MuslimPower

During the first semester, i learned that the mind plays many tricks that can manipulate the way that you think and act. For example, when we read Macbeth, when he is told to be the King of Scotland, he truly believes that he is going to be the king and that he should do what is needed for him to suceed. I enjoyed reading Macbeth and a Lesson Before Dying, but i hated Huck Finn because not only was it a tough book to read, but also it was very pointless to me. I hated writing essays also because i just can’t seem to do good on them because the essay’s that are given are very hard to write about. The evil essay i had no true meaning of evil in my mind and i honestly did not care about the Huck Finn essay because i didn’t like the book. For the next semester, i think that we should have easier essay questions to do because the other questions are a little hard.

This was a very interesting interveiw with Sacha Baron Cohen. Honestly he said a lot about being satirical and how he likes to use his satire to show how people react to this. For example when he was in the rodeo, you said all those weird things about Iraq and all the people were cheering even when he said that George Bush will drink the blood of every Iraqi. I think it is amazing how he can just fool people so easily and show their true characters. When he was being satiracal as Borat, being a stupid man who knows nothing of Western technology, he showed the audience that many people accept what he does because they think that he doesn’t know better, it is amazing. I can’t think of much to write about, but i just think this was an amazing interveiw to listen to. I recomend it.

After reading the slave narrative, The Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave, my understanding for slavery in America was enhanced because it really showed me that not only was life in slavery tough, but also trying to survive once you become free can be just as hard and oppressing. As I predicted in the first post, the conditions for Isaac were bad, but they could have be worse. Mark says:

“The conditions he worked under were not that nice but I can imagine how much worse the conditions were for slaves in the deeper south, as Isaac was in Maryland.”

That is true, he was in Maryland and it would be very hard to comprehend how rough it was for the slaves who lived farther south in America. The way that this narrative enhances my understanding toward slavery is that it is coming from the person who had to go through all the hardships and struggles of slavery. I get to hear the stories and thoughts of this peticular person and get inside their heads as to what slavery was really like. When you read about slavery in a text book or encyclopedia, you do not get all the feelings of the people who had to endure all of this, you only get the facts.

“When I arrived at my home, I returned thanks to the Lord for his mercy to me, sparing my life through the perils of the storm, from the perils of the heat, through the perils of sickness, and from the perils of death.”

This was my favorite quote in the whole narrative because even though there were a lot of more interesting quotes, I think that this one really summarizes how hard it is to survive through slavery and be free afterwards. It really is not an easy thing to do with all the inequality there was at the time of slavery. Isaac would never have life be easy when he was free, people would crook him out of money, like the time when he was at the ferry and he paid for first class tickets, but got ripped off. Even the people that were trying to help Isaac were taking advantage of him. Life was tough.

The narrative of Isaac Mason relates to Huck Finn because it really shows how hard it is to escape from slavery and I think it shows that Jim was very lucky to have Huck by his side and help him escape while people were searching for him and giving reward money to people who returned him. Not many slaves are able to escape without getting recaptured, so I think that Jim was very lucky because Huck made sure that he was safe and made sure that nobody could take him back. This reading really showed me that the slaves were really strong people because even through the hardships of slavery and being a free African American, they were still able to keep their hearts in tact and overcome the seemingly impossible, like writing these narratives, even though they probably were not taught to write as well as they should have.  

It will be very interesting to read the slave narratives because it gives a clear perspective on how slavery really was with not much twist to the stories. Now, I wrote this blog a little later than i should have, but from what i did read so far and what i’m going to read, i expect to learn a lot more about the conditions the slaves had to live in, the ways they would try to enjoy themselves a little more, considering what they are doing is completely horrible. I also expect to read a couple of stories that the slaves have about some horrible incidents that happened, or even a couple stories that are enjoyable to read. Obviously what i know about slavery now is that the slaves were not treated like people and that they had to work in a harsh enviornment with the temperature and the supplies that they had, including food, clothes, and healthcare. 

What Stephen Colbert does on his shows is make satirical jokes about politics, the war, and the president, as shown in the video. Even though Stephen is saying that he wants the draft to be brought back to america, he is really promoting the position that the draft should not get brought back by really saying all the stupid things about the draft. If he was really promoting the draft, he would be defining all the positives of having a mandatory draft, not all the negatives. Colbert wants to have people to learn how bad a draft would be if it were brought back into society by making fun of it. I mean, saying that you want to have more soldiers so that you could have more protesters is not a very good arguement to bring back the draft. The message that Colbert is trying to show the veiwers is that if you bring more soldiers to Iraq, or even just restart the draft, you will have more protesters, riots and things of that sort. This is a satirical article because it is making fun of the idea that the draft should be brought back, so Colbert makes it sound like he likes it by saying that all the negative aspects of it are good. I personally was not “lol”ing when i saw the video, but it definetly gave me a few smiles.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/12/racism.poll/

This link shows that many americans feel that racism still exists in america and that they think that it is a serious issue. A lot more African Americans though think it is more of a problem than white americans because probably all the racist comments and actions are going towards the minorities of America. But with this poll, it shows that it really isn’t just only the people getting oppressed, but some of the people who are part of the race that are the oppressers also feel that there is some racism in America and that it is a serious problem.

In my opinion, satire is so popular because people want get the humor out of situations and problems that happen in our daily lives. Life becomes more enjoyable if you are able to be able to laugh at some things that aren’t truely very funny. I think people like finding the humor in things because it opens peoples minds to ideas that they never thought of before. Borat is considered satire because it makes fun of many steryotypes that exist today with with Jews, women, muslims and all. He pretty much expresses what people think is mean and makes it into something funny, while Scary Movie is really just a parody of many scary movies. What it does is it takes movies that are naturally meant to make you scared and make it into one movie that makes people laugh. Scary movies aren’t real to begin with, so you can’t make a satire on something that doesn’t exist. I personally love satire. Last year we made satirical cartoons in Ms. Blumenthal’s class, and i had a really good one. I think that if you can find humor in something, then express to the people around to see if they like it or not. Some of my favorite satires are The Colbert Report and I also really like satirical cartoons because it isn’t only the joke aspect of it, but also for the drawing to show something too.

The death penalty is acceptable in our society because if you do something really horrible, then you should be put to death. If you kill everyone in a classroom and people witness it, then you should be put to death. Now, it is acceptable if the way you kill them is not cruel or unusual. If you kill someone by putting them in a hungry shark tank, then, yes, it is unacceptable, but if you kill someone by injection or firing squad, i think it is fine. Let the punishment fit the crime.

A Lesson Before Dying, in my opinion, is an ok book. I don’t really like it, and i don’t hate it. Really what I don’t like about it is when Grant goes on these really long thinking paragraphs that last forever, like when he remembered what it was like for him to be in school. Really, all i like about it is that it has an interesting plot.

Mr. Wasserman asked, “Does Grant know what he is doing with Jefferson?” Honestly, i don’t think he cares what he has to do with Jefferson. He just acts like Miss Emma is forcing him to go and it is as if Grant is not even trying to figure out what to do. He just seems to act like his life is horrible and people always make him do things. He should just try to figure out how to make this depressed guy and cheer him up and make him a “man”.

Outside of school, I watched Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Dicaprio. This was a really modern times movie that took place in Verona Beach, Los Angeles (Verona Beach doesn’t really exist). This movie was spectacular. In the beggining, i thought the movie would be nothing like the Shakespere version, but on the contrary, it was very similar. All the characters talk the same way as Shakespere wrote it. They said every line in the play and they acted every scene the way it should have been. Everything that was written in Romeo and Juliet, was played out in this movie. The differences were that it was more modern and instead of swords, they used guns, and they had cars etc. I honestly couldn’t find any differences from the movie and Shakesperes version. The acting in this movie was fantastic, the actors stayed in character very nicely and the scenes when something really important happened were expressed very clearly. I love the way the director directed the film because he followed the play word by word, scene by scene, so it felt like i was reading the book again. 2 thumbs up for sure.