HONEST OPINION - Death is hateful.

At some point in your life you will have to deal with and experience some form of death, wether it be that your dying,or a family member, a friend, or just someone you know. There is never an easy way to accept what has happened or is happening losing a life is terrifying wether it be yours or someone else's its still a precious life that is being taken away from the world, which is yes a part of the circle of life i understand that i just don't like to think about it. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas is a poem that really speaks about the appreciation of life that you should have.The theme is all about holding on to life and a loved one, how death affects people and how you should appreciate life and never take it for granted. The two lines that stand out the most for me are repeated throughout the poem and then come together in the last quatrain "Do not go gentle into that good night.\Rage, rage against the dying of the light." You should fight for your life, you should never give up hope and the wanting to live, you should be taken by old age and not cancer or accidents, and unfortunate events, but all these things seem to happen on a daily basis. And to watch someone suffer because their in so much pain it makes you happy but sad to see them go, happy because their suffering will finally end but sad at the same time due to the fact that they will no longer be able to live in your life with you that explains this quote from the poem "curse bless me". This statement is definitely a clear paradox, a true statement that leads to contradiction. Death sometimes is not fair i know that first hand my grand mother had 18 kids worked her whole life and never smoked a single cigarette, and to watch her suffer from lung cancer   and turn into a completely helpless mess who could not even remember my name by the end of it, its just not fair for someone to suffer like that so when she finally passed i was happy and sad . Death is unavoidable, it comes for everyone at some point in life all i ask for is that you don't go gentle into that good night, if you having a fighting chance take it and learn to appreciate the little things because you never know when they can be taken away from you. I believe that this is the message the Author is trying to get across through his poem. He describes Good men, wild men and Grave men although he describes different men the message is still there one should not die without out fighting for their lives no matter what kind of person you are never give up.


Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night .

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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wish i had me some serotonin !!

This Story Serotonin By Russell Smith takes the readers back in a time machine to the 90's when everyone partied, did drugs, and stayed out all night at all age clubs. It tells us a lot about the youth culture in downtown toronto where the story takes place. This story is all about teen agers doing drugs and going out and partying but the author portrays it in an unusual way he brings us on a flashback roller coaster starting the story at the bar,before the bar on the way to Dokes,bar at 2 am, flashback to Dokes, bar at 5:45 am, Jason talking to Sherry, and leaving the bar at 6:23 am all in this order thats how the story goes. Our protagonist Jason is not an accurate or reliable source because he is so out of it on drugs but seeing as how his point of view is the only one we have look at, its the only one we have to go by. Through out the story Jason deals with some internal conflict he goes out with Sherry but when he takes the drugs he starts having feeling for Emily Dokes girlfriend, Jason thinks Emily is pretty and just wants to tell her how he feels but then he realizes its all just the drugs that are making him feel this way. Jason knows ecstasy is a love drug and it clouds your judgement, he understands that his love for Emily is fake and that he truly cares for Sherry. There are so many themes in this one short story innocence an experience,youth an maturity, and illusion and reality throughout the whole thing Jason is struggling with does he really want to do this, does he like Emily, is Doke really a good friend to be hanging out with, does he want to be doing drugs all the time. All of this is just a part of growing up and maturing, people are going to experiment its just a part of life, and realizing illusions from reality is a part that comes with the experimenting, when you get to your youthful years many people are not innocence but they do learn from their experiences. Which jason had done with his experience he learned that drugs can play with your mind and emotions. If this story did anything for me at all it made me glad i never turned to drugs in high school like so many other people i know.

Whisky breath makin a small boy dizzy

i wish i was doing anything but blogging about english right now i wouldn't even mind waltzing with my dad who's breath could probably get me drunk! The poem my Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke really makes you become a critical thinker because you think about it in two ways the small boy is either being beaten or his dads a drunk who likes to play rough. Theres so many questions you have to ask yourself when reading the poem like how pleasant can it actually be to be made dizzy by your fathers breath,what kind of "romping" would have to happen in order to make the pans slide from the shelfs, and how fun does it sound to hold on like death? to me these are all reasonable questions to ask but there are so many different views on this poem its hard to know which one is right. I see this poem as a boy loving his father and truly liking all the romping around and the wrist holding when getting waltzed all the way to bed. It seems harmless and just playful, but i do understand where people come from when they say that they think the father could be beating him so it leaves me very torn between these two possibilities . Due to the fact that it clearly states the " mothers countenance\ could not unfrown itself" she could not smile but was it because the father was drunk and hurting her child whom she loves so dearly or could it just have been because they were making a mess in her kitchen that she did not want to clean up all the pans and have to put them back on the shelves. The word choice in this poem is just so crafty you just dont know what to really think of it, "battered", "scraped", and "beat" are all negative connotations but are they really that harmful ? To me this poem just leaves you questioning whats right from wrong where do you draw the line ? This poems looking back on a childhood experience from which the boy gives no clear indication of his feelings so we are left to decide how he feels by the wording of the poem. But depending how open minded you are will determine how you really take this poem if you have witnessed or seen a lot of abuse in your life you will automatically think the father is being abusive but if you look at it as being joyful you can pick out words that resemble happiness like "dizzy and "easy", "waltz" and "waltzing" and going back to your childhood for those of you who can remember, how fun was it to rip all the pans off the shelves no matter what the circumstance was!

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Winter Sundays

Well 6 down 4 more to go ! bring on the late night and tea on a winter sunday! This Poem Those Winter sundays by Robert Hayden is a really good example of what kids this day and age do and act towards their parents. Most kids don't every think twice about saying thank you, i love you, i really appreciate everything you've done for me etc. Before you know it, its already to late you never know when someones going to leave this earth and you should always tell people the way you feel and just remind them that you appreciate the way they treat you and go out of their way for you. That wasn't possible for the Hayden to do though, by the time he realized how great and how much love his father had for him he was gone. "Sundays too my father got up early\ and put his clothes on in the blublack cold,/the with cracked hands that ached\from labour in the weekday weather made\ banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him." this is the first stanza in the poem, it lets the readers know exactly whats happening . The father gets up on his only day off to mend the fire and get the house warm for a family, not once in the poem is a mother mentioned so he could have been an only father whom is going out of his way to make sure his child doesn't get cold even polishes his shoes on the one day that he could take a break from his hard working job. The speaker is looking back on his childhood and is realizing that his regrets are so large, for not ever taking the time to thank his father for everything he ever done. The tone in this poem is obviously sadness and regret for something that will never be able to be cleaned from the authors conscience, he knows he has done wrong and has regrets for not thanking his father but theres no way to go back now and he wishes to go back to when he was a child so he could just appreciate it."What did i know,what did i know\ of loves austere and lonely offices" Hayden is just telling his readers he wasn't yet mature enough to understand what his dear father was doing for him, its part of the themes parent child relationships, love an loss, and youth an maturity all of these themes are evident in this poem. So if you have learned anything from this poem it should be to not take your loved ones for granted and to cherish your parents and acknowledge the little thing they do for you.


Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Home vs House

home/ house - a place where one lives; a residence, the physical structure within which one lives, a dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household. A house and a home are the same or are they? To me a house is just a structure that is built to occupy people  and a home is your own its yours and it holds all of your life and memories in it along with all of your belongings. I feel as if the Author Philip Larkin of the poem Home is So Sad has the same impression of a home as i do. A home is suppose to be lived in by a family and given a fair chance to see some memories. Thats what this poems is about to me. It only has two quatrains and in the first one Larkin talks about why the house is sad. The diction he uses is unforgettable, "shaped to the comfort of the last to go" to me this shows that the once known as home is just now a house its family abounded it and went on its way leaving the home in shambles and taking its personality and leaving it as a house thats why its sad.He also uses the phrase "it withers so" for something to wither it must lose force or vitality which means its lost its sentimental value. The second quatrain focuses on the objects in the home the words  "joyous shot" are used to let the readers know that the home is expectant of joy like having a family, seeing a marriage blossom, watching kids be raised the whole nine yards of a happy life happens inside your home. The poem also states that you can see how the home use to be just by looking at the "pictures", "cutlery", and even the music in the piano stool, we are able to envision what this home may look like just by thinking of the objects Larkin is telling us about. Although these objects are highly important he has saved the most significant object for last "That vase."it holds so much sentimental value and is symbolic to the homes death, life it self has been stolen from the home, so as it remands no longer a home but simply just a house. I personally love this poem it may be short but its so creative and the wording is absolutely phenomenal. And like i said before a house is just a structure nothing more nothing less, where as a home is your very own. Larkin uses personification in this poem so well, he does this to emphasize the significance of and differences between a house and a home.

Home is so Sad
by Philip Larkin
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back. Instead, bereft Of anyone to please, it withers so, Having no heart to put aside the theft And turn again to what it started as, A joyous shot at how things ought to be, Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: Look at the pictures and the cutlery. The music in the piano stool. That vase.

The Red Convertible

YUPP !!! its the last day before our blogs are due and im up writing 6 entries should be an interesting night !! I don't know why i waited last minute to blog, because its honestly not that hard it keeps getting easier after the first one. It's just your opinions and how you feel about a certain poem or short story. SO here goes nothing !! Theres so much to be said about this one short story its such a great example of what so many families have to deal with after their family members come back from the war. Henry lives a normal, free, careless life just living everyday as it comes and goes. He lives in the moment and does not think about the future. Him and his brother Lyman spent a full summer just driving doing whatever they wanted before Henry had to go away to war. When Henry came back from the war he had changed he wasn't his happy, joking, loving self he had died when he was at war, he never came back. Throughout the story Lyman is trying his hardest to make Henry feel at home and feel normal again but nothing seems to help. So Lyman gets the bright idea to go and beat up the convertible so that, just maybe Henry would take an interest in it, and finally do something other than just sit and watch television. Surprisingly it works Henry does take an interest in it and does fix it back up into its original running condition. Fixing the red convertible was exactly what Henry needed, when he had finished it he asked Lyman to go for a drive down by the river so off they went. Lyman and Henry end up getting into a fight and thats the one and only time Lyman has seen his brother laugh sense he has been back from the war, Henry ends up dancing and jumping around as if he is gone wild, he looks at his brother and says i need to go cool off he then runs straight out into the river. Lyman goes to check on him and sees that his brother is drifting away quickly Henry in a calm voice tells Lyman "my boots are filling", Lyman never sees his brother again. Out of respect Lyman sends the car plummeting into the river so that it may be there with henry. Its sad to think about all the families that lose the people they love the most to war wether they literally or mentally die its still heart breaking. It takes a really brave and strong person to go away to war and fight for his country so my respects go out to Henry for his bravery.

Procrastination- Eleanor Rigby

Procrastination - the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time. This seems to be what i am doing here with my blogs , procrastinating. Its less then a week from due date for this assignment and i still find myself highly behind. Thats one thing me and Eleanor Rigby have in common procrastinating so that we don't move on in life, except we all know Eleanor's case is a bit more extreme then mine. Eleanor is an old lady who spends her whole life wanting and waiting for pure happiness,a husband, and just a family to love. "Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice/ In the church where a wedding has been" she "lives in a dream", if she wasn't so concerned with the so called perfect life she wanted and could get out of the rut that she is in, dreaming about perfect the life, and actually going out and pursuing it she would realize that there is someone she is perfectly capable of being with. Father Mckenzie is also and old man who is unhappy and very lonely, he sits and darns "his socks\ In the night when theres nobody there". The poor old man knits and mends his socks at night in his spare time when he could be with spending time with friends or a woman like Eleanor Rigby. They could have found companionship within each other. When Eleanor RIgby died she died with regret and hopelessness, she was not happy she did not having any friends "nobody came" to her funeral. She put to much time into thinking and dreaming about a perfect life then she did living her own. So if theres something to be learned from this people is to NOT procrastinate. It obviously gets you no where happy and you always end up kicking yourself in the ass for it.




i Linked the song here so you could listen to it !! Enjoy ! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRNrDaoMqw