Josh's English Journal

Personification page108

1) ‘Sleep beckoned insistently’

This implies that sleep was calling him begging him to succumb to tiredness. This passage suggests that joe was really tired, but was unsure whether to fall asleep incase he was engulfed by the darkness around him, taken hostage by the shadows. This shows not only the fight with sleep but the fight with himself not to fall asleep. This is a form of personification because sleep doesn’t have a hand.

Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made. Describe a decision that you, or someone you know, had to make and explain the consequences. (16 marks)

During the mid-summer of 2008 I had an annual sports day which was held in the park near my school, anyway this was my last sports day before leaving for secondary school. I had run races and won races and lost some. Towards the end of the day there was a race for parents, hearing this I ran to my mother and begged her to partake in the race (because in her early days she was quite sporty and she used to do athletics). Anyway she agreed to race and asked me to lend her my trainers. she was in the lead and then on the home straight she fell over (only to later find out she had snapped her Achilles tendon) she was then rushed to A&E in the school minibus,  here she was given a choice; she could have an operation to fix the injury and she would be in a cast for 6 weeks or she could let it heal naturally and she would have to wear a cast for 3 months. she chose to let it heal naturally. About a week later her friend done the same thing and was also given the same choice she chose the surgery and was in a cast for 5 months instead of 6 weeks.

Rhythm and sound are keys to identifying the emotions characters in these texts.

‘It can sew, it can cook, it can talk, talk, talk.’
This suggests that the writer is frustrated with the way in which she is or has been treated by other people most of all men. It shows that she is starting to get angry because of the repetition in her speech/ language. She may not express herself vocally but she does so through her literature.

‘Her silence flouts me, and I’ll be revenged.’
This implies that Katherina was angry and wanted to seek revenge upon her sister, not fatal ofcourse but still effective. It shows that she is not a woman to be fiddled with and is always willing to speak her mind.

There are some good elements to this essay, while it was inconsistent, there were times when you made clear statements about women’s emotion and linked those statements to facts about the authors, observations about the characters and links to the text itself. Sometimes you explored the language of the texts to strengthen your points and you made some references to the historical and contemporary contexts of the texts. You showed a clear awareness of the text types and the authors and their probable intentions.

To develop your work more:

1) You must remember to focus all paragraphs on the question
2) Every point you make must be supported by a quotation
3) Where possible, those quotations should be explored both for what they mean and also how their language strengthens that meaning
4) Avoid extended exposition of the author’s biography, instead, use that detailed knowledge to strengthen the points you’re making.
5) Link the devices used by the two authors – observing where they might be writing in similar ways about similar things or different ways about different things

Quotes from the texts Sylvia Plath’s poems and The Taming of the Shrew

‘It can sow,it can cook,it can talk, talk, talk’. These are typical stereotypes of women in the 1960′s, considering that Sylvia Plath was a feminist she was obviously angry at these thoughts so therefore expressed her anger through her poem. (Poem Applicant)

‘At twenty I tried to die, And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.’ This shows her deep depression and anger at her life. Also show how mentally unstable she was because on the mentally ill would try to kill them selves. (Poem Daddy)

‘I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look’. This shows that she was trying to recreate her fathers image in someone else who resembled him. (Poem Daddy)

‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.’ This woman is obviously showing mixed feeling about her father because earlier on she said she was willing to die to get back to her father, and now she hates him. Or maybe she is just expressing that she has finally gotten over his tragic death. (Poem Daddy)

Hortensio ‘From such devils, good lord deliver us’. Hortensio is referring to Katherina as a devil for the way she acts is truly beastly. (Act 1 Scene 1 The Taming of the Shrew)

Petruchio ‘That hearing of her beauty and her wit, Her affability and bashful modesty, Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour’. This is Petruchio talking about Katherina who he so loves and wishes to marry. (Act 2 Scene 1 The Taming of the Shrew)

Petruchio ‘Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear’ Katherina ‘Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing: They call me  Katherina that do talk to me’ This from the start of them meeting shows that Katherina is not quite a nice person actually I think it would be adequate to say she is being a bit of a shrew (hence the name).

Katherina ‘You have show’d a tender fatherly regard, To wish me wed to one half lunatic’. This shows Katherina’s first thoughts about Petruchio. (Act 2 Scene 1 The Taming of the Shrew)

Paragraph answer.

Women were often punished by society for standing up for themselves before the 1960’s when women’s rights were introduced into the modern society. As I have explained in my first quote from Plath’s poem Applicant, that Plath felt very strongly on the fact that women were treated like rubbish and seen as something to ‘use and abuse’. Also the way that she expresses her feelings and thoughts through repetition in her poetry e.g ‘At twenty I tried to die, And get back, back, back to you’. this shows the constant striving to get her feelings and point across, it also suggests that she is so full of emotion she cant even structure her words and sentences correctly. Also she uses comparisons, comparing her mother to the Greek mythical creature Medusa.

Quotes from the texts Sylvia Plath’s poems and The Taming of the Shrew

‘It can sow,it can cook,it can talk, talk, talk’. These are typical stereotypes of women in the 1960’s, considering that Sylvia Plath was a feminist she was obviously angry at these thoughts so therefore expressed her anger through her poem. (Poem Applicant)

‘At twenty I tried to die, And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.’ This shows her deep depression and anger at her life. Also show how mentally unstable she was because on the mentally ill would try to kill them selves. (Poem Daddy)

‘I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look’. This shows that she was trying to recreate her fathers image in someone else who resembled him. (Poem Daddy)

‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.’ This woman is obviously showing mixed feeling about her father because earlier on she said she was willing to die to get back to her father, and now she hates him. Or maybe she is just expressing that she has finally gotten over his tragic death. (Poem Daddy)

Hortensio ‘From such devils, good lord deliver us’. Hortensio is referring to Katherina as a devil for the way she acts is truly beastly. (Act 1 Scene 1 The Taming of the Shrew)

Petruchio ‘That hearing of her beauty and her wit, Her affability and bashful modesty, Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour’. This is Petruchio talking about Katherina who he so loves and wishes to marry. (Act 2 Scene 1 The Taming of the Shrew)

Petruchio ‘Good morrow, Kate, for that’s your name, I hear’ Katherina ‘Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing: They call me  Katherina that do talk to me’ This from the start of them meeting shows that Katherina is not quite a nice person actually I think it would be adequate to say she is being a bit of a shrew (hence the name).

Katherina ‘You have show’d a tender fatherly regard, To wish me wed to one half lunatic’. This shows Katherina’s first thoughts about Petruchio. (Act 2 Scene 1 The Taming of the Shrew)

Paragraph answer.

Sylvia Plath uses violent imagery and offensive comparisons to express her strength of feeling in her poems to describe her thoughts about certain people or events in her life. I think that she was mentally disturbed ever since her father died when she was eight because that is the age when you can half identify what has happened and what is going on, so it can therefore be a confusing event for someone of her age. The feelings and emotions that she had experienced during her life must have been terrible to drive her to suicide in 1963 after a few attempts in earlier years as she explained in her poem ‘Daddy’ where she says ‘At twenty I tried to die, and get back, back, back to you’. This clearly states that she was not a very happy woman and had suffered a terrible life, the poem also shows signs of anger and sadness towards her father for him dying when he did, when she was so young. She has also contradicted herself because one moment she is willing to commit suicide and then the next she says ‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through’. To be honest she sounds to me like a complete wacko and I would definitely try to avoid her.

I did a review on a film called The Matrix.

The film depicts a future in what is seen by most humans is actually a simulated reality or cyberspace created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. upon learning this, computer programmer ‘Neo’ is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, involving other people who have been freed from the ”dream world” and into reality.

This links to my theme because it shows that what people think is reality is actually a mechanical program projected into their minds to make them think that they are living in the real world but are not.

Neo reacted to this first with denial then he accepted the fact that he was in the stimulated reality created by the machines.

William Shakespeare

The birth date of William Shakespeare is not known but it is believed he was baptized on the 26th April 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was the son of John and Mary Shakespeare he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.

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Mr Waugh