My critical analysis on The Maltese Falcon

For my choice novel I chose The Maltese Falcon, it was recommended to me by numerous people who said it was a fantastic book, to my surprise they were right. In this book you follow Sam Spade, a detective who recently has been given a case that ends up being much more complicated than he ever could imagine. The author, Dashiell Hammett, creates such a vivid scene of what is happening throughout this book that I could really visualize what was happening. What I wanted to focus my critical analysis on was Hammett’s way of expressing his main women characters through writing. In The Maltese Falcon there are only three women characters who all have very different personalities, all of which are very stereotypical of how men see certain women.
The three characters are Effie Pernie, Spades assistant. Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the very sexual client and possible suspect, and Iva Archer, Spades partner’s wife and also his lover. Each woman has a very different personality than the other and as I was reading I realized that each personality is it’s on stereotype. Effie is referred to by Sam as “boyish” and is often described as having a male voice and besides being referred to as a she once every few sentences it’s very hard to remember she actual is a women. Brigid is the object of Spade’s attention in the entire book, and although he knows that she is a possible suspect Brigid continues to get Sam’s help because of her sexuality. Iva is mentioned very few times however she is the “all accepting” woman who believes every word Sam says.
I connected this to Toni Morrison in not of how she talks about race but how race can be related to sexuality and sexisms in great American Literature. Morrison says, “American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views , genius , and power are without relationship to and removed from overwhelming presence of black people in the United States.” With each of these characters Sam has power over all of these women, it’s subtle for some but it does exists in The Maltese Falcon. In the end of the book (sorry to ruin it) Spade ends up sending Brigid to jail because of her involvement in the crime. So even though he’s in love with her he says “I hope to Christ they don’t hang you, precious by that sweet neck” Even just how Sam talks to Brigid you can tell he’s talking down to her, as if she weren’t to the level as he were. One of Morrison’s last thoughts of Romancing the Shadow is “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veile, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable. Or so our writers seem to say.” In the end, without any of his women, Sam is left alone as a white man. A white man who is supposed to be all powerful, but in reality he has nothing without his other characters, as Toni Morrison says.

Metanarratives

I think one of the biggest ideas that could cover every aspect of America would be the idea of a dream. Everyone has heard of America as having the American Dream. When that phrase was fist coined it meant leaving your home country and coming to America to get a job, start a family, and have enough money from that job to support your family. The American dream is what made people want to travel to America in the first place. However over the years that idea about an American dream has changed significantly. Now it no longer means having enough money to support anyone, it means never stop getting money. Even people who are American citizens now dream about having more and more money flow into their bank account.

The economy now has dramatically changed how people across the world see the American dream. They see people like Mark Zuckerburg who have a tremendous amount of wealth but agree to give a good portion of it to other people. They see people like the man with the “golden Voice” who is on the streets with next to nothing, and they see people like Justin Beiber who became famous off a voice. Even though the American dream is very loosely define in the present, I think that the idea of even having a dream is what makes America America.

Criticism by Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra starts off his article saying he doesn’t believe he is a critic but instead says he understands the world on a larger level. Overall in his take on criticism, Mishra stresses the points that literature was and is being taken for granted. What he was saying, to my best understanding, is that many people like the politicians and the wealthy just expect good literature to be there for them, however that’s not always the case. Mishra quotes Kazin many times and backs up similar beliefs in today’s criticism,

What Mishra focuses on for the majority of his article is literature from around the world and not just from America and Europe, he says, “There is no reason to assume that writing from Europe and America is all the matters or should matter to a critic today.” I completely agree with what he is saying here. Mishra gives the example of a well known Chinese critic named Lu Xunn, and I had absolutely no idea who this was. I think that many people in the world, myself included, get too caught up in America and Europe literature because they see that as the most important.

I agree with almost everything Mishra says about literature today, it’s becoming less and less recognized as something the world needs. Mishra says there is “little point in blaming New Criticism” and goes on with it’s not all their fault that that’s what most people are used to reading now. It’s hard to make a change back to what we used to consider good literature. What Mishra is really trying to get out there is that we need to start looking in other places for literature; places around the world have more than we would expect.

The Great Gatsby

So far in The Great Gatsby I’ve grown attached to Daisy. She is probably one of my favorite characters, I loved her in the begging because her dialog was always the best and Fitzgerald didn’t write about her a lot so it was always kind of a surprise to hear that her character was in the scene. In the first part of the book she is a very strong character and strong minded and that’s what I liked about her. At one part in the book (page 17) she is talking to Nick and she says “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” The day we picked out quotes that stood out to us this was mine, I picked it because I love the way she states and recognizes it, but at the same time wants to change it.
In this recent reading, I became less of a Daisy fan, and I think it was because of Gatsby. In chapter 7 when Gatsby first starts to take control of the situation with him and Daisy he comes on really strong, which is ok in the begging but I think his attitude starts to change Daisy’s character. On page 130 Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby are arguing about the love triangle that’s happening, Gatsby is about to say something and Daisy comes in with “Please don’t!...please lets all go home. Why don’t we all go home?” Though these later chapters it seems to me that Daisy is becoming less of the sarcastic, attitude character she was in the begging to more of a scared, timid character who won’t say her thoughts anymore.

What Will Happen With Harry Potter?

So this past weekend the newest installment of Harry Potter was released. Part one of two of the Deathly Hallows is the second to last movie of the Harry Potter series, and more than just a few people will be upset come next year when there will be no more Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley.

For my blog topic discussion of the week I wanted to see what everyone else thought would happen once there are no more Harry Potter movies. For the most part, our generation has grown up with not only these movies, but also the books. Once they are over will there be anymore movies that virtually everyone enjoys watching?
http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/harrypotterandthedeathlyhallows/mainsite/index.html#/downloads
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/44714/
http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/

Above are just a few of the articles and websites pertaining to Harry Potter characters, Harry Potter merchandise and the new Harry Potter theme park. What started off as just a few books has been made in to so many things. Of course people will still go to the Harry Potter theme park after the movies have all been made, but how will they add onto it like Disney World does if no movies are being made, how will they keep it renovated? Besides Disney movies does anyone think this has happened to any other movies?

I was also wondering what everyone thought would happen in say the next 50 or 100 years. After Harry Potter goes away for awhile do you think that because it was such a big hit it would be remade or added onto with different actors? I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be but do you think it would be possible? Any other thoughts on what has happened with Harry Potter or what you think will happen?

Blog of the week- week 1

This book really changed what I thought about the Vietnam War. Going into reading this book I had almost no knowledge of Vietnam except for what I had learned in history class. So after getting past the very graphic way of how he describes things I realized that even though this book was fiction it seems so real. This really made me try and better understand this war better. I’ve seen very few movies on Vietnam and read no books till now about it but I think The Things They Carried is such a good way to “see” the war though the eyes of a soldier. The Things They Carried takes away some common themes from movies, like Two Days in October like all the emotion soldiers felt and what they went through, but beyond that I really felt like TTTC was very individual on how to portray the Vietnam War.

Op-ed articles

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/opinion/19iht-edcohen.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

this article was really cool because it was about the Chilean miners, which I have been watching about in the news but it also dealt with deeper meanings about miracles and what happend to them down there emotionally and physically. I was expecially interested in this article because I knew Valentina, who was here last year, and after talking to her I was really intrested what Chile was really like.

Here's a quick summary:
Throughout the rescue, a couple of incidents kept returning to my mind, one in Chile, one in Europe.
As in Chile, an earthquake preceded the accident. Disarray characterized the Italian rescue attempt. With today’s technology, such an outcome seems unthinkable. The real Chilean “miracle” was man-made.

Fear of....the dark

Although it’s generic, I still can’t stand being alone in a completely dark room. Maybe it’s from all the scary movies I’ve seen or I’m just too paranoid, but when I come home to an empty dark house it’s a race for me to be able to turn on almost every light in my house. It all started when one year my friends and I had the stupid decision to watch really old scary movies. After about 5 movies it was time for me to walk home, I wasn’t old enough to drive so I had to take the long walk from autumn’s dad’s house to mine. The street lights have always been terrible in Country Wood but this particular night I really needed them to be on, but of course they were not. so the entire walk home I got more and more paranoid about being in the dark and all the movie we had watched. Even though they were just stupid movies I was so scared of being alone in the dark that night. so I ran as fast as I could to get back to my house. Ever since then, whenever I'm in the dark alone I flashback to that moment and get equally as scared as that night.

Genre

So once again my topic is about high school.

one of the songs I really like about high school is: Four Years by Jon Mclaughlin
http://www.elyricsworld.com/four_years_lyrics_jon_mclaughlin.html
In this song Jon Mclaughlin has a rather good feeling about high school and says that once you're done with it, you shouldn't have to go back and re-live it. He saying not to get too up tight in high school

Another song that has a different meaning of High school is: High School Never Ends by Bowling for soup
http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/bowling-for-soup-lyrics/high-school-never-ends-lyrics.html
In this song, instead of Jon Mclaughlin view about just forgetting high school after it's over, Bowling for Soup says that you are never really away from high school, that even when you go to college it still feels like high school.

A movie I thought would represent High school well was a movie I just saw, Easy A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTU4BdtzQtw
this movie takes more of a comic view of how high school is for some people, in the movie it shows how fast rumors are spread, sure the movie may not be completely true but it fits in well with my topic of high school. within the songs and the movie I think this shows really well how one topic can have multiple genre's

What Writing is Like

For me writing is like, going through high school. Each year of high school you learn something more, like you would when you would edit a paper. Like what Mr. Kunkle said in class yesterday about how you need to keep going over a rough draft, and each time you read something you make more corrections to make it better. The more time you have to look at something the more you realize certain things that you might not have seen before, like freshmen year I didn’t realize I didn’t need to go to all the marching band practices to still get an A, now senior year I know this-- I’ve made corrections. All you need to do is get rid of the unnecessary filler.

The Looming Tower

Ok, so I chose The Looming Tower for my non-fiction book. What this book is about is the rise of Al-Quaeda and how they lead to the attack on 9/11. I chose this book because I thought it would be interesting to learn more details about something that has been such a big deal in my life and I although I heard a lot on the news about it, I really didn't know as much as I should about it.

In the first part of this book the author, Lawrence Wright, focuses mainly on the character Syyid Qutb. Qutb was a popular writer in the middle east and he moved to America. Basicly the first 40 pages takes you through his life and makes you grow to like him. When he moves back to the middle east he is hung, and later you learn that he is one of Osama bin Ladin's role models.

It's not until about page 70 that Wright even mentions Bin Ladin's name, I found this kind of suprising because since the book is about 9/11 I figured the very first page would be about him. However Wright takes his time in introducing Bin Ladin, he writes a lot about his father and what a rich guy he was. As Bin ladin grows up though the story gets a lot more complicated and you are introduced to many more characters and it was hard to keep up with once in awhile. Up until very close to the end though the book is all about religion and how close Bin Ladin is to his religion and what he does to stay close to it and what he makes his family do for religion too.

Although this book was a lot to read, overall I thought the reading style was very easy to read. I kept up with the story, for the most part, and was suprised at how much I didint know about Al-Qaeda and 9/11.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Well besides this essay being too long I have very little to say about it. It was very hard to annotate it because I didn’t really know what to say about anything Wollstonecraft was saying. What I really didn’t understand about this essay was that in the begging it says Wollstonecraft wrote a chapter or a book on men too. She spent 26 pages talking about how terrible men where and what was wrong with them, if she hates men so much why write more about them. Also I just wanted to know who would buy what she was writing because she lived in the 1700’s and you would think that the men would’ve gotten upset with what she was writing and stopped it or something.
One other thing I noticed in this essay too was that she mentioned children being innocent and it’s only when they grow up they turn in to, what she thinks is terrible men or great women. Although I think that children are innocent I don’t understand her logic that even though she thinks that no matter what men will grow up a certain way, then how can she say that all children are innocent?
She also makes many Bible references, and I found a bunch of possible vocab words in this essay, I felt bad not knowing all these big words. After finishing this essay though I was so focused about how confused I had gotten and almost had completely forgotten what she had said in the begging, uh oh.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

So , this entire article the author talks about how no one wants to read long stories or articles on paper anymore, I found that a little ironic because this was the longest article we’ve had to read so far. Anyway though, it took me a long time to figure out where this author stood on the new technology stuff, like computers. He spent the first few pages talking about how they have helped us and only the last page or two about what he really thinks about computers.

It was easier to read than skunk dreams, well I thought, and even though the author didn’t criticize computer technology that much I thought it was interesting that he said it’s good to be skeptical about what he was saying, which I was anyway. There was a line in this article that I related by to my college lit class, he said that no one wants to read long blog articles, and in college lit. We said this was because students are lazy, not because of technology.

I also wondered if the author could update this article if he would now, because it was published in 2008 and although computer technology might not have updated that much it has a little since 2008. However, overall I thought this article was easy to read and fairly informing.

Skunk Dreams

So Skunk Dreams didn't' make a lot of sense to me. The entire time I was reading it I didnt know what to think, was she 14 the entire time? how old was she then? why is she talking about elk? and why is this a story at all, whats the point? I know this sounds really negative, but I understood the first story so I figured this one would be just as easy to read, it wasn't to me.

Anyway, one of the first things I annotated on was how she never really answered why she was sleeping on a football field in the first place. I felt like I was missing information all throughout the story. Also on a smaller note, in the first two pages there was more alliteration than I've ever seen in my life!

There was also a paragraph on the 2nd page that reminded me a lot of the movie Inception. It might have been because I read this the night I saw Inception. But the paragraph mentioned a lot about dreaming and the quote that really got me thinking about it was when she talked about people thinking each others thoughts and if she was still dreaming. As I kept reading all I could think about was how much it was like Inception, but overall I liked the other story a lot better, this one was really confusing.

The Talk of the Town

So I read this article awhile ago, and at first I didn't really understand what it was about at first and I felt pretty stupid once I picked it up. One of the things that I picked up about this article was that even though we all knew what this was about the author's never directly said it was about Virginia Tech and 9/11. In the first few sentences I underline one part that said "why it happens over and over again in America." I thought this was particularly interesting, because I've never realized it much before but you really don't hear much about other countries having disasters like Virginia Tech and 9/11, even if they do happen as much as America they're never taken over by the media like they are in America. One other part I circled in this article was the paragraph about Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter at Virginia Tech. I know that what happened there was terrible and all those students shouldn't have died, but I do feel bad for Cho's parents and family. Cho Seung-Hui was part of the media for awhile after the shooting and then his family must have become part of it too, so I do feel bad for them because the American media does go over the top sometimes, like making Cho's family the villain too because he was their son. Overall though I didn't think this article was too bad, it kept my attention and opened me up to different things I never would have thought of

Introduction

hey guys!
so for my first blog i'm just doing an introduction about who I am and fun stuff about me. So first off, my name is megan schumaker, which you all know by know but anyway this year i will be a senior! thank god!! So far over summer i've been playing a lot of tennis, and hopefully at the end of the summer I will be going to the US Open, to watch not to play in. Besides tennis right now all I'm doing is a lot of just hanging out on our boat tubing and wakeboarding, but that's really all there is to know about me.

Summer has just started so I'm trying to keep up with all the due dates on all this stuff but it will be interesting, there's too much to do over summer and so not enough time!