JESSICA DAS                                                                                                                  809

Poetry Reading Response on Starry Night

I never saw myself as a poem person. In matter of fact I was dreadful when I heard our next subject in ELA was poetry. This week I’ve read a poem called Starry Night by Anne Sexton. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the poem. It’s a poem off the artwork Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. One discovery I made about the poem Starry Night by Anne Sexton is that the speaker is depressed. This is because in the poem she seems suicidal and has dark thoughts.

One important observation I made is the speaker is suicidal. For example in the poem the line “This is how I want to die” (Sexton 6, 12) is repeated several times in the text. This quote shows that the speaker is depressed because he is having thoughts about how he wants to die and how. This quote is also an example of verbal irony because most people don’t want to die yet in this quote the speaker contradicts what I expected her to say; instead the speaker says she wants to die.

Another important observation is the speaker has dark thoughts. In the poem the speaker says, “The town does not exist/ except where one black-haired tree slips/Up like a drowned women in the hot sky” (Sexton 3). This quote is an example of a simile. This is because the tree is compared to a drowned women in the sky by using the word like. This quote shows the speaker has dark thoughts about people and herself. This is because drowning is usually paired with death.

A final observation I made is the speaker sees herself as lifeless. This is shown in the poem when the speaker says, “Sucked up by that great dragon/ to split from my life with no flag/ no belly/ no cry”.  The line break in this quote is important because it emphasizes the fact that he is empty both physically and mentally.This quote shows that life has been taken away from the speaker and nothing is left. When there is no life there is only death and darkness.

I discovered many things in this poem such as the speaker wants to be free and die. The biggest discovery I made was that the speaker is depressed by the way she speaks her words and the specific words used in the poem. Vincent Van Gogh, the artist behind the painting was in a mental asylum when he drew the painting Starry Night and ended up killing himself. He was mental and depressed. I believe the speaker got into Vincent’s mind and got into the depressed mindset that he might have been in.

Alphabet Poem- ON TOP

Always was on the top

But then came middle school

Couldn’t see why but,

Didn’t know what to do.

Even my parents were confused;

Friends were just as scared as I,

Going through the same troubles

Having the same problems.

I didn’t know what to do

Just rolled with it

Knew something was different

Let time solve it.

Mind boggling situations

Never knew how to solve it

Options, options, options

Problem solvers near by

Quizzing me day and night

Rest is not option

Slowing down isn’t my style

Turning around sounds nice

Unforgiving regrets;

Venture through your brain

When nothing is left to push you

Xylophones playing in the background

Yearning for you to get back up

Zillions of ways to get back on top

Cabal the Protagonist- Character Reflection

JOHANNES CABAL THE FEAR INSTITUTE by JONATHAN L. HOWARD

I’m currently reading Johannes Cabal the Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard and its nothing but ordinary. In the book there is a land beyond sleep made up of dreams called the Dreamlands but not a dream itself. For millions of years people have explored this mystical land but never truly come back sane but now its Johannes Cabal’s turn to explore. Cabal is a necromancer which means he communicates with ghosts. If you don’t believe my definition then search it in the dictionary. According to the Webster English Dictionary a necromancer is a person who can see the future and talk to the dead like a witch. Being such a guy, people keep their distance from Cabal. Well anyways, he is employed to the Fear Institute, who by the way want to capture fear, to lead an expedition to the Dreamlands. Cabal being the person that he is thinks the Fear Institute’s goal of capturing fear is stupid and unmanageable; the real reason Cabal is going is to do some of his own research and the Fear Institute in his eye is bait for when he needs to run away from monsters.

            Cabal is a very interesting character. He’s intelligent, sarcastic, uncaring, and very anti-social with humans like Bose, Shadrach and Corde which are the three people he is guiding. The most interesting idea in the book is that according to the Dreamlands Cabal is who he wanted to be all along. This is because when a person enters the Dreamlands his exterior changes into the person he dreamt to be as a youngling. In the book Shadrach asks Cabal, “But what about you, Mr. Cabal? Why haven’t your clothes changed?” Corde then asked, “Because you’re already what you want to be, eh, Cabal?” Cabal then smirks and replies, “Just so”. This shows that Cabal is who he wants to be which rarely happen to the protagonist in a book.

            Being uncaring is what Cabal is. When Corde gave Cabal the Silver Key to open the portal into the Dreamland, Cabal shoved the key into Harwell, who was the Keeper of the Silver Key and a lunatic. Cabal shoved the key into Harwell’s forehead and killing him because Harwell himself was the gate to the Dreamlands. This is because only the truly poetic and loony people, which Cabal believes to be the same thing could open the portal. Cabal had no regret whatsoever in killing Harwell. When Bose in disbelief and horror yelled, “You killed him” (Howard 42), Cabal simply shrugged, “He was already dead. He’d allowed certain conceptual the morphs to take residence in his mind. He would have killed himself or been killed within a few months in any case. At least this way he served a purpose. He was a poet. No loss, then.”(Howard 43). Just by reading that quote, anyone with common sense could see he was cold hearted but also very intelligent. He is intelligent and as a reader I know this because the way Cabal speaks with such vocabulary; he had to be educated a great deal.

            I’m not done with the book yet but fairly deep. The story just gets more crazy and unexpected at the turn of each page. I recommend this book because it’s a book that will take you on an adventure and Cabal is character that you will be in a love-hate relationship with because of his character.