Book report : A Clockwork Orange

When he was young, Anthony Burgess wanted to be a composer. Unfortunately, he wasn't accepted in music at university because of his poor grades. He studied in English language and literature instead and he became a teacher in the British colonial service. He travelled to many places, but he grew bored and lied saying that he had a brain tumour and only a year to live. He got discharged and he became a full-time writer. It was a this moment that he wrote his famous novel A clockwork Orange.

A clockwork Orange is the story of a young man called Alex. He lives in what could be London in the near-future . The novel could be separated in three parts. In the first part, Alex has a life of debauchery with his friend. They rampage houses at night to hurt, rape and steal from the inhabitants. They take great pleasure in their ultra-violence and Alex revels in the 9th symphony of Beethoven. But then, Alex's friends grow irritated of the way he treats them. He roughs them up a bit and convinces them to steal into a old woman's house. Alex enters alone in the house through a window and beats the old woman unconscious before going to open the door. When he does, they attack him and leave him incapacitated for the policemen who were on their way. The old lady died from Alex's treatment and he got charged for murder.

The second part is when he's in prison. He was condemned for fourteen years. After two years, he hears of an experimental rehabilitation technique that would release him out of prison immediately after. It is an aversion therapy called the Ludovico technique. It consists of making the patient look at very violent scenes of battle, mugging, stealing and rape while being under the influence of a drug that creates a sharp nauseating response to these scenes. The soundtrack for those scenes was Beethoven's 9th symphony. Alex realizes then that he won't be able to listen to Ludwig anymore. After the treatment, Alex is placed in various violent situations in front of a public to demonstrate that he is cured of his violent side. Here, a priest gets frustrated because Alex is not being non-violent by choice. He must not be violent, because if he does, he feels he will vomit. He remained totally unchanged from the therapy; it was only his body that was trained to react to certain situations.

The final part is when he is release in the society. Unfortunately, his old victims attack him because he isn't able to defend himself anymore. Two police officers, who turned out to be two of his friends, beat him and leave him for dead at the towns outskirt. Alex will then walk aimlessly until he arrives at an house. He doesn't realize that this house is one of the many he had broke into with his friend to rape a woman. The writer living there doesn't recognize him as the one who raped his now dead wife and he wants to use him as a poster child for the victims of the fascist government. Unfortunately, the writer will recognize Alex for what he has done to him and he will torture him by locking him up in a room where Beethoven's 9th symphony was playing. Alex can't take it and he attempt to kill himself by jumping out of the window. However, he will not die. He'll wake up in a hospital from where he'll return to live with his parents. The government reversed the therapy because it was bad publicity for them. Alex will make another gang like the one he had at the beginning of the book, but he will soon tire of it after seeing one of his old friend leading a peaceful life with his wife and children. He saw then that he could be happy while leading another life than the one of debauchery he had.

A Clockwork Orange is a very interesting novel for it's moral about good and bad: It's one thing not to do anything bad, but it's another to do good.

LEL #6

For my sixth Learning express library exercice, I've done the writing diagnostic: organisation and focus. This was a test to evaluate my skills to plan my writing for a text.

It took me two hours to finish the test and I scored 90%.

The test was very repetitive. There was six series of five questions. Each serie was about a different text and asked pretty much the same questions in the same order. After the second one, I was already bored and I knew what the answers would be. This was way too long for what it's worth. I don't know if that shows me if I'm good at organizing my texts, because I didn't have to think at all to answer the questions.

I give it 4/10 because it was too long and repetitive.

LEL #5

I've done the Grammar practice #1 for my fifth LEL. There was forty questions about grammar, punctuation, capitalization, verb, adjective, adverb and pronoun.

I scored 65%. At first, I wasn't happy with myself, but then I looked at the real answers and explanations and I saw that it was filled with errors. For example, look at this sentence.

Tommy's Bar and Grill was | conveniently located on | one of the main streets | in downtown Waynesberg. |

Here, I had to choose what part of the sentence had wrongly used a capital or needed one. In this particular question, I answered that no part was wrong. The test said that the answer was the first part and here's the explanation : ''the conjunction "and" does not take a capital.''

The word ''and'' clearly didn't have a capital. Numerous questions were falsely corrected like this. This test was interesting to do, but I give it 0/10 because it seems to have been corrected by a drunk monkey.

Final Writing

Karoline Leach, born in Liverpool in 1967, author of the play Tryst, has studied in acting and she was an actor and director before being a writer. Her first book, In the shadow of the dreamchild: a new understanding of Lewis Caroll, became a subject of controversy for claiming that the biography of Caroll was far more mythic than true. Her most recent work named tryst was premiered in 2006 and was played in many United States cities and in Montréal. That play reveals much of her understanding of acting. The story is lead by the emotions and the reactions of the two characters to each other and by their own desperate way of life.

First off, Tryst doesn’t have any major action because the play revolves around the emotions of George Love and Adelaide Pinchin. George is a dandy and his way of life consists of seducing women to then steal their possessions. Adelaide works at a hat shop and if George hadn’t chose her for his schemes, she would have been doing that until her death. In the first act, the two of them talks in monologue to describe themselves and what they are doing. Because of that, the audience can know what their thoughts are and why they are answering as they are. It is easy to see that George is a liar and a hypocrite while Adelaide seems to believe everything he is telling her. That is exactly what George wants and everything goes as he knew it would. They get married and go at a resort for the honeymoon. Then, during the second act, Adelaide is not so gullible. She knew George was too good to be true, but it is only then that she confronts him. There is no monologues now, but the awkwardness and the silences gives as much information on what they think and feel. George can’t bring himself to stop being a thief and Adelaide still wants to believe in him and love him. It is because their ways of thinking are so different that this interesting story can take place.

Secondly, even if we can think the contrary, the two of them are desperate, not only Adelaide. She is a mid-life woman and she thought it was too late for her to find love. George, even if he seems to be self-assured and happy of his life, is also feeling he is getting too old for this. In fact, he doesn’t know if he could do anything else than seducing desperate women to take their money. This is why these two are so alike. Adelaide psychologically changed very much during the play. She begins as a seamstress who knows she has no future and then she shows her backbone when she confronts George. Him, on the contrary, he didn’t really change. During the second act, he seemed to be convinced by Adelaide’s dream of owning a hat shop. But he didn’t change. He kills her at the end to go back to being what he was at the beginning, even if he knows he might not get another chance. If Adelaide had not acted differently, George would have gotten away as he always do.

Finally, Tryst is a play where emotions and the thoughts of the characters have the major role. The desperate ways of each of them brought them together and changed at least her. Through all the play, we could know what they were thinking even if there wasn’t that much foreshadowing. That is why this play is so amazing and should be seen at least once.
599 words.

sentence patterns #3

Figure of speech

Simile: A comparison between two things not alike with comparative words.
Ex: My feet smells like a rose that have committed suicide.

Metaphor: Implied comparison without a comparative word.
Ex: A plane is a caged bird.
Ex: The young goalie skyrocketed to fame but now he's crashed

Analogy: inference from one subject or word to another.
Ex: the grand bibliotheque might have the key for your future; it unlocks many doors to knowledge.
Ex: The humain brain, when compared to a computer, is really simple. A computer can execute a billion calcuation per second and some people have difficulty when adding numbers. It's still a mystery why the computers are letting us be masters over them.

Allusion: reference to something. It can be direct or indirect.
Ex: His achilles heel was his lack of personnality.

Personnification: When human caracteristics are given to inanimate objects or animals.
Ex: The car approved with a honk.

Hyperbole: exaggerated statements to evoke strong feelings.
Ex: There is more dust in my room than on the moon.

Understatement: Statement wich is lesser than the expression expected.
Ex: It's just a flesh wound, said the man who had lost both arms.

LEL #4

For my final learning express library course, I chose to do another one that was about vocabulary. It's the word analogy practice 1. I figured this would allow me to further evaluate myself in my knowledge of the meaning of words.

I didn't like this test. There was no explanation for what was the answer I should be looking for. It took me quite some time to figure out the questions. For example, every question was like this : word1 : word2 :: word? : word4. I understood that it could mean : word1 to word2 is like word ? to word4. But in many other question, it seemed like word1=word? and word2=word4. I was really confused and I think that they could have better explained the situation. Also, for being the first test in a serie of 4, it was very difficult and there was a lot of words I have never seen before. That's considering I read a lot in english.

I got 75%, but I guess I was lucky because there was a lot of answers I guessed because all the words were unknown to me.

I give it a 3/10 because someone took the pain to do this test.

LEL #3

For my third LEL I did the reading skills diagnostic: Literary text. I figured I could see how well I read in english. I had to read three text and a poem and correctly answer questions about them.

I scored 34/40, wich makes 85%.

I found this test rather interesting, because even if it was rather long, I love reading. But still, I think that two text would have been enough. When I saw the third text to read, I was a little discouraged to read all that only for a diagnostic test.

I didn't find this test so hard, but it wasn't easy either. I had to think and read the texts again and again to be sure I had understood. The question were about comprehension of the plot and the author's meaning and many other things like main ideas, point of view and vocabulary.

I didn't really learn anything new, but I guess doing tests like this are good practice to read and analyse faster. That would come in handy for tests wich I don't have much time.

I would give this test a 10/10. It's a well conceived practice tool.

LEL #2

For my second LEL course, I took the vocabulary and spelling pratice #1. It consisted of fifty questions. Again, I didn't use the dictionnary to answer, because I am aiming to evaluate myself before working on improvement.

There was ten questions about vocabulary. I had to choose a synonym for specific words. I found that section pretty easy. Then the questions were varied from completing analogies to filling blanks in sentences. It took me half an hour to answer the fifty questions and it was mostly easy, but there was some questions wich I had to ponder a little more than usual. It was kinda interesting at first, but I soon grew bored to answer because the questions were very repetitive and some of them obsolete because the answer could be deduced from the previous question.

I scored 82%, wich for me seems alright. Finding a test easy doesn't mean it is. There was some answers that I gave that weren't the ones I was thinking about. I was a little disapointed about myself because I knew the good answer and I was just eager to finish. I did learn a few things though. For example, panacea means an absolute cure, something that could fix all disorders. I also thougth that to proscribe meant to recommend something, but in fact, it meant to forbid it. If not for those two words, I understood what the others meant, if not specifically.

I guess that kind of test would be helpful to enrich my vocabulary too, but it was a little too easy for my taste. I would give it 7/10 for this test because of that.

LEL #1

When I talk in english, I often don't know how to express myself because of my poor vocabulary. That's why I chose to do the three synonym and antonym practices for my first exercice in the Learning Express Library.

I had an unlimited time to answer twenty questions per tests. I did them without any dictionnary.

In the first test, I passed with 80%. The test was fairly easy and I finished it quickly. There was some words, like abridge, wich I didn't know the definition, but I knew approximatively what they mean. The only drawback is that there was an error in the correction : the good answer wasn't the one in their explanation (my own answer was still false though).

I scored 75% in the second test. It was a little thougher than the first, but not by that much. There was still some words I don't see often, but I was good enough to deduce the meaning for some of them.

I thougth I had some difficulty with the last one, but I scored 80%. I had to guess some answers, but I was right for most of them.

I think those tests showed me that I understand english well enough. However, it wouldn't hurt to know more words to talk more fluidly. It was interesting because it made me practice something I actually wanted to improve.

I would give it 10/10, but minus one point because of the correction error. So 9/10

Hills like white elephants

Outline
Litterary thesis :
Hills like white elephants shows us a conversation between a couple concerning an abortion with the point of view of the man and the girl in the story.

Symbols:
White elephants can represent the fact that the woman is pregnant. The man sees it as an obstacle while the girl sees it as an extraordinary thing.

Also, the train tracks separates the landscape in two. One side is dry, barren and there are hills while the other is green and fertile farmlands. The girl always ''looks across the hills''. We can assume she is considering the idea of the abortion.

When that the man moves himself the luggage to the other side of the station, we can assume that he is the one making the decisions. This is contradictory compared with what he said to her, that it was her opinion about it that mattered.

10 described words from Tryst's teacher's note

1.Shed: to impart and release.
2.Subsequent: Occuring later.
3.Embody: to give a concrete form.
4.Cad: A local town young man.
5.Wits: perception.
6.Seamstress: a sewing woman.
7.Scrub: a slang meaning to cancel something.
8.Peering: To look intently at something.
9.Gawp: To stare with an open mouth in astonishment.
10.Behoove: to be worthwhile.

Sentence patterns #1, #2

Sentence = Complete idea /subject+verb

= independant clause

Clause = Incomplete idea /subject+verb

= dependent clause

= idea, part of the sentence

Phrase = Preposition /no verb (participle(in, on, at): present(-ing) or past(-ed))

CSL(S) has(V) 3200 students(object) in difficult programs (prepositional phrase)wich are interesting(clause).

example use of sentence pattern #1 :

independant clause+semicolon+independant clause

Csl(S) has(V) 3200 students(object); many are smart and talented(adjectives)

Sentences about ''the lady or the tiger''

1. Franck Stockton wrote many short stories; he filled 23 volumes
2. Franck Stockton's most famous story is ''the lady or the tiger;'' it's about a man being judged for his illicit affair with a king's daughter.

Independant clause+Semicolon+conjunctive adverb(therefore, hence, thus, however, etc.)+comma+independant clause

1. F.S.(S) started(V) as a wood engraver(object); however, he(S) became(V) a famous writer(object).

Independant Clause+comma+coordinating conjunction(fanboys(mnemonic: For And, N, But, Or, Y, So))+Independant clause

1. The story(S) has(V) no ending(object), so the reader(S) is(V) left wondering what happens(object).

SENTENCE PATTERN #2

IC+colon(:)

statement: explanation (specific)

ex1: Bernard shaw told a writer:

"There are three things I disliked about your story: they are the beginning, the middle and the ending."

ex2: There is one key rule in my life: always be well-dressed at work.

thesis statement (fourth link)

1. A good thesis statement will make a claim. bad example: Americans are violent. Good example: Americans are violent because they are fearful.

2. A good thesis sentences will control the entire argument. A thesis sentence must reflect the entire paragraph. (main idea)

3. A good thesis will provide a structure for your argument. Example: we shall demonstrate that X expresses itself in 3 ways: A, B and C.

Other points:

A good thesis statement should:

-be clear and avoid vague words
-avoid ­­­''I''
-connect all the subelements of the text. (my point 3)
-pass the ''so what'' test. (be provocative)
-introduce an essay.
-determine the type of paper you write.
-use literary elements. (plot, point of view, metaphor, themes, etc.)
-make use of ''quotations'' as evidence, to support it.

***

Three Components :
-What : Claim about the text (interpretation)
-How : the literary elements (figure of speech, symbolism, theme)(you choose support your claim).
-Why : the significance of your claim answers the question : so what?

BAD THESIS STATEMENT :
1. This poem shows the narrator comparing his love to a summer's day. (plot summary)
2. The poem present the power of love to conquer death. (too universal)
3. The poem shows how Narratives cans last while Nature can not. (too general)
4. The poem proves that the penis is mightier than the sword. (cliché)
5. The structure character and dialogue in the poem show us how humans search for knowledge. (List)

GOOD THESIS STATEMENT :
1.Despite it's emphasis on love and physical beauty, the poem reveals the ways in wich humans can triumph over the vagaries of nature.
Qualities : specific / arguable / provides a structure for your argument

The Tell-Tale Heart

A) Author : Edgar Allan Poe

5 facts about Poe:

-He was born Edgar Poe and he had lost both parents at the age of three. He was adopted by the Allans and they renamed him Edgar Allan Poe.
-He married his thirteen years old cousin when he was twenty-six.
-He was found delirious and sick in the streets and wearing clothes that were not his own. He was brought to an hospital and he died four days after. His final words were: ''Lord help my poor soul''.
-He was one of the first writer to live solely on the money of his writings.
-His first work was published anonymously.

B) Plot (corrections made)

The Tell-Tale Heart is narrated by an anonymous man who assures us that he is not mad. He tells us about an old man he lives with and his dreadful white eye. He explains how he loved the old man, but hated the eye so much that he only wanted to destroy it. So every night, at midnight, he would slowly open the old man's door to enter his room. Then he opened a lantern so that only a tiny ray of light would reveal the eye. For seven days, the eye was closed, so the storyteller did not do a thing. However, in the night after, he made a sharp noise while opening the lantern and the old man awakened. The narrator waited anxiously in the dark, but the old man stayed upright in his bed, completely still. When he finally undid the lantern, the ray of light fell on the blank eye. A heartbeat could be heard and the man thought it was the old man's. Rage filling him, he smothered the old man under the mattress.

The old man's body was hidden under the floor when three police officers came at the door. The neighbour had heard a scream and he had called the police. The storyteller showed the whole house to them so they could see nothing happened and that the old man was on vacations He said to them it was him that screamed when he awoke from a nightmare. The policemen where convinced and were about to leave the house when the narrator invited them for some tea. It was then, when they were seated, that he heard the heartbeats again. They were getting louder and he was sure the police officers heard it too. He thought they were jesting with him, for it was evident they could hear that loud sound. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore and he told them where he had hidden the body so the heartbeats could stop.

C) Analysis

1) Setting: The narrator lives with the old man. The story
2) characters:
A) The narrator, who is the main character, is anonymous. The gender is unspecified, but we can assume it's a man because Poe always narrated from a man's point of view.
B) The old man with the blank eye, wich makes the narrator nervous.
C) The neighbour, who called the police when he heard a scream
D) The three policemen, who searched the house and arrested the narrator.
3) Themes:
A) A human being has a perverse, wicked side -another self- that can provoke him to doing evil things without an apparent motive.
B) Fear of discovery can bring about discovery.
C) The evil within is worse than the evil without.
4) Point of View: First person narrative
5) Sentence Style: Objet -there was none. Passion -there was none. ''I loved the man.''
6) Figure of speech:
Anaphora(repetition of sentences): I heard things in heaven. I heard things in hell
Personification: Death. ''Death becomes a black shadow that approaches him''
Simile: ''A single ray of light like the web of a spider.''
Alliteration(repetion of sounds): ''Observe, how! heartily, how! (...), How!''
Irony: ''I was never kinder to the old man during that week before I killed him''

movie project question 1

1. What questions.

What are you reviewing?

I'm reviewing the film: ''The mysterious case of Benjamin Button''

What is it about?

It's the story of a man who was born old and died young.

What is the plot or storyline?

What is the theme?

What is the director's purpose?

What genre or classification does it fit?

What is the tone?

What is the point of view?

What is the mood.

2. Who questions.

Who wrote, directed, or acted it?

The film was writed from a short story by Fitzgerald that goes by the same name. The writers for the movie are Eric Roth and Robin Swicord. The director is David Fincher. Brad Bitt is playing the role of Benjamin and Cate Blanchett is playing daisy, Benjamin's lover.

What else have they done?

David Fincher also directed Alien 3, Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac.

Who are the main characters in the story?

Who is the intended audience?

Who has said what about this?Why?

3. Where and when questions.

When does the action take place?

Where does the action take place?

LEL # 4

1.Interest level
2.difficutly level
3.What I learned
a)
b)
c)
4.My score
5.Course rating (on ten)

LEL # 3

1.Interest level
2.difficutly level
3.What I learned
a)
b)
c)
4.My score
5.Course rating (on ten)

LEL # 2

1.Interest level
2.difficutly level
3.What I learned
a)
b)
c)
4.My score
5.Course rating (on ten)

LEL # 1

1.Interest level
2.difficutly level
3.What I learned
a)
b)
c)
4.My score
5.Course rating (on ten)

Guillaume Lapointe

I met Guillaume in the english class. He studies in music and from what he have said, he wants to travel a lot. He plans to do two world-tours to at least visit these eleven countries: Japan, Germany, Chile, France, Netherlands, Russia, Madagascar, Australia, Portugal, Spain and Egypt. Studying in Europe is the next thing he wants to do from now. He's pretty good at playing the piano and the french horn. He likes to write music and play online games. He's very familiar with computer interface. In the long run, he wants to work in an orchestra or a music band and have childrens. Oh, and he said he'll die at 27 years old.

Also, guillaume has won many gold medals in his life. For example, he won a contest of figure skating, another one at the piano and one with an orchestra. He passed his driving exam with flying colors and he can hold his breath underwater for two minutes, wich is more long than we think it is. Finally, the life at the cégep and the friends he has there are very important to him. I hope his experiences with the orchestra and his partners at his work will allow him to lead a good life.

Wiki Hunt

1.What is the learning express library?
It is an online learning platform to help students on the academic level.
2.Where is Mr. B's office?
It's at C-150.
3.What pourcentage of the coruse is writing and speaking worth?
They are 50% each.
4.How many students are registered in the class?
37 students are registered.
5.What are Mr. B's office hours?
They are at Thuesday from 1:30 to 2:30 and wednesday from 1:00 to 5:00.
6.What is the 48 hours rule?
You have to contact the professor in the 48 hours following an evaluation, if you missed it, to know if you can do it afterward.
7.What is the first assignement?
The short story discussion.
8.How many references are made to thesis statement
There is 13 references.
9.How many threads are found in the discussion forum?
There is 75 of them.
10.Do you have to go to the Grande Bibliothèque to register?
No you don't.
11.What is the blog URL of the last student on the list?
http://follspantyhoses.blogspot.com
12.How many pages on the site refer to grammar?
There is 24 pages.
13.How many items are listed on the student contract?
There is 10 items.
14.What are the summative writing assignements?
You have to respond to a story, play or movie viewed in class
15.How many items are there in the ''writing correction code''?
There is 25 items.

21/01/09

I created a blog...UH!