Making Connections (Summative Jornal)

Last Friday our lit circle spent way too long discussing a weak connection between our book, "Lord of the Flies", and the television series "Lost". We've explored that before, but only this time we realized how shallow our comparison would be due to the fact that none of us actually watched more than a few random episodes of the show, hence we could never be thorough enough when trying to explain specific similarities. Never the less we commented at least about the presence of the beast in both the book and the series. While in the book you end up with the conclusion that the beast was pure fear and the evil inside the children's hearts, which was there already just waiting for the stress of the unknown and the despair to trigger it as they start to notice that they lost everything that represented safety for them: "Grown-ups know things (...) They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be all right-" p. 101; in the series "lost" the approach is much more supernatural and "real" (to the characters), the beast is not a constant doubt, it is a fact. You can see it in the form of a thick black smoke that somehow is able to kill people, and as they say in 'Lord of the Flies' grown-ups tend to be more reasonable and would not be so easily scared without any evidence that their fears are justified, so I guess it was important to have this little change to make what is hunting them concrete enough so they can feel afraid of it. In a smaller note, both stories start with a plane crash with several survivors into an island, which is highly unlikely, since this kind of accident is one of most lethal and having one single person walking out intact would be already too lucky. I could also compare this sense of longing for the adults as a form of protection and even a reassuring presence just for the fact you know they are wiser and have more experience with the book I read a couple of days ago: "Coraline". In this last book Coraline is bored with her life and she is tired of her busy parents never having time for her, even though they work at home. She finds a whole new world behind a door in her own house, where 'another mother' awaits for her. This world is much more interesting and all adults seem to give Coraline their undivided attention all the time, there's only a little unsettling detail, behind that door people have big black buttons instead of eyes. Soon Coraline discovers that she made a terrible mistake not noticing earlier that everything was just too good to be true. Both books are fictional, but Coraline tends to go further in the 'fantastic fiction', while Lord of the Flies is pretty much 'something more likely to happen' in a way because at least it's not in a parallel world. My point with all of this is that although in the specific situation the kids find themselves when stranded in the island, they seem to believe that adult world is safer, that's not always the truth. There are as many degenerated 'Jacks' that are grown-ups as there are younger ones. So when Piggy constantly talks about his "auntie" which is suppose to be the adult opinion about something, it can be just as flawed as any other opinion, of course most of the times it represents the sensible side of adulthood instead of the dark side, since the kids are pretty deep in darkness themselves: "My auntie told me not to run (...) on account of my asthma.". Unfortunately in the end Piggy's sensible voice was forever silenced by a boulder rolled by Roger on purpose, but for the other kids salvation did come in the form of an adult, a naval officer, to be more specific: "We'll take you off. How many of you are there?".Finally, Coraline wasn't so lucky, with her real parents locked away and betrayed by all adults in the 'other world' she could only rely on her own bravery and intelligence to escape, but that's a whole different story, so my comparison ends here.

Explaining Poem: The Sound of the Conch

I'll start from the most obvious (and therefore boring) and try to go deeper. The image in the end, is basically the cover of the book, which shows the head of a pig in a stick. I chose this particular image because it represents the violence and darkness that I wanted my poem to show, and also because after all the pig's head IS the "Lord of the Flies". The title refers to the shell used in the book by Ralph to summon the other kids for meetings, and thus it represents society and order, as oppose to the primitive state that some kids embraced later on, it is as I said in the poem "The sound of reason". To set the mood of the book I started my poem with the kids getting lost in the island, specifically at night (navy-blue sky), because it's usually during that period that the book goes deeper in the darkness of the human soul. I included the "scar" that the plane crash creates in the forest to show that the island was never an evil place on its own, it needed the darkness inside each individual to turn into an ugly and violent place. "Kill all innocence" refers to Simon's death, because from that moment on things went downhill and you couldn't predict what the kids would do next. The shorter verses that I repeated several times with small adaptations were meant to give some pace to the poem, like the tribal songs that Jack always sings, and they evolved following the plot of the book, showing at the end a Symbol to Piggy's death, the last one before they are rescued. I also included the "masks" that Jack and his choir use to cover their faces as they do the most terrible things shamelessly and the "stick sharpened at both ends" that impales the pig's head and later on is used to show that Jack intends to give Ralph the same treatment. All in all I think I did a good job getting the mood of the book into something much shorter, I'm very proud of how I could really feel in my poem the darkness, the doubt and the violence when people turn against each other with no better reason than envy and pride.

Making Connections

Last Friday our lit circle spent way too long discussing a weak connection between our book, "Lord of the Flies", and the television series "Lost". We've explored that before, but only this time we realized how shallow our comparison would be due to the fact that none of us actually watched more than a few random episodes of the show, hence we could never be thorough enough when trying to explain specific similarities. Never the less we commented at least about the presence of the beast in both the book and the series. While in the book you end up with the conclusion that the beast was pure fear and the evil inside the children's hearts, which was there already just waiting for the stress of the unknown and the despair to trigger it as they start to notice that they lost everything that represented safety for them: "Grown-ups know things (...) They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be all right-" p. 101; in the series "lost" the approach is much more supernatural and "real" (to the characters), the beast is not a constant doubt, it is a fact. You can see it in the form of a thick black smoke that somehow is able to kill people, and as they say in 'Lord of the Flies' grown-ups tend to be more reasonable and would not be so easily scared without any evidence that their fears are justified, so I guess it was important to have this little change to make what is hunting them concrete enough so they can feel afraid of it. In a smaller note, both stories start with a plane crash with several survivors into an island, which is highly unlikely, since this kind of accident is one of most lethal and having one single person walking out intact would be already too lucky. In conclusion I think that now that most of the group has finished the whole book we can finally go to the most interesting connections that can be found near the end, and we'll try to do that in the next opportunity we have to share our thoughts in class.

The Mind Behind The Mind Map

In order to start my mind map I had to first brain storm in a separate piece of paper, and write down all the words I could relate to darkness. In my second step I started to look for words that had stronger connections than the others, and for terms that were more general and essential to make direct paths between them and my main topic: Darkness. In the end I decided that my key words would be enclosed in boxes, and that for the connections I would use five different types of arrows, to represent each layer as I went deeper and deeper into the concept, they were: 1) Gray Blurred Arrow; 2) Blue Blurred Arrow; 3) Black Wavy Arrow; 4) Dashed Arrow; 5) Blue Open Arrow. Also my quotes from the book were usually used as examples for a final layer inside a determined part of the map.

Response

You have good insight about the biguns and the litttlusns and the literal level and the mental level. I am glad that you were enjoyuing your group. Now in your writing can you also bring in quotes to back up what you are saying to support your points and you also want to try adn make connections to help develop and add insight. You are on teh right path.

Mind-maping Lord of the Flies (Summative Choice)

On the last class of this past week we had a lesson based on the concept of creating mind maps: a visual aid to organize your idea. The class was planned in a way that all the groups had the chance to contribute with what they knew about the theme. One of the groups went a little further and their members were asked to complete the gaps that were left, including one example of a well done mind map by Jenessa, who showed us how the use of different colors and shapes can go a long way on getting your attention to what's important and keep you focused on the main idea. After our usual 15 minutes for silent reading the discussion in our 'Lit Circle' tried to follow the organization of a mind map: we decided that the topics were Darkness & Evil and kept going deeper in them and how they relate to the beast on the island of Lord of the Flies. We ended up deciding that the night period had a lot to do with the kids fears, as in the dark it's hard to tell what is real and what is imagination. We also came up with the conclusion that although the "littluns" started the stories about the beast, the "biguns" had fears of their own, the main difference is that out of pride and shame they kept it to themselves ("But that's littlun's talk. We'll get that straight. So the last part, the bit we can all talk about, is kind of deciding on the fear." - P. 88), while the "littluns" weren't old enough to understand the deceiving game that was going on in the fight for power and therefore could speak sincerely of what bothered them: "He wants to know what you're going to do about the snake-thing" - P. 34. In our quest to understand how the beast might actually be the darkness in all of us ("You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?" said by the Lord of the Flies on p. 158) , we started having fun with our discussion, but we were interrupted and told that we were "having too much fun" with our assignment and that kind of killed the whole moment, I hope that won't happen in the future, because I believe that our conversation was much richer when every member of the group was actually having a good time and willing to give their opinions and speak without being recriminated. If our discussions can ever go back to being as lively as they were seconds before this unfortunate event I think we will all get new ideas to reflect on and add to our own opinions of the book so far. Furthermore we can already see connections between this book and the television series 'Lost', where a group of people also survived a plane crash in a desert island, where soon enough the fear of an unknown beast and the rivalry between two leaders (one of which is called Jack in the series) starts to be motive for aggression and division inside the group. Although this two creations are material for interesting comparisons, the most important comparison is between the book and the darkness in ourselves. Because who among us can answer without a doubt that we would never hurt someone or do immoral things if our own lives or the ones that we love were at stake? None; at least not without being big fat hypocrites.

response

You have come to truly understand teh difference of denotation adn connotation. Now how do you think this is going to help you understand your text as you work through your novel. Have you encountered blood in you novel so far? what for m was it in? try and bring in more examples to go deeper into the layers of the novel as you look into the layers of the word and why the author chose to use that word.

Also as you write your response tell me about you and your group and yoru participation in it. I am looking to see how involved you are and your growth as well. Are you contributing to the discussion, how so etc. Overall a good explanation of your coming to terms aboout the terms.