Over break, I was lucky enough to have the time to read "The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. I was inspired to read this greatAmerican novel after attending an English lecture concerning this particular book when I visited Reed College in Portland, Oregon over Thanksgiving break. Coincidentally, The Invisible man and Douglas's autobiography are very reflective of one another and touch on many of the same points. The Invisible man is much more conceptual and creatively well written than Douglas's autobiography but I encourage anyone who was interested in Douglas's compelling tale of his escape to freedom should read Ralph... Continue reading

I am taking American History this year along with AP American Literature. I have noticed consistant and powerful connections between Frederick Douglass' autobiography in Literature class and the DBQ documents we are currently studying in History to answer the question: To what extent were slaves able to wrest autonomy from their master on antibellum southern plantations? It has been very useful to draw inferences and evidece from both sources and bring the material from one class into the next. One of the reoccuring subjects in both Frederick Douglass and the DBQ packet is the vigourous undertaking of slaveholders to manipulate... Continue reading

I stumbled upon a very curious line in The Scarlet Letter, in chapter 5 on page 54. It occurs at a point in the novel in which the omnipotent narrator (in third person) is explaining to the reader why Hester Prynne chose to stay among the Puritans when she could have easily returned to Europe where she could have left her old life (and the Scarlet Letter) far behind her, forever ceasing to be persecuted for her past adultery. The line reads: "But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom,... Continue reading

When we started discussing logical fallacies this week, we found that the definition of a non sequitur fallacy can be identified as an illogical argument where the conclusion has no relation to the premises that were given. Fallacies such as this often appear in the context of an extreme exaggeration. With his in mind, an excellent example of a non sequitur fallacy can be found in the modern teen classic film; Mean Girls; when the Sex Ed teacher at this average American high school tries to convince the students to practice abstinence using an extremely blunt and simple exaggeration that... Continue reading

Last week we finished th novel Catcher in the Rye by J. D Salinger. This week in class, we are watching the Wes Anderson film;Rushmore while drawing parallels and differences between the 1950s novel and the modern movie. The two most easily comparable people in these stories are the main characters; Holden from Catcher, and Max, from Rushmore. Both boys attend prestigious all-boys boarding schools from which they are about to get kicked out of for failing too many classes. Both characters pretend to be older/ more mature than they actually are. Holden and Max both have a fascination of... Continue reading

After reading American Ideology, an excerpt from the book, Declrations of Independence (1991)by Howard Zinn, I was curios about who exactly Zinn is/was and what kind of authority he is in his field. I found out, through searching web biographies, that Zinn was born in 1922 and only just died this year. Zinn was born and raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, New York. Zinn was in the air force, and flew on bombing missions in WWII. He later attributed this experience as a key development in his life that later led to his strong opposition of war and... Continue reading