Romeo and Juliet and me

It is sort of hard for me to connect with the play Romeo and Juliet. One of the reasons is because the diction Shakespeare uses is so abnormal. When characters talk like that, it’s hard to relate to, even if the character is totally relatable. Also, there is so much drama in the play that even if characters do relatable things, they do it in such a way that it seems unreasonable, no matter what the context. But I do feel like the relationship between the children and their parents are similar to my life. The parents love the kids and want what is best for them, but still keep their distance and let them live their own lives to an extent. However, I sort of have a feeling that this may change, but as of act one I can relate to it.

It has been really nice to read at home, then in class. The wording of the play is difficult enough that it’s helpful to hear it read. Reading it aloud also makes it easier to pick up on jokes and puns. Overall, it is a pretty hard to get the full meaning out of the book, but the smaller reading assignments and the in class reading really help my comprehension.

wrapping up late

The message in great expectations was pretty clear. Whatever happens, whether you move or become rich, you need to keep your humanity. If you abandon your family, or get to a point where you become ashamed of them, you’re doing something wrong. Wealth doesn’t matter if you get it from dishonest means or have to hurt people to get it, and that’s also building up some seriously bad karma. If you lose family, friends, or self esteem getting money, you’re just as poor as before.

Did not meet Expectations

I have a new least favorite book! It gets points for tedium, dullness and disappointment. Other books have been ruined by spoiled endings or over analyzing, but not this one. Great Expectations ruins its self by its self.

I guess it really started when pip left for London and was a jerk to Biddy. Those kind of made me lose respect for him as a character, and he really never recovered form that in my eyes. There’s also the issue where the story is really boring. Looking back on it, I think of a jelly donut: the batter is crusty and hard to get through and at the same time oddly substance less, but you suffer through it to get to the jelly. Finally you get through, just to find the jelly is grape, and from the eighteen hundreds. Then you get ill from two hundred year old jelly. It is a very sad experience altogether.

The characters besides Pip were tolerable, but I didn’t really sympathize with any of them. Also, the settings seem sort of boring and reused. But the mysteries, they were another matter. First of all, sophomores love to act smart, and uncalled for spoilers are apparently a great way to show off your intelligence. The second thing is, that if there is one thing I hate, it’s a book that spends four hundred pages setting up mysteries, and then solves them all unsatisfactorily in the last fifty pages, it really sucks. It’s also ridiculous because it seemed that like two hundred of those pages were unnecessary padding. By the end of the book I was just sort of skimming the book every night before I went to bed, then reviewing the chapters on spark notes. I finished on time, but I may not have gotten absolutely everything out of the very end of the book.