Photo Blog

Open , by Andre Agassi with the assistance of J.R. Moehringer.


http://artobserved.com/artimages/2008/09/the-scream-edvard-munch.jpg


The Scream by Edvard Munch shows the psychological pain that probably everyone experiences at some point in their life, and that Agassi frequently must face and overcome on his journey to manhood. Andre Agassi describes many situations in his book where he is frustrated with what his father is making him do. Agassi writes, "I hate tennis, hate it with all my heart, and still I keep playing, keep hitting all morning, and all afternoon, because I have no choice" (27). The figure in The Scream seems to be in great pain just like Agassi is. The painting also is symbolic of Agassi's father's physical screaming at his son. Many times in the book, Agassi writes thing such as: "My father screams from the stands: No more drop shots! No more drops!" (37). Father and son are screaming, Agassi internally, his father out load.


http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/articles/images/dragon048lr.jpg


The image of the dragon represents Agassi's enemy, which literally is a ball machine that he personifies and calls "the dragon." The dragon also represents the role of tennis in his life and how Agassi must conquer his feelings about tennis. The dragon is described as looking like every other ball machine but then Agassi unexpectedly adds that: "it's actually a living, breathing creature straight out of my comic books. The dragon has a brain, a will, a black heart - and a horrifying voice" (27). When Agassi goes back to see the dragon with Stefanie's parents, and his father asks him to demonstrate how the dragon works, Agassi writes, "I'm having shuddering, violent flashbacks" (326). Agassi has to face up to those fears. The dragon also represents his father - Agassi describes his father as "fire-belching" early on in the autobiography (27). Like St. George, Agassi must slay his internal dragon and the hold it has on his peace of mind.


http://carriegooch.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/the-thinker.jpg

The sculpture The Thinker by Auguste Rodin illustrates how Agassi starts thinking about his situation through one of his friends; this friend later becomes one of the persons working on Agassi's team. Perry Rogers is described as "a kid who not only notices" but also points things out (64). Perry also is described as listening, conversing, analyzing and strategizing. Agassi uses Perry to tell him his jumbled problems and Perry rearranges Agassi's thoughts, making them sound logical which, to Agassi, is the first step to making them solvable (64); Perry helps Agassi reach manhood by helping him with his disordered thoughts (141). When Agassi hits a low point, he no longer wants to be using his Thinker friend to help him understand himself (228). With the help of Perry and others, by the end of the book Agassi has been able to think through things and to recognize that: "I didn't alter my image, I discovered it. I didn't change my mind. I opened it" (373).



https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvgi4TujqYGVjOl8paUEmP7HUzEfSQ5Q9EAUMaZEfHBtxh439F8vgF2aNTsIi8ekitlwU72F3GaEFl6PM3GfNw0kZunbJf5_VmggGBI8Zx9bVEGXcThBfQ9wzCWyN2Db2d-8hd7QVhsTw/s400/481_Sisyphus.jpg

In his autobiography, Agassi recounts many stories of his struggles and his defeats and how he keeps going on even when others might be quitting in his situation. In that way, he is like Sisyphus who must push a boulder up a hill and begin again every day, punished for all eternity. Agassi's boulder is a tennis ball and his hill is the court. As he keeps losing, Agassi writes that his wife "Brooke asks, why I didn't just quit?" (112). Later in the book, he says to one of his coaches, "I want to quit... But I don't know how - or when" (228). Agassi continues to lose and lose: "I lose all the time now, and the only time I don't lose, is when I pull out of a tournament" (244). But Agassi continues to play in tournaments. As he becomes one of the oldest players, he tells reporters "I don't plan endings anymore than I plan beginnings... Still, I feel eternal" (350). As Agassi matures, with the help of Stefanie and the birth of his children, he comes to realize "I play and keep playing because I choose . Even if it's not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything" (359). Agassi has come to terms with his boulder.


http://www.abstractfigurativesculpture.com/assets/images/autogen/a_Father___Son.jpg

The stoneware clay sculpture entitled Father & Son visually describes Agassi's relationship to his son. It is a big contrast to his relationship with his own father. Agassi knows his father loves him but that love is demonstrated in a very destructive way. Agassi worries about what kind of a father he will be "I am a stranger to myself - what will I be to my son", but being a father also gives him a sense of purpose: "now more than ever, I need to play. For him, his future, and my other children at my school" (339). His son helps him put the game of tennis in perspective and Agassi writes, "Each night, within minutes of coming home from the courts, as I'm cradling Jaden... I can barely recall if I won or lost" (341). Becoming a father has helped Agassi grow up and he comes to realize that he is a father first and a tennis player second. He writes that, "This evolution happens without me being aware" (341). He notes that his two children and his wife are four distinct personalities and yet they are a matching set. He uses the word "complete" to describe how he feels in life (373). Agassi is content and fatherhood has helped him become a better person.


http://www.myartprints.co.uk/kunst/lorenzo_bartolini/charity_educator_sculpture_hi.jpg


The sculpture by Lorenzo Bartolini entitled Charity The Educator mirrors Agassi's role as the designer of his charter school in Nevada. The school keeps him motivated on the tennis courts: "I'm playing for the school, therefore playing my best" (336). Agassi is committed to setting up all aspects of the school. He and Stefanie raised forty million dollars for his foundation as of 2004. Agassi is pleased that he can give back to the community. The school's unofficial motto is "BELIEVE". One student tells Agassi that the school gave him direction, hope and a life and thanks Agassi for his efforts. Agassi replies that it is he who needs to thanks the student (383). He calls the school and what the school delivers to its students his "proudest accomplishment", particularly because it has been created by a ninth-grade dropout (384).

Safe Area Gorzde Blog

I like that even though the story was about very sad events, there was also some humour in it. The novel gives a good feeling about what it must be like to be in a war where the enemy could be your neighbor. One thing I did not like about the novel is that I found the story a bit hard to follow. I did not know enough history about Yugoslavia to easily figure out the story’s background. The author does describe the historical background, but it was a bit tricky for me to follow. This is the first adult graphic novel that I read and it was a nice change from reading regular novels. I plan to read more graphic novels in the future.

There does not appear to be a traditional hero, but to me the main hero is the journalist. He is drawn to look kind of geeky and dorky with glasses and an odd smile. He goes to Gorzde which is a Muslim area surrounded by Serbs. The narrator can travel on the Blue Road. The narrator becomes a delivery system and brings back goods from Sarajevo to the people of Gorazde. The reader can tell that the journalist is sympathetic toward the townspeople in the way that he describes what is happening to them. He seems to like the townspeople as individuals, not just because they make interesting news stories.

The three panels on pages 92-93 were very interesting. They show seven mutilated corpses lying in the cemetery about to be buried. The narrator names the corpses and describes their decay in detail (they had been killed some months back and left in their houses). The artistic style used by the author in these panels is the same as he has drawn throughout the novel. The drawings are more realistic than cartoons and comics. The panels are in black and white, which gives the story a very dark mood. The corpses have a creepy look to them. Even though they are drawings, they make the reader squirm, and feel sad and disturbed.

Video Game Review

Video Game Review













Teacher: Mr. Darvasi
Name: Matthew Kruk
Date Submitted: November 9, 2009
Course Code: ENG1D
Tribe: Mohawk





Spore is a game published by Electronic Arts, also known as EA games. The game was released for the PC. Spore is a multi-genre game. It can vary from playing it in a god - like circumstance, a life simulation, real time strategy (RTS) and a role playing game. The game was released on September 7, 2008.

The story of the game is about how life was brought to a planet. The game starts when a giant chunk of ice carrying small microscopic organisms inside it crashes into the planet and releases the organisms. You start off as one of those microscopic organisms and you work your way to becoming the top of the water food chain by getting new parts and eating food. This is also known as the cell stage. You can be a carnivore, herbivore or an omnivore, which affects you later on in the game. Once you reach the top of the food chain, you grow legs and move onto the land. From here you can explore and grab new parts, to fight or make friends with other creatures. This is the creature stage. When you fight or socialize with other creatures, you gain DNA points to buy new parts. This increases your creature’s intelligence and when done often enough, you will advance to the tribal stage. In the tribal stage, you have a hut and the game twists and turns into a real time strategy game. You can have up to 12 people in your tribe. You can gather food, which is used as currency in the tribal stage. When you fight or socialize, you will unlock new parts, and new, harder tribes to be nice to or attack, will appear. Once you have annihilated or befriended all huts, you will advance to the civilization stage. Your tribal village then turns into a city. This also follows the RTS rules. In this stage you can destroy, convert or economically purchase every city. Money is gained through cities. Each city has factories, houses and entertainment facilities. Factories produce money and unhappiness, while entertainment provides happiness and houses give more money when linked with factories and more happiness when linked with entertainment. When you have conquered the world in any three manners, you may go on to the space stage. The space stage is a very large and explorative stage in which you control a space ship and fly around the galaxy. You can do many things in space stage such as interacting with aliens, terraforming planets and exploring. The main goal of space stage is to reach the center of the galaxy but you encounter many problems along the way. The rest is up to you to play and find out what happens…

I found the game very addictive because of the many things you can do. You can customize your own cell, creature, buildings, vehicles, spaceship and more, which made it fun to create different things. Playing as cool characters that you create keeps the game different and makes you want to play more.

I would change many things in this game. I would change the civilization stage because it is very easy and does not quite expand on all the problems a world would really have at that time. Since space stage is very big, there are many problems you must always be attending to such as ecodisasters, pirate attacks/raids or alien attacks if you are at war. This does not allow you to do very much else and you must always keep coming back to those planets to solve the problems. I would make the time each problem happens on one of the planets longer so that you may explore and head towards the center instead of always worrying about your planets. With these changes, the game what be almost perfect.

Into Thin Air Blog

September 14, 2009, Edited September 21, 2009

Matthew Kruk

Grade 9

Novel Paragraphs

Into Thin Air is a nonfiction book about two main groups of adventurers who went to climb Mount Everest. This was an interesting read because it describes the individuals of the teams that went up and the experiences of people who did not reach the top whether because of lack of bottled oxygen or the extreme cold conditions or high altitudes. Though many suffered, many reached their goal of achieving victory over Mount Everest’s dangers. The book is written from the author’s perspective and he describes the backgrounds of the climbers and how they came to climb Mount Everest as well as the Sherpas who helped them.

My favourite character is Rob Hall - he was the head of one of the expedition groups. In the beginning of the book, the author describes an interesting rivalry between Rob Hall and the leader of a second expedition group, Scott Fisher. This drives the beginning of the book; catching my attention and making me want to read more. Rob Hall was a very courageous and helping person. He felt the responsibility to help other climbers. Rob Hall died trying to save another person who was too weak to climb down the mountain. Rob Hall to me was a hero.

There are many things that I like about this book. I like how the author describes all the climbers and did not stay on any one or two climbers for an excessive amount of time. I liked how the author describes all the climbers’ reasons for wanting to climb such a difficult and dangerous mountain. I think that the author did an excellent job writing this book.

Two quotes from the book that I thought were good are;

“The first body had left me badly shaken for several hours; the shock of encountering the second wore off almost immediately. Few of the climbers trudging by had even given either corpse more than a passing glance. It was as if there were an unspoken agreement on the mountain to pretend that these desiccated remains weren’t real - as if none of us dared to acknowledge what was at stake here.”

“Guy handed me a beer, Caroline gave me a hug, and the next thing I knew I was sitting on the ice with my hands in my hands and tears streaking down my cheeks, weeping like I hadn’t wept since I was a small boy. Safe now, the crushing strain of the preceding days lifted from my shoulders, I cried for my lost companions, I cried because I was grateful to be alive, I cried because I felt terrible for having survived while other had did died.”

I think these quotes are important because they show the character development of the author. The first quote describes how nobody saw the dangers of Mount Everest and how some people did not look at the dead corpses to even acknowledge that there was danger on Mount Everest. The second quote shows how the author has fully realised the dangers of the mountain and how so many people had died while he had survived. I think the quotes were good because they show the attitude of some climbers towards Mount Everest and how they did not truly realise how dangerous the mountain really was.