Invisible
Following mine friends’ lunchtime savage roast,
To them I hath passed away, like a ghost.
Outside Michelle’s locker I doth roam round,
Lamenting the loss of mine friends’ gay sound.
Now I doth regret acting so brashly,
For I miss the beautiful, sweet Ashley.
Gone art Yi Wen's tuneful chimes of laughter,
And I feel adrift, much like a rafter.
Slowly within me a darkness unfurls,
It conquers me, it dances, twirls and whirls.
I art betrayed, mad, lachrymose, truly,
I refuse to be thy puppet - Julie
The iambic pentameter, colloquially termed the heartbeat rhythm, cements Julie's unshakeable love for her friends. This is ironic because similar to Rosaline and Romeo, her affection is unreciprocated. The narrator's longing for the now-vanished camaraderie she used to take for granted is apparent in the semantic field of names utilized by the poet, which indicates closeness and familiarity, and makes the sudden loss more stark, like a yellow hammer and sickle juxtaposed onto a red background. Enjambement breaks up the poem and forces it to read in a disjointed manner, thus mimicking the narrator's fragmented and conflicted state of mind. End stop lines are present in every line except the last to amplify Julie's lack of closure.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Tybalt and Lord Montague - A Semi-Original Play
Earlier on in the year, we did a project to consolidate our knowledge of the characters and themes in Romeo & Juliet. Our group [me, Lin Yin Tan, Daryl "team carrier" Pung and Tae Eun Kim] decided to rewrite Romeo & Juliet without Romeo and Juliet. The result: a 22-page, 5-act Shakespearean play, complete with a full-color cover page, a summary, a sonnet, review activities, pictures, as well as an acrostic poem.
Victor's Place Review - A Collaboration Piece
This is a review of Victor's Place, an Indian restaurant nestled cozily somewhere between Jenny Wang's and Europlaza, penned by the scholar Michael Wang and edited by me.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
My 50 word short-story submission
Panic. Anxiety. Trepidation. May/June would’ve been the end of me. I was so desperate, ready to bribe Edexcel. I was prepared for utter failure until a kind, benevolent stranger handed me a slip of paper.
Eight weeks later, I received two A*s.
On the paper was a single word:
www.yqh3lpenglish.blogspot.com
(fingers crossed my story makes it to the top 3!)
[SCAN] [ANTHOLOGY] A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat
Apologies for the lack of annotations, I didn't really like this piece.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Monday, April 25, 2016
[THEME] Explore the theme of love in the play
Develops from fatal and destined to
forlorn to perfunctory to pure permeates text from prologue to end
Prologue – “star-crossed lovers” “death-marked love”
LOVE IS FIRST PRESENTED AS PREDETERMINED
- thwarted by malign stars - external forces – separated by cruel circumstance
- death-marked - doomed to fail - set in stone
Introduction of Romeo - “O brawling love, o loving hate”
“Feather of lead, bright smoke”
LOVE IS THEN PRESENTED AS melancholy, forlorn,
one-sided, unrequited, miserable – in a stereotypical and clichéd light - pining for Rosaline moody – infatuation –
lust not love (“Chaste”, “waste”) thus objectifying Rosaline, erroneously
mistaking it for love - locked in an artificial night due to the lack of
reciprocation – lengthy ramble containing antithesis and juxtaposition show his
internal turmoil and the deep conflict he has within – love is portrayed to be
one-sided, a form of torment causing intense internal conflict, and as
insincere and easily confused with lust
Introduction of Juliet - “I’ll look to like if looking liking
move. But no more deep will I endart mine eye, than your consent gives strength
to make it fly.”
Juliet’s response to her mother’s veiled
order of question – wordplay in first line – non-committal – love is presented
as a duty, a chore, a responsibility, an expectation – to consummate a marriage
is to simply fulfill a job and uphold a tradition – logical, cold,
methodological, forced, false, logical, mechanical - not so much a feeling - Juliet
is placid and apathetic to the notion of love - not interested in any such
discussion – Paris’ method of proposal only accentuates the intrinsically
flawed system of marriage – preserve his status, name and social standing
Meeting – “If I profane with my unworthiest hand, this holy
shrine, the gentle sin is this”
Romeo uses a metaphor to describe Juliet
as a holy shrine – he is not worthy – Juliet is sacred, pious, holy - religious
semantic field with connotations of faith, religious imagery running through their
exchange – passionate love – absolute devotion – fervent, zealous, ardent –
connotations of purity – magical, perfect, pure – spiritual, a necessity,
goodness of God - Perfect sonnet form – 14 lines – iambic pentameter, heartbeat
rhythm – love is perfect – harmonious relationship – “kisses by the book”
however audience acknowledges he’s already shed most of his pretenses
“she doth teach the torches to burn
bright” – Romeo sought sanctuary in
the dark but the artificial night he fabricated for himself offered him no
solace, it is only through Juliet’s love that he finds satisfaction
“That which we call a rose by any other
word would smell as sweet”
Love overpowers
family names – strength of their love triumphs over whatever rifts exist
between their households – rhetorical interrogative demands the authority of
the regimental division of their families –mocking imperial importance of
family status and history
"But passion lends them power, time
means, to meet, temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet."
Romeo and Juliet forge onward in pursuit
of their love — empowered to dare cross thresholds that have before been
barriers – tempering steel – connotations of their love being strengthened by
the obstacles they face
Balcony scene – “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,” “winged
messenger of heaven”
Juliet is his sun – elevating Juliet,
his love, to a heavenly status – aligns her with the sun and the stars –
celestial metaphors - suggests that love is heavenly and otherworldly and its
beauty is angelic like Juliet’s beauty – extended metaphor - sincere and deeply
religious imagery, a more spiritual consideration – ethereal - contrast this to
the artificiality of Romeo’s feelings for Rosaline and his over-inflated,
melodramatic descriptions
Exploration of other forms of love:
“And
you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend, and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die
in the streets”
Possessive article – downward divergence
- absolute possession of Juliet – threatening and intimidating – tyrannical – good
intent with her best interests at heart however misguided and insensitive –
paternal caring relationship albeit overly possessive between father and
daughter
[CHARACTER] Explore the significance of Mercutio in the play
“If love be rough with you, be rough
with love, prick love for pricking”
Direct contrast to Romeo’s idealized
notions of a pure, non-physical idea of love – mocks his vision – anti-romantic
character regarding love as a purely physical pursuit, much like the Nurse
“O calm, dishonorable, vile submission!”
Conveys his Mercurial character –
volatile and feisty nature – similar to Tybalt – likes to provoke fights and
brawls – tricolon “calm, dishonorable, vile” – escalating – “vile submission”
conveys his immense sense of pride and incredulity that Romeo turned down a
fight displaying “submission” - impactful – exclamative only emphasizes his
impulsiveness – catalyst for the tragedy that soon ensues
Queen Mab speech – “Which oft the angry Mab with blisters
plagues”
Cynicism – dreams bring false hope,
false ambition – semantic field of illness and disease – spreads like infection
or a plague – trickery of Queen Mab – dismissing dreams as nothing but idle
fantasies
“Hot days” “Mad blood
stirring”
Hot – pathetic fallacy – tense, angry, foreboding atmosphere - circular motion – no end to the hate – personification of blood as mad – inevitable violence which resides in their blood, their veins – innate – violence is inflamed by the summer's heat -
Hot – pathetic fallacy – tense, angry, foreboding atmosphere - circular motion – no end to the hate – personification of blood as mad – inevitable violence which resides in their blood, their veins – innate – violence is inflamed by the summer's heat -
“A plague o both your houses!” “Worms’
meat out of me”
His death emphasizes the pointless
nature of the feud and its infectious nature - marks a distinct turning point
in the play as tragedy begins to overwhelm comedy, and the fates of the
protagonists darken – Mercutio = comic character – demise of Mercutio signifies
the end of happier times – reader’s response: sympathy
[CHARACTER] Explore the significance of the Prince in the play
“On pain of torture… Throw your
mistemper’d weapons to the ground.”
Represents voice of law, justice and
authority – neutral in the feud and desire only peace between them – however
also serves to show how powerless law – embodied by the prince – is compared to
the passions of love and hate – tautology emphasizes consequences of
disobedience – personification to drive some sense into families and instill
guilt within them – imperative sentence shows his high status, power and
authority however fate is a higher power
“Profaners of this neighbor-stained
steel! Will they not hear? – What ho, you men, you beasts!”
Does everything in his power to keep the
peace and often ends up exasperated from the effort involved – neighbor
connotes friendliness and convey his good intentions and desire for peace and
amity – “stained” display his feelings towards the feud – ridiculous and
worthless - interrogative emphasizes his infuriation that another fight broke
out despite warnings – he degrades the men into “beasts” = connotations of
animalistic, savage, wild, bloodthirsty behavior – metaphor – exclamative
highlights his vexation
“See what scourge is laid upon your
hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!”
Relays the moral of the story in the
final scene – by laying the blame on Lords Capulet and Montague for many deaths
– uncontrolled, violent, overly-passionate emotions create destruction –
“scourge” = punishment and penance by God for their hatred – summing up the
moral that vehement emotions bring about ill fate and ultimately death
“Never was there a story of more woe, than
this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
Concludes story and emphasizes theme of
tragedy – hyperbole “never” “of more woe” again stressing the tragedy and
ill-fated nature of the tale
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