Tragedy Project

This week in school we were introduced to our tragedy project and tragedy essay. My idea for my tragic project is to take a alter ego photo. I think that photography can represent tragedy very well if you have a story and purpose behind it. My idea for my photo is to have an alter ego with myself. I want to have one part of my self being the rich royal person and the other side of me being the peasant or fallen person. Aristotle describes tragedy as being a well known or royal person has made their fallen from their arrogant ways that is caused by themselves and receive a punishment that is to severe for their crime. So that is why one part of me is the royal side and then other is more like the peasant, I also want to make it look like the royal side of me will be stepping on the peasant side of me. I found a you tube video that is going to show how to create the alter ego photography.

Oedipus: October 22, 2010

This week in class we finished reading the Greek play Oedipus. A tragic tell about a man's fall from power. While reading this play I saw a lot of myself in Oedipus, mostly with the way that he was at the top of the world then how he just fell from power so fast. It really made me think of myself because sometimes I think that I can climb my way to the top then fall because of my arrogant ways. I never want to achieve all that I want in life then just fall from that power because of something like arrogance and my selfishness towards other people. If I do in fact become a judge or some high powered lawyer that I dream to become, I hope I still remain as down to earth as I am now and that I help my community in any way that I can. And I don't want to give back financially I want to give back with my time and energy. I think that if you just give back financially you don't really contribute all that you can you just think money excuses you from really giving back. So to keep myself from the arrogance that Oedipus had I want to give back and do all I can from my community with time and energy.

All I Ask: October 15, 2010

This week in class I finished my first book for the Independent Reading Project. My first book was “All I Asked” a black romance novel written by Barbara Keaton. When I first started to read “All I Ask” I thought Wow this is a really great book until I got to the middle of “All I Ask” I thought this whole book is extremely predictable because it follows that black romance formula. The black romance formula is a woman is bitter because of a previous break up so she is angry at all men, so when she meets a man she ignores their existence, but one day the right man comes along which she rejects but the man likes her so much that he doesn’t stop trying to get her attention, finally the woman goes on the date with a man and they both slowly fall in love with each other, after a short period of time of knowing each other the man and the woman fall madly in love and find that they cannot live without each other, then they get engaged, and soon after have the wedding of their dreams. In “All I Ask” it uses this very formula Deborah Anderson “Deb” a woman that has just broke up with her college boyfriend Mario meets Darrin Wilson a friend of a friend at a party, when Deb first meets Darrin she ignores the fact that he even exist, until the bump into each other at a restaurant and finally exchange phone numbers, when they finally go on a date both Darrin and Deb find that they are each other’s soul mate and wish to never part from each other. Soon after meeting each other Darrin proposes to Deb and they get married and have a happily ever after. I thought Barbara Keaton made her book so predictable and a huge cliché of black romance novels. If Keaton would have added a twist like embracing the fact that Darrin thought his ex-girlfriend Traci was calling him and made her pop at the same time that Deb came over and Deb and Darrin temporarily broke up. I think some type of wrong turn would make this book excited and known to more people.

Allegory of the Cave: October 8, 2010

This week in class we read the Allegory of the Cave that is written by Plato. The Allegory of the Cave is a conversation between Socrates and Glauton, in the beginning of the story Socrates is describing these places where five prisoners live that are in shackles and they cannot move their heads, so their whole live they just hear a fire in the back of them, and see shadows of men carrying vessels, status, and figures moving back and forth from one side to another. Then one day one of the prisoners is breaks free and climbs out of this cave that they have been exposed to their whole life. As he escapes he feels fresh air and he sees trees and the sun, so as one prisoner becomes free he comes back into the cave, so that he can go back to expose the others to what he has just discovered. However the other prisoners are extremely angered that the other prisoner has taken away what they have known to be true all of their lives with the shadows of men going back and forth carrying vessels, status, and figures and the fire that they heard behind them.

When I first read this piece I thought that it was extremely metaphorically right with the sense that all of our lives we are exposed to one on thing, and when we find out that is not true we get angry because don’t want to believe it. A good example for me is when I found out that Usher got married, all my life I had been exposed to Usher as being a single man that only wrote about finding the right girl, but he never actually would. Then with I found out he was married and all of my theories of Usher never getting married and staying true to his singlehood were gone, just like when one prisoner wanted to show the other prisoners what he had discovered.