"You Were Right" by Built to Spill

Questions for blog:
1.  Make an inference about the lyrical content of the song and explain it.
2.  Write one analytical statement about the musical content of the song and explain/support it.
3.  Make one evaluative statement about the song's overall effectiveness and support it.

Answers:
1.  The lyrics are describing how the artist feels about music.  Music has taught him all of these different things ("everything's gonna be alright," "all that glitter's isn't gold," "you can't always get what you want," etc.), and he is describing what themes in songs were right and wrong.  He uses these allusions to other song in order to do this.  For example, he says that, "you (the music) were wrong when you said everything's gonna be alright," and that, "you (the music) were right when you said we are all just bricks in the wall."  The second halves of both lines were allusions to other songs that taught him lessons.
2.  The musical content of the song sounds very painful, highlighting the lyrics.  The drums and the bass guitar are loud, and the lyrics are discussing how life isn't always fair and you can't always get what you want.
3.  The song has a strong meaning, and the lyrics support it well.  The artist wants you to think about these other songs, and using the lyrics of the other songs forces you to consider what they mean.  You can't escape the other lyrics.

The Steps of the Reading Process

Before beginning to analyze the actual book or essay itself, start by analyzing the title, the author, where the work was published, and when the work was published.  The title could possibly state the thesis, the author might state the potential subject, where it was published can determine an audience, and when it was published tells potential reliability and possible language of the essay.

When you start to read an essay, glimpse at the essay entirely before dissecting it.  Also, it is good to have a pencil or pen to annotate, so you can remember questions you have while reading or words you don't understand.  For lengthy responses to go along with annotations, use a separate sheet of paper or a journal for your thoughts.

Once you've read the essay, summarizing what you have just read is a good way to make sure you understand it.  Next, one needs to do some critical thinking in order to harness your knowledge and experiences to evaluate the essay.  In doing this, one discusses the author's purpose (exactly what the author is saying).  Critical thinking is divided into several operations: analysis, inference, synthesis, and evaluation.  Analysis involves classifying and comparing the essay.  Inference involves forming conclusions and discovering the author's assumptions based on your knowledge, experience, and analysis.  Synthesis involves linking elements of the essay into a whole idea (or ideas) using your aptitudes, interests, and training so that the idea will then contain your sense of the elements' relationships.  Evaluation involves judging the quality and forming an opinion on an essay.

"Young Life" Claims

Question for blog:  Make three claims about this painting, and have one fact to support each.

Answers:
1. Claim: The artist thinks that families who hunt are tough.
Fact: The expressions of the people are hard, and they display a tough personality.

2. Claim: The woman is the man's girlfriend or wife.
Fact: She has her arms wrapped around the man affectionately.

3. Claim: The man killed the deer.
Fact: The man is holding a gun, and the deer is lying dead behind him.

Claim 1 paragraph:
The artist of "Young Life" believes that families who hunt for fun are generally tough.  The viewers of this painting can gather this information from the people's expressions in the picture.  The man has a very serious, firm look on his face, and the boy's expression resembles the man's.  Another way to see the toughness of this hunter family is in the way the males stand.  The older of the two is standing tall, making sure you can see his gun.  The young boy is in a defensive stance, holding the stick up as though it were his own gun to make sure the viewer knows that he can defend himself.  All of these factors depict one word: tough.

"Shame" by the Avett Brothers

Questions for blog:
1.  Decide what the subject and tone of the song are.
2.  Choose three words whose connotation affects the tone of the piece and explain how.

Answers:
1.  The subject of this song is the shame that accompanies the artist's realization of his previous actions.  The tone was disappointing.
2. a) Untender:  This word describes how the artist was treating his girl.  It is disappointing because the artist shouldn't have done it, but he didn't realize that until after he already had.
    b) Strutted:  This word describes how the artist was acting around his girl.  He "strutted," or acted with arrogance.  It is disappointing for the same reason: the artist could have changed this action but didn't.
    c) Shame:  This word describes how the artist felt after he had lost his girl.  He realizes that everything he did was despicable, and so he feels shameful, which brings about more disappointment.

"American Tongues"

Questions for Blog:
1.  In your opinion, what is voice in literature?
2.  How does a person create his voice when writing?  Is creating voice an intentional or unintentional act?  Is it both?  Explain.
3.  Many people in Eastern Kentucky talk around a subject.  According to the speaker, why do they do this?  What can we learn about a writer from the way he/she approaches/handles a topic?
4.  Whether it is in fiction of nonfiction, why is voice important in writing?

Answers:
1.  Voice is the way a speaker sounds, or the way a speaker's words come across to others.
2.  A person creates their voice by choosing words or phrases that they would actually say out loud in the position of the main character (or themselves, for essays).  I think it can be intentional, but most of the time it's unintentional.  It's intentional when a person is trying to fix their writing to make it sound different or more accurate.  It's unintentional when we just write as we normally would.
3.  They talk around subjects because it's the way everyone else talks, and they don't know how to talk in any other way.  We can learn whether or not an author directly approaches a subject or not.
4.  Voice is important because an author has to get their purpose across through it.  For example, if one needed to persuade someone of something in writing, he or she would want to sound professional and direct.  As another example, if an author was trying to write from a different time period, he or she would want to use words and phrases from that time period.

"Eleanor Rigby" vs. "Eleanor Rigby"

Questions for blog:
1. Which of these do you like better? Why?
2. Which of these is more pleasing to listen to? Why?

Version one=cover
Version two=original

Answers:
1. I definitely liked the second version better than the first version of Eleanor Rigby. For one thing, that is the version I'm used to hearing. Also, the first version sounded like people screaming, not like singing.  That sound turns me away from wanting to listen to the song
2. The second version of the song was more pleasing because it was much more soothing.  The first version sounded harsh, and it produced a painful sound.  The artist screamed, and that generally doesn't please a person's ears.  The Beatles are the original creators of the song, and the other people took the original sound and warped it.  The other band isn't a "master" of its craft.

Wassily Kandinsky vs. Jackson Pollack

Questions for blog:
1. Which of these paintings do you like better? Why?
2. Which of these is more pleasing to look at? Why?
Answers:
1.  I liked the Kandinsky painting much better because there were brighter colors and more space.
2.  The Kandinsky painting is far more pleasing to look at because there are bright colors in his painting, but in Pollack's painting, there are only shades of brown, white, and black.  The more varieties of colors there are, the more appealing a painting is to the eye.  It makes the art seem happier and more cheerful.

9/9/11--"Sign Language"

Questions for blog:
1.  What single effect did you get from this short film?
2.  Give three specific things that led you to that single effect.
3.  If you could change one aspect of the film, what would it be, and how would that change the film's single effect?

Answers:
1.  The single effect that is portrayed from the film is optimism.
2.  a) His friends held up the signs at the end that encouraged him to talk to the girl.
     b) Ben describes his friends with nice, quality adjectives when they do not appear to be so.  It seemed as though he had faith in his friends when they appeared to be slightly hopeless.
     c) At the end, Ben goes up to talk to the girl.
3.  If you took out the music in the film, it would completely change the atmosphere.  The music was uplifting and happy, and it made a busy, crowded London street seem calm.  The feeling/effect of the story would change for the worse; without the music, the optimism of the story would be removed.

SOAPSTone-ing "Shooting an Elephant"

S—

            The subject of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” is how people are forced to act by the expectations of others.  The way most people act is illustrated through the choice the policeman made to kill the elephant because of the bystanders that we watching.  When he chose to shoot the elephant, he was choosing the people watching over the animal’s life—all so that he would not look like a fool in front of the crowd.

O—

            “Shooting an Elephant” was written in 1936.  The story’s time of creation is displayed through the language of the text; the speaker spoke in a different form of English than what is used in modern times.  For example, the policeman doesn’t use contractions, but instead always says “could not” or “does not.”  Also, he uses very uncommonly used words such as “roundabout.”  The probable place of the story’s creation is Burma.  The readers know this because the policeman constantly refers to the natives in the story as “the Burmans.”

            The time and place of the story’s creation influence the story by showing the days where Britain still owned Burma.  The readers can infer this because of how the policeman talks about the natives; he says, regarding how natives treat him and other Europeans, “As a [European] police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.”

A—

            George Orwell’s specific audience for “Shooting an Elephant” is people who choose their appearance over what is right.  The author’s target audience is identified through the policeman’s intentions to kill the elephant.  This reveals the target audience because it shows that the author is trying to get through to those people who choose appearance by using emotional appeal, as well as the unsaid question, “Would you kill an elephant to please people?”  Orwell is showing the audience how they appear to others when they make the choices that they do, simply for their peers’ approvals.

P—

            Orwell’s purpose in this story is to show that one should not make decisions based on what others want; he or she should base their choices on what is right.  This purpose is illustrated with the mindset of the policeman.  For example, the man thinks, “I did not in the least want to shoot [the elephant],” but then he changes his mind after he sees the crowd waiting for him to shoot, “And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.”  These two quotes show that when being pressed by people, one will easily do anything to please them, because the man’s original intent was simply to let the elephant go.  However, when the crowd was waiting for him to shoot, he felt obligated to do so.

S—

            George Orwell, who died at age 46, believed that what the British were doing in 1936 against Burma was wrong.  This value is illustrated by his reference to imperialism as an “evil thing.”  He used this term early on in the story to refer to the British Empire and continued to illustrate them as oppressors throughout the story.

            Orwell, who used a pen name (his real name was Eric Allan Blair), also believes that local British law enforcement were pushed by the will of the Burman natives.  As the narrator stood there with the rifle in his hands, he realized he “was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those” native Burmans.  The man with the gun should have been in charge, rather than the crowd that surrounded him.

Tone—

            George Orwell articulates a frustrated and conflicted attitude about how people are forced to act by the expectations of others in “Shooting an Elephant.”  These attitudes are expressed by his frustration with the way the policeman is sneered at, insulted, and assaulted.  His conflicted feelings as to whether or not to shoot the elephant are really a projection of his opposition of the British rule of these people.

"Good Old Desk"

Questions for blog:
1. SOAPSTone the song.
2. What is he talking about?

Answers:
1-
S- God
O- 1972-1973
A- People in need of comfort
P- To show that people can rely on God for anything because He will always be there for you
S- Himself
Tone- Comforting, hopeful, and joyful
2. The artist is referring to the idea that God will always be there for you if and when you need Him.
     examples of when this is shown:
a) "My old desk never needs a rest."
b) "Such a comfort to know, it's dependable and slow."
c) "My old desk isn't picturesque, but it's happy as a desk can be."

8/31/11--"The Runaway"

Question for Blog:
Create an intro paragraph for the following thesis statement:  Rockwell's "The Runaway" overlooks the fundamental rift that was rising in America throughout the 1950s--an emerging counter culture that was not concerned with how things were in America, but rather how they are.

Answer:
The time of the 1950s was right after a major war—World War II.  Soldiers were coming home, and America was rejoicing over the end of those hard times.  The culture of America was changing rapidly; instead of looking back on the past, people were looking forward to the future.  In "The Runaway" by Norman Rockwell, the boy was doing just that—by running away.  He was trying to create a new life for himself, as so many people of that time were doing after the war.  Rockwell's "The Runaway" overlooks the fundamental rift that was rising in America throughout the 1950s--an emerging counter culture that was not concerned with how things were in America, but rather how they are.

8/30/11--"Across the Universe"

Questions for blog:
1.  Identify three images in this song.
2.  Are any of the images also symbols?  If so, explain.
3.  Explain one symbol that you know to be a symbol.

Answers:
1.  a) "Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup."
    b) "Pools of sorrow, waves of joy,"
    c) "Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box."
2/3.  The third image can be perceived as a symbol for the writer's mind—his thoughts are always mixed up and flying around in his head.  His ideas are always jumbled, and they're always waiting to be spoken, just as the wind is ready to be let out of the letter box.

8/26/11--"Inspiration Information"

Questions for blog:
1.  What is the overall feel of this piece?
2.  What musical elements put off that feel/vibe?
3.  Identify the choices you think the musician had to make to get this feel and explain why they worked.

Answers:
1.  The feel of the song is relaxed, slow, and calm.
2.  The tempo is not too fast, which helps support the slow, relaxed feel of the song.  Also contributing to this are the instruments used in the song (the guitar, the drum's beat, etc.), which make the music calm.
3.  The musician chose the tempo to be relatively slow, as well as choosing the instruments, to give off the calm nature of the song.  They worked well because the finished product produced an overall relaxed sound.