TPCASTT Poetry Packet

1. "Sonnet 130" by William Shakespeare

               Traditional beauty is overrated

2. "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe

               Love is expressed through the material

            

3. "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne

               Everlasting life is more powerful than death.

            

4. "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick

               It is important to marry before time takes away youth and beauty.

            

5. "The Author to Her Book" by Anne Bradstreet

               One's own creations can be looked upon with disappointment.

6. "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell

               Time ends love.

           

7. "Sound and Sense" by Alexander Pope

                Writing should be simple to a learned mind.

8. "The World is Too Much With Us" by William Wordsworth

               Humanity needs to be aware of nature.

           

9.  "She Walks in Beauty" by George Gordon, Lord Byron

                Beauty is found in innocence.

          

10. "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

               Power does not stay in one place forever.

                            

11. "When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be" by John Keats

               Love and fame have little value in life.

              

12. "The Children's Hour" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

                The child-like emotions of children are infectious.

14. "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe

               Love can be both uplifting and damaging.

               

15. "O Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman

              The spoils of a journey are not always enjoyed.

           

 16. "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died" by Emily Dickinson

               Death is quiet

              

17. "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

               Humanity is ignorant is to what is right.

            

 18. "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen

               Death during a war is another life lost.

           

 19. "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

               People like to be separated by walls.

            

 20. "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath

               Mirror show true reflections.

Grapes of Wrath Action Project

   What most seniors in high school are concerned with (other than graduation) is their future.  Where will they be after they graduate?  For most students, the answer is college.  Seniors spend a good amount of time in their senior year looking for colleges and applying for the fall semester.  As spring break rolls around most students have their admissions letters and are making final decisions as to where they are going to spend the next four years.  In most cases there are three types of responses college applicants receive from the Office of Admissions from their chosen schools: acceptance, rejection, and waitlisted.  Although not too popular, another type of response from admissions is sent out to a number of prospective students.  Instead of being admitted for the preferred fall semester, some colleges are pushing selected applicants to the January semester.

   When my admission letters arrived in my mailbox, I received notice that I was admitted for the January 2013 semester when I applied for the Fall 2012 semester in an college.  This was curious to me so I decided to set out to find out more about this different kind of acceptance.  I wanted to know why they were pushing some of their applicants to the next semester and the consequences associated with it.  I also realized that this might be a growing trend that might become common for the next generation of applicants to colleges. 

   To find more information on the acceptance, I tried calling the admission office of the college that accepted me for their January semester.  After the usual interlude of being on hold, someone in the admissions office received my call.  When I asked about the January admission I was given an acceptable amount of information on the subject.  I was told that the purpose of this admission is to accommodate students with a shrinking budget in an applicant pool that is larger than ever.  I was also told that it is an immutable decision. After talking for a while, that seemed to be all the information that I could get from the phone call.

   For the purpose of this project, I set out to see if I could dig up any more information on the subject.  For the sake of considering all of my options, I took a visit to the college.  I attended the Open House at which there would be admission counselors, faculty, and student advisors.  I attended a seminar that was lead by the dean of students.  At the close of the session, he told his audience that he would welcome any questions after his presentation.  I took this opportunity to speak with him about the January admission.  After approaching him and explaining my situation, he more or less retold me what I was told by admissions.  However, he did ask me to meet with him after the scheduled lunch to discuss the topic further.  Upon further discussion, he described to me in more detail the answers to my questions.  I was told that in previous years the college has tried to push for a January class.  However, it was of little success.  He did not give reasons as to why it was unsuccessful, but I can postulate that there was little interest in taking off the fall semester.  After asking about the consequences of attending college in the January semester, the dean told me about a “gap year” (or semester).   In short, a gap year is when students take time off to take a psychological break from all the stressor of school.  Students may choose to use this time to pursue an interest or travel or take an internship.  An unexpected result from out conversation was his willingness to put in an effort to get me admitted for the fall semester this year. 

   In The Grapes of Wrath the Joad family moves toward California despite the journey's hardships in hope of a better future.  Although I did not go searching for a chance to have my admission status change, I still feel that there is a connection.  For me, fall admittance of preferable over January admittance because I feel that I do not need a “gap year.”  I believe that summer vacation will be sufficient as a time to ease my mind.  The move to California can also be likened to the search for the "right" college.  Both can be very stressful with many hurdles to jump, but the goal in sight is meant to be worth all the hardship along the way.

Reflection on Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness."

  In this literary article, Achebe discusses the relentless racism found in Conrad’s book The Heart of Darkness.  Specifically, Achebe is concerned with how Conrad uses Marlow as a way to be indirectly racist.  Achebe does allow that this racism might be learned in the unconscious mind and not intentional, but he does not downplay how degrading and immoral it can be.

  Achebe writes about how he sees racism against Africa in everyday society.  He claims that in Western psychology there is a desire to set a foil to Europe.  In this case it would be Africa.  This idea of creating a foil can be traced back to Shakespeare and his famous plays.  Another desire that is present in society is the need to create an “other.”  Conrad puts African natives in the role of the “other” to white Europeans. 

  Achebe condemns Conrad in much of his article and called Conrad’s heart a true “heart of darkness.”  He claims that Conrad makes the African natives seem inhumane. In addition, he writes that Conrad made the Africans seem lesser than modern humans.  Conrad would often throughout the book describe the African atmosphere and natives as dark.  Achebe says in his article that Conrad probably had an obsession with this darkness.  He does not doubt that Conrad was a very talented and brilliant writer who had his moment of true greatness.  However, Achebe calls Conrad irrational and not clear-minded.  According to Achebe, Marlow may have been a tool to protect Conrad from the “psychological predisposition” of his readers.  Conrad created a “narrator behind a narrator.”  Achebe is still respectful for Conrad’s work, but sheds light on the racism it contains.

   In his article, Achebe brings a different perspective to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  Although the article does not diminish Conrad’s great book, it does reveal its racism.

Response to Virginia Ross's "Kate Chopin's Motherless Heroine"

In the literary criticism, “Kate Chopin’s Motherless Heroine,” Virginia Ross suggests that Edna Pontellier’s conflicting needs are the consequence of the absence of her mother.   The Creole society began the “awakening” within Edna into a “sensual and sexual woman” (Ross 252). Edna turns her back on her family, her home, and what she deems society requires of her.  She chooses to seek out a life where she is independent and free from the chains of society.  Her actions from then on reveal insecurities and a regressive tendency.  Ross analyzes the novel through a psychoanalytical lens that gives evidence of Edna’s yearning for a mother that causes the insecurities and regression from her former self.

  Ross put an emphasis on Freud’s theories in her criticism.  Freud’s overarching concept is to scrutinize a person’s actions to find a deeper motive that is buried in their unconscious.  Freud claims that the unconscious part of the mind holds the darker desirers that the conscious mind suppresses.  According to Freud, the confliction between the unconscious desires with the conscious is the cause of much of human behavior and the cause of mental disorders.  Ross writes that the sea is symbolic of maternal love in the novel.  Whenever Edna is by the ocean she feels depressed and abandoned.  Freud might say that sea evokes these feelings because of the absence of a mother in her childhood.  According to Ross, Freud says that a child may not feel separate from the mother giving the child the feeling of eternity.  Carl Jung, a Neo-Freudian, looks at water as the female side of personality.  Edna may substitute a mother with the sea.  When Edna looks towards the sea, she feels a sense of eternity.

   One of Abraham Maslow’s theories is present in the criticism.  Maslow’s Theory of the Hierarchy of Needs is not directly mentioned in the criticism, yet it is outlines in Ross’ article.  Edna’s regressive tendency and search for independence can be her journey to self-actualization.  According to Maslow, in order to reach self-actualization there are other requirements of basic survival have to be meet.  With a dead mother, insensitive father, and unloving sisters, Edna stops short of feeling loved and accepted.  Ross writes that Adele provides the feeling of love and belongingness to Edna.  This brings about her awakening.

  I feel that Ross presents and argues in her article very effectively.  Analyzing Edna’s actions from a psychoanalytical point of view helps prove her points valid.  I believe that Edna’s actions throughout the novel are motivated behind her wanting of a mother.

Reflection on "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

   In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman we read the writings of a women who is put into confinement for an entire summer.  As the story progresses, the speaker slowly loses her mind and becomes insane.  I found this transformation of mind very disturbing and eerily relatable. 

   I have memories of seeing at a pattern or picture that put me in somewhat of a trance when looking deeply at the intricacies.  Some patterns become an optical illusion that trick the mind in seeing things that are actually absent from reality.  Even the speaker has the idea that she is the only one who sees her visions.  It seems as if the speaker sees the pattern moving and reshaping before her eyes and in different lights.  If a person looks at tiles on a bathroom floor or at the small patterns on some furniture, it is very possible to see, often with tired eyes, the pattern morphing into something different then originally seen.  I found that the descriptions of the wallpaper mirrored this.  The shifting pattern on the yellow wallpaper contributes to her decline to madness.

   I believe that almost everyone has had a taste of the madness that creeps into ones mind when placed alone for a period of time.  To imagine the kind of confinement that the speaker was subjected to for the length of a season, especially during summer when there seems to be no end of activity, is a frightening thought.  Being alone with ones thoughts can cause a person to lose the sense of reality much like the speaker in the short story.  The madness seems to take a hold of the speakers mind very similar to how the “woman” would creep around behind the wallpaper.  Each entry of her writing takes on a new level of paranoia and madness as her time in confinement progresses.  The reader can truly sense a shift in the speaker’s mind when she claims that her reflection in the window is really the “woman” behind the wallpaper.  The length of time that the speaker was confined in her room greatly contributes to her insanity.

  Gilman’s short story accurately predicts how a person, when left by themselves, can lose their mind to madness.