Literary Focus Tracker (2)

I have been keeping track of symbolic objects throughout LOTF. The three keys elements I'll be talking about are (1) The importance of the shell from the beginning, (2)being chief-what it means, and (3) the femininity of the pink. The first element is the importance of the shell. “While the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch." (22). This showed that the conch basically elected Ralph as leader. Next, “Ralph smiled and held up the conch for silence.” (23). The conch made a crowd of boys quiet. this is an incredible accomplishment and it's all because of a shell. The importance of this shell began to go downhill when Jack began to break off from Ralph's rule. “‘We don’t need the conch anymore. We know who ought to say things. What good did Simon do speaking, or Bill, or Walter? It’s time some people knew they’ve got to keep quiet and leave deciding things to the rest of us.’” (101-102).
The next key element is the meaning of chief. Being chief, to Jack and Ralph, are two different things. Jack thinks being chief is to hunt and sing, while Ralph is all about keeping the fire going. “‘I ought to be chief,’ said Jack with simple arrogance, ‘because I’m chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp.’” (22). Whereas Ralph believes otherwise. “‘The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going?’” (80). This ends in a dispute and separation of ways.
The third concept to look at is the significance of pink on the island. Pink represents the feminine quality of this book. If you've noticed the amount of pink on the island, you may just think there's pink because it's a coral island, but the pink also shows some feminine quality. One example would be, “The most usual feature of the rock was a pink cliff surmounted by a skewed block; and that again surmounted, and that again, till the pinkness became a stack of balanced rock projecting through the looped fantasy of the forest creepers. Where the pink cliffs rose out of the ground there were often narrow tracks winding upwards.” (26). The whole island seems to be pink.
Those are three of many symbolic objects.

Books for Semester One

This semester, I read:
*In Defense of Food
*Literary Analysis
*Literacy Narrative
*Nation
*Lord of the Flies
*Hatchet
*City of Bones
*City of Ashes

This is an inadequate list. I wanted to read more, but I had too much homework. I feel like a more accomplished reader and writer. I'm excited I read the two books from the series Mortal Instruments because I have been wanting to read those for a while. Also, the Literary Analysis and Literacy narrative drafts weren't difficult, per say, but they were long and challenging. I'm glad I got those (almost) done and a good, acceptable grade on them. I feel like I did't really improve like I wanted to, but I read what I wanted to read. My semester has been filled with adventure books like Hatchet, Lord of the Flies, and Nation. In defense of Food was interesting. It's not that I didn't like the book, it's just that I kept falling asleep while reading the book.
Next semester, I hope to read one more Mortal Instrument book from the series. I also would like to read (and finish) Life of Pi. I've heard it's a great book and it's become a major movie picture as well. I want to be more open to new and different types of books next semester. I have a lot of friends who love to read & they recommend me books all the time, I just don't listen. Next semester, I will listen to them and read at least one book they recommend.

Reading Times:
12/4/12: Literary Analysis; 34 min.
Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 29 pages; 35 min.
12/5/12: Literary Analysis; 32 min.
Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 21 pages; 30 min.
12/6/12: Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 24 pages; 33 min.

Reading times

Reading Times:
11/28/12/12= Literary Analysis; by ME:); 32 min.
11/29/12= Literary Analysis; by ME:); 36 min.
11/30/12= Literary Analysis; by ME:); 35 min.

11/31/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 26 min; 11 pages (R&A)

12/1/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 27 min.; 13 pages (R&A)

Symbolic Objects

My reading focus is symbolic objects. There are many symbolic objects that repetitively come up in the story. One main symbolic object is the conch shell. The conch shell was dragged out of the lagoon by Ralph and since then, it has been used at assemblies. This conch shell symbolizes authority because they use the shell as the speaking device. Whoever is holding the shell would be the person to speak during assemblies or meetings. It also symbolizes leadership. Ralph was chosen as chief because he had the shell that made noise when you blow into it, and when he blew into it, the shell made an incredibly loud sound. Another symbolic object is all the pink on the island. Everything seems to be pink; pink mountains, pink sand, pink pigs, Piggy's pink cheeks. Pink is very feminine color, so it's a little odd that the author might use pink in a very masculine book. One reason is that since it's an all boys book, the pink adds the feminine quality in LOTF. Another reason is, maybe, the author wanted to give you the illusion that this island was pink and pretty and beautiful when the island may be a little darker than it seems. Since we are talking about pink, pigs seem to be an important symbolic object as well. Jack is constantly talking about them, and they seem to be the best food they have on the island. Pigs symbolize something a bit more than that. When we had the group close readings, one group who had the close reading of Piggy (I think that's what it was), had said that they thought the pig could be parallel to Piggy. By that I mean Piggy and the pig may have the same life or future. So with that conclusion, since they killed the pig, maybe Piggy also gets killed. (This is just a conclusion, I don't know how accurate that is.) The last symbolic object I am going to talk about is Piggy's glasses. It seems that on almost every page, Piggy's glasses seem to be brought up. So as a symbolic object, they symbolize (maybe) the civilization. They were once shiny and clean and helped Piggy see, which is like the civilization of the boys before they came on the island. Then, his glasses would constantly get dirty, and Piggy would have to clean them, which may represent the civilization after living on the island for a few days. Then, the boys fought over the glasses and eventually, broke one lens, which beginning in chapter four and mostly in chapter five, the civilization was broken maybe not two lenses, but one lens. Then, on the cover, both lenses are broken, so does that mean that the civilization is completely broken farther into the book?

The symbolic objects in this book continues to add up. There are more and more throughout the chapters, but the ones that have already been mentioned are still brought up. I find that the objects that are repetitively brought up are the important objects, making them symbolic in different ways, shapes, and forms.

Midterm Stuff

Throughout the first quarter and half way through the second, we have learned a good bit of information. This information is in units which are summer reading, literacy narratives (+ traits of writing, writing process), short stories + literary elements, literary analysis, and Lord of the Flies. All of the information we went over are in some form of notes or in a book of some sort. I understand and remember much of what we have learned, but there is always a need for improvement. Of course, for the midterm, I will study all these units intensely. Especially our unit of literacy narrative! I understand it, but there are things that throw me off. Also, the short stories is another unit I will be going over quite a lot. When we read about fifteen stories, you can't remember everything. Especially when you have to take annotations into consideration. I would really like to go over the different short stories and have a brief explanation of them in class. Also, I know we will, hopefully, go over literacy analysis again, especially since we haven't finished our essay. Those are some things to think about for midterm preparation.

Reading Times:
11/12/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 37 min.; 23 pages
11/13/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 22 min; 10 pages
11/14/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 29 min; 17 pages
11/16/12= Life of Pi; by Yann Martel; 33 min; 30 pages
11/19/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 32 min ;19 pages

Our "organized" Government

In class, we had an "organized" meeting to see what would happen or how our class would cope if we every survived a plane crash and survived, like Lord of the Flies. Block 4's get-together was anything but organized. Basically, our class sat on the ground and split up into 3 sections, not willingly. One section was working on how our democracy would work. The next section were four people who right off the bat wanted to be king/queen, making our government a complete monarchy. These four people were not right to be leaders of our class government. The third section was the largest section, and sat on the ground not being able to voice their opinion because the other two sections were in their own separate worlds. Being in the third section, I have to admit I didn't like a monarchy of people I didn't want to rule over us, and I also didn't like the first group's democracy because it was mirroring a monarchy because they people in that group were making all the decisions. I also didn't like how I couldn't say my opinion on what should be done which made me feel weak and not even thought about or considered. I heard a lot of good ideas from the third section though. One was that everyone split up and make their own city-states. Another was to divide up the jobs of the land evenly and we work it out like that. BUt, since no one would listen to each other, none of these ideas could be shared which ultimately made our class a complete anarchy.

If we would have gone longer than we did, our class would have gotten nowhere. Nobody was getting there ideas across; even the democracy group, who were VERY organized, couldn't figure out what was going on. The monarchy group just put themselves up at the front of the class and said they were the leaders, but even if I wanted them as the class' leader, they weren't even making rules or getting everyone organized. They just sat there and started making our "nation's" sport or other things that weren't significant at the moment. Even the monarchy group had great ideas, but if they were in charge, then why didn't they follow through? Our class wouldn't have done anything to make a good government. We were in complete chaos and there was no way we could have started a nation.
Reading Times:

11/5/12= Life of Pi; by Yann Martel; 10 min.; 9 pages
11/6/12= Life of Pi; by Yann Martel; 10 min.;  9 pages
11/6/12= Life of Pi; by Yann Martel; 19 min.; 18 pages
11/7/12= Life of Pi; by Yann Martel; 20 min.; 18 pages
11/9/12= Life of Pi; by Yann Martel; 32 min.; 30 pages
11/11/12= Lord of the Flies; by William Golding; 30 min.; 25 pages

New Room

Most of you, if you have read this, read the title and thought, 'Hmm. New Room? Is she talking about a new bedroom?' The answer to that is no, I'm talking about a new hangout room. I'm part of a group at my church, and where we hangout is not an adequate at all. My mom is on a committee that over looks our activities, and she saw it as inadequate for our meeting as did other people. After she proposed changing this room to meet nicer looks, a few others on the committee also agreed. She then told me about her proposal. I was up day and night trying to figure out some cool plans for this new room. While I was obsessing over this idea, which hadn't been officially approved yet, my mom was doing exactly that. She starting asking around to the children's director at our church and, the most important, our pastor. They both thought this idea was an amazing idea and even put in some advice as well. After telling me this, I decided that I couldn't wait to help in every way possible.

Although this idea is so amazing, there are a few flaws, like every great plan. The main setback was the budget. Our church is a small one, so the funding for certain things is incredibly low, including this small group. Another flaw in the plan was we needed many specific things to be done, like taking out bulky items in the room. So for these things to be accomplished, we need volunteers, mainly big men, come and help do the construction. Also, some people in this group underwork and may not want to help for this remodeling. Lastly, since it's supposed to look nice and organized, we are going to need, maybe, an interior designer. This could cost a lot more money, and like I said the budget is extremely low.

I feel very excited and passionate about this project and can't wait to get this out there, then start working on it, and lastly, to get it complete. I just hope this will work out the way we are expecting!