I CAN READ! (kind of)

Here's my trial of reading Dr. Seuss' Fox in Sox in one take! Please excuse my mother doing dishes in the background.

Literature Analysis #4

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

This was a collaborative experience and the other parts of this book analysis can be found on these blogs:
Taylor Duguran
Hannah Savaso
Ian Steller
Bailey Wineman
Annette Sousa
Meghan Martella

Summary: In the opening chapter we are introduced to Pip who has suffered a great loss of almost all of his immediate family except for his sister. He is in the care of his sister and her husband. Pip has a strange encounter with a ragged and frightening man who we later learn is the escaped convict Magwitch who threatens him with brutal death if he doesn't bring him the supplies he asked for by the next day. Pip is naïve and believes this scary man and returns home with the intentions to keep this a secret and meet with the man again.  Pip is forced into going to the home of Miss Havisham who is wealthy and quite strange. She was abandoned at the alter and keeps everything in her house the same as well as wearing an old wedding dress everywhere she goes. Here he meets Estella who he immediately falls for even though she is being trained by Miss Havisham to break the hearts of young men. Pip is an apprentice to his brother-in-law Joe until one day he receives the news from a lawyer named Jaggers that he has been left a large amount of money and takes off the London to learn to be a gentleman. Here Pip befriends Herbert and Wemmick. They lead a rather careless life until Pip must return for the funeral of his sister. Years later Magwitch reappears in Pip's life and reveals he is the source of Pip's sudden fortune prompting Pip to feel a sort of loyalty for him and try to help him escape London and the police who are after him. Compeyson, Magwitch's old partner alerts the police of their plan and is drowned in the river during an altercation with Magwitch who is in turn sentenced to death and Pip loses his fortune. Years after this Pip returns to Satis House (the old home of Miss Havisham) and sees Estella there. She is no longer married and has a new much softer demeanor about her. She and Pip leave hand in hand and Pip believes they will be together long after.

Theme: The theme of Great Expectations is the loss of innocence and the coming of age. Pip must learn to trust his inner conscience when it comes to the decisions he makes and who he trusts. He is often filled with guilt for the trouble he gets in to and ultimately has to learn o accept responsibility and himself. As he comes in to his own his outlook shifts and evolves with him.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

My version of Hell would look rather ordinary such as the world we live in now. But perhaps not inhabited by anyone else but myself. There wouldn't be any real instruments of torture such as in Dantes Inferno. Even in a normal place I believe one can be in Hell because  the mind can do dangerous things to you. Living in the space Satre set up, just a regular space with furniture but in endless day with those you can't stand would certainly be torturous.


Hell could most certainly be described as too much of anything without a break. Constant repetition can be maddening. I believe we use variety in life as a way to break up feelings and preferences to avoid getting sucked into a routine because that would cause life to become dull and upsetting.

Satre describes the setting through dialogue mainly through the characters making blunt observations of their surroundings. Being in a constant state of awareness and in constant light would be severely unpleasant especially if you were stuck in one specific place for a long time. Garcin is shocked at this new information that he will be stuck like this and tries to find loopholes and bangs against the door trying to get the attention of Valet.

Both Plato and Sartre create a place where people are trapped and alone with their thoughts. Plato's characters were trapped inside without ever being let out and Sartre´s are now trapped inside after having been on the outside.

Summary #1 Great Expectations: Introduction

In the opening chapter we are introduced to Pip who seems to have suffered a great loss of almost all of his immediate family accept for his sister. He is in the care of his sister and her husband. Pip has a strange encounter with a ragged and frightening man who threatens him with brutal death if he doesn't bring him the supplies he asked for by the next day. Pip is naïve and believes this scary man and returns home with the intentions to keep this a secret and meet with the man again.

Allegory Sonnet

While in the cave we all might be
there are so many things we'll never do.
So many things still left to see
the choice to leave up to me up to you.

To see the sights you thought you'd see never,
the blinding light of burning truth.
It's the binding shackles you'll have to sever,
the ones placed upon you in ignorant youth.

Some of us will chose to stay here in darkness.
The joys of enlightenment they'll never know.
You must decide to think clear and with sharpness.
Past the shadows out of the cave we will go.

Break the chains and exit with glory,
finally the chance to write your own story.

BRAIN WITH 14(?) LEGS

My group has decided to read at our own pace every night and update our blogs with our progress.
This way we can feel free to go to each other at any time with new insight or questions.

We also each have our own job to post about. For example I'm the summarizer and will give a general synopsis every time I read to help my fellow members with our understanding of the text.

And since I didn't mention it yet, my group is reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

What I Would Have Posted to the MindMap

Who are your favorite contemporary writers and thinkers?
"Why should we prefer our literature to be about things that didn’t happen? Wouldn’t, say, Steven Pinker be a good candidate for the literature prize?"  (   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/books/review/richard-dawkins-by-the-book.html?smid=pl-share )

Seven reasons why we should read about things that didn't happen:  
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Brennan2.html

Who Is Steven Pinker?
Apparently Harvard professor of psychology...
http://stevenpinker.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

1. According to Socrates, what does the Allegory of the Cave represent?
The sheltered or unenlightened world people are accustomed to living in.

 2. What are the key elements in the imagery used in the allegory?
The prisoners, the chains, the fire, and the darkness and shadows of the enclosed space.

3. What are some things the allegory suggests about the process of enlightenment or education?
People won't be able to handle the amount of information at their disposal at first, but could eventually adapt to "the glare".

4. What do the imagery of "shackles" and the "cave" suggest about the perspective of the cave dwellers or prisoners?
The cave is the small amount that the prisoners actually know or understand and the shackles are what prevent them from expanding their knowledge.

5. In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?
Insecurity can be a shackle to the mind. Self-doubt and a fear of inadequacy hinders growth in many aspects of a persons life.

6. Compare the perspective of the freed prisoner with the cave prisoners?
The freed prisoner's have been given the opportunity to reach enlightenment and see the world for what it can be and would see more value in taking risk than the cave prisoners who would be more prone to stay sheltered and only view the "shadows".

7. According to the allegory, lack of clarity or intellectual confusion can occur in two distinct ways or contexts. What are they?
ignorance and apathy? (I need more clarification on this question)

8. According to the allegory, how do cave prisoners get free? What does this suggest about intellectual freedom?
Open-mindedness is the key to freedom for the prisoners. You have to want the freedom to get it. Once they are willing to be enlightened then they will finally gain their intellectual freedom.

9. The allegory presupposes that there is a distinction between appearances and reality. Do you agree? Why or why not?
I agree because we have all heard the line "not everything is as it seems" and that makes perfect sense to me. A smiling face does not make a happy person and just because a coffee shop advertises the "World's Best Coffee" doesn't mean you aren't drinking complete crap. Appearances can often just be assumptions or masks to what the underlying reality is.

10. If Socrates is incorrect in his assumption that there is a distinction between reality and appearances, what are the two alternative metaphysical assumptions?
Everyone's reality could be different.

We Hang Together

• interdependence- "Underlying key to any strategic alliance, partnership, or interpersonal collaboration."
• coke/pepsi are interdependent by being constantly aware of their competitor
• they must make decisions by monitoring the other company
• inter-organizational relations in both competition and collaboration (global marketing, converging tastes)
• inter-firm relationships provide market awareness and cost discipline.
• "strategic alliance"
• there's a difference between fighting the absence of a resource and trying to attract it
• Americans focus on the "go it alone" method which does not work

Sonnet Troubles

I'm having trouble choosing a sonnet because my favorite poet has so many, here are some favorites:
(courtesy of poemhunter.com and blackcatpoems.com)

One for my big question:
Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,
For weary centuries despised, oppressed,
Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place
In the great life line of the Christian West;
And in the Black Land disinherited,
Robbed in the ancient country of its birth,
My heart grows sick with hate, becomes as lead,
For this my race that has no home on earth.
Then from the dark depths of my soul I cry
To the avenging angel to consume
The white man's world of wonders utterly:
Let it be swallowed up in earth's vast womb,
Or upward roll as sacrificial smoke
To liberate my people from its yoke! 
-Claude McKay 

And these just for fun:          

Sonnet LXVI: I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Hamlet Remix

Sonnet Notes

• "sonnetto" means little song in Italian
• two styles of sonnets
• Petrarch (Italian style)
• Shakespearean Style
• 14 lines
• creative, outside the box
• Petrarch (octane/sestet)
• Shakespearean (3 quatrains followed by a couplet)

Hamlet and Performative Utterance

Using what you've learned about Hamlet the character and Hamlet the play, evaluate the impact of performative utterance on Hamlet and your own sense of self. How does the way Hamlet speaks constitute action in itself? How does it impact the characters and the plot? How does this compare with your own "self-overhearing"? How does the way you reflect on your experience create a sense of memory, expectation, and real-world results? Use the text, your reading/lecture notes, the experience of memorizing the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, de Boer's paper (and Bloom's/Austin's theoretical frameworks), and the many online and offline discussions we've had.

"To be or not to be, that is the question," is perhaps one of the most famous lines in literary history. This line from Act III of Shakespeare's Hamlet is also a wonderful example of performative utterance. In the scene of this famous soliloquy Hamlet is speaking aloud to himself and working through some of the more difficult thoughts in his mind. Performative utterance allows characters as well as audience members to further understand themselves and the situations they are facing. This is something we ourselves due on a daily basis.  Performative utterance in Hamlet helps Hamlet's words to constitute action, impacts the characters and plot, and uses "self-overhearing" as a way for the characters to reinforce their decisions and come to terms with their emotions.


Hamlet is famous for his lengthy soliloquies. He often goes off on long tangents in which in his own self-deprecating way he is able to make his decisions known to himself and to the audience. By saying aloud that "O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!" Hamlet's words have become his final decision that he will in fact act out in revenge against Claudius. Every time Hamlet says the words aloud he becomes more resolved within his own mind that he will in fact strike out. In this way performative utterance becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that we have all attempted at some point. The more you tell yourself that you are capable of passing that big midterm the more likely it is to happen.


Often times, our words that we say aloud to ourselves or even just in our heads can influence the decisions we make. The plot of Hamlet was influenced by performative utterance. If a character would realize something during a private moment, they would almost immediately take action on it. This was clear in Lord Polonius' musings of Hamlet being in love with his daughter. Once this was reinforced in his mind he went straight to the King and worked out a plan to prove himself correct. When we think something is dangerous or worthwhile we often repeat it to ourselves to reinforce our feelings on it before we decide how to act.


Self-overhearing was a common form of performative utterance used. "To be or not to be" allowed Hamlet to give voice to some of his darker thoughts that had been plaguing his mind. When we overhear ourselves speaking we gain a new perspective on our own thoughts and emotions. We are given the opportunity to listen to what we are thinking and it allows us to reinforce and opinion or even a decision we are making. Hamlet often used self-over hearing to work through his decisions and question his existence. While memorizing "To be or not to be" I used self-overhearing as a way to enhance my memorization. I would read the words and say them out loud not only to help myself remember them but also to increase my comprehension of the soliloquy.


Self-overhearing also greatly enhances a person's ability to understand their emotions. Hamlet had some very morbid thoughts and upon saying them out loud was able to organize them in a sense. I often use this method to sort through my own personal issues and feelings. If I begin to feel increasingly stressed sometimes I stop myself and ask aloud "What's bothering me?" and then proceed to list off my major troubles. By doing this I am able to feel as if I have more of a handle on any situation and more capable of working through it.

Performative utterance played a great role in Hamlet. The musings and inner thoughts of the characters reinforced their motivations for their actions to themselves as well as to the audience. Performative utterance can help to move the plot forward as well as add emotional depth to each of the characters.