality as relevant today as it was when he wrote the novel?
4. Siddhartha concerns the quest for spiritual enlightenment, and by the end of it four characters have achieved this goal: Govinda, Gotama, Vasudeva, and Siddhartha. Is the enlightenment achieved by each of these characters the same? Why or why not? What distinctions and similarities exist between the paths these characters use to reach their final goal?
5. Consider Siddhartha’s relationship with Govinda. How are they similar, and how are they different? What are the narrative functions of Govinda’s reappearance throughout the novel? How does their relationship impact the novel’s ending?

These questions tell me that the test is in depth and covers a wide range of topics and concepts. 

B.)  My answers:
1.  Siddhartha had always studied that everything is related when he was a Brahmin's son, but only until the end of his journey did he find the relationship between the exterior and interior worlds at the river.  In Siddhartha, the mind (interior world) is bound to the trials and tribulations of the past along with predictions and anxieties that lie ahead in the future (exterior world).  Siddhartha negotiated the two by employing years of experience both in the spiritual studies and worldly culture.
2.  The spiritualism make Siddhartha different, because enlightenment and holiness are nearly impossible quests.  Usually novels on alienated youths portray a child who grows and matures and accomplishes something while still remaining an imperfect human being.  Siddhartha, however, matured to find perfection and become perfect in every sense of the word.
3.  The novel isn't so much a celebration of Eastern religion as it is a journey that prompts the audience with various philosophical themes that rely on the self-improvement of mankind.  His treatment of spirituality is very close to the studies of Buddhism today and is quite relevant to Eastern religions.
4.  Vasudeva and Siddhartha both become enlightened through the river, but Govinda is much different.  Always being a scholar of Gotama, who had achieved his enlightenment much earlier on through unknown reasons, Govinda never employed the experiences and understandings of life as Vasudeva and Siddhartha had.  When Govinda and Siddhartha were reunited for the last time, Govinda finally touched Siddhartha on the head and felt the holy Om radiate from Siddhartha's self to his.  Each character found enlightenment differently, because, like all ordinary people, they chose their own paths to walk individually.
5.  Siddhartha and Govinda both desired Nirvana, but Govinda was always a follower whereas Siddhartha was more curious and wanted to learn through experience instead of teachings.  Govinda's reappearances throughout the novel functioned to show another aspect from a different character.  Instead of merely watching Siddhartha's growth into maturity, Govinda's growth could also be monitored.  In the end, their relationship impacted the end of the novel by displaying an everlasting friendship that could not be broken even through separate lifestyles and upbringings into enlightenment.

C.)  The AP Literature Exam wants students to display complex thoughts on ideas that peck at the surface of what they have read in the past.  When we read, we need to focus on big ideas like religion and themes while drawing relationships to the main characters as well as the other influencing characters within the novel.

HACKING MY EDUCATION

To hack means to break up the surface.  Education up until now has been a breeze over many topics of just that - the surface, but when will we be able to go more in-depth and think more about our own thinking?  I'm tired of waiting for the "glory days" of college life to figure that out for me; so consider my education already hacked as of last semester.  Questions like "what do you want to know?" or "what skills would you like to demonstrate?" or even "what experiences would you like to face?" have always come up in the past, but they were never realized until this year.  With new freedom to learn during my senior year, I'm embarrassed to say I'm dumbfounded over these types of questions now.  I've never been conditioned to think freely, meaning that I've been a slave to my learning since the day I blindly took a step into the educational system.  My priorities are now on the fence, and I can't decide whether or not I want to know more about medicinal science, writing skills, or skilled musicians.  There's so much to learn, and a very limited amount of time to become experts in all fields.  Before I conquer these mountains though, I'd like to re-learn to love learning.  I'm already tired of school, and it's barely the first day of my second semester.  I want to demonstrate my writing skills on my blog, and I'd like to experience peace in learning before my world turns upside down.  It doesn't seem like too much to ask for.