A Great Beat

             In the poem "A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky," Lewis Carroll gives a lot of setting detail. He speaks about the sound of children on a nice sunny day and how he feels seeing what he sees. Carroll uses a lot of clear description in the poem to really emphasize imagery. The way he says everything makes it all feel a little dreamy and mellow. Lewis Carroll made the rhythm of the poem very slow and soft to portray a lazy feeling on a hot day.
             When reading this my mind took it at a slow pace because speeding through the words made everything unclear. An example of how he used rhythm to make it feel like a lazy summer day is "Ever drifting down the stream — Lingering in the golden gleam". Here he is giving a stronger image of laying out on a boat on a day where it seems like it is to hot to really do anything. Imagery isn't the only device he used to make you feel it because the word choices and the way he structured the poem all factored into the rhythm. This was definitely an intentional choice of his because the rhythm of the poem fits in perfectly with the message the actual words were trying to portray. I like the choice because it helped me get clearer with the feelings the speaker actually felt during this hot day.
              The rhythm of this poem really relates to my life because depending on the setting changes the type of reaction and ways I feel. For example a lot of the time when I am exhausted and beat from hot weather I am function very slow and drearily. Though when it is cold I might be very ecstatic and shivery because of the coldness. I feel like this poem gave a really good example that he must have observed from life and interpreted into literature. Regularly it is this type of writing I wouldn't like and skip over because it is confusing and hard though Carroll found a way to make me actually enjoy and appreciate the writing.

Ceremony of Death

             Barbaric means savagely cruel or exceedingly brutal. In the book, "The Hunger Games," Suzanne Collins, gives the feeling of barbaric ways of living with the hunger games. There are huge amounts of people from all different districts that excitedly await to watch people that they may even know fight to the death with each other. Katniss and the rest of the recruits on a road to death. The people care more about an insane battle of citizens than the well being of a family with no money. Collins may have also been trying to portray our society's bad choices of what is important to fund and support. The overall message being shown here is, the society they live in has many issues that could be fixed if the people in power cared enough to make a change.
             When Katniss and the other selected people arrived at the Capitol it was sick to find out that the people had a opening ceremony where the contestants got dressed up by designers to look amazing so people could sponsor them. For example on pg. 70, "The crowd's initial alarm at our appearance quickly changes to cheers and shouts of  'District Twelve!' " Here the crowd is cheering for Katniss and Peeta as they make their entrance to the tournament. Even  though this book sort of takes place in the future it seems like a very past-like situation where there is a crowd of people watching intently without a problem as these fellow people are headed to death. It is a very undeveloped way of thinking and living which is another meaning of barbaric. Another place where it shows that they don't really care about these people being sent off is pg.71 "It's not really fair to present us as a team and then lock us into the arena to kill each other." This is Katniss' thought when the stylist makes Peeta and her hold hands. It is wrong and also sick to get them to a friendly state where they can accept each other and then have them kill each other. The people are cruel to let the people bond and let them spend time together because then there is even more of a resistance to wanting to be a part of the games. It is a little bit like sacrifices people used to do because they didn't care which person it was or what reason they shouldn't they just did as they felt.
             Collins made an effort to make the situation in the book relate to our government and the choices them and the people make. When the government of Panem made this a tradition and made it so severe and large among their land it made many citizens' lives miserable. In our country the government has made and makes a lot of bad choices that affect  many lives. It is a different kind of choice but SOPA is an example where the government just decides to do something they think is right and then affects everyone else and makes people angry and powerless. Collins also made a very strong connection to barbaric ways and that period of time by having horrible traditions and feelings of happiness to death and she made the government and country all seem undeveloped. Their were many connections used in the book and she made things a lot more understandable by doing so.