Final Blogging Assessment in English 1B

Text Connections

A text-to-self connection for my book Divergent is that sometimes I feel like there is someone controlling me and not allowing me to think on my own. This is like my book because the government in my book wants you to think a certain way to be able to be controlled. But Divergents don't think one way and that is why they are so difficult to control.

A text-to-text connection for my book is to Fahrenheit 451. My book connects to Fahrenheit 451 because in the book, the government hankers to control the people and make sure that nobody can learn from books in dismay that the people might take on the government. That is why they burn the books, to prevent the people from gaining knowledge of the past and revolting against the government. A quote from my book that supports this is when Tris and her mother are talking, "But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled"(Roth pg. 442) Governments in both societies want the people to think a certain way so they can be manipulated and controlled by the government.


A text-to-world connection for my book is that in today's day and age, the government feels like a major presence in our society. Every month you hear reports on the news about how the government is being incriminated of spying or listening in on people's conversations. The technology is available that the government could be able to eavesdrop on any one's conversations. The government can use technology like this to control and manage the people. The government claims that they use this type of technology to prevent terrorist plots or other tragedies from happening. But most people feel like they are violating their privacy. This is like my book because in the book, the Erudite have created a serum with transmitters to take control over the Dauntless soldiers to kill the Abnegation people.

I myself am against this idea of the government spying on the people for many reasons for example privacy! Hello? Does really anyone want the government watching and listening to them 24/7? No! How do you, the reader, feel about this issue in our society today? Comment your opinion.

A picture of a sign saying the Government is watching people

A cartoon sketch of the government spying on the people.

Here is a link to the 'New York Times' website article talking about this issue.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/facebooks-zuckerberg-complains-to-obama-over-government-spying/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Paragraph 1:  Throughout the trimester I have tried to include different styles of syntax and diction in my blog posts.  But in my final post I included a few different examples of syntax and diction.  One example of formal/ elevated diction from my post is in the text-to-self paragraph when I write, “My book connects to Fahrenheit 451 because in the book, the government hankers to control the people and make sure that nobody can learn from books in dismay that the people might take on the government.”  To make the sentence more elegant or formal I replaced simple words like want and fear with words like hankers and dismay.  These words show a little bit of my voice in the piece and make the piece more formal.  An example of syntax in my post is a mix of punctuation and short sentences at the end when I write, “I myself am against this idea of the government spying on the people for many reasons for example privacy! Hello? Does really anyone want the government watching and listening to them 24/7? No! How do you, the reader, feel about this issue in our society today?”  I feel like the short sentences and the different punctuations help show my voice in the paragraph.  It also connects with the audience by asking questions and voicing my own opinion.  These styles of both syntax and diction help me show my voice in the post.

Paragraph 2: My goal this trimester was to actively engage the reader, contain compelling ideas, take advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically by consistently including links, pictures.  First trimester when I blogged I really didn’t fulfill any of my goals above.  That is why over the course of this trimester I have tried to work toward this goal.  A few ways I have worked toward this goal was that in my first post and a few others I incorporated links to website discussing a topic or relating to my book.  For example one link was to a faction quiz for my book while another was linked to an article discussing government spying on the people.  Another way I have worked toward my goal of actively engaging the reader with compelling ideas is by asking questions for the reader to think about and answer.  This keeps the reader attentive and pays attention to what I wrote in a post so that they can answer it.  I also give my opinion on a topic and that allows room for a debate in the comments section.  In conclusion throughout the trimester and especially throughout the year I have worked to improve the content an quality in my blog using techniques I have learned this year and in previous years.