wiki 5 20/20 - I found your post interesting. You are not typical of many of your peers... who love having something (ANYTHING) distract them from the message! Good analysis.

11/5

On monday the chapel leader, rather than giving a message, selected a group of students to act out a skit.  I  think this is a good way to incroperate students into the message and it also intrigues the audience.  But on monday the chapel leader said the students were going to do a skit and right after the skit was over chapel ended.  I thought it would have been much better to talk about the skit either before or after it was performed.  It was almost like the chapel speaker didn't even have to be there, the only people that had to be there were the students performing the skit.  The students did a great job performing the skit.  They spoke clearly and loudly and had good tone.  This is probably because they have participated in the school plays.  I'm not a big fan of doing skits during chapel or in any public speaking event.  I  want to hear from the speaker, i do not want to watch other people act out what the speaker is talking about.  I  feel like a young kid when a skit is performed for me. I am smart enough to understand what a person is saying, and i don't need it acted out for me.

 

 

wiki 4 - 20/20 - I agree with your closing observation... it IS like telling us that his chapel is going to be boring. The bird was a hoot. Would it have been a better idea to have acknowledge its presence or to just keep ignoring it? Once everyone knew it was there, I think acknowledging it would lessen its imnpact on the crowd.. but I am not sure.

10/28

Today Pasor Clausing gave chapel and he did a very good job dealing with a distracted audience.  During his sermon there was a bird flying around the gym and every one in the gym noticed.  Rather then listening to his sermon every one watched the bird fly around.  You could see entire sections off people all move their heads at the same time.  Any speaker would have noticed something like this and wondered what everyone was looking at but pastor clausing did not seem distracted.  He is probalby used to people not paying attention to him considering he does chapel for high schoolers every week. I bet if any other guest speaker would have been doing chapel they would have stoped and commented on it.  I felt bad because i was not paying as much attention to the sermon.  Getting to the issue of Pastor Clausing's message... i thought it was interesting how he said people don't care about the subject of the chapel.  I can see the point pastor clausing was making but i don't think it helped for chapel.  It is like the book says about telling a job, don't tell people it isn't funny before you tell it.  By pastor clausing telling us the subject was boring it made people not want to listen.

 

wiki 3 - 20/20 - good observations. You're done already for this week! GREAT!

10/19

Vicar Mizel gave the chapel message today.  He did a good job sounding excited about what he was talking about.  He told a good story about how he was on a boat and didn't want to go into the ocean.  I liked how he told a little about himself and connected his story with the scripture selection.  He made good eye contact with the two side bleachers but he ignored the middle section.  I remember Mr. Stuade saying the speakers ignoring the middle section but i never noticed it before.  The only parts of his speech that i didn't like was his voice and his hand motions.  His voice sounded rehearsed.  He sounded like he had practiced his sermon and had areas where he made his voice raise on purpose.  I like speakers like Mr. Kulhman who made his voice sound natural and conversational.  Vicar Mizel also moved his hands around a lot.  I had seen him speak before so i was used to it and it didn't bother me as much.  If i had not seen him preach before than i might have been more distracted.  It is things like arm motions and weird voices that distract me from the message.  I find myself paying more attention to the speakers quarks, and not focusing on the message.  

wiki 2 - 20/20 - good observations... I don't think the time spent smashing tiles was too bad a pause... it made us watch closely.

10/15

Mr. Kulhman gave the main message at chapel today and i think he did a really good job.  He did a very good job relating to the students.  He spoke loadly and clearly and paused at good times.  The confidence in his voice made me believe what he was saying.  His face and gestures showed that he was excited about what he was saying.  I  liked how he asked if anyone had any talents and after the was little response he gave one of his talents.  It was a good way to connect to the audience and make people less nervous.  The language he used was common language with few words people had to think about.  This made it easy for the audience to listen to him.  Mr. Kulhman seemed like he was just talking to a small class of a few kids even though he was speeking to the whole school.  The only part i didn't like in the chapel was when everyone put the talents in the bucket and smashed them.  It took to much time away from Mr. Khulman speaking and distracted from the meassage.  It was okay when Brian L. held up the cross because Mr. K was still speeking, but when they crushed the tile Mr. K stoped for about 15 seconds which made it ackward.

 

wiki 1 20/20 - great response work!

10/ 7

I  thought Monday's chapel speaker was very intersesting.  He spoke in a way where it was more like he was mumbling.  His voice did not have a lot of inlection and he spoke kind of softly.  This made him seem like he wasn't very confident in what he was saying.  The chapel speakers i like sound strong and confident.  It makes me feel like they are experts on what they are preaching about, and i feel that i should listen more to what they say.  Monday's speaker made me feel bad for him like he was old and confused.  I felt like i was listening to an old person telling stories where you listen just to be respectful. As far as gestures and eye contact he did a good job.  However i didn't notice that because i was distracted trying to listen to what he was saying.  I  didn't feel connected to the speaker like he was talking to me.  I felt like he zoned off and was speaking more to himself than to the audience.  I might have felt disconnected because of the age difference.  Maybe he would be better speaking to older crowds.  I  usually like the older speakers.  I  don't like the people who try to act like they "get" the high school kids and try to relate to us.  If i wanted to hear a high school kid i would talk to one, i would rather hear from a more experienced person who knows what they are talking about. 

 

 

Public Speaking

 

Ian Cole

Mrs. Staude

English Symposium

September 23, 2009

Works of Shirley Jackson Over Time

 Shirley Jackson is a famous short story writer, known for her bombshell horror endings.  Although

Jackson is know for these endings, she did not perfect this style of horror until years of writing normal short

stories.  This change in styles can be identified by looking at the dates of Jackson’s stories and the subjects

covered in each story.  Throughout her time as a writer, Jackson remains consistent in her choices of

characters , however the themes covered in her works change over time and can be attributed to her mental

condition.

 Some of Jackson’s stories, in order of date released, include; My Life With R.H. Macy, The Villager,

Colloquy, Trial by Combat, Charles, The Lottery,  Witch, and Got a Letter From Jimmy.  These stories were

all released over the course of about eight years.  In these eight years, it is easy to see the changes made by

Jackson concerning her choices of topics. Her earlier writings like My Life With R.H. Macy or The Villager

are very different than some of her later works like Charles or The Lottery.  After reading some of her works,

this change is so apparent that it would be easy to organize her works into chronological order without prior

knowledge of the release dates. 

 In her earliest of the stories listed,  My Life With R.H. Macy, Jackson writes about a young woman

who experiences the bureaucracy of employment in a large business.  This topic is most likely based off of

Jackson’s own work experience since the story was written only one year after Jackson graduated college

(Shirley Jackson Biography).  Another of Jackson’s stories is The Villager. It is about a young woman who

pretends to be someone who she has never met before.  Colloquy is about a woman who goes to a psychiatrist

because she believes that all the people she knows are crazy, when it is her who is really crazy.  Trial by

Combat is a story about a young woman who wants to confront her elderly neighbor who is stealing from her. 

The young woman makes the decision not to tell the neighbor that she knows about the thefts. These earlier

works are all about the psychological workings of women and the strange behavior they display.  This

portrayal of the minds of young women is likely due to the atmosphere of feminism in the mid 1900’s.

 Over  a number of years, Jackson’s subject choice and style develop into what she is best known for,

bombshell horror endings.  This can be seen in her most famous work; The Lottery.  In the Lottery, the reader

learns about a yearly tradition held by a village which selects one person a year.  It is not until the end of the

story that the reader learns that the person selected is stoned to death. Charles is about a mother who finds out

that the stories about her son’s misbehaving classmate are actually about her son.  In Witch, a young boy on

train meets an older man who describes to the boy how he murdered his sister and destroyed her body.  In her

story  Got a Letter From Jimmy,  Jackson writes about a woman who obsesses over a letter to the point of

wanting to murder her husband in order to read it.  The subjects of Jackson’s later stories are very different

than the subjects of her earlier works.  Jackson’s shift to a darker tone is most likely due to the depression

Jackson suffered throughout her life ( Shirley Jackson Biography).  These dark stories are what Jackson is

best known for. 

 It is not difficult to see the changes in Shirley Jackson’s writing through her career and it is even

more simple to see the similarities between her works.  The main similarity between Jackson’s writing is that

all the characters are women.  This could be because Jackson was a female writer in a time when women did

not receive equal treatment as men.  Another similarity between all of Jackson’s works is the characterization

she uses.  She focuses more on the psychological development of her characters than the physical

development. When Jackson writes a story, she writes in a way that causes the reader to understand the

character’s mind.  Details about who a character is become unimportant while a picture of how a character

thinks becomes clear.  A typical Jackson story could describe all the thoughts and plans a character creates

while the character physically does nothing in the entire story.  This creates an extremely intimate feeling

between the reader and the character.

 Shirley Jackson is a writer best know for her short stories.  Although her choice of female characters

never changes over her career, her style of writing does change.  Jackson goes from writing stories that reflect

common experiences for women, to stories that portray the inner workings of a character’s mind, to stories,

like The Lottery, with dark surprise endings.  After reading many of her works, it is easy to see the

development and change of Jackson’s writing over her career.

 

 

Work Cited

Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery The Adventures of James Harris. New York: Farrar, Straus.  1980. Print

“Shirley Jackson Biography.”  Literal Media. Web 21 Sept. 2009

 http://www.literalmedia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5 5&Itemid=75

 

september 14

wiki 5- good work, I think Jackson was a good pick for your project! I totally get your comment about feeling no creative flow on the other idea. Unfortunately, all the academically toned writing we tend to do in h.s. tends to almost knock that out of folks. However, I am sure I'll enjoy reading your analysis as much as I would a short story!

 

2. I tried to think of ideas for a short story for project four but I couldn't think of anything.  I decided to do the author analysis. I am glad I'm not doing a short story because I am not a good creative writer.  I am doing my project on Shirley Jackson.  I like her stories with surprise endings.  I have read the lottery, one called the witch, and another real short one about a crazy person.  I like her stories because they read fast and they have good plots.  I actually enjoy reading her stories, which is strange because I never like to read.  I like her stories because they don't have to be long to have a good plot.  When you have a question about what will happen it is answered very shortly because the stories are short.

 

1.  The story "The New Kid" made me furious.  At first I was made at all the kids who would not let Marty play with them.  I wouldn't effect their game that much to let him play.  All it would have taken is one of the kid to say its okay and the whole problem would have been resolved.  Later in the story I was really mad at Marty.  That kid is the biggest rat ever.  After he was just picked on and bullied, he takes the first opportunity to bully someone else. Marty deserves to be bullied.  This kind of reminds me of the bible story with the unmerciful servent.  Marty is shown mercy when the new kid comes because it takes the focus off of the kids picking on him.  Then the Marty turns around and picks on the new kid showing him no mercy.

 

September 9

2.  I think Karl Heinz (Joe) from the story D.P. had a harder life than the other characters in the confronting prejudice section.  I could not imagine being the only person of a certain race in an area.  You could go your whole life thinking you are a freak and not know that there are millions of other people in the world that look like you.  It didn't help that the people around him kept telling him different thinks about where he was from and who his parents were.  The fact that he was only six years old was also bad.  It wouldn't have been to fun to be black in Germany around that time.  I thought the American soldiers treated him very well.  I was expecting them to just try to get rid of him.  The fact that the soldiers were nice to him will help him feel better about who he is.

 

1.I did not like the story Antaeus.  To start off it was boring.  Also i don't think it went with the theme of confronting prejudice that well.  Sure he was a country kid in a city but the kids didn't treat him that differently because he was from the country.  It would be hard to be a new kid anywhere.  The fact that he was from the country didn't have that much to do with it.  If anything it helped him make friends.  They like someone who knew something different, like how to farm.  When the people told him they were gonna take away the grass on the roof it wasn't because they were prejudice against country people, It was because it would damage their building.  Although i think it would be cool to have lawn on the roof of a building.

 

September 1

2. I like that Mrs. Staude showed us the list of books that people tried to ban.  It was very interesting to see the books that were on the list.  It makes me super angry to see people trying to ban books or any sort of media.  I can see not letting certain books in a school with little kids but that is the only time books should not be allowed.  If someone doesn't like a book, there is a better answer than banning the book; DON'T READ IT.  It makes me furious when people try to take something away from everyone else just because they don't like it.  If someone doesn't like a book they don't have to read it, but don't take the right to read it away from someone else.  Who do these people think they are that they have the right to decide was should and shouldn't be allowed.  Let people make decisions for themselves.  

 

1. I loved Usher II.  I think it is the best story we have read all year.  At the beggining I wondered what a story about a house would be about.  After Stendahl accepted the fact that the house was going to be torn down and invited Gerret inside I knew something interesting was going to happen.  My favorite part was when Stendahl told Garret the people getting killed were the real people and not the robots. I like the irony that if Garret would have read the books he destroyed he would have known what was going on.  I can see how someone that hadn't read any of Poe's stories would not understand this story.  Luckily all of Poe's stories used in Usher II were stories we had to read for other english classes.

Great entry work this week!

aug 26

 

1.  I  think the guy is wrong for not calling the girl in the story Sixteen. I only say it was wrong for him not to call because he said he would call.  If the guy had hung out with the girl and walked her home and not said he was going to call then it would't be a problem that he didn't call.  He didn't have the responisbility of calling her because they spent the evening together.  I  think the guy was stupid for making the girl think he was into her when he really wasn't.  I  think for that reason he is a jerk.  Not calling is not a big deal but leading the girl on is mean. 

 

aug 24

1. I liked the story Charles.  I love stories where there is something that you don't expect that you find out at the end.  It reminds me of the twilight zone.  In these stories you know something wierd is up but you don't know what it is.  Most people said they knew how the story would end right when it started, but I didn't.  The thought of Laurie being Charles crossed my mind but I was hoping for a more interesting ending.  All the ending showed is Lauri lied.  I read the story The Lottery by the same author and the ending in that story was much better than the ending of Charles. While reading i was expecting a

something more like The Lottery.

 

Good job on Wiki 2! I appreciated your frank opinions! Glad to hear you liked "The Lottery" - I agree with you that it's a better story.. How's project #4 coming?

 

aug 20

2. I liked the story A and P. I liked how the author used every day language.  It was funny how he dscribed the 3 girls in the bikinis.  I liked how the narrator gave them names based on how he saw them from a distance.  I like how at the end he was trying to act cool in front of the girls and quit after the manager talked to them.  The funny part is that the girls were also trying to act cool and didn't really acknowledge what he did.  That is how it always seems to work: when people are so focused on acting cool they don't noticed the other people trying to act cool to impress them.++Good point here at the end

aug 18 

1.Why is violence more often seen as the "easier" answer to a conflict situation? Is it really?

 

I think violence is often the easier answer because anyone can be violent.  Often times people are violent because they are insecure and hurting someone else will make they seem stronger.  If a person is upset it takes a lot less thought and less self controll to fight someone.  If someone is in a situation were they could fight and they do not fight it can make them look weak.  It takes more strength for a person to not fight, knowing that it will make them look bad.  Pablo took a much bigger risk trying to be nice to the bartender than if he would have tried to fight again.  When someone is nice, others are not always nice back. When he gave the cigars to the bartender the bartender could have rejected them and made Pablo look bad.

 

practice wiki

 

I thought the doctor in the story The Use of Force was out of line acting the way he did.  I understand him being angry that the little girl would not cooperate but someone who deals with children should know that kids are not always going behave and listen.  However, the doctor was not crazy for wanting to hurt the girl and saying it would do society good.  I think that most of the time when people get frustrated and have emotions and thoughts they know are wrong, they do not stop at just one thought.  A person stays on an idea for a short amount of time before they stop themselves.  This is what the doctor was doing at the end of the story ; his mind was just expanding on an idea we had.  This doesn't make him crazy it just makes him normal.