Vloggin'

I accidentally clicked the stop button in the middle of my video... so it's in two halves. I didn't know how else to do it, I was already 12 minutes in and didn't want to start over.

Here's the first half:  http://youtu.be/cDK0_HPUxqU

And here's the second:  http://youtu.be/L0AlrN_a_lo

I'm really sorry

So I realize I've been lacking in the blog area lately, and my video blog is late, BUT I promise I'll be better after the AP Calc exam tomorrow morning. It's just been quite a heavy beginning-of-week. I promise to have the most marvelously in-depth video blog that you have ever seen posted by tomorrow night. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. I even wrote a poem to express the integrity with which I am making this promise. Okay bye see you tomorrow at this time with my vlog!

In Response to Jae

In Jae's blogpost, here, he discusses the two main characters in the book he's reading. He begins by talking about the narrator, which made me think about the narrator in the book I'm reading. The narrator of Sula appears to be omniscient and unnamed. He or she knows all of the character's thoughts and actions, as well as stories that some characters are not aware of. This is helpful to the reader because it is possible to know many background stories and not be confused why one character is this way or another. We are able to know the characters thoughts and therefore motives for their actions. In this way, it is nice. It is also slightly boring. I like wondering what other characters are thinking, and the comfort that a reader tends to build with a character-narrator.
Although the omniscient narrator supposedly gives the reader more insight to everything and everyone, being all-knowing and all-seeing as he or she supposedly is, I feel more disconnected from the story this way. Jae was able to easily classify and describe the two main characters in the book he was reading, yet I would have a hard time doing that with mine. The two main characters in Sula are also two young girls, yet neither of them ever narrates and thus their interactions are merely commentated upon by the narrator. I am quite far along in the novel, yet I find it hard to clearly separate the two girls. Everything they do, they are together. Even after they effectively kill Chicken Little, they remain close as ever. Either I'm totally missing it, or this is a technique used by Morrison to show how they two girls really become one person. They are so compatible that they synchronize. They think and act as one.

In Response to God

So I read Kaylynn's blog here and found it very interesting. We are not reading the same book, so I found it a little hard to relate directly. Yet in her post she discusses God and God's relationship with the character in the book that she is reading, The Bluest Eye. The book I am reading, Sula, does not make any explicit mention of God at all. In fact, it is full of mothers having casual sex with strangers, creepy men leering at young girls, young girls killing even younger children, and mothers burning their children to death. Pretty un-Godlike if you ask me. Maybe God comes into play later and I haven't gotten to that part yet. But if not, this just goes to show Morrison's diversity and the differences in themes throughout her novels. I may have to correct myself later though, so stay tuned.

Nel and Sula

In relation to my previous post, the introduction of Sula to the story is another event that sets Nel apart from her mother. Nel had never played with Sula because Helene "said that Sula's mother was sooty," yet after their trip to New Orleans, Nel gathers the courage to strike up a friendship with the other girl (29). Sooty means blackened or covered in soot, which I doubt is the literal meaning of the word in Helene's context, but it is possible that she is referring to the color of Sula's mothers skin. She may be calling her sooty as in very black, which in Helene's opinion may mean less like white people or uncivilized. Either way, Helene see's Sula's house as inferior. Yet Nel greatly prefers the "wooly house" where many people came by and Sula's mother was never oppressive or scolding like Nel's mother. Sula and her family represent a freedom for Nel, a break from her own home and family. Once Nel and Sula become friends, little mention is made of Nel's home. The story is then focused on Sula's home and her friendship with Nel. Nel and Sula remain closest friends even after the accidental murder of Chicken Little. Sula was the one who let him go, but anyways Nel feels guilty. They become like one person. Nel becomes a part of this person and leaves her oppressive mother behind.

Train Race

In the scene where Nel is on her way to New Orleans with her mother, there is an incident in the train where the conductor is very racist towards Helene. Helene is very polite in her response, almost apologetic, "we made a mistake, sir. You see, there wasn't no sign. We just got in the wrong car, that's all. Sir" (21). Then, as the rude conductor passes by, "she smiled. Like a street pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the butcher shop he has been kicked away from only moments before, Helene smiled. Smiled dazzlingly and coquettishly at the salmon-colored face of the conductor" (21).
Nel watched the scene and the bystanders' reactions with interest. She notes that "the two black soldiers, who had previously been watching the scene with what appeared to be indifference, now looked stricken" and they physically react with disgust (21). Nel does not understand why her mother had smiled and feels "both pleased and ashamed to sense that these men... were bubbling with a hatred for her mother that had not been there in the beginning but had been born with the dazzling smile" (21).
This shows that Nel does not agree with her mother's meek acceptance of racist behavior. It sets Nel apart from her mother for the first time in the story, as always before Nel has been a footnote in her mother's actions. Here, Nel is in agreement with the other black people on the train. The two black soldiers represent the rest of the black community in that they are angered by acceptance of racism and by a black person accepting inferiority to a white person. This will grow to be a theme in the novel as I believe Morrison's purpose is to show her disagreement with such racism on the part of white people, and such meek acceptance on the part of blacks.  

Danglers

As I read through the comments on and correction of various articles, I could only feel pity for the people that actually comb through those articles so finely to find such minuscule errors. I mean I guess if it's their thing it's cool that they get paid to do it. But really, thinking of all the time they must spend with grammar and mechanical rules makes me want to cry a little. The part that depresses me most is that most people will never notice the errors they point out, nor be bothered to read this section of the NYTimes to enlighten themselves.

I don't even know what a modifier is.

I feel like these kinds of things are just useless. I can still be a very literate human being and successful writer without knowing what a modifier is, much less how to keep it from dangling. But such is life that sometimes we must learn things that do not interest us, and so I begin my investigation of the dangling modifier.

So basically, if a modifier is not directly followed by something that is being described, the modifier is dangling. Apparently dangling modifiers make it seem that some participles are not referring to what they seem to be referring to. I don't really know. I don't even know what a participle is. I understand the authors point in some ways, because in some sentences it is obvious that revision is needed. But why do they have to name it?

Oh, these helped.