Last. Blog. Ever.

As I've said before, World Literature was by all means not one of my favorite classes but I did like learning some new stuff about the world around us. This is my last blog that I have to type ever in my career, unless I'm old and have no life so I decided to start a blog. This semester we learned about The Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis 6-8, Chinese Literature, Ancient Persian Literature, Ancient Greek Literature, Ancient Roman Literature, Ancient Italian Literature, and English Literature were the eight topics that we studied in a time frame of 18 weeks. I think that my favorite topic would have to probably be the Ancient Italian Literature because we got to learn about the Inferno by Dante and the rings of Hell. That was most likely one of the funnest projects in this class.

The Inferno

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So this week we have been reading small parts of the Inferno. We have read Cantos I, Cantos III, and Cantos V and for the Cantos V we were split into two groups and had to write a story in poetic form about two different topics out of one story. These stories are a bit confusing but they were interesting to read. The poem that we had to write was about Francesca and how she was cheating on her husband, Giovanni, with his brother, Paolo. When Giovanni found out, he killed both his own wife and brother. So they both went to Hell because they hadn't confessed their sins yet. Francesca hadn't been to a church to to her confession so she had all of her sins built up inside her. What we wrote was that Giovanni had been suspicious about his wife and that she was sneaking around. So one night he went out and followed her and found out she was cheating, so his first reaction was to kill them both, and when that matter was done, he had no remorse for what had just happened. In the Cantos V there were also MINOS and that is what my picture is of.

The Rings of Hell

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The past few days we have been working on a presentation that involves the nine rings of Hell. Holly and I got assigned to Ring 8 which is called Fraud. The lower down that you go into the Rings of Hell, the worse it gets. Satan is in ring 9 which is called Treachery. The rings of Hell are Ring 1 Limbo, Ring 2 Lust, Ring 3 Gluttony, Ring 4 Greed, Ring 5 Anger, Ring 6 Heresy, Ring 7 Violence, Ring 8 Fraud and Ring 9 is Treachery. We did a power point on Google Docs called World Lit's Inferno Show. Ring 8 is all about being punished for sins that involve of course, Fraud. Both Ring 8 and 9 can be reached by descending off of a vast cliff. Ring 8 is also broken down into 10 smaller rings itself. They're called Bolgia's. Each one has its own punishments for depending on the crime that was committed. This was probably one of the more interesting activities that we did in class, it was interesting learning about all the Rings of Hell and what happens in each one of them.

Virgil...

Virgil and the Aeneid

This week we are blogging and having our test over the Epics in one assignment. Explain and discuss who Virgil is and why he wrote the epic poem The Aeneid. Be sure to discuss the historical importance of the work. This was the question that I was given to answer. Virgil was born Publius Vergilius Maro, he was unquestionably one of the greatest poets born near Mantua in what was then the province of Gaul. Virgil's childhood experiences on his family's farm marked his outlook on a profound permanent way. When he was eleven years old, Julius Caesar came to govern the city of Gaul, when he arrived it opened Virgil's eyes and gave him a different world from his father's farm in a backwater town. Virgil then traveled to study around to many places, including Rome. He had also taken courses in rhetoric-the construction and delivery of speeches that was important for young Romans to be trained for public affairs. Virgil was actually trained as a lawyer but ended up never pursuing the legal career. 
Virgil wrote the Aeneid between 29 and 19 BC. It tells a legendary story about Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the Ancestor of the Romans. The Aeneid was composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell about Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latin's, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The first six books are the Journey to Italy and the second set of six is the War in Italy. 
The Aeneid was in fact written in a time of major political and social changes in Rome. Despite the polished and complex nature of the Aeneid, the legend is said to be that Virgil only took time to write three lines of the poem each day, so therefore it would be in the making for a long period of time, there were half complete lines, abrupt endings were generally seen throughout and that was shown to be evidence that Virgil had died before he could finish his piece. The Aeneid is more complex than most classical epics because it was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally. Some legends that have been stated that Virgil had actually feared that he would die before he could finish the piece, so therefore he went to his friends and the emperor at the time, Augustus, and asked them to burn what he had done upon his death. Augustus and his friends didn't comply with his wishes and some few minor modifications were made to the Aeneid, and it was then published.

-Photo Courtesy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid#History
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My reaction to the RWLD was that the opera based on Dido and Aeneas was really confusing and hard to understand because opera music is not modern day music one bit.  I get the meaning that she was depressed because Aeneas was leaving her to go conquer Rome but she was shot by Cupid's arrow then she was in love with Aeneas and could never love anyone else again. So when Aeneas left her to conquer Rome, she stabbed herself and the opera was based on that scene. The art isn't what you see around today, it was very unique and individual. It was pretty interesting and if I enjoyed art as much as some people, I would be interested in pursuing to do more research.    

The Epics in World Lit

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We've been learning about Greek and Roman Literature. We've read two epics and the one's that the class has read is The Death of Hektor and The Meeting of Hektor and Andromache from the Iliad. I have only read the death of Hektor, and those are both from Greek Literature. We care all currently working on reading The Passion of the Queen from the Aeneid. I have only gotten a few pages into The Passion of the Queen but so far its good, they're talking about Dido, the queen of Carthage, and how she has lost her husband in war. She claims that he has died and failed her and she's all depressed. But her sister Anna is trying to talk her out of being depressed and to look at the positive side of everything not the negative. On the next page of the story it talks about how Dido got shot with an arrow by a hunter on accident. She feels as if she is weak and it says "But though she runs for life through copse and glade the fatal shaft clings to her side." I'm not quite sure how to comprehend that to my understanding but I take it as she's okay, guess reading more in the story will let me know. The picture that I have is a scene from Troy, its the Trojan Horse, in how Hektor fought at one point in time.

Oedipus The King

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So this week during world literature, we have been reading Oedipus The King. Its about the King and Queen of Thebes and how they were cursed and they're first son would kill his father and marry his mother and make children with her. So when Laius' wife Jocasta had a boy, they put a hook through his ankles and they gave him to a Shepard to take and leave on the top of the mountain for death. Then the Shepard gave the baby to another Shepard to take to Corinth for the King and Queen there because they were unable to have children. So when Oedipus grew up and realized he had the curse on him, he went away from his family in Corinth and never thought twice about going back, and on his way to Thebes he ran into a carriage full of men. Neither would move out of each others way so Oedipus ended up killing three out of the four men that he ran into and one of those three men that he killed happened to be Laius. When he got to Thebes he met and soon married and had children with his real mother, Jocasta. That was only after taking the curse off Thebes by solving the riddle.

Whats Going On In World Literature

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We just finished up our Chinese literature in World Literature with an open book test over all the stuff we've learned. It was definatly a difficult test for me since I'm not good at taking them in the first place. Though some of the stuff that we did learn was in fact quite interesting it was kinda boring for me because it's weird to learn about another culture that I've never thought about learning about before but I'm sure that down the road, I'll be happy that I learned it. We even saw some videos that our teacher showed up from when she went to Beijing, China last year. Those videos were actually more interesting because they were from the present day and not thousands of years in the past. In a way I wish that I could definatly experience China in my own hands right now. I think that it would indeed interesting to learn whats its like now comparred to thousands of years ago. I love learning about history and what not, but I think Chinese history would be a little bit farther down on my list.

The Dog and Paris...

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There is an old man and his dog that live in the same building as the boy, and all the time he can hear the old man yelling and screaming at his poor little dog, the dog has patches of fur missing and scabs all over his little body. The old man's name is Salamano and you never see him without that old dog. But when Raymond and Meursault (the boy) had come back to the building, old  Salamano was standing on the doorstep with out his dog. The boys were wondering where he was because they were never apart. They proceeded to ask him where his dog was and he replied that he took him to a the Parade Ground and he stopped to watched 'The King of the Escape Artists' and when he turned back around, and was ready to go, the dog wasn't there. He must have ran away from him and he didn't know it. He also mentioned that he'd been meaning to get him a smaller collar just hadn't gotten around to it. They all soon went on with their night, and later on Monsieur Meursault and Raymond heard the old man crying because his dog was gone and he thought he'd never see him again. The next day while Meursault was at work, his boss called him into his office and he was there thinking that he was in trouble for maybe talking on the phone too much and not concentrating on his work enough. But his boss soon let him know that he wanted him to start working out of Paris and that's because he's young and able to move around and travel without having to worry about a family. But there is still one thing that he's worried about... Marie. So in the end of their discussion, he decline's his boss' offer.

Marie

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The boy and Marie had planned on her coming over on Saturday, and she did as planned. The caught the bus and went a few kilometers outside of Algiers, and went and went to the beach. Marie taught him a new game and that was to skim the foam from the crest of the waves with your mouth, hold it there, then roll over on your back and spout it out towards the sky. But soon after his mouth tasted salty and bitter. They ended up catching the bus back to his town and going to his house and she spent the night. The next morning they heard Raymond and his mistress. He was yelling and screaming at her and so the proceed to go out into the hallway and listen by the door. There were a lot of people around and Marie asked the boy to call the cops and he didn't want to since he knew the story, so he said he didn't like cops and later one showed up anyways and Raymond got in trouble and was going to be taken down to the station to be questioned.

The Mistress

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One of the boys' neighbors, Raymond Sintes, offered him over for dinner to have some blood sausage and wine. He accepted the offer and joined him later on in the night. They went on talking and as the night progressed, Raymond proceeded to talk about the mistress that he had. He said that he payed everything for her including her rent, food, pairs of new stockings, and yet she refused to work. Raymond ended up finding a lottery ticket in his mistresses purse and he found a ticket from Mont-de-Piete which showed that she had pawned off two bracelets that he had never even know had existed. So he proceeded on and ended up hitting her because he had come to the conclusion that she was cheating on him. Raymond told his mistress exactly what he thought of her and he smacked around so much that it made her bleed. So Raymond later says to the boy that, "If you ask me, she still hasn't got what's coming to her." So he then turned to the boy and was talking about needing advice.

Its Been Awhile...

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So it has been awhile sense I've last blogged, and thats because I've been gone from school for a week and a half up until this week. First was for a classmate who made it to State Wrestling, and the other week   I was out with strep throat. Its definitely been hard being able to catch up on all my homework and being behind on blogs has sucked too. Its also been very tempting to not read my book for this class so I can blog.... But I've started reading it again so I can catch up! When the boy gets back to work after Maman's funeral and having time to cope, he returns to the office with a desk full of freight invoices and he had to go through them all. He left for lunch with Emmanuel who work as aDispatcher. A truck had past them them and they ran after it and they chased it until they were able to climb up on the truck. 

World Literature In My Eyes

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In World Literature, I see this class as being very difficult and I'm not to fond of it because its different than what I had expected it to be. Its not that its too hard, but its not too easy either. It just shows that with the way I do in this class that its a good thing that I took it, to maybe try and help improve my reading skills for college in the fall. In this class, we have read many different forms of literature from around the world except the United States. Some of the stories that we read are difficult and hard to comprehend but that's why we always go into brief discussions about what we read that day in class. This class helps me wake up and realize that in order to pass and do good, I need to pay attention and be on top of things. So though I may hate this class so much sometimes I want to drop it, on the other hand I still think its good for me to take it to help me understand.

The Girl

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This next chapter is about him going out for a swim at the public beach down by the Harbor after being at home for days. While he is out swimming, he comes across a girl that he used to like because they used to work together. They swim together for a while and then the same evening, they decided to go see a movie together. She then went back to his place, and when he awoke, she was gone. He ends up feeling kind of sad for himself and so he thinks about Maman and then realizes that really nothing has changed from before. It just shows how short life really can be and that you have to live each day like it really is your last, appreciate it like there's no tomorrow.

Funeral

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I have continued to read the book, The Strangers by Albert Camus and the farther I get in to the book it gets a little more detail. Overall its still getting a little better as we go along. The funeral is in a town called Algiers about eighty kilometers from Marengo where the child lives. The still doesn't want to see his Maman before her casket is sealed and she is buried. The residents at the place where she lived are only allowed to attend the vigil of someone whose passed and not the funeral. So there were only 4-5 people in  total outside the workers that attended the funeral, including Perez, who was teased saying he had a finacee which would have been Maman.

Maman Died

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Since the last time that I've blogged, I was still not totally understanding the whole process of blogging, nor did I care to blog but since it's required for class, I suppose I'll go along with it. Albert Camus is actually not as boring I had expected his piece to be. I have been reading my book more often than I did when I got it. Its not as boring as I thought it would be. What this book is about right now, is the child's mom died, and he calls her Maman instead of mom or mother. His Maman hasn't lived him for sometime, at least that's the way I am taking what the book is saying. The child in the book just had funeral services for his mother and he didn't even want to see her in the casket before she was taken away in the morning. 

The Stranger

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The book I have chosen to read is, The Stranger by Albert Camus. This book is about a man that gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched Algerian beach.