Week 2 Dialectic Journal

This week I'm using the second stanza from Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est. 

Gas! GAS! Quick boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim though the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

First of all, I just love this poem.  I like how it's in first and second person, so it's like you're actually there, in the war getting gassed.  I like how the author is so honest, he doesn't make war seem fun and heroic, he tells you the cold hard truth.  And how he makes it seem as the gas is a sea, green and deep, makes it more realistic, like you are there watching a man drown in gas.  I just think this poem well is written, and beautiful.

I underlined the appositive phrases.  

^w^

How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

So this is my first time doing this sort of thing and I'm not exactly sure how to do it..... But here goes.

When I read this bit from the book, I immediately knew it would be the part I would use for this blog.  I really like it. ^^

But we haven't read everything.

 Neither have I.  Nor has anyone, not even Harold Bloom.  Beginning readers, of course, are at a slight disadvantage, which is why professors are useful in providing a broader context.  But you definitely can get there on your own.  When I was a kid, I used to go mushroom hunting with my father.  I would never see then, but he'd say, "There's a yellow sponge," or "There are a couple of black spikes."  And because I knew they were there, my looking would become more focused and less vague.  In a few moments I would begin seeing them myself, not all of them, but some.  And once you begin seeing moral, you can't stop.  What a literature professor does is very similar: he tells you when you get near mushrooms.  Once you know that, though (and you generally are near them), you can hunt for mushrooms on your own. 

( from page 36 in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster)

  

When I read this passage it encouraged me to keep on reading this book! I thought it was going to be so dry and boring... And at some parts it is a little boring, but it's not what I thought it was going to be!  I like how the author is so.... Truthful.  He says beginning reader is at a slight disadvantage, I'm glad I'm not a beginning reader! ^^  I love how he uses something that we can relate to well , picking mushrooms with his dad, as the example.  It makes it seem... I don't know, so much more real to me.  He makes it seem easy to start reading like a professor, and maybe it is.  all you have to do is start to see the mushrooms, and then you cant stop seeing them! ^^  

I can't wait to read the other half of this book. ^^

well, it's not very good, but it's my first time doing this, hopefully I'll get better at it. ^^