DShoes Blog Page

Alexi/Hendrix

David Schumacher — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:17:19 +0000

The way Alexi wrote, compares to what Hendrix did at woodstock because of the way they both changed things up a little. Hendrix made a much bigger impact on society as he changed the country’s song. What Alexi did is took off the sugarcoat on Native American literature. He shows the emberassment involved in alcoholism and how the Native Americans were treated by the whites. The continuous failing to succeed in sports and futher education due to alcohol and other factors is a different way than we might have read about Native Americans in the past.

Ohh say can you see…

David Schumacher — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:36:15 +0000

Jimi Hendrix really took it to another level when he played his famous version of the star spangled banner at woodstock. Woodstock was a several day concert full of drugs and hippies. The big question is to whether Hendrix wanted to discrace his country’s song, or just give another version of a song that is highly respected in America. I believe there is a tiny bit of “he just wanted to change the song a little and give it a more rock feel for the concert”. I do think he has that going through his mind when he decided to do this radical act. I believe mostly going through his mind was showing disregard for the soldiers in the war and showing US not doing so well with everything going on and in the war. When he played it, you could definitely hear the changes he made to the honorable song. The big part that got me is “the bombs bursting in air”. When he made this sound like actual bombs and also put steps into the song, it makes you almost feel as if defeat is going on. I believe he did this for that purpose of speaking to the crowd in front of him. Which was filled with “warduckers”, hippies, and just people not so much in favor of the war.

Blood Wedding

David Schumacher — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:36:09 +0000

Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” deals mainly with the factors of going into weddings without choosing your partner and without the free choice to do what you really want. In blood wedding, the bride takes off with another guy during the reception after the wedding. The play goes on the idea that getting married is something your parents work out for the best interest of the bride/groom and the families. This is how marriage was awhile back. I didn’t see any true “love” in the story in my opinion. Their wasn’t any love between the Bride and Bridegroom, the marriage was simply there because he was rich and could provide for her.

I also don’t believe their was any true love between Leonardo and the bride. The bride taking off after the wedding is a lustful act much more than love. If it was true love, than I don’t see any reason why she went through a ceremony if she knew she didn’t love him and loved Leonardo. Therefore, I believe lust played a much bigger part in the play than love did.

Trickster

David Schumacher — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:21:35 +0000

In the chapter “Amusements”, their is definitely the trickster aspect present. In class I brought up the emberassment factor. I still believe that Sadie and Victor did not want to be emberassed by Dirty Joe being passed out and being with him. It seems like the sudden decision to put him on the roller coaster was just for their entertainment. This is a “trickster” thing to do, because they simply were doing this dangerous action to get a cheap laugh.

As it turned out, this stunt pulled more of a crowd than the tricksters wanted. The laughter and thrill they got from seeing Dirty Joe on the rollercoaster suddenly died as they realized how many whites were watching. I believe this is the perfect example of a trickster, because of their lack of compassion for anything other than their own entertainment and laughter.

The only traffic signal

David Schumacher — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:34:08 +0000

I feel like this section had alot to do with the Native Americans pride and excpectations. The section is pretty much just a scene were Adrian and Victor sit on the porch drinking diet pepsi and commenting on what they see. They get to talking about how Victor used to be a good basketball player until his hot streak went cold in the state champiosnhip and the team lost by 20 points. This starts the conversation about Julius Windmaker. He was hands down the best ball player on the reservation. Then a year later on a day when Victor and Adrian were sitting on the porch they see Julius on a game day. He was drunk and they wondered how he would play that day, so they attended his game. He played horrible and this went to show how “heros” on the reservation often threw away their gifts and talent to alcohol or other drugs. We figured in our group today that people on the reservation hope someone makes it. And be “makes it” I mean to attend college and play, or even make it to the pros. But what happens is they hope someone makes it, but expects them to fail somehow. At this point in the book they don’t seem to have had a good role model from the reservation to follow.

McMurphy vs Ratched

David Schumacher — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:19:35 +0000

Throughout the story “One flew over the cuckoos nest” there is a conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. Since the second he arrived at the institution, the patients all knew he was different. He had a different kind of swagger to him and he had tattoos. Nurse Ratched also knew since he arrived that he would be a different type of patient. In his first week at the institution, he makes a bet that he could make Nurse Ratched crack. He won the bet when they wanted to watch the world series game and after it was turned off pretended like it was still on. This made Ratched lose her temper, and won McMurphy the bet.

Ratched was on a power trip running the ward. The opinion I got from the story is that she loved to be in control and have everything go her way. When McMurphy is around, I feel like this power of hers is threatened. Therefore, I believe the conflict of McMurphy and Ratched is one of control.

Power, Culture, and Author

David Schumacher — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:41:44 +0000

In the story, The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende used the ideas of power, culture, and author very frequently. It is easy to see Estebans struggle for power throughout the book. His struggle to have full power over Clara and his raping of the peasent girls were both examples of his power struggle.
Culture plays a pretty big part in the book because you have to realize that things back then and over there, aren’t the same as things are now. You have to be open and understanding to the changes between cultures that allows for differences between what we do and what they do.
The Author of this book was Isabel Allende. She used a technique of having different people tell the story. It was always changing as in who was talking to you or whos tellin the story at that particular time. Isabel Allende set up the book so there would be people in the novel telling the story, but that there would also be a narrerator that jumps in from time to time. I found this to be confusing at first. Getting used to the different voices in the story was difficult because it made me look back alot and make sure I knew who was talking. This clears up as I got used to it more and deeper in the book when I had a better understanding of the characters, it was more evident as to whom was speaking.

The House of Spirits

David Schumacher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 06:44:53 +0000

This book so far has been slightly confusing. It seems wierd to me that Clara would stop talking? Whats the significant point for the reason she stops talking until she announces her marriage? Am I wrong for thinking Barrabas is the coolest person in the novel thus far? I mean who are we suppose to look up to? Certainly not Esteban who is raping every one of his female young peasents in site. I’m hoping as I read more that this Esteban and Clara situation will evolve into something I can understand thoroughly and see what happens to the family cause of it.

Cortez part II

David Schumacher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 06:39:35 +0000

Gregorio Cortez was looked at as a rebel and extreme badass in the corridos we read and looked at. In the movie we saw in class, he was looked at in two different ways. The defendant had him as innocent and everything he did was in self defense. I don’t agree with this as I liked him as a badass cowboy instead. In the movie they pointed out he was a killer and tried to emphasis that people had died here, and tried to stear the juries decision by emotion. But in the written version (ballads), they loved Gregorio Cortez because he taunted authority and was the man of the hour. This makes one wonder if that difference in character is just like to corridos changing from person to person, town to town, or if they changed it to just make a better movie?
I’m thinking that it got changed just for creating the movie. I think the porducer of the movie saw the corridos we saw and just didn’t want it like that so he changed it. I could easily be wrong but thats what I think happened.

Artroids/lies

David Schumacher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 06:33:04 +0000

The “artriods” poem was extremely confusing. As far as being a poem this piece meant nothing to me. It was certainly neat, but not anything I would call poetry. I did, however, play the game on my own time and found it to be some what enjoyable. There is a lack of emphasis on the words though. Once you get past like level 3 its hard to read the words because their coming at you pretty quick. So I think it’s a really neat idea to combine the two, but not “Literature” or “Poetry” at all.

The “Lies” Poem was much better. I enjoyed that she takes peoples lies and combines them into little poems or segments. I believe this idea is very origional. The fact that we had an oppertunity to add our own “lies” to the poems was really cool. Then having them change once when you click on them, I thought was also a really fun idea. This, unlike artoids, is something I think is Poetry.