Reading Critically

Before you even begin to read a piece, you get hints and clues to it's contents. A title can tell you a lot about a piece, and so can knowing information about the author, and where and when it was published. The first time you read a piece, just read it. Don't begin to analyze it yet, or pick apart all its particulars, just read it. Get used to the author's voice, recognize the subject and be able to point out the author's opinions. After rading, summarizing a work will help you understand it, ezpecially with more difficult pieces. Then, you begin the process of critical thinking, which consists of analyzing, inferencing, synthesizing and evaluating. In analyzing something, you should look at the author's main idea, support for the idea, special writing strategies and other elements. By inferencing, you "draw conclusions on a work based on your store of informmation and experience. In your synthesis, you link the elements you pointed out in the analysis, to a whole, bringing the big ideas together. And finally, you can evaluate, or judge the quality of the work. And voila, there you have it, a critical reading.

Young Life

In Young Life the man and woman are embracing, and as they lean against eachother, their bodiesfit together like puzzle pieces. They form one single figure, each part of a whole. This symbolizes their life together, equal as one.The woman's shirt is a bright white, which is a harsh contrast to her partner's dirty, faded colors. While they form one figure, the color contrast adds to the fact that they are separate, contrasting elements of one whole. This difference shows that they are not the same, and work well together because of their contrast. Opposites attract, eh?

SOAPSTone Dave Barry

Subject
The subject of Dave Barry’s Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out is that women and men have very different interests and opinions, especially related to sports and cleaning. This difference between the attentiveness of women and men to different activities is illustrated through Barry’s example of a social event and the division of activities between sexes that took place: women and men in different rooms, concerned with their separate favored pastimes. This shows how the men and women have such differing interests, because the men were watching the World Series and the women were socializing with each other and partaking in what I’m sure was intellectually stimulating conversation.
Occasion
Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out came from Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits (1988). The essay’s general time of creation is made apparent by the references to the World Cup and Windex and other relatively modern things. Since these things are relatively modern, one could assume the general time span in which this essay could have been written (luckily it says it at the top, so, said “assuming” is unnecessary). This essay was probably written in America, because Dave Barry is American, and the obviously American names of the people in mentioned in the essay.

The time and place of the essay’s creation influence the essay in him the author having certain interests and referencing certain products and social norms that are specific to his generation. He talks about watching the World Cup on television, which is not something that would have been possible even less than a century ago.
Audience
Barry’s specific audience for Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out men and women who are in a relationship. The author’s target audience is exhibited by his jokes about his wife and him, and their disagreements and separate interests. This wouldn’t be humorous to someone significantly younger, or someone who doesn’t understand relationships.

The author’s general audience is teens and up. The author’s general audience is communicated through his slightly mature humor, and vocabulary.

Purpose
Dave Barry’s purpose in Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out is to be humorous, while touching on a well understood and common subject. There is no specific action the author wants his audience to take, his goal is just to entertain them. His attempted humor is shown when he retells the story of the Pompeii volcano disaster by exaggerating men's’ ignorance towards cleaning by saying that “They never even noticed the ash until it had for the most part covered the children.”
Tone
Barry shows a sarcastic and humorous attitude about the differences in the interests on men and women in Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out These attitudes are expressed with his exaggeratory and sarcastic word choice.

Eleanor Rigby

1. I do like the dubstep version a lot because it keeps much of the same sound as the original version, but just adds to it, but of course the original is my favorite. Maybe its just because it's what I've always known, and it will always sound beautiful. I almost want to be critical of the other two versions just because they are tampering with something so beautiful and it's hard to do it better than the Beatles. I really do hate the metal version though. It just sucks.
2. The original version would be considered the most aethsetically pleasing, because it sounds good to the general public.

Tense shift grammar entry

I was planning the banquet while he had made the guest list.
Rev: I was planning the banquet while he made the guest list.

SOAPSTone "Shooting an Elephant"

Soapstone “Shooting an Elephant”

Subject

The subject of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” is that with an audience, one acts differently, or for different reasons than when the only person one has to impress is oneself.  This change of mentality due to one’s audience is illustrated through the author’s admittance to killing the Elephant mostly due to the pressure of the crowd, rather than what he wanted to do, or thought was right. George says “[He] seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind”. The author admits to being manipulated by the audience into doing what, having been by himself, he would not have done.

Occasion

Shooting an Elephant was written in the early 1900’s. The essay’s time of creation is exhibited when the author states “I did not even know that the British Empire is dying.” He is referring to the dying of the British raj, or empire, which ruled over India from 1858-1947. The place of the essay’s creation is lower Burma or somewhere in England, if Orwell had returned home by then.

The time and place of the essay’s creation influence the essay by causing the author to feel passionate about the Empire that reigned and the corruption of the British sovereign and to discuss how this affected his experience serving as a police officer during this time. On the subject of the hatred towards Europeans in India, Orwell states “As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so”. Orwell was treated poorly due to the time and place in which he worked.

Audience

Orwell’s specific audience for “shooting an Elephant” is people that are working under negative pressure. He talks about the situation that he was in, where he made a bad decision, based on the negative pressure that was pulsing from the crowd. He discusses how hard it was to face up to these people, and how it seemed so easy for his judgment to be hindered by them.

George Orwell’s general audience is those who know what it’s like to be hated, just because of generalized anger. The author’s target audience is revealed by his regretful tone towards the way he was publically harassed because of the anger Indians possessed at that time for the English, due to the oppressive British Empire.

Purpose

George Orwell’s purpose in “Shooting an Elephant” was to portray to his audience that it is hard to keep your judgment when being faced with a decision, while others are pressuring you and analyzing your choices, and in such a situation one might not make the same decision as when he or she is deliberating on his or her own.  The difference in one’s judgment from when they have no one to impress, compared to when their choices are being analyzed, and their every move is up for ridicule is illustrated when Orwell states “But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone”. The author is saying that his decision was altered by the crowd’s judgment of him, and he chose a different solution than he would have, had he no one to impress.

Speaker

George Orwell, who’s experience policing in Burma yielded the novel, Burmese days, and essays, “Shooting an Elephant” and “A Hanging”, believes that it is selfish and unrealistic to make decisions based on the influence of a crowd, disregarding your own opinion. After killing an Elephant because of his insecurity in front of a judgmental crowd of natives, to which he was a foreign, Orwell said “ I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool”.

Tone

George Orwell shows a remorseful and melancholy attitude about his decision under pressure in “Shooting an Elephant”. These attitudes are expressed with words of regret and almost shame. This remorseful tone serves to show that, while under pressure from a group of people, it is hard to make the right decision, but in the end, to do what you know is right is always the better choice.

Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell is known for his idealistic portrayal of the 1900s through his artwork. You might have seen some of his calendars full of months of happy "candy counter" scenes. In Rockwell's "The Runaway", he overlooks the emerging counter-culture centered around responding to America's problems at that time, by portraying America as a nation with a calm and benevolent social and economic climate, which it was not.

Across the Universe

-I imagen Planets and strars and firey meteor collisions, beautifully destructive, moving in slow motion.
-I have always known that a wedding ring is a symbol for marriage. A wedding ring is an object thaat symbolizes committment, it is a concrete reminder of your loyalty and love for your spouse.