Aurora's Learning Diary by Aurora L.

A Farewell to Arms

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2016-10-02 08:43:17 UTC

We've recently read a little extract form <>, written by Ernest Hemingway, where the main character gets injured after a shell explosion.
The author had actually experienced what he talks about, and we can clearly notice it while reading.
First of all, the text is written in first person, and Hemingway gives a great importance to each single detail: sounds, colours... .
Secondly, it's like we are experiencing what happens: the descriptions are related to our senses, and this makes us empathize with the whole situation.
Last but not least, Hemingway shows, through a dialogical sequence, the different opinions on that war which covered everyone's voice (in fact, after some lines, the dialogue becomes so confusing that we cannot understand who was talking).They were different, but all of them agreed on the fact that the war had to end.
In conclusion, this extract made me reflect upon wars and helped me develop my own point of view: a war is not only bombs and rifles, it is also boredom, anxiety, fear of the future, tension and pain. Fighting against each other is useless, it just destroys us physically and psychologically. "There is nothing worse than war".

The image comes from: http://cultstories.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/addio-alle-armi-cover.jpg

Dulce et Decorum Est

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2016-10-16 13:43:54 UTC

Reading "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen was like a cold shower, it taught me a lot.
Firstly, this poem shows us that the word "war" can have many shades of meaning, and one of them is "fatigue".
In the first stanza Owen uses verbs of movement and expressions which slow down the scene. The soldiers weren't just tired of fighting; that way of living had drained their bodies and their minds, and they looked like old people.
Then, we find an extremely realistic description of a gas attack and the death of a warrior. Here, another definition of "war", that had already been underlined in Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms", takes over: it's "friend who dies in front of you". The author talks to us through the protagonist's voice and narrates what happened by using contrasting similes and metaphors.
As we go on, we have one of the worst sores of this conflict, something that marked a whole generation: shell shock. We can see how the strong and paradoxical expressions we had found in the second stanza introduce one of the main themes of the third one. The realism, a constant presence in the poem, gives us a sense of confusion, the same generated by shell shock. Thanks to it, we discover what the latter really is, because we can almost experience its effects. What is more, Owen warns the future generations about their attitude towards war (which had also become a chemical warfare) and discredits a famous quotation by calling it "The old Lie": "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", that means "Dying for your homeland is sweet and decent".
Last, there's another meaning of "war" we find out only once we finish reading: it's "alienation". Everytihng, even the reader, is alienated, closed in its pain.
In conclusion, I learnt something that will never get old enough to be forgotten: witnessing is always important in order not to repeat the same mistakes.

The image comes from https://www.google.it/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjs_8jG0d_PAhXBfRoKHWswAEcQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Faccaddeoggi.centenario1914-1918.it%2Fit%2Faccaddeoggi%2F19150908&bvm=bv.135974163,d.d2s&psig=AFQjCNFSwasidzztOl09xkdOcA5xXJEXMA&ust=1476717971726487

The Waste Land

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2016-11-03 20:00:28 UTC

You never stop learning. No, you don't.
For example, when you reflect upon the Great War you probably think you already know everything, but if you try and deepen your knowledge you'll always find out something new.
That's what happened to me when I read three extracts from <> by T.S. Eliot in class.
This "path" was another revelation.
At first, I read two parts of "The Burial of the Dead": the author used the objective correlative to make us feel the same way as people from the post-war did. They were confused and alienated, and for this reason Eliot wrote, in the first one we studied, that life was a cruel stepmother while winter was a "protector" which covered our memory, something really dangerous for us.
Then, he described London and its citizens going to work. He called it "Unreal City" and used a lot of quotations in order to show us that men were alienated and so lost in their thoughts they had become like robots. As we go on, we discover that they acted like this because they inconciously wanted to hide the sense of guilt war had brought them.
In the end, we analysed a little bit of "The Fire Sermon": it was a bit confusing, but as I finised reading it everything became clear in my mind. The narrator was Tiresias, a famous character from Ancient Greece, and he talked about a couple of people from the post-war London. How is that possible?
It means that war and its consequences are always the same; we could take one and describe them all. Tiresias had Lived the Thebes war, and he was able to tell the way the boy and girl from the First World War felt. The indifference towards each other, the alienation, the tiredness have no differences.
To sum up, war and its horrible results will never change, and this kind of witness should be like a warning for each one of us.

The doodle comes from: me (the shadow of my hand gives it a dark touch, doesn't it?!) :)

Virginia Woolf

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2017-01-21 21:02:06 UTC

Virginia Woolf was one of the most interesting authors I have ever "met".

Studying her personality and her masterpiece <> was like opening a Russian doll: both of them are made up of pieces stick inside each other, and each single part is important.

She was able to make a short period of time and apparently banal situations look gripping: weren't you curious of the flowers Mrs. Dalloway was going to buy, or of what caused the violent explosion in that scene?

Other Virginia's quality was the almost poetic way in which she described her characters' minds and thoughts. She created a whole inner world that make us understand her compositions better, but also our own psychology.

The two I mentioned below are great, but in my opinion her best point was her ability to vent all her inner problems into her writing. She suffered from bipolarity and heard imaginary voices, but she fought against them (even though in the end she lost the battle) and she made them become something wonderful.

What have I learnt from this amazing writer? Her characteristics taught me a lot.

Since I like writing, I found out how to describe a character's interior world without causing boredom to the readers and a useful way to dilate time.

Last but not least, I learnt that when you have a problem you can defeat it by transforming it into a constructive thing.

The image comes from: https://www.google.it/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwi3nbHgotTRAhUDlxoKHfryAH4QjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.azquotes.com%2Fquote%2F320690&bvm=bv.144224172,bs.1,d.bGg&psig=AFQjCNGIPANDo45uMA8WLDYyNuItiF4HAg&ust=1485123544711035

James Joyce

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2017-02-15 20:19:17 UTC

James Joyce.

Which is the first word that comes to your mind when I name him?

"Epiphany" is probably the one. And it's also what I had when I understood his genius.

We started studying him by reading <>. At first I found his style and the themes he talked about quite strange, I couldn't understand them.

Then, as we deepened this author, I had my Epiphany. I figured out why he saw Dublin as the city of paralysis and especially why he used lots of writing techniques. He actually invented a new one, the "collage technique", an ancestor of the cinematic one.

We also analysed <>'s structure and read a little extract from it. I liked how Joyce used Homer's <> to deal with the historical context when he lived and its antiheroes.

That's when I fell in love with the interior monologue, which you can only appreciate after having studied the period when it was created.

It may look confusing and senseless, but it is a sort of description of how our brain works.

I personally believe it is a good way to make the readers familiarise with the characters and the situations presented. At least, it worked with me.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed examining this writer, and I would love to be as creative and original as he was.

The image comes from: http://natalieharrower.com/dublinbylamplight/wp-content/uploads/james-joyce.jpg

D.H. Lawrence

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2017-03-16 16:50:19 UTC

Have you ever thought about our relationship with nature? About how it can be involved in our lives? Well, D.H. Lawrence did.
I was already interested in this theme, and studying this author made it even more fascinating and appealing for me.
He succeeded in creating a sort of intrinsic correspondence between nature and us. He used it to describe human emotions, and in this way he gave a surreal atmosphere, something holy.
Another thing I really appreciated about Lawrence is his personal style: by reading his works, we can actually feel that he hid behind his characters, how much his complicated story influenced his life.
In conclusion, I loved this writer, he represents an important piece of my "literary puzzle".

The image comes from: http://www.quadri-e-stampe.it/media/images/popup/gogh-van-willem-vincent--bluehender-rosenbusch-788360.jpg

Scott Fitzgerald

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2017-04-21 11:53:53 UTC

What do you think about when I say "Roaring Twenties"?
The luxury, hedonism and excesses of that period probably come to your mind.
In reality, that happiness was only appearance, a cover which was hiding an impressing moral aridity.
Scott Fitzgerald, thanks to his work <>, was great at making us reflect upon it.
This novel shows us that the enormous parties Gatsby threw were only an excuse to meet Daisy, the woman he loved, and all the people who took part in them were not friends of his. In fact, when he died, nobody went to his funeral.
It is a sad truth which was preparing itself to burst and destroy both the economy and frail moral values of that apparently golden period.

The image comes from:
http://quotesology.com/great-gatsby-quotes/

Harlem

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2017-04-28 12:01:43 UTC

Why are the Roaring Twenties also called the "Jazz Age"? Because one of the key words of the 1920s in the United States was Black Art, which especially developed in Harlem, a residential and business section of upper Manhattan in New York City.
It soon became famous as the "Black Mecca", "the capital of Black America", because around 1910 it had an increasing African-American from South America.
It was one of the main centres of innovation in jazz, and it was also famous for its entertainment points, especially the Cotton Club, were white people had the possibility to drink and mix with blacks (actions that were forbidden in that period of Prohibitionism).
Last, another reason why Harlem is worthy of note is the fact that it was the site of a national research library which aimed at collecting, and providing acces to resources witnessing the experiences of African descendents in the world.

The image comes from: http://cdn1us.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeekus/files/2017/02/cotton-club.jpg

Frazer, Jung, Eliot

aurora_1998_lombardi — 2017-05-18 20:51:54 UTC

Which is the link among these three authors?
Well, it could be summed up in just one word: archetypes.
Okay, but what is an "archetype"?
According to the dictionary, it is "one of the inherited mental images postulated by Jung as the content of the collective unconscious". In fact, this Swiss psychoanalyst was convinced of the fact that there was a set of common archetypes (such as games or symbols) each one of us knows, and he concentrated on them.
T.S.Eliot followed this path in poetry: in his masterpiece <> we can notice a lot of quotations from other culture and religions, and we could surprisingly discover that we know some of them without having studied them or having heard about them (at least, it happened to me...!).
We can also find religious archetypes in James Frazer's <>: one example is "the dying god", a god who dies and is reborn afterwards.

The image comes from: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ECcnkCD1lCg/VU0pH4-oItI/AAAAAAAAStI/L9JMzWlTxUY/s1600/big.jpg