Oedipus and a play

This week we finished reading Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. At the end his wife kills herself because Oedipus finds out the truth of his past. I think that she could have found a way to deal with the problem that did not involve her taking her own life. Then after finding his wife dead Oedipus ripped out his eyes with her golden brooches. I think that he could have found a less painful way of punishing himself for killing his father and marring his mother. I thought that this was a pretty good tragedy over all. This week we also went to see a play that the drama kids worked on. I thought that it had some parts that were a little funny in it and they made me laughs a little. At the beginning I did not understand it and found it boring. But as it went on I started to understand it. There were some parts that made other kids around me laugh but I did not find them that funny at all. I think that over all the drama kids did a very good job in the play. Also I enjoyed watching the play even when it did not make me laugh.

Tragedies

This week we had to turn in our drafts for our papers. I had a hard time thinking of what to put in the paper. It did not help that I waited till the day that it was due to write it. I think that I did an ok job on the paper but there is a lot of work that can be done to improve it. This week we also had to start reading Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. I found some parts a little confusing because I don’t know a lot about Greek mythology but I think that I understood the most important parts. We had to think of question to ask our peers about what we read. One of the questions I came up with was why did the queen not want Oedipus to continue his search for the truth. One answer we came up with was that she suspected that Oedipus was her son and that he killed his father. She did not want Oedipus to know the truth so that she would not have to deal with the problems that came after. Another was if Oedipus would carry out the punishment that he said would be for the killer of the king. We said that he would punish himself so that the people would not get angry at him.

Book 2 and Assignment

This week we started on a writing assignment for the short story unit. At the beginning I did not know which prompt to pick but in the end I ended up choosing the first one. Then it was sort of hard to remember all of the short stories that we read and then pick one that could be used with the prompt. I decided to quickly scan some of the short stories that we read. And I think that I ended up picking one that fit the prompt I chose. What was a little more difficult for me was coming up with a good thesis statement that went with the prompt and the short story I chose. This week we also had to choose another book for our independent reading. For my independent reading I chose to read The Pesthouse by Jim Crace. I ended up choosing this book after going through the list of books we could pick from. I first picked out the books that had titles that sounded interesting to me. Then I looked up a short summery for those books and pick out the ones that were interesting. Finally I looked at how long the books were and chose from one of the shorter ones.

O'Connor and Camus

This week we had to read “The Guest” by Albert Camus. I found this story a bit odd because all Daru wanted was to stay in the building on the hill. He decided to let the prisoner make the decision of going to prison or escaping and he decided to go to prison. This was shocking to me because I did not think that someone would willingly go to prison when they could have escaped. We also read two stories by Flannery O’Connor. The first story was “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and the other story was “Good Country People”. The first story was sad because the whole family was killed. I feel it was kind of the grandmothers fault for taking the cat without telling the others. One thing that I don’t understand is why the man shot the grandmother three times. The second story was a little stranger. I did not understand why the boy pretended to like the girl just so that he could steal her fake leg. What was stranger was that he does the same thing to other girls. This week we also learned about Existentialism. I am still having a hard time understanding it but I think that in time I will get it.