2001-11-30

love in literature

     The theme of love has been a recurrent one in the literature. Its role is important because love will always offer different twists and turns that will make any plot more interesting. Love is a particularly interesting subject because it sounds simpler than it actually is. We like to think that love stories are always very sentimental. We know that the woman and the man are going to live happily ever after by the end of the book, but sometimes the situation is different. I’d like to tell about the greatest love stories in the literature.

     The first one is “Romeo and Juliet.” This is probably the most famous lovers ever. This couple has become a synonym for love itself. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy which was written by William Shakespeare. Their love story is very tragic. It is the tale of two teenagers from two feuding families who fall in love at first sight and then marry. They become true lovers and then lost all for their love.  Their deaths unite their feuding households.

     The second love story is the story of Tristan and Isolde. It has been told and retold a lot of times. Isolde was the daughter of the King of Ireland. She was engaged to King Mark of Cornwall. King Mark sent his nephew, Tristan, to Ireland to escort Isolde back to Cornwall. During the voyage, Isolde and Tristan fell forever in love. Isolde did marry Mark of Cornwall, but could not stop to love Tristan.  When King Mark finally learned that they love each other, he forgave Isolde, but Tristan was banned from Cornwall. Tristan went to Brittany and met Iseult. He was attracted to her because of the similarity of her name to his true love. He married her, but did not consummate the marriage because of his love for the "true" Isolde. After falling ill, he sent for Isolde in hopes that she would be able to cure him. If she agreed to come, the returning ship's sails would be white, or the sails would be black if she did not agree. Iseult, seeing the white sails, lied to Tristan and told him that the sails were black. He died of grief and Isolde died soon after of a broken heart.

     The last story is the story which was written by Charlotte Bronte “Jane Eyre”. It is famous tale, where friendless characters find a cure for loneliness in each other's company. Jane is an orphan employed as a governess to the very rich Edward Rochester. The improbable pair grows close as Rochester reveals a tender heart beneath his gruff exterior. On their wedding day, a horrified Jane discovers that Edward is already married. Heartbroken, Jane runs away, but later returns after an accident when dreadful fire has destroyed Rochester's mansion, killed his wife, and left him blind. Love triumphs, and the two reunite and live happily.

     In conclusion I'd like to say that all these three stories show that the subject of love plays an important role in literature and will continue to be the most important topic in future writings.  New ideas and small improvements to older traditions will make love an interesting theme in the years to come. We can already easily acknowledge the importance of love in the history of our literature.

2001-11-22

 

WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP?

     Songs, poems and proverbs about friendship are common and can be found in all languages. It is so because friendship has a great value in our life. Everyone would like to have a bosom friend, someone trusted, loyal, sincere and faithful. Friendship may be defined as ‘a dynamic, mutual relationship between two individuals’ and it is founded on the recognition of external or internal similarities.

     I would like to start with a type of friendship, which is based on external similarities, that is: the same race, social background, the same hobbies, business interests, the same school or outdoor activities. This type of friendship lasts only for a short period, it means, that such a friendship is not long-standing and can easily be broken when the external similarities change or disappear. Moreover, such a friendship is not very intimate and faithful, or deep and eternal. It is rather brief and casual. This friendship break down, when the people ‘grow away’ from each other and become too different in interests, opinions, beliefs and characters.

     The second type of friendship is based on internal similarities, it means on mental and spiritual features. Such a friendship does not recognize any differences between people, because relationships are usually equal, therefore they feel comfortable, relaxed and emotionally safe together. People, who have internal friendship, do not have to weigh their thoughts or words and usually are on the same wavelength. Such friends are very loyal and cordial and even when they have ups and downs they manage to foster their friendship and to remain sincere friends for really a long period.

The one more thing I would like to mention is that it is more and more difficult to make a friendship nowadays, either external or internal. The main reason is that we live in big cities, where we sometimes don't know who lives next door, so if we want to make a friendship, we should be honest and interested in people, rather than trying to make them interested in us. We should treat others in a way we like they would treat us in order to make harmonious, intimate and enduring relationships.

     In conclusion I would like to say that the friendship between people is perhaps the most important and meaningful feeling in the world. It is an intense connection and ‘never anything but sharing’, the sharing of everything that we have and giving even more than we get. It is a deep feeling that lasts for all our life and needs a great caring for each other's safety and well being.

2001-11-15

Books

First of all I'd like to say that reading is very important for every person. It helps us to learn new words, expressions and to see how this words  are used in context. We can expand our vocabulary through reading and become more educated. Speaking about me, I like reading very much, but usually I have a little time to do that. I used to read a lot in summer, when I had a lot of spare time. I read very interesting book this summer, which is called "Man and boy" by Tony Parson. It is the type of literature I like to read the most, because it is real, it tells the things about the life we live in and about such people as we used to be. I agree with the fact, that Classical Literature is also very interesting and I used to read it at school. What is more, I liked it very much, but only to read in my native language, because it is quite complicated and difficult to understand when you are reading it in foreign language.In future I will try to read more  and choose different types of literature, but now I have time only to read what we need for our lectures.

2011-11-11

Writing

I have read an extract from the book how to improve and study writing yourself. It was said, that it is two ways in which we can help yourself learn to be a better writer:
-One approach to writing is through wide reading.
-The most important way we can help yourself become a good writer is by writing. We must buy yourself an extra notebook, and try to write down some ideas every day, in English, about anything that interests you. We must write down our opinions on life, love, the writing class, whatever interests us. As we write we mustn't worry too much about putting our ideas in order, just let them flow.
The second stage is more difficult. Once a week we must reread our journal, select one topic and rewrite it for a particular reader. This may be our teacher, a fellow student, or the whole class. We will need to thing carefully about how to present our topic in such a way that our reader can follow it

"Study Writing" by Liz Hamp-Lyons and Ben Heasley
(A course in written English for academic and professional purposes)
                             

2011-11-11

My day


 I got up at 7 o'clock although I haven't lectures today. I had breakfast with my family and then I started to do my homeworks. It was not very easy, because there were things which I don't understand, that is an intonation from phonetics, so first of all I had to study the theory again. It was really useful to read it again and I did my homework at last. After that I studied Grammar a little bit, I've read about the use of prepositions. After all I finished to read a book "Alice in Wonderland", which we need for our LTA lectures and I have only to write a report about this book, which I think will be very difficult to do, because we didn't do it at school, so I must to read some material how to do it correctly.