New Chapter

Chapter 4 is up. Click the Charlotte link at the top of the page. I also got rid of some unneeded fluff on the right side, to give the blog a less chaotic look.

Stones of Fate

Stones of Fate is a game designed by some of the people I game with Saturday mornings. They need donations and offer rewards for their backers. It's a pretty fun strategy game, that is simple to play and easy to learn. For just $20 you can have a copy of the game shipped to you when it's published. Check out videos and more information on game play on the Kickstarter page. You can check out the publishing company for the game here. They could really use your support for the game.

Senior Projects and Stuff

One of my senior projects is is Charlotte and the Witch. This is the story that I'm working on. There are links to it in various places throughout my blog. (Like here for example.) It's a story of a baby that gets possessed and gains magical powers which she has no control over. She goes around doing horrible things to people and regrets every moment of it, but still has no control. Anyway, I'm still working on it, so y'all should check it out.

My other project that I'm working on is my board game entitled Prom Queen. I'm bringing it to school pretty much every day now, so if you want to play it, just ask me. I plan on getting this game published in the future, and make some money off of it. I may need some sort of art for the board and cards. I'll also need to find a way to get plastic pieces and cardboard tokens made, so that I don't have to mooch off of Risk for game pieces.

Helen Essay

Finally got it up:

Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world, and both poets understood that there were no women like her. Poe sees this as only positive, she is beautiful and pure. Poe believes that her beauty is a gift from the heavens, and by existing, she graces everyone that shares her world. H.D. on the other hand, sees this beauty as an example of what others are not, and therefore common people are upset, because they’ll never be as good as her. These two poets shape their separate views through contrasting usage of poetic devices.

The poets use the recent history of the speaker as a basis for which their speaker forms their opinion. In Poe’s poem, Helen had recently crossed seas and the people of Greece rejoice in her beauty, while in H.D.’s poem, death had occurred in the recent past. The speaker in Poe’s poem only sees the beauty that Helen’s face brings, whereas H.D.’s takes in a larger picture of war, lust, and jealousy.

The tone in each of the poems differ greatly. Poe sets his tone of optimism through his choice of comparison to all the lovely things in nature. H.D. makes his tone stand out by pointing out that everybody hates her and won’t be happy until she’s dead. Poe’s poem remains pure through focusing only on Helen’s face and hands, but H.D. details more lustful body parts, as a strategy to add corruption to the tone. In the time period this was written, a woman was not supposed to show her feet or knees, as these were seen as very sexual.

With 3 stanzas and 15 lines, these poems share a similar basic structure, but digging deeper will yield many differences in other parts of the structure. Poe’s rhyming scheme is more formal than that of H.D. in order to emphasize that Poe’s speaker is addressing a goddess while H.D.’s is addressing an evil. Poe’s rhythm is also more consistent than H.D.’s, also showing the differences in the speaker’s preparation of the announcement to Helen.

The two poets use very different strategies to get their drastically differing points across. Poe uses formalities as flattery, while H.D. relies on the outrage of the speaker to show frustration. The speakers are shown to have different opinions on the same subject through different uses of poetic devices.

BNE draft 1

There are a few characters in Brave New World that feel isolated even though people aren’t shunning them. These characters reveal new perspectives on the society of the novel. Bernard actually thinks about who he is and what he thinks. His thoughts uncover shocking features of the culture. John was raised into a completely different society, so he doesn’t understand the norms and beliefs of the society or where they came from. His presence brings sharp contrast to the story to emphasize the features and views of the society.

John simply doesn’t know what the society thinks, or how they react to changes. When he hugs his father, who was raised in a different culture, his father gets upset. This shows that the people in the society not only aren’t attached to others, but also reject this type of attachment. John’s father is very uncomfortable in this situation because he was completely unprepared for it. John wants people to open their eyes and think about what they are doing and how its wrong, but the people in the society don’t seem to mind because they were raised not to react to the ramblings of another. The fact that John cares about the people shows that the people don’t really even care about themselves.

Even though Bernard was raised in the culture of not caring about others or feeling anything but happiness, he feels unfulfilled and looks for more in life. Bernard rejects the sex and drugs that all the other people are doing, in order to better understand life and himself. Bernard has the capability to feel comfortable while looking out over the ocean by himself, while any other person in the society would quickly become bored and go do more sex and drugs. Bernard reveals that the people have become reliant on physical stimulants in order to be happy, and anybody who wasn’t was simply strange.

These two characters different personalities reveal different things about the society. Since John didn’t know how people would react, he was much more up front about the things he wanted to express. Bernard quietly questioned issues that arose around him. John’s presence emphasizes how people interact with each other and how nothing in the society is personal or heartfelt, whereas Bernard’s presence shows the problems around the individual’s own thoughts and habits.

Huxley uses alienation to express the norms and moral viewpoints of his society. He points out the differences in the features of his selected characters and the culture they are surrounded by to identify what the society believes. John the savage questions the society to attempt to change the unchangeable. Bernard questions himself to change the small corner of the world which he can make better.

Sheeple

                          This image pretty much summarizes the key points of American conditioning.

Image provided by XKCD.com under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

New Chapter

Chapter two is up and posted to the Charlotte and the Witch page. Click the tab at the top of the page to check it out.