Mike

This semester in English, I feel like I did a pretty good job.  I managed to escape with A’s on report cards and progress reports, but I feel like I should have done better on my essays.  Persuasive essay writing has never been my strong point, and I have always preferred creative writing.  That is why I am looking forward to getting to write a satire piece second sememster.  This semester I learned a lot about evil and the likes, and I learned that Jonathan Edwards was a crazy man.  His views on evil were very interesting, and some what entertaining to read simply because they were so different to how I feel about religion and judgement day and such.  I also learned that there is far more to the history of racism in this country than I thought.  I never knew that the slaves were beaten on the level that they were.  After seeing the pictures of their backs I was even more disgusted at slavery than I had been before.  After reading Huck Finn, I also saw how people treated slaves, and I was horrified.  Slavery should never even have started, let alone continued in the way it did, or at all.  For second semester I hope to improve my essay writing, especially with my thesis’.  I also want to comment more on other peoples blogs, as well as get my blogs up on time.  I just hope to improve all of my writing skills by the end of the year.

Although reading is not one of my favourite activities, satire is one of those things I do enjoy reading.  Satire just makes everything seem funny.  To someone who can’t take a joke, I can see how it would be offensive, but to someone with a good sense of humour, it should be good fun.  Satire is recognizable most of the time, but when it isn’t it only takes a little bit of effort to figure it out.  I think that it is ridiculous that the guys featured in Borat are suing, because it should be obvious that it is meant to be funny.  Yes, they were made fools of in the film, but they were fools to begin with.  All Borat did was show the rest of the country that.  Another example of not recognizing satire immediately are the articles from The Onion that we read a few weeks ago.  Although they seemed ridiculous, they don’t necessarily make one feel uncomfortable immediately, if at all, and so many of us mistook it for something real.  After thinking about it for a while, I realized that it was nothing close to real, but because Mr. Wasserman gave such a convincing story stating that they were real articles from recent news, I didn’t expect it to be satire.  My definition of satire was also off, and so now I am much better at picking and choosing between what is satire and what isn’t.

sat·ire     /ˈsætaɪ^ər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[sat-ahy^uhr] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun

After reading some of the Autobiography of Louis Hughes, I felt that slaves were very discontent, even if born into slavery.  Hughes describes the way that plantation owners would choose which slaves they wanted, and why they chose them.  I think it is horrible the way he described the “thirty-nine lashes,” and the indignified manner in which it took place.  The fact that women were stripped down to the waste and whipped is horrible, and men being completely stripped as well.  I still find it difficult to believe that anything like this could have taken place in the U.S, but the evidence is everywhere, and we shall never forget how horribly slaves were treated.  He also wrote about how owners would even check the teeth of the slaves to make sure they were in proper physical condition.  The way slaves were treated was horrible, and no one deserves to be treated in that way.

Before reading some of the slave narratives, I realized that they will be very VERY personal.  It is going to be very interesting to read these first hand accounts of how these people must have felt.  I expect that some of them will be rather depressing, although others may have a certain air of contentment.  I am not saying that anyone forced into slavery was content with life, but if that is the only lifestyle they have known then they don’t know what life is like out of slavery.  I’m sure many of them will discuss potential methods of escape, and other ideas that could possibly help slaves escape.  Finally, I expect the Underground Railroad to appear in one or two narratives.

As we progress in English, and we read more of Mark Twain’s writings, I realize more and more why he was considered such a great satirist.  Today in class we read “Letters from the Earth,” and despite many warnings from Mr. Wasserman, I didn’t find it to be very offensive.  I actually rather enjoyed reading it.  That may be because I am not personally a religous person.  I thought it was very interesting to understand his perspective on religion as he would have wanted us to.  Although I know many people who would findit to be most offensive indeed, I think that it was actually obvious that it was satire, and I’m not sure how people can mistake for something serious.  Twain’s family was afraid that the people of the world were going to mistake it for blasphemy, seeing as it is quite obviously humorous.  Some people need to go to the nearest convenience store and buy themselves a sense of humour.

Today in class, I agreed with just about everything in the piece of writing.  I certainly feel that the troops should be brought back from Iraq, and that Iraqi leaders should be left in charge.  However, just as with most things there are problems with any solution.  If we were to bring the troops back, that doesn’t solve the problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict.  No matter what happens, there will always be conflict, and nothing can change that.  There is also what can be described as a civil war in Iraq.  The Sunnis and the Shiites will always be fighting, just as they always have been.  As long as people live on this planet, people will start and continue wars.  We have been in Iraq for five years, and so far all that has happened is people have died, and the Iraqi leader has not stopped the Shiite Death Squads, because he does not want to be considered a traitor to his people.  I stand by what I have previously said, in that gradually troops should start to be pulled out because the difference is less likely to be noticed, and conflict will not be restarted (in theory).  If life were only as simple as the theories we base things on.

Satire is a form of literature that “points and laughs at things that deserve to be pointed and laughed at.”  I love reading satire, because as an older brother, making fun of my younger brother is quite a useful passtime.  It is also funny to see some of the social problems modern society has.  Something like Scary Movie isn’t considered satire because it doesn’t point out the social issues of society.  It takes several different movies, and creates spoofs of them, and then jams them all together into one.  Borat, however, is satire, because it is a film in which Sasha Baron Cohen pretends to be a reporter from Kazakhstan and travels around the United States with the purpose of pointing out social issues and then addressing them.  I thouroughly enjoy reading satire, and occasionally I will write a piece.  Satire is fun to read when it is similar to the pieces we read in class the other day with the keyboard, and also the mathematical theory piece.  Although I like Scary Movie, it really isn’t satire, and most of the ideas in it are stupid, although very funny at the same time.  I was surprised when Mr. W told us that The Darwin Awards isn’t satire, because I could have sworn that it was pointing and laughing at the stupidity of human beings.

The Jim Crow norm was to say, “Yes Ma’am,” and “No Sir,” especially to whites here in Natchez, Mississippi-Clifford Boxley

This quote relates to the part of A Lesson Before Dying in which Grant says that he is a teacher, and he teaches what the white men tell him to.  It shows that Black people were more or less under the control of the White people.  Throughout American history, this has been the theme, up until several decades ago.  Black people were forced into slavery, and African-American women were not allowed to vote, and all African-Americans were forced to sit in the back of a bus.  These were times when even the schools were seperated between races.  I have a theory as to why this is, and it is simple.  The White people did not understand by Africans had different coloured skin.  They did not understand, and so they were afraid, because all people fear what they do not understand.

The Shakespearian play that I saw was in film format.  “Romeo and Juliet,” set in modern times, with guns instead of blades was a very different adaptation of the tragedy.  This is the kind of adaptation that is considered good, because it takes the basic plotline of the original, and then combines it with a totally new idea.  The language was the same, and the characters were the same, but it was in a completely different time period, with different meanings to different phrases.  For example, the prince in the play is ruler of the city, but Prince in the film is a police officer, in charge of the police force.  It is this kind of thing that catches my eye in an adaptation.  The two families are rivals because the fathers of Romeo and Juliet run two competing businesses.  Although silly and cheesy as it is, this movie is as faithful to the book as the book itself, apart from where it is not, and gives a completely different view on the events in “Romeo and Juliet.”

When given the choice of sending more troops into Iraq and taking all of them out, the only logical option is to pull them out.  My own personal choice would probably be to pull out some troops at a time, but not all at once.  If all of the troops were taken away, the lack of a military presence may cause people to think they can get away with disobeying the new leader.  If troops were pulled out slowly, the lack of military would not be noticed so much, and when all the troops were out, people would continue as if nothing had changed.  With extra military presence, the number of troops available for deployment to other countries that may have conflicts will be lowered, thus weakening the country in general.  Many people find that the Iraq War is unnecessary, and that all of the troops should be taken out.  Even the supporters of the war think that we are going about it in the wrong fashion.  According to an official count taken by CNN,

There have been 3,078 coalition deaths, 2,839 Americans, two Australians, 120 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, six Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 32 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, two Romanians, five Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of November 8, 2006.

This seems like an awfully large number of deaths for a war that isn’t even a war.  It is simply what congress would call a “military-exercise,” much like the Vietnam War.  These deaths are unwarranted, and it is my opinion that Iraq should hold a fair election, open to all people, and once the leader is elected, America and everyone else should leave, and let the Iraqis handle Iraqi affairs.  This way everyone is happy.  The U.S is no longer losing troops, and Iraq no longer has to deal with the American intruders.