Vocabulary #9

aficionado: one who is extremely proficient at something.

 I guess you can say the office drone got a promotion because he was a paperwork aficionado.

browbeat: intimidate, typically into doing something with stern or abusive words
My mother is fond of browbeating me to do my work.

commensurate: corresponding in size or degree; in proportion.
My cloth size is commensurate with my body.

diaphanous: light, delicate, and translucent.
the light was the stained glass window was diaphanous around the room.

emolument: a salary, fee, or profit from employment or office.
I was happy to see my hard earned emolument.

foray: a sudden attack or incursion into enemy territory
i did not expect this foray from Denmark.

genre: a section or group of something or others that are similar.
the science fiction genre is my least favorite genera.

homily: a commentary that usually follows a scripture or speech.
many were impressed with the woman's improvised homily.

immure: to close or seal within.

i don't wish to immure my friends  with my boring speech.

insouciant: showing a casual lack of concern; indifferent.
I am basicly insouciant.
 
matrix: an array of numbers and or symbols in columns.
in economics, game theory matrices are common in oligopolies.

obsequies: gushing or flowery.
his obsequies manner was getting on my nerves.

panache: brave, flamboyant with reckless courage.
she acted so panache, everyone seemed to dislike her.

persona: an aura or vibe that one gives off.
She has a pleasant persona, but can get moody very quickly.

prurient: having an excessive interest in sexual matters.

many people find **** an overly prurient person.

sacrosanct: regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with.
the school system has never really been regarded as sacrosanct.
 
systemic: of or relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part.
i have a systemic hatred for the doctor who section of tumblr.

tendentious: expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view.
the speech was going to be good, but he had to stop being so tendentious.

vicissitude: a change of circumstances or fortune, one that is unwelcome or unpleasant
 I arrived at the bus stop on time and realized the bus came and left early, i shook my head in vicissitude.

What I think about when I think of act 3 (Vernacular R Us)

I think hamlet is drawing the strings on his appearance of insanity. He is probably raving mad considering his lack of conscious as he kills Polonious. I think little crazy Hammy is getting sidetracked with all the negativeness he sees in his life, which are a lot. Claudius repents for the act of murder but doesn't wholeheartedly apologize and is by deduction, saying hes sorry to absolve his own sins. Hamlet sees this and decides not to kill him but goes off to berate his mother for marrying Claudius in the first place. Then he kills Polonius. Before all this however, Ophelia shows her affection for Hamlet and Hamlet says "Naaaaaaah" in the most un-danely way imaginable. Then before Claudius went to repent, the royal family saw the play that mirrored the rotten state of Denmark and Claudius got pissed and threw a royal tantrum.

Literature Analysis #3 And the Mountains Echoed

I'm going to circumvent the list here and go on about a book I read recently by Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner,  that was culturally rich from the middle eastern lifestyle in the troubled years. So, lets get started!

Plot and Tone:
1./2. It is difficult to describe the basic plot as it is a very large book. It follows the lives of multiple families whose lives have been impacted by the occurrences at Kabul, a town near Afghanistan that has been ransacked, commercialized, and pitied to the point of loosing pride. The main story however follows the plot of a folk tale with the morals along the lines of; Giving up who is most dear to you can be the greatest advantage for who you give up, it is better to live in opportunity than be in perpetual poverty. Exposition is where the scenery is described, the players are set and the narrative is about to begin, however  I need to repeat how many individual stories there are in the book, staying true to the name "An the Mountains Echoed" as the ripples in time are seen from one lifetime to the next. The inciting incident usually has to do with the tragedies of family, as a reoccurring theme, the resolution and climax are as varied as the grains of sand of the dunes.

3. The author keeps a generally serious tone, delivering key plot points after long delays that, I need to admit, are not very necessary. Other times He delivers with such drama and severity as to make yourself question the motives of the protagonists. The tone is mercurial at best, but always tends to be pessimistic in nature.

4.1) Drastic contrast, drastic contrast, drastic contrast. SO MANY TIMES it made you feel guilty of your luxuries and good fortune. (there were people who ad to walk miles and miles for water) 2) Anachronistic everything, the theme of the story is set in one of the most depressing areas ever, or at least it seems like it, and as such it is unexpected to see so much joy. (a young child was struck by an axe and was nearly killed, but she grew to make the most of it.) 3) onomatopoeia that was sickening,"the thumps of bullets through flesh." 4) Connection Ethos. A father gave up his child who he loved the most as to see her have a good life, many tears were shed. 5) Plot twists occurred as information was brazenly provided that destroyed any previous knowledge of what you thought was the plot. 6) Illusions to the story I mentioned the story is related to are made as a key factor in the story. 7)  It held some ambiguity as to the outcome of the tales. 8) There was intense imagery in violence and such. 9) There was an ironic scene where a man earned a household, but in reality it was taken as a bribe from a judge. 10) I don't want to be offensive, but there was a lot of language inversion as to get immersed into the story.

Charecterization.
1) Direct: The tobacco has stained his teeth and his shirt was torn in places. This shows that the character being described was poor, but cared less of his life.
Indirect: (same charecter) he caught a glimpse of a tear as his friend looked away. This implies a hard childhood or life beyond the given.
Direct: She did not look like her mother, she was shorter, and wider.
Indirect: I was not jealous of my mothers looks, I understood it was not for me. The daughter was being sad for her lack of form, but didn't brood on it, meaning she has a logical mind.

2) He does in fact change his dialogue and syntax very much. Many times he describes the vixen-styled french lady character far differently than describing a life of the traditional Muslim woman. It generally follows the societal bonds pre set.

3)Pass. Usually the characters are super dynamic, they are constantly expanding their deepest emotions and feelings making them more deep, or expanded.

4)  The problem with this book is that it gave you too many characters to fully divulge, it left you with a sence of wanting to more about each one more to complete your knowledge about them. In some cases you understood who they generally were and what they are like, but more often then not, i left feeling like a small part of them were left out of a whole that was a determent to the story.

Vocab 8

abase: behave in a way so as to belittle or degrade.
Her abase behavior did nothing to stop my good attitude.

abdicate: renounce one's throne.
 I will never abdicate to the vile scourge of the earth!

abomination: a horror or miscreant.
Frankenstein is often called an abomination.

brusque: abrupt or offhand in speech or manner.
The child's brusque attitude towards her parents made me wonder about her upbringing.

saboteur: one who rigs or sets up a calamity.
The saboteur rigged the military base to explode in 15 minutes.

debauchery: foolishness or shenanigans.
The debauchery of the teenagers made me think they were children.

proliferate: increase rapidly in numbers; multiply.
The bacteria strain was known to proliferate quickly.

anachronism: being noticeably out of place.
The anachronism of a clown at the funeral alerted me to my strange dream.

nomenclature: the devising or choosing of names for things, esp. in a science or other discipline.
Being versed in basic nomenclature can improve the appearance of being intellectual. 

expurgate: remove matter thought to be objectionable or unsuitable from.
Television often expurgates the use of overly foul language.

bellicose: demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight.
Look for my new book! Bars and bellicose!

gauche: lacking ease or grace; unsophisticated and socially awkward.
Trailer trash is generally given to those of great gauche.

rapacious: aggressively greedy or grasping.
parents don't appreciate an overly rapacious child.

paradox: a statement that inwardly contradicts itself yet holds some truth.
A pair of docks is not a paradox unless the pair of docks contains a pair of dockers which still doesn't make it a paradox...

conundrum: a sticky situation; progress barrier.
The last sentence was a conundrum for me. 

anomaly: something out of the norm.
An earthquake in Central America is an anomaly, just like a tornado here is.

ephemeral: lasting for a very short time.
The cyclones created here would be ephemeral at best.

rancorous: rowdy uproarious in speech or behavior.
Rancorous speech is common amongst the stereotype of sailors.

churlish: rude in a mean-spirited and surly way.
Don't be insubordinate and churlish to your substitute teachers.

precipitous: dangerously high or steep.
The learning curve of many classes can be precipitous.

Dear Ophelia

Dear Anonymous,
It seems you have quite a conundrum on your hands! I would suggest you listen to your heart. Its not like medieval Denmark where you were bound by your fathers wishes or anything! I'd say, if it ment that much to you, meet him in secret. Go to a movie or two, and eventually you'll see whether hes the guy for you or not. If he does turn out to be the one, then you can break out the drama and say you love him!

Literary Fiction and Empathy

Fictional characters are generally  created around a specific mood or emotion. I say usually to show that it isn't set in stone, however, characters like Hamlet may represent a repressive stress  and melancholy state and depending on which character pertains to a person, you can make additional connections. what they think may be what the character thinks, so you can adapt.

Green eggs and Hamlet.

All I know about Hamlet is he has some serious sadness issues as well as being prone to suicidal thoughts or tendencies and something something ghost... Shakespeare was a sarcastic dirty little man who had a very funny view about life as well as as a depressing side seen in many parts of his works. He was the go to play man and literary man of the renaissance era due to his amazing skills as a writer. He gave himself authority to create words as well. Shakespeare has an automatically negative stigma attached to his name for his tenancy to make complicated works, but if you were to make it an enjoyable experience by overacting and making a sarcastic dripping play out of complex situations it would be very fun.

what i ment to say was....

Chaucer had a writing style that extrapolated the idea of a boundless society in a time period where your title and upbringing decided your life. Chaucer was writing to the people for the people, He added both comedy and attrition to the bindings of a harsh caste based society inescapable by the people he wrote for.

Vocabulary #7

 On arrival in the port of New York, Bianca  immediately created a schism. She announced, "Hey look guys! I have the keys to a yacht!". Most of us eschewed from asking where she got the keys to a yacht, so we boarded the boat on our way to Lithuania. Lisa was being garrulous because of her nervousness on being on the high seas, and was quickly sent to the brig for her blabbering. We could hear her harangue through the night and realized it would be no good to keep her locked away, so we let her out for the remainder of our voyage. On the trip, we noticed Daniel had a heavy
interdependence on each part of his classy wardrobe, and in exchange we decided to lock a suit away to get on his nerves. I wouldn't say his foul mood was capricious and we soon relinquished his prized outfit so he would stop complaining. Land was in sight sooner than we expected. the journey through Lithuania was surprisingly quiet. It lacked loquaciousness I would have expected from our group. oddly though, one night we found Daniel had wandered off due to cabin fever and was neigh to be found. After a while we found Daniel around a campfire with many strange figures. Daniel's interest in Germanic paganism was ephemeral to say the least. Their chants ricocheted off the surrounding trees as there was a plethora of pagans. "Daniel, stop your pagan shenanigans." Said Ashley as she approached the fire. Everyone thought this situation was wonky and decided promptly to leave. However we haven't decided where. "Egypt has a nice ring to it." stated Daniel as He used his observations of paganism and his own religious beliefs and juxtaposed them 

together in a long, sesquipedelian talk on the way to his car. Our experience with Egypt was inchoate, but we headed off ebulliently none the less.

 

Bianca Ramirez:   

Daniel Rucker:

 Ashley Hong: 

 Lisa Malins:

 

 

IF I JUST HAD MORE TIME...

To be honest I don't think more time would have helped in that format of a test. It would have taken at least two weeks of strait memorization of words to be able to mechanically write them all and define them. I understood most words and definitions, the trouble came from remembering what words there were to write. On the day of the mid term I could have concomitantly defined most of the words if I knew what they were. (gripe gripe gripe)

Lit Analysis #2 Catcher in the Rye

1. The basic plot of the story is a young boy named Holden finding his purpose, or at least his moral compass, while wandering through some metropolitan area in the winter (presumably New York). The action starts after he gets ejected from his school for terrible grades and was forced to face his family back at his home with the disappointing news. He wanders the city near Christmas time looking for things to do. He finds he is not a hard resilient person, but rather mortal like any average Joe. He begins to crave a purpose, and through multiple visits with his sister he decides that above all he would like to be the metaphorical, and literal, catcher in the rye. A sort of savior or protector who in Holden's words would, "do nothing all day but catch the people falling from the cliff".

2. I view the theme of the story as being that What you do in life should be what you want to do above all. It doesn't matter what people think of you as, but if you are productive and succeeding at being happy and making the world a better place, do it. You will be rewarded for your efforts.

3. The author seemed blunt. When describing things from Holden's point of view he seemed sort of wormed arrogance into the dialogue, but when describing scenery and other poetic styled views, he made his language very florid and wordy, when he was describing the bright lights of the city lit up at night during Christmas was when this caught my attention. But for the most part, he was describing as if through a frosted lens, What stuck with me the most was the way Holden described how everyone wants to help them self and how they're faces were as cold as the snow yaddah yaddah. Everything was cold until you got the impression Holden was content, (most apparent at the end pertaining to the love for his sister at the end of the story.)

4. 1). General synesthesia while describing settings. 2).Ethos to give you feelings for Holden's predicament at the end, Puts you in Holdens shoes . 3). The entire story was an allegory of Holden finding his way in the world, and the emotional struggle tacked on to each of us. 4). Early on it alludes to Holden's weakness, or his general inability for true deep conflict. 5). Irony is in play as Holden makes himself to be a hardcore urbanite, but is actually quite inexperienced. 6). Holden set himself as the archetype of the male gender, he knew his faults, but he exploited his positives. 7). Euphemisms were hurled left and right to make the reader involved in the demography of the story. 8). Holden's sister seemed to be Holden's foil as she moderated his negative behavior that Holden thought so much of. 9). The point of view was very creative, it seemed to be Holden reciting events that he knew of, but also didn't know the chronology of. Sort of a laxed omnipotence. 10). The entire story seemed to be a stream of consciousness. I said Holden seemed like he was recalling points of his life, so he also created tangents to follow until intersected by another tangent.


Characterization:
1. It is implied Holden is intelligent due to his cynical view of life, and it also he is referred to  by his sister as an irresponsible child, so we can gather he is, or at least was, hypocritical. What is directly stated is that Holden is a junior in high school making him either 16 or 17. We can also see he is not the strongest child physically, but is often mentally superior to his peers, despite his expulsion.

2. When Mr. Salinger described his characters, he softened, or hardened his tone depending on what role they played. The angry pimp was a allusion to the negative aspects of Holden's life and was therefore described with brutal resolve. Further, The sister, a beacon of hope, was shown as an angel practically.

3. The protagonist is highly dynamic. Holden changes as the story changes almost directly in relationship to the plot. He is so deep that you only see what he is truly like near the end of the story after the crusty exterior has been peeled away. He only really is fully understood when you tie in all elements of the story to the resolution, if you could call it that. (which is admittedly very nice)

4.It feels like I took a swan dive into Holden's life. I was living with him and sharing his struggles. This shone most when at the end (yes I love that ending) Holden was describing his mutual content.. Not really a mutual content, more of a content bliss.

The comparison tale

A common theme among the tales is a certain form of bluntness. Chaucer seemed to be nonplussed, or at least acted, nonplussed when he put his characters in the face of adversity. Also they all seem to be incredibly experienced. In the case of the cook, he seemed to be really comfortable in divulging in his less than savory lifestyles. This is also common when the monk tells his story about sin and frankly ignoring his own faults.

Tale of a Canterbury Tale Tale

The cooks story: The cook was a party animal. He had a dark complexion with dark hair and was known for his great dancing as well as his overall gluttony. He worked for a wealthy man but took from him what was not rightfully his, so after a while he was kicked out by his host and found a friend who enjoyed sinful pleasures like the cook, and had a wife simply for respectable appearances.

1. The cook was probably very limber due to his skills of the dance. He may have long fingers as well due to his skill with the guitar. We can also infer the cook may have a portly stomach from the liquor he consumes at his favorite tavern. Chaucer also implies he isn't the most morally clean of characters, he may have unsavory habits due to his lifestyle.

2. The cook's story is an enigma, it ends on such a random note you can either figure Chaucer got bored with the idea of a dancing king and made him into a drunk, OR you can figure he set up his persona to show the slip of the human condition after one looses a central point where one can attach their morals. (like an anchor) Further, he introduces the cook into another story as a drunk who fell of his horse, this could be why he decided to discontinue the cooks tale.