Journal #8

1. The first aphorism that I find interesting is “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” I think this is saying that you need to try many different things in life so when your time is up you have no regrets on how you lived your life. I like this personally because I think that you do need to try a lot of different activities in your life so you find what truly makes you happy. If you are not happy by the end of your life you will have many regrets and won’t be happy about the way you lived your life. Live it to the fullest because it’s the only one you get.

2. The second aphorism I found interesting is “We boil at different degrees.” This is saying that everybody has different tempers and tolerance levels. Some people will get mad after one joke and others will never get mad. This is personal to me because I believe that some people are more prone to get angry over certain things. We are born to tolerate different levels of discomfort and anger and some people do it better. This means never to assume that some is ok with a joke or hurtful response until you know them. Better yet just don’t say hurtful things and this will never have effect in your life.

3. The third and final aphorism that I found really interesting was “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.’ I think that this is saying that it doesn’t matter what is in the past or what lies ahead in the future as long as you are true to yourself you can and will succeed in life. This is personal to me because I think that everybody makes mistakes in life but not many people know how to forget about them. Part of growing as a person is to learn to forget about some of the mistakes you’ve made in the past and just know that you being yourself and the virtues and knowledge you have already about life will get you through rough times.

Journal #7

These two poems are very different. Whether it’s literary or poetic terms they differ greatly. The first thing that I can think of is the tone. The tone in these two poems is very different. In the Waterfowl the tone is very peaceful and attentive but in the Raven the tone is very gloomy and hopeless. You can tell that in the Waterfowl the speaker is excited and curious about these birds but in the Raven the speaker just wants the bird to leave. The setting in the Waterfowl poem is very early in the evening where the sun is setting and it is very peaceful. However, in the Raven the setting is midnight when it is very creepy and eerie especially when you have a bird that is the sign of death talking to you. The mood is different because you get chills reading Raven when you are more relaxed reading about the waterfowl. I think the themes are different because the theme in the Raven in simply that death always finds you while the theme in the waterfowl poem is about living life even though you might not know where you are going at certain times in that journey. The Raven is a lot longer so it develops more of a plot than the Waterfowl poem does. The Waterfowl poem is more of a description while the Raven is set up more like a narrative type of writing. Poe’s version of romanticism is definitely more pessimistic whereas the Waterfowl poem is optimistic saying that you could go anywhere with the help of God guiding you. The conflict in Waterfowl is where the birds are going and if they will get there but the conflict in the Raven is much more involved. It has to do with life or death and where you go when you die if you don’t have God in your life. The imagery in the Raven is very dark and gloomy whereas the Waterfowl poem imagery is bright and hopeful. Nature in the Raven is displayed badly but in the Waterfowl nature is being guided by a higher power to its final destination. The raven is guiding the person to death whereas God is guiding us to happiness.They are both written in first person but the speakers have very different views on nature. Both poems do have to do with birds but in very different ways. The message of the Raven is that there is no afterlife and once you are dead that life just ends and you do not get to see your loved ones again. In the Waterfowl the message that a higher power like God is leading you in the right direction even if you don’t quite know where the final destination is. These poems are very different but are both well written and interesting.