Mike’s Blog

Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. His family went through tough times during the depression and he wasn’t able to pay for college so he got a few menial jobs to pay for his tuition at the University of Michigan. During college Miller wrote a few plays which he received awards for. Miller graduated from college in 1938 and received his bachelor’s degree in English. He began writing plays for the radio and then moved up to writing big plays that would be performed in theaters. Miller was to become and American playwright, who through his plays he showed the flaws in the American dream. He often wrote plays that depicted the how families are destroyed by false values. In 1949 Arthur was nominated, “Outstanding Father of the Year,” which helped with his success of a famous writer. After becoming famous through his works he married actress Marilyn Monroe in 1956, who was an actress in one of his plays. Their marriage lasted until 1961 and Monroe died in 1962. Throughout the rest of Millers life he only wrote a few more plays, but many say that they were not as good as his earlier ones. Miller died of heart failure at his home in Connecticut, on February 10, 2005.

Work Cited:
“Arthur Miller.” Wikipedia. 07 Apr. 2008. Wikipedia Foundation Inc. 09 Apr. 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller.

Berger, Marilyn. “Arthur Miller, Moral Voice of American Stage, Dies At 89.” New York Times. 11 Feb. 2005. 09 Apr. 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/theater/newsandfeatures/11cnd-miller.html?ei=5070&en=3842d0df3195ba4c&ex=1148356800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1148209567-ZnjnGzbndB3P1XvCU5BNDg.

“Arthur Miller (1915-2005).” Kirjasto. 2003. 09 Apr. 2008 <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/amiller.htm>.

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Our objective for this essay was to write one that had to deal with naturalism. Naturalism is where nature has no consideration for humans and that nature is cold, impersonal thing that has no relationship with humans. I didn’t know that’s what naturalism meant when I wrote my story; I just thought naturalism just had to deal with nature. I think if I would have really listened more when we were going through the slide shows I could have wrote a better story that had to deal more with nature and how it is not related to humans and has no sympathy or love for humans. Instead in my story I wrote about nature and a person in the future having to deal with never knowing nature, never seeing, or never learning about nature. It deals with this guy named Tim. His world in the future is run by a total dictatorship, he is told what to do and when to do it. He is told this to stay alive. Everyones robotic lives seem to treat them well, but not Tim. In my story Time tries to escape this world and manages to pull it off. My story could have still maybe had the same structure but at least it would have been on topic if I knew that naturalism had a different meaning thatn what I thought.

Here is my non naturalistic story, enjoi.

Sometime in the future, they think the year is 2327, but no one knows and no one can really find out, the world is governed by one person and the world is under a dictatorship. They don’t know how this happened but it has been this way for many, many years. When people are born they are implanted with a memory chip that tells them what to do and when to do it. This is way past a dictatorship; the government controls everything everybody does.
            In this new world, there lived a controlled man named Tim. Tim wasn’t really like all the other people though. Tim knew what was going on at all times, he had his own mind, but he still couldn’t control anything. Tim went everyday of his life following what his mind was telling him. In this place where Tim lived were industrial building everywhere, that’s where he worked, and that’s where he lived. He lived on the 40^th floor of one the many gigantic buildings. Many people never noticed but this place was surrounded by a vast wilderness. Tims dream, which he was the only who had was to escape this controlled life and see what was beyond. Tim was never educated to learn about the wilderness because the government only taught them what they needed to know to do their work.

            Tim knew that the only way he could escape was to somehow get this chip out of his head that was telling him what to do. He feared the government would somehow find out that he got his mind controlling device out and send out someone to take him away. In the future they didn’t need correctional facilities because everyone was controlled and no one ever got out of hand.

            But one evening he tested it, he took a knife felt around his head to see where the chip was placed at, and started to cut a little slit in his head. Lucky for him it wasn’t even very far in his head and he pulled it out without even bleeding. But once he got to it he had to pull hard to get it out, and it hurt him really bad. When he got the device out of his head he examined it and it looked like a regular computer chip with rods that dug into the skull, that was the thing that made it hurt really bad.

            Once this chip was out of his he started heading for wilderness he had noticed every night before he had went to bed. One he got to the bottom floor of his gigantic building he started to head out the door. He heard someone say stop and he looked back behind him and noticed three men wearing weird clothes. He booked it, he ran as fast as he could out the doors, through the streets and to the end where he had never been before. The people were gone, he lost them three blocks back, he had time to catch his breath and look at what was in front of him. It was a building to the right which didn’t look occupied and a very tall fence that he was determined to climb. He started to scale it and noticed more of this wilderness that he had never seen before.

Once he got to the top of this 40 foot high fence he escaladed to the bottom.

            He turned around to look at this new world in front of him, he thought of it being wild and free where no one could tell him what to do and when and how. The only thing on his mind was what he was going to eat, sleep in, drink, and survive with. As he kept going through the woods searching for something that he didn’t even know for what almost seemed to him to be 15 hours, he came across this little boy, and he didn’t know what to think. The little boy took his hand and took him through thick trees for about a 10 minute hike. Once the little boy stopped he looked up from the ground where his feet were and noticed a small civilization of many people, free people, that would help him learn what was going on and what happened and how to live in this free world.

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This story started off amusing and funny, but throughout changed quickly and brusque. It started off with a family wanting to go on a family vacation in
Florida. The family consisted of a dad, named Bailey, and old grandma who was very selfish and just wanted to do what she wanted to do, a mom, a baby, and two kids; one a stocky boy named John Wesley, and a little girl named June Star. Both the kids mostly got what they wanted and both really didn’t like the grandma. Before they go on their trip the grandma is worried about this killer that escaped from jail named The Misfit and doesn’t want to run into him.

 ”Here is that fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida…I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it.”

 The trip starts going on they stop and get a bite to eat at this place called Red Sammy’s in
Georgia. After they eat they all head out again and the grandma tells a story of this old house with a secret panel in it and the secret panel has money hidden in it. She says she remember exactly what turn it is and where it was. The little boy and the girl go crazy and want to go to the house really bad, so the dad turns around and the grandma points them down an old dirt road behind them.

 ”We’ve never have seen a house with a secret panel!” June Star shrieked. “Let’s go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can’t we go see the house with the secret panel!”

They turn around and go down this old dirt road looking for this old house with a secret panel in it. As they are traveling down the road the grandma remembers the house isn’t actually in Georgia but in
Tennessee. She didn’t say anything and got really nervous and accidentally let the cat of her cage. The cat jumped on the dad and the car started to flip. The kids pointed out the obvious several times by saying,

“We’ve had an ACCIDENT!”

As they all got out of the car they all noticed everyone was ok. The kids were disappointed when they saw their grandma come out of the car alive. Then they noticed a car coming by and waved them down to help them out. As they all started to talk for a while the grandma noticed that this man was The Misfit.

 The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. “You’re The Misfit!” she said. “I recognized you at once!”

The Misfit asked Bailey and John to step away into the woods with these two other people that where with The Misfit. After a while of the grandma talking with The Misfit trying to reason with him two shots rang from the woods. The two men shortly returned and asked the mom, June, and the baby to go join the Bailey and John. As those three went off with the two men, and shortly later three more shots rang off from the woods. The grandma did everything she could to try and negotiate with The Misfit but when she touched him on the shoulder he shot her three times in the chest.

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The first day school got out I couldn’t be happier. It was the shortest Christmas break I had ever had. Usually in Arizona we got 2 1/2 weeks off instead of just 1 1/2. After the bell rang to let us out I was in my truck with my friends heading up to the mountain. Snowboarding is my favorite sport and I do it as much as I can. While I was snowboarding that first day I was doing pretty good. I landed a switch 540 and I even did a wildcat backflip, that was the first one i landed this year. Also when I was snowboarding I was talking to the ladies and met a couple snow bunnies. Snowboarding was really fun that day and it was fun every day up until Christmas-thats because I couldn’t go up because I had to do stuff with my family.

On Christmas Eve my family all gathered around our tree to open all of our presents for one another. Everyone liked what they got and we all went to bed anxious for Santa to come the next morning.

When we woke up me and my brother didn’t have time to open our gifts because we were expected at my Grandma’s house for breakfast and a gift exchange. It was really fun because I got to see all my family and they are all really funny.

After me and my brother got done with that we came back to our house to open our gifts from Santa. All I got was clothes.

I liked the clothes I received and I decided to wear them to my other side of the family’s Christmas party. At my Uncle Bob’s house we had another gift exchange and I got more clothes.

As the short days quickly went on, on New Years Eve, I noticed two more presents under the tree, one was for my brother, and one was for me. I quickly called my brother to come join me and see what we got. We both opened our gifts and my brother got a Xbox 360, and I got a Playstation 3. I played it as much as could and before I knew it school was here. I just wish i could’ve had a couple more lazy days of me playing PS3 and snowboarding before school came back.

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I was browsing around looking at poems from other students and even in the big red literature book. I read a couple from robert frost that were pretty short. i don’t think i liked one of them just because it seemed so simple, but the other one i read seemed pretty good. It was talking about a forest that was owned by someone in the village nearby and how he could just stay there and no one would know he was there watching the snow fall. i liked it.

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One of my choices for a poet is Edward Estlin Cummings (E. E. Cummings), who is a poet with a very unique style. His poems usually express traditional ideas. Another one of my choices is Robert Frost. Robert Frost displays the same rugged persistence and determination exhibited by the rural New Englanders he depicts in his poems. My last and most hopeful choice is Shel Silverstein. Silverstein usually does clever, silly children’s poems. Out of these three poets i would really like to do my paper on Shel Silverstein.

My experience with poetry has been going pretty well, i think writing the poems was pretty fun and i really like critiquing poems as a class.

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I thought that writing the poem was pretty fun because i just made everything up and it seemed to me to work pretty well. I would say it was a pretty short poem and i didn’t really have any trouble with writing it. Overall i would say the whole writing process was pretty fun. I noticed myself smiling while i was writing it because i thought it was really funny. I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything i was just writing what came to my head and i thought i did a pretty good job of portraying the topic. I would say i spent about 4 minutes writing the poem.

Lies

You spin a story like a spider spins a web
I never know when to believe you
You go so long it forms a cobweb
Why do you always do what you do?

Why can’t you just tell the truth?
Saying all those lies that you say
All those lies coming from your tooth
Saying all those things everyday

I wish one day you will see
That all your lies really hurt me

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Why does he always wish that he had the boy?

He always wishes he has the boy with him because it would probably be a lot easier to catch this gigantic fish if the boy was with the old man.

Why does he wish he’d never caught the fish?

The old man wishes he had never caught the fish because he did all that hard work for nothing if the fish is just going to get eaten by sharks.

Why does the old man relate himself to Dimaggio?

He relates himself the Dimaggio because he is this big time baseball player that has problems but can still make it, as the old man has problems and is going to try and make it through.

After a fisherman catches the biggest fish he can catch, what then?

I think that a fisherman isn’t just out to look for the biggest fish he can find, but to look for as much fish he can find for food or money, or whatever a fisherman may need fish for.

Why is he questioning the moral consequences of catching the fish?

I think he is questioning whether or not it may be moral because of the fishes beauty. The fish was supposed to be this big colorful free object, but when he caught the fish it started to fade and all of its beauty faded along with it. Then the sharks ate it and totally killed everything about the fish.

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My reaction to the story so far is it seems very descriptive in what he is writing about. It seems that whatever he writes about whether it be of the old poor fisherman or even past stories you can somehow relate in a way. The story is very well written and it is a good book so far. In The rest of the story, I think, will be just as good. Just by judging the cover of the book I think the fisherman will go out further and find a really big fish that he has been wanting all of his life. I think he will catch the fish and he and they boy will pay everyone back in the town for what all they have done for the poor fisherman.

Overall so far, like I said before, the book uses really good descriptive language that can help you picture more of the story in your head. I like in the book where the author said,

The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

This sticks out to me because it shows more emotion and better detail.

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