Sunday, June 7, 2009

Cat in the Hat blog #1

Character Analysis:

The character that I am going to analyze is going to be the Cat in the book The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. According to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis paper, the Cat is an Id ego, he does many things that our animal instincts want to do, what we want to do to have fun, and to complete our desires no matter what, as Sigmund Freud has said; “...The part of the personality that contains our primitive impulses: such as thirst, anger, hunger; and the desire for instant gratification or release. According to Sigmund Freud, we are born with our Id. The Id is an important part of our personality because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the Id is based on our pleasure principle. The Id wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the other circumstances of the situation. The Id is sometimes represented by a devil sitting on someone's shoulder. As this devil sits there, he tells the ego to base behavior on how the action will influence the self, specifically how it will bring the self pleasure.” As the Cat is an Id type of ego, he also plays a huge part within this book and the plot of the story. He plays a huge part because without this Id character, there would not being a conflict, therefore just leaving the children and the fish at home, alone, with nothing to do but waiting for their mother to arrive home. Also, he provides the solution, or conclusion, to the end of the story, which is a very big role with-in this story because he helps make the house completely normal again before the mother comes home. Now, the Cat has an Id like personality because he comes into the children’s and the fish’s house and completely messes it up by bringing in his shenanigans and messes with the fish while destroying the entire house. He also shows signs that he is an Id like ego by letting the mess get bigger within the house, not even caring about it getting messy while ignoring everyone elses plea for him to leave the house and stop causing the messes, and just doing as he wishes. In all, the Cat is an Id like personality because all he does is cause trouble for the narrator and his sister and the fish. He completely messes up their house without no care and then refuses to listen to anyone else. Also, he is an Id like ego with-in the story because he helps causes the conflict within this story by causing the mess while the mother is close to the home, which makes him a very important of the plot and story. Even though he was an Id throughout most of the book, he became a good superego by helping the kids clean-up their house and everything, making everything nice and neat before the children's mother come home.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Persepolis Blog #2

2) Yes, Persepolis is more powerful than if she had fictionalized it because instead of just reaching out to the adult world of reading, it extends to the kid and the teenage world of reading because it has pictures, which keeps kids entertain and makes them want to read, as well as to teenagers because it is simple to read, you do not need to visualize anything because the comic book like set-up helps you see what is directly going on, therefore it is easier to remember, which i can relate to because sometimes if i have a picture in my head, i can memorize it better and even understand it even more. At the sametime, it doesn't appear as powerful because it has a comic-book like set-up, which i believe, a lot of adults won't pay attention to much at first, because I think that they believe that if it's a comic book like setting, it will have a comic book like writing, a hero with a problem, the hero solves it, then it ends, but in this book, there is no hero..., just a girl who is telling about her whole life with her family and the surroundings around her that helped shaped her to who she is, so it's just not for kids and teenagers, it is for everyone to read because it tells a real story of how one persons life was shaped by her country. Within memiors, there are benefits and drawbacks. The benefits would have to be that we get to hear straight from the persons point of view, but the drawback would be that we do not know if most of the things are true, because it's from the authors point of view, so everything may not be factual.

3)Satrapi goes and challenges this myth by showing that not all Iranians are like that, a lot of them rioted and protested against this, they hated it and did not want it in their country at all, but they did not have enough power to stop this. Persepolis dispels and confirms my views on Iran because at first, i thought that all iranians were like that, but now i see that only some of these people in iran are like this, not all of them at all, which kind of makes me feel bad for misjudging people based on their government and what they stand for, but at the same times, shows me that iran was corrupted government wise, not the population wise, well, just maybe part of the population. It helps deepen my understanding of iran because i feel more sympathetic because they have suffered so much in their past, also that they people do not have as much freedom as we do in the U.S., which makes me think how i should be glad to be able to live within this country, and that a lot of people in Iran are just striving to live.

9) They did this by doing what they thought was fun, and they still bought banned stuff like CD's, Posters, and other western things that were not allowed within Iran. If I was a child within this environment, i would have been scared and probably would have followed the rules because i cherish my life and want to keep on living, and also, go with my beliefs because i am proud of my religion and cherish it and appreciate it, so i would not rebel as much as satrapi because i would be scared to be punished, locked in prison for so long, then tortured, then maybe even killed. As i am now, a teen, i have rebelled a lot of things, i have rebelled against my parents, (of course, everyone does it sooner or later), by staying out later, not doing crap, and just kind of doing whatever i wanted even though they yelled and lectured at me, but i rebel even less now because i know that they are just looking out for me because they just care and worry about me, but i still stay out later than i am supposed to because i do nothing bad, just chilling at a friends house who lives like four blocks away from me. Satrapi, in a lot of ways, is a normal kid because she plays with other kids, she talks to other kids, gets mad a lot, is loud and annoying, and talks to her parents a lot, which is what i did when i was a kid, i would always hang out with my parents, just talking to them in hmong and asking weird questions.