Reflections

Writing in Mrs.Turner's class has taken me for a ride. It has been an enjoyment, and I have even found myself sometimes enthused about writing. That must be a first. At times I am reluctant to start but once I am it is hard to stop. For the Crucible essay my goal for writing was to take a deeper look at a Abigail and compare her to an object in life. The main idea for my paper was to show how Miller used Abigail to illustrate how how lies destroyed a community, then I compared that to the element fire. While developing my paper I had to have the quietness of my room to brainstorm thoughts I wanted to include in it. Throughout the paper I tried to use examples to support my opinions from the play the Crucible. During the piece I implied the major points we discussed in class to develop the basis for my paper. From writing this paper I learned how to take a random object and compare it to the personality and characteristics of a character. The other paper which is on my blog is called Nature. The purpose was to relate Emerson and Thoreau view of transcendentalism to my experience of the nature walk. In this paper I used at least one quote from Emerson and one for Thoreau that I could compare my view about nature or another element of transcendentalism to his. I highlighted the reasons to why I basically disagreed with the concept of transcendentalism in today's time. There was time to think about what to write and time to actually write it well, many of times what I thought about and actually wrote were different. I may have really good thoughts, but can not figure out how to put them on paper. Sometimes it is the opposite I can not think of one word, but once I began writing thoughts just began to come and wow there is my rough draft. I may not have used everything I learned in every paper but I definitely learned how to somewhat develope a vivid descriptive paper and used brushstrokes, find specific examples from the text to support your opinions, and how to tie the main idea of the paper in to a developed thesis.

Truely I did not have a specific place outside of school where I revised my work. I basically did all of my writing in school. Most of the time right after I read Mrs. Turner's or another classmates comments I would then think of ways to change my mistakes and do so. A lot of my thoughts were as I was typing at the computer. Maybe next time I can actually go home and get in that quiet place and think of creative ways to improve my paper. Each of the three different kind of revisions (revise new ideas, revise using craft lessons, and revise to polish and clarify awkward sentence structures etc) were done at school. An example of my revision is when I added the quote from Abigail " Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it;" Abigail is not afraid to take drastic measures to assure her innocence. so that I could have text from the book to support my opinion of Abigail. In the Nature essay I was encouraged to add imagry from my nature walk so I added, "the thick walls of trees outlining the tiny pathway gave you just enough space to walk, until you reached the inner parts of the wood. The tall trees blanketed the entire floor of the woods, only letting tiny amounts of sun pierce through the condensed trees." In the Nature essay I also change my wording with thanks to my editors that helped comment on my paper. One example is this being my old sentence-"The only experience I managed to meet <-- some different word here maybe? with was the laughter anand non-terminating voices of my teenage adolescent teenage and adolescent is a little redundant you maybe could use another adjective to describe the teenagers peers." to this being my new revised sentence "The only experience I managed to acquire was the laughter and non-terminating voices of my teenage peers."

After reading Rachel's memoir one thing that really stood out to me was how she did not use many being verbs. I really struggle with that so maybe next time I will always try to take that in to account. http://rachelwhitmire.blogspot.com/ Rachel made the subject actually be at the beginning of the sentence and is doing the action. Erika's writing show's me how to stay on topic and make every thing flow throughout the story. A link to her blog is: http://erikaverbeck.blogspot.com/. Last but not least from Erika Burton's Scarlett letter essay I really saw the use of quotes throughout the paper!http://erika-burton.blogspot.com/

Nature with Emerson and Thoreau

Nature with Emerson and Thoreau



Nature is supposedly a place that calms the spirit and refresh the problems of everyday life. Well, that shocks the Huckleberry Finn out of me. On my fourth block class's nature experience, this sure was not the case. According to Emerson and Thoreau, I was suppose to become a "transparent eyeball" and "become one with myself." That almost sounds like Chinese to me because who really takes time to do that now a days. The only experience I managed to acquire was the laughter and non-terminating voices of my teenage peers. The dark maze which the ground of leaves created only made me cautious of where my feet were being placed the entire time. Seeing the various types of green plants, weeds, and whatever else was my sign to look for poison ivy. The thick walls of trees outlining the tiny pathway gave me just enough space to walk, until I reached the inner parts of the wood. The tall trees blanketed the entire floor of the woods, only letting tiny amounts of sun pierce through the condensed trees. As I lay on the nets of the ropes course and gaze around me I notice creepy spider webs hanging from a stick, talk about scary. I hate spiders. This experience was "supposed to be" about nature, but the over-powering thought of us just half a mile from the ruckus of T.L. Hanna High only weakened the purpose of going into the woods. Twenty minutes, only fifteen being spent in the woods, is not enough time to make a deep soul transformation.
Emerson was a man, who believed that nature could transform your life. Born in 1803 and dead by 1882, indeed he had what is considered a long life for that time, but a life full of mishaps and social withdrawal sums it up. How can we manage to get the same meaning from nature as someone who was a loner and never really grasped the little enthusiasms that society offered? Emerson says, "The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man an the vegetable." Who sits and daydreams about a relationship between a man and a vegetable? Not anyone normal, but someone who has nothing else to consume their time. With all the luxuries of today's society, a comparison of this sort is by far the last thing on one's mind. Frantically shopping, busily working, or roughly playing are only a few pastimes people encounter each day. The death of Emerson's wife, son, and best-friend may have also played a major part into why he examined all the microscopic aspects in nature. Since I have other means of consoling myself after a hardship in life, I don't turn to nature as Emerson did for a comforting place to forget all of society's adversities. Quoted from Emerson's story "Nature" he says, "The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood." In this quote he basically says a child can really relate and enjoy nature because of the child's innocence and worry free perspective of things. Children today grow up relatively quick compared to the children of Emerson's time. We are faced with issues like sex, violence, and peer pressure at an early age, thus we can't go into nature with that worry free perspective about things. The children in society are now forced to lose site of their innocence while growing into their adult attitudes towards things. So, applying that to Emerson's quote, there are not many people, child or adult, that really can let the elements of nature shine into their eyes and their hearts.
Thoreau was also a man who followed in Emerson footsteps by practicing Transcendentalism, and dedicating part of his life to living in the woods for two years. In the story from "Walden or Life in the Woods" Thoreau practices nonconformity and the importance of nature. He says, "...I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not live." He was willing to leave all modern life had to offer and go into total self-reliance of nature. Not many people, including myself, would be willing to give up Friday night football, or the luxury of the television to live alone like the cave man era. Thoreau was not in the majority of people living in modern life, but instead made a minority of just himself and nature. When I was in the woods, I did just the opposite. I was with my friends, Danyetta and Melody, basically the entire time. I did not practice nonconformity. Instead, I was in with a crowd. Thoreau also values all that nature offers because he strives to learn everything about anything that he can. He sees nature as a place to learn, while I see nature as a place to vacation or relax. In Thoreau's most famous essay, "Civil Disobedience", he writes, "The American government--what is it but a tradition though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity but each instant losing some of its integrity." Free thought is what I say to this quote. Free thought is exactly what I experience while in the woods. Although my friends and I were together, we had a little moment of quietness where I got time to think. I began to think of my homework, all the projects I had to do, and experiences that I had in the previous week. Even if I did not have a deep soul transformation, I did have a couple of seconds to just stop and think about my life.
Emerson and Thoreau have some very deep and logical assumptions on nature. The creepy crawlers, ropes course and dangling ropes did not help me become one with nature. The idea of nature being the key to becoming a "transparent eyeball" is not for me. Everyone has their way of broadening their horizon about life and the things it has to offer. For most people because of the luxuries in life and the modern temptations we don't turn to nature to help up us become nature observers. I am not saying we don't try to learn and become aware of non conformity, self-reliance, and free thought but that we just have different ways of doing so. Sorry to say, but Emerson's and Thoreau's ideas are left in the past centuries and replaced with other modern methods.

Abigail Relates to Fire

Tiny things in the world around us are being compared to everyday situations and people we face. The comparisons are as simply as an orange being round like the earth, or emotional as to say the heavy rain drops are like the tears I cry every night in place of the hurt I constantly feel in my heart. In the Play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Abigail is definitely the fire that keeps the momentum of the play at an utmost high.In the play Miller uses Abigail to show the destruction of false accusations on a community.
Fire what an amazing element of nature, its flaming flamboyant colors are easy to catch ones eye. While consuming it it's charming appeal will easily inspire you to bow down to its every command in desire to stay out of harms way. Abigail says, " Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it;" Abigail is not afraid to take drastic measures to assure her innocence. Firemen will do all they can to put out a fire, but once it is out of control they can simply look from a far in astonishment and do what they can to potentially put out the fire and stay out of harms way. The same is for Abigail. She is an astonishing young lady that has a way of charming others. She shows us examples of this throughout the play. In order for her to be engaged in an affair with a happily married man name John Proctor she would have had to be charming and an attention grabber. Abigail has a thing about her that makes the other girls in the Puritan society follow and mock her every word. In Act III Abigail says, "Oh, please, Mary! Don't come down." Once Abigail started faking that a spirit was attacking her the other girls, Susanna Walcott for example, immediately follows saying "Her claws, she's stretching her claws". No one wants to be on a bad accord with Abigail. In Act I she threatens to kill her friends if they spoke a word of what really is happening in the woods. No one wants to cross Abigail the wrong way. What does everyone usually think of when you mention fire? Maybe the devil, death, or a demolisher will ring a bell? The two: fire, and Abigail can relate to the devil. Fire is supposedly what the devil manifest in and during the play that is exactly what Abigail is(the devil on earth) the two goes hand in hand. Fire is sometimes used to demolish buildings, paper, and old boxes. Abigail is like a human fire who went through the Puritan society and weaves out many lives by planting false accusations of people being witches in the courts. The good thing about fire is that if you take away its main elements which keep it going it is no longer a threat to society. Abigail is a major threat to the society until Danforth takes back power and finally puts an end to accepting the false information from Abigail. Once he took back his power the poor Abigail realized she was no longer fearful to others.
Everything has its own personal characteristics whether living or not, and that is the biggest difference between Abigail and fire. Abigail is capable of having emotions, and a sense of knowing the ways in which she has hurt the people around her. Abigail has feelings against Elizabeth Proctor that drives her to introduce pain and suffering in her life. When fire consumes someone's house and destroys everything they have it has no feelings or emotions that plays a part in it, everything is due to nature. Fire has good qualities Abigail doesn't. During the play Abigail does nothing good, although for fire it is different. It can be used to cook, destroy old papers, and keep you warm.
In the play The Crucible Miller uses Abigail to show use how justice is not always serve to the innocent. Through Abigail, Miller is proving that the cliche "good always prevails" is false. Abigail's villainous lies destroys many lives during the Puritan society. The comparison of fire to Abigail allows me to see all the characteristics of Abigail that makes Miller such a success in showing the reader how destructive she is in the community.