Sixties part 2

         A few years pass from the first part to the second. By then, Katie’s child is born, Brian returns from his service in the Marines, and Michael is involved in running Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign.   Michael also has lost Sarah to another political activist. 

         Sarah begins to notice that she is being unappreciated with her current partner; she demands to be treated equally, she wants to lead with him, not one step behind.  On one protest broadcasted through television, Michael sees how Sarah is being arrested while trying to speak to some journalists with microphones. 

         Michael is involved in Kennedy’s campaign, and as part of this, he is collecting signatures to bring back all the troops fighting in the Vietnam War.  While on his job, he goes to his parents’ house.  And he asks his mother if he would sign.  She tells him that his father does not agree with this.  When the father arrives, the mother agrees to sign the petition to get the troops back from the war, and she faces her husband saying that she respects him, but that she also has a say in the house which he needs to respect.

         Brian returns traumatized because of the war.  He struggles with getting back into society as a normal person.  His father allows him to drink and do what he wants because there he feels sorry that he had to go through all that trauma.  Because there is no real treatment for these people that are psychologically unstable, Brian obtains no help from society.

         Katie has brought up his child, and at one point attends a Woodstock Festival where she is to be reunited with her two brothers.  All three return home and begin to live as a family once again.

         The father throughout the whole miniseries plays the part of the society that does not accept change. He is reluctant to accept what does not go as he had first thought, and he is the reason for Katie leaving home, Michael leaving home to work for Kennedy.  The father eventually accepts and apologizes to his daughter even though he admits that it is very hard for him to do so.

         Emmet, has grown up since his father died. He has joined the revolutionary group, the Black Panthers, and is willing to fight with arms to get their rights as Americans.  While talking with Fred Hampton, he reveals to him that it is better to be peaceful than to raise arms.  While reflecting on this, he visits his father’s grave and promises to continue the fight how he fought, with peaceful protests.

         The miniseries finishes with both families, the Taylors and the Herlihys, living happily in the American society.  Although society still faces social problems, discrimination and racism, they families are at peace with themselves and accept each other.

The traditional aspect of: A Room with a View

        The movie adaptation of the novel, A Room with a View, tells the story of a young woman, Lucy Honeychurch, who meets a man, Mr. Emerson, on a trip with her cousin to Florence.  When they arrive at the place they are to stay, Charlotte, the cousin, complains that they haven't got a room with a view of the city.  Mr. Emerson's father can't help but overhear this and is quick to offer switching rooms with them, and adds that it is a must to have a room with a good view when one goes to Florence.  This is the first time we see a very "proper" action; offering to switch rooms shows that the Emersons are very traditional and provide help to both women. 

         Lucy eventually falls in love with Mr. Emerson before heading back England.  The Honeychurch household is a very proper and traditional.  They follow what is expected of their high class status, traditions and protocols. The Emersons are less strict in this manner, but nonetheless, they are proper.

         When Lucy arrives home, a sophisticated man called Cecil Vyse proposes two times to Lucy; she declines both times.  Cecil is of a higher class because he is well educated and immersed in books. Cecil’s role in the movie is to prove that such high class prestige is not fun. Lucy eventually agrees to marry Cecil.  While engaged, the Emerson’s move to a cottage near the Honeychurch household.  Because of this, we can see how Lucy will become tempted to be reunited with Mr. Emerson, but she must stick to her engagement because of traditions.  It would be a very good image for the Honeychurch family to be better associated with a higher status family.

         In contrast, Mr. Emerson's father taught his son the following: "love, and do what you will." Throughout the movie we can see that Mr. Emerson has a very different attitude to all the high class protocols and traditions.  He treats everything with respect, but his actions lie on a fine line that separates what is traditional and what isn’t. Mr. Emerson also tries to convince Lucy that she shouldn’t marry Cecil if she doesn’t really love him.

         By the end of the movie, Lucy is fed up with the traditional high class protocol, and she admits to Mr. Emerson that she is in love with her son.  Lucy breaks the marriage proposal because she feels that Cecil can’t possibly reciprocate love, and she can’t deal with that.  Lucy pursuits Mr. Emerson before they leave the neighboring house they moved in after they return from Florence.

First half of: The Sixties

            For my Advanced English course we saw the television miniseries The 60’s. The goal was to analyze discrimination throughout the chapters.  In the beginning we are presented to two families. An African-American family, the Taylors, and the Herlihys, a white family.  The first chapter had a really good exposition; we are presented both families, one struggling with civil-rights movements and obtaining the right to vote in a southern town of the United States, and the other family struggles with a son that didn’t get a football sponsorship then decides to join the marines, a daughter that sneaks out of her house to go to parties and becomes pregnant, and a son that gets straight As and gets involved with politics.

            The father, of the African-American family, is a church minister.  We see him educating his son Emmet in the ways of peaceful manifestation the way M. L. King Jr. promotes.  The son tries to convince his father that they should act violently and use force to obtain their rights, although he does this to no avail.  A few years later Emmet gets involved in a riot across his town, and his father catches him with a gun. He tells his son to hand him the gun; with the gun in his hand, police shoot him by mistake.

            In the Herlihys household, the father gets mad at the daughter for being reckless so she leaves the house for California in search of the father of the baby. She joins a hippie commune and has the baby.  The second son begins going to college after his older brother leaves for the marines, and there he has a professor who promotes student associations.  At a meeting for a protest in the college, he meets a woman called Sarah and pursuits having a relationship with her.  The son eventually has a political clash with his father and has to leave his home because he doesn’t share the same views as his father.

            We can see how discrimination is the mayor theme in the miniseries.

Poem that arose from an assignment in the Journey Journal

When Inside Wants Out


**Optional: Listen to this media, it has a sense of the atmosphere wanted to be conveyed.  Keep up with the timing with the audio. If not time, simply continue the reading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXDt_YixKDA **

0:03 With a tendency to express many emotions by reflecting on love

some type of addiction, wave, or an escape of my humanity.

Conditioning is one of the many laws of life.

As I am the last of four, sharing thoughts with myself was normal;

looking at the world around me, understanding, reasoning at young.

0:33 It’s an ultimate expression of (my) humanity.

Times never had; basically me and my imagination.

It’s all that pent up anger about the lack of courage; is conditioning.

0:49 I guess it is just a means to an end.

Thoughts can be powerful. Express good love;

as a child I was ignorant, and innocent with love.

To share smiles, a “free hugs” movement, or “free love.”

It gets me sad; sad was always happy for deep people.

Maybe we are just that, sad, but knowing happy we choose the latter.

1:24 Express of good love, a kind of warmth, like a kiss maybe.

A good glass of tipsy wine with family.

A state at which one feels perfection, philosophy and love-ophy.

This is a way to express the peace within,

when inside wants out.

My response to the Journey Journal assignment.

I have 46 journal entries and I have 3 (on the date of this post) more on my tumblr account.  I decided to continue the journey journal simply naming every entry with a number.  I’m from square one, but on the first post I put I mention that it is a continuation of what I was doing on the journal.  I do hope not to lose the habit of writing, which I guess I will be able to keep as long as I can sit down and just really be with me, myself and I for more than 4 hours, more or less. 

Have I learned or made better something of my persona? I do think I have.  Sitting down to write my last two entries on the journal made me decide on continuing the journal only.  I can write my thoughts faster, I can really post anything that comes to mind just knowing that I’m sending this out to the world, and my 40 followers, and not really bothering for what might come of my writing.  I have considered the journal to be a cathartic element, so I will keep it that way.

I have been able to go with my first thoughts pretty well throughout the assignment and I hope to be able to really fix thoughts faster than fast, seeing as it makes no real sense to “write your first thoughts” because first thoughts can sometimes be like “blue green magenta lets write other colours with a u because british and without spacing because yespurplemarronfive what is this im thinking. THE CHUPACABRA!!!”  And so on.  I believe, or I like to (believe), that first thoughts is something you work on, somewhat like being able to socialize. I’m not one to talk much, but I think I have learned much in the past years of my life.  I guess like a decade ago I would talk a max of 100 words in a day. That bad, maybe.  But I’m probably exaggerating.

About the anti-rules, I think I had a hard time with “don’t cross out.”  Although I always knew this was referring to thoughts, for example, to not cross out a complete, or part of a, thought because you thought it was ugly, or something indignant, or maybe something you just didn’t want to ever thing you would come to think of.  To not cross out what you may consider “dark thoughts.”  I believe expressing this on paper, and really organizing these thoughts no matter how bad, really helps one with getting through it.  An example would be something like suicide.  It is a fact that saying suicide helps one to really associate the gravity of the act for a person. So writing your thoughts really helps you, and you’ll be thinking a bit more on that “dark thought” a bit more, and come to peace with it in the end. (At least this was my processing, not with something like suicide though.)

Another rule I had a few encounters more than most, was the grammar; to not worry about grammar, punctuation and spelling.  I’m somewhat of a grammar-Nazi so this is a must. Sometimes...  Most times, I would cross out the word I had written wrong just to be sure I knew how to write it, and to not get lazy with writing as one might do on text messages. So, this thought relates to the crossing out. I did it on words I knew were incorrectly written.

What have I learned about myself with this assignment?
Well, one, I have been able to get back on track with how I used to do things back in high school. I would do really good assignments whenever I had time for myself, and I had motivation to write or work, or really understand all the abstracts concepts in physics, for example.  Although I am a person who really likes to have company, with one person really, I do well when I am by myself to do my work, and really find what there is to learn by doing said work.  I don’t really know how it works for some people, but this is probably a reason why I like to be with myself; I guess I can trust myself to do a great job and what is expected if I work at it alone.

PS:  This blog post could not have been written with less words, probably more though. I acknowledge that the example for the first anti-rule was a bit excessive with detail, but I do hope you get the complete idea.

PSS:  (an excerpt from my first attempt at writing this blog post.)

---Whenever I got cluttered with work, reminding myself to do the journal first helped me a lot. This would clear my head, and allow me to focus on the matters at hand. Other times, the journal worked as a friend; I would write the kind of things you keep secret to yourself.

Writing a jugular was particularly fun at times.  The atmosphere of my thoughts would get really serious, I felt that my facial expression would also change.  It felt like as if you reached a milestone for that moment.  The jugulars for me were moments of a change in attitude toward a topic one writes about.  Basically, the jugular was a somewhat spontaneous line of thought that emerged from a previous thought one had.---

Reflection on Trifles

     The drama Trifles presents us with a few themes that allow us to understand the plot.  In the action we are presented Henry Peters and his wife, Lewis Hale along with his wife, and the county attorney.  They are placed in the home of John Wright who was been murdered by his wife.  Although she denies killing him, we are presented the evidence that suggests she did.  The themes of tradition and gender roles are presented in the play.

     We see how the traditional society affects the gender roles directly.  In this period, we have men who work at farms doing all the hard work to come home to rest; the man is also the one to set the does and don’ts in the house.  Women are to keep the house clean, cook and sow.  We can immediately see that there are problems in the play when the wife of John Wright does not follow her role.  At the beginning we see dirty pots, pans and a piece of clothing that was not sown correctly.  These indicate that something is wrong with the wife. 

     We learn throughout the women in the stoiry that Mrs. Wright used to sing in a choir, but she was silenced by her husband and never sang again.  Some time later they recall that a man was selling canaries, although they did not know if Mrs. Wright bought one.  Once they find an empty bird cage, they ponder and what must have happened, and if the Wrights had a bird in the first place.   Both women conclude that they husband must have silenced the bird as he silenced his wife because he did not like peoples' singing.

    The themes of tradition and gender roles can be summed, and we can say this is discrimination, in one word.  We can see how the men treat the women as if they were inferior when they are the leading characters in the drama.  The author presents this and uses irony; the author allows the women to hide the evidence and help Mrs. Wright not be sent to jail.

Here is a link to a drama representation of the play:
--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1LGwPFeSz8