extra credit a winters tale reasponse (play)

okay now i'm going to be completely honest right now, i totally hated that play it made no sense what so ever. now the play me my friend and our parents i think was an abridged version so it didn't have all five acts but still it was long and the first act i thought i was going to have to puke out my ears and eyes. i saw this over the summer and as far as specifics go i can't really remember but i think i can give a general plot outline thing. basically two old friend kings are meeting together for the first time in a while and the king that is visiting has to go back to his homeland. the other king wants him to stay longer so he tries to persuade him into staying. he refuses so the other king asks his wife to talk to him about staying and he convinces him in three short speeches. the king then becomes consumed with a crazy paranoia that his pregnant wife had an affair with his friend. basically the other king leaves and the kings wife is arrested. the queen gives birth in prison and the king considers killing it but actually he ends up just casting it away. during the queens trial the oracle pops up and says that she is innocent but the king refuses to listen. the queen faints and is thought to have died and from that day forth promises to grieve for her. the baby gets picked up by a shepherd who becomes rich because the baby was sent with a lot of money. basically the rest of it is that the other kings son after 16 years wants to marry the shepherds daughter (the kings daughter) so they slip into a party and find her and they agree to marry. now the other king chases them out so they flee to the kings country where the king and his daughter finally unite. he takes his daughter to a statue of the queen which then comes alive and starts talking and says that she was waiting for the oracle prophecy to be fulfilled.
ow my hand hurts from all the typing.

reasponse to my papa's waltz

this poem, out of all of the poems i have read with my class is definitely the most controversial. i read this poem for the first time last year and just like this year it sparked 2 sides and 2 ideas. now i personally think that the father wasn't beating his son because i think that the whole tone of the poem would be different if the memory was something sad. this poem i think has it's own little beat and i don't think Theodore Roethke would have done that if he was remembering a sad event.

some people make the argument that "oh well the father is drunk so he must be abusing his son" i disagree with this, just because you're drunk doesn't mean that you have to go beating people. i don't think this point is really valid i mean i have seen many drunk people and they don't go around randomly beating people. they're just a little loopy.

also another big reason why i think that this was a happy event is because the title of the poem is "my papa's waltz" i personally wouldn't associate this title with beating or with unhappy memories. another reason why i think that its just having fun is the meaning of the word romped,"rompedpast participle, past tense of romp (Verb)1. (esp. of a child or animal) Play roughly and energetically.

 it says play not abuse. 

another thing people seem to misinterpret is the line "You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt"  i think that this is actually just enforcing the fact that this is a waltz and what he means by beat time is he kept the waltz's 3/4 beat by tapping it on his head. since all waltz have a 3/4 beat i think his father was just showing his son that what they were dancing was a waltz. because if he was actually beating him why would he be beating time. 

these are some of the few reasons why i think that the father isn't beating his son, but then again there really isn't a way to be sure because we don't know what happened. so it is still up to you to decide but this is what i think.

MY PAPA'S WALTZ
 
  The whiskey on your breath
  Could make a small boy dizzy;
  But I hung on like death:
  Such waltzing was not easy.
 
  We romped until the pans
  Slid from the kitchen shelf;
  My mother's countenance
  Could not unfrown itself.
 
  The hand that held my wrist
  Was battered on one knuckle;
  At every step you missed
  My right ear scraped a buckle.
  
  You beat time on my head
  With a palm caked hard by dirt,
  Then waltzed me off to bed 
  Still clinging to your shirt.

independent reading reasponse

I am reading a book called "Jews without money" this book is a half fictional autobiography. It is Michael Gold's autobiography and it was used in the holocaust as Nazi propaganda. This book is about a 6 year old boy named Mikey who lives in the lower east side during the early 1900's. Mikey belongs to what he refers to as a gang but really it's just his little group of friends. Mikey has seen some pretty crazy stuff and known (sort of) what they were, he taunts prostitutes, makes friends with a pimp, takes care of a hobo and meets a one eyed gangster and he’s only six.

What this book so far has showed me is that the lower east side wasn't all just factories and big busy streets; it also had its little alleyways where all the dirty business goes on. whenever i use to hear of the olden days lower east side I always thought of busy streets pushcarts and such which, don't get me wrong are in the book, but you never are told of the dirty things that go on. This actually really interested me while I first read it. Another very weird thing for me at least is the fact that this 6 year old kid is basically living his life in these back alleys and he makes friends with pimps and hobos and prostitutes, it just seems weird.

independent reading reasponse revised

I am reading a book called "Jews without money" this book is a half fictional autobiography. It is Michael Gold's autobiography and it was used in the holocaust as Nazi propaganda. This book is about a 6 year old boy named Mikey who lives in the lower east side during the early 1900's. Mikey belongs to what he refers to as a gang but really it's just his little group of friends. Mikey has seen some pretty crazy stuff and known (sort of) what they were, he taunts prostitutes, makes friends with a pimp, takes care of a hobo and meets a one eyed gangster and he’s only six.

What this book so far has showed me is that the lower east side wasn't all just factories and big busy streets; it also had its little alleyways where all the dirty business goes on. whenever i use to hear of the olden days lower east side I always thought of busy streets pushcarts and such which, don't get me wrong are in the book, but you never are told of the dirty things that go on. This actually really interested me while I first read it. Another very weird thing for me at least is the fact that this 6 year old kid is basically living his life in these back alleys and he makes friends with pimps and hobos and prostitutes, it just seems weird.

Then again though those were different times and I really don't know what the norm was back then. I really am now interested as to what the norm was back then and how it compares to today. I would imagine that it would be much looser back then as apposed to now. I also wonder what kids used to do for fun I mean now it is watching tv or playing video games but back then it couldn’t have been and I think these kids then would have a whole different mind set then what they have today. Sort of going off what u was saying, I bet that the same exact kid raised back then and raised today would be completely different, but that’s only my opinion.