Dishonesty in The Importance of Being Earnest

Disohonesty is a large part in the play The Importance of Being Earnest  by Oscar Wilde. It ties in with satire and humor when people are telling lies in a humorous manner. An example being the pursuit of pleasure. John/Jack lies to everyone by saying he has a wicked brother name Ernest who always gets into trouble in the city. When "Ernest" gets into trouble, Jack goes and "helps him out". Truth be told, Jack has no brother and he is actually the make believe Ernest. He does this so that he can go out in the city and get away from his dull life without anyone knowing.This is also expressed through the satire of marriage. Cecily and Gwendolyn both think that they are going to be married to Ernest. The truth is that Ernest is made up person from a result that Algernon calls Bunbuying. Both Jack and Algernon get into a twist from lying to Cecily and Gwedolyn about "Ernest". Humour is also shown in the play through epigrams. For example, "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his" (pg.28). This is basically saying that women she be less like their mothers and men should be more like their mothers. This is quite contradictary due to the time period. Men were supposed to be these strong and fearless characters while women were weak and emotional. Satire of education also takes part in the play. For example, "Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows." (pg. 56). Jack and Algernon are both very dishonest when they pretend to be Earnest  and decide to marry Gwendolen and Cecily with that lie. By this, they were  not being very earnest by pretending to be "Ernest". It is very funny when Gwedolyn says "He is the very soul of truth and honour." (pg.59) because he's lying to her about who he is and she is blind to it.


I think that Wilde used dishonesty through the characters in the play to sort of poke fun at this society in their time period and particularly the upper class. Dishonesty is not necissarily seen as a good thing but in the end everything seems to work out because of it. Jack turns out to find out more about his family and the couples become engaged. He was making fun of all of these "serious" ideas that were going on at the time and really made a point about how ridiculous all of it was. Another humorous part of his play, because they were dishonest...everything seemed to turn out alright.

Evaluation of Projects

1. Kayla Thaller/Kelsey Eagan. Comic strip

I felt that their comic strip conveys the message pretty well. It clearly shows that the pigs had the control over all of the animals even from the first picture. Although it only shows one aspect of the book, it is a very large and very important one. Overall, well done.

2. Daniel.
-Drawing

I think that this picture is great! Rather than it being all about the animals its nice to see something that shows the books biggest parallel, the Russian Revolution. Replacing the animals heads with major people dealing with the Russian Revolution showed the resemblance between the two and was very clever. Nice job Daniel.

3. Emily
-Drawing

Emily's parallels show a lot about the book's meaning. Showing the different levels and how they compare between the people and animals really paints the picture for you. It also shows that there is always a leader. Swell job Emz.

4.Levi
-Movie

This movie was SO good. Levi did an extraordinary job on the script and conveyed the characters well. Quality was 100% as well as completeness. Way to go.

5.Annie
-Movie

This movie represented the animals well and shows what went down in the book. I loved how she used real animals and took the time to give us that effect. Very well done.

6. Sidney
-Poem

I really love this poem and it obviously had a lot of time put into it. It tells the reader step by step what happened but in a fun way because it is a poem. It shows that Sidney understood the book and would be helpful for someone who didn't have such a good grasp. Nicely done.


7. Angela
Pyramid/Artwork


I think that this was a great way to represent the book's meaning. It clearly shows that there were different levels and greed rose to the top. It relates our society and the book well by comparing and contrasting the animals and humans. Great job.


8. Hailey
-Poem


This poem was something that was nicely done. It has all of the key elements to tell the story. It looks like a lot of time and effort was put into it and you can tell. This is great. Nice!


9. Dan
-Comic strip


Dan's comic strip shows the major parts of the book such as corruption of power and use of speech. Way to go, this was nicely done.


10.Kylie
-Drawing/artwork


Showing the seven commandments really showed what the animals were trying to do. The crown on the pig's head in the picture is very clever. Well done.

Creative Project for Animal Farm

Here is a link to my Creative Project. It's an Animal Farm movie trailer. Hope you enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdFReGbZx6I&feature=BF&list=ULClkIY8xBavY&index=3

New Year's Resolution

The year 2011 has come to us with a fresh start. What will I do differently this year is a question many ask themselves during this time. My New Year's Resolution is to show at least one act of kindness each day. A lot of the time a resolution will be mainly beneficial to you and you only. In this case, I can be brightening up my own day and another's at the same time. I mean who doesn't want a "You look nice today." or a "Let me help you with those." I am not limited to the common phrases I just listed, they are only examples. So many small things can be done in a day that will leave you and the other person posting on Facebook "good day" or just smiling. Especially in Olympia,Wa where it is dark and grey 95% of the time... I know I don't walk out my front door into the cold smiling as I ride off to school. I'm almost positive that no one walks into a high school somewhere around 7:30 am with a positive, upbeat attitude. If someone spills their coffee on themselves in the morning, thats a bad day. If I'm there to help clean it up and perhaps lend them a spare shirt/jacket, I believe it just got a little bit brighter. I am going to try to show these acts of kindness at least once a day in an effort to make someone happier. How will this benefit me? I will leave the day knowing that I did something to make someone's day just a little bit better.

Lending a hand to another.

Helping an elderly women cross the street!

Keeping Things Whole- POL

To start things off, I am reading the poem "Keeping Things Whole" by Mark Strand. When choosing our poems for the Poetry Out Loud competition, I was instantly drawn to this poem due to its title. When I read  it, it made a lot of sense to me. Although there were very few stanzas, I felt like it had quality and more meaning than the others. Due to its shortness I continued to keep searching for something that seemed more "complex". When I searched, everything seemed to have useless words and phrases which really did not help me see what they were truly about. I felt like "Keeping Things Whole" would be the best choice because it is simplistic yet has a strong meaning.

In the idea of relevance to my life, there isn't a really definite comparison. I felt that this poem is somewhat relative to the idea that the narrator's life is lacking purpose. He understands that he must keep moving and going on with his life even though he is interrupting the existence and paths of others. This can compare with my life because I often ponder over the idea of waking up everyday and going through this scheduled routine. After reading this, the ideal thought that came to my mind was "Why do I keep moving?'.

How will I convey this in my performance? I'm definitely thinking of a sort of sad voice, but also in a wondering/questionable to show that I'm not sure about life. At the end I will draw more sadness or somewhat monotone to convey that I have accepted life being this way and I just need to keep moving. With facial gestures, I will obviously express the facial gestures that go along with my tone. Hand gestures, on the other hand (pun), are a different story. I'm not going to use anything very dramatic but more subtle such as a tap on my leg or a finger tapping my head/lip to show that I am pondering. Hopefully all goes well in my performance!

The "Urgent! Extra Credit Blog" on 5 Part Paragraph Skills

Going over my old blog post helped me a lot. Even though I wrote it, I kind of completely forgot about those skills which would enrich my paper. These skills helped develop my new paper in many ways. One being, that I chose stronger transitions. I made sure to have strong transitions so they they did not flow in with everything else and were recognizable. That was helpful because it is so important to make sure it is clear when you are trying to make a new point. Another way being that I made sure my commentary was well written. I did not just restate and restate everything but instead I made it my own. The commentary written in my new paper was my actual thoughts on what I thought the quote meant and what the author was trying to  get across. Thanks to Mrs. Gilman for posting this so that I could rethink and improve the quality of my paper.

Poetry Out Loud

EATING POETRY

QUEENS CEMETERY, SETTING SUN

CARMEL HIGHLANDS

GOOD PEOPLE

I DREAMED THAT I WAS OLD

Of these five poems, I most enjoyed "Eating Poetry". I thought it was humorous and although it had a small message that this man absorbed poetry and was a better man for it. Would I want to recite this poem? Probably not, I feel as if it would be on the side newspaper column for one's small self enjoyment.

I did not like "I Dreamed That I Was Old". This poem was very sad and depressing to me. I do not like thinking about my death and longing for my youth.

Of these six poems, I am most interested "Good People". Although I'm not confident this is the poem I will be further studying.

I personally connected with "Good People" because it talks about parents and children. Obviously I can relate being that I am a child and I have parents.

The criteria that will be easiest is to make a connection with the audience. I feel like this will be easiest because I find it very simple to generally scan and make somewhat of eye contact with the audience as I am reading.

The criteria that will be hardest for me will be to "relax and act natural". This will be a problem because when reading I will want to get into a character.

Another criteria I will struggle with is to "not say rhyming poems in a sing-song manner". That will be difficult because I find myself wanting to just kind of let it flow instead of breaking it up so that it does not sound like a song.

Videos:
I watched "I am Waiting" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This was a successful performance to me because the way the girl recited it made me think that she was actually thinking those words and that she was a part of it. Her small hand gestures fit great while she was speaking and were not too big so that it was not distracting.

I also watched "Man-Moth" by Elizabeth Bishop. This was successful because the guy reciting it was very well paced and his pauses in between words gave a dramatic effect. His gestures and flow through the poem were great.

I feel like this competition will be very competitive and there will be kids who are very serious about winning. I think I will do fine, I'm not expecting to win obviously. I have not yet decided the poem I want to memorize yet but I will in due time. I think this is a great website if you are studying or learning about poetry. It very resourceful to say the least.