What I Meant to Say Was...

Chaucer knows how to satirize everyday society in ways that people thought were inaccurate in their heyday. His style of writing is consistent as well as his theme and tone throughout all of his tales.

Vocabulary 7

shenanigans: mischief.
My brother and I like to get into shenanigans together.

ricochet: to move in this way, as a projectile.
The rocket ricocheted into the earth as we ran helplessly.

schism: division or disunion.
There is an unfortunate schism between my dad's family and ours.

eschew: to abstain or keep away from; shun; avoid.
My mom tries to eschew from chocolate.

plethora: overabundance; excess.
We own a plethora of old tennis racquets.

ebullient: overflowing with fervor, enthusiasm, or excitement.
She was ebullient because she finally was asked to homecoming.

garrulous: excessively talkative in a rambling manner.
I don't understand how he can be so garrulous and still have more to talk about.

harangue: a scolding or a long or intense verbal attack.
My coach gave me a harangue because of my terrible performance today.

interdependence: mutually reliant on each other.
My sister is very interdependent on my mom when she is at home.

capricious: odd notion or unpredictable change; erratic.
He is so capricious that I never know what will happen next.

loquacious: talking or tending to talk much or freely; talkative; chattering; babbling.
 This vocabulary word "loquacious" is sort of like "garrulous".

ephemeral: lasting a very short time.
This senior year will be ephemeral.

inchoate: not yet completed or fully developed.
My backhand stroke is very inchoate and it doesn't even go over the net.

juxtapose: to place close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast
I decided to juxtapose my parents, and my mom is way more laid back than my dad.

perspicacious: having keen mental perception and understanding.
My teammate is very perspicacious towards calculus, yet I am not.

codswallop: nonsense; rubbish.
One of my teammates didn't show up to our important match today because she is "sick". But she isn't. That is just codswallop. I'm pissed. We freaking lost.

mungo: a low-grade wool from felted rags or waste.
I still don't understand what the heck a mungo is.

sesquipedalian: given to using long words.

wonky: shaky, groggy, or unsteady; stupid; boring; unattractive.
Her face is wonky and reminds me of a horse.

dipthong

Green Eggs and Hamlet

1. Let's be honest, I know absolutely nothing about Hamlet except for the short blurb I heard about while watching the latest "Freaky Friday" movie with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in it. Hamlet was a little nuts, and someone died.
2. Shakespeare is a man that speaks a language that I do not understand, and he wrote "Romeo and Juliet". That's it.
3. I know that I frown when I hear the name "Shakespeare" because, like I stated before, he speaks a language that I do not understand.
4. To make this studying experience about Hamlet hard to forget... I don't know. I just don't want to deal with the difficulties of learning and having to comprehend the complexities that surround Shakespeare and his array of plays.

If I Just Had More Time

Honestly, I feel like I had plenty of time for studying and preparing myself for the midterm. I thought I did better than I expected myself to. And while we're still on this "honesty" thing, I studied only the night before and the morning before. I know that I knew all the vocabulary words, it was just a matter of remembering them on the spot, while writing an essay on a subject that I completely understood. This is one of the tests that I am actually surprised that I did somewhat okay on for only having 40 minutes to do so.

The Comparison's Tale

Okay, so the only stories I heard today had to do with lies, and adultery. These are the exact two things that I read about in my group with our story. I heard about the Miller's tale, and the Wife of Bath. Ours was the Shipman's tale, and in all three of these tales by Chaucer, the woman lies, cheats, and deceives her suitor. Actually, the Wife of Bath is just a prostitute, so she doesn't really count as much when it comes to cheating. But, what I found in common with all of these tales is that Chaucer likes to satirize the way that humans lived, and what was considered wrong, and made it into a joke to be learned from. Each theme had to do with either trustworthiness, or foolishness and gullibility.

Literature Analysis #2

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom

1. This story was a recollection of a man's life as he dies. The man was killed, and then he must meet five people in order to finally be at peace. The five people he met each had a very important story to tell him about his life, how he lived it, and they all show him what he did wrong, and other times, what he did right. The man's name was Eddie, and the five people he met were as follows: Joseph Corvelzchik, (a man that Eddie "killed"); his Captain from his army days; Ruby, (the woman whom the amusement park he died at was named after); Marguerite, (his late wife); and the little girl who Eddie could have saved from burning to death but couldn't. All of these people had an inspiring and eye-opening story to tell. The author tries to break the wall between the actual character being read about, and you yourself. He tries to make you feel the emotions that Eddie feels and what it's like to be in their shoes.
2. I thought carefully about this theme, because I really want to get it right, or even close. But I came to the conclusion that one major universal theme is that every action has a reaction. Every single story that Eddie heard had one thing in common: it was a direct reaction to something he had done. Had he not done what he did in each story, none of it would have happened, and he could have even lived rather than dying. It really gave me another perspective. Everything that I say, do, or even think has a direct reaction on someone else. If I tell someone that I like their shirt, they could go the rest of the day feeling great about their decision in wearing that shirt. But, if I tell my little sister that I don't like what she is wearing to school on a certain day, she could either go the rest of the day feeling self-conscious about herself, or her negative energy that I rubbed off on her could affect someone else, making something happen that was unintended.
3.  The author's tone is very straightforward, and deep. He describes everything in a way that everyone understands and relates to, and speaks of love and life and death in a universal tone. "People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love." The way that Mitch Albom describes things in this book, as well as in other books by him, he takes his time so that the reader can connect with what is going on, and not drift off into a different place while reading. "People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains." He creates an atmosphere that gets you stuck inside of what you are reading and holds you there until you lift your head just to think about what you just read. "People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love."
4. 
   

Imagery: "People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless." (p. 35)
Personification: "The whirring of a small biplane, dragging an ad from its tail." (p. 14)

Simile: "Every muscle he had was as tight as a piano wire." (p.56)

Hyperbole: "The children freeze." (p. 37)

Metaphor: "Holding anger is a poison." (p. 141)

Euphemism: "Passed away? Moved on? Met your maker?" (p. 112)

Irony: "He cursed his father for dying and for trapping him in the very life he'd been trying to escape." (p. 128)

Exaggeration: "It eats you from inside." (p.141)

Periodic structure: "Life has to end. Love doesn't." (p. 173) 

Denotation: "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." (p. 141) 

CHARACTERIZATION:

1.  When Mitch Albom describes Eddie, the main character, he uses direct characterization. Actually, he describes all of his characters in this book with direct characterization. He is very descriptive in anything that he writes in the novel. But, the way he describes both Eddie and the very first person he meets in heaven are somewhat alike. He describes their facial features, what they are wearing, and what their body language is telling about them as people. I don't remember reading any examples of indirect characterization. Like I said before, he is very straightforward.
2. The author's syntax and diction stay constant throughout the whole novel. It didn't matter whether characters were changed, or settings. The author's syntax and diction were helped by the intense imagery set forth. The diction flowed through the pages. 
3. The main character in this novel, Eddie, is a dynamic character. After each and every story that he hears from every person that he meets in Heaven, his mind set changes a little more. By the end, when he meets the little girl who he tried to save from being eaten alive by fire but couldn't, he have sympathy for every person he met. He also understood so much more about himself, and others around him. He was a round character as well in the sense that he had so much personality and feelings that showed up as I read.
4.  After reading this book, I felt like I met every single person that was mentioned. Eddie, Ruby, Marguerite, Joseph, Eddie's father, the Captain, and tons more characters. Each character came with his or her own story that made you eager to read on. I felt as if Eddie was me, sometimes. After doing this literature analysis, I kind of want to read the book all over again haha!

Tale of a Canterbury Tale

My group chose the Shipman's Tale, (we actually decided the Skipper's tale, but the closest thing I saw on the site I found was the Shipman's, so I hope that was the same thing. Also, I read it was about a merchant and a monk. So maybe I'm wrong, but I guess I'll learn from my mistake if I am.)
Anyways, the one that I read was about a rich and foolish merchant who married a beautiful woman, who was, in my experience, a gold digger. She only used his money, and didn't love him at all.
One day, she was talking to a monk, telling him about how she is unhappy with her husband, and how she owes someone money which she is afraid to ask for from him. Being the kind monk he was, he said he would loan her the money in exchange for, uh, "sexual activities". She agreed, and then the monk went to the merchant and asked for a loan, not telling him it was for his wife. The merchant loaned the monk the money, who gave it to the merchant's wife, the tricky dude. The monk and the wife had sex, and when the monk went home, the merchant came by to ask for his money. To this, the monk replied, "I gave it to your wife!"
When the merchant went home to his wife, they had sex as well, and he then confronted her for not giving him the money that the monk gave her. All she said to this was that she needed to use it for important things, and that he shouldn't question her since he owns her body. And the foolish merchant agreed.

Weird story, but I liked it. It was funny, for an old tale.

Chaucer's purpose in telling this story, from my perspective, is to give the reader a lesson to learn. The lesson could be different to anyone, but to me it was to not trust anyone. He is definitely satirizing society in this tale. In society, there is both adultery, and lies floating around in every corner. The merchant was lied to by both his wife and the monk.