Quarter 2 Reflection

The end of quarter two is here, surprising but true. And with every end to something, we need to reflect on what happened, what we accomplished, and what we could have done better. One thing I think I improved in this quarter is writing. During this quarter, we had to write blogs, AoWs, and more. Since I got lots of practice with doing this, I’m sure I got better at least a little bit. When I look back at my blogs from quarter one and earlier, I do notice my blogs this quarter being longer and more in depth than before.

When I am asked the question, “ What has been the most challenging part of quarter two for you”, I can’t think of anything in particular. For ELA itself, I first thought, “ The thinglinks were no doubt the hardest thing I had to do this quarter.” But now that I think about it more, it seems like it was challenging at the time but it would be fairly easy to do it again if I needed to. The beginning of this quarter I barely remember, so I can’t say if anything was difficult, but it seems like I would remember if it was very bad. So I came to the conclusion that the most difficult thing for me to do this quarter was present my butterfly project. Since I’m a quiet person, it is hard for me to get up in front of the class and speak. But since I did it once, I can do it again. And, to help myself with this, I will try to overcome my shyness and not be nervous. This could also be considered a goal I have for quarter three and beyond.

It has been merely seventeen days since the new year, but it seems I have accomplished so much already. The first thing that comes into my mind is finishing my butterfly project, since it happened very recently and it took a while to finish. I also finally started a new book after reading the same book for about four months. The book is the first in The Land of Elyon series and it is part of a three book series, which will most likely be my life for the next year or two, so that might be considered an accomplishment. These are just a couple of my minor everyday accomplishments, which I’m sure everyone has.

During this past quarter, I have learned so much about the world, I can’t even bring it all into one paragraph. But, I can tell you the general ideas of what I have learned. The biggest thing I have learned about is The Holocaust, which makes sense since it was the main topic in ELA this quarter. During the reading of Night, a field trip to a Holocaust museum, and the watching of two movies, I became very acquainted with The Holocaust and learned a lot about it.

“Life Is Beautiful” Blog

I noticed many differences in the way The Holocaust is portrayed in Life Is Beautiful and Night. The mood or tones in each piece are different, even though they are practically about the same thing; The Holocaust. The mood in Life is Beautiful is generally more light and happy than in Night. Night is more dark and not very optimistic. Elie Wiesel wants his readers to know how terrible The Holocaust truly was, while Life is Beautiful brings humor into the Holocaust and might make the illusion that the Holocaust wasn’t that bad. The differences in the two pieces are made by the point of views of two different people.

The movie in question is called “Life is Beautiful”. But, this brings up the question, How is life beautiful? Even though the movie is about The Holocaust and it would seem that there is nothing beautiful about the Holocaust, there are aspects about the movie that are beautiful. One thing I found beautiful about life, based on the movie, is being able to be with who you truly love and being willing to do whatever it takes for your love. In “Life is Beautiful”, as soon as Guido bumped into Dora, he knew he wanted to be with her, and I’m sure she felt the same. Guido tried continuously and finally married her, after many attempts and even breaking up Dora’s engagement. The beauty is, after tons of things stopping them from doing so, Guido and Dora got married and had a family, just like they wanted. Throughout the Holocaust, their love stayed strong and Wido even gave his life to save Dora, which is a beautiful thing.

There are many instances in “Life is Beautiful” where it gives evidence of why life is beautiful. One that I saw in the movie is the innocence and trust of children. Throughout the movie, Guido tells his son, Joshua, different lies to make their situation a sort of fantasy, and Joshua believes every word his father says. If Joshua were older, he wouldn’t have believed what his father told him and would have used his own common sense to see what was truly happening. But, young Joshua in the movie didn’t have common sense yet and believed what he was told, just like all other little kids do. Guido tells Joshua that they are playing a game and they need to win one thousand points to win a tank. Both Guido and Joshua were probably a little happier if they were in the mindset of it being a game. But, Joshua may not have played along if he were older and they would have both been in despair. That is why the innocence of little children is one of the beauties of life.

There were multiple instances in the movie, “Life is Beautiful” where I noticed similar scenarios to the book “Night”. One was when Guido and his son, Joshua were on the train going to the concentration camp. Practically the exact same scene happened with Elie Wiesel and his father during the Holocaust. There was a part in Night when Elie was squished between 80-100 people in one train car, just like Guido was. But, when I was watching the movie, I got noticed a different tone about it than I did when I was reading the book. While in the train in “Life is Beautiful”, Guido tried to make the best out of the situation by telling a story to his son to help him not be scared, which actually probably helped Guido not be scared as well. While the train ride for Guido is stories and laughs with his son, the ride for Elie Wiesel and his father was a very different experience. Elie remembers having to stand up squished among tons of people, fear overpowering all of them. There was no laughter, no talking, just a solemn silence. The mood in the movie, “Life is Beautiful is more light and less intense than the mood of this part in “Night”. From Elie Wiesel’s point of view, this train ride was dark and horrifying. This shows that the mood or tone of the same situation can be much different based on the point of view of the author.

Night Blog

In the book Night by Elie Weisel, I noticed Elie going through many changes in his life due to The Holocaust. Night shows how the life of a person can change completely because of one event. Elie changed in many different ways, both physical and emotional. Elie transformed in his faith, empathy, and his respect for himself.

The biggest change I saw in Elie was his change in his faith. Throughout the book, as terrible things happen to Eliezer and his family and friends, Elie starts to lose faith with God. On the very first page of the book, Elie said, “ By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.” Before The Holocaust started affecting Elie, he was very religious, dedicating his life to God. At this point, he never would have thought that he would turn away from God. But, he also didn't know the horrors that lay ahead for him. Once he had gone through deaths, work and malnourishment, he started to fall away from his God and give up on all he believed in before. During their fasting time, Elie said, “As I swallowed my ration of bread, I turned it into a rebellion against Him.” But, at this point, Elie still believed that God might still help. Then after many months and still no sign of his God saving them, Elie’s belief in God ended and the building anger towards God erupted. At the very end of his story, Elie said, “a prayer to this God in whom I no longer believed.” After all Eliezer Wiesel had gone through, from total pious to disbelief, The Holocaust changed him immensely.

Another major change I noticed Elie go through was his survival instinct kicking in. Part of his survival instinct is losing his empathy for others. Throughout this book, I came to the idea that as part of human nature, when humans get in danger they lose empathy and only care about their own well being. When Eliezer first got to the camp with his father, his father wa s hit and Elie barely even cared, which he was ashamed of but couldn’t help it, he was just glad it wasn’t him. Then later on, once had gone through so much more, he said,”At that moment the others didn’t matter.” If Elie was his old self, he would have cared, but not anymore.

Another way Elie changed was letting himself be dehumanized by S.S. The first instance where I noticed him letting himself not be human was when he accepted that his name is now A-7713 and he was fine with it. With him accepted that as being his name, he is letting himself be dehumanized. Before he was affected by The Holocaust, Elie was his own person, doing his own thing, with his own name. But, throughout his time in concentration camps, Elie became to accept more and more that he was no longer human. In the middle of the book, the S.S screamed at the prisoners trying to run to the next concentration camp. “Faster, you filthy dogs!” There was S.S making sure the prisoners know where their place is, not humans. Then, just a couple of sentences later, Elie says talking about him and the other prisoners, “like automatons.” Automatons are machines, not humans.” By saying this, Elie is agreeing with the S.S and declaring himself not human. During Eliezer’s imprisonment in the concentration camps, he lost his self respect and gave in to the dehumanization of the S.S.