A CRITICISM ON THE MOVIE TROY

War is the subject on the audiences’ view in the movie  that the audience are confused in the story, they fail to realize the beauty of ancient Greek civilization – what it announced and what it explained, they do not recognize the mythical culture the Greeks owned. The wealth, power, values and beliefs the Greeks held were sufficed to show to the whole world that they, as well as their culture, are of excellence, which was streamed with intellects and prepared to compete among great nations in their time.

      I, like most people do, have known Greece about heir gods and goddesses (myths). The Greeks’ rituals, practices and beliefs to their gods, as a whole, is extensive and vigorous that it seem to have pillars like it was unbreakable. The belief have three corners in its world – hell, heaven and earth, if a Greek wishes that his enemy would die, he would pray to the god of hell (Hades) that he would take the life of this person he wishes to meet hell, and, if  a Greek wishes this person to ascend to heave, he would pray to the god of heaven (Zeus) that he will welcome the goodly person. As it is of demand, Greek civilization is being presented and portrayed in a perfect manner in the movie.

      I admire how good Americans are in presenting such twisted epic. Homer’s presentation in Illiad is a complicated plot that such director and writer would analyze Homer’s aim to humanity and what his epic contributed and implied. I understand the abstractness of the movie with the order of the epic remained chronological and the aim of the director or writer is being expressed and most importantly, the teachings Homer wanted to impart and brought up to humanity is visible.

      Homer’s intention to humanity is to open our views with the manifolds of the life, that we should be aided with love and the righteous wins over evil. He instill to us that power is given, and should be used evenly, and also not and should likewise be given significance to, that strength is within and it should not be abused, that wisdom reproduces new forms of ideas and conquers a nation, and that mind rules over matter of emotions, it may be the other way around, but the one who uses it should be skillful enough, as Achilles in warfare. Homer portrays the life of the Greeks – their culture and adventures – through inculcating the world that life is enough for us to own and should be grateful that we are given that price gift, for others, who do not consider that life is sufficient, they should look on to themselves first, on how well they are doing.

        I appreciate the way the producer or writer arrange the setting. It is descriptive, in a sense that, it completes the illustration of Homer to ancient Greece, although it takes million to finish such props, design and place of settlement, the director or producer is capable of reaching a high-quality movie which is open to judgments. It is expressive, that it answers, the problem of the viewers of what ancient Greece and its people eventually look like and how they move about or respond to people among greater nations. The analyses that Greece, with its beliefs, was, far more better among towering nations, and the philosophy that Greece is the training ground for men who wanted to seek more or discover.

       I notice the making love of Helen and Prince Paris in the movie and I believe that the director or producer choose the person who would fit to play the role Helen (Diane Kruger) because her potentiality to be like one shows through her extraordinary beauty, her full blossom, her satin-like skin, her beautifully curved features and her being graceful, they prove it by way of this love scene – the nudity of Diane Kruger. I think Brad Pitt, with his title as the most sexiest man in the world in year 2003, fits most in his role and play it well, since Achilles is being described by Homer as handsome, one with great stature and physical outlook, skilled in manner and in ways, and wise which is of wide extent, and which he uses for and according to his will and what he stand for.

       Not all scenes in the movie are desirable, there are those which I consider unpleasant. I reject the scene which presents the dancing of the female courtesans at the house of Alexandros for the Dannans are having a feast by whom he kissed on of them. I understand that man wants to fill their emptiness. But, I neglect the idea of the director or producer to show the pessimistic side of the Greek culture, since, for sociological reason, the society considers prostitution as a societal case that could not evaporate, it may be judged at, but, it is an inevitable thing, they are transparent, that they give an informal presentation which explains to their lack of respect towards the Greek and their culture, and they are vulgar, that they insulted the amusement of the Greeks and they deserve a condemnation themselves.

Rebecca Rodriguez

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READINGS OF HORACE IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake combined the vocation of engraver, painter, and poet. He produced and published his other works himself, except those which remained in manuscript at his death, by using his own unique method of engraving both illustration and text on copper plates and coloring the printed volumes by hand. He reveals the current events existing in the society whether optimistic or pessimistic and which he is not apprehensive to. He proclaimed the primacy of imagination and freedom over reason and law. A powerful imagination is evident in every aspect of Blake’s work. A deeply mystical man, claimed he had visionary experiences that prompted him to invent his own belief system in which the creator of the universe, whom he named Urizen, wrought vengeance on mankind through Jesus, renamed the Prince of darkness as Orc. As a poet, Blake performs as a light to men who are unaware though some of his works basis is of imagination, he turned poetry as a medium to shed awareness of those who did not see and who do not want to see.

       Realistic views are found in the works of Blake since in his travel he include in his poetry what he saw by which he appreciated or criticized, what he perceived, and what he sought by which he accepted and withdraw. One of the travels he had was in Africa, where it convinced him to look always through the eyes which the South had given him and which bewilderment and fear made him mute and afraid. But after he had left the South, luck gave him other eyes, new eyes with which to look at the meaning of what he had lived through. The actuality of his experience in Africa was included in his poem, ‘The Little Black Boy’: 

My mother bore in the southern wild

And these black bodies in this sun burnt face

     The poem is a revelation on the apartheid existing in the society of Africa in the earlier periods. He realized that he should express what he understood and he did it in composing his poems. As expressed in his poem, ‘The Little Black Boy’, he observed the unfair treatment since according to the words written in the Bible God made men equal among each other that should be acknowledge by men themselves. Books that shed light to him in creating his poems are: George Moore’s ‘Confession of A Young Man’, which described how and English youth resisted the restrictions of a Victorian environment, Dostoevsky’s ‘The House of the Dead’, which depicted the lives of exiled prisoners in Siberia, how they lived in crowded barracks and vented their hostility upon one another, James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, which depicted the double revolt of an Irish youth against the oppressive religious life of Ireland, an Ireland which England was seeking to strangle, and D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers’, which dealt with the experiences of a son of an English coal mining family, a son who sought to escape the demands of a bleak environment. He believed that books were the windows through which he looked at the world and for him reading was a kind of remembering. His poem serves as instrument for the awareness of mankind, as man reads and understands it.

           Horace instill that literature should instruct by the presentation of something beautiful and useful. Poetry has been provided with words that will freely follow and the foundation and source of literary excellence which is known as wisdom. Poets either benefit or delight us, or, at one and the same time, to speak words that are both pleasing and useful for our lives.

          William Blake created the poem as entertainment for children to let them know of their innocence and to each people as an awakening about people who are repressed by a certain majority that exists in some parts of the world. He represented the poem as delightful for children are the subject matter of the poem, and they are marked as the gleefully oriented citizens for they cannot realize the truth in its nature, yet it instruct about equalities that should be adopted by man.

          Blake laments for the blacks in the South and shed grateful thoughts for answered prayer to the overcoming of racial discrimination by enclosing it in his unequally paired verses. Blake give life to his poem as it would function as it is to perform where it stood and serve useful to the substance as the muse granted the lyre, the task reporting about gods, the children of the gods, the victorious boxer, and the horse who was first in the race, as well as to record youthful anguish and wine’s liberating influence. He acknowledges himself as a poet who have the ability and knowledge to preserve the variations and shades of literal works and embracing it with art to be recognized and fully appreciated by men.

          Nature first forms man within so as to respond to every kind of fortune. She delights man or impels him to anger or knocks him to the ground and torments us with oppressive grief. Afterward she expresses the emotions of the spirit with language as their interpreter. Nature talks to Blake and taught him the right path to the solution with what he saw. She awakened him with some of her developments by which she creates it herself, made him arouse his anger and expresses her emotions to him about his function who will overcome the developments.

           He distinct himself from other poets by revealing the truth, being direct, and being a guardian in his poems as the difference whether a god is speaking or a hero, a mature old man or someone passionate and still in the full flower of youth, a powerful matron or a diligent nurse, an itinerant merchant  or the cultivator of a prosperous field, a Colchian or an Assyrian, one raised in Thebes or in Argos.

        He viewed the customs in the South and empathize on the deprived. He does not take substance on the outcome but take substance from the foundation so that he would excel himself and teach as a poet who does not aim to extract smoke from the flaming light but rather light from the smoke, so that he might describe spectacular marvels,  Antiphates and the Scylla and Charybdis along with the Cyclops.

        His lines are not sociably but obligingly and tolerantly. It is not for mere presentation of art to excite social classes but it obligated and tolerated its function.

         He teach what nurtures and forms himself through his own ideas from a source based on what he saw and follows what his function and duty are, what is prosper and what is not and what direction poetic excellence leads and avoiding directions which failure beckons.

        Poets teach lessons their emotions wants to, let them brief so that receptive spirits will quickly perceive and faithfully retain what the poet have said. Everything superfluous seeps out of the well-stocked mind. In order to create pleasure, poetic fictions should approximate reality that anything it wishes must be believed nor should it extract a living child. Poet gets every vote who combines the useful with the pleasant, and who, at the same time he pleases the reader, also instructs him.

        William Blake was able to do his function that is to delight and instruct in his poems that includes the good he had given to man and achieve excellence by the teachings he taught in his performance.

Rebecca Rodriguez

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ANALYSIS TO THE POEM TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Gentian is a plant herb in which its characteristics are described in the stanzas of the poem. It blossoms and grow , can stood anywhere, observes the running of time and season, and also dies. The poet did a comparison between human and a plant in whose qualities and capabilities are very much alike. Man grow and at the peak of his time his very essence would be seen , he is independent for he ventures on wild ideas and deep thoughts that would strengthen him and will be able to stand alone, as his time passes and he is becoming old he met experiences in accordance with the changes of time and season, and at the turn of his time , his hour came and he dies.

       The poem shows how nature can be a guidance to the conditions of man. The growth of the plant would serve as reflection to man showing what is the appropriate way to grow. It teaches even on what is good and not.

       Bryant was a romantic poet who offered himself to nature. The poem shows the poet’s connection with nature, how nature affected man, and what nature really is as part to mankind.

Rebecca Rodriguez

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AN ANALYSIS TO AFRICAN SHORT STORIES

           The three short stories selected are two Hausa Tales and from Samuel Asare Konadu. The two stories were from a large collection of tales, proverbs and other African traditional material. It is the largest repository of African folklore in any language. The collection was a compilation of two British administrators in Africa, Frank Edgar and John Alder Burdon. The name Hausa was taken from a large ethnic group in Northern Nigeria who are called Hausa people. They are trading and farming people whose language is used as the lingua franca in Nigeria and in many neighboring countries.

       The story of Konadu was a fragment of the novel A Woman in Her Prime in which the heroine was Pokuwaa. It dealt with the African belief in the supernatural and based with the traditional life of African people.

       The two tales ‘The Man with an Ugly Wife’ and ‘The Severed Head’ talk on ambitions from less fortunate people , enchantments and test on truths.

       The story ‘Fetish Child’ by Konadu talks of a woman, Pokuwaa, who wanted to bear a child and was worried that in her mature age not a single child was blessed to her. She sent rituals to the god Tano and asked him to give her a fetish child. Although her rituals, a black hen and eggs, got lost, it was regained when she found it in the woods.

       A short paragraph would give a summary of the three short stories:

       The Fetish Child. It was Friday and the day of sacrifice for the great god Tano. Pokuwaa prepared herself for it was her turn in consultation and sacrifice which will be held at the house of Tano. She asked for her heed of a child. Having black hen and eggs as offering, she rubbed her limbs with shea cream and sprayed herself with smooth white clay powder. This was for purification which was essential for this day of sacrifice. When Pokuwaa reached to the spot where the hen had been tied , she found out that the hen was gone. She searched for it in the village Brenhoma then she come across with children playing and one of them saw the hen and who had been throwing stones at the hen. The boy led her to the woods and in the bushes Pokuwaa found the hen.

       The Man with the ugly Wife. There was once a man who married to an ugly wife. They were so poor and one day the man built a hut for him to make the life of a hermit for forty days and nights. He shut himself up in the hut and spent all his days and nights in prayer and fasting. On the last night of his vigil, he had a dream and he learnt that he could pray for three things and that whatever he prayed for would be granted to him. The next morning, he let himself out and told everything to his wife. Upon hearing, the wife decided to change herself into a beautiful woman. At nightfall, the husband did what his wife requested, in the morning the wife become the most beautiful and no other woman in town could match her. When the chief heard the news, he ordered to bring in the palace the beautiful woman. The husband, discovering that his wife had been captured, prayed that his wife will turn into a monkey. As the chief prepared for his bride, he discovered that she turned into a monkey. The chief returned her to the husband’s house. The husband prayed that his wife shall return into her normal appearance for her recovery. His prayer was answered and she turned into the same ugly woman. The man learnt his lesson with that incident.

       The Severed Head. There was once a traveler who was making his way through the bush when he came upon a severed head standing on a tree stump beside the path. He was about to come to it when the head said: ‘Whatever you do, learn to keep your mouth shut’. The traveler stopped in surprise and the head repeated what he said. The traveler ran away in terror and when he reached the next town he went to the palace and was admitted to the audience chamber where the Chief was sitting on his throne wherein he reported what he saw. The chief wanted to know if the report was not false and decided to test the truth of his story in which he gave a statement that if the story proves to be true he will be rewarded but if it proves to be false he shall pay for the falsehood of his own head. Executioner and some of the chief’s henchmen were sent to go out with the traveler and found the head. When they reached the tree stump they found that the severed head was still there and they waited for it to speak. Until the last wait there was nothing to hear , the executioner drew his sword and cut off the head of the traveler. As the head of the traveler rolled out, the head on the stump spoke: ‘I told him before to keep his mouth shut.’

       Cultural Practices that can be found in the short stories The Man with an ugly Wife and The Severed Head: less in clothes and no food on people who are poor, building a hut and clay as entrance or lock, doing a solitude life or practicing hermit, using of tool as mattock, praying and fasting, putting of chief as ruler of the village, seizing by force on women to be presented to the chief and made her a bride (as practiced by the chief), living in palace by the chief, audience chamber as court of the chief, belief in God as giver of life, executioner, henchmen and courtiers as members of the court, giving of test on truth as proof whether the reported news was true, and practicing of execution on the evidence that the reported news was false.

       In the story, Fetish Child, practices such as: offering sacrifice for the great god Tano on Friday, water and other provision were placed in the kitchen, bamboo enclosure as bathroom, a house set for the god wherein people would ask consultation and offer sacrifice, use of drums and offering of yams, sheep, goats, eggs, and cowries for the sacrificial gathering, black hen and eggs as offering for those women who ask for a fetish child , purifications-such as- rubbing of shea cream in the limbs and spraying of smooth white clay powder in the entire body as an essence for the sacrificial day, festive of Fofie on Friday and which come every six weeks, having bushy hair and wearing cowries and shells tied in it by the children in Brenhoma village, pampering of Fetish children for they believed that if they were beaten , the gods would take them away, a shrine and oracles for Tano (god) , belief that the black hen and eggs to be offered to the spirits would bring back madwowa, belief that if Pokuwaa cannot do the sacrifice her fate as a braven woman would be made certain, Pokuwaa’s belief that her red fine blood that run in her due from the prickling of the tiny thorn stems gave a sign that she was young enough to have a child, and Pokuwaa’s making a sense of triumph made her believe that the black snake which was a predator to the black hen was a bad spirit, or a man turned into a snake.

       The cultural strains enumerated concluded that Africans are pagans, that they have strong faith to their gods, and that they believe that their gods were giving them guidance and good life from every sacrifice they offered. The stories showed that every citizen in an African Village were helping each other that they were bonded which resulted to a harmonious living.

       The Political aspect in the two tales presented that the head of the Village was the Chief. He was domineering and gave orders that even personal matters were from his command. Eventually, the chief was responsible for peace and order in the village like his order of execution to the traveler if the report he gave was a deceit.

       The three short stories reflected a situation wherein Africa was not yet colonized by the Caucasians and was free from the bondage of slavery. Africa is rich in culture and her paganism gave her a foundation for the course of living for the Africans.   

Rebecca Rodriguez

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A reaction paper to the article How is English for specific purposes different from English as a Second language, also known as general English? by Lorenzo Fiorito

The most important thing that a learner should learn English is through learning ESL. Learning ESL is the best tool a learner is familiarized in English and develop competency in English.

        ESP comes along as ESL emerges in the learning process of the learners. It had developed eventually as the learner needs specific learning of a certain field defining specific functions in English. The question is , how does ESL differ from ESP?

        In the long run, ESP is a suggestive strategical learning procedure which is concern on the context of specific functions and helps the learning process undergo easier approaches to the learner.

        On the one hand, ESL includes all four language skill in learning: listening, reading, speaking and writing that enables the learner develop analytical, competency and proficiency in learning. It adds the learner needs in improving grammatical structure to the fluency of the learner in using the English language.

       However, ESP is a needs analysis that determines which language skills should be use effectively and familiarize by the learners. For example, ESP chooses reading skills, it should be utilize in the process of learning in a certain specific field or it might promote to the understanding of specific functions enabling them to fulfill such specific fields.

      ESL thence appears to be a directive teaching to the learner, the so-called general English taught by the learners at the start of their learning or the learning taught from what are contents in the book. And yet, ESP teaches vocabulary and structures learned in a meaningful context which reinforces their learning and the learner to increase their motivation.    

Rebecca Rodriguez 

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