How do I feel about home? Well, I am the kind of person that take for granted their home. Do not took me wrong, I like very much to be inside my home, but the fact that I go there every day with only a few exceptions in each month, makes me take it for grantes. But that usually changes when I am away from home a large period of time. I start to feel uncomfortable and I start to miss my house, my room, my bed. I also start to miss the food that is made in my house, the sound of my dogs barking, and to wake up in my cozy bed. I do love my house very much, but what make me love it even most is the fact that my family lives there too, and when I am away I miss them, including the maid, Juana who is part of the family already. One of the things I like the most of my house is to arrive after a harsh day and just lay in my bed for hours. I am dying to get away or do I hope never to leave? Well, some times I start to think that I would like very much to go to study in other country, but every time I think about it I start to get depress and I start to think in all the things that I will miss, all the things that I won’t see happen here. But that does not mean that I won’t be willing to leave my house forever. Eventually I will have to leave it forever and start my own home, with my own family.

     If danger suddenly arrives home and I am forced to leave my home, I will missed it even more if I leave it voluntarily. When something is took out of our hands, we want to fight for it back, no matter what are the consequences. Like the the story we just read, the ants were getting back home even if their home, which was the log, was on fire, and some of the even died. Some humans act similarly, because when a burglar enters their home, some probably will get back to recuperate their things, or kick out the thief, and may end hurted. I am the person who do not care much about material things, and I think that home can be anywhere where the family is together, but eventually I would want to get back what once was removed from me.

     What are these crimes? Well, there are many kind of vandalisms commited here in the city and in the communities. First of all, and the worst kind, is the murder of people. Just last week, I heard 17 shots near my house, and the next day I found out that it was the mother of a friend of a friend. The victim can be anyone, and by anyone I mean me and you also! It is very sad to hear that, but it is true. Other kind of vandalisms include burglaries of houses, fights in the middle of the street, violence between people and citizens, and even graffiti all over the walls. When does these crimes happen? Although they can happen at any time, usually those crimes are commited in the nights, when there is almost no light and when they can escape rapidly.

     Where are commited the crimes? Here in Guatemala, there are certain zones were violence and crime is more frequent than in other places. But now, those crimes are seen even in the “best” neighborhoods. Polices should take care of that, because if the rate continues like that, no one will want to visit Guatemala again ever. Why? There is no simple reason of why those vandalisms are commited, but the most probable of all is that is people trying to find money or food, or that the vandals and destructors are people that has no education at all and do not care about the rights of others. How? Well, the can do it with weapons or with their own bodies, actually as far as their imagination can go!

     In a city that is complete destroyed and were children are gathering around, children with no values and with nothing more to do than destroy other lifes is completely hollow. The characters of the story are empty withing, the do not fell antyhing, they do not think about other people. When the gand of destructor children gather to plan the total destruction of the house of Old Misery, the do not stop to think what can happen to him been old and alone. They do not think that this can affect his life for ever and may not recover ever. This is very sad, because a city full of hollownes is a city lost. This happenes half a centry ago in London, but this is happening again, values are lost, morals are not tought any more.

     In the city of the story, the word beautiful cannot go inside it. Everything is destroyed and no one has good manners. The only good thing that happens in the story is when they mention that the little child is going to chuchr, but at the end he escaped from it. That is really sad, and it should not happen neither now nor inthe future.

LETTER

Dear Friend:

     My house has been destroy by a group of violend children, vandalists, children with no morals of values. It is completely destroyed, except my bathroom, where they left me locked up while the finished to destroy the house. I do not know what I will do now, I am old, rheumatic, and with no family at all. I am completely lost right now, I have no money and I do not know where I can get it now. The worst thing of all is that I was kind to those kids, I even gave them chocolates once, and the accepted them. That day, they made noise all the day. I was only out for one day and half, and when I come back again, happy that I would return home, nothing is left. I have entered in depression, the only thing I hope is that I can come out of it without any problems.

Old Misery.

     The poem “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning is about a man who is literally mad, but in love with a girl. During the poem, the speaker experiences many different emotions. At the beginning of the peoem, when Porphyria arrives, his hear is breaking for her and just then, he relishes the warmth and cheer she creates. Anyway, he acted indifferent in front of her, like thinking what he would do next. As she made him hug her and as she say that she loves him, he felt proud and happy, as if he was a god and she was worshipping him. His hear swell, and he debated what to do. He felt she was only his, and with passion, he killes her. In the end, although he knows he did something really bad, he notices that God has said not a word, and as he was mad, he then though what he did was nothing! So he only kisses her and stays with her all night.

     His emotions changes during the poem. First with emotion, then with indifference, then with passion and doubt he killes her. Finally with indifference and love. He was completely mad. Why does the speaker murders his belover? Well, that is simple. He was crazy, so when passion filled his body as they were together, he did no knew what to do. So doubt arrived to, and beeing mad, the only thing he could think of, (he already thought that she was completely his and of no one more) he killed her. The worst thing is that at the end, although he knows he did something bad, he did not feel guilty at all.

LOVE WITHOUT LIMITS

     The emotion expressed in this sonnet, “Sonnet 43″ by Elizabeth Browning are indeed universal. That is because love is a universal emotion, an emotion that is felt by everyone around the world. Love can be so big, like in this poem, that a person can found many ways of loving a person, even to the infinite of the universe. Because love is unique, it will be different from person to person, but as an emotion is universal without a doubt. Why do love is unique? Is unique because each person will feel love differently and through different ways.

     “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” This line is the most popular of the poem because it is quotable and profound. In love, the most imoprtant characteristic of anything is profoundity. This line expresses how much one person can love another, in how many ways! The first part is a rhetorical question, a question that the person who receives it should already know it. Love is infinite, unique, and universal. All these is expressed in those lines.

     TEARS, IDLE TEARS: One of the adjectives that the speaker use to describe the past is “divine despair.” He also refers to the past as the “days that are no more.” But the three main adjectives that the speaker use throughout the poem is: sad, strange, and fresh. These adjectives are similar in the way that they express profoundity further then their literal meanings in the poem, representing it with metaphors in the poem. These three adjectives are different because each one stands for something. Fresh as things for the first time, sad as the last things of something, and strange as darkness. Each ajective describe different things in the poem, but in the end are united to describe the days that are no more.

     The tone of the poem is dark and melancholic. All the poem it is talked about sadness, strange things, and divine despair about the past. The thing that is precious about the past according to the speaker is love. At the end of the poem the speaker starts talking about the first love and the kisses, that both are things precious in life that will be remembered and missed even after death. The speaker, without doubt, had a miserable past. But it was the past itself that cause the speaker use that kind of tone. It was miserable because of the way he say the things and the adjectives he uses during all the poem. Also all the metaphors the speaker use are somewhat dark and very melancholic.

     THE POWER OF NATURE: Two poems are included, which are “The Eagle: A Fragment” and “Flower in the Crannied Wall.” Both contained messages and lessons from nature. In the one of the eage, the speaker states that nature is powerful and completely tameless. It shows the strength of the eage as a thunder and nothing can stop it. On the one of the flower, it shows the mystery of nature and how it is form. How nature can be incredible in its own ways and an enigma to all humankind. In what ways are the two poems different? In the one of the flower, nautre is beautiful and divine, while on the one of the eagle, it is invincible and nothing can stop it.  

“Close to the sun in lonely lands” (From The Eagle: A Fragment)  This quotation states that the egale is lonely and mysterious, but by being close to the sun, it represents a tameless strength.

“(If) I could understand what you are… I should know what God and man is” (From Flower in the Crannied Wall) How humankind tries to undestand nature, like a single flower, but it is a complete mystery, because it was made by God, and it is divine.

     SHATTERING GLASS: In the “Lady of Shalott” a lot of feelings can be perceived by different words: Cracked, it represents failure and something that has gone wrong. When the mirror craked, it meant for me that something terrible was about to happen, that years of traditions now have been broken. Mirror, it represented the world in another point of view, even all up-side-down. A world that is not real to everyone else, just to the Lady. Curse, this word represented a tragedy at the end. Something that could not be stop by the Lady, and that she would had to suffer a terrible destiny. Shadows, it represented tha darkness in the poem, the unseen future. The shadows of a world that the Lady had not ever seen.

     The Lady of Shalott become half sick of the shadows that she sees in the mirror because she is tired of seen half of the real world. In the mirror she sees just like the reflection of the world, not the real part and that can be upsetting and annoying. That statement of “half sick” hints that she will do something about it and probably stop seeing the mirror and start to see the real world, even if the curse is triggered. To see only shadows of something and not the object in its natural form could be sick to anyone, and a person would do anything to stop seeing those shadows!

     “Tears, Idle Tears,” is a poem by Lord Tennyson. How can tears be “iddle”? When the tears are idle, it means that someone is crying for no specific reason, there is no emotion. Someone is just crying because, when there is no meaning behind. I don’t really think that I have cried without knowing why, because there is always an emotion in the middle or a past memory. For me, crying without a meaning is just a little ridiculous, because there is always a cause, something that makes a thing happen, and that thing now is crying. Even though I found it a little ridiculous, I really think that there are some people that cry without a specific reason or even a meaning. Those people cry without knowing wahy, because are tears from despair, from the depths of the divine, of the days that are no more.

     Divine despair, is when someone is completely sad and extremly despair about something that he or she does not understand because is absolutely divine. When something is divine, people cannot explain it with material words, is just magical and even impossible. Is the despair of the depths of the heart and the body where no one and no thing can reach. When Adam and Eve fall in the story of the Bible, there was despair from everyone. From the divinde God, because of deception, and from the couple because they felt abadoned and felt the treason in their bodies. They passed a sin to us for the eternity of times, so that could be the reason for the existential sadness of the speaker.

     For me, “Death in Life” makes perfect sense in the poem, and even in contemporary life. Although is a contradiction, it has a very profound meaning when it is used correctly. For me it means when someone’s life has no meaning anymore and that person wants even to die or just lie there forever without doing anything. Because that is a life without “real life” where the person is not enjoying it and wants just to become an inanimated, meaningless creature of Earth. Is the kind of life where death is just the best option, a life that is idle. And there comes the phrase “Death in Life.” My response to this line is that I need to have goals and specific objectives in my life, or I would become one of those many dead “living” creatures that exist today. I have never felt this way, and I hope I never feel it, because it might be just completely desparing and people might even want suicide. It will be very hard to overcome such feeling, so for me, is better to prevent it.

     Oh, I have my story against nature. It was a few years ago, like four, and it was on my vacations of Holy Week, just after Spring Break. Well, on those vacations, my family and me have decided to go to Izabal to Amatique Bay, a beautiful hotel with a beach toward the lake. Anyway, we where already there having a great time in the pool and all the different games that we experienced when on of my uncles decided that we should take a trip on boat to the castle of “San Felipe.” Everyone was very excited, especially me, because although I had already go there, I was too little to remember with detail everything I say. So the day we were supposed to take the trip everyone woke very happy, but with one little problem, it look like a storm day.

     Some of the members of my family said that we should postpone it, but the majority, including myself, voted for taking the trip despite the weather conditions. The sky was completely gray and the water looked a little agitated. So after a very short debate, we decided to go, so the next thing we did was to go inside the boat and start our trip. Just was we were approaching inside the ocean, it started to rain a little, just a little sprinkle. But as we move inward, everything changed. Very heavy rains started to drop, and the ocean was very, very wild. At first all my cousins and I were completely excited about it, and we even asked the pilot to pass through some of the big waves. We were having the best fun of our lives and we were already soaked wet with salty water. But time passed, and the rain just got worst and the waves got bigger. Everyone started to feel very cold, and even some of them nauseas. My little cousins were already crying, and the adults started to worry about what was going to happen. I got really scared in that moment, but I started to think that if it was that bad, we did not have even go out in the first place.

     It was like an hour of scare faces and worried eyes, but finally we reach the coast. I was completely happy I reach the coast alive, and everyone was so excited that we saw the castle with more emotions than every before. We passed a great time there. I even bough a new dry shirt to wear in the trip back. Going back was espectacular, the rain was gone and the sun was bright and shiny. We all could appreciate the beauty of the ocean and its surruondings. When we reached home again, I knew that it was going to be a moment I would never forgot, the moment I felt completely thrilled and scared by the great Nature.

     The use of irony is very common in many literature works, where there is a descrepancy between expectations and reality. The fundamental irowny in the sonnet “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley is that there is a sculpture in the middle of the desert, a sculpture that has almost wear out and there is only few remains. In the base of the sculpture says “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works you mighty, and despair.” And although the phrase said look at my works and despair, in the surroundings, there was nothing, only ruins and vast sand. So the irony was that although the phrase survived time, the sculpture around it did not.

     Pride is a characteristics many people develop. In this poem, the king of the person that made the sculpture had pride when he or she wrote the phrase in the base of the sculpture. It said that everyonw should despair with all the beatiful art he had made, but as time passed, everything was destroyed. So Ozymandias was a proud person, thinking that his sculptures would be inmortal, when they did not. To artists pride apply as well, because they might think that one of their arts will become very important or will survive forever, and it never happens.

     Yes, of course. Because there might be a political leader who thinks that will make a change in his country, like the sculptures in the poem, and think that those changes will last forever. And everyone will admire him for those changes until the end of time. But suddently other political leader can destroy those changes, or time can devastate them so in the end, there will only remain his words, but nothing material, all would had perished. So yes, it applies to the contemporary world and even in politics.

     This poem has been criticized as sentimental and dependent on clichés. I agree in part with this statement, but is not completely true. Although this poem is full of feelings and is considered to be very sentimental toward the girl, it has an esence of purity and honesty, which maked the reader believe in what he or she is reading. At least, that is what happens to me. The speacker describes the woman so perfectly that in the end, anyone could want that kind of girl in his life. It is, indeed, full of clichés about women, saying that is soft, eloquent and calm; and about her great beauty. But to any man, it can be true when pure love is present.

     Does inward nature can be revealed by outward appearances? No, not all the times. It is almost impossible to determine the inward nature of any person just from the outward appearances. That happens because a person can be completely false from the outside, and pretend to be someone else. Many people agree that in the face and the eyes, it can be determined the inward nature of a person; by seeing the pureness of the eyes and the profoundity, or even the facial expression that person makes. That is what happens in the poem, that in the softness of her face and her beautiful eyes, the speacker can conclude about her personality and actions. Although these is sometimes true, most of the times it can be devious. So a person must not be based only on that.

     All these staznas from the poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, were my favorite ones. They also strike me as particularly quotable. But, what situations in contemporary life would you apply the lines to? Well, in the first one, when people is alone in a big trouble, he or she feels that no one would help him or her, because ther is no one around. Not even a saint that would come down to help, and person begins to feel despair. That happens every day in real life. The second is an irony, when you have something all around you and you don’t need it, water water every where nor any drop to drink. In real life, it can happen with material things. In the third is the burden of guilt, and any person that did something bad, feels a sensation that bothers him a lot. Is like the Albatross in the neck of the mariner and is a very heavy burden. In the last one, it says that when someone is alone, he feels that even God is not there. People may think that in times of problems and despair.

     Do you agree or disagree with Coleridge about the message in this poem? Why? Well, I really agree with Coleridge because I am a person who thinks a lot before doing something. And although can turn boring and somethimes is dull, it has serve in many different ocassion to overcome problems or any obstacles I find. The moral in this poem is expressed openly, and that is they way it should had been, not different. The imagination that this poem has is for me, sufficient, because it has a lot of extravagant lines with supernatural features.

     This ballad is famous for its use of vivid figurative language  and memorable sound devices. Find examples of especially effective examples of simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme. A good simile can be “I pass, like night, from line to line” where there is a comparisson between the nigh and the steps of the speaker. A metaphor, “what evil looks, had I from young and old” implies that the evil has cough the speaker. Personification of the Death that has a shape or of the wind, that did not blew. Alliteration of the woman who has death-in-live. Assonance in most of the poem, where there is no rhyme at all. An internal rhyme “and we did speak only to break, the silence of the sea!”

     Why do human beings do evil? Why do evil people sometimes prosper? Why does God allow innocent children to suffer? Humans do evil because of we all have a “free choice” in which we can decide to do everything we can and think about. Some people, according to some of the most famous philosophers of history, are naturally evil, so it is in their instincts. For in my own opinion, people are evil because they were not teach any moral or values when they were children, and grew up just to do things bad, without really noticing how bad their actions are. Evil people almost always prosper because they do not mind hurting others, or passing over them to succeed. They will do anything to achieve what they have in their minds, and I mean anything by anything, even kill some innocent guy. In the other hand, good and moral people see all these, and cannot pass over other people by hurting them, and that is why there is more difficult for them to succeed. I really don’t have a solid and good response of why does God allow innocent children to suffer. It is completely bad, and the world would be better if there was no suffering to innocent and good people, but it happens, and it is probably because innocent children have to grow strong before converting into a man and achieve all their goals in life. So for me, is like a test and nothing more.

     Which social problem would you choose? Why would you choose it? Violence and abuse toward children of the world. Evil of our day is worst than ever, and it will probably continue to grow. In the past, violence at least was toward other people, toward “enemies,” and it was completely evil and bad, but now, violence can happen everywhere, husbands to their wifes, teachers toward students, students toward teachers! Between brothers and sisters, and the worst of all, parents toward their children! For me, it is probably one of the worst things violence has now-a-day. To attack a child is unbereable, and shall not be forgiven. A children is completely innocent, it is in the stage where he or she has not much experience, and its innocence makes him or her vulnerable to almost everything. But violence and abuse is not the answer. I would choose this social problems, because it is likely to reach more all of the peron’s hearts, and maybe they could also do something to stop it. When they realize how grave the problem is, they will act and stop this horrible violence.

     What happens to anger that is allowed to grow and fester, anger that is nurtured with our own deceit? Anger is a very common feeling, but most people, when they fell anger, just let it our by screaming, by yelling at other people, or even react violently. But that’s it, and the anger is gone. But there are some times when people don’t let that anger escapes from him or her, or is just that the anger is so much, that not all of it goes out of the body and mind. So that kind of anger starts to get accummulated and accumulated inside the person until one day it explodes or convert into a big mass of anger that the person cannot longer control. Then, that is why people tend to have angry explosions, acting extremely violently or becoming like insane. Or like it says in the poem, a fruit is formed, and that fruist may spread its seeds, spreading anger and violence to other people.

     What does confession mean to you? What purpose does confession have for the teller and listener? Is a listener even necessary? Why do you think the act of confession plays such an important part in law and religion? A confession is when a person tells everything that is inside his or her head relating certain subject. Is to let it go, to let go that burden that was bothering that person with all those “secrets” he or she had inside the head. For me, the real purpose of confession for the teller is to let go all those thoughts that have been forming inside his or her mind, and get rid of all of them. Is like throwing a very heavy burden away. For the listener is just to help the one that is telling his or her secrets and if it is a problem, probably give some advice. A listener, for me, is necessary, because in that way, the teller gets more help and is like passing some of the burden to him or her, so the listener can help with it. In law beacue in that way, the confessors are determined guilty or innocent in what have they done, and in religion to forgive some of the sins so the confessor have his or her soul clean.