Intro to Faith

If faith is forced on a child, taking them to Church every week, making them read the Bible, or sending them to religious school without giving them a choice, they will grow up rejecting that religion. I found in my research that there are many people who grew up with parents forcing religion down their throats don’t want to be a part of the religion now that they have a choice to be or not. I grew up in a very Catholic family and every week we went to Church. My mom sent me to Bible School and Bible Study during the summer. As I started to get older I found that going to Church twice a week for Bible School and Church was a burden and that I would much rather be at home. I could recite for anyone the Our Father, Hail Mary, Gloria, Nicene Creed, and about fifty Church songs. With all this knowledge stuffed in my head from about sixteen years of Church-going I feel like it is just taking up space at this point. I started to make excuses to got go to Church, even volunteering at our local Petsmart with my neighbor to clean cat’s cages. Right before I was confirmed I told my mom that I didn’t believe in God anymore. She didn’t freak out but she did still make me get Confirmed, I did it for her but I found it to be very hypocritical. Ever since my mom has only really made me go on Christmas and Easter, though she still goes every week. I believe that if my mother hadn’t made me go to Church

This first quote I found on a University’s website on how to raise children~

“Sometimes—because we truly want what’s best for our kids—we begin to demand that a child or teen go to church or participate in church activities. Often these demands seem to alienate children even further from religious activity.” –A report out of Brigham Young University

The second quote is from a blog at radicalleft.net. The writer grew up Christian and was conformed to hate it soon after his 16^th birthday.

“Think sex and drugs destroy America?
Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls"
You should probably fall to your knees right
this minute and thank a merciful
and lubricious and happily polymorphous sex God
that you don't know what they are

At some point the daughter stands up,
her pale arms wrapped around her daddy,
and reads aloud a formal pledge that she will
remain forever pure and virginal and sex-free
until she is handed over, by her dad
(who is actually called the "high priest" of the home),
like some sort of sad hymenic gift,
to her husband, who will receive her like
the sanitized and overprotected and
libidinously inept servant she so very much is
Praise!” –Max Blunt

This isn’t something that has started just recently. This passage is a blog of a former altar boy who discusses why he is no longer with the faith.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/outsidebox/2007/07/on_growing_up_catholic.html

Here is a fun video of a radical Christan woman who also is one of 'God's Warrior's'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjl54v1irbs

Close read of a poem

Now poetry is one of the things I find the hardest to review, so here we go. Commings:

The whole poem is in one line with no breaks, meaning no breaths. It seems as if it is being said by some drunk and rambling about something to his empty glass. He speaks of America in almost a sarcastic way but seems patriotic about it. He talks of the heroic happy dead being rushed to the slaughter. He may be talking about solders being rushed away to war. In the end he asks should the voice of Liberty be mute because of this? I think he's talking about how the people don't have a true say in what goes on in this case.

Part of my project, I just wanted to get it down so I have it on here, enjoy!

Evolution

I sit feet dangling with bows in my hair,
my best skirt and pink blouse on.
He is everywhere for me.
The tomato and cucumber told me so.
Everyday he is all around me and I feel him there.

There are 23 panels above my bowl cut hair.
Someone's voice calls me back to the front of the class.
A disruption to my day is all this is
and I begin to doodle on the desk.
Now twice a week I am aware of his presence.

A bribe, out to lunch a a trip downtown
gets me into the car.
My eyes grow heavy with the weight of the
early morning when I get a sharp elbow to the side.
To to get on my knees for nothing but my mother's smile.

The time is long passed when my eyes open
to the white roof of my room.
The car is gone and I am completely alone.
Now I feel like I know who I am,
nothing is there and it won't be forever.

MAUS

1. A specific theme or idea or question that propelled you through the text.
I had two questions that I focused on well reading the text. One, What is this story going to teach me about the Holocaust that I don't already know? Two, Why did the author chose animals in the place of people?

2. A specific Panel or set of panels that support this theme/idea/question
Well one of the things I didn't know about the Holocaust was how the richer Jewish people could use their influence and money to delay going to a internment camp. I also learned that many people used their family connections to stay as free as they could be for as long as they could get. This is shown on page 92 when they went to a registration for their passports to work or not. They went to a table where their cousin was working and he stamped their passports with a good stamp, as sown in the last panel on the page.
I found that Spiegelman's idea of using animals instead of people was a cleaver one. This made it much easier to determine race and religion of the characters by just looking at them. On page 66 you can see that Vladek puts on a pig mask to seem to be a Pole. in the second pannel on the page. This shows perhaps how easy it was for the Jewish people to do th is. You can clearly see the string and the differece between his skin and the mask.

So maybe I'm not on the right page but I want to work on the theme of 'Corruption'. I will focus on American Born Chinese and Blankets for our readings in class. I think I'm going to do a multi -media project. I'll pull from outside sources such as V for Vendetta and other Graphic novels that deal with this theme. Maybe I should go with the idea of temptation. I think that would fit with everything better.

Respect my Authority!

My close reading on Blankets will be on the last three panels of page 80. Craig is at winter bible camp and he is seen reading the Bible. A boy in the bunk below him sees what he is doing and starts to make fun of him for it. In the second panel Craig lies and says he was only organizing his things and not actually reading the Bible. The third panel shows him putting his bible away and asking for God's forgiveness. I find these panels very interesting because in the Bible God always said to stand up for what you believe in and Craig doesn't do this, he pretends to hate it there as much as the rest of the group does to fit in better or avoid humiliation.  In the first panel the boy who is making fun of Craig looks very dopy and dumb well Craig just looks annoyed. In the second one they have more of the same expression. The third panel shows Craig's shame with the dark lines down his face.

Craig's relationship with his father is the most interesting to me. It reminds me of my relationship with my father, though maybe not to that extreme. There is a level of fear that plays an important role between them. I believe this fear calms down in the middle of the book however because Craig doesn't seem to be so afraid to ask if he could stay with his girlfriend for a few weeks. 

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

This story always intrigued me as a child and when I read the names of the mice I knew who they were and what she was talking about instantaneously. But why was this story chosen? She needed a project and so she chose a story from the Bible but the writer's choice is much deeper than that. The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendnego is a story about three brothers who work for a King. The boys are good hardworking men of God. They worship him above all and never give into temptation. Then one day the King asks them to bow down and worship a golden idol. They refuse and are punished by being thrown in the furnace, but they do not burn. A bright light emerges from the furnace and there can be seen four figures, the three boys and another figure. This figure is seen as Jesus Christ. This story is referenced to show Jeannette's own struggle with her sexuality. She refuses to give into the 'idol' of heterosexuality.