Percy Bysshe Shelley

Do you believe in the dark faeries? Percy Bysshe Shelley was a well known poet who wrote in the romantic style. In American Lit for the past few weeks, we have been researching romantic poets. Something I found interesting about Shelley, was that his first important poem, had been about Queen Mab. In general, she is a well known dark being. The use of her name as the title,made me wonder: Why her? When I analyzed the poem more closly, I found some connections to his life. Shelley had two wives. The first one committed suicide, after he traveled to France with another woman. In his poem, he personifies Death and Sleep as if they were actually people. I found that you could easily replace the two names with his wives names because the characteristics describes them each induvidually. One of the questions that I had was: Do you think that he wrote the poem Queen Mab with inspiration of his own life, mainly his wives? When I looked up Queen Mab, the most common pop-up said that she was commonly defined as a depiction of the plague or even herpes. This was because she was mainly drawn over a body, whose lips were covered in boils. Do you think that had anything to do with Shelley's choice to use her as his title?

Post Civil War... Reconstruction

This week, we took our test... Of Course, but we briefly talked about the reconstruction era that came after the Civil War. In this era, it was mostly about what should happen with the freed slaves. Should they have had equal rights or not? That was the big question that was asked. What do you think? Should the equal rights movement have come faster? And if so, what do you think the effect would have been? I think that if the equal rights movement came earlier, it would have been easier to go through the Great Depression that cam later, with a bigger and more equal work force. We also talked about the Freedman's Bureau which was supposed to reform the South. The ratio was really lopsided though. 2000/4million freed slaves. How do you think that they were able to reconnect all of the families and help find everyone? I'm pretty sure it would be hard to do so without internet. I personally think that it was a good idea to have people specialized in finding people who were seperated. It's kind of like a compensation. I feel like this would have been more effective id their were more people. What do you think? 

Civil War -> Gettysburg

Last week, we talked about the Civil war. To go more in depth, the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Cold harbor. Today I will write about the battle of Gettysburg. We talked about how Gettysburg was probably one of the most decisive battles in the Civil War. I was wondering, why they would continue the war for months after? Wouldn't it only deplete supplies until the South would be left wit nothing? The most decisive battles took place on Little and Big round top, and Culp's, and Cemetery Hill. The battle between Little and Big round top, took place in the area between, the Devil's Den, also the valley of death. This battle , protected the Union army, from being destroyed by the sides. The leader of the Union army part, was Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. Wouldn't he get more recognition than that which was given? It seemed like his part in the battle was a bit underestimated. The battle on Culp's Hill took place on the last day. The tactics were important, to make sure that the Union Army won. I was wondering, why would General Lee keep trying to send troops through an open field even when his forces were depleted? Wouldn't it be better to recognize the failure and change the strategy to match the situation?