For me, Hamlet has been all over the place. I tried really hard to make sure that I was consistent in reading the book every night; however that was not the case. I’m happy to be able to say that I am completely on track with my reading. Also, I am happy to say that I understand what is happening in the book even without using Sparknotes or the movie. Felling pretty good about this book.
Posts Tagged ‘antonio’
Antonio: Hamlet
February 19th, 2012Antonio: Current State of Life
February 12th, 2012It feels like I’ve been in a daze for a while. It’s like I’m sailing through life watching events unfold. I don’t think this is a good way to feel, at least while I’m this young. I’m too young to be having a mid-life crisis haha. But things are looking up. I’m starting to get closer to a lot of people who I don’t usually talk to and I’m beginning to rekindle old relationships. However, some are starting to slip away. I don’t think I know enough people for the 150 rule to be taking effect. Ok PEACE
Antonio is the Kindle Whisperer
February 10th, 2012
Antonio: Kindle Whisperer
Remember how the wonderful Ms. Buono donated a Kindle yesterday? That was really kind. We like Ms. Buono, and she likes us.
Well, there’s a subplot: It turns out that the Shift key had malfunctioned, and as a result, there was no way to type in the password and to access the Kindle.
Forlorn, disappointed, bordering on morose, I called up Amazon last night, and the representative declared the Kindle “defective.” There was no hope.
Until Antonio, the Kindle Whisperer, came to town.
During SSR today in Advisory, I gave Antonio a seemingly impossible mission: Fix this Kindle by Monday.
He cracked the code in less than 10 minutes.
Thank you, Antonio, for your skill. You have just restored all that is beautiful in the world.
Essay of the Week: “Insatiable Desires”
January 27th, 2012
Congratulations to Antonio, this week’s Essay of the Week recipient. He is our second two-time winner. Antonio blends solid analysis (particularly in his structure and point of view paragraphs) with sophisticated language. Leave comments about what you like!
Insatiable Desires
In the poem, “A Story” by Li-Young Lee, the author conveys a father’s torment in not being able to provide the stories that his son desires. The son seeks new stories from his father because the son has heard them all. However the father is unable to respond with a new story. This causes the father great anxiety and causes him to imagine a bleak future for him and his son. In order to describe the emotions that the father is feeling toward his son, Lee uses structure, point of view, and tone.
The use of structure in this poem shows the complex relationship that the father has with his son and how the father feels about his inability to satisfy his son’s desires. The author separates the poems into three distinct units, each highlighting a different stage of the boy’s feelings toward his father. The stages of the boy’s love are separated by the different stanzas in the poem. The beginning of the poem shows the boy’s love for his father; the boy sits on his father’s lap, eagerly waiting for a story. This is shown in the second stanza where it says, “His five-year-old son waits in his lap” (3). In the middle, the boy’s attitude toward his father dramatically shifts as he is packing up so he can leave his father. This is shown when it says, “but the boy is packing his shirts” (15). The shift in the boy’s feelings toward his father is shown when the father tries to tell stories to convince his son to stay, while the son remains unfazed by his father’s efforts. Finally, in the last stanza, the boy’s feelings go back to normal and he is back to loving and depending on his father when the setting returns to the present and the father is still unable to tell a new story. This is shown when it says. “but the boy is here” (19). The author’s use of structure shows the relationship that the father has with his son.
The author’s use of point of view further displays the complex relationship that the father has with his son. The author uses third-person (limited) point of view in order to describe the feelings of the father. It is third-person (limited) point of view, because the poem only uses the father’s point of view and does not allow the reader into the thoughts of the son. The author initially displays the father’s point of view when his son asks for him to tell a new story. The father feels that even amongst all the knowledge that surrounds them, he is unable to do anything for his son. This is explicitly described when it says, “In a room full of books in a world of stories, he can recall not one” (5-8). The father is feels that even if he has all the resources around him, he is unable to provide what his son wants. The father’s point of view is further shown when the son is packing his belongings and the father tries to persuade him to stay. The father is shown as desperate in his attempts to persuade his son into staying. The father’s point of view in this situation is best described when he exclaims “don’t go” (11). Through the author’s use of point of view, the relationship between the father and son is clearly shown.
Finally, the author uses a desperate tone in order to explain the relationship between the father and his son. The tone of the words used in the poem reveals the father as a desperate man, struggling to please his son. The rash tone is specifically shown when the father is trying to stop his son from leaving. The father exclaims, “don’t go”, a venturesome attempt at making his son stay once his attempts at story-telling have failed. The father has failed in persuading his son to stay using normal means and had to resort to begging. The act of the father begging his son to stay show the father’s desperation and this act of rashness further shows the complex relationship that the father has with his son.
Through the author’s use of literary devices, Lee succeeds in showing a father’s relationship with his son. She uses structure to illustrates the change in the the son’s feelings toward his father. The point of view shows how the father feels about not being able to satisfy the desires of his son and the use of tone illustrates the father’s feelings of desperation in not being able to get his son to stay.
Antonio: The Scarlet Letter So Far
January 8th, 2012I really like the Scarlet Letter. It is by far my favorite book. It is the most interesting book so far and the easiest to get into. I think there’s something about the writing style; it’s just beautiful and poetic.
My favorite character is Roger Chillingworth. I like his style and how he approaches situations. He’s like a smooth operator, just someone that one could aspire to be. It would be nice to have his calmness and insight in any situation.
As for predictions, I believe that Reverend Dimmesdale is the baby’s daddy. I feel like I either heard something about it or that how he tried to get the magistrates to cease their arguments, while interrogating Hester, might have given it away to me. I’m excited for the truth to be revealed.
Antonio is a podcast star
December 25th, 2011
Antonio was recently on The Kindle Chronicles, a weekly podcast dedicated to lovers of the Kindle.
I chose Antonio because he’s read on the Kindle in both Advisory and in AP English.
He had lukewarm comments about the Kindle — some positive, some negative. (This is because he hasn’t figured out how great it is yet! 
)
Check out the interview below. It begins at 16:08.
Update: I’m happy to announce that I received two more Kindles, bringing up the total to seven Kindles. I will be focusing them on my Advisory to promote independent reading before my advisees graduate, but they will also be available to any student who’s interested. Please see me.
Antonio: Presentation of Growth
December 15th, 2011Antonio: Imagination Domination
December 4th, 2011I feel that as we grow into our maturity, we start to forget our youth. You know, we start to lose touch with the things that kept us happy as kids, the things that made every day an adventure. I believe that if we never lose sight of our youth, we will never lose our happiness. So for all who rush head-first into responsibility and stress themselves out, remember the little person inside you and rejoice. This has been a public service announcement by Antonio Beasley. CIAOOOOOO!!!!!
Antonio: Theme Study
November 20th, 2011I want to do my theme study on coming of age. The three books that I choose are The Kite Runner (best book ever), Lord of the Flies (I’ve heard amazing things about it) and Catcher in the Rye (mehhhhhh). My first book will be Lord of the Flies.
Antonio: Coming of Age
November 8th, 2011I have noticed that throughout the story, Siddhartha is focused on finding himself and becoming enlightened. He believes that through enlightenment, he can be happy. He wanted to relieve the fear in his heart. I see this as a bildungsroman because he goes on a journey in order to find enlightenment. Also because, through this journey, he realizes that in order to find enlightenment, he must accept himself and all that he has been through.
Antonio: Fate and destiny in Oedipus Rex
November 4th, 2011
In class, we had a unit on fate and destiny where we explored whether we could avoid destiny or not. For this project, I chose to focus on fate and destiny as it is presented in Oedipus Rex. In the book, there is a prophecy saying that a child will kill his father, lay with his mother, and bring ruin to his town. For my picture, I chose to focus on how it is Oedipus’s destiny to bring calamity upon his city.
In my picture, I use two different types of perspective: atmospheric perspective and point perspective. In atmospheric perspective, you fade out the background in order to create a sense of depth, and in point perspective, you create a focal point, and connect all buildings to it in order to make them seem three dimensional. I use both of these in order to create a realistic setting of the town, that Oedipus rules, for my picture. The town has a castle, and many buildings in it to show that it is a town.
In order to create a connection to fate and destiny, I use a variety of symbols. I make the edges of the picture like a thought bubble in order to make it seem like it was thought of or prophesied. I also make the edges golden to add in the notion of a divine prophecy. In the actual picture, I make the town shrouded by a green mist in order to show the disease and ruin that the city will experience. I mad sure to make the castle above all the miasma because I noticed that none of the people in the castle are plagued by disease. I also depicted Oedipus with blood streaming from his eyes because Tiresias told him that he would blind himself. The tears of blood not only show that Oedipus’s eyes served no use for him, but also
My picture shows that are lives are chosen for us. I shows that divinity decides what will happen and that destiny is inescapable. As an artist, I try my best in order to capture my vision on the paper. I feel that through my own style, and use of image, I have shown that destiny is unavoidable.
Antonio: My response on Beloved
October 29th, 2011I really enjoyed the book. I liked the symbolism and how interesting the descriptions were, and surprisingly enough, I understood the book my first time through. I thought that Morrison did an excellent job in telling the story. I especially like the style in which she told the story. It was really erratic and never stayed in one place. It frequently jumped time periods thus furthering my understanding of the events that happened in the book. Morrison really left no stones unturned for me.
APers Outloud, Edition #1
October 23rd, 2011Welcome to the first APers Outloud podcast! Listen to what the APers have to say, and feel free to leave a comment.
Find out what’s hot at iseroma.com
October 2nd, 2011What are people reading on iseroma.com? Find out by looking at two new features on the sidebar: “iseroma popular topics” and “iseroma popular posts.”
iseroma popular topics lists tags with the most posts. The bigger the tag is, the more posts the tags has. It seems like after “ap projects,” marco, antonio, paulina, and the stranger are all quite popular.
iseroma popular posts lists the most viewed posts this week. Congratulations to Carmen for having the most popular post this week (so far!). If you haven’t read these posts, check them out and comment!
Nathaly: Social Expectations
September 30th, 2011Introduction
After reading The Stranger by Albert Camus, I will conduct an experiment that uncovers other people’s attitudes when I do not conform to social expectation. In the novel, Meursault, the main character, is a unique human being. He is very much detached from others. He is not attached to others emotionally or physically because he does not conform to social expectations. When he does not obey rules or morals, people treat him differently or worse, compared to someone who does meet social expectations. I will be testing if the way people act towards me changes in a negative way.
Method
Before starting my experiment I had to come up with my hypothesis to test out if my prediction will be true. Then I identified each part that is essential to my experiment which are the following:
Hypothesis: By acting like Meursault, people who I communicate with will get frustrated with me and act differently towards me.
Subject: My family and the people of my school.
Independent Variable: Not conforming to social expectations.
Dependent Variable: The way people act towards me.
Control: Some of my peers who know about the experiment
Control group: Students in AP English class
Experimental Group: People at school, my family and boyfriend
After I put my experiment to the test by acting like Meursault’s description. I was detached and emotionally different than others because I refused to accept moral order of society. I didn’t make judgment on my actions but was honest. Every time I was put into a situation that I have to act like Meursault, I wrote down my observations on a sheet of paper.
Results and Findings
In school, when my peer Antonio Beasley told me that he does not have grandparents and to not feel for him, I just give me a smile. He reacted to my answer offensively and called me an “ass” for smiling and laughing. When Antonio got hurt, I laughed at him. Then he told me not to laugh at him because he was in pain but I just kept laughing. A different time when I wasn’t emotionally connected was when Joseph wanted to hug me. I denied his hug so he called me mean. When I was not emotionally attached to how Damian felt, he felt frustrated. I told to him to “shut up” and would not change my diction when asked me to, so he decided to hang up on me. Minutes later he told me those words are disrespectful but I didn’t take what he said into consideration.
When my mom and I were on our way to get a gym membership, we got into an argument. She told me not to speak back or raise my voice to her because she was the oldest and the mother and that I should respect her. I told her that I didn’t care how old someone is, I’m going to speak however I wanted. Her decision of paying for my membership changed but then when I spoke the truth, she was wiling to pay for my membership. The next situation was based on religion. Damian wondered why I don’t believe in God; he then tried to convince me to believe but I just wouldn’t.
A time when I was not judging my actions was when the cat was on a chair and I kept shaking it and all the cat was doing was just holding on so she wouldn’t fall off. My sister witnessed me doing that and was surprised of my actions although she didn’t have anything to say. During school, in lunch break, I would not be with my friends but there was no difference in their reaction.When I would be isolated in my room when I was at home, there was also no reaction from my family members.
Analysis and Discussion
In my observations, I’ve noticed that overall, in most of the experiences that I’ve encountered, people gave me negative emotions and responses. People wanted me to relate to them and come to one level of understanding by relating to their emotions, so I could feel what they wanted me to feel because that is morally correct. People also want to feel attached to someone my relating with emotions. Since that didn’t happen, people would react to my actions in a negative way and get frustrated with me. All the people I did not relate to emotionally responded in a different way than usual like I predicted.
Obeying adults is correct but when I talked back and didn’t do what was ethical, my mom tried to punish me by not paying for my gym membership. She tried to correct my behavior by giving me a punishment. On the other hand, she noticed that her punishment wasn’t going to work. The words of honesty that I spoke about her affecting my grades did not allow her to punish me because she didn’t think that affecting my academics was morally correct. Her morals stopped her from correcting mine. On a different subject, when I was speaking to Damian about religion, he tried to give me his thoughts about religion to believe in God so I could be convinced to believe in God. Even then I denied my faith in God and expressed what I thought about that subject in my honest opinion. I noticed that in both my mother’s and Damian’s reactions, there were similarities because both ended up giving up and just let me think the way I wanted. Furthermore, they did not try to correct me.
As I did not judge my actions, my sister’s reaction to when I was torturing my cat was surprised. I did not make sense if my actions were good or bad, so I kept doing it. She did not say a word after I continued my action. When I was isolated from my friends at school and my family at home, there was no difference in their reactions. No one noticed because that is how I normally am so people don’t think it is unusual. These last experiments that I encountered, people did not have a different reaction than normal because people understand that that’s the personality that I have, so people don’t see that as different from my part.
The people who know me the most like my family, close friends and boyfriend had different reactions by not reacting different towards me and giving up when correcting my behavior. They are more familiar with my personality and respect the way that I am. While others who don’t know me so well like acquaintances from school expected me to act a certain way. They are the ones who reacted in a negative way towards me. My hypothesis was only proven right to those who are not familiar with my characteristics.
Antonio: Reactions to Death
September 30th, 2011Family Matters
Hypothesis: If a person randomly brings up the death of a loved one or someone of importance, then the person they are talking to will shows signs of sadness and remorse for the person who has experienced the death of a loved one.
Subjects: For my subjects, I chose people that I normally talk to in an effort to get pure and honest reactions. If I would have talked to a stranger, there is an increased chance that the responses would have been inaccurate since they probably would have been uncomfortable conveying their true beliefs to a stranger.
Independent Variable: The independent variable is that unlike a normal conversation, I am bringing up something depressing such as the death of a loved one or even multiple loved ones.
Dependent Variable: The dependent variable will be the reactions of my subjects to the things that I’m saying.
Control: I did all of my work in a very small time window so that people would catch on to the fact that I’m saying depressing things about my life to multiple people, thus making my results inaccurate.
Control Group: The control group is the people that I had normal conversations with throughout the day.
Experimental Group: The experimental group was the people that I chose to share the depressing information with.
Experimental Process: I would try to act as normally as possible while visually recording reactions so that I would not look suspicious writing things down during the conversation. I would ask things like how they were doing, or what’s new with them. I would comment on how they looked on the given day. I would try to be my normal charming self in order to lure my subjects into a false sense of security. Then, when it seemed like the conversation could only get better, I would say something utterly depressing and gauge their reactions on the spot. I would say things like, “Did you know that my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and that she suffocated as she died four days before my mom’s birthday?” By saying horrific things like this, I was able to see people’s views on family ties.
Findings: People were likely to do three things when they heard my depressing statements. They would either get awkwardly quiet and look down, try to empathize with me, or get frustrated because of the timing that I chose to say something so depressing. Everybody knows the feeling of losing a loved one, so my statement brings up painful memories that they either try to reject or accept.
Analysis: Based off of the reactions of my subjects, I can family ties are something that my subjects really value. They show very vivid and distinctive reactions when I mention something about them losing a loved one. Because of the continuity of my findings, I can conclude that having emotion for a loved one who has died is a very normal and human characteristic and that family as a whole is important in society.
Antonio: My Weekend…
September 26th, 2011Friday: Super mega tired and have to go to work, not very happy, but I stop by quickly and get a mango slush and find a way to enjoy myself. Don’t get off until 10:30 and luckily my mom takes me home. Now I have cake from a party I couldn’t go to and I’m super sleepy, so I go to bed.
Saturday: It’s 2x experience weekend on CoD so I make sure to reap the benefits from about 10-4. Then I start my math hw and get frustrated and do no more homework.
Sunday: I make half-hearted attempts at finishing my homework, but spend the bulk of my day watching football. At about 7, I call into work to see my schedule for next week and they tell me that I was supposed to work BOTH SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. MIGHT LOSE MY JOB…
The Lucky Four meet Khaled Hosseini
September 23rd, 2011
A couple Thursdays ago, The Lucky Four (Brenda, Antonio, Marco, and Paulina) attended a lecture by Khaled Hosseini, author of Kite Runner, at Dominican University.
The team even got to meet the author!
But it was unclear which was better: the lecture or eating tons of food both before and after the event.
Antonio: Chuck Norris is great; let me tell you why
September 9th, 2011How many push-ups can Chuck Norris do? All of them. Jesus can walk on water, but Chuck Norris can walk on Jesus. Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He just stares at them until he gets the information he wants. Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun. Chuck Norris won American Idol using only sign language. Chuck Norris doesn’t call the wrong number, you answer the wrong phone.
AP Essay of the Week: Justice in The Kite Runner
September 1st, 2011
Justice in The Kite Runner
In the book the Kite Runner, justice is something that isn’t honored by the characters. They just let problems repeatedly go on until no one cares to mention it. Amir, the protagonist sees his servant being molested yet he says nothing in order to get justice. At first he believes that peoples’ needs of justice are nonequivalent, then he discovers that everyone has an equal need for justice, and finally his search for justice creates an underlying theme of acceptance.
Amir at first believes that not all people deserve equal justice. Amir’s servant gets raped by the neighborhood bully, but Amir does not say anything about it He did not feel that his servant’s right to justice, was equal to his own. Amr could have told someone what would happen, and retrieve justice for his servant but he chose to keep his mouth shut for fear of being attacked by the neighborhood bully. Amir feels that his whims are more important than the needs of his servant because his servant is a second class citizen and is not affected by the same rules as normal people. Amir does not see justice as an equal oppurtunity.
When Amir gets older, he discovers that all people should have equal justice. Because he realizes that he was wrong, Amir sets out to retrieve justice for his servant. Amir understands that people from all walks of life are the same and are deserving of equal justice. Therefore he acquires justice for his servant by confronting the neighborhood bully and adopting his servant’s son. Amir understands that all people deserve equal justice, therefore he gets justice for those who have been wronged.
Because of the search for justice the theme of acceptance can easily be seen. Speciffically, accepting people who are different than you are and understanding that even though you are different, you are the same in some areas. The search for justice in the book brings people together based off of their differences instead of driving them apart.
Amir first believed that not all people were entitled to equal justice, then he grows up and realizes that everyone is entitled to justice, and the search for justice in the entire book points out the theme of acceptance.According to the Kite Runner, justice brings us together.
