1. Culture is the surroundings in ones community. It is the environment in which one lives and how the different parts of the community interact. Culture is how the community as a whole lives their lives.
2. The people and things make up a persons culture. How the people interact and how the people and things like art, dance and music interact also makes up a large part of culture.
3. Culture is extrinsic, you are not born with your culture in you. Culture has nothing to do with whats inside of you, but it has everything to do with your community.

Fact:
1. The stool the boy is sitting on is green.
2. All people in the painting are boys.
3. The walls in the painting are white.

Claims:
1. Police are good natured people (analytical).
2. The man behind the counter is friendly.
3. The police and boy are planning to eat something.

Entry 2:

            What surprised me in the second half of the book was that Pickering did not pay much attention to Eliza and pretended like she wasn’t there after she had successfully been passed off as a lady at a party. This surprised me so much because I always thought of Pickering to be the nice one and Higgins to be the cruel, unthougtful one but in this scene both men were being cruel and unaware of Eliza’s feelings. I would have guessed after the huge success that they had with her that they would acknowledge her and congratulate her.

            Just as Higgins and Pickering acted badly that night so did Eliza. When she was being ignored she threw a big fit and was acting very ungrateful. She even went as far as throwing her shoes at Higgins. Even though Eliza was not being treated fairly she did not have any right to act that way after someone had taken her in for six months and taken care of her. I think the reason Eliza was so mad thought was because she had always gotten a reward for her work. This journey was like selling a flower to her. Once she sold the flower she would receive money, but now after she had done her work she was expecting her “money”, but it didn’t come.

            I went on a mission trip to Haiti this summer and I read the book before I left and when I was reading the part about how Mr. Doolittle lost his happiness when he became rich I didn’t understand how that can be true. I always assumed that the more money you received the happier you would be. But now that I am back from Haiti where the poverty was immense and the average person lives on less than one dollar a day I can understand that money does not make you happy. I learned this from when I was working with the children in Haiti, they were always to happy and positive, much happier than a majority of well-off American children, even though many of them did not know where there next meal would come from. This experience allowed me to understand the book and Mr. Doolittle’s situations and feelings more easily. 

Pygmalion Journal Entries

Hallie Walther

Entry 1:

In the beginning of Pygmalion Clara is being very mean to Eliza and does not want to give her fair pay for her flowers. Clara also rudely ordered her brother to go fetch a taxi for her and her mother. When I read this passage I was amazed about how rude Clara was. I don’t think that people today are as rude as she was then. Then of what the equivalent to a flower girl would be in the 21^st century. The first thing that came to mind was a street vendor in New York or some other major city. When I drew this parallel I realized that people are very rude to street vendors and it allowed me to relate this story to modern day times which helped me to understand the story more easily.

The next thing in the play that I was confused about was the fact that Higgins would allow a person he had only met once who he knew nothing about come live in his house for six months. I know that my parents would never let a person that they had recently met come live with us. This led me to wonder why Higgins would want Eliza to live with him. I think it was because he wanted a challenge and Eliza seemed like a great opportunity for one. I think that once Higgins made his mind that he wanted Eliza to live with them there was nothing that anyone could do to change his mind.

Another thing that surprised me in the play was that Mr. Doolittle sold his daughter for a very small amount of money. This is hard for me to understand not only because it is illegal to sell humans in the United States today, but I can never imagine my father doing such a thing to me. Even though selling your daughter is a bad thing I think that it ended up being a good thing for Eliza. She had the opportunity to learn how to speak properly and learn how to be a lady. This opened up many doors for her like being able to get a legitimate, well-paying job. 

            Entry 2: The Pearl

            When I read the second half of the book there was one thing in particular that bothered me. This was when Kino hit Juana and Juana was not even mad at Kino. If someone had hit me, especially someone I loved, I would be very upset about it. The reason she gave for not being upset was that Kino said “I am a man”. This is the stupidest reason I have heard for not getting man at someone. It also concerned me that Juana said that she could not live without a man. This is redicicolus because Juana would have been better off without her husband. Juana had the original idea to throw the pearl away. If Kino had listened to this idea none of this trouble would have been brought to his family. His son would have still been alive and he would have still had his house and canoe.

            A symbol that I found in the book was the mountain. I feel like the level of greed goes up as the altitude goes up. When Kino is in the village he is somewhat greedy, not thinking of spreading his wealth with others when he receives his payout and always being skeptical of others. But, when Kino decides to go up the mountain he has reached a whole new level of greed. He is willing to but his wife and sons life in danger to get more money for the pearl. This is putting money over the people that you love and in my opinion that is as greedy as a person can get.

            A motif in the book was music. Music appeared many times in the book in many different situations to describe what kind of mood the characters were in or what they were feeling. The “type” of music changed as the book went along. At the begging of the book the music was mostly about family. This slowly changed to music about evil and danger. During the transition Kino heard evil music with family music in the background. This shows how Kino’s greed was creating evil and taking over his family. Another example of how Kino was being taken over by the evil and greed is when Kino was hearing the music of evil and his heart was beating along with it, showing how the two combined.   

The Pearl Journal Entries

Hallie Walther

            Entry 1:

In the book The Pearl, Kino is changed by the presence of the pearl in his life. He starts to become afraid of everyone and thinking that they will destroy him. In fact, the real person he needs to be worried about being destroyed by is himself. Kino is slowly becoming a monster by trying to protect his pearl. One of the ways he does this is by isolating himself from other people because of paranoia. I don’t think that Kino had any idea that he was changing until Juana told him that the pearl was changing their lives and that they should get rid of it. I predict that even though the family had noble wishes in the begging of the book like saving their child, getting married and sending their child to school I think that their intentions will become more self-centered as the book goes along.

            The greed also affects the rest of the community. The most obvious example is the doctor. He only would see the baby when the parents had money. We can assume that he gave the baby medicine to make him sick so he could charge the parents. On top of that he offered to keep the pearl “safe” in his safe and again we can assume that he did not have noble intentions. The greed also extended to the larger community. We say this becasue many of the members of the community who had not previously paid attention to the family paid attention when they had something of value. This phenoniom was also seen in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. In this book not many people paid attention to the drunken Mr. Doolittle until he became rich and then people he was astrainged with suddenly became interested in him once again.

            There was a symbol that I thought encompassed the theme of the book. I believe that the theme of the book is greed. This symbol was comparing when the author had previously described how a pearl was made by a clam creating a hard shell over a grain of sand and when the author described how Kino had a shell of hardness growing over him. This is continuing to show how the pearl is a symbol for greed and how an obsession with materialistic things can change people in bad ways. We see this theme not only in book but in the real world. Many times you hear stories of corrupt politicians that use all of their power and money to benefit them not doing their job to help others. This reinforces the theme that when money is involved greed takes over.