My Story

  There was a boy named Johnny, he was 12 years old and lived a pretty normal life. He went to school, had friends, and his family was pretty wealthy. He had a father, named Edison, a step mom, named Marie , and 2 sisters. There really wasn’t anything important when it came to their family. Except for one thing, he was a spoiled brat. He would beg and cry for the stuff he wanted, he would get mad whenever he didn’t get the stuff, but he would only get mad at his step mom for no reason. It’s like if he was her boss and she would do what ever he said. Johnny wasn’t really thankful of the things he had received and his step mom loved him no matter how disrespectful he was towards her. He thought the only reason she was nice was because she was trying to look good in front of Johnny’s dad. When ever Johnny came back from school he would always yell for his step mom to make him some of his lunch, and if he didn’t like it then he wound throw it away! Johnny had all the toys and games he wanted, yet he was still ungrateful and thought there’s was always more for him. But there was one particular day that would have changed Johnny’s life forever.  His mom was out doing some shopping when as she was coming back home she had gotten into a car very bad car accident and died. During that time Johnny was still at school and no one in their family had found out yet. So when Johnny got home he did the usual, call for his mom and waited till she got to him. But that time she never came to him. His father had heard him and went up to him to tell him the bad news. Once his dad told him what happened, Johnny felt a little heart broken, even though she had passed Johnny was being his own self like usual and said “wow, who’s going to make my food now?” At that point his father had slapped him in the face and grounded him, finally disciplining him for once. The sad part was that Johnny never learned from that, he never learned to cherish life and how important it was.

Literature Analysis

The book that my literature analysis will be based off of is The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. The plot of this story is based around a boy named Ponyboy Curtis and his brothers Darry and sodapop, they were part of a low end group called greasers. During their life time wasn’t easy, and they had a rival group called the Socs, a group of wealthy, privileged boys who would mess with the greasers a lot. The theme of this book is based around the greasers and socs fighting each other. They later learn that the gap between class should not get in the way of how they feel about each other. When reading I don’t recall them taking about being in school. Ponyboy’s daily routine was pretty normal, He would usually get up, eat breakfast and spend time with his gang. There was no meditation or anything like that involved. At a point he wouldn’t even wake up in his home because of how he ran away to an abandoned church with his friend Johnny. Something that helped me understand the book was the slang they used, it was a mix of some gang type stuff and 60s way of speaking, also the way they described the clothes helped too. And you could get a good understanding of where they were based on how the narrator described it. What also helped was the dialogue, and a lot of it had to do with what Ponyboy was thinking.

The thing that drew me to this book was watching a bit of the movie a long time ago, I wanted to read more about what happened because of the nostalgia. I kept reading because every time something new happened and I just wanted to know what was going to happen next. If a story seems really interesting or makes me think more about it then I would want to read more.

An example of direct characterization was Ponyboy, that is pretty obvious, and another was Johnny because of how many times he was mentioned in the story. Examples of indirect characterization was Cherry and Sodapop for the same reason, they weren’t described/talked about as much as other people in the book,their characters were pretty self explained. The protagonist was pretty much static, he really didn’t change much around the story. And he was also round, wouldn’t really confuse or surprise you every now and then. A person in that book that was really well described was Johnny, the way they explained how he lived at home and how his face always looked best up and that he was pretty poor, also that his parents were abusive and would neglect him.

Here’s what I learned today

I didn’t really learn anything important today, since we were just working on our literature analysis for 3 days straight. But there was one thing that stood out, Dr Preston trusts us when it comes to working for a long period of time by ourselves. He trusted us to work on our stuff while he met with kids from the class. I think that is the only thing that really mattered when it came to learning something.

Literature Analysis: A Work In Progress

So far the only thing I have done is post what book I’m going to be reading. I haven’t done that much reading, if anything like 2 pages. The book I’m going to be reading is The Outsiders, and that’s it. I would have done more reading but I kept doing work from other classes.

Comparing Notes

There wasn’t much comparing yesterday since there was a sub we just did our work. One thing we were comparing though was the journal. The rest of the time was just us doing our own work. If anything we were just comparing our thoughts on how to do the journal/blog.

The Week In Review

What most of this week had to with was about literature. First we learned about the importance of a essay and that school made us think that they suck. We then learned about what makes a story good and built up. Later we read a story that was an example of that mountain thing we talked about that makes a story good.

The Plot Thickens

Do you like action? Then you’ll love stories that are driven by the plot. Here are the key ingredients to a good plot. First of all the story needs an exposition, the part that gives you a little of the information. Then there’s the inciting incident, where the story tries to hook the reader and get their attention. This counts as the rising action because it leads to the climax. The climax is the part of the story that is most interesting and important. Next is the falling action, where it is time of discovery, everything slows down. At last there’s the resolution, after everything has happened and the reader knows what is going on and what happened. Those are the main ingredients to a good story, the rest has to do with the story itself.

The Making of an Essay

The most I could say about making an essay is that it wasn’t boring. Yes it was a little time consuming but not really hard at all. What made it not boring was that I got to explain everything I thought about the topic of the essay. I just kept typing and typing because of the things I wanted to say. It has been a while since I have written an essay so I did start a little off, but that was it.

I Am GSD

So far I think that I have done my work. Not just this week but since school has started. Well the only thing I haven’t posted was this post that I am writing, but that has its own reason. Everything else I have done is finished and all my work is up to date.

Writing About Life And Death

The question is if I think Katha Upanishad qualifies as an allegory. Personally, I do think that the story qualifies as an allegory. There are a few reasons why I think that it is an allegory and so I will explain. An allegory is basically a story that has a hidden meaning to it.

The reason I think Katha Upanishad is considered a allegory is kind of obvious. In Katha Upanishad,  a boy named Nachiketa meets Yama after being sacrificed by his father. Yama is represented as death, but not death itself. In this story, death is described as someone not something. Nachiketa is given three boons by Yama, Nachiketa then asks 2 simple questions. But on his 3rd question he asks about death, Yama tries to tell him that it's not a question he should ask, but he does it anyways.

Yama becomes impressed that explaining death to him did not throw him off at all. But when Yama explains death to Nachiketa, he explains it in a way that explains the things about death but not death in general. What the story doesn't tell you that makes it an allegory is that we can overcome death. We could overcome death by understanding it. Death could also teach us many lessons, and to not take our life for granted. It also teaches us that we should not be overly attached to something.

So that is why I think Katha Upanishad qualifies as an allegory. The story tells you about many things about death but not death itself. And with that there are meanings to what death teaches you.