The Best We Could Do

In the book The Best We Could Do my favorite pages are 247-249. In these pages it depicts the scene of Thi's family on the boat. During the night they were allowed to go on top of the boat to get some fresh air and to look at the stars. This is my favorite part in the book because there is so much going on but in this scene its so blissful and calming in such a difficult time. What makes this even more interesting is that there are not many moments like this in the book, but whenever a scene like this does occur, it is always a big moment in the character's life and gives them more hope to keep moving forward.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

[In the short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find," there is a grandmother, and I will discuss how the grandmother has developed and changed throughout the story,] with a link down below to the story. In the beginning of the story, the grandmother was very exclusive of outsiders and was quite worried about things she didn't know much of- this is shown in the very first paragraph where they talk about the Misfit. Later on in this story when the grandmother meets the Misfit she gets more comfortable with him after she learns more about his story, and starts to talk about a subject that she knows much about- religion. The way her character develops through the story is shown in the way she interacts with outside characters and other entities. 

http://www.discerninghearts.com/catholic-podcasts/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-read-by-flannery-oconnor/ 

Reflect on the Process of the OHP

In ELA and IHSS, we just finished our oral history projects. What I found most interesting about this project was listening to to these people who have gone through these traumatic events and how they coped with these experiences. I especially enjoyed listening to how they plan to rebuild and become stronger, not just as individuals but as a family. These people only stopped helping when incapable or in direct danger themselves. They talked about how people Houston want to get to a place where they can help others. 

This is a trend I have seen through these interviews. 

I believe I handled of working in a group well for this particular project. Personally, I do not like working in groups for a couple reasons, one being that communication is difficult and finding time to work together face to face is even more difficult. But, for this project, working in the group made the heavy lifting easier because we could delegate work between group members for the actual interviews [video/audio, interviewer, notetaker]. Working in a group also made it easier and more efficient to do the multimedia work presentation. This is because we delegated the work pretty evenly. Granted, some people had harder jobs than others because of how much effort each task required, like making the website. Overall, the work we did as a group was well thought out and divided well which made working in a group easier. 

Blog 10/26/17

This week, we were asked to answer a question and this was: What led to Marjane's grandmother to yelling at her? Was the yelling justified? Why or why not? This scene occurred on page 291 in the Complete Persepolis book. Marjane's Grandma yells at Marjane because she tells her a story of how she got some random man arrested and finds this amusing. Marjane's Grandmother finds this offensive and insulting because her husband- who is Marjane's grandfather- spent a third of his life in prison defending the innocent, and Marjane's uncle Anoosh died in a prison. So, getting someone arrested for no apparent/real reason is insulting because of all the heartache that this family has gone through with the police. Therefore, Marjane's grandma's yelling was justified in my personal opinion, because Marjane had a lack of respect for her family's suffering. After Marjane's Grandma leaves Marjane feels really bad about how her grandma yelled at her and plans that this never happens again. One factor why I believe she took this so hard is because her grandma reminded her of all the pain and suffering her family went through mainly the death of her uncle on page 70.     

Blog 9/28/17

Mariane started wanting to make her past disappear while she is in Europe and she saw Iran on the news. She saw lots of unbearable news, and felt guilty for leaving her family, and so wishes to forget her past so she does not have to feel guilty any more for living in a safer part of the world. She makes some lifestyle changes shortly after that seem to connect her to her past in some ways. For example, she grows out her hair, similar to when she was a child. A line I thought was really meaningful was "always keep your dignity and be true to yourself" that she remembers being said by her grandmother on page 195. This mindset plays a big role in these pages. In the next scene, she contradicts her wishes of forgetting and instead defends her Iranian background to people she overhears speaking poorly about her and her country. So while initially she wanted to forget, she stayed true to herself and her roots. 

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.