Arthur's English Journal

A boy age 4.With the name Arthur (me) was today attced by a Pecok. The boy had gone with his family to the local zoo. The family had unknowingly gone on a day when there was a supervised animal free day.
The boy had approached the Peacock with out a family member. The animal had broken it’s cage and attacked the young boy. A witness said that “the boy was so quick”. The zoo had nothing to say.

On Wednesday the 24th Prince Harry peed on a man’s head. John Lucas friend of the young prince said, in a interview with Piers Morgan, that “after a drink we went to the top of the palace and we dared him to stand on the side of the palace. He took it further, he took down his trousers and the next thing we knew he was telling us to run.”

The unfortunate recipient of this royal gift was the head Reverend William Black-Stone, of Bristol cathedral. The priest was at the palace for a special service remembering John F Kennedy. William Black-Stone said that “I was looking forward to my trip to the palace. This incident should not shape the young man’s life. The Prince is a growing person who will make mistakes just like the rest of us. I have spoken to Prince Harry, and we have put it behind us.”
The Prince left a statement saying simply “sorry”. This whole affair highlights just how normal the Royal family can be. The Archbishop of Canterbury is still recovering from his injuries that he received after fainting, on hearing the news that Prince Harry had been the one to spoil a great day.

The HS2 official website (http://www.hs2.org.uk/) says that one of the reasons the rail line will take until 2033 to complete is because the government needs to submit a bill to Parliament and then get the bill passed. This will take two years. The build is also in two phases. Phase one, the route to Birmingham, will take until 2026 to complete. The discussion about whether phase two can go ahead will only begin in 2015. HS2 is the biggest transport project undertaken for a generation. HS1, from London to the Channel Tunnel took 15 years, from the Tunnel’s opening in 1994 until it began operating in 2009.
Another reason it will take such a long time is because the scheme is controversial. Some people do not want HS2 to be built and the government has to take their views into account. For example, the group Stop HS2 object to the project on environmental grounds. Stop HS2 says that 162 wildlife sites are threatened (see http://stophs2.org/)
HS2 will take a long time to build because it is a very complicated technical and engineering challenge. It is also very controversial and there is a lot of criticism about the plan, so it will take a long time for government to pass the bills that will allow HS2 to be built.

Over-All grade: (Provisional): 6A

1. Film: 5A – Good awareness of the meaning of the text through the use of voice and directorial decisions.
2. Timeline: 6A – Detailed and thoughtful analysis of the plot and themes of the text
3. Prop:  – Submitted, yet to be assessed.
4. Essay:
   • Reading Grade: 7B – Sophisticated appreciation of the lingustic, stylistic, generic and historical context of the play
   • Writing Grade: 6C – Well structured, with consistent style and accuracy. Lack of sophistication of the expression of the more complex ideas sometimes, with a tendency to over-rely on simple sentence structures.

This is the film that me and Peter made – it is a scene from Romeo and Juliet. We used a website called Xtranormal. We hope you enjoy it. (This is submitted on Peter’s behalf.)

Romeo & Juliet
by: arthurdavies

Romeo and Juliet – one of Shakespeare’s greatest works – is constantly filled with references to fate.
In this essay I will be talking about key elements that suggest fate in the play. In Romeo and Juliet there are many references to their own death. This will be my first subject. My second topic will be the way in which Romeo loses his faith. For the third paragraph there will be a complicated paradox.

” I fear, too early, for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels, and expire the term
Of a despised life clos’d in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He that hath the steerage of my course
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen!”

In this quote Romeo is saying to the audience that if he enters this party, the events that will follow will cause his passing (this is the party where he will meet Juliet and set off the events that will lead to his death.) This is the first main point in the play where Romeo talks about his death. What Romeo is saying is even though he knows going to this party will eventually course his death, he is willing to let God make the decisions for him.
This tells the reader two things: one that Romeo is obviously very religious, and two, that Romeo is clearly predicting his death. The image Shakespeare uses to show this is that God is the captain and Romeo is the ship.

In the times of Shakespeare’s plays religion was as important as politics. Shakespeare uses this to his advantage. Romeo losing his faith could be argued to be the real tragedy. The quote above implies that Romeo is willing to put his life in danger if God wants him to.
“I defy you stars”
This is very important for Romeo as it means he is so in love with Juliet that he is willing to forget God. This gives more reason for Romeo to kill himself. In the film the death of Tybalt comes in front of a statue of Jesus. Killing, in the eyes of Christians, is the second worst sin that you can commit. This then shows that he is gradually losing his faith. First he slays Tybalt in front of Jesus, then he commits suicide in a Church, the home os God.

Suicide, in those days, was considered the worst sin of all as it took the choice about whether a person lives or dies away from God. Many times in the play, God controls events that lead to Romeo’s suicide. This implies that Romeo it is not Romeo’s fault that he committed suicide. The best example of this is when Frier John is stopped from delivering the message because of a disease which causes the area that he is staying in to be quarranteened. If that message, telling Romeo that although Juliet looked dead, she was still loving, had reached Romeo, he would not have committed suicide. Maybe what is happening here is that Romeo’s suicide has been controlled by God but for a different reason than we may first presume. After Romeo and Juliet’s bodies are discovered, the Capulets and the Montegues decide to end their argument and draw up a truce. God has used these two young people’s suicides to stop the ongoing disagreement which could have led to war and the deaths of many more people.

As we have seen, Shakespeare uses fate in many ways. However, in my opinion, the most important way in which fate is used is to direct the plot. Fate makes people do things and events happen in a story which do not need to be explained in other ways. It is like an unseen force directing characters. In those times fate was God.

I think Mercutio is using metaphor to compare his day dreams to the wind.
“Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south”
Mercutio is using the wind to illustrate the unpredictability of day dreams. Wind goes North then South as his dreams go one way then another. The metaphor also shows that there is nothing to get hold of, no physical thing to touch like wind itself.
“Which is as thin of substance as the air”
The effect is that it seams to say that Mercutio is very confused even panicked.

Your task is to identify the metaphor present in the following excerpt and then write a paragraph that explains the metaphor and its effect on the meaning of the passage it is embedded in.

MERCUTIO

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

Feel free to watch the presentation again from this lesson to remind you of how to approach a passage that contains a metaphor:

I am going to make a prop of Julets grave stone. When she is throught to be dead.

I might do a film seen of when Julet meats Romeo. But I might do a presentashion or a class activeity .

Shakespeare is asking the question are we in control of are lives or do we not have any choice.

Romo is also talking about even though he has a feeling that he will die, thanks to events at the party “some Consequence hanging in the stars”. Yet he is still wiling to go if he thinks that god  wants him to. Later on in the play though he is willing to commit the worst crime agents god and kill him self which shows that something massive must change for him to place that much trust in god and then almost slap him in the face.

Allthought the play (sofare) the play it is asking the question is their fate by:

Teling the crowd at the biging what is going to happen and nothing can change it (like fate).

The cowincedenc of  Romo just runig into the sevent unprepped which leads to his deth. Some people think that is a key factor to fate egsisting.

When Romo is tarking about his own death that is fate (if you think it egsist)