Post 12: A Tragedy

                    Kobe Bryant, during his NBA career, was a phenomenal basketball player. He won several NBA championship titles in his long 20 year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, broke several records and scored high points in several games, and he even went to the Olympics in London during that time and won a gold medal. Even though his numbers and statistics spoke for him as far as him as a basketball player, what makes this hero a tragic hero was his ego, which often got the best of him on and off court.
                    On the court, Kobe was historically considered a "ballhog", or someone who didn't pass to his teammates very often, even if he was not necessarily performing great that night. Also, he was very hard to work with, especially with his teammate Shaquille O'Neal. Throughout both of their careers, the two teammates had several disagreements. At the middle of both of their careers, Shaquille O'Neal even went as far as to write a "diss track" song towards his teammate. As far as off the court, the superstar Kobe was accused of sexually assaulting a 19 year old hotel employee. After both of these incidents occurred, his performance on the court deteriorated significantly until his retirement in 2016. Although his performance on the court began to diminish, his superstar hero status never completely went away.

Post 11: A Personal Narrative

                    I can recall almost scene by scene that day. I couldn't have been any older than five or six, so this occurred roughly fifteen years ago, but still I remember it as vividly as it happened. As a kid, you normally do whatever your older family members tell you to do, probably to gain some sort of "acceptance" from them. Let's face it; they were "cool". My uncle took my older cousin and I to the playground after school, and everything was normal. This was until, of course, my older cousin convinced me to go up the largest slide in the playground, backwards. Meaning, I was to climb the actual decline and step down the ladder that brought you to the top.
                    Safe to say, this did not turn out very well. When I triumphantly climbed to the top and jested to my older cousin below me, I neglected to notice the steps underneath me, and I slipped off the apex of the slide, landing hard on my back. In retrospect, I could have caused a lot more damage than I did, but I only dislocated my left thumb. Strange how someone's impact on you can cause you to make stupid mistakes.

Post 10: A Modern Hero, in comparison to an epic hero

                    My take on the modern hero versus the epic hero was sort of touched on in my last post, but I think I'll use this post to clean it up here. To me, an epic hero is one who does over the top, godlike heroic tasks, such as slaying beasts or speaking with or through the gods, or even completing a sort of epic journey. A modern hero, however, is someone who is revered for helping someone out in their community or doing something humanly good for another human. An example that I saw in several blog posts was the nurse being a sort of modern day hero, since it's their job to save other people's lives. However it is their job to do this, so I don't believe that they could qualify as a "hero" in the general sense. An epic hero did not necessarily look for recognition when it came to doing the things they did; however a hero nowadays has to do what they do in order to bring home a paycheck.

Post 9: A Modern Hero

                    If you're asking me, there is no such thing as a "hero" in the 21st century. A hero nowadays is someone who goes out of his or her way to do a "good" deed. I guess to define what a "hero" is, you'd have to also define what a good deed is, because the definition of a hero has definitely changed from historical times to now. In any time before the 21st century, a hero would be someone who slayed beasts (such as Gilgamesh), someone who is a decorated war veteran or captain {George Washington, for example), or someone who spearheads an entire social liberation of a people (Martin Luther King Jr.). 

                    It seems that you don't see very many "heroes" to this caliber in this day and age. Nowadays, a hero is someone such as a firefighter or a police officer. The problem with this is that this is their job to be a "hero". A hero would normally do heroic actions without having to receive a pay check for doing those actions. Another modern day take on the hero is a person who does a good deed, or a "local" or "hometown" hero. The issue with this is that it shouldn't take recognition of a good deed to define someone as a hero; it should just happen. Humbleness defines a hero, not recognition.

Post 8: The Pillow Book

                    The Wikipedia page that I'm choosing to do my edits on is The Pillow Book. I'm choosing this article because it isn't exactly as in depth as any of the other full length stories that we have read thus far. I like how it mentions that there are other pillow books that exist in the world and that were written back then, but I feel like it didn't explain the pillow book that we read about in class. But I do like the comparison that is made to The Tale of Genji, the story that we also read in class. I plan on adding more details not only about the story, but about Sei Shonagon, the author, since there are very little details about her in the article or her role.

Post 7: The Birth of Modern Romance

                    It is commonly believed that romantic love gets its roots from the richer Aristocratic courts of Europe, India, Japan, and India. There are a couple of theories as to why this is the case, and I've narrowed it down to two that I'm going to discuss in this post. One idea that I developed is the concept of some form of "hero" in romantic stories. Take Gilgamesh, for example. Although Gilgamesh ultimately declines Ishtar's offers of love and romance, it is not until Gilgamesh proves himself as a "hero" that she offers herself up to him. Although an example from an older text, this same concept is prevalent in The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, especially when she writes of the samurai. Samurais are typically considered heroes or protectors in Japanese folktales, which plays nicely into my theory. 

The Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales was a promiscuous, sensual woman who loved sex and the idea of sex; so much so that she had five different husbands. The next theory that I have is that the aristocrats would have probably rejected this on grounds of holiness and cleanliness, since being virginal is and was considered clean in the romantic era. Marrying an honest man or woman pretty much assures that he or she (but probably she) is virginal, which was a sought-after trait in the romantic time period.

Post 6: Sex with the Wife of Bath is so Amazing

                    The song that I chose to compare to The Wife of Bath is Sex With Me by Rihanna. I feel like the content matter is about the same, in regards to loveless sex. In the song, Rihanna uses lyrics like "We're not making love, we're tryna get nasty" and "The sex doesn’t get any better, make it long, let it be all night" to not only describe how nice she is with sexual relations, but it also states the requests that she wants from the man that she is having sex with. Seems like a song The Wife of Bath could relate to.Here's the song if you'd like to listen. (Does contain explicit language)

Post 5: Wife of Bath.... Romantic?

                    When I was reading The Wife of Bath, several thoughts entered my head, but not one of them was "romantic". I don't think that I'd describe her as romantic. despite her possibly romancing five husbands in her lifetime. I don't think that she displayed anything more than meaningless sex, and she made that quite clear in her dialogues.
                    Despite this, I believe that she could be a reflection of modern dating. The hookup society is pretty prevalent in this day and age, especially with the technology that we have and apps like Tinder to help people meet up for short flings. Although this is not classically "romantic", that is the society that we live in today.But, at least she got married before deciding to have sex with her partners.