Breaking the Law

I feel that it is acceptable to break the rule/law, when there is a reasonable excuse to.  There needs to be a much larger amount of good reasons to break the law than reasons not to.  If someone were to safely run a red light because their pregnant wife was in the passenger seat giving birth, that is a reasonable reason and excuse to run the red light.  In the end it just matters weather or not you are willing to take the chance or if the pros are important enough to suffer the consequences for the cons.  This man obviously needed to get his wife to a hospital so he weighed the odds and if he got in trouble later on down the road, he would face the consequences, but he knew that it was most important that he got his wife to a hospital.  Some people get confused what is breaking the law and what is legal as self defense.  If someone breaks into your house, that is invading private property and the person can be convicted and sent to jail, but if they threaten you or your things, you can act in self defense and the charges against you can be dropped.  If they charged at you and tried to attack, you can do whatever it takes to stop them weather thats spraying mace in their eyes, tazing them, stabbing them with a knife, slicing them with a sword, beating them with a baseball bad (personal choice of weapon when at home), or shooting them, the jury on your case will most likely drop the charges because you wouldnt normally harm the person, they were just threatening your well being and property.  As long as you stop at whatever is necessary, you shouldnt be charged, but if you hit them with a bat in the shin and it breaks their leg and they give up, you cant continue to beat them to death.  The proper thing to do would be to duct tape their wrists and legs and watch them as the police arrive.

The Minister's Black Veil

In the short story "The Minister's Black Veil," the minister of the small town uses a black veil to symbolize the little sins in our lives.  He explains how over time the little things we do that we dont feel are a big deal at the time do become a big deal.  After a while these sins become a habbit and then get cluttered up in our lives seperating us from God and the spiritual cleanliness that we want.  The minister's goal was to have the image of the veil etched into the peoples brains so even after he died, the image of what you look like to others is stuck in their head.  What Mr. Hooper wanted to get across, but the people didn't understand at first, was that this is how we all look to each other especially God.  If we arent careful we can have a black veil over our own lives and look differently to others.  It was almost as if the minister did not want to wear the veil because it caused depression in his life.  If people were running from him because his veil was saddening and made them remember their sins and imperfections in their lives, I am pretty sure the person wearing the veil would get depressed too.  It says in the short story that when Mr. Hooper looked into the mirror he realized that he didnt want this stuff in his life, but he couldn't stop because he was trying to teach a lesson to his village.

The pastors goals were to get the people of the village to realize that they need to stop sinning and covering it up so no one notices. "'If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough,' he merely replied; 'and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?' (Thoreau)"What they dont realize is that God sees everything no matter how secretive it is to you so whenever you sin, to God, it would be as if you are wearing a black veil over your head.  He does forgive us of our sins though, so if we were to repent and ask for forgiveness He would gladly forgive us.

The color of the veil is another big aspect in this stories analyzing.  The writer had the choice to make the veil any color, but he chose black for the emotional impact it has on a human.  It is in our nature that when we see the color black 90% of us immediately think of darkness, gloom, sadness, sins, imperfections, etc., which is exactly what the author was getting at for this story.  It was made very clear that the pastor wore a black veil ever since the title of the story was written.  The author wanted the emotional impact along with the stories impact to grab the reader.  Through the theme of the story the feeling of sorrow towards the man was gained as the feeling of happiness faded away.  This is one of the reasons I personally dont like Dark Romanicism's and am ready to start a new topic, although I can say I did learn a lot during this unit.

Hawthorne,, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1836." Eldritch Press. Web. 20 Jan. 2012.

Journal over scary stories

Scary stories are oh so scary.  Suspense is a key factor in making a good scary story because you have to keep the reader or listener interested and involved in the story.  Interesting facts or different things that happen in spontaneos places always catch the reader off guard and continueing to pay attention to what is going on.  I know from personal experience that if someone trys to make a story and nothing interesting happens in it in the beginning I dont like reading it.  I always give up and dont want to finish the book.  There also needs to be a sad part or something dramatic so people feel bad about that person or thing.  That person needs to then be the bad person or scary person to scare the reader even more.  If the nicest person is the nicest person for the longest time then the reader becomes emotionally attached and feels sympathetic for the nice person.  The moment this happens they need to snap and become a scary monster.  That monster needs to eat and destroy anything in its path killing millions and becoming a horrid human being.  The reader then gets scared and hates the person.  The monster then needs to become normal again by being healed since the monster in them is not their fault and is uncontrollable.  The moment that happens the army needs to kill the monster and sad music needs to play.  The rain starts to pour and the moonlight glows on the humans face.  It is then a happy, scary, and sad movie all in one and will win a grammy award and be loved by millions making me and everyone involved famous and unable to go out in public without having our shirts ripped off our bodies by the mobs of people. This, in my opinion, would be an awesome movie, book, or story and I would love to be able to see it.

Journal over fear

Fear is a big word for its actual size.  I personally think that girls fear me the most.  When I talk to a girl I am always afraid of making her mad and getting slapped.  Even though I am always nice to girls and dont make them mad, nor have I ever been slapped before.  Its just, in the movies girls always slap the boy so hard and it sounds like it hurts so bad.  I fear many other things than girls though including heights, teachers, and growing up.  I have hated or feared heights since I was a little kid and dont think I will ever get over it.  I also fear teachers for the extra stress they can add to my life by assigning homework.  They can do so much damage by just a little bit.  The homework can make or break my day and night and that is a fear of mine.  Besides these little fears I have here and there the one that is by far the worst is growing up.  I am so afraid of going off to college and being on my own trying to survive.  I will be so excited and am ready to go and experience college, but it scares me so much to not have my mom with me if I need her.  It use to be a lot worse for people that didnt have cell phones or the internet, but now I can skype her every night if I wanted to.  I am scared having to worry about doing my own laundry and being diciplined enough to keep up with it.  Im also afraid of being responsible for myself financially and other sorts.  I dont want to have to pay bills and for my food, and I want to be able to be a kid for forever.  A kids life is so simple and always cheerful but in reality life isnt that way and sad things happen all the time.

Pit and the Pendulum

In this story a man is punished for what sounds like is not his fault. When he wakes up after falling asleep he notices that he is in a dark room and is afraid that he is mistakenly locked in a tomb and burried alive. After some more investigation his worries are behind him because he learns that it is not a tomb, but a prison chamber. It is completely dark and he must trust himself and stay calm while figuring out his escape. Since he could not see anything in the dungeon he had to use other senses to find his way out. To my suprise he had some very ingenious ways to escape the deathly tricks in this cell.

This story is not a dark romanticism, but has more of a strong story line. Dark romanicisms typically are gloomy and have a sad ending to them like most of Poe's other writings. In this one though, an innocent man is saved when a French general and his army successfuly take over the prison and its inmates. Since this is a happy poem, I would classify it as a Romanicism because it is very romantic how he gets to go home to his family after being rescued by the french army. This man continues to show lots of bravery to continue to fight for survival after knowing he is going to die. His ways of escaping their tortue was very ingenious and unique. The story almost had a fairytale ending to it, except the man isn't a princess.

When the man is strapped onto the table and is looking at the ceiling, I find it ironic that there is a clock painted there and that it is visible to every person that has been killed on that table. It must be another form of torture by antagonizing the prisoners. It basically meant "haha you can see your way out and cant get out and its only a matter of TIME untill you die and no one knows your here :)". That didnt matter though because this man continued to fight through and ended up surviving the fatal pendulum. When the walls started to come in, he knew he was going to die. He must have prepared mentally before and was ready to fall into the pit when the hero of the story came to his rescue and snatched him up before he fell in.

I like this story for many reasons, but the main one was how interesting it was. I also liked the fact that it isn't a dark romanicism and something horrible happened in it. I would like to explore more of Edgar Allan Poe's works throughout our class and see how many others I can find that are not dark romanticisms. I hope that more of Poe's short stories are this interesting and not like some of his poems. I also predict that Danny will be content with this story since he too hates being put in a gloomy mood by dark romanicisms.



Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 263-273. Print.

Journal 24

The other day I was at home extremely tired and watching the television.  When I was watching some ice from our gutters melted enough and broke free.  When it hit the ground it made a very loud BANG.  I was pretty spooked because it was dark out and I didn't know what had made the noise.  When I looked outside I didn't see anyone or anything that could explain what had made the noise.  I then got even more spooked and almost cried.  When I looked closed I finally noticed the melting ice block on the pavement in our back yard.  I put two and two together and realized that that was the explanation for the loud noise.  When I noticed that this was the reason I started to laugh and went back to watching tv.  That night the television was very entertaining and I ended up watching for way too long.  I dont normally watch that long but for this night I did.  I dont know how I remembered this story or why I chose this one but I did since our journal was suppose to be about a time when we were spooked.  This journal was not very hard and I didnt mind writing it.  I think we should have more time for blogging our journals though because it is very hard to get finished in 6 minutes.  I will admit though that todays short journal time was my fault because I added an hour jokingly and Mr. Langley did not enjoy the joke.  That is understandable though because me and Danny can tend to be pretty annoying.  I am sincerely sorry for adding the hour and I wont do that again.  I hope that we can get more time from now long and I can write some good journals.  Wow, I really got off topic this journal, my bad.

Reflection:Dark Romanicism

Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The Happiest Day", is about what use to be and not of what would be.  Poe talks about what his  hapiest day was in the past.  It is easy to realize this when he uses the words "But they have vanish'd long, alas!" in one of his lines in his poem (Poe 6).  I would definately classify this poem as a dark romanicism because it is obvious in the first read through of the poem.  The words "hath flown" or "have been" were used in this poem to signify that the happiness was in the past (Poe 4 and 16).  I picked this poem thinking that it was going to be a light and cheery poem until I remembered that Poe wrote in the dark romanicism period and that everything has kind of a gloomy haze on everything.  Most of Poe's poem titles make the poems themselves sound appealing and have great potential for a cheery and happy poem, but once you read all of the poems you realize that is not the case.  I feel that if Poe would have wrote in a diferent time period his poems would have been enjoyed and been more appealing to a greater number and vast variety of people, but on the same note if he had written in a different time period I think that he would not be as popular because he wouldnt be known for something.  Poe's poems are known for their gloomy effect they have on themselves and the dullness that they bring upon their readers.  That is one of Poe's trademarks, which to some is an exciting thing that makes them enjoy his poems and love his works, but to me it is more of a negative outlook on life and I dont enjoy reading them.  It makes me get in a gloomy mood and I dont like that.  I like being a cheery person and being able to be in a happy mood most of the time.  When we read the poem by Poe in class I didn't enjoy reading it and it was hard for me to concentrate because of the boringness it was to me.  This boringness was because of the darkness of the poem.  I feel that Dark romanicism is an important thing to some people but it also isnt very important to some of us others.  I will read these poems in class since they are assignments but I dont plan on reading them outside of class.  What I want to find is some sort of reading materrial we talk about in class that I enjoy and want to read on my own outside of class for enjoyment and entertainment.  So far that hasn't happened because it is hard for me to find books that are appealing but I hope I can find one in the near future.

"Edgar Allan Poe: "The Happiest Day"" Poetry Lovers' Page. Web. 18 Jan. 2012.

Zimmerman, Brett. "Frantic Forensic Oratory: Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"" Facts on File. 2001. Web. 2012.

Journal22 on sledding

There once was this itty bitty small boy,
He really wanted to play with his toy.
He asked his mom but she said no,
You need to go outside and play in the snow.
He decided to go ahead and sled,
So he went to the barn and opened the shed.
He started to walk up the super high hill,
He got so scared his mom made him take a pill.
He got on is sled and started to roll,
He moved so fast he looked like a bull.
He hit a bump and started to tumble,
He moved so fast the sled started to rumble.
He lost control and veered to the right,
There were nothing but trees left in his sight.
He leaned to the right and leaned to the left,
He leaned so hard he had no energy left.
He prayed that he would not crash just in case,
He hoped that a tree would not hit his face.
With next to nothing left that he could do,
He jumped off his sled, landing in doo doo.
He cried so much his mom heard him from home,
She brought an ice pack to put on his dome.
They went back home and she let him warm up,
And brought him some coco in a big cup.

Journal 21

It was a month into winter and we still hadn't seen any snow.  Mr. Frost had still not made his appearance.  It had gotten annoying that we had cold weather but no snow.  He was holding back in joy that we were not happy.  We went on for a few more days without a sign of any snow coming.  Five days after the complaint of no snow, he came out of no where and took the little village of Hayes by surprise. We weren't prepared and had no intentions of being snowed in for a long time.  When it came we had nothing ready.  No food, no water, no wood, not even clothes had been gathered for the long winter ahead.

Many died in the coming weeks and many became very ill.  Our family suffered many losses and dilemmas.  I lost a brother and six sisters during this winter.  Although inside it was frightful, I could not stop looking out the window into the distance.  The snow and pretty whiteness always calmed me down.  I could gaze at the trees and the prairies in hopes to go play in the snow.  We got over three feet of snow and spent two weeks shoveling enough of a path to get new supplies to the village.  I could never forget that winter for its horrible sickness it brought but also the good and joy it brought to my mind.

Even though the winter brought peace to me and the visual effects of the environment was soothing to me, I would never want a winter like that one to happen again.  The losses in my family were greater than any good that came.  My mother did not speak for months after my brother and sisters death's because she couldn't believe they happened.  I felt bad for her and just wished that there was something that I could have done to help her through it.  Although all these bad things happened to my family and I don't want another winter like this to ever occur again, I still enjoy the winter and the white blanket it brings upon this earth.