Poem Worth Loving

The Laughing Heart (Charles Bukowski)

Your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

*I love this poem because it relates to my life. Ever since I was young, I was extremely shy and not outgoing. As time passed, I began to come out from my "darkness" but I still possess that character. However, when I read this poem, I was like "WOW"...this is the story of my life! So ever since, I loved this poem.

Open Question

            In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caufield, the protagonist in story, caught my attention, and I grew to admire him. Some might argue that I am mistaken since Holden is portrayed very poorly in the story, but one side of him shouldn’t be used to judge him as a whole. Salinger does this on purpose to make Holden stand out from his hectic life. Holden discovers a very important fact about life where he wants to be the catcher in the rye. 

Salinger, throughout the entire plot, shows the negative side of Holden and towards the end provides a new side of him where the readers feel compassion for him. Even though he flunks out from Pencey prep school, calls up a prostitute to ease his desire, and lies to his sister Phoebe about dropping out from school, he has a side which admires me; he imagines himself being the catcher of the kids falling off a cliff. Salinger uses a metaphor for the cliff to represent the transformation from childhood to adulthood, the state where kids experience puberty. From all the events that occurred up to this point, this intention is capricious, judging from his previous haughtiness.

He is one of the kids who fell from that cliff, no one to catch him from falling off. As he is experiencing the event, he realizes that the unknown world is cruel and harsh. He calls most people “phony” and criticizes them to cover up for his loneliness and depression. Through many signs and symbols, I can conclude that Holden wants to be young again in his innocent youth. He doesn't want to grow up because there will be many responsibilities and desires he never expected as child.  

Holden Caufield is not the typical protagonist who does great deeds and lives a moral life. He is one who is sick of all the cruelties of life and has nowhere else to relieve them except on others and him. He is aware of this and wishes to prevent others from going through the same experience. People shouldn’t judge a character solely on his/her action or behavior but what’s in the heart. 

Big Question: Abstract

Ever since Earth began, inhabitants emerged and transformed through the ages. Civilizations erupted, laws were made, and wars broke out. People began to adapt to their enviroment and form races that enabled them to communicate and interact with each other. Since then, many races formed which led to many stereotypes. There are many researches that relate to race and ethnicity. My purpose to research on this topic is to discover if race has a huge influence on an individual and how societies use this factor to distinguish people. I want to know if racism can be not only a negative practice, but a positive one someone can learn from.

AP Term

Subordination: is the couching of less important ideas in less important structures of language

In linguistics, subordination is a complex syntactic construction in which one or more clauses are dependent on the main clause, such as The dog ran home after it had played with the ball. The italicized text is the subordinate clause.

Here is a list of subordinate conjunctions:

after although as because before even if even though if in order that

once provided that rather than since so that than that though unless

until when whenever where whereas wherever whether while why

 

New Big Question

In 20th century, how does race matter? Is there any lesson we learn from racism to work more collaboratively? How can we share/emphasize the things we have in common more than the things that distinguish us?

AP Term

In literature, tragedy is any composition with a somber theme carried to a disastrous conclusion; a fatal event; protagonist usually is heroic tragically flawed.

The best method for me to memorize this term is thinking of Shakespeare's plays. We recently read Hamlet in our class and encountered a tragic event when Polonius' death led to Ophelia's,which led to Laertes', Gertrude's Claudius', and eventually Hamlet's deaths.




There are others plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth that incorporate tragedy.

Self Search

After searching my name, I found some interesting things...

- One was a research officer who worked with the Governments of Uganda, South Sudan and Tajikistan.
- Another was a shopping website...weird
- A kid who celebrated his fifth birthday with a pirate swim party.
- A Doctor who served a number of roles with Duke Integrative Medicine.
- A painter born in a Quaker family in 1682.