Final Project

Stuff about life by teenagers

by Gabi and Annette

Plato vs. Sartre

Most everyone would respond to an amazing discovery as excited, or wonder struck. Many people would feel proud, and feel a fresh, open mind to new possibilities at hand. But the prisoners in the cave of Plato's The Allegory of the Cave tell different. 

The Allegory of the Cave's prisoners are to be told to not appreciate what else the world has to offer. No prisoner in the cave would believe it until they could see it, which they can't if they keep spending their lives looking at shadows and darkness. Estella from "No Exit" would react exactly the same. See, she didn't even believe that she was where she was. She was supposedly in hell, but she believed that she did nothing wrong. Estella and a prisoner don't believe anything unless it is made true and realistic to them. 

So many people in the world don't believe or understand things until they have the most amount of proof they can get. Such as the prisoner, he won't understand anything about life and the world until he gets out of the cave. Estella wouldn't believe she was in hell until it actually appeared to be what everyone was telling her. Sometimes, seeing is believing. 
DON'T WORRY I'M WORKING ON IT .

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

My group and I are doing a collaborative literature analysis on Great Expectations. The other parts of the analysis are on Taylor, Hannah, Ian, Serena, Bailey, and Meghan's blogs.

3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).
Dickens' tone is almost remorseful when he writes about Pip's viewing of his life.
 "Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself." (p. 126)
"It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxiety never disappeared from my view." (p.324)
"The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of this illusion, caused me to feel an indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates where I had once wrung my hair after Estella had wrung my heart." (p.341)

2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?
Dickens' syntax/diction does change a bit when describing characters; he is a little more descriptive.
"A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head." (p.1-2)

Dickens Notes

•Bildungsroman: a novel of education and maturity. Going from ignorance to enlightenment. 

•childhood is about having great expectations

•Pip: orphan who wants to do nothing and get something out of it. Sensitive, mature-ish, desire. Doesn't fit it. Wants more than just to live and then die. 

•Joe, Jaggers, and Magwich. Father figures. 

•Magwich is the stranger. Animal-like. Magwich embodies the threat of abandonment. He has no emotional bond to Pip. 

•Pip thinks he is like Magwich. He thinks he's evil. 

•Havasham: crazy. Has resentment and anger towards men. Not nice. A symbol of decay and anger. 

•Estella: Cinderella. Heartbreaker. A vision of promise. Like the fairy godmother. Trained to destroy men. 

•when Pip describes Magwich and Havasham he doesn't tell the truth. 

•Havasham- old spinster with a house of sad memories. Left at the alter, and that's represented in her home. Indirect characterization of her room.

•Hav-a-sham: living a lie. Having shame. 

•fairy godmother to Pip, adopted Estella, mother figure. Pip sees positive in Havasham. Sees her as a success bc she has money and materialistic items, but she is not happy. 

•Pip realizes she's not all that. The things in her house (old food, wedding dress, shoes) symbolize possibility and fertility. 

Her home is an act of destruction, considered a "monster". 

•adopted Estella to train her to destroy men for revenge. 

•the fathers that Pip selects for himself are just role models that he sees himself in. 

•Joe is the emotional father, Jaggers is cold. Pip sees a possible mirror of himself in both these men. Joe is strong physically, Jaggers is a blackmailer. 

•Joe lives by feeling. Sort of a romantic character. 

•Jaggers breaks everything down. Needs Havasham and Estella. Threatens Havasham with a secret for power. 

•Joe tends to trust people. Jaggers is opposite (except money). 

•Magwich is the representation of what Pip will be like if Pip doesn't change. 

•Pip learns evil can be turned around, and redemption is possible. 

•Pip realizes Havasham is not his fairy godmother and is not important. Estella is not meant for Pip, he was just part of the training session being destroyed by her. And Estella is not a wonderful girl. Magwich was just a convict, but gave Pip ideas that he never really believed belonged to him. 

•He learns that life IS awful and terrible, but this is the life which things become possible, but we just have to try and create the life we want. 

•Pip is unsure of himself. Estella and Pip are a middle aged failed couple.

•Pip means seed. Symbolism of Joe and his wife making a baby named "Pip", a seed. A new seed. Everything is possible. 

Jean Paul Sartre Notes

•"people are condemned to be free."

•it's difficult to be free. 

•existence precedes essence. (I am therefore I think.)

Allegory of the Cave Sonnet

Stuck inside a cave
With no where else to look
But one of us was brave
And went beyond our nook

Still facing the dark
Still inside the gloom
One man to embark
Exceeding our tomb

No one tends to peek
Beyond what they can't see
Some turn the other cheek
But I do not agree

We need to be aware
Of what else dwells out there


"I tried."
-Annette Sousa

plato study questions

1. I was a little confused as to what it means to Socrates, but what I got from The Allegory of the Cave was that society refuses to see a lot of their surroundings. Being stuck in the cave and then being told that there is so much more to be explored in the world seems to ruin their picture perfect image of what they have already adapted their minds to. Just spitballin here.
2. The shadows against the darkness were what caught my attention as imagery. The shadows represented a sign of imagination to the prisoners in the cave. They could imagine all they wanted, but the fact that they couldn't imagine much beyond that wall and those shadows in the darkness got me to thinking, how could you live without having curiosity eating away at you as to what is outside of that cave?
3. The allegory suggests how important enlightenment is, and how crucial exploration is to discovery in our society. Too many people disregard the possibility of exploring beyond what they already know because "it's too hard" or "we already understand enough". There is no limit to what is to be discovered.
4. The shackles used in the cave are an example of the lives of the dwellers. They aren't given a chance to understand more of what is hidden out there, therefore they don't want to. Their lives go as far as the cave walls.
5. School shackles the mind, in a way. That was the first thing that came to mind, to me. Every day I get up to get dressed and ready to repeat exactly what I did the previous day. It is like my cave wall. How am I ever going to get a chance to explore if I have this "shackle" forced on me every day for my whole childhood?
6. The freed prisoner was bewildered at what he was missing out on, and when he told the prisoners who hadn't yet seen anything besides the cave, they called him crazy, and that it would ruin their image that they have created for themselves their whole lives. The freed prisoner's mind was set free to roam as well.
8. Prisoners get freed by the exposure to a new world. They could be free to roam around the cave, and still wouldn't understand what freedom really is.
9. The allegory presupposes that there is a distinction between appearances and reality because not everything is what it seems to be. Through this computer I could appear to be a really smart person who has a way with words, but really, I have a thesaurus. Don't judge me. I know these words, I just can't remember them all the time ok.
10. See, I'm not smart. I don't understand what the heck this question is asking me.

There could be alternate realities. The truth is what we think the truth is, and there are so many truths beyond just the one that you think. 

The Republic Notes (so far)

•The Allegory of the Cave is just one section of The Republic

•The Republic being pointers on the government

•Everything we know about Socrates has come from Plato

•Glaucon is a character that Socrates is in conversation with. Just a prop. 

•Doesn't teach my dictation. More by participation. Helps us come to a longer lasting understanding. 

•Theme: how much we are enlightened or unenlightened. It's only as much as we question it. 

•Allegory: an extended metaphor created by using stories to describe it. 

Sonnet Remix (i tried)

Hamlet Remix