Persi's Blog

What character do you find most interesting in the story? Why? Point to specific parts of the text to discuss this. While reading this bizarre story, I found the grandmother in the first chapter to be the most interesting. Her thought process was very odd, and slightly graphic. For example, before they go on their road trip, she decides to bring along her cat Pitty Sing: “She didn’t intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for 3 days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush up against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself.” You can see why the author’s writing has been described as grotesque and apocalyptic. Another example is when her outfit is described. “Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” It seems like heav...

Q: In what ways can you challenge yourself to be a better group member in a group project? Although I tried to be the best group member I could have been, there are some things I would have liked to change. To start off with, I wish I would have better informed my interviewee of how the interview would be. I hadn’t told her that we would record and film it, and it was planned a bit late. When it came to the actual interview, she was slightly irritated with me for withholding the information mentioned above. I think I could have had more questions and backup questions prepared, as our interview went by pretty fast, Q: How did you handle the difficulty of working in a group? I have to say, my group was a pretty good group, and our class had it together on this project. It wasn’t super difficult, and we all did equal amounts of work by bringing our strong suits together. I had a willing interviewee, Brooks was able to provide a microphone and video camera, and Francesco helped wi...

In what ways did Marjane find it difficult to fit back into Iranian society? In what ways did this surprise you (or not surprise you)? When Marjane decides to leave Austria, it’s because she feels as though she has no one there, and she just misses her family. But it’s been a long time, and when she firsts arrives in the airport, she’s hit hard with how different and oppressive she forgot it was. Her father doesn’t recognize her and her mother barely does. ‘Marjane: “Dad!” Mom: “Ebi! Look! It’s Marji!” Dad: “Marj…?”’(pg. 246) She quickly realizes that not much has changed except for herself. Her relatives visit her for weeks while she feeds off the attention, and deep down she feels horrible about this. She’s especially guilty about how safe and free her life was in Austria, and how she only left because she felt as though she had given up there.

The book that I chose for ELA was Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick, who also wrote Silver Lining’s Playbook. The name of the book is taken from a quote it references from the novel the Picture of Dorian Gray. It focuses on our main character, Nanette O’Hare-starting off with her being a regular 17 year old in the end of her junior year. Her favorite teacher is Mr. Graves, who gives her a book that he read when he was her age. This book is called the Bubblegum Reaper. It’s about a boy named Wrigley who is also in high school. He always talks about “quitting”, but we and the other characters never learn what it is he wants to quit. He develops a crush on a twin after seeing her tell her secrets to a turtle, who is later named Unproductive Ted, yet he doesn’t know which of the twins she is because they are so similar, yet he can’t say anything to either of them out of fear of the other’s secrets being exposed. Nanette gets in touch with the author, an old man named Booker who wro...

My favorite book that we read this year was definitely the Great Gatsby. It’s a novel suspended in time, and opens a portal to the Golden Age that’s magical. It’s a bit fantastical and exaggerated, but that’s my favorite part of  it. It’s an odd bird of a book-it’s story seems like an attempt at a telling of regular life, yet a very unrealistic one. My least favorite book was probably the Merchant of Venice. Don’t get me wrong, I do really like Shakespeare, I just felt like some of his other plays are much more fun to read. Also, it’s a bit of a gory play to read. Not as bad by far as some of his other works, but everything surrounding the pound of flesh just makes me uncomfortable. Next year can we read Twelfth Night instead?

With every well written book comes character development. Jay Gatsby shows quite a bit of this, although it’s not him changing, rather, it’s Nick’s and our changing perspective on Gatsby. In the beginning of the book, Gatsby is a mystery to be found out. Not only does Nick not know him, it doesn’t seem like anyone else does either. At his lavish party, Nick talks to the host for a bit without even realizing who it is. In the beginning, his character is skewed. We don’t know much about him and soon come to realize most of it is false. “What part of the Midwest? I inquired casually. “San Francisco.” As the story continues, however, we learn the truth about his past. This helps us to understand why Gatsby does what he does. Once Gatsby and Daisy finally reunite, we can see that she is a big reason for most of his life choices and it becomes clear how obsessed he has been with her.  

The play that my group is reading is Henry V, which is a historical play. This play primarily focuses on the story of Henry V and the events of the Hundred Years War. Historical plays primarily focus on the monarchs and royal families of England. Because these plays can be dramatized, there can be problems with the authenticity of characters and plots. Although Shakespeare loved history, he could make his plays more dramatic then the actual events had been. He also sometimes mis-portrayed characters, leading us to have incorrect histories on them. It is interesting, though, that despite the historical misconceptions made by Shakespeare’s history plays, we continue to believe them more than actual history.

Me and Angela worked on an essay that explored the reasoning behind Portia and Nerissa dressing up as men. Our idea was that Portia was actually the most powerful character in the play. I think we would have gone into more detail about Jessica and Nerissa and write our essay with more key points and contextual evidence. It was really fun to just sit down and write an essay, and I promise I’m not being sarcastic there. I also would have put more detail into our presentation. We gave a slideshow but I think we could have gone more in depth with it. All in all, the project was surprisingly fun.