So long...farewell...

Well here I am adding on to my "how this class affected me" post! I can't believe that tomorrow is our last day of class, how the time just flew by! So, I guess in my last post I want to express how great I thought this class was..and not just because we read interesting material and had a great professor, but because everyone was themselves and it added so much to the experience. Everyone had their own voice and could express it aloud, instead of being in a huge lecture class where your just a wallflower. I know that the lessons I learned in class and from our literary friends had an impact on me each day and to think I wouldn't know them if I hadn't taken summer classes! So I hope that everyone has a great rest of their summer and maybe we'll see each other around campus! So long...farewell....

The Gains of Losing...

The Great Expectations of Matilda: The Gains of Losing

            Stuck on an island, no electricity, no plumbing, nothing at all. The common question posed in this situation asks: if only one thing or one person could be taken along, what would it be? Maybe photographs, a lover, music, or a book? In Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, there is no one item rule, but Mr. Watts, the only white man on an island in the middle of war, chooses to share one thing as the makeshift teacher. He introduces the children to the characters and lifestyle in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. One student in particular, Matilda, bonds with the literary characters and with Mr. Watts. With the help of these new friends, Matilda discovers her own great expectations through the gains and loses in her life.

            Mr. Watts is the first to verbalize to Matilda how losing and gaining things affect a person. “There are some things you never expect to lose, things you think will forever be part of you, even if it is only a toenail. […] You gain as you lose, and vice versa.” (Jones 69) Matilda has spent part of her young life losing everything she had to the redskins, but now Mr. Watts was showing her that when something is lost, something else is gained. Matilda lost her father to another country and the material items that make life easier, but she gained a teacher and through that teacher she gained a friend, Pip, as well as the importance of the journey literature can take her on. In Great Expectations, Pip is also someone that has lost and gained throughout his life, he lost his family, but gained a handsome piece of property. Each person has different gains and different losses, but there are lessons learned through each one. 

            Back on the hypothetical island, all alone with one item, after some time that one item turns into hundreds of the same thing. Each one has a personality and dances to its own drum. Is this reality or a fragment of the imagination? Wait, imagination. This island floating in the middle of nowhere not only has a person and their special item it also has an imagination. Mr. Watts explained to his class, “'We have all lost our possessions and many of us our home,’ he said. ’But these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no person can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations.’” (Jones 123) With absolutely nothing, Mr. Watts is teaching that life can be difficult, things, items may be lost, but no on can take an imagination. Despite the mind being prone to diseases, such as Alzheimer and Schizophrenia, it is still the individual’s mind. Mr. Watts’ wife, Grace, was “crazy” but all she wanted was to stay in the acting role of the Queen of Sheba, and her imagination let her do that. No one can take the dreams of an imagination.

            Ultimately Matilda physically escapes from the island, but she had escaped emotionally long before.

People sometimes as me ‘Why Dickens?’ which I always take to be a gentle rebuke. I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens’ England. Now, if that isn’t an act of magic I don’t know what it. (Jones 231)

Through Mr. Watts reading Great Expectations, Matilda was taken away from the hardships she was living with. Although she did not just escape from her world, another enchanted her. Her imagination was soaring with what Dickens’ England was like, with what Pip was like. She was off in another world that did not involve war or the pain of losing her mother and teacher at the same time in such gruesome ways. After making it off the island and thriving in her new physical world, Matilda tried to show the enchantment of Great Expectations with others, although she referred to the reading as being her “get-out-of-jail card” (Jones 232) while teaching. She was sharing what she had gained when she had absolutely nothing, with others.

Almost every character in literature experiences some type of loss and some type of gain, otherwise nothing would happen at all. Life would be way too humdrum. Fraulein Maria stated in the movie The Sound of Music, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” (“The Sound”) So, in literature, movies, plays, and even an average human’s life there are losses and gains. It’s how everyone learns from these experiences that shows the great expectations laid out for them.  Through Mr. Watts’ actions, he helped to reveal Matilda’s great expectations, “I only know the man who took us kids by the hand and taught us how to reimagine the world, and to see the possibility of change, to welcome it into our lives. […] We needed a magician to conjure up other worlds, and Mr. Watts had become that magician.” (Jones 245)  Matilda discovers that because of everything and everyone she has lost and gained, she has a purpose in life and that is to share the enchantment, the escape, the imagination that literature provides. Now about getting off that hypothetical island. It may take some time, but honestly all it really takes is an imagination.

 

Works Cited

Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. New York: The Dial Press, 2008.

"The Sound of Music". IMDB. 8 Aug 2008 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/quotes>.

            

Almost...

Well I can't believe that we're almost done with this class. The time has just flown by! I'm really glad though that I decided to take this in the summer, I feel that the atmosphere that developed with our small class made the learning experience better than it would have been during the regular academic year. I know I'll probably be writing another, "how this class affected me" post after class tomorrow or Friday, but I have to write about it for it to become an experience! So I'll continue later...

Earnest vs Ernest

According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary by definition Earnest is a serious and intent mental state while Ernest is just a man's name. I guess back in the 1800s a woman would want a husband who is in a serious and intent mental state. But after reading The Importance of Being Earnest, I'm a little boggled. I find that the character Earnest really doesn't fit this description. He has been living lies and acting rash (proposing, and wanting to be christened). And yet Gwendolyn still loves him and wants him to be Earnest, because she's always wanted to marry an Earnest. Earnest has tragedy written in his name. I would take Ernest over Earnest.

Found again...

I just realized that I didn't post the second found poem I wrote...so here it is coming from the return policy on the back of a Barnes and Noble receipt...

Unread and Unopened

The Original form

A book's first days

within the store.

Unread and Unopened

Not to be returnable

Made for Selling

Unread and Unopened

        except

Days to be used.

Milo <3

I just want to forewarn everyone that this blog has absolutely no relevance to class but it's all I can think about right now, so it's all I can write about....Tomorrow after class I have to go and put my cat to sleep. His name is Milo and I've had him ever since I was five. I got him at the Farmer's Market with my mom and my best friend and her mom. On the car ride home we were dicussing what to name him. I wanted to name him Nala because The Lion King was the new Disney movie out and my friend and I were obsessed with it. But then my mom told me that I couldn't name him Nala because he was a boy. So then, obviously, I wanted to name him Simba. Right like that would happen. So my mom suggested Milo because he looked like the cat from the movie Milo and Otis, which I watched pretty regularly. So that was it, he was named Milo. I remember when we moved houses from close to Emily Dickinson Elementary School to out in Four Corners, Milo disappeared for about a week and we thought he got lost because he didn't know where he was. But he knew exactly. Our old neighbor called and said that Milo had been sitting on the front porch of our old house for a couple days. What a crazy cat, he traveled miles to where he thought home was. It's unbelievable that he made it! He is my cuddle bug and when I was younger, I would purposely lay my arm out onto the pillow next to me when I went to bed, because he would come up and lay his head on my arm and go to sleep. He became like a security blanket, there were times when I couldn't and wouldn't go to sleep without him in my room. Unfortunatly, after I moved out for college and then came home for the summer I couldn't do that anymore. He was having health issues and had no control of his bladder. Actually, the vet told my mom that he peed when he was comfortable, which was normally on my bed. At least I know that he was comfortable being with me. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I don't think I can say goodbye. I know it's not like losing a grandmother or a nephew, but in a sense it kind of is. He's been a part of my family for the majority of my life and now I just have to say goodbye and send him into another room, knowing that I'll never see him again. I've been a wreck all afternoon and I know tomorrow is going to be no different. I want to be selfish and keep him around because I love him, but I know that he is hurting and I can't be selfish, I have to love him as much as I can until the very end, and I know that through all of my sobbing that's what I'm going to do.

Monday's Questions Answered...

The first question of the day on Monday was How do Oedipus Rex and The Importance of Being Earnest "talk" to one another? Well, both Oedipus and Earnest are orphans who ultimatly discover who their birth parents are and they both in some form "get to know" their relations: Oedipus with his mother and Earnest with his cousin. But although their characters live fairly similar lives, their tales are very different. Oedipus ends up with nothing, he banishes himself and Earnest, I assume, lives a happy life with his one love. They are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but they both show you what happens on each end!

The next question posed was What do I think is the most endearing line in literature? But there was a catch, it couldn't be anything ide

ological, wise, or with any meaning. After reading a few other's blogs I agree with most of there lines "Call me Ismael" fabulous, "Everyone called him Popeye" ect. The line I love though, has been cinematically tweaked, but there is no doubt in my mind that the actual line is more convincing, despite the movie line being equally convincing. The line is not at the beginning of the book but is almost the very last line "My dear, I don't give a damn." Rhett Butler just makes my heart melt. Although he does leave Scarlett, she deserved it. The line is straight forward and absolutely perfect!

I kind of forget how this book came up in class but I wrote it down, I think it has to do with how only after writing down an event does it become an expereince, anyways after looking it up and reading about it, it sounds really interesting, so I thought I would add it to my blog to share with everyone courtesy of our beloved Wiki... Haroun and the Sea of Stories and also this quote from The Importance of Being Earnest... CECILY. "I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down I should probably forget all about them." page 22

And finally, I know Professor Sexson said we were going to watch a clip of the movie version of The Importance of Being Earnest, but I wanted to share the trailer for the movie...it's rather funny...