The Art of War

I know last week I said that that would be my last blog post, but I was wrong. I apologize. This final blog post is about the book I read over the past couple of weeks. The book I read was the Art of War by Sun Tzu, which was quite interesting. This book is mainly about how to win wars or the process to winning wars in a quick and effective manner. The book begins with laying out plans. This mainly refers to one particular force. Sun Tzu outlines what a good general should have planned for his forces and how to lead them based on Moral Law. Moral Law is the men of the army’s respect for their leaders and each other, and belief in their leaders. time.

Next, he mainly focuses on the economic standpoint of war. First of all, war is expensive for everyone. So, if someone strikes their enemy when their enemy’s economy is in a downturn, the attacker will be at an advantage. Another aspect Sun Tzu emphasizes is how victory is always the main goal without a lengthy campaign because with a lengthy campaign you always lose a significant amount of money.

In the middle of the book, his ideas focused on strategies and tactics, including what to do when preparing for war like calculating chances of victory. Another strategy he discusses is attacking places that are undefended and defend places that cannot be attacked to increase your chances of victory. Another idea he mentions is that everyone can see the tactics but no one can see the strategy since the tactics are the way you are set up beforehand and the strategy is what actions follow after. The terrain is also a key aspect to winning wars and can affect how you position your troops and the strategies you use with them to defend themselves. The final takeaway message is the role of information and how to obtain that information. Sun Tzu states that spies and spying on your enemy is a very valuable asset to achieving your goal of winning the war.

I believe the central argument of this book is a proposal for a proper and effective method to win wars. I agree that this is one of the best if not the best strategies to winning wars in general, no matter what the dispute is about. These strategies have been used in the past and are still relevant today. Every general will have their own variation of this set of strategies or will follow these set of strategies but in a much looser regimen. Since these strategies can be used more like guidelines, that is why they have been used so much in the past to now.

I would recommend this book to others because it was quite interesting and intricate. I liked seeing the viewpoints of what strategies ancient generals fought with, compared to fighting with modern technology. I believe the strategies still hold true to this day making it valuable for everyone to read.

Final Blog Post

This is the last blog post for the year so I will wrap this up by discussing which book is my favorite and which one is my least favorite, as well as why. To be honest I enjoyed all the books we read except for The Merchant of Venice. The reason why is not because I didn’t like the story, but because of how Shylock the Jew could never have won during that time. My groups response project to The Merchant of Venice shows this with an alternate ending depicting what would've happened if Shylock choose mercy instead of justice. Other than that one reason I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

I know I said in my last post I was done with The Great Gatsby but that was before I knew what my next prompt was. The Great Gatsby is indeed my favorite book that I read this year. The main reason for me is the character Gatsby himself because of how mysterious he was and how I see bits of him in people I love and care about. Another big contributor was all the color symbolism throughout this book; I loved how Fitzgerald, the author of the The Great Gatsby, used color symbolism as such a powerful tool in his arsenal.  

The Great Gatsby Part 5

This is the final blog post on the Great Gatsby. This week's prompt was to write about anything having to do with The Great Gatsby that I haven't discussed already. I have decided to write about what is revealed about Gatsby and Daisy based upon their reactions to each other when they meet at Nick’s house in chapter 5. When I went back to review this scene I saw two people who had a very deep love for each other.  Why I saw this was from how worried and nervous Gatsby was when first meeting with Daisy. Another point that showed the love they felt for one another is their conversation, since they talked for hours trying to catch up all the lost time.

What this scene all so shows are these characters insecurities, mainly Gatsby’s. We see a whole new side of Gatsby with him being not just awkward but having low self confidence. We first see this low self confidence at the very start when Gatsby has trouble even facing her much less starting a conversation with Daisy, but he finally builds enough courage to say hello and thankfully the conversation went on from there. In Daisy's case she was more surprised and alarmed than anything, and of course full of joy, the only problem was what do you say to a person that you loved 5 years ago. So, this also reveals the awkward side of Daisy. Over all bringing people together after a long period of time will result in people lacking self confidence and creating a awkward situation, but after you get through the difficult parts everything becomes easier.

The Great Gatsby Part 4

This week the prompt I choose was how Jay Gatsby, the protagonist of the novel, fundamentally change over the course of the novel, and how is this change caused by the central conflict(s) that Gatsby faces? 

Our view of Gatsby really does change from the start of the book to the end of the book. In the beginning, we see Gatsby through Nick's eyes and Nick doesn’t know Gatsby that well. Gatsby is on this hypothetical pillar held by a lot of people but especially Nick, the reason why is how everyone sees him. The thing is people don’t see Gatsby that much, he’s very mysterious but on those occasions that you do talk to him, he is very calm, cool, and collective. As we go on reading this book we see a whole new side of Gatsby and how he’s really like when panicking. When Gatsby is under pressure he starts to act nothing like he did before, it's like he completely loses that side of him with being calm, cool, and collective. Now we see what Gatsby is really like and that is because of two reasons, one we get to know Gatsby better through Nick's eyes and second Daisy enters the picture. What Daisy does to Gatsby is putting him under pressure causing Gatsby to lose his classy self. Overall Daisy was the trigger for Gatsby to fundamentally change throughout this book.