Masterpiece Essay

May 1

Jeffrey Walter May

Dr. David Preston

AP English Literature

9 June 2015

Masterpiece Essay

Marriage is the union of two things (typically man and woman) that love each other and this can be said about one and learning. Someone can fall into love with learning and how much that one can take in and process into their own interpretations. But also one of the biggest burdens with marriage is the fact that divorce is always an option after it, it is the cause of the love no longer being there and once again this can also be said about learning. Someone can no longer feel as strongly as they once did to learn in the first place and I can say I honestly had a hint of both throughout the year, I would go in and out of marrying and divorcing my love for learning. I have always loved to learn and have new ways to figure things out but at times I get stressed out and break down to the point where I want to divorce learning.

Fiction is my most favored to read, not only because it is the widest genre of literature but because it allows for so much that CAN fall into its category and has a huge range of what can be written for it. I enjoy it because although it is a fictional piece it still holds a lot of information and truth into it with the many ways that the reader can interpret. As we studied Brave New World this year I had really enjoyed it as my top 3 reads ever. A new way of

May 2

interpreting the world is something that truly intrigues me a lot, I like to find new ways that our world can be ran or shown the different things that could have changed the world and that is one of my favorite (that is also why I love Harry Potter a lot because it is about wizards and those, for as far as we know, don’t exist so it’s just something new that intrigues me). I had also read Catcher in the Rye as a literature analysis book and I had really enjoyed that one, and not just because I am related to JD Salinger, but because the book gave a lot of meaning to it. It was packed in with all of the sarcasm by the main characters and I use sarcasm a lot as my own thing so I can totally relate to that and that had definitely made me laugh while I was reading the book.

Although there was quite a few presentations I had missed I still had the opportunity to see a lot too and there had been a few where I didn’t take as much in as some of the other presentations. One I had really enjoyed was Laike’s presentation on art because as she presented I could totally see the passion she had for drawing and how much it truly inspires her. When she told us how cool she thought it was that someone had contacted her to buy one of her pieces, I could totally see that she was really excited her artwork is getting out there and not just staying in her art books and paintings she had done. Terry’s presentation on nature was the same and it showed just how much he has a love for nature and it actually inspired me to get a group of friends together and plan a backpacking trip for a few days in the summer. Terry truly has a great passion for what he does and it helps him to be who he really is. Millie had a great passion for finding out the information about her family tree and how it could be related

May 3

back to basketball. Although I’m not a huge basketball fan, I still very much enjoyed learning about everything that she also learned about with the pairing of day to day and yearly family births and everything else that had regards to basketball. Megan had a fantastic presentation on journalism and although I knew she liked it, I didn’t know it was that much of a passion of hers. She really went up there and blew my mind with how much it inspired her and how much she truly loves it and I can’t wait until the day I can see her name on the news or in a popular article and I can reflect on how she once gave us a presentation that lead her to be where she is. Sean getting into politics is a great thing for him because I can tell it totally moves him. Once again with this word, the passion I saw in him (although he presented while feeling very sick) was still tremendous and he had well thought out, real, straight to the point but also well rounded topics. He will make a great person in the field of political science and I can see him going very far with that one day.

As I went through the process of my masterpiece, I ended up taking in my brother as my mentor because nearly everything I have learned about computers has been through him, a lot was self-taught with online tutorials and what not but I truly learn most from him. It had helped me to bond and get closer to him through my process of completing everything not only on my masterpiece itself but for anytime I have computer problems I don’t know how to deal with but any time anyone asks me for help. I am often known to people as the tech guy because I help a lot of people with the problems they experience and then my name gets passed around that I

May 4

can help with stuff like that. And honestly I really enjoy it, I love tinkering with little things and putting in codes to get things to work and it is something I can wait to do in my future.

All in all, I really took a lot from this course and am really glad I took it. I had been debating whether to take AP English again because I didn’t have the greatest year in it during my junior year but I decided to and am glad I did. The amount of life skills I have to go on into college and my life with are amazing and I would not want to trade it for anything else. And in this moment, I would like to thank you Dr. Preston for everything you have done and I appreciate it a lot.

Donuts and Dragons

Process of Donuts and Dragons

As I went through the process of coding this game to work, I hit a bunch of bumpy roads, lots of anger quitting and closing my laptop because it sucked to get done, but the work was worth it. Below is the different amount of coding that went into it, with each segment being on the right.

Donut

Dragon 1

Dragon 2

Dragon 3

Dragon 4

Masterpiece/reason I haven't been posting

If you know about coding, or even if you don't, you probably know how difficult it is or how difficult it looks. That statement is very true, but the worst part of it all is the frustration it brings to you when something doesn't go right. Personally when I get frustrated I throw things and walk away and I have done that so many times with making this game. I have focused almost all of my attention onto coding this game and it's still in beta version with flaws. I plan on having it done by the end of the week but it may be done sooner. 

Sonnet

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

I believe this is a Shakespearean sonnet, with the shift being on the line of "I love to hear her speak, yet well I know" because he is no longer describing the things he loves about her but rather straight out confessing the love he has.

'Out, Out' by Robert Frost

‘Out, Out’ by Robert Frost is a poem of a young boy cutting some wood on his buzz saw, to eventually cutting his hand off in the process. It has a nice tone throughout the poem until the end when everything takes a shift to an almost dark sense. The poem itself has an overall theme that life is short and can be lost in the blink of an eye, or in the mishap of a table saw.

The speaker throughout the poem has a moderate tone that is in an almost a callous sense. He starts off describing the scenery around him, talking about the buzz saw as though it is an animate object. It “snarls and rattles” almost as if it is controlling itself throughout these first couple lines. It goes on to tell us of the imagery of mountains and the sun setting into Vermont. He then goes on to tell the story of a boy cutting some wood as is his job. The poem starts to say that it is just an ordinary day and that the boy is about to call it a day. As his sister comes to call out to him that supper is ready, is when the saw seems to take a leap of its own, as if it had its own mind, and jumps out to cut the boys hand. The boy doesn't want his sister to call the doctor but she called him anyway, as he was losing too much blood. He then gets put under with ether and that is when the boy passes away.

            It is here where the tone of the poem just changes, makes a drastic shift.

“No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”

It is almost as if no one cares that this boy just passed away, no one has any care in the world at all that a young child is gone. Just because it is not them who passed away they don’t seem to want to give any attention to it. The death doesn't stop anything for this town, besides the work that the boy is doing. No grieving was done just a whole lot of moving on. The speakers view on everything changes with these lines, originally going from a normal tone to just a complete change to blunt ending within the last couple of lines. It is most likely a reference to seeing bodies in a battlefield and how you just have to watch them go down and do nothing about it.

Poem essay prompt

1974 Poem Prompt: Write a unified essay in which you relate the imagery of the last stanza to the speakers view of himself earlier in the poem and to his view of how others see poets.

In 'Out, Out' by Robert Frost, the ending of the poem results in a change of tone that is different from that of the rest of the poem, so I feel like this prompt can relate to it.