Literature (?)

Sharon GuerreroA01378727:v

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Weekly Reflection 4

Through the last week I haven’t feel like I learned something quite concrete but I think I improved my analysis abilities as we watched a lot of clips in which we had to identify what visual, auditive and timing elements were building tension. It is not like if I learned a new technique for building tension in cinema but rather became quicker and better at acknowledging them.

I think this ability also became stronger with the making of my IOP, because of the fact that we had to work in teams and more brains work better than one brain. Finding more stuff to analyse beyond the film terms, results way more easy when you are collaborating with other people and it helps you get out of your personal box of ideas. As the IOP’s have to be creative it is also extremely enriching what my classmates can come up to with their ways of reaching certain subjects of the analysed work.

The things I learned by watching the other IOP’s were plenty. I think one of the best things I realized was with one of my friends IOP in which they acted as two characters from different novels. What I loved about is the fact that both characters were from really different backgrounds and still were able to be empathetic with each other. I was like analysing a human problem through the eyes of another cultural background and shows a different way of seeing and treating things. So changing in a radical and unexpected way the perspective in which you are analysing something can lead to a new branch of ideas and solutions.

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Weekly Reflection 3

The transcendence is one of the central themes in which the manga Hikaru no Go centers. Most of the character develop through transcendence specially the three main characters: Hikaru, Sai and Akira.

Sai, a ghost from a very far away past who is an expert in Go, at first wants to focus on reaching the divine move when he meets Hikaru. Later on he starts realizing that there is something more important which is to mentor Hikaru into becoming an excellent Go player. The plot leads Sai into discovering that his purpose is not exactly to reach the divine move by himself but to help others reach it or at least let them being able to teach other generations so that they can reach it.

I think other themes in Hikaru no Go may be solidarity and persistence for what you are passionate about. Hikaru and Sai were both a bit selfish with each other, both want to play Go and reach their own goals but then realize that they must let the other develop and be more solidarious. This teamwork is also seen more at the end, where Hikaru, Akira and Yashiro support each other, specially between Akira and Hikaru, who both learn to recognize the talents of the other and accept their rivalry in other to improve and reach the divine move with the other.

I think personally, the persistence is what stayed with me the most. Hikaru is so persistent and disciplined such as Akira. The plot happens in very large time lapse of years, and these characters are as passionate at Go as they were when they started playing it. They don’t give up (well, Hikaru does give up after Sai disappears, but still he makes a comeback to Go), and are always willing to improve.

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Weekly Reflection 1

So far in this semester we have learnt about cinematographic language. As I am very interested in film, I already knew a lot of what the teacher explained us about composition, shots, angles, however I think it was good for me to retake this concepts so I could remember them better. The way I watch movies did not change very much with what we saw in class, however, I am keen to talk how my vision of films has changed through the time.

At first I thought filmmaking was just about telling stories. I was amazed with the worlds and situations you could get into by just watching a movie. Later on I started to learn about the storytelling devices that are commonly used in filmmaking, Still I was scratching the surface of how I conceive movies nowadays.

Learning about storytelling devices I was led into the other crafts that are needed in order to make a film. I learnt how to edit, how does cinematography works, what does an art director is in charge of, etc. I started watching more films, and realized that the are many ways a filmmaker is able to tell a story by experimenting with the elements that make it possible.

I took some workshops with the objective of expanding my film knowledge. I went to some acting classes, then to film appreciation classes (where I watched Andy Warhol’s films… ugh… but also very eye opening ones like Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon). One of the most important workshops I went to was the Direct Cinema one. There I started to watch cinema as some kind of art capable of way many things than just telling a story. By that time I read Walter Benjamin’s “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” and felt awestruck from the revelation I got. Film was no longer just a device to tell a story, but rather a medium of perception. The way something is perceived through the camera and the edition was the art itself rather than what was recorded. I started watching films as an experience containing ideas and no longer just stories.

Because of what I just have explained, I am not keen in comparing how literature and film tell stories in their most efficient way. Try comparing how Dvorak’s New World Symphony is able to tell a story with David Friedrich’s Stages Of Life, I can’t find sense in that since it is quite obvious both work in pretty different ways. One is through sound and the other through sight. The same way film and literature work under different rules. Film is an audiovisual medium, and literature is done through words.

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Weekly reflection 6

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is a novella that encloses the brutality of  human nature in the context of the European colonialism journey into an allegory to the human condition and moral consciousness. Through the novella, we found some specific moments in which we empathize with the actions of the characters even though these actions are correct, right, bad or wrong; the position in which the reader perceives the actions are directly influenced by the way it is written, so in Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad emphasizes the presence of darkness using sensorial resources through rhetorical devices such as imagery for alluding to the human condition.

The essence of being a human being is subverted by showing how the common Western ideas of what humanity means are actually contradictory when put into action. Conrad also had the ability to introduce all these ideas by using elements that are sensorially perceived and imbuing giving them with a significance. He wrote about how civilization is uncivilized, and how as humans in a human context are actually entering into a void of fog,- of anthropological ignorance. With all said before, this is how Hearts of Darkness is able to exhibit the irony of men and their lack of self-awareness by the way humans perceive their own reality,- in a sensorial manner.

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Weekly reflection 5

Heart Of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is a literary work that breaks into the dark side of humanity. The story is about a sailor, called Marlowe, who travels in a marvel trade expedition to the Congo during its colonial era. In this novel, Conrad, outs Imperialism hypocrisy, by contrasting the morals of London society and the brutality that was used in the Congo colonization. It represented through the character of Mr. Kurtz, who is was a man of accumulated reputation in England and was very respected by the company men. However, this man exploited the Africans and was a personification of the European capital interests.

The presence of fog is another symbolism that represents the smoke and mirrors game that the powerful people make for manipulating others and not letting know about their wrongdoings.

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Weekly Reflection 4

Structuralism is a form of analysing literary texts that focus on how the author creates code for the readers to understand certain message. The structuralist analysis could be made considering different factors contained in the story, such as the codes, literariness, conventions, naturalization, opposites, etc. For example, last week I read William Wilson and analysed it in a structuralist form. By reading carefully it can be noticed that there are constants which show a code with the purpose of creating a constant opposition between the narrator and his double. The things in which both are different are the ones having to do with the morally right and wrong actions. While the narrator sticks to wrong doings, the double functions as an opposition to him by boycotting the wrong doings as also advising him to be more prudent. This is accentuated when the narrator starts despising him each time more and more. So this duality draws stronger with the codification Poe builds with each symbol alluding to this.

This way of analysing is different from others, because it is based completely on the idea that language is a code and therefore any literary text has within itself a codification. Structuralism doesn’t analyse the code of a text, but rather the way it is constructed. This is important because it allows a point of view in which the use of language of the author as a code is recognized and lets the opportunity to be conscious about the thinking process of him.

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Weekly Reflection 3

Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories are characterized by the way he describes the ambient, the sensation, the places, and the characters, so that it is makes the readers biased to perceive the text in a specific form. In the case of Hop Frog, this especially happens with the description of characters. We can notice that the characters have very different qualities between themselves. In one instance there is Hop-Frog, who a jester dwarf and that is also disabled. Then there is the king and the seven ministers, who are grotesquely big and chubby. By comparing both kinds of characters, we get the feel about who is the one that has the control and power over the other, and who is the one who is subdued to this. With this we can tell why it is important to put on attention over how the characters are described, because these descriptions are actually in the text, for the purpose of giving roles information.

The whole description of Hop-Frog and the king, is the one that makes us finally decide whether Hop-Frog’s actions where justifiable or not. In the text we are told that that Hop-Frog has a disability that makes him unable to walk normally and without pain, this has an impact on the way his actions are judged. The king has an abusive behaviour over Hop-Frog and trippetta are there are also hints about how Hop-Frog and Trippetta were taken from their village to serve as an amusement to the king. So the disability part makes us cringe on the circumstances that Hop-Frog has to endure despite his difficulty to walk. So by now we think the proportions of the king’s abusive and unfair power Hop-Frog. So when Hop-Frog commits his vengeance it is not quite as we think he is being completely evil, but thank he is thinking he is making life a little bit fair.

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Weekly Reflection 2

In The Mask Of The Red Death, the use of symbols in descriptions is of most importance. We are facing a short story about a prince who looks himself in his abbey with a group of people to avoid the red death that has killed most of the habitants of his kingdom.  But, as everything, death falls upon all of us, and there is nothing to do about it.

In this short story, the abbey of Prince Prospero is described with a lot of detail. There are seven rooms, of different colours each, that go along like if it was a huge corridor; this may mean the path we have to follow through life. It is of no surprise that the last room has black walls and a black floor, with an ebony clock and a red glass window. This last room represents the death that comes after the long ride of the other rooms. The clock is an important symbol of time, as the time to die comes closer second after seconds, and each time it marks the hour with its loud timber, we feel overwhelmed about it.

Prince Prospero decides to make a masquerade, in which all the guest hide by using masks. This may also mean the fear of the dead, and how the guests tried to hide from it. It is twelve o’clock when the Red Death arrives to the party, which is also a symbolic hour because midnight is the end of the day as it could represent the end of the life. The Red Death is also wearing a mask, which represents how mysterious death actually is, and that no one really knows what happens after it as it is impossible to tell what hides behind that mask. Finally, everyone dies in the abbey.

The descriptions of this story not only contain symbolism, but a huge range of emotions and feelings, we as readers get while reading it. The description of the rooms, builds a mood and tone while it reaches the last room. In the description of the dark room we are anticipated of what kind of fate we can expect from the story. The creepy adjectives of this room have relationship with themes such as death.

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Weekly Reflection 1

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque Of The Red Death are different short stories that can be compared by some constants Poe has. Starting with themes that both of the stories touch, we have death, guilt, fear, and other dark themes.

Poe reaches these themes by using the rhetoric device of imagery, and establishing a tone and mood. He makes this by using a clean diction that uses the exact words that convey in main semantic fields. For example, with have in The Tell-Tale Heart word such as vulture and dark, and in The Masque Of The Red Death, there are words such as blood and dark room, that are linked to the theme of death. This means that as much that Poe starts describing an ambient of a place or the look that a person has, he is more able to build a sensation inside the reader’s mind.

The writing style of Edgar Alan Poe, show us that the used of words is an important tool in literature due to the huge differences in can makes to the final result. Maybe both words could mean the same, but not feel as if they were the same. One word may have a more grotesque touch than another, or evoque a different sensation, even though they are similar.

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A24 films Alignment Chart

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Reflective statement

We are reading My Name Is Red, written by Orhan Pamuk. By making the oral activity, I learned many things that helped me understand better my reading of this novel.

First of all I made an investigation about Orhan Pamuk’s life. I got to know that he was a very important Turkish writer, who wanted at the beginning to become an artist, then studied journalism and finally decided to only work as a writer his entire life. I also learnt that he has always lived in his house in Istanbul. Orhan Pamuk is well known for writing novels that represent Turkish culture in a very detailed way, while making protest of the atrocities lived in his country. But this description of own culture is made in a sort of in love way, highlighting the uniqueness of the culture. I could notice this even better by knowing Pamuk’s intense love for his city that could be easily noticed by his permanent residence in his own city. A lot of detail in the description of the streets also spills this fact.

A lot of references to the Islam, the predominant religion in Turkey, are also mentioned.

We also saw in class the different types of narrative structures. It was nice to be able to identify this different ways of telling a story, but right now, I am just going to focus in My Name Is Red. My Name Is Red is a novel with a collage structure. This means his narrative centres in a specific event, which is in this case the aftermath of a murder. What makes the collage structure different is that this event is told from different points of view. Some chapters are narrated by the murderer, others by the murdered one, and even some arte narrated form the point of view of animals and things.

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End Term Reflection

During this term I learnt several things, not only literary stuff but also things as an IB student.

We read Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. That is why we had to learn about poetry and rhetoric figures. We analysed the rhetoric figures in Dante’s and therefore upgraded our understanding of it. There were some rhetoric figures that were more kind of technical such as the rhythm of the poem. Others were more of content like the allegories. I acknowledged the importance of the rhetoric figures in The Divine Comedy, as it was infested with them. For understanding those allegories we needed to know about Dante’s context. We investigated about poets from his time and also the previous ones to him. A lot of information about Greek mythology came out with this. Another important task was to include in our analysis Dante’s political issues in his natal city: Florence. All this process made me realize the important to know the most of subjects surrounding a literary work as possible, so the understanding of it can be a better one.

I learnt to improve essays and a lot about narrators in a literary work. This two mixed also helped me reinforce my knowledge as an IB student.

During class, the matter of values was also discussed. We got done some definitions of a lot of values such as respect, responsibility, liberty, among others. It was a nice thing to do, because we can improve our work as students and as human beings by knowing these fundamental things. Now I am more conscious about the values in my life and my IB works as student.

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Reflection 4 (Inferno)

Dante wrote The Divine Comedy for making a hypothesis of how would be the afterlife. Maybe, his purpose wasn’t to give an official look of it, but always got a lot of ideas, based on what he knew, and was very keen to write it down. He was an avid reader of Virgil and other poets before his epoch, and, in an attempt to combine all of their ideas he compiled them in The Divine Comedy.

The context of Dante had a lot of what have just been said. He lived in a time were Catholicism got a lot of power and tons of people were quite religious. Even himself seemed to read very often the bible due to all his religious knowledge shown in The Divine Comedy.

The Divine Comedy uses several kinds of literary devices, beginning with the way the poem is divided, which is by cantos. Cantos are made of five or more lines, as a stanza. This gives the poem a rhythm, that give us space for stressed and unstressed syllables and meanwhile having also a rhyme.

Another literary devices used in this poem are the allusions to a large variety of mythological, historical, and religious characters. We can notice the presence of a lot of Greek thinkers such as Aristotle, Socrates and Epicurus. We can also find Ulysses from The Odyssey and the Minotaur. Characters from the Arthurian Legend, such as Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, legend are also mentioned in the text. In the area of historic figures we can read allusions to some Popes and leaders from other religions like Mohammed. Using these and other allusions he makes easier to demonstrate a lot of concepts within one word and meanwhile giving examples through popular ideas. It is like in The Simpsons by Matt Groening, where a lot of themes are mentioned and explained using pop culture references.

I have not liked The Divine Comedy at all, so far. Maybe it is because I feel angry about all the things that are sins and are supposed to be eternally punished. I certainly feel very uncomfortable while reading this, because it goes against my way of thinking. Of course this is a very subjective opinion but it is the true. However, I think it is pretty full of knew things to know about general culture; I’ve been able to know more from the allusions mentioned.

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Naruto reflection 3

By now, I’m almost finishing the task of reading Naruto, so I can identify some themes that last most of the story. One of those could be persistence. This attribute is mentioned since the first chapter, when Naruto wants to be a Shinobi and dreams with becoming the Hokage. And it keeps appearing during the chunin application exams, the failed recuperation of Sasuke and the fights again the Akatsuki. During all the stages, Naruto is always giving his best. When he is learning a new technique he doesn’t mind if it is very hard, he keeps going ‘till he gets it.

Thinking about the Hero’s journey, Naruto shares various archetypes and stages of it. Considering Naruto as the archetype of the hero, he has a departure, an initiation and a return. Naruto’s call to adventure may not be quite as it is marked, but I think it is noticeable when he becomes a Ninja with Iruka’s help. He had some previous status quo of being the prankster of the village but then, he was called by the Shinobi world and his dreams of becoming a Hokage. His initiation consists mostly of a road of trials and battles with others to protect Konoha. And, well, about the Return, I won’t said anything because I don’t fish reading Naruto, yet.

As some stages of the Hero’s Journey could be found in Naruto, also some of the character archetypes could be identified. If Naruto is the hero, then Iruka, Kakashi and Jiraiya are his mentors. They guide Naruto providing him with advice and knowledge, and always watch after Naruto. The Shadow of Naruto is Sasuke. He is the compliment of Naruto characteristics, and one of the Naruto’s most important struggles.

Knowing about the Hero’s Journey, has helped me to analyse not only Naruto, but also other stories. Identifying archetypes makes it easier to understand a character way of thinking and the enrichment it could bring to the story development.

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Naruto reflection 2

The presentations about Japan we had in class, helped me to understand a lot of things that take place in Naruto, like for example hierarchy concepts like how to talk to superiors or equals in a Japanese context; now I know that for referring for a superior I also acquired knowledge about Japanese religions as Shinto and Koijiki made me more conscious about how characters conceived life in terms of ideologies, wisdom, and sacred elements. Japanese God´s are like sort of spirits or demons, each one representing something that is manifested in life, that´s why a lot of things in Naruto turn around on nature things, for example, the ninjas from the dessert or from the foggy parts, and others.

Almost three weeks after start reading Naruto, I feel more motivated to be more persistent in my goals, and started putting more effort on the thing I must do to achieve them. I also started thinking on other goals that not only represented a benefit for me, but for the people who I appreciate. Now I am so keen on changing for better.

Some of the motives of why I am reading Naruto may be open myself to a different kind of literature so my knowledge acquired more breath while having a different posture.

Naruto is my favourite character because he has this ability to make bonds with almost all the characters, and learn from others, and make others learn from him, so there is a lot of development in each character due to the reciprocate relationship with him. I certainly love Naruto’s determination on everything he does, like he always says he never “goes back on his own words” and that is something I admire from him, because persistence is a very difficult quality to keep on with, but it is a very fructiferous one.

(I know this may sound silly, but I feel very attracted to Shikamaru. I don’t know how could I find a drawing so sexy, and not only because of his quite hot serious face, but also his ability to make strategies is very interesting and I people like that.)

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Naruto Reflection

Naruto is the first manga I’ve ever read, not because I had prejudices about it, but because it never came to me the interest on reading one. As I already considered comics as literature, I suppose I did also considered manga in this category, so I actually didn’t change my definition of literature. However, I never thought could be so amazing until now.

Since the first chapter I found myself so into the reading, and I’ve been really enjoying knowing more and more about the characters and the different techniques they use for combat. However, what I love most about Naruto is the philosophy established in all characters’ actions. They always want to give their best, and believe in hard work for achieving dreams. Teamwork takes an important role in their actions, too; they are even willing to sacrifice themselves for the people they love. Being in unity with their comrades means a lot for their progress and improvement of themselves, besides this is helpful for defending their village.

I think it is such a pity that when I told some friends and family that I was meant to read Naruto for a school subject, they were incredulous like Naruto was garbage, because I’ve learnt a lot from it not only about values, but Japanese culture. I think people should not be so pretentious and better star reading all kinds of stuff. Fanfics are another genre, which I often find people taking it as a joke, but I see fanfics as totally worth reading. While reading fanfics I get a lot of inspirations for my own works, imagining a lot of situations and alternative universes (au). Sometimes I cry while reading a fanfics, or laugh or shiver, reading those works is quite a wonderful experience, and sometimes people don’t give any credits to the authors, who some of them, I consider are very talented.