Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge

“Poetry is an art…of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections, both relatively to human affections, by the production of as much immediate pleasure in parts, as is compatible with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole”.

After reading this quotation and having read the poem Kbla Khan written by Samuel Coleridge, I can say that poetry needs to be part of our lives. There are many things that can be related to poetry, for example we can make a poem about our own life experiences`, or we can create a poem based on our dreams and plans for the future. If we would like to have a different and better world, we can make it in a poem. Poetry helps us to express ourselves in a way that everybody can feel something once he/she reads that piece of writing. As it was mentioned in the previous quotation, "Poetry is an art...of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections..." It is important to say that it does not matter who you are or what you like to do, the main idea is that anyone can write a poem, but you have to say what you really want to. You have to express your thoughts, ideas and feelings.

A poem has to be real, fluent and sincere, in order that this can provoke any kind of expressions and feelings in the reader.

"Little black boy", William Blake

When I read the poem “Little black boy” I could realize the importance of the relationship between mother and son. It is easy to see that the mother was always protecting her son, and taking care of him. What really calls my attention was the way of thinking of a black boy, and what it´s mean to him being a black person. In some cases we can see that black people is considered as the worse thing in the world. On the contrary, the poem showed us that maybe there could be many differences between black people and white people, but in heaven there is not going to be any difference. In that place everybody will be considered the same; they will have the same rights.
The picture that I relate with this poem was “Madonna and the Child”, because it shows us a mother protecting his son and that it is the main issue of this poem, how a mother can save his little boy.

Discrimination in Shakespeare`s work and inside the classroom

My final essay is going to be focused on Discrimination. First of all, I am going to give a definition of the concept that I mentioned before and then I am going to analyze how discrimination is expressed through Literature in Shakespeare´s texts such as “The Tempest” and “The Merchant of Venice”. I chose this topic, because I consider it really important in everyone´s life and also because it is something that can be connected with an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom. I am going to use some examples from my own experience as a student and as a future English teacher; the examples are going to be focused on things that I have seen in my work experience because I think that they are important in this topic.

The Encarta`s encyclopedia defines Discrimination as an “unfair treatment of one person or group, usually because of prejudice about race, ethnicity, age, religion, or gender”. This means that a discriminated person is the one who is segregated by the rest of the people; there are a lot of reasons because they are left a side by others, such as the skin color, or the place where they came from, and some others. As it was mentioned in the definition, this unfair treatment is related to a prejudice. Do you know what a prejudice is? Well, a prejudice is referred to an action or way of thinking about a something or someone. Longman´s dictionary defines this concept as “an unreasonable dislike and distrust of people who are different from you in some way, especially because of their race, sex, religion, etc”. By this definition, it is easy to compare it with the one that I gave before. Having read both definitions, are you able to say that those words can be considered as synonyms? Almost for me, they are synonyms because both are terms which refer to a bad treatment to another people.

If I think a little bit more about Discrimination and the topics that we have seen in our course of Literature, I can see the importance of this topic and how useful could be Literature when you want to teach something like this. When we were studying Shakespeare, and we saw the text “The Tempest” and then the movie “The Merchant of Venice”, I could notice that William Shakespeare was more than a famous English writer, because he was always giving us some messages behind the text. Those two texts gave us a message that it is really important for us, as future English teachers to keep them in mind, and in this case the message behind was Discrimination. In the case of “The tempest”, we could see how colonialism influenced this topic, which was Discrimination. In that book, it was easy to find discrimination to Caliban, a slave, and as we all know, people who has got a lot of money is going to discriminate the rest of the people, who are slaves. In relation to “The Merchant of Venice”, the message was at least implicit in the movie, because everybody could see how Jews were treated by Catholics; this awful treatment, just because they had different beliefs and ways of thinking. When I think about that, I start asking myself if I could discriminate someone because of his/her skin color, or religion, or even their work and if they have money or not, because I really believe that everybody is different but it does not matter how different can anyone be from another one; everybody must have the same rights, because we are all human beings and that make us equals between the other people. I would like to know if you would accept being discriminated or would you like to see that your best friend if being discriminated because of his/her skin color? In my personal opinion, I would not accept such as sacrilege, I am against Discrimination, because we have to accept each other and we have to be respectful in order to be respected.

In my personal experience, when I see someone who is in the street and he/she is wearing dirty clothes I immediately think that maybe he/she is poor. That shows us that stereotypes are part of our society, and that is a factor that also affects Discrimination, because if we create a bad stereotype about someone, we are going to discriminate him/her because of that image that we have in our minds.

In the case of the Chilean society and Chilean schools, I start thinking in an imaginary situation. I imagine a school which is located in the South of Chile, in the 9th region. This school is a private one, so it is located in a high level place. It is supposed that there are going to attend students with money, because they have resources to pay for it. Near to this place, there are people who live in the countryside. There is one family who has a lot of money, so their children are going to attend to this school. To this school are attending students with a high economical level, and those students from the countryside. As we know, their accent and pronunciation is going to be different from the ones who live in the city. In the English class, the teacher asks one student from the countryside to read a paragraph, and he did it very good and clear. Then the teacher asks to another student, to read the same piece of writing. He did it, but his pronunciation was not very good. This makes me think that it does not matter where are you from, the most important thing is that you can do your things well, and without judging people because of their appearance or beliefs.

In relation to everything mentioned before, would you accept discrimination inside the classroom? Would you accept your students bothering between them? In my case I would not, because as I said before we have to be respectful to be respected and we have to accept each other, because we are all human beings.

Work cited:

Shakespeare, William. “The Merchant of Venice” (Movie)
Shakespeare, William. “The Tempest”. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html
http://www.jcu.edu.au/eo/JCUDEV_010542.html
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861605112/discrimination.html

Outline final paper

Topic: Discrimination

Title: Discrimination in Shakespeare`s work and inside the classroom.

1. Introduction.

2. Definition of the concept Discrimination.

3. Discrimination through Literature and William Shakespeare.
a. The Tempest
b. The Merchant of Venice

4. Connection with an EFL classroom.

5. Conclusion.

Summary of Chapters 33 and 34 from Sense and Sensibility

Chapter 33:
One day Marianne went to the jeweler and there was John Dashwood. The next day went Brandon while Sir John was visiting them and he thought that Brandon and Elinor will probably be married. He congratulates them but Elinor tried to explain him that there was not any married , while John also tells her that Edward is going to be married to Miss Morton.
He also laments that Marianne has lost her beauty and bloom through illness, and will hardly marry well now.

Chapter 34:
Dashwood´s family decide to give a dinner for the Middletons, to show their delight for their new company. Brandon was also invited, while John wishes to do everything possible to speed up the "supposed" marriaged between Brandon and Elinor.

Catholics versus Jews, a big deal.

In this review I am going to talk about a movie which is called “The Merchant of Venice”, and I am going to relate its main topic with reality. This movie it is based on a William Shakespeare play and it was written in 1598, but there is not an exact date.

William Shakespeare was a really famous British writer who was born in April 26th, 1564 and he died in May 3rd, 1616. He has been known as one of the most famous writers around the world. Shakespeare had written a lot of important and known movies, such as Romeo and Juliet (1595), Hamlet (1601), Otelo (1603-1604), The tempest (1610) and some others.

“The Merchant of Venice” took place in Britain, during the 16th Century. This movie principaly narrates the differences between Jews and Catholics. In this case, we can find two main characters of it who were Antonio and Shylock. Antonio was a Catholic man who was known as the merchant. On the other hand, Shylock was rich Jew man, known as the usurer. The movie started when Bassanio asked Antonio for some money that he needed to travel to Belmont because he wanted to visit Portia, a rich woman. The problem starts because Antonio did not have any money to lend him. For that reason, Bassanio went to visit Shylock and he asked him for the money. This is how the story goes.

During the movie I could notice that Shylock and Antonio were enemies. So it is really important to say that at that age, Jews and Catholics were adversaries, because Jewish people were not considered as normal citizens. At one moment, Shylock said to Antonio, Why we can not have the same rights? We have the same blood, the same feelings, we are all equals. That calls my attention because I agree with Shylock and I think the same as him.

In the past, Catholic religion was the main belief around the world. They were like the owners of everything; they were the ones who had more power. Jewish people have different beliefs, they are completely different from Catholics and for that reason they treated Jews as the worse thing of the world. This means that Catholics hated Jews because of their beliefs and from the other side Jews hated Catholics because of the same reason and also because they were always discriminating them.

Jewish´s beliefs are very different from Catholic´s beliefs, for example: Jews do not believe in Jesus, they believe in Yavhé; they read the Ancient Testament; their Church is called synagogue; their Leader is called Rabbi; and their most important day is Saturday (Sabhat). From the other side, Catholics believe in Jesus; they read the Bible; the Church is their temple; their religious leaders are Priest, Archbishop, etc; and their most important day is Sunday. As you can see there are a lot of differences and probably that caused the problems between Jews and Catholics. During the 1600 c, the Catholic Church was the one that had more power around the world.

During the Second War World, we could find those kinds of problems, because Jewish people were not considered in the society. There is another movie which is called “The beautiful life” (La vida es bella), it is an Italian movie that talks about what happened with Jews all along the Second War World. In that movie we could see how Italian Jews were treated by Catholics, and how they abused of them.

As you can see, even during the Second War World was present that problem, and now it is not the exception, because we still have those problems between these two religions. “Christians have criticized Jews for rejecting Jesus as their messiah, and Jews have criticized Christians for corrupting the concept of one God and following a false messiah” (http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/christianity_judaism.htm), for that reason they do not tolerate each other.

I think that problems between different beliefs and religions had always been here, especially between Catholics and Jews. Probably there is a prejudice in relation to Jewish people. As I said before, Jews have different beliefs from Catholics, but that does not mean that they do not have the same rights. I am not in favour of discrimination because in my opinion, every person has the same rights, even though they have different thoughts. I do not like to see how people are discriminating others because of their beliefs. I believe that this problem is because we are not accustomed to accept a variety of ideas and thoughts. We are all different and for that reason we have different beliefs and we have to accept that. It does not matter what happen, we are all equals and that is the only important thing.

References:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/christianity_judaism.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice

Outline: The Merchant of Venice!

1. Introduction.

2. William Shakespeare's life.

3. Summary of the movie.

4. Relatioship between Antonio and Shylock.

5. Differences between Jews and Catholics.

6. What is happening now? Do we have those kind of problems?

7. Personal opinion.