Mr_Shank

I’m going to start out with the 5 words this time.

• Enigmatic: adj. resembling an enigma; perplexing; mysterious. I chose this word because I didn’t know it, but I’m really glad I chose it because now I can quote Patrick Star. “The anatomy of my mind is an enigma.” You can alter this quote using this word–> “The anatomy of my mind is enigmatic.” But, the original is better.
• Mnemonic: adj. assisting or intend to assist the memory; pertaining to memory. Chose this one because I didn’t know what it meant.
• Ascetic: noun. A person who renounces material comforts and leads a life of self-discipline, especially as an act of religious devotion. Also chose this one because I didn’t know what it meant and it is used a lot.
• Tarmac: noun. Tar macadam, or tar. Chose this one because I didn’t know what it meant.
• Frivolous: adj.. Characterized by lack of seriousness or sense. & Chose this one because I didn’t know what it meant.

Alrighty. In the beginning of the “Grove of Ascetics,” we learn about one of Sarath’s college professors. His name was Palipana and he was an extremely tough teacher and an intelligent man. He was known for being great and when he claimed that he had decoded writings in a cave in Sigiyra, he was even more known. But, he could not prove anything he claimed, so he was “shunned” by the archaeology world. He moved to a monastery and became a monk. Anil and Sarath decide that they need held finding out where Sailor was buried first, and they are positive the Palipana can help them.

The next day, they are just described while they eat and hang out. They talk about how good Anil is at what she does and she can guess an age and how a person died just by looking at them and most of the time she is right. That night they hang out in the woods in their ambalama and talk some more about the painting of the eyes on Buddah. “Without the eyes, there is not just blindness, there is nothing. There is no existence.” I don’t see why they are talking about this eye painting; it has nothing to do with Sailor.

Anil starts thinking about Cullis and one of he experiences she had with him in a hotel room. They were laying there and she just wanted to talk with him. He grabbed onto her hair and he wouldn’t let go. She stabbed him in the arm and called a cab and then she left. It was the end to their romantic relationship.

Then, the story goes into finding out that one of the girls in the monastery is Palipana’s granddaughter. Both of her parents died in the war and she was in an orphanage run by nuns. He took her in because she was not safe where she was living, and she has lived with him in the grove ever since. Then, I got extremely confused when they book said that Lakma, Palipana’s granddaughter, would slip into the forest when he died. I thought he was still alive?? Maybe they are speaking about “when Palipana died,” as if it didn’t happen yet. But the wording in this part is very confusing.

The next night, Sarath and Anil leave for Colombo and they come across a weird truck driver in the middle of the street just laying there, spread eagled on this back. Sarath and Anil drive on, but then Anil gets a weird feeling about the man so they drive back to see if he is okay. He is not. When they find him on the street again, he had nails in his hand, “crucifying him to the tarmac.” Sarath and Anil stopped to get help from some strangers who gave them salt and some warm water. They used that to clean the truck driver’s hand and they took him the emergency room in Colombo.

This next part of the book is titled “A Brother.” It starts off in the hospital talking about the beginning of the war and what the hospital was like during the 1980’s. Doctors saw explosion, grenade, and mine injuries more often. The war had turned the hospital into a different scene, and not in a good way. Then the book focuses more on the truck driver with the nails in his hands. After he got out of surgery, he was in a lot of pain. But, he still liked to walk around and see al the different parts of the hospital. The story turns to to the truck driver’s doctor, Linus Corea. He was kidnapped and taken hostage for about a year or two at one point in his life. His wife and children went to him because that was the only way they would ever see him again. He was working in a camp of insurgents while he was kidnapped and he worked for the men that kidnapped him. His life there wasn’t too bad. He had long hours to work, but got time off to sleep and rest. On his birthday, the men took Linus and the nurse he worked with to a lake to swim. They tried to incorporate a swim into their everyday schedule after that. Linus’s family arrived, but he didn’t seem too terribly excited to see them. He even said he didn’t miss them anymore. He said that the camp he worked on was “his life” which is NOT the right thing to say in front of your wife and children.

The story takes another turn to Sarath and Anil again where they are back in the hospital. Sarath’s brother is a doctor and his name is Gamini. They all go out to eat and get into a talk as to what should be done about the government. Gamini thinks that the “freedom fighters” are the main reason why everyone should be scared. He questions why Sarath and Anil are so interested in the killings by the government while there are so many more killings by these freedom fighters.

This book once again goes into random stories about Anil and the one is about her name and how an astrologer tried to get her to change her name but she wouldn’t. But she realized this was just a teen stage and she got over her obsession with her name. Once her parents split, she was much more laid back and didn’t really care.

Now the story goes to Anil and her years in college and her life before the actual story setting. She had a hard time finding her classes and followed her professors around, she was involved in a bad marriage, etc. The book goes more into the marriage with and Anil and her husband who was a doctor. They really really liked each other in their younger years and it seemed as though maybe they were in love. But, things took a turn for the worse after their trip to England. I found one quote quite amusing, thanks to Adam, but it is a little inappropriate, so I’ll keep it to myself. She divorced him and started to focus on her studies a lot more. The first quote she wrote down from one of her professors in college was “femur is the bone of choice.” At page 146, Anil says once again (now in the present tense)”femur is the bone of choice.” I think she’s going to look at Sailor’s femur instead of his skull…

BTW, I read to page 145. Anywhere around there is good I think. Also, I am very sick right about now and this is about the last thing I feel like doing. Plus doing it on a Friday night just ruined my life. AND I would have gone to the play tonight but I’m too sick. Ughhhh!

Sorry this is so long, there’s so much crap in 75 pages, it’s ridiculous.

Okay, so this book starts off with Anil arriving at Katunayake Airport and then she was driven into Colombo. When she was younger, Anil was a fantastic swimmer and nobody in Colombo ever let her live that down. Now that she is 33,she doesn’t like people to recognize her as being a swimmer, she wants that to recognize her as Anil- a great anthropologist.

The second day she was in Colombo Anil went to a hospital to workwith forensic students at the hospital. Within a few minutes, Anil had figured out how one of the corpses died, but she left that to the students to figure out.

The next morning she went for a ride in a bajaj, a three wheeled taxi that was opened on both sides. It was raining that day so she felt the rain on her legs and it took her to a flashback of a dinner party that her family had years ago. It started to rain and it pretty much ruined the whole dinner that hosted outside. Next, she met Sarath Diyasena, whom she would be working with in the human rights investigation. He was so interested in her swimming, he didn’t ask her about anything else. Sarath and Anil are staying on a boat where they do a lot of their work. Anil finds out that people have found 3 bodies in government protected caves. Sarath and Anil are going to get a permit so they can go and search for more bodies in those cave and see if the government is the one putting those bodies in there.

On her first weekend, Anil went to her father’s friend’s house. Her name was Lalitha and she is one of few of her dad’s friends that is still alive. She had a short conversation with each other and Lalitha’s granddaughter and then she left. She went to the hospital again to use some equipment and people kept coming up to her asking her if she was the swimmer that got the scholarship. She met Dr. Perera and he asked her to give a 30 minutes speech on snakebites. She had no idea what to say, but she agreed to it anyway. She met another doctor in the hall that knew her father and then he asked her if she the swimmer and she walked away nodding.

The next day, Anil asked Sarath to go get dinner with her, but he declined. She began to ponder what his real job in this investigation really was. Was he a spy for the government? Was he just an archaeologist? Then the book goes into some weird italicized chapter about a man on a train that kills another man when they go through a tunnel. It said there were police officers all over the train, so the police officer that killed the other man was probably there because he government wanted that guy dead. The police officer shoved the dead man out the window after he strangled him with a chain.

Anil flew into Miami and met a man named Cullis. He was in the bathroom withher while she took her bath and she slept with him naked I think. She took her camera and recorded the hotel room and him while he slept. She recorded his “lovely ribs” and his writing.They had met before and went bowling, but being naked around him after meeting him once seems odd to me.

The next chapter goes through people that died and what they were doing the last time they were seen. Man of them were at friend’s houses, taking baths, or even praying. This just goes to show that Sri Lanka was and is a very dangerous place to live.

Sarath and Anil drive up to where the 3 skeletons had been found and they are searching for a 4th. When Sarath and Anil were talking on the ride up to the mountain, we find out how her parents died- in a car crash. It was after she left Sri Lanka and she never saw them again. That is why she didn’t return to Sri Lanka until now. They go for a swim and talk about a friend that taught Sarath a lot who was a monk. He got killed and when Anil asked who killed him, he said “Now we all have blood on our clothes.”

The next day, they go into the cave where the 3 bodies were found. Anil finds a their body that was previously buried. It was burned, but not totally. This body was not prehistoric like all of the others people had found. They named the body Sailor. Anil is sure this body was a victim of a political murder and it sort of seems like Sarath is trying to convince her it is not. She questions him about his relative that works for the government. She does not trust Sarath.

The next day Anil just looks over Sailor and tried to find out how he died and what tests they can do to find out where he was previously buried. Sarath goes out and Anil goes to the rest house owner. She asks him about his wife and says that she’s very nice. Sarath told Anil that his wife died, but the owner of the rest house says that she is still living. Anil gets sick and by noon the next day, she had a terrible headache.

Anil becomes delirious because she is sick and almost cries during dinner. She saw monkeys in the hallways and she believed what she saw. One minute she was freezing and the next she was sweating. Anil tries reading but the lights were too dim. She calls Sarath to bring up brighter bulb and he quickly returns downstairs int he hotel to where he was before. Leaf calls and Anil can barely speak to her be she is so delusional. The next day Anil asks Sarath if she can trust him and he tells her she has to. Anil finds out how Sailor died and he was shot in the neck by a .22.

Next, we find out that Anil’s name is not really Anil. She took that name from her brother and she hated her real name. It took 100 rupees, a pen set, and tin of 50 Gold Leaf cigarettes, and a sexual favor for her get the name “Anil” from her brother.

She met a man named Chitra and he took her out to eat. She found out that he can help her out in finding out where Sailor was first buried. The book then goes to Sarath inspecting all four of the skeletons on the ship. He coats them and takes pictures of them. He takes part of Sailor’s skull and he takes pictures of him without his head. He realizes that he and Anil need help with this mystery.

I chose all 5 of these words because I had no idea what any of them meant.

Anthropology- The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.

Guerilla- A member of a band of irregular soldiers that uses guerrilla warfare, harassing the enemy by surprise raids, sabotaging communication and supply lines, etc.

Cuneiform- Anatomy. noting or pertaining to any of various wedge-shaped bones, as of the tarsus.

Vainglory- Excessive elation or pride over one’s own achievements, abilities, etc.; boastful vanity.

Languid- Lacking in spirit or interest; listless; indifferent.

Frentic- Frantic; frenzied.

Mallory Stickler =)

Book V

 Since his mother, Mrs. Yeobright, died, Clym had been deeply depressed. Eustacia had also been feeling unhappy because she never meant for her unkindness to lead to Mrs. Yeobright’s death. When ever she begins to feel upset she seeks the comfort of Wildeve once again. After Clym starts to recover from his depression he begins to investigate what happened to his mother the day she died. He eventually talks with Diggory and Christian and learns that his mother had planned to visit him hoping they could reconcile. Then he talks to Johnny Nonsuch, the boy who received Mrs. Yeobright’s last words, he tells Clym that he saw another man enter the house, and then Mrs. Yeobright knocked on the door. Eustacia looked out but did not let her in, so Mrs. Yeobright stormed away thinking her son wanted nothing to do with her. Clym suspects that the man Johnny saw was Wildeve. He then becomes furious and confronts Eustacia, she tells him that she wasn’t sure what to do and that it was all very confusing, but she wouldn’t tell Clym about the man who entered the house. She then leaves Clym and goes to live with her grandfather again.
While staying with her grandfather she is cared for by his servant Charley. Charley begins to fall in love with Eustacia and as she contemplates killing herself he takes precautions so that she won’t be able to. While trying to woo Eustacia he creates a huge bonfire. Wildeve sees the fire and mistakenly thinks that Eustacia wants to meet with him. They begin to talk about leaving the Heath and going to Paris. While this is going on Clym goes to talk with Thomasin, he tells her that he still loves Eustacia. Later, when Wildeve returns home, Thomasin tells him that she believes he and Eustacia are “getting it on.” He becomes angry and the very next day he gives the signal to Eustacia that they are going to leave that night. Eustacia goes to meet Wildeve that night, there is a horrible storm during the time. She thinks about how poor she is and how Wildeve is not the kind of man she would have wanted to move to Paris with. Then the book switches directions completely and starts talking about Susan Nonsuch. She is making some sort if doll to resemble Eustacia, she then throws it in the fire, this is no doubt a foreshadowing of the things that will come.

Clym is sitting at home waiting for Eustacia when Thomasin tells him that Wildeve has left their home. Then Captain Vye, Eustacia’s father, tells him that Eustacia is also gone. Worried they go out looking for them. Clym and Wildeve meet, Wildeve is on his way to meet Eustacia. They hear the sound of something falling into the nearby river. They realize that it is Eustacia and both jump in to save her. Diggory then arrives on the scene and tries to rescue them. He recovers Wildeve and Clym, Wildeve is dead. They later find the body of Eustacia. Clym is the only one left alive; he blames himself for all their deaths and once again becomes depressed.

Book VI

Both Clym and Thomasin are deeply disturbed by the deaths of their spouses. Thomasin eventually moves in with Clym. For the longest time Clym remained alone is his part of their house. Eventually Thomasin realizes that she must be there for her daughter, her spirits then rose and she is happy once again. Then Diggory comes back to town, he is no longer a reddleman and once again starts talking to Thomasin. The two begin to fall in love all over again and after an argument with Clym the two eventually marry. Clym is once again left alone in the house; he becomes a sort of a preacher and preaches around the Heath. In the end it worked out tragically for most, although Thomasin and her daughter are finally going to have the life they deserved.

WORDS!!!!

maypole- a colorfully decorate pole that people would dance around (I thought I knew what it was but I figured I would checked, seemed too obvious)

weir- a small dam or stream

Not many words I didn’t know, must have gotten used to the writing, if their are any other words you didn’t know please mention them.
Also….a question….

What do you think would have happened if Clym had died instead of Wildeve?????

In this section of the story, Clym Yeobright and his mother are arguing and fighting constantly. Clym has come back from Paris to Egdon Heath, where he plans on building a boarding school for the children in the heath. But as he becomes reacquanted with everyone again, he meets Eustacia, who he quickly falls for. He has now decided he wants to marry her. Mrs. Yeobright, his mother, disapproves of him building the school and marrying Eustacia, because she believes that he deserves a better life with a better person. He doesn’t listen to her though and so their strained relationship may be destroyed.

In the meantime, Thomasin, Clym’s sister, comes to her mother to complain about her husband, Damon, who is still head over heels for Eustacia. She tells her mother that he is refusing to give her any money. Mrs. Yeobright decides to give her daughter 50 guineas, which is her share of Mrs. Yeobright’s inheritance. She also decides to give the other half of the inheritance to her son, Clym. Damon knows that Mrs. Yeobright is going to give something to Thomasin, so he offers to deliver it to her. But Mrs. Yeobright refuses, for she knows he is not a man of his word.

She decides to give the inheritance to Christian Cantle, Granfer Cantle’s son, who is supposed to deliver 50 guineas to Thomasin and 50 guineas to Clym. On his way to deliver the inheritance, he sees that there is gambling going on at Damon’s hotel. They are gambling over a very expensive rug of some sort. Christian decides to gamble along with them, and luckily wins. However, during his gambling, he let it slip to Damon that he was delivering the 100 guineas to Thomasin and Clym. Damon challenges him to gamble with him, and unfortunately, Christian loses the money to Damon.

Diggory witnessed this and decided to challenge Damon in order to win the money back. They gambled all day until night and Diggory won the money. Not knowing the money was supposed to be split between Mrs. Yeobright’s children, Diggory gave all the money to Thomasin, who keeps all the money for herself, also not knowing half of it belonged to her brother, Clym.

Clym is getting married to Eustacia, Damon is jealous, Thomasin has all of her mother’s inheritance, and Christian Cantle proves to be very unreliable.

Throughout this book, I have run in to many complicated words. The words I chose to define are sullenness, circuitous, contemptuously, contingent, and ruminate.

Sullenness: showing irritation or ill humor by a gloomy silence or reserve

Circuitous: roundabout

Contemptuously: showing or expressing disdain

Contingent: uncertain; dependent for existence

Ruminate: meditate or muse; ponder

I don’t think that I can live up to Mallory’s last 4 1/2 page post, so I won’t try. 

Instead,  I’m going to help you guys with some difficult words, the get on to the summary.

The first disgustingly ridiculous word that I found was Ægean.  First off, this word has a combined A and E, which automatically make it a doozie.  The A and the E combined, æ, is actually a letter in many other languages.  As you can imagine, it is pronounced like it is to separate letters side by side, AE.  On page 92, Ægean is used.  In this case it is simply referring to the Aegean sea.  So this word doesn’t really have a hard definition, but it is confusing because of the Æ.

This word fortunately uses all standard letters, but unfortunately is a lot more difficult.  The word superciliousness makes it’s debut on page 92. Superciliousness is defined by WordReference.com as “the trait of displaying arrogance by patronizing those considered inferior.“   As you can imagine, it is used to describe Eustacia’s feelings for Diggory Venn the Reddleman.

I found this word worthy of discussion due again to strange letter.  On page 104…

…As I gazed down on my paper to find the word of which I was about to define, a far more challenging word caught my eye, so I instead chose to define it.  The word I was going to talk about was manœuvring.  Again note this use of fancy letters.  Anyway…

The new word that I saw is disparagement. It means “the act of speaking contemptuously of.”  You guessed it, this one is also used by the always friendly Eustacia Vye!  Diggory Venn uses this word in his conversation with her on page 104 to describe the way she is talking to him.

Another word frequently used throughout this section was mummers.  Mummers are actors, as you could have guessed, but I thought this word was worthy to be in this post because of the infrequency of its use in or lives.

I think that those are sufficient words for this section, so I’ll skip right along to the summary.

This section begins with Diggory Venn meeting with Eustacia Vye.  After a long conversation which spans many a page, Eustacia tells him to go away.  Nothing was really acomplished during their long winded discussion except Eustacia becoming aware of Diggory’s affection for Thomasin.  Later, Diggory expresses his love for Thomasin to Thomasin’s Aunt.  She responds by telling Wildeve that their is another suitor after Thomasin’s hand.  Wildeve is pretty cool with this, because he’s tight with Eustacia, but learns that Eustacia really isn’t interested in him when he is only wanted by herself.  With Wildeve not exciting anymore, Eustacia goes looking for adventure.  She convinces a mummer to trade places with her so that she can act in the Christmas play.  The whole purpose to being in the play was to get closer to Clym Yeobright.  The section comes to  close when Eustacia goes to the plays final performance and attempts to contact Clym.  

(Clym Yeobright is the Native that is returning as alluded to by the title.)

And finally, at long last, I finish this post with a question.  This has crossed my mind many times while reading the book.  How do you visualize Eustacia and Thomasin?  Give some details, try to be descriptive.

Edit- Haha I was reading over this and realized I didn’t put my name in it.  That would have been unfortunate.

Double Edit-  2/22/09 (Sunday) 11:29 AM:  I Can’t find Adam’s Blog yet! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! And he already responded to this one so he won’t see this message!!!

Brian Wawrzyniak

In the beginnging of this book, Thomas Hardy is describing the scenery of the wild known as the Edgon Heath. He describes it as having dark vegetation, no trees and it wears a dress of brown, which implies it is pretty bare with just dirt. The day turns to twilight at the heath and the scenery is “majestic, impressive, emphatic, and grand.” An old man came along walking on the road. He has white hair, and he looked like he would have been a naval officer in his day. There was a “single atom of life that the scene combined,” which turned out to be the reddleman off in the distance. The old man eventually discovers that there is a young woman in the back of his van, or wagon, and tries to find out some things about her. The old man gets a little personal and the reddleman has to tell him that he needs to mind his buisness. After that, the reddleman rides away and the old man sees a woman off in the distance. The woman was profiled against the sky, “like an organic part of the entire motionless structure.” The woman leaves, but a group of locals replace her. They are building a bonfire ontop of a hill. Some of the locals are Grandfer Cantle, Timothy Fairway, and Christian Fairway, and Susan Nonsuch. They talk about the recent news, the marriage of Damon Wildeve and Thomasin Yeobright. Later, we find out that the woman in the back of the reddleman’s man was Thomasin Yeobright. We find out that Thomasin’s aunt does not approve of the wedding and the aunt’s son is in Paris. The reddleman returns and asks where Thomasin’s aunt lives, and he leaves to go to her house. Right after he leaves, she arrives at the local gathering. When Thomasin’s aunt is walking back from the gathering, she runs into the reddleman, who is Diggory Venn, and he tells her that he has her neice in the back of his van. There was a problem with the marriage liscence and she got very upset and ran away. In this communtiy, being married is a very important thing, and if something goes wrong in the marriage, it is a big deal. Thomasin’s aunt goes to the hotel where Thomasin’s fionce is and she insists that they go through with the wedding and Damon agrees. The woman that the old man saw earlier was looking through a telescope to look in a ligthed window down in the heath, and joins a nearby fire and is wating for something. After the boy who is tending the fire leaves, Damon Wildeve, Thomasin’s fionce, joins her. It is obvious that they have something more than a friendship and he left her for Thomasin Yeobright. Her name is Eustacia, and she is why the marriage between Thomasin and Damon did not happen that day. Eustacia thinks that Damon still loves her, but Damon does says he does not love Eustacia more than Thomasin. Now, the author talks about Eusatcia, the Queen of the Night. He described he and said her hair was a facy to see, she was somewhat heavy, and soft to touch like a cloud. The boy who was tending the fire before Eustacia had come, who is Diggory, finds out that they have an affair going on and he tells Eustacia that he knows that she is going to run away with Damon to the U.S. He plans to force Damon and Thomasin’s marriage, because he was once in love with Thomasin and wants her to be happy. Eustacia says that should have not have cared for him because there was a better person nearby. Damon goes to Mrs.Yeobright (Thomasin’s aunt)  and says that he wants to marry Thomasin. Mrs. Yeobright says that there is another man that Thomasin is interested in to make Damon jealous, and it works. Damon says that he still loves Eustacia, and he tells her that. Eustacia doesn’t like that she is his second choice. The end of this chapter ends with a foreshadowing of Clym Yeobright returning to the heath from Paris.

If you haven’t noticed, this book uses a lot of vocabulary this is very hard to understand. In the chapter that described Eustacia, the book says, “during the trip thither with her father.” In this context, thither means to or toward a place or point. I chose this word because it’s not a normal word that people use every day and it is part of the difficult context that this book frequently uses.

Another word that i chose was languor. It means a lack of energy or vitality; sluggishness. It is used when the author is describing Eustacia standing against the sky and being one with the scene. I chose this word because it is new to me, and it is not commonly used.

The next word is reddleman. The reddleman in this story is the guy that is red and has Thomasin in the van. A reddleman is a person who dyes sheep red. I chose this word because it is repeatedly used and I wasn’t sure what it meant.

The next word is archipelago. It means a chain of islands. It is used in a similie when then hills were compared to archipelagos in a log-formed AEgean (AEgean islands or AEgean sea). I also chose this word because it is new and uncommon.

The last word is inducement which means the act of leading by pursuading or influencing. I chose this word because it is not a familiar word to me. Also, because it used in a sentence when Eustacia is repelled by something, which is it’s antonym.

FIRST OF ALL, SORRY THIS IS SO LONG!

SECOND, I AGREE WITH BRIAN! BEING ABLE TO DO A VIDEO BLOG WOULD BE PRETTY SICK. I THINK YOU SHOULD CONSIDER IT, THEY WOULD BE MUCH MORE ENJOYABLE TO WATCH INSTEAD OF READING A MILLION OF THESE THINGS! JUST A SUGGESTION! =)