The Last Blog

The semester has gone by so fast, it's sad to think that I only have a couple more days in this Lit. class. I can honestly say that this was one of the most entertaining classes I've ever taken. The discussions were great, the topics were intriguing, and the teacher and students were awesome too. I knew from the first day that I would enjoy this class because I like fantasy, literature, fairytales, and the overall theme of the class. I was certainly not disappointed, and will probably always remember some of professor Sexson's wise remarks and sayings. Hopefully I'll be able to take another class with Mr. S sometime soon, but next year I am off to Spain for 8 months! I'll miss this class and it was a great experience. Thanks for everything :)

What I've learned

Even though I didn't write on the generic topic for my paper, I think it's worth mentioning what I've learned this semester. First, of course I've explored the concept that every story is a retelling of another story. Everything we come into contact with is connected in some way, and it's impossible to find a completely original story. At first I was skeptical, but after this class I realized that this is true. In every story, you can find the same archetypes of portrayed by different characters in different ways, but it all ends up similar. Even our own lives are retellings of other's before us and other stories. It's quite interesting once you get to analyze your own life and the stories you've read and see how each of them reltes to other stories.
In addition to retellings, I learned how to persevere trough a huge book.I can honestly say that I've never read a book as large as the Brothers Karamazov. At times I found my attention drifting, and I probably didn't really absorb some of the book, but i was still a rewarding experience and showed me that I have the ability to read a 700 page russian novel.
Also, I examined the idea that I can learn lessons and experiences from reading. Surely, I can learn through travelling and actual physical experiences, but I can also learn through reading.
In class I also learned about many archetypes. For example: the hero, the temptress, the trickster, the earth mother, the wise old man, etc. Each story without a doubt contains some of these archetypes, they are just represented in different ways. There are even these archetypes in our own lives. I'm sure we all know a wise old man, a caring mother, a trickster, some kind of temptress, and hopefully we are the heros of our own life story.
Some of the stories I enjoyed most this semester were: The lady with the pet dog, all the fairytale re-telling like Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, Antigone, and where are you going, where have you been. I also liked the poetry section, with poems like The Demon Lover and writing our own sonnets. There's something about being forced to condense your thoughts into specific lenghs that makes reading a poem especially powerful and full of emotion. Sonnet therapy is something I'll certainly consider whenever I feel down.
I'm sure I'm leaving a ton of things out, but these are the aspects of this class that will stick with me for many years to come.

Individual presentations

I'm so glad that I got my presentation out of the way in class yesterday. It feels so good to have that paper and presentation done. :) Anyways, I've really enjoyed listening to everyone present. Everyone had a unique idea and way of looking at the class of the Brothers Karamazov. Even if they did the generic topic, they all noticed different valuable aspects of the class. Some of the presentations that I enjoyed the most so far were Lena, Anne, Spencer, and James. Everyone had good presentations, but these few stood out to me. I liked how Lena wrote her paper in the form of a story about our Lit. class. It incorporated many things about stories that we have learned this semester and actually applied that all into her own story. I thought it was a really unique way to approach the assignment. Next, Anne had an interesting view on who the hero of the Brother's Karamazov was. Most people would choose between the most prevelant characters, perhaps Dmitri, Alyosha, Ivan, or Father Zossima. However, Anne came to the completely different conclusion that Illyusha was the hero. I'd never pondered this claim, but after listening to Anne's reasons, I can see why he could be considered the hero. Next, Spencer's presentation stood out to me. He seemed very at ease in front of the class and the dixie chicks song quote was a great and inventive way to end his speech. Finally, James entertained the class with his presentation by using south park. It was unique from every one else's approach and kept us all entertained. I'm looking forward to the presentation's tomorrow. Good luck everyone!

my Paper!

Ivan Karamazov
In the Brothers Karamazov, Ivan plays a vital role in the plot of the story. He has many defining characteristics, including strong beliefs on the idea of God and the world as a product of these beliefs. It is these powerful and thought provoking beliefs that help develop his character and the reader's opinion on Ivan. However, as the novel progresses, Ivan's thoughts on responsibility and his intellectual nature begin to cause him turmoil and ultimately end in his demise.
In this novel, each of the three brothers have a defining characteristic. Alyosha is religious, Dmitri is military-minded and Ivan is intellectual. Ivan ponders ideas and concepts deeply in the novel, and his strong ideas on God are most prevalent in a discussion between him and Alyosha concerning the torture of children. In this discussion, Ivan goes into depth on his ideas concerning God. At first, it may appear that Ivan does not in fact believe in God and that he is an atheist. However, this is not the case. Ivan does not reject God. He does believe in a God, it is the world created by God that he can not believe in. The examples that he gives to defend his beliefs are shocking, gruesome, and one of the most difficult parts in the books to read without evoking some kind of human emotion. Tales of a child shot in the face and an innocent child being torn to shreds by dogs secure his position and are difficult to refute. Tales like this make it difficult for even spiritual Alyosha to justify a God. He poses the question concerning how could he believe in a God and world that permits the torture of innocent children. Why would a world exist where people torture beings not old enough even to have sinned? Ivan hints that he would believe in a world that permits the suffering of adults, but the suffering of children is simply incomprehensible. He notes “Listen, if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” (Dostoevsky, Book V Ch. 4). These beliefs demonstrate Ivan's stance on the injustices of the world.
Near the end of Ivan's rant, he poses this deep question to Alyosha. “Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature-that baby beating it's breast with it's fist, for instance- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears:would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!” (Dostoevsky, Book V Ch. 4 ). Alyosha, being a man dedicated to religion and God, cannot even consent to this, which in a way proves and validates Ivan's point. Clearly, after hearing about all of Ivan's beliefs, it is obvious that he is a man bursting with unending amounts of dilemma and despair concerning injustices in the world. These strong feeling affect him throughout the rest of the novel, particularly towards the end of the novel in his discussions with Smerdyakov.
In the novel, the reader can clearly see a relationship develop between Smerdyakov and Ivan. That relationship involves the two men being foils of one another. When Ivan first visits Smerdyakov, Smerdyakov begins to affect Ivan by telling him things he would rather not hear. First, he tells him that he actually wanted his father dead. In addition, he mentions that he left his father on the day of his murder because he believed his brother Dmitri was going to murder old man Karamazov, and he secretly wanted this. This seems to be the beginning of a complete downhill spiral for Ivan. The idea that he could in a way be responsible for the death of his father takes a toll on his conscience. Later on, Ivan visits Smerdyakov for a second time, and this time he continues to inform Ivan of his subconscious thoughts and desires. He tells Ivan that he wanted his father dead so that he could inherit a sum of wealth. Concerned and in turmoil over these assertions, Ivan visits Katerina, who shows him a letter from Dmitri promising to kill Fyodor Karamazov. This puts Ivan at more ease, and helps to convince him that he had nothing to do with the death of his father. However, even with Ivan's conscious put at ease, the worst is yet to come. On his final visit to Smerdyakov, he is confronted with a heartwrenching fact. Smerdyakov confesses that he killed Fyodor Karamazov. However, he does not accept full responsibility for the murder. He asserts that he would not have been able to commit such a crime had it not been for his discussions with Ivan. He claims that Ivan's beliefs and ideas gave him reason, justification, and permission to commit the murder. In other words, he gave him tacit approval for the murder. Therefore, Ivan is greatly responsible for the horrific murder of his own father.
Now, Ivan feels that he has the ability to prove his brother Dmitri's innocence, but he is equally troubled by the concept of his responsibility for the murder. The next chapter of the novel, The Devil, Ivan's Nightmare, represent the point at which Ivan Karamazov is driven mad. After Ivan returns home from his visit with Smerdyakov, he is met by a hallucination or dream representing the devil. The devil figure confronts him with all his doubts, weaknesses and fears and eventually causes Ivan to resort to madness. At first it is unclear whether the devil figure was a dream or reality, but that question is answered when Ivan says “Never for one minute have I taken you for reality. […] You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom. It's only that I don't know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me....of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them” (Dostoevsky, Book XI Ch. 9). From my interpretation, the devil figure was created by Ivan's imagination and was actually a part of him, representing all his conflicts and some of his thoughts. When confronted with all of this and forced to look himself and face his thoughts he was unable to bear it all and went mad.
Overall, we can witness the path Ivan takes into insanity and how his intellectual nature affected this. As demonstrated by his rant on the idea of God and torture of innocent children, Ivan is frustrated by the world's injustices. Also, he seems to resist the thought that he has responsibility for the actions of humans, and maintains that humans are responsible for their own actions. However, his collapse into madness shows how his beliefs cannot justify the emptiness in his heart. In the end, he is forced to believe otherwise and ponder the possibility of personally bearing a role in his father's murder. Father Zossima held the belief that we're all responsible for everyone else, and that theme is brought to life with Ivan's dilemma. In a way, all of the brothers are responsible for the murder of their father. Even though none of them directly committed the crime, they each played a role. Dmitri admitted that he wanted his father dead. Alyosha didn't stop any of them from the crime. Finally, Ivan's discussions with Smerdyakov justified the killer's actions. Therefore, it seems like Smerdyakov wasn't the only one who bears a burden for the murder. This notion of shared fault contradicts all Ivan believes about personal responsibility.
In addition, Ivan's intellectual nature seems like a way to escape from others and retreat into his own thoughts. However, in the end yet again, he cannot remain separate. In fact, he becomes morally involved in the murder. Finally, when Ivan is confronted by the devil, his lack of complete faith in God gives him nothing to retreat to and no higher power to place his sanity in. Therefore, he is unable to remain sane and justify all the conflict happening within him and as a result, goes insane. His original beliefs of resenting the world created by God and the lack of acknowledging moral responsibility for other peoples actions turned against Ivan as the novel progressed. In his final great moments in the story, he way forced to bear responsibility for the actions of others as well as deal with the murder of his father, which he was made to believe was partially his fault. Overall, the intellectual nature of Ivan was not able to deal with Smerdyakov's accusations on responsibility, and the two characters are portrayed as foils of each other.









Works Cited
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.

April 21

I really enjoyed today's group presentations. The First group's presentation was really well put together. When I walked into class, I was impressed by their matching outfits, all of their props, the music, and how organized they seemed. It was a great idea to portray all of the archetypes and relate them to a recipe and how each part played a role in making the whole. It made complete sense and was entertaining. Plus, the cookies were delicious!

The second group's presentation was also really fun to watch. It reminded me of my group's presentation a bit, because it was re-telling a story we have gone over, but it was still unique and fun. Antigone had a really strong personality, which refected the story well. I liked how the story was in a modern setting. The skit was funny and Professor S. made a good point at the end about how we enjoy watching other people hurt themselves as long as it's funny. I now realize that it's true that we sometimes enjoy other people's suffering, no matter how cruel that may sound.

more group projects!

Our group did our presentation on Monday, and I think it went pretty well. Our group worked really well together, and I liked our idea of the re-telling of cinderella and the overall project idea. Most stories we only ever hear from one point of view, but it can be fun to imagine the background stories of the less prominent characters. It would be fun to imagine the story of the prince in Cinderella, because we know very little about him, or any prince in most fairytales for that instance, because most fairytales only focus on the story from the Princess's point of view. Anyways, I liked the story my group invented, Prince and all.

The first group did an interesting job as well. I enjoyed their idea of a debate, I never thought of anything like that for a group presentation. It really helped engage the class and get everybody fired up in discussion. Tim was a bit dominant in his group and made himself heard above everyone else, but overall it was a good debate. Although it got a bit off topic and by the end I could barely tell the original argument and which side each team was one, it was still entertaining. In my opinion, there are some books that can be genuinely boring. To me, these could be things such as golf magazines. I would get extremely bored reading a golf magazine, but my boyfriend, who loves golf, finds them really interesting. I think it just depends on your personal interests and imagination. Surely you can always use your imagination to make a book more interesting, but there is some material which can seem impossible to work with. If a book has enough substance and room for imagination, then anyone should be able to read it and if they are just to lazy or unimaginative to get through it, then you could say that they are boring people. So, I agree with both arguments to an extent, but neither of them completely. I'm sure looking forward to what tomorrow's presentations will bring :)

Plagiarism

In class we got into a little discussion on what plagiarism really means. According to a definition I found online, plagiarism is taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own. From what we've learned in this class, everything is a re-telling so is it really not possible to take someone else's ideas? I don't think so. However, I think that the definition of plagiarism is getting at the point that you shouldn't intentionally copy or steal someone's ideas. If you just copy and paste someone's words, then you are plagiarising. However, if you truly try and use your own words and own interpretations and thoughts, then it is not plagiarism. But it's still interesting to think about how everything could be considered plagiarism if you looked at it a certain way. All of our thoughts someone else before us has likely thought before. Even if we think we're the only person in the world who has thought of something, we're probably wrong. But that's a little dismal. It's great to think that we are completely unique and we actually really are. No one else on the planet has lived our lives exactly. They may have had some of the same thoughts as us, but no one has lived our lives quite the way that we have.

Group Projects

I thought that the group projects on Friday were really well-done and entertaining. I don't know where, but I remember reading about how Pocahantas and Avatar basically have the same plot with different characters, setting,etc. Nevertheless, it was really interesting to see how closely the stories were intertwined and how you could make a trailer using the voice from Avatar and the pictures from Pocahantas and someone who hadn't seen either movie wouldn't know the difference. After learning about how every story is a re-telling of another, you could probably do that same thing with many movies. On Youtube, I've also seen how people put up pictures and scenes from a movie and play a song in the background and both stories fit perfectly together.

Also, the pyramid game was a great way to review for this class. I knew every word or phrase except for the last one, Anamnesis. I'm still not exactly sure what it means.........

The second group did really well too. Their skit incorporated so many different themes and stories from this semester. I found myself constantly picking up on what stories were involved while they performed the skit. I think if you write any kind of story, there will be themes and plotlines and archetypes from other stories even if that was not your intention. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to write a story that's completely original and unique. Other stories will always find a way to fit in. Also, every person has their own interpretation of which stories are involved within another, and everyone's interpretation is unique. Maybe someone can relate a story to what has happened in their life, maybe to a movie they've seen or book they've read. It is certain that the author didn't mean to involve all of these connections in their tale, but it just happens. I think Garrett mentioned something about how the Lord of the Rings could fit in perfectly with group 2's story, and it certainly can. I don't think group two specifically meant to do this, but that is the beauty of re-tellings.

Paper Idea

For my final paper, I want to write about the character Ivan Karamazov. I haven't devised an exact theseis, but I know that I want to examine Ivan's views about God, and look more into the chapter where he speaks about the torture of children and it's relation to his beliefs. Also, I want to examine how these beliefs affect him later on in the book when he goes insane and how that relates to his tragic downfall.

Ivan

In the Brothers Karamazov, one of the chapters that I found most intriguing was in Book eleven, dealing with Ivan. In this book, Ivan visits Smerdyakov. To me, it seemed like Smerdyakov tried to change Ivan's way of thinking, persuade him of things that might not have been true, and plant ideas in his head. Smerdyakov says his epileptic seizure on the night of the murder was real, and Ivan went to Moscow to be as far away from the murder that he suspected was to be committed. Ivan visits Smerdyakov a second time. This time, Smerdyakov tells Ivan that he actually wanted his fathers death so that he could attain some of the inheritance. So, he didn't say anything about his suspicions, in a way permitting his father's murder. This has a great effect on ivan because he feels responsibility and guilt for his father's murder. He goes to Katerina and she puts him somewhat at ease by persuading him that Dmitri is the murderer. Later on, when Smerdyakov sees Ivan, he admits to commiting the murder, but blames Ivan for also being responsible for talking him into it. Now, the part of the chapter I found most interesting to read was when Ivan goes home and finds a visitor in his room that appears to be a middle-aged man. The visitor turns out to be the devil, and he taunts and criticizes Ivan about all his weaknesses, flaws, and fears and this finally causes Ivan to go mad. When I first read this section, I was confused to if the visitor was real or a ghost. It was later I realized that the visitor represented the devil. This could have some interesting parallels with the issues of Ivans beliefs about God. Ivan couldn't fathom a God, and was ultimately driven mad by a devil and from guilt forced upon him. One could ponder if Ivan could have resisted going mad if he had been more like Alyosha, a man of faith. Then, he might have overcame his illness.

Men and Women arguing

I think Professor Sexson has a point about men and women arguing with each other. He mentioned that the whole situation ends up being pointless because we just don't understand each other, and we use that against each other. I have seen this all too often and heard people I know talking about it. One situation I can think of right now is between my best friend and her now ex-boyfriend. At times they got along great, but others times there was a great lack of communication and understanding. Towards the end of their relationship, they were just arguing alot. One of them always wanted something more or different from the other. I'm friends with both of them, so they would talk to me about their issues, and it seemed like they didn't understand each other. They tried to tell each other what they wanted, but it never seemed to work for long. My best friend wanted more space to be free while her ex wanted her to be his whole life, and she felt suffocated. She changed her mood alot and feeling about him also, and I think that he couldn't keep up with all her emotions. Also, her ex and some of my guy friends I know often talk about how girls are so confusing and never make any sense, while other times all my girl friends talk about how guys are stupid and can't understand the simple things a girl wants and that guys are more confusing. So there seems to be a conflict. Each gender thinks the other is too confusing, and thats where all the arguing comes in, when they say you can never understand what it's like to be me. In my life, it seems like often it's much easier for members of the same gender to communicate than members of opposite genders. In some cases guys and girls can be great friends, but usually your "best friend" is of your same gender. It's true that men and women are often significantly different, and maybe we'll never truly understand each other and the arguing will continue, or maybe not.......

The Brothers Karamazov

I actually finished the Brothers Karamazov soon after Spring Break. However, I'm still trying to untangle and work out some of the details of the story that I missed the first times through, so for now I'll talk about some of the parts of the story that jumped out at me. The first major part of the book that had an affect on me was when Ivan was talking about the torture of innocent young children. I found this part of the book hard to read because it was so graphic. Ivan gave several examples of torture. One was about a baby being killed by a gun. The baby was first made to believe the gun was a toy, and smiled and reached for it when the trigger was pulled. This was one of the most cruel things any human could do, especially to an innocent baby. Also, Ivan mentioned the tale of a young boy who was torn to shreds by dogs. One of Ivan's main points in this chapter is the fact that children have done absolutely nothing to deserve torture.
Some examples of what Ivan has to say on the subject:

-Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God!' I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones!

-Listen! If everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it? It's quite incomprehensible why they should have to suffer, and why they should buy harmony with their suffering.

Ivan's point is something I've never before thought of when dealing with the question of God. What kind of God would allow the torture of little children? His point is valid in a way, and I think that's why it is hard for Alyosha to respond to Ivan's view. Alyosha is a very religious person, but it would be hard for anyone to defend God who permits this kind of torture.