
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Chapter 7

Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Chapters 5-6 Quiz
Friday, June 8, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Chapter 6

Sunday, June 3, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Chapters 3-4 Quiz Today

They are responsible for some 60 million deaths. They ruled their countries with iron fists, squashing all dissent and directing government-sponsored programs of terror against their own citizens.
Drawing on the latest findings and expert analysis from leading psychologists and historians, HITLER AND STALIN: ROOTS OF EVIL examines the 20th century's worst villains. The parallels are striking: both had abusive fathers and doting mothers, both were extremely insecure about their physical appearance and ashamed of their backgrounds, and both came to power at roughly the same time. From Hitler's "Jewish nose" to Stalin's deformed foot, the Final Solution to the Gulags, this incisive special compares the backgrounds and policies of these two despots, interpreting the latest evidence and theories in the hopes of illuminating the personal, emotional and mental underpinnings of their actions.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Chapter 5

In Chapter Five, the strife between Napoleon and Snowball reaches its climax. The two pigs represent two divisions of a post-revolutionary government, one (symbolized by Snowball) the more intellectual, visionary, and idealistic, and the other (represented by Napoleon) more economically-minded and authoritarian. With the appearance of the young puppies, now trained into killer attack dogs by Napoleon, the animals give their first strong sense of Napoleon's ideological betrayal; the dogs were the resources of the farm, and Napoleon seized them and then turned them against the farm animals themselves.
The reactions of Mollie the mare and Boxer the cart-horse can be contrasted in Chapter Five. Mollie is unable (or unwilling) to stand the strain of the new Animal Farm workload, and her love of luxuries such as sugar lumps and ribbons incline her more toward contact with humans anyway. Her flight can be seen as a portrayal of the flight of pampered nobles after a revolution. Boxer, on the other hand, responds to Napoleon's increasing control by giving himself a new mantra, "Napoleon is always right." Here Orwell satirizes the blind, unthinking devotion of the masses toward the political figure they originally supported, despite the leader's devolution into tyranny.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Animal Farm Quiz Next Class Chapters 1-2
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Animal Farm Chapter 4

Friday, May 11, 2007
Animal Farm The Movie

In Chapter Three we begin to see the first unmistakable signs that the Revolution will drift away from the common animals' ideals, which were more aligned with Old Major's vision of a classless society. The exclusion of the pigs from the farm labor marks the beginnings of the social stratification which would have been anathema to Old Major. The animals go along with these developments out of fear that without the pigs, Mr. Jones will return, though these fears are implanted by Squealer, who early on recognizes the value of fear in persuading the animals.
Chapter Three also establishes the division between Snowball and Napoleon. Snowball is clearly the "thinker" of the movement, developing the flag-raising ritual and symbolism and creating the elaborate system of committees. To the reader, much of Snowball's activity seems benign, and even benevolent, as in the education efforts and improvement-minded groups like the Whiter Wool Movement for the sheep. These efforts establish Snowball as the symbolic descendant of Old Major's vision of animal life.
Napoleon, in contrast, becomes subtly malevolent in his interactions with the newborn puppies. Here, Orwell's use of perspective to create irony is significant. The scene (as is all of Animal Farm) is narrated from the unquestioning animals' point of view, and the narrator only remarks that Napoleon "kept [the puppies] in such seclusion that the rest of the farm soon forgot their existence". The tone of Orwell's animal perspective is, as always, noncommittal and unremarkable, but the more-perceptive reader is instantly alerted by this suspicious behavior on Napoleon's part, and is cued for the bolder violations which Napoleon will commit in subsequent chapters.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Chapter 2
HOMEWORK:
- Finish chapter 2 questions
- Read chapter 3
NEXT CLASS PART 1 ANIMAL FARM MOVIE
Chapter Two: Analysis
With his death, Old Major symbolizes the idealistic, often intellectual or abstract vision that leads to a revolution. His death clears the path for other younger figures to seize the revolutionary fervor which is sweeping the farm and use it to propel themselves to position of power. Napoleon, Snowball, and Squealer are cleverer, sneakier, and more aggressive than the other animals, and they soon rise to power as the leaders of the revolutionary movement.
The other animals' hesitancy to accept the revolutionary ideology right away is symbolic of the peasants in Russia who were at first suspicious of the revolutionaries motives. The reservations they express, such as the plaint that "Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone, we would starve to death," symbolize the people's reluctance to abandon the security of their familiar forms of governance in favor of a self-determined, less secure future. Squealer's persuasive tactics in convincing the animals to unite in revolution symbolize the personable, persuasive speaking powers of a charismatic political leader.
The Seven Commandments are significant for their resounding censure not only of animal inequality, but less predictably of human habits at large. The first two and last two commandments are aimed at reinforcing the unity of the animal world and establishing some basic beliefs for the animals to share.
Commandments 3-5, which explicitly forbid the animals to engage in human activities such as sleeping in beds, wearing clothes, or drinking alcohol, are fundamentally different. With these Commandments, the animal society attaches a significance and prestige to these vestiges of human life that they might have not developed otherwise. With no taboos against wearing the Jones's clothes, for example, one can imagine a scenario where the animals wear the clothes briefly as a curiosity, with no harm done. By forbidding these acts, the Revolutionary leaders turn the items into signifiers of prestige and social standing, making the pigs' eventual adoption of human habits particularly disillusioning.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Chapter 1

Animal Farm is a satire on the Russian Revolution, and is one of the best 20th-century examples of allegory, an extended form of metaphor in which objects and persons symbolize figures that exist outside the text. As its title suggests, the setting for this fable-like novel is a farm, and the bulk of the characters are the farm animals themselves, all of whom symbolize various revolutionary figures or political ideologies.
The opening chapter introduces the theme of revolution that dominates
The first chapter contains many examples of the whimsy which is scattered throughout Animal Farm, most notably in the way Orwell describes the various farm animals in semi-human terms. We meet Clover, the mare "who never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal," an example of Orwell drawing attention to the very "animalness" of the farm animals by juxtaposing it with traditionally human characteristics and foibles. Orwell's writing style here, as throughout the novel, is plain, spare, and simple, a technique which emphasizes the fable aspect of Animal Farm; by using minimalist language and short, simple sentence structure, Orwell draws the reader's attention to the animals' perspective, a point of view which will lead to great irony as the revolution unfolds.
Friday, May 4, 2007
ANIMAL FARM
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Ship trap map project...
Friday, April 20, 2007
The Most Dangerous Map Project
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Movie part two

Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Movie part one

Thursday, April 12, 2007
THE MOST DANEROUS GAME INTRO.

State—not far from Theodore Roosevelt's homestead. At the age of ten, he started writing for the
Poughkeepsie News−Press, his father's newspaper, as a baseball reporter. Later, while attending Georgetown
College in Washington D.C., Richard served as secretary to his father in Congress. Following his father's
death in 1912, Connell enrolled at Harvard University where he served as editor for both the Daily Crimson
and the Lampoon. After Harvard, Connell went to work for the New York American, a newspaper in New
York City. He also served with American forces in World War I. In 1925, following the publication of "The
Most Dangerous Game," which won him the O'Henry Memorial Award for short fiction, Connell moved to
Beverly Hills, California, where he continued his career as a freelance writer.
Caribbean, known by sailors as Ship−Trap Island. Among those sailors, it has a mysteriously ominous
reputation and is given a wide birth by knowledgeable sea captains. Those passing near it sense an elusive,
indefinable sense of evil. Ship−Trap Island is somewhat removed from the regular sea route between New
York and Rio de Janeiro, but not so far to avoid the occasional passing ship. The island is covered with a
dense jungle that extends all the way down to its treacherous, rocky shoreline. On one side of the island, a line
of giant, jagged rocks, capable of sinking any ship that ventures into them, extends from the shore, lurking
just below the surface of the sea. It is this line of rocks that gives Ship−Trap Island its name.







