This World and Me

On the first day of my freshman orientation for undergrad, my orientation leader gave us icebreaker questions to answer. One of them was "what is your favorite animal?". I thought for a second. Since elementary school, I had a particular fondness for grizzly bears because there's something incredibly charming about the intersection of fluffiness and clumsiness. It would also be a particularly relevant choice, since my university's sports team is called the California Golden Bears. However, as I thought about how to respond to this question, I realized that one animal has since overtaken the grizzly bear as my favorite animal. It was one that I had read about, wrote about, and actively admired. After all, the creature is the  fastest animal on the Earth , and its continued existence today is among the greatest triumphs in the history of environmental protection. Confident in my decision, I smiled and scribbled down my answer and returned it to my orientation leader. ...

Earlier this year, I published a post called "Shakespearean comedy and Rio" in which I talked about the various tropes of Shakespearean comedy and how they can be identified in Blue Sky Studio's modern computer-animated film series Rio . That post was a massive effort. It took more than a year of on-and-off writing to finish. The post was informed by my study of Shakespeare at The Ohio State University in the fall of 2016 and later my study of Shakespeare at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall of 2017. In my original draft of the post, I started writing along a tangent about Shakespearean tragedies. I wanted to compare some of the tropes of Shakespearean comedies I was learning to the tropes of Shakespearean tragedies I was learning at the same time, but I found that it was too off-topic and would have made the post too massive (the final result was already quite massive, especially with the analysis of Rio !), so I ended up cutting the discussion of Sh...

The term "comedy" has a variety of meanings. In everyday use, it is a form of entertainment filled with jokes, satire, and storytelling, intended by the author to be funny – to make the audience laugh. In elementary school classes, if a student is the "class comedian", he is always goofing around, trying to get others to laugh at him. There are different kinds of comedy: stand-up comedy, situational comedy (often abbreviated to "sitcom"), surreal comedy, romantic comedy, tragicomedy. In this post I would like to discuss the genre "comedy" in the context of the works of William Shakespeare and identify one modern film franchise which contain themes that resemble those of Shakespearean comedy. * * * First, a little background. William Shakespeare is one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. His birthdate is not documented, but we know he was baptized on April 26, 1564, and died on April 23, 1616. (2016 contain...

Prince. Why, thou owest God a death. [Exit Prince.] Falstaff. 'Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg?  No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air—a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon—and so ends my catechism. Exit. —William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1    (1597), Act 5, Scene 1. An attack on the value of "honor" to those who fight to the death. A soliloquy by the cowardly Sir John Falstaff at t...

O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is happening? 'No.' 'Then where does the past exist, if at all?' 'In records. It is written down.' 'In records. And — ?" 'In the mind. In human memories.' 'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?' 'But how can you stop people from remembering things?' cried Winston, again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!' O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial. 'On the contrary,' he said, ...

Oh, cut my lace in sunder that my pent heart May have some scope to beat, or else I swoon With this dead-killing news. —William Shakespeare, Richard III , 1592 (comments by Queen Elizabeth, upon learning that Richard, the corrupt Duke of Gloucester, will be crowned King of England)

This is a rhetorical analysis essay written for my AP English Language and Composition class. My instructor was Mrs. Razem. The year is 1963. The United States is at its momentous period of revolution: the Civil Rights Movement. At the head of this revolution sits Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, having protested in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, is confined in Birmingham City Jail. Opposed to King's unlawfulness, a group of eight Alabama clergymen compose an open letter , criticizing King's demonstrations as "extreme". King's letter in response, later dubbed " Letter from Birmingham Jail ", eloquently defends his actions to the Alabama clergymen through the use of strong appeals to moral authorities that King and the clergymen share, as well as through his shifts in tone from respectful to accusatory. King is quick to point out that he and the clergymen share a relationship with God and thus appeals to God as a moral authority. King opens his ...

[...] For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea. —Edgar Allan Poe, " Annabel Lee ", 1849 (Poe's last poem).

The brilliant To Kill a Mockingbird had a profound impact on American literature. Its powerful themes of empathy and prejudice remain painfully relevant today and will remind and inspire us for generations to come. Rest in peace, Harper Lee.

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? — Edgar Allan Poe, " A Dream Within A Dream ", 1849