Post #4 (For 10/29/10)

This past week we have been reading several readings on different author's views on tragedy and what can be defined as a tragedy. One of the readings stood out to me more than the others because it was talking about how many people nowadays aren't really into the old-fashioned Greek tragedies because nowadays we are more used to seeing more "drama," which can be a lot different from tragedy. I feel like we are more interested in movies, books, and television when they include a lot of drama, sometimes to the point where they can be extremely gory or too unrealistic. I think that it would nice if more of the old-fashioned kind of Greek tragedy was incorporated into modern media. Sometimes drama can be too much drama, and even though tragedies can have a good amount of drama, the hero learns from this drama and essentially becomes a different person. I feel like in modern movies many lead characters go through superficial drama and don't really learn valuable lessons about themselves.

Post #3 (For 10/22/10)

Honestly, when we first started reading Oedipus, I wasn't really into it and I thought it wasn't very interesting. The things happening in the play started getting a lot more interesting though, and it was cool to know what was going to happen in the end. It didn't bother me that I already knew what was happening, I liked seeing how everything unfolded and how everybody found things out and had the truth come out in the open. I liked this because I think that the truth always comes out, and Oedipus is an example of this. I thought the ending was very tragic and dramatic, which made it a lot more interesting. I thought that Oedipus gauging his eyes out was overly dramatic, but I think that he just didn't want to live in a world where the truth was hurting him, so he didn't want to see it anymore. It's sad that people resort to things like this because they are not able to deal with their emotions. I think the story of Oedipus really was a tragedy.

Post #2 (For 10/15/10)

This week, we wrote our first in-class essays in response to the books we chose for our independent reading project. I read "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer. I don't know if anybody else in our grade has read it, but it is definitely one of my favorite books and I would recommend for everybody to read it. This book is really easy to relate to, even if the events that happened are tragic. The main character, Oskar Schell, has lost his father in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. His grandfather, Thomas Schell, lost the love of his life during the Dresden Bombings during World War II. The quotes in this book are very beautiful, such as, "It's the tragedy of loving, we can't love something more than something we miss." This book definitely gives you a new perspective on different aspects of life, specifically when it comes to the loss of a loved one. This book definitely showed an accurate example of how an event in someone's life can significantly alter or change a person's perception on life.

Post #1 (for 10/08/10)

For this blog post, I want to write about my opinion about what we have talked about in class this week regarding Socrates. Even though his name is difficult for me to pronounce, I can really relate to his views and what he dedicated his life to doing. He went against what others believed and took the chance of questioning things that others would not dare question. I thought it was really unfair that people were going against him just because he was going against the norm, but I don't think that Socrates wanted other people to feel pity for him. He knew that what he was doing was the right thing, ethically and religiously, so it did not make him feel saddened that he was suffering consequences for following his beliefs. I think this is really admirable because these days you don't really see people doing that too often. People care too much about what people think, and reading about Socrates this week and seeing how he didn't care about whether others were against him reminded me of the things that I am going through personally. Socrates is definitely someone to look up to when it comes to pursuing your beliefs and not caring what others think.