"Song of Myself" by Whalt Whitman

This book was one long poem that described life as Walt Whitman sees it. Whitman refers to "I" many times in the story but i don't beleive he is talking about only himself, he referst to every one. He is a therty seven year old man that is healthy. He would like to have the joy of life till he dies.

Then he speaks about nature and life, he exprehow close and intuned he is with nature and humanity. the he mentions perfumes with coenside with individuality. Expressing the uniquness of each humin beange. he also explains the importance of individuality and that a person must strive to be unique and not follow others.

The discution of prosparity and joy that a persons scences can feel, hear, touch, smell and taste. The importace of freedom was eminent, and desire for it was present in his poetry. He does not believe that knowlage is the most important factor in ones life but freedom is a detail one could not fully live without it. without freedom you cant fofill life as it should be lived.

His grates mottow is life is clear and simple, simplicity is the true way to live life. He does not give much care to matirealistic things. Life in its simple form is ""sweet" and good. When you have acheved "sweet" life joy and unification with ones sole is present.

Everything in life is joyful. Different perspectives complete the world. The massage that i got from this poem is individuality and differece compleats this world and it is important to conect with ones soul.

Whitman expresses the theme of individuality by constantly explaining how important it is to be ones self and not following others. Which connects it to desire because every one has the desire to be unique and to beable to do what they want. Freedom gives individuals a chance at life and express themselves without being ridiculed. Peace will be gained by freedom because if people are free the wont have things to fight about therefore they will be able to acheve full quality of life. having acheved a unbounding quality of life a person will come to love nature and the surroundings. To love ones surroundings is to love humanitie and the people aroud you.

life and death are opposites, both expressed hand in hand in this story the story relates them by saying you should live life to the fullest till you die, you never know when you will die so live every day like it is the last. You should also live life in nature conecting your soul to the worlds
finest nature, and the importance of seeing the true beauty of nature and life.

The video bellow is a monolog, a man acting out certain scenes from "Song of Myself".


Why was Whitman so concerned with the balence between life and death?
What does he mean when he says we are limitless?
Walt has very strong feelings for the world around, what are the reasons for it?
Do you think Whitman's point of view is concrete or abstract?




The following clip expresses the life story of Walt Whitman and all of his works of writing.


I enjoyed reading this poem by Walt Whitman, it went in to vivid detail of the world as Walt saw it. It was a great reading in to someone else's view on life and death and how the contradict themselves. This poem really makes you think about how the quality of life and how the surrounding nature impact a persons soul and their well being. I would recommend this story to all because it shows a point of view that is "out of the box" so to speak, an abstract but at the same time concrete point of view.

The following video highlights quotes from Walt Whitman's work and expresses the themes as well.

Question of the day!!!!!!!!!
What did you think about this book? Did you have similar thoughts to me? Add your own feedback.

"Greenleaf" by Flannery O'Connor

"I wouldn't milk a cow to save your soul from hell," (O'Connor 356).
Summary

“Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor is a short story depicting the life of two different families in the1950’s. The May’s, white, and the Greenleaf’s, black, the May family consisted of Mrs. May, and her two suns, the Greenleaf family was made up of Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf and their twin boys. Mrs. Greenleaf was a very spiritual and religious woman.

The story starts off with the May’s, who own a farm, and the Mr. Greenleaf was the “grounds keeper”. Mrs. May states many times in the beginning that the only reason why she still employs Mr. Greenleaf, even though he does not do his job, is he has been with theme for so long. She is constantly dissatisfied with his work, nothing ever gets done the way she wants it.

One night she was in her room and heard a noise from outside and found that there was a stray bull in her fields. She was very concerned that the bull would mess up her breeding schedule for the cows. Although she wanted to resolve the issue right away she was hesitant to call Mr. Greenleaf because she was scared that he would be judge mental. He may have judged her on her boys and why they did not catch the bull. Her boys never helped her, they were lazy. She was very jealous of how well the Greenleaf boys treated their parents and had their own high-tech plantation.

The next morning when he arrived at the plantation and was told about the bull, his response to her was that the bull had been there quite a few days. She was infuriated when she heard this news. She had ordered him to secure the bull, the bull got out, and soon after she found out that the bull belonged to the Greenleaf boys. She paid a visit to the Greenleaf plantation to inform them that they had till that evening to come get the bull and if not it would be killed.

The boys never came to retrieve their bull so the next morning she ordered Mr. Greenleaf to kill the bull. They went out together to kill the bull, after passing all the gates, they both got out of the car. He went in to the bushes and she waited by the car, she spotted the bull and called for Mr. Greenleaf. It was too late by the time he had got to her, the bull had planted his horns in to her stomach and killed her, he then shot the bull and killed it.

Themes:

Many themes where expressed in this story, one of them is Racism. Racism is a very dominant theme especially because of the time period, they called blacks the n-word and made racial slurs, the hatred between the families because of color took place as well, which is why Mrs. May had to repress her desire for Mr. Greenleaf. She could not express her love for him because they were different colors. Family was also another dominant theme but it was also incorporated with irony because it was ironic hoe the May boys could not care less about their mother, the person who gave them life.

Mrs. Greenleaf is a devoutly religious and spiritual person, on the other hand Mrs. May claims to be religious but does not believe in anything. In some parts of the story the bull represented many things like sexuality and taboo. Sexuality is represented after Mrs. May was killed by the description of how the bull laid on her lap. Taboo and innuendo were publicized by the way the May’s treated each other not accepted by society. They are both shown corresponding along with sexuality dealing with the bull, because it is unacceptable by society to have feeling for other races and the description leads to innuendo.

Questions:

What does the bull represent?

Is Mrs. May truly jealous or just wants to have relations with Mr. Greenleaf?

What did the way they die represent?

Why were the May boys’ so disrespectful?

Reader Response:

The story strangely depicts a story of some one that had feelings that they can’t act upon. I found the symbolism in this story to be quite strange. Personally I found the analytical story line to be decent but I would not recommend this story to others, which is not only my view but the view of my entire eleventh grade American literature class.

Multi Media

The following movie and gadjets each represent something different the movie represents how the bull killed her and how powerfull a bull is. The mario game showes that you have to becareful of what you do not to be killed and the current event part (news) is there because Mrs. Greenleaf cut out the articles and preformed her rituals.

The Killers

SUMMARY

"The Killers" is a mainly dialog story that may seem confusing. It takes place in in Henry's diner, in Summit, in about the early 1900's. It is about two men that come in to Henry's, on a beautiful day, to kill a man, Ole Anderson, a Swedish boxer. He was a man that moves from town to town. He came from Chicago, and is staying in a motel.

Nick a young boy in the diner thought that he may have double crossed someone and thats why they want to kill him. when the two killers, Max and Al, walked in to the diner to kill Ole because thats where he normally went for dinner at six.

At the diner they get annoyed by the waiter, George, because he is slow and everything they want is on the dinner menu. After being in the diner for a few minutes they took bright-boy, Nick, and the cook, Sam and tied them up in the kitchen.

They kept referring to the cook as the n-word. Then they told George that if any one was to come in and order something, to tell the the cook is out sick and if the were adamant about ordering something to go in the back and cook it for them. That is what he did, he sent one person away and when the second person was adamant about getting food, he went in the back to cook for that person.

After waiting for Ole till twenty pasted six the killers left and George went back in to the kitchen to untie Nick and Sam. once Nick was untie he went to go to see Ole, in the Hirsch's rooming-house, to tell him what happened. Ole did not seem surprised and when Nick asked him if he was going to skip town his answer was no. When Nick came back to the diner he said he was ready to leave this town and move he was not liking what was going on.

THEMES

Although the story, "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway, has a lot of content for a nine page story I feel that the themes and meanings behind the story was even greater. The story reflects the theme of racism, expressed many times by the characters calling the cook as the n-word.

Looking out for one another was another theme put was only used in one part of the story. to once when Nick went to tell Ole about the guys that wanted to kill him.

Along with the other themes from the story are what I believe are sub theme, I named them sub theme because if you are to analyze the story these might not be the first thing you see, one of the themes is staying out of trouble and another one is you can't run away from life. They both go hand and hand because if you make a mistake or get in to in life you can't run away from your life because it will all catch up to you.

Ole got tired of running from what ever happened in Chicago and lie around till they come and kill him, because his past caught up to him. Examples of this from other places are Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", Marian stole $40,000 and ran away and ended up getting killed.

MEDIA

Another movie you might want to view is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg6j73AKvAw