Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Chaps 1-4: 1st episode "Papa Returns"

                      Themes 
Superstition - when he kills the spider and his pa comes back
gullibility- when the gang charges after Sunday school kids believing that the elephants and the a-rabs.
The role of the outsider- when the lady teaches Huck about praying
                 
  allusions

bible- moses
Arabian nights
Don Quixote


                      characters
Aunt Polly, Mary, Widow Douglas, tom, Judge Thatcher, Huck, pap, Tommy Barnes, miss Watson, Joe Harper, Ben Rogers, Jim

                     part of plot
exposition

                   summary
In this episode Huck gets adopted by Widow Douglas and she tries to teach Huck about manners and how to be polite.  She tries to tame him.  She also teaches him about the bible and how praying will help him.  Huck doesn't understand how praying will help him. He prays for a fishing pole and hooks and gets the pole but not the hooks and gets mad.  Then Huck meets up with Tom Sawyer and the two start a gang with Tommy, Joe Harper, and Ben Rogers.  They decide they are going to go rob a group of a-rabs that have elephants and camels that are stocked with diamonds.  Huck decides to go because he wants to see an elephant, but when they get there there is no one there but Sunday School kids.  So they decide to rob the Sunday school kids, and then they get yelled at by the teachers.  Then Huck asks Tom where the elephants and the A-rabs were, and Tom said they were there but they were cloaked by wizards.  Which just means that Tom was using his imagination where Huck was not as educated as him and didn't know what imagination was.  After that robbery the gang decided not to be a gang anymore.  Then Huck a few days later goes outside and finds footsteps that are his father's footsteps, and then Huck runs down and tells Judge Thatcher that he wants him to have all his money.  And he gives Judge Thatcher $6,000, but Judge Thatcher doesn't truly take the money but tells Huck he does.  Huck goes to Jim and asks Jim to have the hairball tell Jim Huck's future.  The hairball tells Huck complete nonsense, except he tells Huck to stay away from water.  Which is a foreshadow to a later chapter when Huck gets on the raft and sails the Mississippi River.  Then Huck finds out his papa isn't dead, and he is sitting in Huck's room. 

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

journal 43 chapter 22 pg 208

"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother.  "We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest."

What this is saying is that Hester doesn't want Pearl to talk about Dimmesdale and Hester's plan to leave so that they can be together and be free to be a family. 

journal 42 chapter 22 pg 207

"Hester Prynne gazing stedfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she new not; unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach."
This is saying that Hester Prynne is looking at Dimmesdale who is off in his own world, thinking about different stuff.  Then Hester is thinking about the woods and how they were holding hands and all that stuff, and then she starts thinking about their future and wonders if Dimmesdale will act the way he acts in the woods in the new society or if he will act they way he acts as the minister towards her in the new society. 

Journal 41 Chapter 21 pg 199

" What a strange, sad man is he!""said the child as if speaking partly to herself."In the dark night-time, he calls us to him. and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood on with him on the scaffold yonder!......."
What this is saying is that Pearl is putting together the pieces of the puzzel to why Dimmesdale wont be seen with them in public but in the woods he has a different personality. Dimmesdale will claim them as his family when it is dark and no one can see them. 

journal 40 chapter 20 pg 189

" It was the same town as heretofore; but the same minister returned not from the forest"
What this is saying is that the events that had occurred in the forest had changed Dimmesdale, but the town while he was gone had not changed at all.  Dimmesdale has changed because he is going to leave with Hester and Pearl and go to move to England and start a whole new life and not worry about what he was doing before. 

journal 39 chapter 20 pg195

"I think to need no more of your drugs my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand"
What Dimmesdale is saying is that because he has figured out how to take care of his problems he does not need the drugs to help him cope with his secret.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Journal 38 Chapter 19 pg181

"It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest-gloom; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine..." (181)
Pearl is standing on the side that the sun is shining down on where as Hester and Dimmesdale are standing on the side where it is dark and shadowy.  This is because Hester and Dimmesdale have a secret  that they are hiding from everybody, and Pearl is pure and has no secrets. 

Journal 37 Chapter 19 pg182

"...this brook is the boundary between two worlds..." (182)

Hester and Pearl have had this world that they have had since the very beginning.  Where before Pearl was born Hester and Dimmesdale had a world that they had created, and now Hester wants to bring Pearl into the world that Hester and Dimmesdale have created.  The side of the brook that Pearl is on right now is the side of the world that Pearl grew up with, and if she crosses over she is saying yes to the world that Hester and Dimmesdale created. 

Journal 36 Chapter 18 pg178

"...the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child." (pg 178)
The creatures in the woods and the plants all like her, they treat her as family, they are not afraid of her, where as the animals are afraid of other people.   

Journal 35 Chapter 18 pg 176

"With this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it had never been!" (176)
Hester is saying she is going to become a new person, she is not going to let anything from the past hold her back, for example the A.  She is going to start a new life with Dimmesdale. 

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Journal 34 Chapter 17 pg167

"...the contrast between what I seem and what I am!" (pg 167)
What Dimmesdale is saying is that he is truly a sinner but the society thinks that he is perfect and never committed a sin.  This is important to Dimmesdale because he wants society to think he is a perfect human being and hasn't sinned.  He wants everyone to like him. 

Journal 33 Chapter 17 pg166

"...they glided back into the shadow of the woods..." (pg 166)

Hester and Dimmesdale have to go into the woods to talk because Dimmesdale doesn't want to be found out for being a sinner like Hester.  In society people will judge them where as in the woods there is nothing there to judge them. 

Journal 32 Chapter 16 pg163

"...he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black man set his mark in that place?  But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?" (163)

Pearl is asking Hester why hasn't Dimmesdale revealed his sin like her mother has. 

Journal 31 Chapter 16 pg 162

"'Once in my life I met the Black Man!' said her mother.  'This scarlet letter is his mark!" (pg 162)
What this is saying is when Hester decided to commit her sin she is saying she was tempted by the Devil to have sex with Dimmesdale, and because of it the Devil marked her with the letter A. 

Journal 30 Chapter 15 pg 153

"...a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity, whichever way he turned himself?" (153)

That is saying that there is a dark shadow following Chillingworth that is showing his darker side.

journal 29 chapter 15 pg 156

"It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his hear!" pg 156

Pearl knows that there is a connection between the letter A on her mother and Dimmesdale always touching his heart.  She doesn't know what the connection is, just that there is a connection between the two.

journal 28 chapter 14 pg 151

"..the whole evil within him to be written on his face features," (pg 151).
This means that because of Chillingworth wanting to torment Dimmesdale, it is being shown on his body even though he is not telling anybody about his revenge.  They can tell through his features that something is wrong. 

Friday, November 18, 2011

Journal 27 Chapter 14 pg151

"for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend!"

What this is talking about is how Chillingworth in the pursuit of trying to seek revenge, has lost his wise and caring self and has turned evil and bad. 

Journal 26 Chapter 13 pg139

"Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy."

Hester has changed the meaning of the letter "a" from adulterer to able because she has been helping out around the town.

Journal 25 Chapter 13 pg 142

"...the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom.  It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril."
Hester is changing the meaning of the "a" on her chest by doing good deeds.  She used to get laughed at and mocked because of the "a", but now she can go into to homes and tend the sick.  It has the sacredness of a cross on a nun.

journal 14 pg 92

"The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather that the mansion of a grave old Puritain ruler."
This is comparing the governor's house to Aladdin's palace, which is bad because Governor Bellingham having all these nice things is going against what the Puritains believe. 

journal 15

"where now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,was the scarlet letter so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and inclosing her in a sphere by herself."
Which is saying that she is not trying at all to hide the letter, but instead she is just not letting it bother her.  The punshment of wearing the "a" is truly brought out to show that she is different from the rest of the people and they will forever rember that.

journal 24 chapter 12 Pg 136

"All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless perfectly aware the little Pearl was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold."

Chillingworth sees, because of the the letter A that is above their head that is glistening with light that illuminates, the form of Hester and Pearl and Dimmesdale holding hands.   It gives Chillingworth proof of what he has suspected, which is Dimmesdale is guilty.

journal 23 ch 12 Pg 134

"'Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?,' inquired Pearl.
Nay; not so, my little Pearl!"
This shows how Dimmesdale will not show/tell the town about how he has sinned.    He won't tell exactly what he has done to sin either, he only tells that he has sinned when no one is really paying attention.  It shows that the scaffold has the power to control people becouse if he goes and confesses to his sin up on the scaffold then every one will judge him.    If he continues to confess without the details, then it just seems like he has done something small.  

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Journal 22 chapter 11 Pg

He had told his hearers thet he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity; and that the only wonder was, that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty! 
What this is saying is that Dimmesdale confessed to a sin that he has done, but he is not telling them what he really did. So the church people think that he is confessing to a minor sin which makes them feel closer to him knowing that he had sinned as well.  If he is saying that his sin is so bad that they are just thinking that he didn't open a door for a lady or something else minor then their sins are much worse than that.

journal 21 chapter 11 Pg 125

"....mr Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself wether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!"
What this is saying is he is trying to think of what type of thing will grow on top of his grave if he decides to keep his secret from every one. In his life Dimmesdale is concerned with what pepole think about him, will he be concerned with what they will think about him in his grave or what grows on top of his grave?

journal 20 chapter 10 Pg 115

"...that these black weeds have sprung up out of buried heart to manifest an unspoken crime?"
What this is talking about is how Chillingworth is trying to scare Dimmesdale into telling his secert.   He is telling him this story of how another man did a crime and he had never confesed to it.  So when he died the secret grew out of him in the form of a plant.

journal 19 chapter 10 Pg 114

Chillingworth pursues many careful but insistent conversations, trying to find a way to get Dimmesdale to confess to his sin, but also making very sure that he does not let Dimmesdale suspect. Chillingworth is trying to do anything of the sort Chillingworth senses a secret animal side in Dimmesdale and wishes to reveal it. Dimmesdale, unfortunately cannot recognize what Chillingworth is doing "Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.