I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, I Also Know What The Title Means Now

I know why the caged bird sings, and frankly I think it's amazing that she still can. She has gone through so much growing up, including being raped at the age of 8 (9 maybe?), multiple moves from grandmother to mother to grandmother to mother to father to homeless to mother (all before the age of 18), and a lifetime of adventures that I know will not be lived by myself. Yeah, "she" doesn't sound like a literal bird anymore. "She" is actually a real African American girl/woman living from 1938 to present time named Maya Angelou and she has dealt with quite a lot of troubles. It doesn't explain or give all the details, but at the very tender age of 4 she left her parents her brother via train to go live with her grandmother ("Momma") in Stamps, Arkansas. Her life here during this time may have been the easiest she's ever had it. Whilst here, she realizes how "different" "whites" and "blacks" are. She sees her mother take the abuse from the white children and be subjected to the humiliation of having them taunt her, and calling her by her first name and having her call them Mrs. and Mr. When she is a little older (8 or 9) her and her brother (whom both share a very close bond) are picked up by their dad of whom they know nothing about. This might be the first time Maya (the girl) imagines a crisis. Her father is so perfect and him and Bailey seem to be able to talk to each other so easily that Maya begins to suspect that she is adopted. Not that big of a conflict, but it is her first.

Her father drops them off at their mom's (real) and they learn that their parents are divorced. She goes through many adventures and horrors, such as being raped by her mothers boyfriend, having to deal with the fact that he was murdered because she spoke, being called horrible words due to her skin color, being refused much needed treatment because of her skin color, crashing her father's car in Mexico, getting assaulted by her dad's girlfriend, losing her brother (left for a job), having to live in a junkyard, false belief of her sexuality (she thought she might have been lesbian [?]), dealing with her changing body, and becoming pregnant at an early age (16). Despite all this, after each event she always manages to smile and keep going (some took longer time to recover then others however).

The last event was the pregnancy, which contained the most beautiful quote and scene throughout the book. I'll lead up to it (generally, not specifically due to the fact that I do not feel entirely comfortable speaking about it): Due to her influence about a lesbian novel Maya had recently read, she believed she was lesbian and her body was mutated and misshapen. She talks to her mom shyly and is rejoiced to hear that her body is perfectly normal. Unfortunately, due to the fact that while her fried was undressing at a sleepover and she thought that her friend looked beautiful, she began thinking again that she was lesbian. She decided to prove to herself that she wasn't with the first thing that popped into her head, unprotected casual sex with a stranger (totally the first thing to pop into my head as well, mhmm, yep). She did (luckily didn't get a disease) and a couple of months later realized she was preggers. It took more then half a year for her to tell her mom, and when she did her mom was not ashamed at all. Maya gave birth, and for some reason she was scared she might hurt her baby boy. She loved him unconditionally, but she was scared she might do something accidentally. After the third week of the child’s life, Maya’s mom forced Maya to sleep with the child in the same bed. She did and when her mom came to wake her and show her that she had unconsciously rapped her arms protectively around her baby whilst sleeping. Her mom then said to her: "See, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking." [Chapter 36, pg. 281]

This book is I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

I Don't Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Well Not Yet Anyways

Maya is a black young girl who lived in the racist and segregated time periods of 1928 and 1945. Maya and her brother, Baily, have been sent from home at the very young age of (I think) 4 to go live with their grandmother in a place called Stamps. In stamps, white persons and black persons are so separated, that Maya used to believe that white people were just make believe. Anyway, Maya comes to Stamps and lives with her grandmother (she calls Momma), her crippled uncle Willy, and her brother Baily for the years of her early childhood life (I think up to about 8-10ish). She grows very attached to everyone and everything there, although she is not sure if she likes it and always feels a sort of emptiness within her. Suddenly out of nowhere, her father comes to get her and bring her back along with her brother. She doesn’t feel close to her father at all. They take a car home, and after a long ride they meet their real mother and- chapter ends. This is roughly the first half of the book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

This book clearly states the problems and issues about growing up. Maya is feeling insecure, curious, non-ignorant, and many other common symptoms of growing up. I would praise the author on creating such a realistic story, however it is an autobiography. Branching off of the insecure part, she has been feeling more and more insecure as the story progresses. In the beginning she was just a bumbling child who felt dumb, but wasn’t worried about it or troubled at all. However, her insecurity has been rising and rising. As she began to grow up, she compared herself and her brother. She described their two very similar features (noses, skin color, eyes, etc.) and underrated hers and overrated his. For example, she describes her skin as being “Sh*t” colored, and his skin being the color of black velvet. They have the exact same colored skin. Her insecurity got to the point that the slightest tremor might make her absolutely despise herself. That slight tremor came when her father arrived. He was Awestruckingly (I believe that’s a word :P) tall, wore fancy clothes, spoke perfect proper English, and was incredibly handsome. Baily immediately warmed up to him, and (subconsciously) began imitating his actions. Maya however was to shy and was always distant from him. She began suspecting that she was just an orphan who was picked up off the streets to keep Baily company.

I have yet to see if her insecurity grows alongside her age, and I’ll post another post when I finish this book.

Spring break HW

Over the break I have read two blogs. One was Eliza’s: Harry VS. Ron: Overexposed VS. Overshadowed. The other was Joyce’s: Gale vs. Peeta. I liked both of them very much for very different reasons.

I liked Joyce’s blog post because it was so direct, organized, and semi-personal. It had the classic structure of introduction, example, other example, other side’s examples, conclusion. She compares Peeta and Gale in terms of love for Katniss. She gives reasons why Peeta should be with Katniss, and why he would be good for her. She then goes to Gale’s side and explains why he should be with Katniss and why he would be good for her. In the end however, she explains why Peeta would be better, thus concluding the post. She also makes it sort of personal by connecting to a topic everyone knows (the hunger games), and voices her bias opinion as well in the middle of it.

Eliza’s post was also very well organized. It looked as though it was an example from how a bog post should be written. That’s how perfect it was. She chose an interesting topic from a well-known book that the average student would not think of, therefore making you interested. She wrote about who has more weight to carry in the Harry Potter series, Ron Weasley, or the man himself, Harry Potter. This is quite an interesting topic because nobody ever really talks about that. When you think about it, Ron is probably just as troubled as Harry. He’s poor, unimportant, “overshadowed,” and just pretty much bad at everything. When you think about it, you can understand why in Eliza’s perfectly structured conclusion she says that it is a tie. Eliza’s post is well organized because it follows the same rules of the 4 paragraph essay.

For my future blogs, I would like to be a lot more organized in my writings. Have an obvious introduction that clearly introduces my main idea, and the theme/subject. Then 2 paragraphs of two examples and their explanations towards relation to my main idea. And after that, a nice conclusion that sums it all up nicely, smoothly, and quickly.

  What the student di wrong was place a citation from another person’s work and pretending as though he/she was the one who wrote it. He or she could have included directly before the citation: “A good way to express what I want to put into words is said form the authour  of this site: http://http//www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html.”

- Don’t look at the piece when paraphrasing.

-DON’T COPY AND PASTE EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU WILL CHANGE PARTS.

- Make sure to include where you cited it somewhere near it.

Tim DeCristopher is a climate activist who has strived to protect our enviorment, and the people of amerlica against big corporations. He is not an extremist who goes in and blows the “bad guys” away with bombs. He organizes peaceful protests. He was sent to jail fo a bit because he interrupted an auticon for an oil company.  An energy company has contributed $25,000 to his legal defence. DeChristopher did not like that this company secretly outsourced to forieng countries, so he wrote a well written email to the company stating that if they did not stop outsourcing and closing down power plants in America, he would refuse the donation they gave and orgainize a protest against them. The jail he was in saw this as a threat, so he had to be moved into a padded, isolated, small confinement with one other man and limited fresh air.

This is extremely  unfair and unjust for more then one reason. He has not done anything that has ever actually hurt someone, so the padding and confinement is unnecessary. There is absolutely no evidence that he would hurt himself, or anyone else from this letter. All he threatens to do is organize a protest, which is completely leagal and does not deserve to be punished.

Another person who has written a similar letter in similar conditions has gone unpunished, and for that the results were rewarding. This man was Martin Luther King Jr. According to the article, the same rules that restricted DeChristopher’s letter would have also restricted a letter that Martin Luther King Jr. sent regarding a political boycott. Why should one go unpunished while another does not?

In conclusion, Tim DeCrisopher has been unfairly punished. They could have given him a warning and kept him in his original low  security cell.

Romeo and Juliet pre letter

Dear Person,
We are soon to be reading romeo and juliet, and i am quite happy we are to do so. I have not yet read a book of Shakespeare's, so i am not entirely sure of what to expect. I know that there will be the old version of english used throughout the book, in fact, all of it is probably old english. Being that i speak and write in such an eccentric way, i may be able to easily understand Shakespeare's language, for i believe that they might be quite similar.

On other note, my mother has been recently nagging me about our "incompetent" ELA classes, for we never have group readings on classics. I have told her that we were to be reading Romeo and Juliet and she was very pleased. She said she read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade too. Well, at least now she cannot say our ELA system is incompetent because it is up to speed with hers, and she was satisfied with hers.

The weird thing about Shakespeare, is like you are rereading. Because his works are so famous, I pretty much know the whole plot about Romeo and Juliet. I also know what happens, who dies, and how it ends. Why read it then? Because of the literary style and devices used in it, and because the plot and story is so amazing that it must be analyzed more thoroughly. That is also the same reason why you would reread a book, or re-watch a movie. i can't wait to read it, and i'll tell you about it later.

Sincerely,
Jake Lester

Sonnet 27 Shakespeare Response

SONNET 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.




This is a sonnet written by shakespeare and to start it off, on line 13, it is not lol, but lo, An exclamation used to draw attention to an interesting or amazing event. Shakespeare wrote this poem to show the lifestyle he endures, concerning lost or gone love. In my own personal decipher, I will start from the beggining and translate. Tired, I try to go to sleep, to give rest to my body for I travled for long. However i cant rest because i start to think. My mind works when my body can't work anymore. And my brain is eager for a journey to you, but i try to say awake, and lookng into the darkness of my room. Except that my hearts wanting makes your image apear in the night, which in contrast and combination made thedark look beutiful and your old face gorgeuos. Aha! Always I am working physically and mentally, and i never find peace.


The main theme that sonnets usually focus on is love. Shakespeare especially foceses on very complicated relationships about his love, or at least makes it sound very complicated. Specifically I think this one is about a past lover whom Shakespeare can no longer see. It is possible that she has died, which would work with the part where he says "...and her old face new." I chose this sonnet, and really love it because it has such an interesting and involving point, being that the author cannot ever be at rest for his mind and body are always working. I loved how Shakespeare was always using the best of words for what he wanted to say.


For example, he could have easily have said something like "my body and my limbs are so tired" instead of "The dear repose for limbs with travel tired." The difference in quality is painfully visible just from a few words, the main one being repose. I didn't even know what it was and was forced to look it up. It makes me think about the fact that having a wide range of vocabulary might be the key, and main factor to a good sonnet. Even if the sonnet is about your love for Cheese Doodles, I am sure if you spoke the way Shakespeare you could make it sound good. My attempt (first 4 sentences): For have I a deep yearn'ing for my sweet love, That unto thee I use magniloquence. My soul thinks of nothing besides thereof. Cheese Doodles hast i not misrepresent.


I just wrote the first four lines of a sonnet about Cheese Doodles, and no matter how you look at it, The subject of that partial sonnet is awful. However I ornate it with some fancy vocabulary, and it becomes mediocre and slightly amusing. This is taking matters to the extreme however, and with a decent poem, a beautiful piece could be made. I think Shakespeare realized this and chose to sacrifice readability for artistic, creative, and of beauty remembrance for his sonnets.

A Sonnet Of Meaning

Emotions, emotions, what purpose served?

No practical reason of existence.

A perfect person can now be unnerved.

And oh so very hard for resistance.

In crucial moments cause hesitation.

Causing impossible control of thoughts.

Giving way to annoying sensation.

Relief from this weight is what I have sought.

But alas, it is what makes us human.

For without that I ask, what would we be?

Without the ocean, what would be the sand?

A dessert as far as the eye can see.

There would not be moisture, life just as well.

And what would life be then? It would be hell.

3 poems

"What is ____" Poem

Poetry
is
whatever.
The earth,
the sun,
the ground,
the sky,
the sea,
everything,
nothing,
all, none,
me.


"What happens to..." Poem


What happens to a world one believed in?
So real, no more.
Imaginative until frowned upon.
Washed up, no more.
The magic fades, darken do the shades.
Alas, no more.
And  what then? Gone, just as made.
What does happen to a world once believed in
but not anymore?
No more, no more.


Art poem

A rabbi cloaked in a veil of light

as darkness has enveloped the surroundings.

An angel in the horizon taking flight,

a worrisome face as the journey arises.

Praying, praying. Giving all to all.

The torah, a violin, a goat, a man.

Praying,

resting,

solitude.

Art and Solitude

Solitude

by Marc Chagall

A rabbi cloaked in a veil of light

as darkness has enveloped the surroundings.

An angel in the horizon taking flight,

a worrisome face as the journey arises.

Praying, praying. Giving all to all.

The torah, a violin, a goat, a man.

Praying,

resting,

solitude.                              -by jake lester

Marc Chagall was born on july 7th 1887. He was born in Russia, and was the eldest of 9 children [http://www.biography.com/people/marc-chagall-9243488]. He studied art from a very young age and when he was 23 (in 1910) he moved to france. When in France, He started painting the pieces that made him famous, such as Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers (1912), I and the Village (1911),Hommage Apollinaire (1911–12), Calvary (1912), The Fiddler(1912), and Paris Through the Window (1913) [http://www.biography.com/people/marc-chagall-9243488]. He often incorporated his religion and home village in his art pieces. In 1914, he had his first personal art gallery (a gallery entirely dedicated to his art) In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Vitebsk merchant. She was also in many of his pieces. In 1916 they had a daughter and named he Ida. When world war 2 broke out, Marc and his family went to seek refugee in New York (for MOMA invited them). Bella (Marc's wife) died 4 years after arriving dying in a hospital. He continued making art pieces of his home and his first wife, painting sets, and other related things till the day he died, which was on March 28, 1985.

I chose this piece because it just looked so sad, yet it also reminded me of hope. I was interested on why it may have done that to me, so i looked at it closer. I noticed that in the piece there is a rabbi sitting on the ground in maybe the nighttime. The rabbi looks as if he has an expression of concern on his face, similar in my opinion to the angels. Maybe the rabbi is praying for the angel, who has a tough journey ahead. If you look closely enough at the man's face (and you must include the mouth in the picture), you can see that he is hoping, and possibly praying.

 Also, there is not only black in the background. Nice shades of blue are starting to sprout, most likely giving to a new day. A new day, a sunrise very much symbolizes hope. When looking at the center of the painting, and looking at the buildings covered in darkness, you notice how sad it looks. However, directly to its right are some buildings covered in brightness, making it look a lot more joyous and less sorrowful. I believe that this means that there is hope for a "brighter tomorrow" by definition of how the sun is rising.

Concluding this, Marc Chagall incorporates almost all that is dear to him. He puts his village in the background, puts the torah in it (the red scroll that the rabbi is holding) (Definition: A scroll containing the law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures) [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Torah], which is a major part of his faith, Judaism. He also places a goat in it, which has a very deep significance to Marc because almost all of his works have a goat in it. These three things might be his definition of hope, or of what reminds him of it.

Would be hilarious if it wasn't so dreadful

Wow, I stop at page 260 in Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. The characters are about to watch an air show and nothing important looks like it is going to happen. I write a blog about how my suspicions of ice-nine are true and i take a break from the book. When I come back to page 261 one of the planes have crashed, "Papa's" dead crystalized body has fallen into the sea, and pretty much an apocalypse happens. The whole sea freezes, all the locals have committed suicide because of their playful "Priest," and tornadoes are raging 24/7. The person the main character loves commits suicide 1 week after the tornados start, and meets the mysterious Bokonon. This book has 287 pages and the first 260 pages are an introduction to an exciting story. This book only takes place within a certain amount of months and then it just ends in twenty pages.

Just twenty minutes before writing this i was talking to someone about  how there were some good books with non conclusive endings. I can't believe how true that was. This blog post will be short, because there is just too much for me to summarize within a single post. anyone who wants to question humanity, or why they exist, or about God and religion just read this book. I don't even know what to tell myself in my mind about this book. I give the book a 8/5. in comparison i give the first book of the hunger game series a 4.5/5.

Cats Cradle Suspicions Comfirmed

                                            READ PREVIOUS BLOG BEFORE READING THIS

To start this off, I knew it. Ice-nine has made its appearance, and none too shabby either. In Cats Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Ice-nine has successfully killed two human beings, on pages 235-239. "Papa" was the president/dictator of san Lorenzo, a poor, sad, third world country, and he was dying. He was about to die of cancer, when he decided to commit suicide. He committed suicide by putting a chip of ice-nine in his mouth. This froze all the moisture in his body, causing almost everything in his body crystalize with ice-nine. Then, the doctor who was treating him went to wash off his hands, which had ice-nine crystals on them. The doctor was bewildered when the water he was washing his hands with froze and he touched it with the tip of his tounge. He died the same way "Papa" did.

The main character witnesses the doctor die, and you hear hints of what the three children did with their crystals. the book is nearly over, and on ice-nine matters, nothing else has happened besides 3 countries having control of it. San Lorenzo, USA, and soviet russia.

Cats Cradle and Ice-nine

Ice-nine. An object that is frequently mentioned in the main character's past with an unrelenting distaste. I believe that this crystal will be very important to the story itself, and the whole world (in the book) quite possibly. Ice-nine is a crystal developed by a deceased father of the secondary characters and to the first nuclear bomb. It freezes any liquid it touches and turns the liquid into more ice-nine. The drastic feature of this crystal is that it never stops, and if unleashed onto a body of water that in someway connects to the ocean, all rivers, the entire sea, and even "rain that drops to the ground" would become ice-nine. It has the capability to become the most malicious weapon of mass destruction. The father, before he died, split up the ice-nine between his three children. The same children whose path intertwines with the mainn charactor's so much, that it leads me to have a faint suspicion that he himself might come to be in possession of some of this dreadful mineral.

The first time ice-nine is mentioned is on pages 42-43, when the main character talks to an associate of "Father" about "Father." The main character is at this time trying to write a documentry on "the human aspect" of creating the nuclear bomb. The associate tell's a story of when a marine general interupted "Father's" lunch break to ask him if there was a way to solidify mud so that the marines could trek across it with more ease and efficiency then wadding through it. This is where "Father" makes up the idea of ice-nine to get the general to go away. After that, "Father" decides to make ice-nine. The associate does not know that "Father" made it. The only people who do know at that current time are his three children who become very important as the story progresses. The main character of the future (the one who is supposedly writing the book, aka the fake author) dedicates two pages talking about how ice-nine is real.

The next time it is mentioned is when the fake author is on a plane to San Lorenzo, and he meets Newton and Angela, the youngest son and eldest daughter of "Father." They talk and chat of thing irreverent to ice-nine, but at the end the author mentions "that the son of a bitch had a piece of ice-nine in his thermos bottle in his luggage, and so did his miserable sister, while under us was God's own amount of water, the Caribbean Sea [pg. 111]." The main charecter does not hate Newton at all. Newton is a friendly 20-something year old midget. He said the words "son of a bitch" most likely in either a playful, or scoldful way (scoldful being because he was so careless with it, the thermos was all that was protecting humanity, and all living things on earth).

The main character would not speak of ice-nine with such anger and passion if it was of no significance. I expect ice-nine to make its grand appearance, threatening all of humanity soon.