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Water for Elephants

I need to figure out exactly what it is that made me enjoy this book so much. Is it that it enlightens you on somewhat a different world? It has a good mix of struggle, pain, love, and acceptance. It makes you root for Jacob and feel for him and get upset and worried for him as well. Sometimes I would even get mad at him for making a stupid decision. Maybe it is that these characters are relatable, none of them are perfect, they all have flaws which makes them relatable. The writing feels like he’s talking to you personally, I think this book might be so good because of how you can relate and feel for everyone because none of them are perfect.

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Water for Elephants

I loved this book so much!! When I got to the end I couldn’t put it down, which says something because I was on spring break at a house on the ocean with paddle boards, kayaks, and a pool. But when asked in class I couldn’t figure out what it was that made me love this book so much. Yes it is somewhat the plot but obviously it has to do with the writing as well. Yet when asked I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was. So I will ponder this for a bit and see if I can figure it out!

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Water for Elephants

In the book they talk about Ringling a lot and how amazing Ringling is. Yet at the end of the book when he actually joins the Ringling circus Jacob doesn’t tell us much about it. It left me wondering how much was different in their circus? Is it really that much better? After reading this book I really want to go see a real circus, but I feel I would be disappointed because as stated in the book circuses have changed over time. The traveling on train cars was a big deal which now no longer happens.

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Went to the OU library today to try and find some critical essays on our books. I didn’t have much luck probably because I have a newer book but others like @emilyplumer found an entire book of criticism! It was a good experience even though I couldn’t get much out of it this time, but now I know what to do and ask if I need help finding sources for an essay or project. I also saw Keisha(!!) who was super nice and let people check out books under her name.

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Water for Elephants

This book shows what it’s like behind circuses. Circuses always seem to be like magical places and this book then takes some of that magic away by showing some of the ugly behind what makes a circus run. The book talks about how there was a hippo that died that they kept showing to patrons anyways. Even with showing the ugly behind circuses the book still makes me want to go see one asap. I think this is because Gruen still leaves some of the magic. All of the acts with Marlena are still written with a magical feel to it. So that even with all the bad that happens in these places there is still some nice and magical moments.

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Water for Elephants

While reading this book it somewhat goes back and forth in time from chapter to chapter. It will have a couple chapters of the main story and then switch to when he is an old man. It always starts with him waking back up and now he’s old again and usually was talking about what we just read as if in his dream. It reminds me of other books where we question their credibility. I this all just a dream or is it real? If it’s real then it seems to be being told from much much later in life so how much has his mind changed from when it actually happened?

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Rebel Without a Cause Observations

So tonight Annie, Rachel Hartrick and I watched Rebel. It was interesting to say the least. Here are our takeaways: ~ It all seemed to happen all in 24 hours. Heck of a first day of school. ~ Red clothing = Distress or trouble. Jim’s jacket, Plato’s Sock, and Judy’s clothing in the beginning. ~ Value of acceptance. Particularly on family. All of them wanted a family member’s attention. Teenagers specifically want to be accepted. That’s why they all found each other. ~ They even created their own family in the end. ~ All families involved were pretty wealthy. ~ Material possession doesn’t equate to love. ~ Primary Audience = Teenagers Secondary audience = Families in general We all contributed to this list and were generally confused by the movie.

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Transcending Genre

Going into seeing Hacksaw Ridge I knew it was a war movie. SPOILER ALERT!  This movie is a lot more than just a war movie.  It talks about the morality of war as well.  The main character refuses to touch a gun.  It shows how war affected life and how you were treated if you didn’t fight.  It is not a typical like action war movie of good vs bad.  You can’t tell who is really good or bad.  The main character helps the Japanese as well as the Americans.  It shows how gruesome war is.  It in no way glorifies war like most movies do.  It shows the terrible affects of war throughout.  

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TapTronic did something never done before and they did it extremely well.  They took Irish Dance and made it something new by using it’s rhythms to create this dubstep music.  They kept the traditional way of irish dancing but added current music to it. Now many people are seen doing this on irish dance instagrams and blogs.  Ed Sheeran recently had a contest for Irish dancers to dance to one of his songs and use the hashtag step4sheeran to be part of his new music video.  TapTonic started this all with their current looking music video with the twist of the rhythms being done by traditional irish dancing.  Now many young ( and old ) dancers take the fun twist of dancing to current music instead of the traditional songs.  

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3. Accepting Death

“He can’t have Margaret anymore because she’s like the dog in the street that was taken away. I don’t know why she was taken away. My mother said she died in her pram and that must be like getting hit by a car because they take you away.” (38)

This is Frankie’s way of accepting death. From what I can tell the first time he saw death was when that dog died. Earlier he asked if his brother was going to die from biting his tongue because his blood was the same as the dog’s blood. Frankie tends to keep connecting death to his first experience with it which was this dead dog he saw that was hit by the car. He is so innocent because he is so young. He doesn’t fully understand death just that they are “taken away”. I love how Frank McCourt writes this in the book. It shows the innocence of children and how a child can try to accept such a large topic as death.

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Angela's Ashes: themes

I have noticed two repeating themes so far. There are lots of songs that are thrown in. His dad and everyone else seems to always be singing. McCourt puts the lyrics in for these songs and it makes me want to know the tune. That’s is one sad thing about books is when they mention music and you don’t know the tune for it. I am going to try and look up some of these to see if I can find the songs on YouTube. They are all mostly old Irish tunes from what I can tell so hopefully I can find a few. The bigger theme however is that Frank McCourt seems to have a need for things to belong to people. There is no sense of sharing in his viewpoint from what I see. He has a story told to him by his dad that is “his” and that no one else is aloud to hear. When he goes to his neighbors and the parents are singing to their daughter and his brother starts to sing he gets mad because he says that song is Maisie’s and not Malachy’s. He has a strong sense of things needing to belong to one person and that person only, no sharing. I had never thought of anything that way and it intrigues me if that is just a him thing or and Irish culture thing because his brother, Malachy, doesn’t seem to understand it like he does.

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Angela's Ashes: the Tone

I really enjoy reading this book. It started off confusing by jumping back and forth between his current life and his parents life’s but then it went to just his life. The tone of the book is so interesting and relatable. He gets the tone across that he is just a young boy yet he does so without dulling the story or making it seem childish. It is a mature story and it shows how children don’t understand everything around them. I love the differences you can see in the cultures. He lives in New York in an Irish family. They use different words than we do and he shows the accents of the different people such as the other Irish. his Jewish neighbors, and the Italian grocery store owners. He calls a stroller a pram and he calls his father dad while his Jewish neighbor Feddie calls his dad papa. The neighbors say Oy where the Irish will say Och.

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2. Accepting Death

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt “My mother screams again, Dead, Mrs.Leibowitz. Dead. Her head drops and she rocks back and forth. Middle of the night, Mrs. Leibowitz. In her pram. I should have been watching her. Seven weeks she had in this world and died in the middle of the night, alone, Mrs. Leibowitz, all alone in that pram.” (37-38)

McCourts little sister just died and this is one of his mothers reactions. This is the first time they say she is dead besides the very begging of the book. This is where I believe the mom accepted her child’s death. Before then the mom had not said she was dead nor has anyone else, I thought maybe she was just very sick. The mother goes through stages before she gets to the actually accepting of Margret’s death. The mom starts by refusing to let go of the baby, then she flips out on Frankie and says he doesn’t care that his sister is sick. Then she goes over by the window and just sits there and cries before Mrs. Leibowitz comes to help. Frankie says at one point that his mother isn’t acting like his mom and that he wants his dad there. The death of his sister freaked out his mom a ton. The father reacted by going to get a cigarette which was actually him saying he was going to get drunk. And the final reaction for accepting death in this part of the book was Mrs. Leibowitz who came to counsel the mom and say that it happens, babies die and it will be okay.

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1. Accepting Death

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt “Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister Margaret, dead and gone.” (11)

This is the last sentence of the first paragraph. McCourt starts his book off with saying his sister died but how he does it is so casual and like it isn’t a big deal. Usually mentioning a death especially of someone that close like a sister is built up in a story yet hw choses to start the book off like that. I think this is how he starts to create the tone for the book. Death is a big scary topic for most people but how he says it here is just that it happens and makes it feel like he has accepted it and moved on.

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When it comes to the topic of high art, most of us will readily agree that ballet is a high art. Where this argument usually ends, however, is on the question of Irish dance being a high art. Whereas some are convinced that Irish dance is a high art, others maintain that Irish dance is not a high art only and art. Irish dance should be considered a high art because of its many similarities between Irish dance and ballet in performances, dress attire, and techniques.

•performances - both have recitals, dance competitions, and professional performances.  Having dance competitions helps to show who is the best, competition helps the dance to move forward and improve with time. Having professional performances is also key to being a high art because people are willing to pay to see strangers dance.  This proves that people value the style of dance and that enough people value the dance for there to be professional Irish dancers and ballerinas.

•dress attire -both have specific hair styles, special dresses, and have to wear lots of makeup. Having specific dress attire is important in something being called high art because it differentiates you from everyone else and helps the audience to see that this is a high art before they even dance.

•technique -both have hard and soft shoes.  Ballet has pointe shoes whereas Irish dance simply calls them hard shoes.  Although I grant there are slight variations between these shoes and the technique, there are still plenty of similarities.  Ballet is known for going on pointe where Irish dance does the same but in both their soft and hard shoes.  Both dances do entrechats.

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This is high art. Everyone considers ballet to be high art and what is happening in this video is no different from ballet. They are on pointe like on ballet. These dancers are even holding their hands like how ballet tends to. Irish dance and ballet share many similar techniques which makes Irish dance high art just like ballet

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I believe that cake decorating should be high art. Yolanda Gampp, the women that made the cake, makes cakes in all sorts of different shapes. She can make cakes that look like brains (as seen above), pumpkins, pancakes, hats, and much more. I think this is high art because very people can do what she does. When people see these cakes many people wouldn't even realize it is a cake and once they find out then most are very impressed. It is a hard skill to accomplish and look very cool when done. I feel that the difficulty of this task and the visual pleasure these cakes give make her cakes high art.