My reason for happiness

I decided to choose the word "happiness" because I believe there are many ways to present the word in modern day society. There are numerous pop culture references of happiness, slang terms of happiness, and a large amount of definitions of happiness. With all these being accounted for, it is also enjoyable to discuss a word that has a great connotation.

Killin' It 14th Century Style

14th century weaponry,

A lot more complex than you would think. I was interested to see the simplicity of 14th century weaponry, considering the tales of one-on-one combat. However, I was highly mistaken when I took this stance, because there is a lot more weapons and tactical warfare than I could have ever imagined for such a time period. One of the weapons I found in my research was the Obsidian knife, which is a 14th century South/North American knife that is currently the sharpest knife known to man in history These knifes could chop of the head of a horse in one swipe, which showed the strength of these knifes. Not only did specific weaponry show complexity, so did other fighting tactics. For example, the naval mine, torpedoes, Fu Go, and cruise missiles were all prevalent in the 14th century. Clearly none of these were specified during the tale of Sir Gawain, but it shows the strategy and intelligence of the chivalry at the time.

Source: 
http://www.cracked.com/article_18880_7-insanely-advanced-weapons-history-somehow-forgot-about.html

The final Battle

You can not defeat me I am too much to handle
The flames can not do harm to my strength 
You can not be the one who lights the candle
To the desire in me to destroy man kind

Bloodied the ground and also the hand
To the traitor that tries to take the life
Of a beast like me who owns the land
Where the humans lay to rest in peace

The peace of the puzzle begins to end 
For I can not fathom the possibility longer
Longer the life, for the homeland I apprehend 
Is a distant memory of those around me

Who am I to see the world I live in
As a world that meets more than the eyes
Eyes familiar to those of sin 
Not the eyes that I present to those of evil

Evil is all it takes to make me possessed 
Die alone but cry no more 
The evil is gone as is the mess 
Of disgrace, the ignorance lives on...

Our Faire Englische Tung: 2-3

For my blog entry, I've decided to look into the Hundred Years' War that was referenced to by chapter three in Our Faire Englische Tung. According to the historical interpretation of the war, it is said that "There were constant rumours in England that the French meant to invade and destroy the English language."-Wikipedia 

The outlook of the French vs. English possessions 

When looking at the map (shown right), it is evident that France was looking to take control of the Northern territories, along with the Western territory that was inhabited by English with an alliance to Burgundy. 

However, another cause of the war between these countries is the relationship between the Kings of France and England. In another article, the feud stemmed from "regarding the duchy of Aquitaine located in Southwestern France."-eHistory. 

Looking at the map, it is interesting to consider the Holy Roman Empire's influence on France and England to expand. It seems as though the HRE was large enough to factor in as a reason for the feud between the neighboring countries.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years'_War

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/archive/hundredyearswar.cfm

My three bullet points

For the reading, I chose My Monster by Barbara Johnson, and I took three points out of the reading that I thought were very capable of being compared to my essay on the Frankenstein scene.

1.  Johnson begins to cover that critics have recently began to critique Frankenstein in the viewpoint of Victor being in a battle with depression. She states that it is a "representation of maternal rejection of a newborn infant" and "mixed feelings about motherhood." (Johnson 247). This was referred to in my viewpoints of the Frankenstein, as I believe Victor is very self conscious about his discovery as soon as he realizes that he made a mistake by making a creation rather than living as a father figure.

2. Barbara Johnson also summarizes a feeling that I had in my essay when she refers to the "monstrousness of selfhood" (Johnson 251). In my essay, I refer to the dangers of fortune and well being, which Victor believes that his creation will bring him success. Although he never states it, all the events that happens after his creation did not resemble what he believed to happen.

3. The last thought that stood out to me while reading My Monster/My self was something I never really thought of until said by Johnson. She indicates that "The figurative monstrosity of female narcissism is a subtle deformity." (Johnson 240). I find this fascinating as women had a large influence on the book as a whole.

Frankenstein scene

Shelley's "Frankenstein" chapter iv Scene:

The passage in which we are examining is during chapter IV, where the paragraph begins with "No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards...". In this passage, Victor is opening up his mind to the thought of the created life, and he describes it as "new species would bless me as the creator and source". His energy in this passage is exuded by his interest to create a subspecies that has never been created before. The energy was always there with Victor, but he was simply unable to keep consistently working that hard to create the monster without going insane.

He refers to "his spirits" and gives allusions to having success if he can accomplish this task. Throughout the second second paragraph, he states that his body and soul are breaking down due to fatigue, but his heart won't let him, when he says "lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit." This one pursuit is literally driving Victor crazy, which makes it very interesting that he continues on with the difficult task of creating the monster. However, Victor is very determined to create the monster due to the god-like feeling that is exhibited by Victor throughout the passage. Being the "creator and source" as stated before seems to be a reference to God, which would make him the all powerful and knowing creator of a species, which no human has ever done before.

I find it interesting that Victor was trying to accomplish a task that would bring him fortune and well being, but instead brought him a life of misery and fear. This instance is very interesting to me because his accomplishment is a very unbelievable feat, but it only brought him struggle. I feel that his mentality and demeanor had a large contribution to the struggle, because he was naive to what he was creating that he forgot to take into consideration how the monster would react to a new environment. The monster had a brain of its own (even though it was an abnormal brain from a hospital patient), so for Victor to overlook the monster's emotional state was surprising to me.

A Paragraph about my favorite scene

In Frankenstein, I was most interested in the scene of chapter 12, which was a scene that was described by the monster to Victor. In this scene, the monster begins to express his observations about the humans, and he stated how the humans were scared of his appearance, which made the monster believe that he was some sort of evil. However, the monster did not believe this until he started to see the reactions of the other people, so he thought he was innocent at first, but soon began to realize that he was being seen as a scary creature of evil.

This chapter does not stop at the revelation of the monster, however, and also describes how the monster is beginning to realize how the humans communicated as well. I really thought this chapter was special because it really captured the sensation of first impressions very well. The monster was a very effective creature to use in this situation, as it did not have any previous opinions, which made the impression for the monster very interesting.

As a whole, this scene is one of my particular favorites because it outlines the innocence of the monster at first, which is a common human element that begins to fade with age. In this case, the monsters inexperience to human contact makes the experience very intriguing. I consider the monster to be a youthful infant, as they are beginning to understand the normal conditions of human interaction, but the monster is much more intriguing because it's a creation of an incredibly intelligent individual.