Monday, April 28, 2008

Hemingway

Hemingway was born on July 22nd, 1899 in Illinois, Chicago. His mother wanted twins, and when she didn't get that she often dressed Hemingway and his older sisiter alike with the same hairstyles so that they looked like twins. His mother wanted him to enjoy music but he preferred being outdoors with his dad doing things like fishing, hunting, etc. Being with nature so early in life gave Hemingway a lifelong passion for being outdoors, on adventures and living in isolated areas.
Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest High School from September 1913 until June 1917. He was great both academically and athletically and displayed particular talent in English class. His first writing experience was in the school paper and yearbook in his junior year and then wirking as editor in his senior year.
He didn't want to go to college so, instead, he began his wrting carrer as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star. Even though he only worked there for six months he nevcer stopped following the Star's guide for his writing style.
They named Hemingway their top reporter of the last 100 years.
Against his fathers wishes, he tried joining the United States Army to see what happened in World War One. He failed the medical examination because of his poor vision and instead joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps.
On his first day an ammunition factor blew up and he had to pick upo the remaindçs of the people in there. This first encounter with death left him shaken.
In July 1918, Heminway was wounded delivering supplies to the soldiers and this ended his carrer as an ambulance driver. He was later rewarded the Silver Medal of Military Valor for saving a wounded soldier even with his own wounds.

Hemingway fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky but their relationship did not last long. She became involved with an Italian officer. This provided inspiration for one of his earliest novels.
After the war, Hemmingway returned to his home town and started working for the Toronto Star newspaper. He became freinds with another reporte, Morley Callaghan ç, who also wrote novels highly praised by Hemingway.
On September 3rd Hemingway married his first wife, Hadley Richardson
. In December 1921 they moved abroad, to Paris.
After much success as a foreign correspondent, they returned to Toronto where their son John Hadle Nicanor Hemingway, later known as Jack, was born.
Hemingway fell out with his editor around the same time. Harry Hindmarsh said Hemingway had been spoiled by time over seas. He resigned, but his resignation was ignored or just rescinded because he carried on working for the Toronto Star through 1924.
Hemingway met Scott Fitzgerald at a bar, and were at first close friends. They drank and talked alot. They also swapped manusripts and Fitzgerald tried to do alot on Hemingway's career but this relationship cooled of because thaey started to become competitive.
Hemingway divorced Hadley in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer, an ocasional fashion reporter.
In 1928 they moved to Key West, Florida.
However, their new life was soon interrupted by a tragic event.
Hemingway's father had diabetes and financial instabilities. He comitted suicide using an old civil war pistol. He immediatley travelled to Oak Park to organize the funeral.
At the same time, another friend of Hemingway, also comitted suicide.
Their second son Patrick was born in the same year, and their third son, Gregory, was to be born a few year later.
Following the advice of John Dos Passos, Hemingway returned to Key West in 1931, and established his first american home which is now a museum.
Over the next 9 years, until this marriage ended in 1940 and a bit into the 1950's, Hemingway spent alot of his life in the writers den in the converted garage.
In the fall of 1933 a safari took him to Kenya, leading, later to Tanzania. 1935 saw the publication of his book about his safari experience.
In 1937 Hemingway travelled to Spain to report on the civil war. While there, Hemingway broke his friendship with Dos Passos.
Some health problems charecterized this part of Hemingway's life.

The United States entered World War II on December 8th, 1941 and Hemingway sought to take part in naval warfare. His crew was charged with sinking German submarines threatening shipping of coast.
After the FBI took over he went to Europe as a war correspodent for Colliers magazine. There he observed the D-Day landings from a landing craft but he was not allowed on the shore.

Newly divorced from Gellhorn, he mnarried war correspondent, Mary Welsh Hemingway. He returned to Cuba and became public witness to the Rolando Masferrer schism within the Cuban communist party.
Later Years.
The Old Man And The Sea was published in 1952 and it earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. The next year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Then his traditionally bad luck struck again. On a safari he was in two plane crashes and very badly injured. Some of the American newspapers mistakenly published his death thinking he was dead.
Then one month later he was badly injured by a bushfire accident. The pain left him in anguish and couldn't travel to Stockholme to receive his Nobel Prize.
A bit of hope came when they discovered some of his earlier manuscripts in the cellar of the Ritz, although some of his energy was restored, his heavy drinking kept him down. His blood pressure and cholestorol was high, and he had aortal inflammation, his depression also aumented by his heavy drinking. However, in October 1956 he had the strength to go to Pío Baroja's burial, one of his literary influences.
In Februrary, 1960 he had trouble getting his bullfighting novel to the publishers and therefore had his wife Mary summon his friend Will Lang Jr. to leave Paris and come to Spain. The first part of the story was published in hos magazine and then the rest in the succesive issues.
Hemingway attempted suicide in the spring of 1961, receiving yet again ECT treatment.
Some weekes after his 62nd birthdau he took his own life on the morning of July 2,1961 at his home wqith a shotgun blast to his head. He was buried in a Roman Catholic service. He himself blamed the ECT for ruining his carrer by destroying his memory.
Other members of Hemingway's family also comitted suicide.
Heminway was interred in the town cemetry. a memorial was erected in 1966 at antoher location. It is inscribed with a euolgy he wrote for a friend, Gene Van Guilder:

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills
The high blue windless skies
Now he will be a part of them forever

Ernest Hemingway -Idaho- 1936



Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn is a boy who lives in America. A widow adopts him but his drunk dad comes looking for him for his money. He takes Huck to a log cabin by the river. Huck finds a canoe and while his dad is gone, escapes. He found a black man on the island and they ran away together. As they go down the river they get to know diferent towns and things. They get split uo and Huck stops in a big house. The fanmily has a fight with another family and Huck gets his chance to run away. He finds Jim and as they were going two men came running up to them.A "king" and a "duke".
They went from town to town acting, making money and then getting kicked out.
They go to a house pretending to be lost brothers of a dead man and try conning the dead man's daughters. They take the money that the dead man left his daughters but Huck felt bad and stole it of them and hid it in the coffin.
The king and the duke then got found out as conmen and were asked about a mark on the man's body. So they went to look and found the money. Huck and one of the daughters came up with a plan and Huck went from the house and left the king and the duke to get arrested.
Then they found Jim and took him. Huck went to a nearby house and pretended he was their nephew. It turns out their real nephew was Tom Sawyer. Tom came and pretended to be a stranger. They found Jim in a shed and helped him escape.
"Sid" who was really Tom, gets hurt and tells aunt Sally that they helped set " the run-away nigger" free.
In the end Aunt Sally adopts Huck. He hates it.
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My Opinion

I really liked the book because of trhe adventures and the mischeif they get into. It's also funny. At first it was hard to understand because it is written in the way you would say it but then I got used to it. The only thing I didn't like was the end. It was a bit boring. It just says "my aunt is going to adopt me and try to civilize me. I hate it. I've been there before".
I would reccommend this book, and wouldn't mind reading another of Mark Twains books.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

William Shakespeare



"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"

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.

William Shakespeare

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Four Weddings And A Funeral.







This is a group of friends that have never got married or fallen in love, but one day two of them get married. Charles, the main caracter, met in that wedding an American girl called Carrie. He speaks to her a bit and really likes her.
In the second wedding he sees Carrie again, but with her fiance. He is upset.
The third wedding was Carrie's. In that wedding one of the friends died.
Then it was the funeral.
The fourth wedding is really unexpected... It leads to a surprising ending!



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In the funeral, the man's partner reads a famous poem. This is it:



Funeral Blues.



Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W.H. Auden.



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W.H. Auden grew up in Birmingham in a professional middle-class family and read English Literature at Church. His early poems, in the late 1920s and 1930s, were a mix of obscure modern styles and accessible traditional ones, and were written in an intense and dramatic tone. He then got bored of this and abandoned it after he moved to the United States in 1939. His poems in the 1940s explored religious and ethical themes and weren't as dramatic as his earlier works, but still combined new forms devised by Auden himself with traditional forms and styles. In the 1950s and 1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and concealed emotions, and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos, a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England where his father was a physician. Wystan was the third of three boys; the oldest became a farmer; the second, became a geologist. His mother, had trained as a missionary nurse.
In 1908 his family moved to Harborne, Birmingham, because his father had been appointed the School Medical Officer and Lecturer of Public Health; Auden's lifelong psychoanalytic interests began in his father's library. From the age of eight he attended boarding schools, returning home for holidays.
Until he was fifteen he expected to become a mining engineer, but his "passion for words" had already begun. He wrote later: "words so excite me that a pornographic story, for example, excites me sexually more than a living person can do".









Monday, December 17, 2007

My trip to england

Last week I went to England with my mum and my sister. My dad was there waiting for us. So when I finished school on Wednesday, I went home, ate and did my homework. My mum went to work. At half past 5 my parents' friends came because they were coming with us to England. When we got there we said hello to my dad and went to pick up the car we had rented. Its was freezing cold. We got to my auntys house at four o´clock in the morning. At six o´clock we had to wake up because we were going to a clothes show, there are loads of models there and they sell the clothes that they model really cheap.

On Saturday I went shopping with my mum, my auny and my sister. But me and my sister got bored and went to have a look at some things to buy for my mum and dad for Christmas.

That night we was going to do a suprise party for mum because it was her birthday, so that afternoon me and my sister rang my dad, we went to the restaurant where we was going to do the party and started decorating it.

It looked really good and there was alot of ballons and confetti and other stuff.

My mum thought that we was going to have a meal in an Italian restaurant, but when we got there all our family and friends were there and started singing Happy Birthday! Mum didnt know what to do and just stood there with her mouth open staring at everyone. Then we put in a DVD of photos of when she was little and we were all laughing about how much she has changed over the years.

Then the food came, we all ate and then the DJ put some music on. My dad started singiing on karaoke and his phone rang. It was a joke that dad wanted to pull on mum. He said it was her cousin Jose Angel and that he was asking her to put the tele on. So she went and put the tele on and there was a film of my family in Madrid wishing her a happy birthday. She didnt know wether to laugh or cry. She had a really good time that night. So did we all.

On Sunday all my family came to my auntys house to eat and we were all talking about Saturday night.

That afternoon we went to scotland to go to my grandads grave and clean it up a bit and put new flowers on. It looked really nice and bright white. We look after it well.

That night we stayed in a hotel in Scotland and me and dad went to get some food. We got lost on the way back and it was really funny.

On Tuesday morning at about ten o´clock we set of again to Manchster to say bye to my uncle and his son before we went to the airport. When we got to the airport we quickly had lunch and looked for our friends that were coming home with us aswell. We got sat down on the plane and off we went.

We got home quite late and we was all tired out. That week we spent more time in the car than any where else. I hate going in the car up to Scotland. It seems to take forever and its my poor dad who has to drive.

I think it will be the last time we go back to England for a long time. But who knows because my dad likes to surprise us.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Quality vs Tabloid newspapers

The main difference between tabloid and quality newspapers is that tabloids are more colourful, have a "page 3", and usually contain information about politicians and other famous people if they have been caught having an affair or doing something out of the ordinary.
Quality newspapers explain storys more deeply, arent very colourful and when they contain stories about politicians it is about their elections and other important things that they are thinking about doing in the future.

Which newspapers belong to which group?

The Daily Mail:- Tabloid
Evening Standard:- Tabloid
The Times:-Quality
Daily Mirror:-Tabloid
The Sun:-Quality
The Independant:-Quality
Daily Telegraph:-Quality

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Why do we have two names for some farm animals?


The answer to this question goes right back to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.


The Battle of Hastings was the decisive Norman victory in the Norman conquest of Engalnd.


The battle took place on October 14, 106, between the Norman army of Duke William of Normandy, and the English army led by King Harold II. Harold was killed during the battle. It is believed that he got shot in the eye by an arrow. That is why the arrow s so famous. This battle is seen to be the point in which William gained control over England.
Background
Harold had claimed the throne of England for himself in January of 1066 soon after Edward the Conquerer died.
On September 28, 1066, William of Normandy, afer being delayed by a storm in the English Channel, asserted his claim to the English crown b military force, landing unopposed at a marshy, tidal inlet at Bulverhyte.
Legend has it that upon setting foot on the beach, William tripped and fell on his face. Turnimg potential embaressment in front of his troops into a face-saving exercise, he rose with his hands full of sand and shouted "I now take hold of the land of England!"
Upon hearing the news of the landing of the Duke's forces, Harold II, Hurried southward from London. He departed the morning of the 12th, gathering what available forces he could on the way. After camping at Long Bennington, he arrived at the battlefield the night 13 October.
The two Kings and their Countries.
HAROLD THE II:- He was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon King of England. He ruled from January 5 to October 14, 1066 when he was killed in the battle of Hastings.
WILLIAM TE CONQUERER:- He was a medieval monarch. He ruled as the Duke of Normandy from 1035 to 1087 and as Kingof England from 1066 to 1087.
Where is Normandy?
It is situated along the coasts of the south of the English Channel between Britanny (to the west) and Picardy (to the east) and comprises territory in northern France and the Channel Islands. The territory is divided between French and British sovereingity. It is divided for administrative purposes into two regiones: Basse-Normandie and Haute-Normandie.
What changed after the Battle of Hastings?
After the Battle of Hastings, William still had to conquer England. He marched from Hastings , crossing the Thames at Wallingford and then on towards London. At little Berkhamsted he received the surrender of the city. William took hostages to ensure the the surrender was kept.
William wanted to be crowned King as soon as possible. His Coronation took place on Christmas day, 1066. It was held at Westminister Abbey. During the Coronation, as the people inside the Abbey shouted out their acceptance of William, the troops outside thought a fight had broken out. Fearing that William had been attacked they began to set fire to the Saxons houses. As the Normn soldiers could not understand the language of the Saxins and the Saxons could not understand the language of the Normans, it was difficult for them to communicate.
William kept the promises he hd made to the barons who fought with him to give them English land.
We should remember that William the Conqueror was not only King of England, he also ruled Normandy an he spent a lot of his time there. Barons and knights in England spoke French for many years, and most writingwas in Latin or French.
The ordinary people spoke in their own Saxon language, and the Chroniclers continued to write in it untl the reign of William's grandson Henry II.
So why do we have two names for some farm animals?
Because to the French a pig was pork because thats the meat tat they ate.
A cow was also called beef.
When a Franch person went to an english farm and asked what a pig was, the English farmenr would say it was called a pig. But the French person would say it was a pork.
The English would grow pigs and the Normans (French) ate pork.