Sunday, January 31, 2010

Annotated Bibliography for Oral

Book:

Backlash; the undeclared War against Women

○ Women and advertising
○ Women got first put into advertising because it was a sense of freedom and rights for all
○ The start of women going to work was the start of putting women into advertisement
○ The women emancipation
○ Women want to be like men and so they will listen more to women then to men
○ If a women sells a product they are more likely to buy it from them then from a man
○ Women have to be prettier then men
○ Women have to live longer and healthier
○ Women are better


Video

Frontline PBS: The Persuaders

○ Everywhere there is advertisement
○ How do we know what to choose
○ The marketing strategies
○ How to find out how to advertise
○ Different experts talking about consumers and what they really want
○ Emotional branding
○ Most things are bought because there is a connection to it
○ The science of selling
○ How do we sell and how do we know what the consumer wants
○ People have to find this out, by testing the individual consumers by asking them questions about products, etc.
○ There has to be a direct target to find out what will be bought and what not
○ Car companies will not produce small cars, because the consumer will think that the car is too small even if it does help the environment - they don’t care, it needs to be practical

Online article

Frontline PBS: Analysis

○ An overview of what is in the different chapters of the movie, and what people are going to talk about it.
○ Not very helpful for the actual oral
○ There is a short sentence at the beginning which can be used as topic sentences
○ There HAS to be an emotional connection between the consumer and the product they buy


Frontline PBS: Forum, so how should we think about all of this…?

○ Interviews from experts in the field of advertising and market research
○ 4 major questions are asked, and each individual answers it
○ There are different opinions
§ Advertising is good, because in the end the consumer has the right to choose
§ Advertising is bad but we cannot do anything about it
○ Some of the questions are not helpful, because they go into great detail.
○ This can be used to quote some experts and how the feel towards advertising

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Options

Editorial (Blood Diamond)
Ad (Greenpeace)
Screenplay (Cuckoo)
Pastiche (maybe Hitchhikers?? Depending on the book that SL choose)

Friday, November 27, 2009

Intro and Big Idea

Introduction:

In heaven one will find those who died proudly and those who died in hatred. The poem by Rupert Brooke The Soldier and the poem Reconciliation by Siegfried Sassoon both cope with the situation of dying for one’s own country and the nationalistic feeling towards war. While both poems speak of war in different ways and through the use of different devices, the two lyric poems have some similarities. The biggest difference is the fact that The Soldier was written before the war and is an Italian sonnet and Reconciliation was written after the war and is an epigram. The main idea portrayed in The Soldier speaks of the love towards own country and that it is a positive thing if one dies for their own country. Reconciliation speaks of the horrors of the war, and that it is foolish to think that war is something positive and that fighting is doing a good deed. Therefore, the two poems differ in their perspective but have the same content, since both talk about nationalism and the love or hate to fight for ones country. These main ideas are portrayed and displayed in the pieces through mainly imagery, both sensory and figurative, as well as tone, rhetoric, persona, structure and language. Although one may be more present in one of the poems than in the other, both use imagery as their main device to emphasize their view on going to war and the good and bad things about what happened or what is going to happen.


General Big Idea: The big idea that these two poems both share in common is the juxtaposition about being proud to fight for ones country and the loss that happens during a war.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Planting a Sequoia

Virginia Hasenmeyer
English Yr. 2 Mr. Holmes
Planting a Sequoia

The poem Planting a Sequoia by Dana Gioia was written in 2004, and is a lyric poem. A lyric poem is a poem that expresses personal feeling, mood or mediation towards something. Furthermore, the poem has an elegiac perspective, because the content of this poem is about a father’s first baby son dyeing and a tree being planted to represent this. Dana Gioia uses a lot of imagery, both sensory and figurative, to describe her feelings towards the situation. The big idea of this poem is the juxtaposition between death and birth and it is expressed by a baby boy dyeing and a sequoia tree being planted.

The use of imagery in this poem is very powerful since it sets the mood throughout the poem. Already in the first stanza imagery is used to set the setting. Due to sensory imagery like, “Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific” one can locate that the poem is set in the north-west Coast of America. Also the atmosphere of the poem is defined by the use of diction and the descriptions about the setting. Words like rain, blackened, dull and grey suggest a sad mood, for example due to death. An example of more figurative imagery is in stanza three: “stray atoms” which is a metaphor for bits and pieces of the dead baby boy. Throughout the poem, more imagery is used, especially in the middle stanza, where the burial of the little baby is described. A metaphor used is “our native giant” which refers to the Sequoia tree, which is native to North America. The new tree being planted is in juxtaposition to the baby being buried under the tree. “Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant’s birth cord.” This verse is the heart of the poem, because it is in contrast to the new tree being planted. Gioia uses symbols such as a lock of hair and the birth cord to represent the baby boy that died.

The juxtaposition in this poem is also represented by the tone of the poem. In the second stanza the tone of the poem is hopeful, because it uses the conditional verb “would” to express what would have happened if they lived in Sicily. The father explains that he would have planted an olive tree or a fig tree to celebrate new life; however this wouldn’t have worked in America due to the temperature. Therefore, a Sequoia tree was planted, which is represents a long life even though a baby just died.

This elegiac poem is driven by the use of imagery and reflects on the big idea, which is the juxtaposition between birth and death. The symbols used to represent this are the Sequoia tree which represents long lasting life and the father’s son who died. The father explains that he will continue having children, even though the first one died: “unborn brothers dead”. After the whole family has died, the sequoia tree will still be standing in the middle of the apple trees, representing life, and not knowing that underneath it, is death. “I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you, Silently keeping the secret of your birth.”This last verses of the poem, request to the tree, that he has to always be there remember all the things that happened.

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Haiku

Sprouting of hope
A young olive tree
Shares thoughts and dreams

Picking viola
Dropping them on the cold tomb
Until they vanish

Blinding sunlight
First glimpse of color
Smiles on our faces

Monday, November 2, 2009

Poem

The poem I choose was:
Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon

I noticed it was lyric. It was about death, so I am guessing it is an elegy. The first stanza of the poem is about the positive aspects of soldiers. Then it moves to the negative sides and ends with the 'fake' glory of the people, when the soldiers come back.


I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Page 166

Context:
- Before this scene, McMurphy talks with the other patients about the nurse, and how the patients are all "kissing her ass".
- Says that the Nurse has no control over him
- In this scene, McMurphy finds out that most patients are voluntary except him and some of the chronics and Scanlon.
- After this scene, McMurphy finds out that one has to be nicer to the Nurse, because she has the control over him and when he lives.


Themes:
- Self-sacrifice vs. Self-interest
○ " you have more to lose than I do…I'm voluntary. I'm not committed"
- Perspective vs. perspective
○ "you, Billy -must be committed for Christsakes!"
○ "McMurphy doesn’t say a word. He's got that same puzzled look on his face like there's something isn't right, something he cant put his finger on"
- Control and Oppression
○ Control: the nurse has the control over McMurphy and when he has the right to leave the ward

Character:
- McMurphy
○ Change: finds out that he is one of the few that have been committed, and can’t chose when to leave the ward
- Harding
○ Is using this opportunity to be the bigger one
§ Motif: big vs. small
□ "No. You've got more to lose than I do, my friend"
® Condescending
- Billy Bibbit
○ Not committed either, being "big"
§ "standing on tiptoe"

Motifs:
- Big vs. small
○ The individual characters
○ The machinery:
§ " Martini comes away from the X-ray screen, buttoning his shirt and muttering, I wouldn’t of believed it if I hadn't saw it"

What drives the text?
- Language:
○ "like there's something isn't right…"
§ Unsophisticated language of McMurphy
§ The grammar is incorrect, there is a word missing
○ Tone of Harding:
§ Sophisticated
§ Condescending
§ Teasing
○ Tone of McMurphy
§ Unsophisticated
§ Harsh
§ Scared/confused
- Structure
○ The paragraphs are made when there is a change of character speaking, or if someone is in action
○ When the tone changes from Harding to McMurphy
- Imagery
○ "McMurphy walks up and down in front of that bench, running his hand around in that thick hair"
- Rhetoric
○ Repetition:
§ " You've got more to lose than I do"
§ "Are you bullshitting me?"