Vocabulary

P22:
Resume: Do something again.
Territories: Area
P23:
Naturalist: Someone believes nature
P24:
Maintain: Keep
Rattlesnake: A kind of snake with a tail which can make noise
P25:
inferior: Lower
P27:
Intrigued: Lie or some secret plan.
P29:
Stumble: Mistake
Inevitably: cannot miss adv.
Crusaders: People who do the revolution.
P30:
Victim: People who gets hurt.
Symptoms: Something can tell people what will happen.
Stiff: Hard
P33:
Typhoid: sick like could
Cholera: A kind of sick.
P34:
Emphasize: Highlight
P42:
Destiny: Life

Bad Ending is Not Always Bad!

  I had read the Pobby and Dingan, and I had watched the movie. I think the movie try to tell us all things in the book, however the movie cannot tell us whole things. So there are some difference between the movie and book. I consider that there is a most important difference between them. It is that in the movie the ending is more like a happy ending, however in the book the ending is a little bit sad. I prefer the book because bad ending is always for a better future.

  

  Let's talke about the book first. In the book, after they hold the funeral for Pobby and Dingan, they do not get the opal back. Another thing is that they hold a funeral for Kellyanne in few weeks after Pobby and Dingan's funeral. It is like they lose so many things, like a complete family, opal, and money. Ashmol and his parents are so missing Kellyanne, however they cannot bring her back forever. So they keep Kellyanne in their dream, like what they do to the opal.

 

  In the movie, the owner of the cemetery gives the opal back to Ashmol, and there is no funeral for Kellyanne. So I consider that they get opal(money) and Kellyanne(a complete family). It is a happy ending, and I believer that most people prefer the happy ending.

  

  If I saw the movie first, I believe I would like this movie. However i saw the book first, so I prefer the book. I like book more because happy ending cannot always make people remember what is important. For example, if everything is good in thebook, the dad would never know family is more important than opal; the mom would never know family and love are much better than the life in England; Ashmol would never know family is the best place for him. I want to say that bad ending is not always make you sad, and it is always for a better future.

We should always stand up for the truth!

  

  “She is a witch! She is a witch! ……” Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo was over. I saw this play last night at The Black Box Theater. The play is amazing, and all actors are hard working. To be honest I cannot understand all of he play, however I definitely learned something from the play, and I want to talk about two of them. I think those two things would help a lot. Let’s see what are they.

    The first, I consider that we should have the courage to againt the authority. In the play, this stoy is happened at the time period when religion was higher than science. However Galileo found something new, and those things are againsting the Bible. Everyone did not believe him besides his one student. Finally they puted him in the jail, so he had to give all his notes to his student. As we can see he dare to say the truth even though it would against the authority. I think we should all learn this courage. In our real life espicaily in China, most of students do not have their own thoughts. They always copy from the book; do what teacher ask them to do with out thinking; just follow rules. All of those things is killing Chinese progess. If everone just copy and fellow rules, what is the difference between us and robots? I suggest that everone should say out the different ideas of everthing, and be independent. We cannot get better and better without innovation. Every scientist did not know if they would lead a revolution before they finish one.

    Second one, we should define every truth by our own experiene. As we all see, in the play everone think the bible is the truth. However they do not test it. Everone believed that earth was the center of the universe, however Galileo found out sun is the center.  I remember Galileo tries to tell them that you should trust your own feeling by throwing a stone in the ground and he says that nothing is drouped. Things like those happen everyday. For example, my friend tells that it is cold outside. When I go out, I feel so warm, however I already bring my coat withme. I believe things like cold and warm happen in everyone’s life. I consider that we should always test before we define something as the truth, and this will help us to know what the real truth is. Then we can help everyone around us. I believe if we do the test every time we will make a big change in our life. Suspect the thing before you trust it.

    At last, I want to say thank you to everyone who work hard for this play, and I hope everyone can find the truth and say it out. Even though we will have so many troubles and problems when we tell others our thoughts, we still need to say and never give up, just like Galileo.

A great person!

He was a German Marxist poet, playwright, and theatre director. He was born in 10 February 1898 Augsburg, Bavaria, German Empire, and he died in 14 August 1956 East Berlin, East Germany. He had a lot of good work. For example, Life of Galileo, and The Good Person of Szechwan. He had two wifes and 4 kids. He remained a lifelong committed Marxist who. Brecht thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and exploitation and to be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change in the world outside. He also change a lot of things in the theatre. He created Verfremdung seffekt, and he put the German, Chinese, and Japanese theatre together. He got reward from his country in 1951, and he get a peace reward in 1955. Verfremdung seffekt is a way for actor to act a character, which said actor should keep distance with character, and they should higher than the character and act it. There were some people did not like him, so they tried to stop built the museum of him. I hope I can watch one of his theatre!

The play of Galileo!

Life of Galileo is a play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht with incidental music by Hanns Eisler. The first version of this play was written between 1938 and 1939. The English version opened at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947. It was directed by Joseph Losey and Brecht, with musical direction by Serga Hovey and set-design by Robert Davison. This play is about Galileo. He is short of money, and one of his student tells him a special thing the telescope. Then he replicates it, however it is sold to the Venetian as his own creation.He uses it to find so many new things, however he gets in troubles.The play stays generally faithful to Galileo's science and timeline thereof, however it talks his personal free life. Galileo did in fact use a telescope, observe the moons of Jupiter, advocate for the heliocentric model, observe sun spots, investigate buoyancy, and write on physics, and did visit the Vatican twice to defend his work, the second time being made to recant his views, and being confined to house arrest thereafter. There was also a interesting thing between he and his daughter. I am looking forward to see the play. 

Citation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Galileo

Most beautiful things is not always what you thought!

I consider that opal is the dream. When we always can get what we want, we won't have anymore impetus. If they didn't go to the Australia, the story wouldn't happen. Dream doesn't need to be true. Absences of the opal dream changed all Ashmol's family and the town. At the end of this book, Ashmol's family finally came together. They all realized that there is something more important than finding the opal, going back to hometown, or finding a own place. In our real life, we always have a lot of dreams but we do not need to make them true. The absences of those dreams will make us always full of energy. We would work hard for them, and we will find some thing hide under them. For example, " I had reckoned on buying a new house and getting my mum an air ticket for a holiday in England, and all kinds of other stuff, with the money from that opal."(Rice 58) Those things are what Ashmol's dreams, however none of them became true at the end. We still can see he, all his family, and people in the town felt happy and relax at the end. I consider that dreams won't always lead you to get what you want, but it will give some surprises. 

A dream like opal!

I had read 11 chapters of Pobby and Dingan, and I had found some interesting things in this book. First of all, I think this book tells us a story about the dream. The father has an opal dream and the Ashmol's sister has two imaginary friend called Pobby and Dingan. I am going to talk about two topics that I am interested in. One is what is the real dream? Another one is what is the relationship between the opal and the imaginary friends?

What is the real dream? As we all know this family is really poor. "kellyanne opened the car door and crawled into my bedroom." (Rice 6) From this sentence, we can know that they live in a car. They are too poor to buy a house. "I had reckoned on buying a new house and getting my mum an air ticket for a holiday in England, and all kinds of other stuff, with the money from that opal." (Rice 58)I can feel his desire to have a new house and kinds of stuff. I think the real dream for him is that he can live in a new house, and the dream for mum is that she wants to go back to England where she is from. "Ashmol, I sensed it today! Tomorrow we’ll be on opal, son, and we’ll be bloody millionaires! I can feel those bewdies sitting there in the drives, staring back at me. Checking me out. Waiting. They’re red-on-blacks, Ashmol, I’ll bet you anything! There’s rumours going that Lucky Jes has taken out a million-dollar stone and a fossilized mammoth tooth with sun-flash in it. We’re close, boy. Close. There’s definitely something in that earth with the name Williamson on it!" In this speech, we can see how much the father wants to find the opal. At start, the father might just want to be rich, however he starts loving opal, so the only thing he believes is that he can find opal and become bloody rich one day. For the father real dream is becoming rich by finding opal. "What d’you bloody expect when you drag your family to a place like Lightning Ridge? What d’you bloody expect to happen when you bring up an intelligent girl like Kellyanne in a place full of holes and criminals and freaks?" We can see the anger in the mum's speech, and we know they are in a little ridge full of holes, criminals, and freaks. So the sister cannot make some good friend in here, so she has two imaginary friends. The only dream the sister has is that she wants some great friends who can listen to her, play with her, and take care of her.

What is the relationship between the opal and the imaginary friends? In my opinion they are the same. "Me and him never took Pobby and Dingan seriously one bit." (Rice 8) As we can see, father did not really care about Pobby and Dingan at start. However he changed. "One time he even took Kellyanne, Pobby and Dingan out to the Bore Baths in the ute. When I ran out to join them with my towel around my shoulders, my dad shouted：" Sorry, son. Can't take you today, Ashmol. Not enough room with Pobby and Dingan in here."" (Rice 11) The father started to see Pobby and Dingan as real, just like he wants the opal. I consider that father realized his daughter and him is the same. Both of them have a dream that no one else can see or feel. He started to support her with the imaginary friends, and he wanted the mother to support his opal dream, like she supported Kellyanne's imaginary friends. I do not think those dreams are stupid or impossible. I have some dreams like those. For example, I want to become the president. I know that is huge and ridiculous, howeve at least I have a dream, and I am doing hard for this. It is much better than someone who  has no dream and is wasting their life.

Citation

Rice，Ben. “Pobby and Dingan.” Alfred A. Knopf, 2001-01-16. iBooks.