In our literature class, we read the short story called “The Destructors”, written by Greeme Grehene. I took notes while we were reading the story and we talked about the rite of passage and the temes of it.
Afterwards, we had to answers some questions in groups. I did this with María Roggero and Milagros Montanelli.
In our literature class, we started reading a poem called “rooms”, written by Charlotte Mew. After reading it, we had to do an activity that consists in two parts. In the first part, we had to answer some questions about the previous poem, while in the second activity, we had to read a poem called “Home is So Sad” and contrast it to “Rooms” in terms of style, language and form.
Activity 1:
Activity 2:
I did it with Silvestre Braun
Today, in our literature class, Pato gave us a task: we had to answered some questions in pairs, and afterwards, watch a video. I’ve done this work with Rosario Segura and Victoria Landolfo.
In our literature class we read a story called “Tyres”, written by Adam Thorpe. Here is the analysis of it and the stages of rite of passage I wrote with Victoria Landolfo, Lola Villegas, Rosario Vago and Sybilla Correa Perkins
Analysis Setting: Macrocosm (historical-social context)
• war (dark)
Microcosm
• life in a french village
• Love relationship (clear)
(P. 404)
Key moment
• Now, they can see the war is near!
• war is really happening in front of their eyes!
Love and war get interconnected
• specularity -> he feels reflected on the body of a young boy (son of a butcher’s)
• Climax: point of no return
He finally feels involved/touched
(P. 405) -> description of the “act”
• full of emotions
• The narrator feels more alive than ever before!
=\=
Ending (p. 407)
Dead -alive
• he is alive but dead inside
• Narrator:
~ feels guilty
~ he never grew out of it
~ senseless life
~ stagnation (stillness)
• he spends the rest of his life paying for his mistakes
• Voice: a narrator telling his memories (a flash back)
• Theme:
~ never letting go
~ paying for your mistakes
~ loyalty to the girl, country
~ love for the girl and for France
~ no cutting corners
~ love vs war
~ how individuals are kind of determined by the reality of society and the content they lived in
• Tone:
~ sad / depressing
~ romantic
~ guilty / remorseful
STAGES OF RITE OF PASSAGE:
from not knowing that war was near to experiencing it.
Trespassing and dare are connected
In our literature class we read a poem called “Song” by Lady Mary Wroth. After reading it, we did an analysis and we complete a photocopy explaining what does each stanza mean. Afterwards, we saw a presentation on our teacher’s blog and we comment if we agree with that presentation or not. I wrote my comment with Rochi Segura and Fefi Marty.
Analysis:
Photocopy:
In our literature class, we started reading a poem called “Lion Heart”. After reading it, we had to do an activity in our blogs.
2) Look up words in the dictionary
CREST: Highest part of a hill
IVORY: very pale
HERALDING: a royal messenger
SQUALL: A violent gust of wind.
UNSHEATHED: To plow from a sheath, sword, knife,etc
VAULT: arched structure
TO THROB: To palpitate
BUMBOATS: A boat used in peddling provisions and small wares among vessels liying in port or offshore
RAW: exposed
3) Who is the writer?
The writer of the poem “Lion Heart” is Amanda Chong
4) Check what the merlion is. Find a photo to illustrate your post in your blog
The merlion is the lion statute, called “the Merlion Statute”, in Singapore
5) Watch the following videos and take notes to analyse the poem in detail.
I wrote my notes with Victoria Landolfo and Lola Villegas Argento
NOTES:
S1
You came out of the sea,
skin dappled scales of sunlight;
Riding crests, waves of fish in your fists.
Washed up, your gills snapped shut.
Water whipped the first breath of your lungs,
Your lips’ bud teased by morning mists.
Notes in class:
“you” personification of the Merlion (powerful symbol)
– The Merlion standing out, representing all Singaporeans
– Dappled=colorful
– Crests= “fish”
– Vocabulary in connection to see –> semantic field (sea/water)
S2
You conquered the shore, its ivory coast.
Your legs still rocked with the memory of waves.
Sinews of sand ran across your back-
Rising runes of your oceanic origins.
Your heart thumped- an animal skin drum
heralding the coming of a prince.
Notes in class:
– “Ivory coat” “Shore” “Waves” “Sand” “Oceanic”
– Although the Merlion is on land, it’s always connected to the sea
S3
In the jungle, amid rasping branches,
trees loosened their shadows to shroud you.
The prince beheld you then, a golden sheen.
Your eyes, two flickers; emerald blaze
You settled back on fluent haunches;
The squall of a beast. your roar, your call.
Notes in class:
– Now the setting is on land “jungle”
– Described as full of life (“eyes”) –> as Singapore
– The repetition of “your” emphasis the personification of the museum.
S4
In crackling boats, seeds arrived, wind-blown,
You summoned their colours to the palm
of your hand, folded them snugly into loam,
watched saplings swaddled in green,
as they sunk roots, spawned shade,
and embraced the land that embraced them.
Notes in class:
– “Boats” “seeds”
– The British arrived by boat
– Colonization
– Singapure grew a lot
– Disadvantages of colonization:
– Loss of identity, culture & freedom
S5
Centuries, by the sea’s pulmonary,
a vein throbbing humming bumboats –
your trees rise as skyscrapers.
Their ankles lost in swilling water,
as they heave themselves higher
above the mirrored surface.
Notes in class:
– Power of sea –> exonomy (trade)
– Singapour economy depends on the sea
– Singapore–> from rural to urban “skyscrapers”
S6
Remember your self: your raw lion heart,
Each beat a stony echo that washes
through ribbed vaults of buildings.
Remember your keris, iron lightning
ripping through tentacles of waves,
double-edged, curved to a point-
flung high and caught unsheathed, scattering
five stars in the red tapestry of your sky.
Notes in class:
– Renember your origins/culture/identity/who u really are
– Lets ise the sea dor its advantagea (trade) but kets feel proud of ourselves our identity! We are singapureans
– Theme:
– nationalism/strong sense of nation
– Love for your country/nature
– Colonization
– Urbanization
In literature class we had to create a post in our blog finding evidence about An Inspector Calls and quotations for our characters descriptions. Here is my work with Sybilla Correa Perkins and Ines Galmarini.
Arthur Birling:
– Tries to impress the inspector with his social status and fails.
– He is proud that he is going to be knighted. He thinks he is “Absolutely First Class”.
– He claims its one of the best nights of his life because the marriage between Gerald and Sheila will improve his business.
– He is extremely selfish, ” A man has to make his own way”, he also thinks that firing Eva Smith wasn’t a bad thing. The only thing he is worried abut is his and his family’s reputation, he doesnt learn the lesson.
Mr Sybill Birling
– Mr Sybil was a very cold woman and a snob, who cared a lot about social classes.
-She really dislikes the inspector and she even lies to him.
– She sees Sheila and Eric as children, and tries to hide their issues, like his drinking and her marriage problems.
– She admits to have judged Eva Smith before even talking to her and she saw it as her duty not to help her. She only sees people as their social class and not how they truly are.
-Mrs Sybil, like her husband still doesn’t see anything wrong in her actions and doesn’t accept the major responsability she has. “then he’d be entirely responsible – because the girl wouldn’t have come to us, an have been refused to assistance, if it hadn’t been for him”. She blames it on other people.
Eric Birling
– Eric is an akward character, with a tense realationship with his father. He is also a hard drinker.
-He supports workers like Sheila he feels that they should have better a lifestyle, “Why shouldnt they try for higher wages” he cares more about the people that their money. When he retells the story of Eva Smith he is very guilty, frustrated and he can’t believe he did such stupid thing, he says ” Oh – My God! How stupid it all is”. He actually has a sense of responsibility and he is appalled that his parents don’t.
Sheila:
– In the beginning of the book she is described as no more than a pretty face but when the inspector arrives we discover that she is not as naive and shallow as we think she is.
– She immediately shows her compassion for Eva Smith, she is full of guilt and she blames herself as “really responsable” and starts to change.
-She catches up on what the inspector is saying very rapidly, she is the first one to know that Eric is the one who got Eva pregnant. She tells her mother to “Stop, Stop! ” just as the inspector starts, so she picks the information quickly. She is also the first one to suspect that the inspector isnt real.
– When Gerald admits that he cheated on her she doesn’t get angry she acts very mature. She is a developing character because she gets smarter and matures by the end of the story.
– She is also surprised with her parents behavior,” If it didn’t end traggically, lucky for us but it might have had” she reminds them that even if it didn’t happen is still thought them a lesson.
Eva Smith
-Her parents were dead, she was in the working class and she came from outside brumley
-The Inspector says she kept a secret diary that made him understand and know about the last two years of her life.
-In act 3 the family starts to wonder if Eva Smith was real. “We’ve no proof it was the same photograph and therefore no proof it was the same girl”. Yet the final phone call, announcing that a police inspector is shortly to arrive at the Birlings’ house to investigate the suicide of a young girl, makes us realise that maybe Eva Smith did exist after all.
-Eva Smith could represent every woman of her class.
Inspector Goole
-He works very systematically; he likes to deal with “one person and one line to enquiry at a time”. His method is to confront a suspect with a piece of information and then make them talk.
-He is a figure of authority. He deals with each member of the family very firmly. He cuts through Mrs Birling’s obstructiveness.
-He seems to know and understand everything.
-He knows the history of Eva Smith and the Birlings’ involvement in it, even though she died only hours ago.
-He knows things are going to happen.
-He is obviously in a great hurry towards the end of the play. Does he knows that the real inspector is shortly going to arrive?
-His final speech is like a sermon or a politician’s. “We are responsible for eachother”, “fire and blood and anguish” that will result if they do not pay attention to what he has taught them.
-All the mystery suggests that the Inspector is not a ‘real’ person.
Gerald:
– He is an aristot his family is not over impressed by Gerald’s engagement to Sheila since the Crofts wanted more money and the Birlings wanted a nobility title
– He is not as willing as Sheila to admit his part in the girl’s death.
– He did have some genuine feeling for Daisy
– He tries to prove that “that man was not a police officer” so that the family can forgive and forget. He seems to throw his energy into “protecting” himself rather than “changing” himself (unlike Sheila)
– At the end of the play, he has not changed. Also, Sheila is unsure whether to take the back of the engagement ring.
In our literature class we had to write an essay about the poem “Passion” by Kathleen Raine with students from Senior 1. I wrote mine with Anouk Laferrer. [task]
As you can see, the essay is divided in two colours. The blues sentences are written by Anouk and the green ones by me.
Pato, our literature teacher, gave us a task. We have to make a mindmap showing Eva Smith’s relation with all the characters of the story.
Mindmap:
Moreover, we have to answer some questions from the act 2
Answers:
The mood at the dining room at the beginig of act 2 is tense. Since they were talking about Gerald’s relationship with Daisy Renton (Eva Smith), and they were unaccompanied since the inspector had left them alone to discuss their problem. Here the mood became to “stress”/more tense, since they were going to get married and Sheila discovered that Gerald had been cheating her with another woman.
They acted this way because Gerald cheated on Sheila with Daisy Renton (Eva Smith) in the summer.
Mrs Birling re-enters the room with a lot of confidence. She believes that the Inspector was going to lose time asking questions to her. We say this because Mrs Birling says “I am Mrs Birling you know. (….) we’ll be glad to tell you anything you want to know, I don’t think we can help you much…”. This quote proves that Mrs Birling is self-assured that she she is not involved in the case. However, Sheila tries to warn her she is, since Sheila could read the inspector very well. Sheila knows that the Inspector knew something about her mother in connection with Eva Smith.
Mrs. Birling’s attitude towards Eva Smith wasn’t acceptable. Since Eva came to an organization, which help specific people, and asked for financial assistance. Mrs. Birling, who is a very important member of it, used her power for the wrong. She convenced the Committee to not help this girl, because she said her name was “Mrs. Birling”. Also she said that the father of the baby is the one who almoust have all the blame and he should help the woman, he was the only one who was guilty.
(in process)
Sheila is aware of Eric’s involvement when she puts all the pieces together. As we can see, Sheila was the first who could understand the real situation and she was the onlyone. After listening the story of her mother she started to think who the father might be. She thought, Eva said this guy was a drunk and a young man who did’t have a job, she came to the organization as Mrs. Birling, and the inspector insisted that he wanted to talk with Eric. So she made a conclusion, all these things helped Sheila to realize Eric’s involvement.
She reacts in that way because of two main reasons. First, because she doesn’t believe his son was able to do such a thing. She doesn’t want to accept reality.“I don’t believe it, I won’t believe it” This quote express the feelings Mrs Birling had when she realized that her son was the father of the child of that innocent girl who suffered a lot as a result of Birling family’s actions. Secondly, because she had blamed that unknown father the hole act and when she conclud that she was talking about her own son, she was totally regret.
Everyone in the dining-room are in shock when Eric re-enters, because they started thinking the same way as Sheila.
Today, in our literature class, my group and me answered the questions (15 to 20) from the book “An Inspector Calls”. My group are Sybilla Correa Perkins, Elena Persic, Flor Claps and me. Here is our poster and the ones of my classmates!
Questions 1 to 5 Martina Ibarbia, Rosario Vago & Rosario Segura
Questions 3 to 7 Federika Marty & Silvestre Braun
Questions 6 to 10 Victoria Landolfo, Lola Argento & Ines Galmarini
Questions 12 to 17 María Roggero, Milagros Montanelli & Margarita Muller
Questions 15 to 20 My group
Questions 19 to 23 Ignacio Maestro, Benjaím Mayol, Jerónimo Leguizamon & Santiago Blasco
Questions 24 to 27 Fransisco Lusso & Otto Kreutser
