English 103

[bajoh103-blog]

Taking Their Autonomy Doesn’t Keep Kids Safe

In my researched argument, I looked at how the perception of childhood has changed over the past 200 years. I start right around the publication of the Brothers Grimm and go from there. It was super interesting to see the transformation that has taken place. From the Industrial Revolution that endangered children to the Enlightenment thinkers that praised them, there developed a dichotomy that people struggled with for centuries. We can still see the scars of these conflicting ideas when we look at children today. The average child is now protected, nurtured, and completely useless. We have robbed children of their agency in an effort to safeguard them from the real world. We must protect them, no doubt, but we must not forget that they are autonomous beings in society as well.

[mabig103-blog]

I find your topic interesting discussing how children and how they are treated is constantly changing. I am curious where you will go with connecting the children throughout the centuries to the children in your story.

[xxxxly333-deactivated20181030]

Your topic, and use of “completely useless” definitely shows your opinion on the issue. I find it very important to address the issue of constant nurturing and how it will affect later generations. I find too much acceptance to actually be detrimental to self esteem, as any criticism will cause an individual to be very over critical of themselves after not having true criticism before.

[aldarrow4-blog]

I like that you observed the evolution of childhood. You noted how the perception of childhood changed overtime and it is interesting that you can relate this to children today.

[daric103-blog]

The Darkness of Stockholm Syndrome.

As this assignment approached I treated it as something of an easy task. I knew my topic, pointing out Stockholm Syndrome in Beauty and the Beast, and thought it would be fairly easy to carry out because well, it’s there. The tale is essentially the textbook definition of Stockholm Syndrome. A girl is taken prisoner, given the chance to escape, but refuses because of an emotional bond that has developed between her and her captor. What I didn’t expect to find while doing my research was the grisly reality behind the fairy tale comparison. I looked at many modern day cases of Stockholm Syndrome and was both horrified and taken aback by what I found. These stories are dark and heart wrenching, to the point where I seriously considered changing my topic. I very quickly realized that though the story of Beauty and the Beast is alright to poke fun at, the real thing is no laughing matter.

[without-opress-of-toll]

That’s really interesting. I mean, really the only thing I’ve ever seen about Stockholm Syndrome has been in connection with Beauty and the Beast. I’ve never really thought about its implications in the real world.

[aldarrow4-blog]

I find it interesting how your research topic changed your opinion of the story. It changed so much you almost changed research.

[aldarrow4-blog]

Researching Fairy Tales

      When thinking about fairy tales, we normally do not think about comparing them to science.  But in this paper, our argument was to use research from scientific sources.  It was an interesting task taking a fantasy world and combining that with the world of fact. I found it surprising how these fictional stories have many scientific elements intertwined in the plot.  As a future engineer, science has always interested me, and this paper has helped show me that science can be applicable in almost anywhere.

[trtay103-blog]

So. Many. Articles.

After finding countless unless articles on varying subjects slightly related to my topic I find myself exhausted. How many people spend their every waking moments devoted to writing these things? I found a 488 page article on the effects of makeup on mans understanding of beauty… like… Who writes that? This is indeed a struggle. I finally find myself citing experiments full of math. Including an equation  “N of beautiful people X percentage of opinion= amount of beauty”… How does one derive this? It is a strange world out there folks. 

[mabig103-blog]

I found a lot of the same issues when researching for my annotated bibliography. There were so many sources that I went through and I also saw the authors putting quantitative qualities on personalities, I still don’t understand how no matter how many times I reread.

[evsor103-blog]

This was an issue for me as well. However, I found that the more I really read and loved for the right articles, the better readings I found. I believe that because I spent this time and effort looking for articles, I was able to find the perfect ones for my topic. 

[aldarrow4-blog]

This is very true. I believe that the hardest part of writing the annotated bibliography was not the writing part. It was the wading through thousands of scientific articles looking for the right one.

[evsor103-blog]

Writing an annotated bibliography is very different than writing a reflection or analysis. It is much more scientific and factual. I personally enjoy studying these topics. They are very interesting to me. I am studying intergenerational conflicts between women, especially mothers and daughters. This idea stems from the evil step-mother in “Snow White.” She has issues with Snow White and is jealous if her beauty. She is willing to do anything she can in order have her killed. This is how desperate she is to be the most beautiful woman around. This is not the only case of intergenerational conflict in fairy tales. This is why I have chosen to study it for my social science topic on my annotated bibliography. 

[courtneymelvinuaenglish103-blog]

I agree, studying these articles was actually enjoyable. Since we were allowed to choose our topics, I found one that I knew very little about and learning and becoming a little more informed about it was very interesting.

[aldarrow4-blog]

I also feel that writing an annotated bibliography was very scientific. It was hard to write creatively, because the template asked for many dry details.

[aldarrow4-blog]

Writing an Annoted Bibliography

I feel that creating an annotated bibliography was a quite a bit of work. The first part was finding the sources. This part was not my favorite. It involved scrolling through hundreds of scientific journals to find the one or two that actually apply to my research question. The next part was reading through each journal and article. This was interesting to me. At times, the words were a little over my head but I enjoyed learning about past experiments and research. The final part was writing about each source I found. This did not take me as long as I thought. Hopefully, the annotated bibliography will set me up well for my research paper.

[erste103-blog]

Fairy Tales have always served as tale’s that coincided with its time period and society. The movie Into the Woods may seem like parody account of the tales, however the film still delivers the same messages as the originals just in a more modern sense. Albeit, the the humor in the film brings a light twist to generally dark Fairy Tales, the modern rendition simply makes these Fairy Tales such as “Cinderella”, “Jack and the Bean Stalk”, and “Repunzel” more relatable. In the case of “Cinderella” the movie stresses the relationship between the Prince and Cinderella much more than early renditions. This is due to the time period we are in, where relationships are now a large part of the generation we are in. What can be deduced from this is that contemporary retellings must adapt to their time period in order to communicate clearly to their audience. The retelling also stresses on something that many young adults or teenagers can learn a lesson from.

[aldarrow4-blog]

I find it interesting that you highlighted the importance of relationships in today’s society.  I like that you summed up Into the Woods as a modern twist to the 4 fairy tales.

[evsor103-blog]

Contemporary Retellings of Fairytales

The classic fairy tale of “Snow White” was originally written and published by Brothers Grimm in1812. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were brothers from Germany, and were both nationalists. When “Snow White” was published, many German stated had recently become allies with Napoleon, thus becoming a part of his wars and confederations. Unlike the Disney version, Snow White is a very young, innocent teenager. She is afraid of her stepmother, as in this  time, stepmothers were a very rare occurrence. Elaina Smith wrote a contemporary retelling of the classic fairytale entitled “Dead Apples.” This story is about a town by the name of Dunlath that had solely a male population; no females in the whole town. One day, a young woman moves to the town. All of the men in the town were astonished at the presence of a woman and would follow her around and stare all of the time. The town grocer, however, stayed away. He was very shy around the woman, for he loved her. One day the woman choked on an apple core, and then remained unconscious for weeks. The grocer came and visited her every night. She started to die, and the grocer saved her. Eventually, when she woke up, he professed his love for her, and she screamed at him and ran away. Although the content of Smith’s “Dead Apples” deviates somewhat from the Brothers Grimm version of “Snow White,” it does include some similarities, however the story completely fails to effectively resemble any of the original themes or ideas from “Snow White.”

[aldarrow4-blog]

Based on your introduction, I would completely agree that this adaptation of Snow White was a failure.  This contemporary story seems difficult to tell if it is an adaptation or a separate story.

[aldarrow4-blog]

The Progression of Women’s Role in Marriage

Society is always looking to progress and change.  It needs to adapt to the changing times otherwise it will fall out of date and die.  One aspect which is constantly changing in our society is human rights.  Looking back at history, it is easy to tell that times were different and certain people were treated in different ways.  In writings, film, and many other forms of expression, one can observe the progression of society.  Many fairy-tales have modern and original versions that can act as a foot prints to what society was like at the time it was written.  Writings give us many of these clues including social norms, class structure and more background to compare to the society of today.  One short story, The “Blue-bearded Lover”, modernizes the story of “Bluebeard” severely altering many of the key elements including the moral of the story. The author of the revision, Joyce Carol Oats, successfully revamps the tale of “Bluebeard” by keeping the Bluebeard himself unchanged but modifying his wife to depict the progression of women’s roles in marriage.

[kemcc103-blog]

More Than Meets the Eye

It seems nearly impossible for kids these days, or anyone for that matter, to come across something or someone and not immediately start creating mental labels and pretense judgments. Appearance is always the biggest first impression. Sometimes it just takes a quick glance and we think we have the person all figured out. I for one am definitely guilty of jumping to conclusions about people I hardly even know, and I think most of us would have to admit to that too. But, I have learned through my many experiences that more often than not that first impression you create for someone is far from reality. The princess in Donkeyskin is a perfect example of how far off these automatic judgments can be. A girl that was arguably the most beautiful in the land, so beautiful that her own father wished to marry her, was deemed repulsive by everyone in the new town just because of her appearance, even when the prince tries to convince them of her true beauty. Although written so long ago, Donkeyskin shows that society really hasn’t changed and examples why we shouldn’t make these rash and unjustified judgments.

[aldarrow4-blog]

You did a nice job of connecting your anecdote to the story. Also, a theme that we can all easily relate to.

[tuerv103-blog]

Intro Draft #1!

Here’s the beginning of my first intro. I think it works for now.

“My life was never filled with a story as particularly gory and traumatic as the tale of Bluebeard. I have no closets full of dead wives, magical bloody keys, or homicidal husbands. However, I have let my curiosity get the better of me at times.  I’ve never discovered anything nearly as terrible as what the younger sister finds in her husband’s closet, but I’ve definitely run into my fair share of trouble for my curiosity.  Thankfully, as the younger sister found out, I usually have someone looking out for me enough to pull me away from this trouble.”

[aldarrow4-blog]

The first few sentences did a nice job of pulling the reader in. Towards the end of the intro, it needs a little more detail connecting your personal situation to that of Bluebeard.

[aldarrow4-blog]

Curiosity Kills Much More than the Cat

As a little child, there is no other time of the year like the Christmas season. Starting in October, a brigade of holiday ads hype-up children as if their diets consisted solely of sugar. I remember making a list and counting down the hours to Christmas morning to see what surprises were under the tree.  Except there was one problem. I could not wait for the “right time” to open the presents. I needed to know now.  I remember sneaking down to the tree in the wee hours on Christmas morning, long before my parents would be awake. I carefully felt the packages and shook them listening to the contents jingle around inside.  When I was done, I knew the identity of many of the hidden treasures under the tree. Sun light peeked its way into the living room as my family came together to unwrap the gifts.  The usual ecstasy of finally revealing the numerous surprises was gone and replaced by emptiness.  I had given into my temptation and lost out on one of the most joyous occasions of the year.  My irresistible urge to discover the many secrets hidden under the veil of wrapping paper and the tale of Bluebeard by Charles Perrault go hand in hand explaining the dangers of being too inquisitive.  This gruesome tale is an accurate warning of giving into the temptations of something one can’t have and the terrible consequences associated with it.