"When I have fears that I may Cease to be" by John Keats

I believe that everyone is afraid of death because of different reasons. A mother is afraid of leaving her children alone, a girl is afraid of leaving her boyfriend, a grandfather is afraid of making her children unhappy, a brother is afraid of not seeing her sister getting married, and so on. In my case, I am afraid that if I died my entire family will collapse. I know that my parents love me and my brother as if we were they life, so they are not expecting me to die first.
I believe that John Keats is afraid of missing some important things in his life such as writing, love, recognition, family, etc. He had goal to achieve as anyone else have, so he was afraid of not achieve his objectives in life. Keats used this poem to let us know what his fears were, and how afraid he was of dying.
I believe that regret is not good at all. We should live the way we want to, in order to do what we want to do. We all have dreams and we all have the right to have those dreams come true.

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After reading the poem "Kubla Khan" by Coleridge two things called my attention. The first one was that Coleridge was under the effect of opium when he wrote this poem. It is said, that this poem was a hallucination that he had due to the drug. It is really weird, at least for me that a famous poet writes under the opium effects, but many people celebrate the fact that he was capable of writing such a piece of work under this effect.

The second thing is that the writer really cares about nature. I understand that romanticism was focus on nature, but this poem is only about nature. The poem was really difficult to understand, even though we read it in Spanish too. He talks about rivers, forests, gardens, and so on. I imagine that his hallucination was about a castle which was located in a wonderful forest, full of trees and animals around it. He might want to live in a place like that.
It is said that his poem is not finish because he received a visitor while he was writing. I believe that it is ok the way it is.

Your mother’s love, will be always yours

After reading the poem “The Little black boy” by William Black, something called my attention. He makes a difference between black and white, but at the same time he makes no difference. I believe he is trying to show that no matter who we are or how we are, in the end we are all the same. In other words, no matter who we are or how we are, our mother will always love us, and we can count on her support when ever we need it.
For Black, eternity, heaven and god, are important concepts in his poetry. He is trying to show that no matter who we are while we are on Earth, once in heaven we will be all the same.

From a lovely story, to a complicated topic

In this essay I will develop 2 of the topics I find more interesting in the novel written by Jane Austen, called “Sense and Sensibility”. I will start with a small summary of the novel, then I will talk about the topic I have chosen and finally, I will close it with a conclusion.

After Mr. Dashwood died, his wife and 3 daughters (Elinor, Marianne and Margaret) were supposed to live with Mr. Dashwood’s only son, John. John was the only heir to Mr. Dashwood’s fortune and lands. While Mrs. Dashwood and her 3 daughters were living with John and Fanny, John’s wife, Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s brother, came to visited them. Elinor and Edward feel attracted to each other immediately, and spend most of their time together. Mrs. Dashwood was really happy, because she was thinking her daughter will married with a wealthy known man. One day Mrs. Dashwood and her 3 daughters received a letter from Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin, Sir John Middleton, which said that he invited them to live in a small cottage in Devonshire, Barton Park. Mrs. Dashwood accepted immediately, and in there they met Colonel Brandon, a 35 year old bachelor who felt attracted to Marianne’s personality.
Marianne was a very passionate and extroverted girl, who was really interested in paintings, reading, music, etc. She also fell in love really quickly, that is how she falls in love of Willoughby, the nephew of a wealthy old woman. They had a really good connection almost immediately, because they had a lot of things in common. After a few days of visiting Marianne, Willoughby announced he will leave Barton Park for a couple of months. Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood were devastated because of the terrible news.

Edward went to visit the Dashwood’s girls for a few days. After Edward left, Ann and Lucy Steel came to visit her cousin lady Middleton. During that visit, Elinor was informed by Lucy that she has been secretly engaged to Edward for 4 years. Elinor felt overwhelm, but she tried to justify Edward, because deeply inside she wanted to find a reason to forgive him.
Marianne and Elinor travelled to London to spend the winter at Mrs. Jennings’s home. Willoughby and Marianne met in a party by coincidence, and Willoughby treats Marianne as he did not know her at all. The day after the party Marianne received a letter from Willoughby which says that he was engage to Mrs. Grey, a really wealthy woman who could help him with his debts. Marianne was in shocked; and deeply inside Elinor was suffering too.

At the end of the story, everything went well for Elinor and Marianne. Edward decided not to get marriage Lucy because he loved Elinor. After a few months, they got married even though Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny did not accept Elinor in their family. Lucy and Robert, Edward’s brother, got married after all. Everyone realized that Lucy wanted to get married not for love, but for money. On the other hand, Marianne realized that she deserved something better than Willoughby and that her excess of sensibly almost killed her. At the age of 19, Marianne got married with Colonel Brandon, and all the Dashwood’s lived happily ever after.

From this novel I can rescue a lot of things; values, love, carrying, etc. unfortunately I have to choose only one topic. The topic that called my attention the most was whether to married for love or for money.

Is it correct to get married for money? We can see in the story that Lucy was only concerned about money; love was not something important for her. Fanny and Mrs. Ferras were an example too; they did not wanted Elinor in their family because she did not have money. They did not care about Edward’s feeling, they were only concern about they fortune.
Since I was very little I have heard that getting married for money is bad. You are supposed to love your future husband, and if he has money it is even better. That is what I used to believe. In a perfect world, everyone would get married for love, and will live happy with that, but are we in a perfect world? Absolutely not. People need money to survive. People need to pay bills, schools, vacations, and so on. so you can not leave with only love. In today’s world people are getting married for money, not for love. A new survey about this topic was made and the results were absolutely amazing. “Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were "very" or "extremely" willing to marry for money.” these quote is a conclusion of the survey mentioned before. This survey agreed on what I think about this topic. People now are more willing to get married for money, than they were 50 years ago. This is saying that the world is changing.

More and more people are realizing how difficult is to have a family, and how difficult is to have a good marriage. Many couples get divorced because money problems, in those cases we can see that love was not enough. A divorce specialist said that “every one of them has "messy marriages" because of a romanticized view of love carried over from childhood.” He is referring to the different couples who decided to get married for love, and failed. If people get married for love, is because they think is what they have to do and not what they what they want to do. We are living in a materialistic world, and in people’s priorities, money is in the top of the list.

To conclude this essay, I can say that the novel “Sense and Sensibility” has a lot of topics we can focus on. In my opinion, getting married for love or for money was the one I chose. It is amazing to see how young couples are not concerns about love anymore. Money is the main priority for both man and woman. In today’s world, people are more focus on having a new mobile phone than family issues. Children are rising by themselves, because their parents are working from Monday to Monday. Even though I think is not “terrible” to get married for money, we should pay attention to this issue, because it could become a huge problem in the near future.

Bibliography

Bibliography


Austen, Jane. “Sense and Sensibility”. London: Waverley 1892. 3rd July 2009.

Frank, Robert. “Marrying for Love… for Money” The Wall Street Journal. 14th December 2007. 3rd July 2009.



Small, Benjamin. “Don’t get married for love, says divorced expert” Canadian Broadcasting corporation. 13th February 2007. 3rd July 2009.

A good movie, but a much better book

The merchant of Venice is a book written by Shakespeare which was adapted as a movie in 2004.
The story is about a man, whose name is Bassanio, who needed money in order to go to meet Portia, a wealthy girl who was waiting for a man that could win her love. Bassanio asked for Antonio’s help. Antonio didn’t have any money so he decided to go to a money lender who turned to be Shylock, a man who days before was offended by Antonio because he was Jewish. At the end of the story Bassanio won Portia’s love and nor Bassanio or Antonio paid the debt they had with Shylock. Antonio went to court and Shylock claimed his pound of flesh. Portia dressed up as a man, defended Antonio and she won the case. She said Shylock could take his pound of flesh, but without make Antonio bleed. Shylock was only supposed to take Antonio’s flesh, but not his blood.

This entire story started because of an Anti-Semitism differences that was taking place during 1600. Antonio spat in Shylock’s face as a reaction against Jewish people. All the prejudice against the Jewish was bringing a lot of problems to the Jewish. They were not allowed to have the same jobs the rest had, so they were force to work as money-lenders. Antonio never believed he would need Shylock’s help. On the other hand Shylock was furious and he was going to took advantage of the first opportunity to take revenge on him. Antonio learnt his lesson earlier than Shylock. Antonio learnt his lesson and that is why he did not ended as bad as Shylock did. Shylock ended with nothing. He was punished for his need of revenge, and he not only lost the case against Antonio, but he also lost a big part of his goods.

A completely different relationship was the one between Antonio and Bassanio. It was absolutely amazing to see how the loyalty was presented here. I am not sure if Bassanio felt the same to Antonio, but it was pretty clear that for Antonio, Bassanio was like a son. Antonio was capable of giving his life in order to help Bassanio. The values that join Bassanio and Antonio were many, as an example we have; Solidarity, love, loyalty, honesty, etc. I believe Shakespeare was trying to reflect a lot of important values by using this relationship as an example of them.

It was shocking to see the character of Portia. During those days it was common to see that men were more important than women. In fact friendship among men was sometimes more important than their own wife. The personality Shakespeare gave to Portia was not common those days. Even though Portia was from the royalty it was clear that she not even control her own life. His father stipulated (before he died) that Portia will married with the man who choose the correct chest. Here we have an example of how Portia was not allowed to choose on her own. If Portia didn’t love the man who choose the correct was not important, she was supposed to obey his father’s will. At he end Portia was able to prove her intelligence and safe Antonio from a terrible death.

To finish I would say that the movie is good, but the book is much better. It is really interesting for me the character of Shylock. How greedy he was and how blinded he was because of the necessity of revenge. I learnt a lesson; I learnt to forgive my enemies and to help when I can. Shylock should have accepted the arrangement they had offered to him and everything would have ended in a completely different way. Selfishness would not lead us for a good road; on the contrary, it would make us be a bad person day after day.

Outline

I) Introduction

II) Relationship between Shylock and Antonio
- Prejudice
- Revenge

III) Relationship between Antonio and Bassanio
-Values


IV) Portia’s intelligence


V) Conclusion
-Personal opinion