Quote Reflection

"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one maan's a blacksmith, and one's a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppermith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come." After choosing to become a gentleman, choosing money over friends, choosing to part from the ones who truely love you. Hoping the love of your life will love you back, hoping to make something of yourself, hoping to make her proud. After choosing all these things -- money, repect, and social popularity -- to try to make yourself look better, would you forget about your family and friends and treat them as if they are not worthy eough to talk to you? Not worthy enough to be treated with respect; even though they are your family? It is clear Pip has made his choice, after being so rude to Joe that Joe leaves Pip's home and returns back to his own, for it is simply unjust from him to be treated this way.

Even on the worst of days, after doing poorly on an assignment, after loosing your job -- whatever the case may be -- when we return home, we can always seek help and love from our family. Helping us overcome these problems, doing whatever they can to make us feel better, even for a little while. Knowing that our family loves us, knowing they are the reason we are who we are, knowing that they are the reason we act they way we act, would we abandon our family after we are done with their services? Now that we are able to provide for ourselves would we leave our family once and for all? When able to reunite with them we would make this a time to remember, to make up for the time we have not seen each other; we would never even consider treating them as if they are unimportant because they belong to a lower social class than ourselves. This form of disrespect was illustrated through Pip's reunion with Joe, where Pip treated Joe so badly that Joe left Pip's home, for he did not feel welcome there. Disrespecting those who loves us is an unjust act to our elders and a form of disrespect we ourselves cannot even imagine, something Pip was taught while living in the house of Joe and Mrs. Joe. However now that he has moved to London, this idea of respect is gone.

Premonitions Response

The Past
Time to learn from our mistakes

Realizing opportunities we did not take

Problems that we came across

Praying daily that we wouldn't get lost

The Present

Living day to day

Hoping and hoping to find our way

In this world we live in today

The Future

Waiting all our life to be grown up

To be successful to make something of yourself

Only to wish to be brought back to your youth once again

When living in the present, knowing what would happen in the future

Predicting the outcome of others based on events from the past

Would you try and stop it?

Try to protect complete strangers from the terrible events they will soon face?

Or would you let them face it alone, for it is destiny.

Great Expectations Chapter 25

After a long stressful day at work, watching people lose cases, watching them have to give away a possession special to them simply because they cannot afford to pay for their case with money, could possibly be the toughest job a man could receive. When forced to go to this job everyday -- everyday forced to watch these occurrences -- would you let it ruin not only your working life, but your personal life too? Would you bring home your work and let it control what you did at home and how you did it? Dickens illustrates this shutting out of reality through the life of Wemmick.

With these problems faced, it is time for Wemmick to go home, yet he does not return to what we today would consider a home. He returns to his castle. Little children pretend to live in castles and pretend to be royal, almost as if they live in a fantasy world. Once at home Wemmick closes himself off from everything work related because he doesn't want it to complicate the life he lives at home. His castle is his healthy escapism because he doesn't want to face the reality of the working world while he is there. Closing yourself off from reality is a way of life Dickens is illustrating through Wemmick; the thought is truly tragic.

Reflections on Great Expectations

Home - a comforting oasis - a place to spend time with loves ones. However the idea of home is illustrated very differently in the novel Great Expectations. Pip's character changed from an innocent boy into a theif once he is introduced to a man willing to kill. In order to save himself, Pip is forced to return to his aunts house - his home- and steal what the man has asked for. The idea of stealing from family, from your own home, is truely disgusting. Illustrating the character Pip is becoming.

Honoring Our Veterans

Read my Veterans essay on my new essay blog

http://taylorjohnsonx3.blogspot.com/

Rock

Fresh water trickling over the smooth wet surface
Drops of crystal slowly making their way towards the barren earth,
From which we came
And where we will return.

A tiny metronome,
Timing my thoughts - my actions,
Timing where we step,
And where we fall.

Picking up this moist, glassy solid,
I place it in my pocket, and continue through the expansive forest.

The Good Earth

http://taylorjohnsonx3.blogspot.com/
Click the link to get to my other blog, to read my Good Earth essay

Bare Branch

Falling with a sense of rhythm
Spiriling down to the bare, frosty ground

Autumn is here

Leaving trails as if showing where we've been
And where we have yet to go

Autumn is here

Glancing up the branch, half broken
Shaking amongst the winds

Autumn is here

The branch now almost empty,
Forced to face the winds alone

Autumn is here.

Starvation Encounter

Wang Lung's life is taking a turn for the worst, as his innocent children face starvation. After a successful harvest Wang Lung began to spend money in useless ways rather than saving it for his family, which is what he should have done. His uncle, a careless human being, spent money the same way. He demanded Wang Lung gave him money so he could buy food for his family. It was known to Wang Lung that the money would be on the gambling table by night, because that was the kind of person his uncle was. He should have not given his money to his selfish uncle because he knew his uncle would spend it carelessly.

After his uncle was paid there was still no rain, and starvation was spreading faster than the swine flu in our modern times. O-lan lost her newborn baby because it starved to death, so Wang Lung was forced to make a choice as any good father would have done. Packing up their things they fled to the south - a decent decision for they could either starve or try to make a change. However once they got there they had to act as beggars - something Wang Lung - or even me today, would not want to do.

Reflections on the Good Earth Chapter 1

Marriage -- A chance to spend the rest of your life with the one you love; a ceremony celebrated with family and close friends, a time to forget your past and start over, but this time with someone you care about by your side. Like a baptisim for adults, being reborn into a life of Christ; perhaps a New Year's resolution just waiting to be brought to life. However farmers such as Wang Lung witnessed a much tougher situation.

"[Wang Lung's] father...[had] gone to the House of Hwang and asked if there was a slave to spare. 'Not a slave to young, and above all, not a pretty one,' he had said." (p.8) This slave, whom Wang Lung had never met would be his new wife. They would live together for the rest of their lives, and just the thought of having this forced upon you is truely tragic. As Wang prepared for what should be the most important day of his life it turned more into a chore, not something I would picture my own wedding day like at all. Wang's modivation to get out of bed was "this [is] the last morning [I] [will] have to light the fire...And [even] if the woman wearied, there would be children to light the fire." (p.3) Even when he arrives home with his new wife, all he can think about is how she will prepare dinner for the guests he invited over later that night. I can't even imagine putting myself in O-Lan's shoes and have to live day to day knowing this was how my should have been fairytale wedding ended afterall.

Thomas Hardy

Here are two of my favorite stanzas from The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy. These two are my favorite because they are so descriptive and vivid, you can almost picture yourself there. This poem was written as a rhyming poem, showing that Thomas often wrote with a closed writing structure.


I leant upon a coppice gate
When frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
The strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had saught their household fires.

Thomas Hardy -- an ironic poet born in June of 1840 -- spent almost all his free time writing. Whether it be novels, surveys, or poetry which he now a days is not well known for. He composed novels such as Desperate Remedies, Far From the Maddening Crowd, Under the Greenwood Tree, and A Pair of Blue Eyes.

Castle

Running absentmindedly up the cobblestone stairs, not quite knowing as to where I am going -- this place so unfamiliar. Opening a door to a closed off room a mustly smell overtakes me. Closing my eyes and reminicing of the days before I lie down on the overstuffed duvet and drift back off to sleep.

Minnie's Letter

Dear Mrs. Hale,

I thought it would be necessary to write and tell you about the actual events leading to the death of my husband, because as we both know looking through one's house could clearly give you the wrong impression. Months before he died, he had seem distant, confused and most importantly depressed. It seemed mild until two days ago when he took a rope to my pet bird's neck; strangling it to death.

The week before the killing of my bird my husband forced me to stop singing because it gave him headaches, so I bought myself a bird -- a wise innocent creature, to remind me of those happier times. This bird brought me back a hope I knew I was lacking and having it back made my heart feel full once again. I do not know why my husband took his anger out on this bird, for it had done him no wrong to begin with.

Knowing that the bird did nothing to my husband, seemed unfair to me therefore I felt revenge was necessary. Then I also took a rope, and tied it around his neck while he was sleeping. The rope was not intended to kill him but to startle him and force him to appoligize for what he had done. Throughout the night the rope got tighter, choaking him to death -- it was clearly unintentional.

Mrs. Hale I took the trouble to write this letter from prison, to ask that you show this to the police so they know what lead up to the killing of my husband, and that I should be proven innocent.

Thank you Mrs. Hale,

-Minnie Foster