Thursday, April 14, 2011

Glogster Explanation

The word that I have chosen for my glog is violence. From that word, I pictured Jack and his hunter group killing a pig, and blood spurting from its wounds. That is why I chose my background to be red and blood-like. I also chose many key words to deepen the meaning of violence. The definition of violence is the expression of physical force against one or more people. Many times, that results in murder when the line has been pushed too far. When I think about violence, I usually think about shattered glass. That is a symbol for something that has gone wrong. When Jack smashed Piggy's spectacles on the ground, they broke, but that was only the physical part to it. Piggy and Ralph's trust towards Jack and his group are broken, which ultimately results in the splitting of the group. This shows how a little bit of violence can result in a big consequence. The image of the three knives in the bottom-right hand corner represent weapons that are usually used when violence occurs. The fire in the centre of the glogster represents the hate between Ralph and Jack as it is the main object that Ralph and Jack fight about. Ralph would talk about how important the fire is and their hopes of escaping the island while Jack likes to hunt and does not care much about the fire. This can lead to more intense arguments and violence. After reading Lord of the Flies, I have learned that violence can occur anywhere at anytime with anyone, therefore regardless of age and nationality, as long as their is nobody to control a group of people, there will always be violence, which is what's happening in Libya with Gadhafi. Nobody has control over him, and now he is bombing his own people.

Glog

http://dondddon.glogster.com/glog/

Monday, April 11, 2011

Journal #4: Lord of the Flies (summative)

This week, Ms. Caldwell stressed connections greatly, and that is what my group has focused on, especially on Wednesday. That day, we were supposed to make many connections and share it within our group, then write about one main one. In our group, we stated many small connections, such as Lord of the Flies connecting to World War II, but our big main connection was a text to world connection was to the current crisis in Libya. Ghadafi, the leader of Libya for over forty years, created an unfair society for his people, and when they decided to rebel, he started attacking his own people. This is like Lord of the Flies where Jack was the leader of his tribe and he decided not to care about the fire and hunted only. When Ralph and Piggy rebelled against them because they wanted to get out of the island and the fire was the only way out, Jack would not listen, and he even started killing, as expressed in this quote: “The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (ch. 11). Jack killed Piggy and he exploded the conch, the symbol for power and order. As soon as that conch was destroyed, the island was in a huge mess, and ultimately Jack and his tribe went inhumane.

The above connection can relate to an essential question: What does power have to do with fairness and justice? The amount of power that one person possesses controls how fairly and just they treat one person. The more power one has, the more unfair and unjust they will treat people, and vice versa. For example, a little boy has more power over another boy who is even littler than him, so he bullys him. However, when he is reported he will not treating the adults unfairly because he has no power over the adults.

Then on Friday, we watched the black and white film of Lord of the Flies. Although the internet was laggy, the film made me picture Lord of the Flies much better and clearer as visuals along with reading is always helpful!

In our group, I would have to say that our discussions were not as smooth and deep as before the break, and that is very obvious due to a two week long spring break between the English classes. However, we still had a pretty good discussion as we all tried to give examples of connections from the book to ourselves, other texts and the world.

In this book, the plot, setting and characters had major changes to them. When I started reading the book, I connected it to Hatchet (see my previous summative journal) as I thought it was going to be another boring survival book. It was about survival at first, but as the novel progressed, the main problem was not about surviving on the island - it was about humanity and how Jack and his tribe were being beasts, killing and being totally cruel and unjust,as they repeatedly say "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!" (ch.9) Although the book does not say this, but should Jack had not been rescued, I make the assumption that he and his tribe will not be human anymore - they will evolve or de-evolve to a totally new creature, a totally new species. This is why I think this ending is slightly odd. Ralph was being chased by Jack and suddenly a ship comes and rescues him, leaving Jack and his group's aftermath unknown...

I would rate it a 7.5 out of ten because the plot, characters and setting were easily understandable, but some parts of the book dragged on and it just lacked that entertainment factor; I was not enjoying it fully when I read it. Oh well, I guess that's why we are analyzing them...

I improved on this journal as I brought in some quotes, I analyzed it more and gave it a rating.