Here is what you should do for the remaining time:
Please revise, and extend, one of the blog posts you have already written on The Catcher in the Rye. These blog posts should be increased in both length, quality and depth. Remember revising is about fixing ideas and not just about putting the commas in the right place--and in order to fix ideas, it sometimes means that you must erase/edit ideas.
A couple points of clarity:
-You should type these responses and format them properly.
-They should be a little over a page, single spaced, in length (I think).
-Make sure that you sound like you--but also make sure that you are not being too casual...this is still a piece of writing that will be turned in.
-Include at least three pieces of textual support.
-They should be printed out before class on Wednesday BUT you should also post what you accomplish today in class on the blog.
The last thing to remember is this--revision is about both adding and subtracting. Revision is about making your writing better. Revision is about correcting ideas and not just about sticking the commas in the right place.
Good luck and let me know what else I can do in order to be of assistance.
Best,
AK
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I find it hard to choose just one thing to live humbly for. In fact this isn't the first time I have sat down and tried to put my thoughts into words. I believe that there are many things each of us want, and as you may know that changes with age, the people we hang out with and the time. So I think we should just try to live life to the fullest. We never know when something bad...or good will happen. Every moment leads up to the next and we can't control the outcome.
When I turned on the news this afternoon it was all circulating around the bomb scare in Portsmouth. I can imagine that after that scare the only thing the people on the bus were concerned about was getting home and going to their families. I know that if an experience like that happened to me I wouldn't spend my evening as cautiously as I had before. So what i have chosen to live humbly for is life. It may be tough at moments but what makes it worthwhile and exciting is not knowing what will come next. Sometimes the best things are the hardest to obtain, but that doesn't mean we should take the easy way.
Above is my original post, but I have decided to start fresh with this blog entry. I find it hard to just sit stll and write. Its not that I’m afriad my writing will be misunderstood, but more that I don’t know what to say. Sometimes I’ll write something but when I go back and read it, I realize that is not what I was tryng to say. So you must understand that this post was especially hard for me, however that is why I’ve decided to give it another go. I wasn’t as trilled with this blog entry when I hit send, I felt as if it wasn’t my full potential, and that it needed for thought and personality…
It is impossible not to take a fall as a human. After you have fallen you will most likely be broken by the thing that has stopped you. I learned today in class that to realize your wrong doing one must be hurt by what they have done, not to the point of death, but to the point where there spirits have been broken yet still able to be mended. In other words if you do something that you know is wrong yet you continue to do it, you will eventually lead yourself to a fork in the road where one way is reality and the other road is just a giant circle in which you continue to repeat the same wrong doings. By the time you have gotten to the fork you are unable to erase that past which means that you are left to either acknowledge your problem(s), or continue on the path of personal destruction you are already on. Fortunately I believe that Holden hasn’t taken the wrong path. I believe that Holden is approaching the fork, and is getting tired of his own poor decisions, which will help influence the road he takes towards reality. It is important that you go about after your fall at your own pace. Others around many appear to have already blossomed, but that is because they have just fallen ahead of you, and have taken the path of reality. Reality may not always be happy, but for you to be able to mend and soar you have to defeat the battles you have ignored which is the reason why you have gotten broken in the first place. There is a famous Chinese proverb that says “Failure is not falling but refusing to get up”. It will take someone else to teach you about yourself. Holden is a key character who shows he doesn’t like to be taught about himself, that is why he ignores peoples help. If he excepted help, he would have to face problems that would require …….. (what I wrote in class)
For my revised blog entry I chose to pick passages the really ‘wowed me’. Rather than rewriting mine previous one, I am going to write another on an entirely different passage.
One passage that really wowed me was when Phoebe ran across the road and Holden described that moment. “Than she ran right the hell across the street, without even looking to see if any cars were coming” (208). This really wowed me because of how many different meanings this seemingly simple sentence can take. The obvious literal meaning it could take is the fact that Phoebe ran across the road. She was mad at Holden and therefore, blinded by her rage and sadness, she ran dangerously across the road. However I think this can also take a much deeper symbolic meaning. At the beginning of the book, Holden is seen running across a road. “I don’t even know what I was running for- I guess I just felt lke it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing” (5). Holden is trying to escape the cold by running to Old Spencer’s house. The cold is a symbol for Holden’s problems and hardships so
Today in class, I learned that no matter who you are, you need to, and are going to take a fall sometime in your life. Nobody is perfect, and everybody makes mistakes. For some people, like Holden, they make a chain of mistakes that they never really recover from. Just hope that sometime in your life you meet somebody who is prepared and willing to catch you, before you hit rock bottom. We talked about the broken egg not being shattered, and how this is like Holden because all he needs is somebody to repair him. I think that he has met these people throughout his whole life, but he never really noticed. I can't blame him because who goes through life thinking of who is going to save them. I certainly don't, and Holden definitely doesn't. But what you need to do is be able to reflect back and try to remember who it is that will catch and repair you, before you have hit the bottom and shattered. Holden might have been falling for so long that he can't be repaired, but he needs somebody to try. Holden said that "People never notice anything." Is this true? Or does Holden just not notice people noticing him? Like we talked about in class, there were many opportunity's for people to catch him, but he wouldn't let them close enough to do it and if he did he would push them away when they tried. Holden always calls people morons, and he also said "All morons hate it when you call them a moron." Holden knows he himself is a moron, and this makes him hate himself even more. Whenever something bad happens too him he says that it makes him even more depressed. He is at fault for his depression and if he just opened his life up to family or friends all these bad things wouldn't happen to him. Today you also read us a poem, about how a man was stabbed and instead of blood, money poured out of him. On page 113 Holden says, "Goddamn money, it always ends up making you blue as hell." While I was writing this I was skimming my book and I happened upon this quote. It immediately made me think of the poem you read us today in class. I pictured that man dying with "Benjamin’s" pouring out of him, and how he is slowly turning blue from lack of oxygen and blood. This is a morbid thought, but it also is what Holden is talking about. When you have money, you are slowly dying, suffocating from loneliness. You look around and see all the faults in other people, instead of seeing what is wrong with yourself. Holden may not be drowning in money, but he is definitely drowning in loneliness and self pity. In a way he actually is drowning in money because his family is so rich, and by sending him to so many different schools they are suffocating his social skills, and slowly killing him. We never really learned that much about Holden’s parents, because everything we heard was tainted by Holden’s point of view. But it seems to me that they do try to help him, but eventually give up on trying to help him because he doesn’t want to help himself. Holden is incapable of fending for himself in the world. He thinks that he could go off to the west and live there by himself for awhile, but he doesn’t understand that he can’t do it. He can’t even make it a week without spending all his money and having to borrow from Phoebe. Holden has no sense of reality, because he thinks life is a game, but he has never had someone tell him that life is not a game, and you have only one life so you have to live it right. That is what I learned in class, that we have one life, and we have to live it to its full extent, and also that we have to make good friends and stay with them if we want someone to catch us.
Today in English class I learned that we are all like Holden in some way or another. We will all break and we will all hope to be caught. But unlike Holden we have to try and fix ourselves and if we’re lucky we will meet someone half way who can help us. Throughout life there will always be reasons for breaking and for hating and for giving up. If you can push past those and put yourself back together you might be even stronger than you were before. Kind of like the egg shell, you just have to remember that while it lies on the ground broken there is a bird flying away to bigger and better things. Some breaks will be worse than others and sometimes it might feel like someone is out there smashing you with a hammer but once you pull yourself back together you will most likely have learned from it and be better prepared for the next fall. Sometimes a fall is necessary. If something is wrong but nothing changes that will will continue being wrong. No one will notice or if they do they probably wouldn’t do anything about it because correcting it would be hard. But if a fall happens then we are forced to accept what went wrong and change it or else we will continue making the same mistakes over and over again. When Holden made a mistake we would ignore it and run away. If he had used those mistakes to his advantage he could have stopped after maybe the second school and would not have to sneak into his own apartment to visit his little sister. I also learned that everything ends. Something’s more quickly than we would have liked.
A passage of Catcher In The Rye that 'knocks me out' is, "I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it" (Ch. 5, pg. 38-39).
I am drawn to this passage because it shows a different side of Holden that we, the readers, have not seen before. Before this moment all we have seen of Holden is a boy who is confused, acts irrationally, and gets the axe from yet another school. In this passage we see that Holden actually cares about something, his brother. It is obvious that he loved his brother Allie and his baseball mitt is the only thing he has to remember him by. Allie’s baseball mitt acts as something that catches Holden. Not only does a baseball mitt have the physical, non-symbolic use of catching, but Holden gives it a symbolic meaning as well. Holden holds the memories of his brother inside that glove. Sometimes memories are all someone needs to be caught.
Holden relies on Allie catching him, “Every time I’d get to the end of the block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie.’ And then when I’d reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I’d thank him. Then it would start all over again as soon as I got to the next corner” (Ch. 25, pg. 198).
But Holden also remembers breaking the windows when his brother died. In class we often talk about different meanings for windows. In class we discussed how windows can mean windows into our own souls. So when Allie died Holden broke all the windows into his own soul, so he is now incapable of introspection. This also explains why Holden enjoys going into the museum. Holden explains that the museum does not change, no matter how long you leave it, if you come back to it, it is still the same. Holden also makes the point that it is the person viewing it who is different, never the displays. I believe Holden enjoys the museum. He has something to compare himself to that is unchanging. He cannot examine himself, because he broke all of his windows, so he compares himself to a building that is not changing. He can see how he has changed when he views the museum.
Chase Rosa
4-18-10
Catcher in the Rye post #1
One idea that has really caught my attention is Holden’s unwillingness to accomplish anything. When he went to Pencey prep school, he failed four out of the five classes he was taking. He never tried to get good grades and it just looked like he wanted to get out of the school. He is unable to acquire any good friends. The fencing team failed because of Holden. Holden is a character who fails to achieve anything like grades and athletics because of his lethargic behavior in life. People are incapable of catching and helping him through the tough times he endures. Ultimately, his future is going to become corrupted because of it.
The way I choose to live my life is through hard work and dedication to school and athletics. Holden’s view differs immensely to mine. This contrast is what draws me so much to his perception of life. I remember when I failed my first class at my old school; I went to get extra help every day so that I could make up work and help understand the material. Holden would just not care and store it away in his head as to say nothing to worry about. “It is all right with me if you flunk me though I am flunking everything else except English anyway”(Ch.2, Pg. 12). Holden uses an absurd excuse to say why he is ultimately failing the class. This reveals Holden as someone who tries to take the easy way out, instead of somebody who works through the difficulty. Whenever he says he is going to do something, he never does. At first, the idea somewhat humored me. As the book went on however and Holden started to make ridiculous decisions like not calling anyone when he felt depressed and when he was giving away money at clubs, it escalated to sheer annoyance. “All of the sudden, on my way out to the lobby, I got old Jane Gallagher on the brain again”(Ch. 11, Pg. 76). While he was thinking about her, he never thought about calling her. He was afraid that if someone else besides Jane was to pick up the phone that he would get caught. The only thing that will happen will be that he won’t talk to Jane and that he will get sent home to his parents! Holden is too afraid that he will finally lose and that he will finally have to do things the way that he does not want them to. When is Holden ever going to notice what he is doing and stop? To actually attempt at school and to try and accept people for whom they are. Then, he will start to become healthier in what he chooses to do with his life.
Holden is a character that is unable to be “caught” because of his inability to connect with people through speech and because of the conflicts within himself that halt him from falling. Holden throughout the book has met people who have tried to catch him. He has just strayed away from them. “I mean I could shoot the bull to Old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time”(Ch. 2, Pg. 13). Old Spencer is trying to connect with Holden while his mind is just wondering off to somewhere else. Holden is not able to take away anything from his talk with Spencer. He does not accomplish anything. At Whooton high school, Holden failed an Oral composition class. This is where he had to say a speech without digressing. He flunked it because he never tried. If he was to try, he could have gained practice on how to talk to people without the train of thought be winnowed away. In order to catch there must be something that is falling. “ What I have to do is catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff”(Ch. 22, pg 173). Holden struggles to not fall. Holden needs to fall though because he would be able to to be repaired because he would be in reach of the person that helped him. His fall shall be difficult because he must abjure his past which he has been living in. He will be able to open himself up to people so they can reach in and comfort him.
J.D. Salinger chose to reveal this idea in Holden’s narrative to show why Holden’s present life is so unsuccessful. The divulging of this purpose will than show us that Holden’s future is to be determined.
During class on thursday, I learned about different peoples opinions and thoughts on the End of April, Catcher in the Rye, and how they compare to eachother. I learned about many different ideas and what people thought of the symbolism in both of them. I also learned that everyone is going through tough times in their personal lives or in school. It was kind of like that quote or mantra that we talked about the other day in class that was something like "be kind to everyone you meet because everyone has a different struggle that they are trying to get through even though you might not know it". In class today we did a sixty second writing exercize and shared what we came up with. We also read the letter from Alma to Holden, did a sixty second writing exercize, and talked about what we thought of the letter and why she was writing it to Holden. Then everyone worked on these blog posts.
I find it hard to choose just one thing to live humbly for. In fact this isn't the first time I have sat down and tried to put my thoughts into words. I believe that there are many things each of us want, and as you may know that changes with age, the people we hang out with and the time. So I think we should just try to live life to the fullest. We never know when something bad...or good will happen. Every moment leads up to the next and we can't control the outcome.
When I turned on the news this afternoon it was all circulating around the bomb scare in Portsmouth. I can imagine that after that scare the only thing the people on the bus were concerned about was getting home and going to their families. I know that if an experience like that happened to me I wouldn't spend my evening as cautiously as I had before. So what i have chosen to live humbly for is life. It may be tough at moments but what makes it worthwhile and exciting is not knowing what will come next. Sometimes the best things are the hardest to obtain, but that doesn't mean we should take the easy way.
Above is my original post, but I have decided to start fresh with this blog entry. I find it hard to just sit stll and write. Its not that I’m afriad my writing will be misunderstood, but more that I don’t know what to say. Sometimes I’ll write something but when I go back and read it, I realize that is not what I was tryng to say. So you must understand that this post was especially hard for me, however that is why I’ve decided to give it another go. I wasn’t as trilled with this blog entry when I hit send, I felt as if it wasn’t my full potential, and that it needed for thought and personality…
What does it mean to live humbly for something? Well the definiton of Humble is
–adjective
1.
not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful.
2.
having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.: In the presence of so many world-famous writers I felt very humble.
3.
low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; lowly: of humble origin; a humble home.
4.
courteously respectful: In my humble opinion you are wrong.
5.
low in height, level, etc.; small in size: a humble member of the galaxy.
–verb (used with object)
6.
to lower in condition, importance, or dignity; abase.
7.
to destroy the independence, power, or w
So if you were to live humbly for something, it might not necessarily be the most exciting, or have the greatest impact. So to add on to what I said before maybe we should just try to live humbly for one another. Isn’t it true that one good dead leads to another. However I do think our actions should be recognized. When I think of humble I think of acting in the background. So why would that wanna make us live humbly for something it doesn’t right? So we just need to remember to not give up or give in to the easier path.
In English class 9F we have improved and engaged in discussion. We have learned to think on two levels, symbolically and literally when we were taught to look at the facts that were on the page in the years before. I believe that we are a success story and flourished at the reading, and writing and discussions we took part in throughout the year. But every great thing can never become great with a flawless background. In English class last week we had a stumble in our long road called Freshman Year of 2010. We got ahead of ourselves and did not put our complete concentration into the lesson which was a mistake, because “a genius is a person with complete concentration on one idea.” This quote is important in many ways. For me it is true I can get off topic easily, I will admit it, but when I put this quote to use it seems to really work and I appear to do better with what I am doing. When we learned this lesson the class seemed hard and unnecessary when it happened but now when I look back I realize that it was an important lesson to learn no matter how uncomfortable it was at the moment. I learned that you can break easily, but the only thing that matters is how you recover from the being broken. Things can break all the time like Holden, like a robin’s egg, like chalk and like students but it is all about how you pick your self up after the hit. You could just stay in the same cycle and go through breaking over and over again, but at one point you will be beyond cracked or chipped you will be smashed, pulverized into a dust. You need to break free after a blow and move on and recover. You need to give yourself the chance to change on your own, where people can not judge or criticize punish you for the mistakes you have made. You need to change for yourself, not other people’s harsh words or actions, because they cannot control you but they can try. And above all you have to want to change and have to be able to be brave enough to put effort towards changing and you need to understand that there is a strong chance that you are going to have to withstand another blow. Some people are here to make you stronger by breaking you down, but what they are really doing are building you up and preparing you for people who will just break you, and break you with force. To be a genius you need to have focus and be willing to try something again and again. If it is a free shot, a math problem, C bar down, memorizing a quote or just becoming a better person, to accomplish all of these thing you need to be able to concern rate. There is a moment when instead of waiting for class to be over and coasting through you look forward to class or another name for it would be the discussion of “Catcher in the Rye.” That is when you are on your way to becoming a genius in my eyes, and English 9F are well on our way of becoming just that.
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