Class Evaluation

Personally, I feel that as a student in Mr. McCarthy's British Literature class, I could be doing better. While my grade isn't terrible, I see no reason for me not to have a high A. As a student I could be making better attempts at doing my homework. While I do read when assigned, I sometimes don't take the time to do the simple questions asked for that reading. My test performance is decent but my tardiness is kind of a problem. It doesn't help that I have lunch right before class but still, it's something that can be worked on second semester.
Mr. McCarthy as a teacher is pretty good. He gives us the freedom to be productive workers and doesn't try to dictate the class. He lets us share our opinions on the readings and think it through, by doing group assignments and cool activities. It's a pretty laid-back class which is why I probably slack off. I get easily comforatable. Second semester I plan to tighten up loose areas and be a better overall student in this class, as well as others.

Nelson Mandela

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela made an address upon his release from his unjustly prison sentence. In this speech he calls for hope and preaches change in South Africa. He also preaches his views on the damage, and destruction that apartheid has caused in South Africa. He calls for an end to it and hopes for a future where it is non-existent. He calls for uniting his country, and ending the suffering of his people. He places this task in the hands of everybody stating no lone man can accomplish this task. It's amazing to hear a man speak so positively after going through such a negative and unfair time in his life. This man was in prison for years for simply trying to help, he never lost hope, he never gave up. He came out of prison a stronger man, with strong beliefs. That courage and strength is unbelievable even to me. 

Truth and Reconciliation is a address that reveals past wrong doing by a government. Nelson Mandela's address on this is now considered a model today.

Oedipus Rex and Freud

Oedipus Rex was a story of a boy Oedipus who was destined to kill his father and take his mother as his wife. His parents had visited an oracle prior to his birth and there they found out their fate. The father, King Laius, in desperate attempt to prevent this prophecy from coming true ordered the child to be killed by a herdsmen but he felt pity for the child and gave to him another king. The king raised him as his own and in his older years told him he wasn't his father. Oedipus then began to seek out for his parents and consulted a oracle who told him his destiny. He inadvertently came across his father in his travels and got into a dispute with him and killed him. He then went on to Thebes, his home, and on his way came across a Sphinx who stopped those going to Thebes and made them answer a riddle, those who couldn't answer the riddle were eaten. He answered the riddle correctly and was thanked by all those of Thebes and made King and fulfilled the prophecy in taking his mother's hand in marriage...which is kind of gross. 

But Freud some Oedipus in some of us in his views of the complex relationship between father and son. He believed there was and will always be some sort of animosity towards the father and desire to kill him. He also believed that the love of a mother would grow into a desire to sleep with her. These thoughts are extremely medieval and not something that is desired... or a at least I hope not desired in modern day times. But Freud believed these feelings lied in everybody.