Participation

Throughout the semester in 56B, I think that although I did not answer many questions in class discussions, I contributed to the discussions that were going on within the group. When it came to the readings, I made sure that I was up-to-date with what was assigned per class, and ready to give input in class. For the assigned notes and lectures, I watched every lecture video and article attached to the “watch before class” section because I knew that many of the concepts being presented in the videos were going to be brought up in class. My group stressed class attendance throughout the semester, and when we spoke in small groups I felt more comfortable talking around them to get my points and relate them to the class.

I believe that my participation with A Clockwork Orange was the strongest in the semester, and I contributed many different key points from this novel.  What was not visible through the class and for mini-exams was that my group came readily prepared in sharing different key points from class discussions and notes. In and out of class, my group was engaged in note organizing to be well informed for exams and class discussions. For these reasons, I think that my participation grade for the semester would be a B.

Diablo 3

• What is the significance of your hero?

My hero in-class was a Barbarian, and I also play a Crusader. The barbarian is the prime example of brute force with an array of area-of-effect (AoE) attacks that stun and destroy everybody nearby. A crusader’s role is mainly to be a “tank” and take all the damage. In terms of aesthetics, the crusader resembles a knight.

• Did you listen to the Lore, Quests, Journals, and townspeople? What did you discover?

Blizzard has a really strong sense with incorporating a good amount of lore into their games, and I think that in the case of Diablo 3 it appeals to a wide audience. My group discovered that Leah was looking for her uncle in the beginning part of the game.

• What are the rules of this game — that you can discover so far?

The game is pretty much about surviving as I completed the quests given from the townspeople. I’ve discovered that working in a group is quicker and more advantageous than working alone.

• At what level did you conclude the play? How much money has your hero found?

The group ended at around level 9, and we each had around 9,000 coins.

• What’s in the inventory?

The inventory consists of different pieces of armor and potions. Some of the stuff I don’t really need, and other things are important to switch out when adjusting to different groups and bosses.

• Was anything sold, repaired, or bought with the merchant?

I didn’t really talk to the merchants too much during in-class play, but when I actually play the game and pick up items that don’t necessarily fit my class, going to the vendors becomes a task that has to be done every time I reach the town.

• What skills are available to your hero?

Barbarians had an array of skills (even at level 9) and as I leveled I gained more abilities and more powerful enhancements to what I had. I used many different AoE attacks.

• How can this kind of gaming “save the world”?

Gaming can save the world because it gives people the chance to communicate and solve problems; moreover, in solving those problems the gamers are guaranteed an epic adventure. My group’s adventure was very fun, and getting to kill the skeleton king was an achievement that not many people did in the class. When we work together, it shows how much more progress we can achieve, as opposed to this screenshot, where sometimes working alone can be extremely difficult.

• How can gaming represent narrative (or not)?

Gaming represents narrative because as I went through the storyline, I saw that the character is senselessly stuck at some points without going through the quest line. For example, for my group to be able to continue on, we had to talk to Leah to continue the quest to find her uncle. We are participating in the part and thus become immersed in the story.

An insight into Nox

Nox is a story that involves the author Anne Carson talking about her brother that has passed away. She talks about her relationship to her brother Michael before his death, and goes through to the events after his death. The right side of the story gives the info about Michael, while the left side runs definitions from a poem in the beginning of the story. The background contains many different photos, post stamps, notes, and paintings that can correlate with the story or be seen individually. The story itself shows different photos and letters that Carson received from her brother over the years, and it gives the reader insight to who Michael was, and through interactions with his wife, Carson’s text is seen as a running notepad of her thoughts after his death. Nox as an elegy can be seen as very poetic, and strays away from being a novel, biography, or a narrative; instead, it combines all of these factors to create something that is unique in its presentation.

Nox is not a novel because of the form it takes as well as because of the organization of the story. The story is put together in a pamphlet style with no back pages, and the reader is not able to take it with him/her on a windy day in the park. Nox also strays away from being a novel because even though physically it looks like a book, it comes in a box–henceforth changing the “codex-style” of the novel. Within the pages, the plot is spread between different pages with an emphasis on negative space and positioning of notes and text on pages. While novels are usually read front-to-back, Nox can be started by either reading the left side only, starting anywhere on the right side of the text, or just the right side linearly.

A narrative can be seen within Nox, but Nox does not have all the characteristics to be classified as a narrative. While the story has characters and a loose plot, Nox can be read in any order. In this sense, it can also be seen as a biography of Michael’s life, for it has many different aspects of his personality, but Nox does not chronicle the different events that happened in his life. Instead, the story focuses on who Michael was as Carson knew him and the experiences Carson had upon receiving the news. Instead of the biography type of writing, Nox is more of an elegy that describes Michael’s life.

The different types of notes and letters being presented briefly shift the narrator. Even though the numbered sections are written by Carson, many different notes are from other people. For example, a note from Michael or a conversation with his mom briefly has him speaking, and thus postmodern elements of the fragmentation of the narrative are seen. The style that Nox is written in amalgamates all of the former–the narrative, the novel, and the biography–into a poetic text that captures different snippets of Michael’s life as Carson tries to piece together who her brother really was.

Recitation: Summer in the City

Summer in the City

This poem utilizes the blackout method in Michael Cunningham’s The Hours

New York City.

A June morning so fine, she delays.

New York always produces a few summer mornings like this;

Mornings endless.

West Tenth Street, what a thrill, what a shock,

isn’t it beautiful?

it was late June, she could do what she liked.

Prone to romance, along Fifth Avenue this love feels vast;

Determined, she stands at Eighth Street, waiting for the light.

twenty-five years; the light changes.

Manhattan;

she loves the world, and

she knows other people must love it too,

though no one speaks reasons.

we want to live playing love,

for Washington Square Park, the beauties of the world

arrive in New York on a Saturday.

.

A Clockwork Orange Class Notes – How do the world’s events show up in this novel? (1920 – 1970)

• Burgess satirizes behaviorism with his portrayal of the fictional Ludovico’s Technique. (B.F. Skinner’s experiments, 1950’s and 60’s)
• Burgess took all of the things he didn’t like from British and Soviet Union governments, along with critiques about the American police force, and puts them all into this one dystopian government.
• The socialistic British welfare state was too willing to sacrifice individual liberty in favor of social stability.
• He despised American popular culture for fostering homogeneity, passivity, and apathy. He regarded American law enforcement as hopelessly corrupt and violent, referring to it as “an alternative criminal body.”
• Space Race between Russia and the US, Cuban missile crisis.
• Pg. 69 – “And then I was forced to watch a viddy a most nasty film about Japanese torture. It was the 1939 – 45 War . . .“
• Part 1, Chapter 4: “They don’t go into the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? . . . Badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?”
• Glossary is indicative of the culture of that era, with most words referring to violence or terror/sex/alcohol. Words he replaced include: frightened, club, noise, policeman, drunk, gang violence, rape, etc.

Team Fish N’ Chips:

http://barrientez56britlit.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/a-clockwork-orange-class-notes-how-do-the-worlds-events-show-up-in-this-novel-1920-1970/

A Clockwork Orange Class Notes – How do the world’s events show up in this novel? (1920 – 1970)

A Clockwork Orange Class Notes – How do the world’s events show up in this novel? (1920 – 1970)

A Clockwork Orange Class Notes – How do the world’s events show up in this novel? (1920 – 1970)

Recitation 3: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Recitation 2: “My Last Duchess”

Jane Eyre and Colonialism

As the novel Jane Eyre progresses, the second half adapts to contain more national pride and colonialism. One of the most blatant examples of colonialism was the incorporation of Bertha in the novel. Bertha was introduced at the first attempted wedding between Rochester and Jane Eyre. Once Bertha is introduced, the concept of her and her introduction were in itself in relation and intertwined with the idealism of colonialism. Rochester’s first description of Bertha includes defining her as “mad, and [coming] of a mad family” (249), in his attempt for vindication for himself. He defends himself from peoples’ opinions on his marriage, and he seeks to fully vindicate himself by inviting everybody to come see his wife (249).

When Jane first sees Bertha, she is described as a beast or a human being by Jane herself, and everybody in the room witnesses the savagery that Jane depicted her to have. Everybody in the room at this point feels rather threatened, and Mr. Rochester is to a certain extent justified due to Bertha’s different appearance. Her different hair and more aggressive attitude (who wouldn’t be aggressive if they were being held against their will?) reinforce the colonialist idea of savagery and the “rational man” having to take control and help the person who is being subjugated.

Jane Eyre in this section most blatantly shows commentary to the British Empire and their relation to slavery. The first part of Jane Eyre shows the growth of the character, the bildungsroman, and the second half shows the grown Jane through her experiences with other people, most notable Rochester and the interactions that they have with Bertha. The sense of colonialism and national pride that Jane has is a direct result of the growing naval fleet and conquering of different areas and obtaining of different peoples.

Wuthering Heights review

Last Friday’s play Wuthering Heights was an interesting rendition of the traditional novel, and was directed and adapted for the stage by the director Kirsten Brandt. Some of the different aspects that she incorporated were the use of the stage and placement of her characters, as well as the differences that she mentioned beforehand that supposedly enhanced the overall understanding of the play.

It was pretty interesting to see a play being done in a workshop, and Brandt’s use of spatial arrangement was a key component through the play. Keeping all of the characters near each other and having the actors and actresses echo what the “on-stage” characters were saying improved the overall understand of how gothic Emily Brontë’s novel was, and one of the more memorable moments was when everybody sighed upon a death. On the continuation of spatial arrangement, some characters even went into the audience seating and yelled to obtain a better effect on the chaos that erupted towards the middle and end of the novel: they would yell during arguments to the people on stage.

Another interesting concept presented beforehand was that the play was not necessarily going to be linear, and that Brandt was also going to incorporate different works of Emily and Charlotte Brontë. Poems and other stories actually enhanced the Victorian feeling of Wuthering Heights because it gave the audience an enhanced feeling of the gothic. Charlotte and Emily Brontë were both excellent writers, and melding their work by using Charlotte Brontë’s work to augment the play was especially useful when moving through scenes or time in the play. As many different gothic elements were presented, the feeling of the ghostly presence wasn’t fully present; instead, the play had more of an ominous feel when the ghost should have been more present. The student actors did an amazing job in their portrayal, and Brandt’s directing and spatial arrangement made Wuthering Heights a successful San José State play.