Neil Gaiman 11/19

Well to be completely honest, I don't really know how to respond to the Gaiman text. I was really confused and overwhelmed, both of which are very familiar feelings experienced by reading a Midsummer Night's Dream as well. I think this was an interesting way of approaching a way to help people better understand Shakespeare's play. Now the question is, did it really help much? Now to that question, I don't know if I really have an answer. I honestly don't think I could get any more confused after first reading a Midsummer Night's Dream. So I think any material after that couldn't really do much but help met to better understand this play. I liked his comical approach, and I really enjoyed having the pictures to look at while I read. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream

After reading this play written by Shakespeare, I must admit feeling a bit stressed out and overwhelmed. I tried the best I possibly could to keep up, but reading Shakespeare is just so damn hard. I will however admit that one of the relationships is Helena and Demetrius. I think its really funny to look at because it is the typical "she loves him, he won't even look at her" relationship that I think EVERY girl has had at least once in her life. Even what Demetrius professes his love to another woman (Hermia), Helena still won't change her feelings for him. Which is another situation I am sure all of us girls can relate to. I think the relationship between Helena and Demetrius shows that things haven't really changed that much in all these years. And than when Puck and Oberon enter the play and put Demetrius under the spell by using the flowers, this is when it gets good. Helena gets what she always wanted and Demetrius confesses his love for her. And than she doesn't even know what to do with it, she doesn't believe him. Funny how we wait so long for something, and than when it finally happens. We're kind of over it. I liked following the crazy relationships in the play because I felt like at one point or another we can all relate to the characters. 

Thesis

I'm not exactly sure about a thesis approach yet, right now I'm trying to focus on a subject for my paper. I'm thinking about writing something to do with media images and trying to connect it to Oranges, or something and how it affects personal identity. I'll get back to you when I've got more. 

Persepolis 10/29

The panels that I'm going to write about are panels on pages 334 to 337 towards the very end of the book. These are the panels in which Marjane meets Behzad after he gets home from jail for making an illustration of a bearded man. He was beaten up, but explained to them that it was never his intention to make bearded men come off as sissies. Marjane and her magazines graphic designer go to visit him, and they talk with him and his wife very briefly. On the way home Marjane is really pissed off that she considered Behzad her hero for so long (well not really that long but 20 days to be exact). She starts on this rampage about Iranian men and how they won't ever let their women speak and how all the laws are on the males side. Her friend tries to convince her otherwise letting her know about some of her past experiences with Spanish men and how they are the exact same, but Marjane is infuriated. 

She goes on to say that "if a guy kills ten women in the presence of fifteen others, no one can condemn him because in a murder case, we women, we can't even testify! He's also the one who has the right to divorce and even if he gives it to you, he nontheless has custody of the children! I heard a religious man justify this law by saying that man was the grain aned woman, the earth in which the grain grew, therefore the child naturally belonged to his father! Do you realize? I can't take it anymore. I want to leave this country." 

It's amazing to look at the way that Marjane feels and how strongly she feels about it. War and the traditions of her country have made her completley change her mind about how she feels about her country and not for the better. Because of the wars, the law, and the tradition, these are the reasons that Marjane wants out. Conflict has completley created Marjane's identity. Conflict being war shapes Marjane to be who she is. It may even deny her of who she wants to be. I felt like this was the exact reason that she wanted out of her country so badly: so she could be free to be who she wanted to be and not only what her country wanted her to be. 

This works in context with all the poems we read, especially I explain a Few Things by Pablo Neruda. This poem tells two sides of a story, the happy go luck side and the evil war side, and illustrates how easy it is for war to ruin/tear apart a beautiful happy country. In the beginning Pablo states the question he thinks we are going to ask, "Why don't you write about the happy things, the flowers and the birds anymore?" And at the end he answers it "Come and see the blood in the streets." The first half of the poem is all about the happy suburb of Madrid, his house was even called "the house of flowers because in every cranny geraniums burst." But in the second half of the poem something terrible happens. "And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings". All of a sudden war comes and turns this nice suburb into a hell hole. He than talks about the blood of children, death, knives; all the pieces that come with war. He even talks about how his house has changed. "See my dead house." His house went from being beautiful to dead. And finally at the end he basically says, the reason I don't write about the flowers, birds, and beautiful aspects of Madrid is because war destroyed them. This poem in itself is a perfect example of how war changes everything. War is a universal concept and no matter where you are from you can relate to it and death. It can not only forge your identity, but as we see in Persepolis it can also deny and transform your identity. 

Blankets

First, I'd like to look at the panels on page 12. The first four panels the boys are ruff housing and fighting over the blankets when all of a sudden they hear their father coming down. Than in the very last panel on the page it shows their father for the first time. He's asking the boys "What's going on up here?" I think its interesting to look at how Thompson showed the father in this panel. It's very shaded and has a thick black border around it. From my interpretation, I understand that maybe the father isn't such a nice guy. He's kind of an ominous figure, kind of scary and dark. 

Second, I'd like to take a look at the panels on page 13. The boys are making quite a ruckus from their bedroom, so their father comes upstairs to yell at them. When the boys question their father and ask why they have to sleep in the same bed, they get the same answer that I'm sure ALL of us have heard at one point; "Don't question your parents authority." (Also with the thick black border around it). It's funny to take a look at the fourth panel exactly and see just how the author illustrated the fact that the dad has all the authority in the room, he is quite larger than the two boys. In fact the father takes up over 3/4 of the panel itself. The boys are both quite small in the very bottom corner of the panel. I think its interesting to look at that from a different perspective. All parents have authority over their children, and Thompson chose a really good way to show it, with not only words but also pictures. 

Finally I looked at the panels on page 35 where he almost misses his bus. The driver stops and lets him on and than in the very last panel on the page where he is sitting with everyone else, he is basically miniscule in comparison with all the other people on the bus. I interpreted this to be exactly how he felt; small and worth nothing, less than everybody else. 

I think this book and Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit are similar in the fact that Jeanette experience some of the same feelings. Craig gets made fun of a lot for being an outcast and so does Jeanette when her mother is forced to send her to school. Jeanette is also a social outcast because she decides to play with her sexual identity. 

Assignment for Wednesday 9/24

I really enjoyed talking about how texts work in conversation with each other. I thought that the different pieces of Ralph Waldo Emersons essay, Self Reliance, really were easy to connect to the pieces we have or are studying. For example, in the essay he says, "accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of you contemporaries, the connection of events." This immediatley made me think of the monkey king from the story American Born Chinese. The monkey king will not accept to just be a monkey, he wants to be human, he wants to be more. Because of his foolishness, he spends an eternity underneath a pile of rocks (500 years to be exact). I think this need to want to be something other than yourself is also explained by the quote, "imitation is suicide." If you spend all your time trying to be like other people, you loose the real sight of yourself. I think that this happens everyday, for people in middle school and highschool or really anywhere that are trying to fit in. It seems to me that you want to be more like the person that is kind of shunning you. I think its dumb, where would this world be if everyone was the same? It'd be boring and unrealistic. So why is there the need to constantley be the most popular, and in order to do that, put everyone else down on your way to the top. I personally beleive this social norm is embedded into our culture. Emerson also says, "to be great is to be misunderstood". It seems to me that the ones that are trying so hard to be someone else, are the ones that are clearly misunderstood, and they are the great ones. People need to realize that to be yourself is to be great.

American Born Chinese

I found this book to be kind of interesting and I must say so far that I enjoy reading this book ALOT more than I enjoyed reading McClouds book about comics. I like the fact that this book is more dialouge, and actually telling a story compared to McClouds (which I felt like was more comparable with a historical novel than something you would read to tell a story). The part of the book that I liked so far was the panel about the king monkey, who no longer wanted to be a monkey anymore. I thought it was interesting how the author kind of incorporated God into it (the creator of the monkey who tries to explain to him that, he was born a monkey and a monkey he shall be). I thought it was funny how the monkey tried to escape, and not only peed on the pillars which later turned out to be his creators fingers, but he also carved his name into one of them. The book shows how the monkey flew past the planets and stars, past the universe, and pass the boundries of reality itself and he still couldn't escape the reach of his creator. I also liked the fact that when the monkey disobeyed, the creator punished him and basically buried him underneath a bunch of rocks for some rediculous amount of time, 500 years or something like that. All in all I would definatley have to say that my opinion of this book so far is very good, and I look forward to finishing it.