class directions

I have to say that I really like this class and there is not much which could be done better. I guess it would be cool if we did some more group work, though. That is always fun and probably good for the class community. I hope we will watch some more movies such as The Crucible and The Road while reading the books which go along with the movies. Then it would be cool if we did more creative writing exercises like essays or poems instead of simply answering questions to a book or something like that.

My December

This is my December,
This is my time of the year,
This is my December,
This is also clear.

Watch the snowflakes falling down,
Watch people being happy all around.
I watch myself being kind,
But I have other thoughts on my mind.

What is this for, is this real?
Does anybody feel the way I feel?
Everything´s superficial, smiles are insincere,
I cannot stand this, I have to get out of here.

So I escape into a secret place,
To live my life in my own pace,
To not see all the lies under the christmas tree.
What is wrong with me?

This is my December,
This is my snow covered home,
This is my December,
This is me alone.

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 and died in 2010. The authors moste popular book is "The Catcher in the Rye" which was published in 1951. That book became a worldwide success and Salinger got a lot of unwonted attention. He couldn´t really deal with that, so he moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, to be alone with his family and without the press. Since then, he never gabe interviews to a newspaper or anything.

The only thing he would do, was giving a few interviews to students who wanted to ask him about his writing.
Eventhough he could have made a lot of money, he refused and stayed by his on trying to protect his privacy.

"I am a writer, I will continue to write, but not for "the people". I write for myself, and my family. I never owed anyone anything. I gave something and now I am done"

You could feel sort of sorry for him, but he somehow seems to me a litte bit selfish. Like his daughter was never able to live a normal live cause she had to pretty much stay with him in his lonelyness.

Holden

In "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden is the main character. He is sixteen years old and about to get expelled from Pencey High. Before he went to Pencey, he got expelled from a couple of other schools. So his life is described as a typical teenage life which goes down the drain. However, Holden is not at all a typical teenager.

He actually has a very interesting personality. And that is not meant in a good or bad way, I just think he is somehow special. It kinda seems like everything annoys Holden and no matter what someone does, it gets on his nerves. Holden thinks that almost everyone in the world is phony, and he hates phony people eventhough he himself sometimes acts in a phony way and even admits it. The special thing about him is, that there are certain people in his life, who, in his mind, never do anything wrong, be always perfect and be innocent forever. And he wants to protect those people from bad influence.

I really wonder how his life would go on as he was an adult. Cause sometimes you have to make compromises in life and be dedicated to a job or a task. You cannot get along in life hating everything and everyone and be annoyed by it or them. You have to be positive to make your life better and that is what Holden might wanna start doing.

My Red Hunting Hat

In the book "The Catcher in the Rye" the red hunting hat symbolizes Holden´s hate for phonies. So that he would hunt a special kind of people which he strongly dislikes. I don´t have a hunting hat but if i had one it would propably represent that I`m hunting for people who are absurdly brutal. For example when like a group of people beat up a lonely guy just to have some fun. I think that is just unbelievable unfair and extremly gutless. Those are the kind of people I hate.

Other than that I would rather hunt for good things like happiness and having a good time with friends or something like that. Basically anything that would make my life better or more interesting.

Thankful for a classmate

First of all I have to say that I really like everyone in this English class. Everyone is really nice and I enjoy going to this class. It is very interesting to hear all the different opinions on questions and topics cause we all got other values on our mind to judge different situation in different ways. Especially Harlans and McKinleys comments are really inspiring sometimes.

I also think that Mr McCarthy is a very good teacher since he knows how to make the lessons interesting. He always finds a good balance between fun and learning at the same time and that is why I like this class so much.

Then there are Filip and Jack sitting right next to me. They became good friends of mine and helped me a lot to understand things when I didn´t know what to do. Our group work was always very productive and fun. Thank you guys for being in this class with me!

Cormac McCarthy Blog

The Road is a very  special book which makes people think more about our own world. The dark and depressing athmosphere of America after the apocalypse with those the two nameless heroes, the father and the son, makes us reflect a lot, since any of us could be one of them. Where does McCarthy get his ideas from for such an affecting book?

I think for Cormac McCarthy his surrounding and the people who are close to him give him a lot of inspiratione to write his his books. He sais that many lines from the book where are taken from conversations between him and his son. Also he gave some of the character traits his friends live for to his characters in the book such as being  the good guys for father and son.

"A lot of the things that the kid [in the book] says are things that John said. John said, "Papa, what would you do if I died?" I said, "I'd want to die, too," and he said, "So you could be with me?" I said, "Yes, so I could be with you." Just a conversation that two guys would have."

"I have friends at the Institute. They're just really bright guys who do really difficult work solving difficult problems, who say, "It's really more important to be good than it is to be smart." And I agree it is more important to be good than it is to be smart."

His ideas obviously kind of come from everyday life, from conversations with people. And thats where he got his interpretation of the apocalypse from. In an interview the "Wall Street Journal" asked him what kind of research he did for The Road. He said that he was often talking to his brother about what would happen if there was a serious catastrophe and only some people left on our planet. They came up with everyones would be part of a tribe and they would eat each other. Just like in his book the bad guys.

"We talked about if there was a small percentage of the human population left, what would they do? They'd probably divide up into little tribes and when everything's gone, the only thing left to eat is each other. We know that's true historically."

I guess the thing which makes his book so affecting is his way he presents the relationship between the father and the son and the language which is held very simple. You probably have to be a great author AND a father to be able to describe the relationship in the way he does.

Letter to Charles Bukowski

Dear Mr. Bukowski,

I read your poem "Dinosauria, We" and I was impressed by how you described what our societey will be or maybe already is. On the one site I could understand what you are talking about in the poem and that all those problems in the society are fatal. But on the other site I was kind of scared of what you wrote and I think you are exaggerating a bit with this apocalyptical foreseeing.

Do you really think that everything will get this bad that everything will be blown away? You said there will be the most beautiful silence. I associate this with some kind of total emptiness of life in that world then and I wonder how could that physically happen?

I mean, it is probably true that money will be useless, that trees will die and that the sea will be poisoned at some point, but that does not mean that everything will become extinct. And as you yourself said, the rich and the chosen won´t feel the consequences of the apocalypse, so how could there be the most beautiful silence, if some rich people still existed? That sounds a bit contradictory to me.

Also, as mentioned before, you said that money will be useless but at the same time the rich people will watch all the apocalypse from space platforms. So how should rich people be able to escape the chaos and go to space platforms if money is useless? Thats an incosistent point, too.

Father and Son

I think a relation between a father and son should be very close anyway in this stadium of education I assume the boy is in. But under such circumstances it must be even closer to go on and fight for surviving.

Obviously the boy lost his mother somewhen before the story starts. So the only natural parent is his father and of course he  is his the one where he gets his energy from to go on. The Father also lost everything what is worth living for exept for his son, so he made it his duty and his task to take care of the boy and to save a better future for him.

Despite those apocalyptic circumstances he is trying to live a life with ethical values and a normal education. He is trying to stick to habits so that the boy and he himself can better deal with the situation. Father and son are the "good guys" in this burnt world.

In my opinion the relation of father and son is changing in the way of the depth of conversations. First their conversations are just about food and reading books for the boy, but then the boy starts to ask his dad some questions, which are unusual for a boy to ask. Such as what his father would do if he died. I guess that gets their relation to another level because both of them know the whole dimension of their situation...

John Proctor, Hero or Stooge?

It is hard to say wether John Proctor is a Hero or a Stooge. He did some bad things, but also he was upright man.

First of all, it was not fair of him to betray his wife with Abigail Williams. If you are married you have certain responsibilities and one of them is defenetely to not being unfaithful. But as I said, he has also some good character traits.

In front of the court, he sees through the lies of the girls, who accuse women of being in pact with the devil randomly. He warns the court to believe in such lies. With the aid of Marry Warren, his maid, he tries to get his wife Elizabeth Proctor free, who is also accused of witchcraft. So he is maybe not that bad, as he seems at the first look.

Since Marry Warren cannot stand the pressure of the other girls, she soon breaks down and accuses proctor to be with the devil. Because of that, Proctor gets arrested and convicted to death. He gets a chance to free himself by confessing his devilish pact.

And this is the point where I would say that he is rather a hero than a stooge. Proctor does not take this chance. It does not agree with his consience to buy his life for a lie. In my opinion, Proctor is a good man who has his failures but also has strong principles.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a story about God and the Puritans. Jonathan Edwards was a preacher at that time an he was very well known among the Puritans. He preached about God and how people must not sin.                 
Edwards is saying how God is ready at any moment to punish you, if you sin. He tells us that God holds the water from killing the puritans and how he will drop them in hell if they sin. He also said in the story that God is waiting to shoot the Puritans with an arrow if they stepped out of line.

I myself cannot imagine a god like this. If a god existed, he would not punish his followers for every single mistake, I think he would rather show them the right way to life. No one is able to avoid any mistake and that is probably why the Puritans do not exist any more. Their religion asked them impossible things.

Arrivals... There goes the Neighborhood.

When we moved to our "new" house in Bliedersdorf, Germany (actually we´re living there for 12 years) I didn´t know that we moved to the propably most boring neighborhood in the world!

In my neighborhood there are mostly old people, so there is usually nothing bad like crime going on. I myself just have few connection to those people. So it´s not much more than "hello and good bye" when I see them. That´s actually pretty sad, since I already experienced that it can be very different. The neighbors here in America are a lot closer to each other than those in Germany are.

Within the whole 12 years we lived in Bliedersdorf, there have been only two incidents where there was a bit of civil commotion. Once, a stupid guy from the next street broke into a house of an 80-year-old lady and tried to steal something. The othertime when a men commited suicide by poisining himself. That´s it basically. I mean, we don´t have like fights of gang members or stuff like that and I never heard gun shots.

Some would consider my neighborhood as a "good" neighborhood. It´s safe, that´s for sure, but for me it is rather boring to live there. I´d always prefer to live closer to the city because there is a lot more stuff going on!

Introduction

Hey!

My name is Jonas Schmid-Querg, I was born in Hamburg on the 17. November 1994. Right, I´m German and I will attend Whitney Young Highschool for the whole school year 2011/2012. So I live here in Chicago with a host family.

Let me tell you a bit about myself and about Germany:

Since 1998, my family and I live in Bliedersdorf. This is a tiny village 50 km (31 mi) from Hamburg. My sister an I attend the "Gymnasium" in Buxtehude, which is about 12 km (7.5 mi) from our house. After elementary school we have basicly three different types of school, which stand for different level of education. So it´s not like high school in th USA.

My favorite subjects in school are math, physics, English, French and of course sports. I guess I will do a job later on which contains maths and physics stuff. Maybe some kind of construction engineer. I like learning  languages because English and French are spoken all around the world so it will very helpful to be abel to speak them. And last but not least: sports. I´ve been playing soccer since I was 7 years old and I still enjoy it. In Germany we don´t have school teams, we have teams in the cities or the villages. I used to go to soccer practice three times a week and to have a game every saturday.

I like to try out new kinds of sports and therefore I have sailed for two years, played ping pong and did a paragliding course. Dad and I often ride our racing bicycles together if the weather is fine at the week ends. 

Obviously doing sport is my favorite hobby. But I have some other activities which I like to do such as reading, listening to music and of course meeting friends.


I´m very happy to spent a year in the USA, especially in Chicago and I want to find new friends and have lots of fun here!!! :)


Jonas