Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Cuckoo's Nest Blog #1

Just as we saw in The Great Gatsby, we can find examples of heroes, antiheroes, and villains in Cuckoo's Nest. An example of a hero so far in this book would be McMurphy. In these first chapters of the boook, McMurphy is the new guy in the mental institution. It doesn't seem like he has any idea about the turth behind the institution, so when he finds out, I think that he will come out to help the others break against the rules. We can see evidence of this on page 28 where it says, "'...ya know-that is the ex-act thing somebody always tells me about the rules....just when they figure I'm about to do the dead opposite,'". We can see his potential for hero-like actions.

With the information read so far, the narrator-Chief Bromden-will fit the antihero role. He is kindof like a fly on the wall, always watching and listening, but never talking or trying to be seen. Even though he is an observer, I feel that farther in the book, he may unintentionally get in the hero's way, or knows information about the villain that could help others, but keeps it to himself. On purpose or not, this could be his future in the book.

Finally, the villain role would be filled by Big Nurse and the "black boys". I can see them being the villains because of their actions seen in just these first sixty or so pages. Big Nurse is a seemingly nice nurse, but can turn to evil in a second, and she keeps secrets from the patients. The boys are basically Big Nurse's minions, as they follow her every order even before she had to "think it". They torture the patients and cause mayhem. Based on their personalities already, they will most likely be the villains of the book.

Monday, March 5, 2012

The Great Gatsby Blog #3

1. Interpretive: What can we interpret to be the main theme of the book?
          There are multiple themes that we can interpret to be the main ones. These range from a person's happiness to how one should live their life. Personally, I interpreted the main theme to be that money can't always lead you to happiness. We can see this with Daisy, because even though she married Tom for money, she wasn't happy or that much in love with him. We can also see this with Gatsby, as he had a lot of money as well. However, he didnt really have any "true" friends (besides Nick), he lost Daisy, and no one had even showed up at his funeral (other than his dad and Nick).

2. Interpretive: What can we predict about Daisy's future?
          Daisy's future is very vague, but we can pinpoint a few details that may be true to her future. Based on her extreme want for money, we can assume that she will stay with Tom. Also, in order to stay with him, she will most likely keep the truth about who was driving the car that killed Mrs. Wilson to herself, in order to stay with Tom. She will probably suppress her feelings about Gatsby for the money as well.

3. Evaluative: Analyze what the author is meaning through Nick's actions after Gatsby's death.
          At the end of the book after Gatsby died, Nick decides to tie up some loose ends and leave the area and go back to the Midwest. The author's meaning of these actions was to show the truth behind everyone, like how Tom and Daisy are truly hurtful people who think money can save them, and how Jordan was kind of stringing Nick along.

4. Evaluative: Evaluate what the author meant by "So we beat on, boats aganst the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
          The author means that we will never go forward in our history. We are stuck with what we have now, and we are only going backward. The author writes this as Nick talking about how we can't reach the American dream, as we have already reached our capacity.