Mirror, Mirror

hi...It has been weeks since we were assigned a blogpost because we have been hard core preparing for the AP Exam... now that that is done we are back online for one more blogpost.
I am going to start this post by saying thank you. Thank you Mr. Thomas for being everything you were, for everything you did and everything you have taught me. Looking back, I feel that I have changed more in the last 9 months, than in the 16 years before my junior year. I am completely aware that Mr.Thomas/ APLAC didn't change me, but they were definitely big factors in the progress I made. (I don't even know how to write this, so bare with me and my disorganized structure)

The course: This class has been such a blessing to have. Through it I have learned to be organized, prepared, patient and (I don't know what word to use) efficient in thinking, okay I guess I could use smarter. I think that This is the first class I have ever taken that I have actually been excited to improve in. Organization wise I love the fact that I can time myself and I know what schedule works for me, I have never had that before. It is not that I was messy or that I could never find anything before, but the fact that now I do not have to get stressed out about doing my work in a timely manner is incredible. I work efficiently and actually get excited to do an assignment is something new to me. I love it. Patience... I really don't know how this came about. I have been waiting for it for years and all of a sudden I have it, how does that work? I can't write anything else about it because I really do not know how I became patient... maybe it was through Mr.Thos's refusal to change our seating arrangements many times through the year, jajaja. It feels weird to say that I have become smarter, but I don't know why it feels weird. That is the whole reason to enroll in an advanced course and actually take it seriously. I have learned so much this year and they are things that I can take away, things I can use in other aspects of my life. I also think that it is amazing that in a skill-based class I learned so much content, for example:

• How many words the English language has and why. (600,000)
• America's 1950's culture
• America's 1920's culture
• Why scary stories are scary
• Where to read news from
• LOGICAL FALLACIES
• Why Vietnam happened and what it was
• And a multitude of authors
• The level of amazing that is Truman Capote... (In Cold Blood was SOO GOOD!!!)

The test: I was so ready for those essays, Mr.Thomas did a WONDERFUL job at teaching us the synthesis essay. Amazing, thank you, perfect, yay. However, the argumentative was the hardest to write, it was just the prompt and the structure along with the examples I could use just... It was not as easy as the practices we had in class. But then, in class the hardest to write was the synthesis due to time crunch and understanding the passages.

The teacher: From Mr.Thomas I have learned so much more than I could have asked for. (Again, THANK YOU!) I am 100% sure that no one else can teach about the world and the possibilities it holds for students (you/me) in an English class emphasizing in American History and values, while still getting us prepared to take an AP Exam in May, which, by the way, I felt completely ready to take. He taught me to be confident in myself and what I know, in a way he told me it was okay to grow up. Today (Monday May 19,2014) we had a Socratic seminar about The Great Gatsby and how Nick Carraway changed from being "tolerant" to a more compassionate judge. In those words, I honestly see myself. At the beginning of this year I had no formal opinion of my own for almost anything. Why? Because I was scared of having "the wrong opinion" or offending somebody. Now? I know I can have my own opinion and IT'S OKAY! I love that! I have reached the point where I know that being tolerant is different that understanding differences and I chose the latter.

I love having had this experience and I hope i never forget any second of it! But at least I know that if I do, I will still carry everything this year has taught and I could not be any more grateful than I already am.

Thank you,

Vicky

 

 

My Burden

I love Wednesdays. I go to my favorite classes, when I get home I usually don't do anything, I go to dance class and goof around for a good hour and then I come home and usually start writing these. However, its past midnight and I know nothing of what i am about to write. This week we are writing about 5+ things we "carry" everyday; something physical, an aspiration, a strong relationship, our personality and our memories.

Physical

What do I carry physically? The ONE thing that I feel naked and lonely without is a pair or earrings. Seriously, the amount of days I have gone without wearing any can be counted on one hand and still have fingers left over. I was born at 5:32 pm, and by 5:35 pm I had a very cute pair of gold studs, provided by my grandmother, in my ears. You could say that I was born with earrings on. Which up until I was 10 I truly believed! (My sister was born here in the U.S and she didn't have earrings so I freaked out I honestly believed they had mixed up the babies- the worst part is that I was disappointed in the newborn for not having earrings.) Another reason that NEVER leaving my house without earrings became more than a habit was that since I was a 2 year old being raised in Venezuela the whole conversation about "girls wear earrings and boys don't" got super installed in my head! In my class only the girls had earrings- yes ALL of them- and that's how we associated gender. One time I visited my cousin here in the U.S and she wasn't wearing earrings and straightforward 6/7 year old me walked up to my mom and asked if she was a girl or a boy...(clearly she was a girl.) Also, as a baby, my mom would put bows and change my earrings all the time and I NEVER took my earrings out, but the bows were off of me almost immediately...

There it is, I carry my earrings.

 

 

Dream/Goal/Aspiration



Goals and dreams and all that stuff are funny to me. For me they have always changed. For a really long time I wanted to be a flight attendant, for a really long time I wanted to be a vet, an actress, an artist, an engineer, a farmer, a racehorse trainer, you get the point. Things change, currently I want to do something in the filmmaking field, when people ask, I say film director to cut the whole explanation. But even then I'm not sure, it takes so much work and if there's anything that scares me more than not having a plan is limiting myself to only my plan. Like I said, things change. And then there are the goals that don't drive you. I mean, the ONLY universities I EVER wanted to go to were Rice and Harvard. CLEARLY NOT THE CASE ANYMORE. I have always had that pressure of wanting to go there but why didn't that pressure drive me to work harder academically? Or why was I never passionate enough about them to actually make my "dream" a reality? I honestly don't know. My bucket list has over 200 entries, and they are all different and some may not happen because I have changed my mind about that certain "phase of dreaming" and created new entries. Yet I cant seem to cross out the ones that "I'm not feeling"? Why?  Why do some dreams go wrong and others nag at you forever? I don't know... and that scares me, now knowing what's going to work what's a failure and what floats. I also really want to work at Disney somehow, maybe at the studio, maybe at the park, maybe even everything... i don't know. So, to answer the question as straightforward as possible for the current me- The dream that drives me the most right now is to get into Full Sail University and travel the world to make documentaries and movies and ahhh.... I get so nervous thinking about it. I cant say that it is what has driven me my whole life or what will continue to drive me until I accomplish it. My dad always says that happy is the best thing you can be and if that's the dream that makes me happy, even if it may be temporal (hopefully not, I like this one) then so be it.

I carry a dream to go to Full Sail and study filmmaking.

 





Relationship

Who is the person that never leaves my mind? My role model? The person that I do everything for, that inspires me to be a better version of myself? It's me. Well, little me. I was always a very ponderous child, I spent 100% of my time thinking of things, imagining, talking to myself, giving myself advice, for a long time I was my own bestfriend. I knew myself better than anyone. Of course, if anyone had asked me this question before 2012, the answer would have been my grandparents, all 4 of them. But something happened during the summer of 2012, I cut ties with my childhood. At that moment, sitting in the back seat of my moms car while on the Florida turnpike, I realized I wasn't the same person. Most of the things I thought, liked, and believed... all different.From that moment on, I have been trying to honor my childhood self in some way. I tend to catch myself drifting out and immediately start remembering things I would think of as a child, and those thoughts inspire me to be better. I pick up a book I used to read when I was younger and I enjoy getting the same feelings from it now as I did back then. Some things I do have to force myself to remember or I just don't and that's when I allow myself to "create" current-Vicky's opinion and its hard and I get sad that I don't remember, but it is what it is. In other words, when I realized that I had no traces of my childhood personality left, I decided to get them back and honor them somehow because I owe everything I am today to that little girl that thought that if you didn't wear earrings you were a boy. It is sort of that whole idea of "don't forget where you're from," There is a certain feeling that i can NEVER get rid of, it haunts me constantly and I respect it. That feeling is Nostalgia.

I carry my childhood self.

 

Personality

As previously stated, I change a lot. Lately the last year and half has been for the most part good for me but its also been confusing as to "who am I?" I don't know. How do i describe myself if I've never been funny, or  charismatic, or stubborn? I've always been independent and positive i suppose. Im always able to see the bright side of things and be by myself. I don't like problematic situations i don't like being rude and i respect my elders. I am a very  "by the book" person but i [think] am creative too. I don't get embarrassed easily, at all, which is a plus since i tend to be outgoing. I am very detail-oriented but at the same time i wont let things that are out of my control bother me. I am extremely close to my family i rather spend time with them over anything. I am open minded and tolerant, i don't like to judge people or other things (music, books, etc) too quickly. Im passionate about things i REALLY like- videos, history, dance, anything Disney. I'm sarcastic and picky, organized and shy, caring and happy.

I carry a positive outlook, passion and respect.

 

Memories

I have a very vivid memory, i remember a lot of random things from every moment in my life. For instance, i remember my first day of school in 1999, we played in the big glass room with giant foam blocks. I remember that when i was in 1st grade by mom would walk our dogs by my school everyday at lunch. I remember sitting in a car for endless hours, driving by the beach, getting new shoes. All random memories that hold some sort of value to me; whether it be sentimental or just because i cant get it out of my head. One of my favorite memories is going to the race track with my grandfather. We would wake up at 5 in the morning and we would go down and eat cheese empanadas and then watch all of his horses race (I named all of the ones born during my childhood- Baby Bop, Noche de Mayo (Night in May) and Fulvio). This one time, the jockey riding Baby Bop brought her over to us and in my head i said "This is it, I am going to be a jockey, i have to start training" and when he got off the horse he was about a foot taller than me... dream crushed. Needless to say i cried on the way home. At that moment in time i realized that you CAN'T do anything, that the whole idea of my parents saying "you can do anything you want to do" wasn't true, there are certain limitations; for me, it was my height- something i cannot control. Another memory that has a really big impact on my life is the way i got taught how to read. Since i was the first grandchild, niece, daughter, cousin everyone super spoiled me and i was always getting toys. My parents told me that i had to read the instructions before being able to use it or it would not work. I learned to read basically immediately. It hit me when i was 8 and my cousin and i were playing with his new toy. I was reading the instructions outloud and he asked me why. I said "because the toy won't work unless..." bam, it hit me harder than the bus that hit Regina George, i had been bamboozled into reading useless manuals. This taught me 3 things 1) to read and 2) that my parents lie to me so i could either believe anything i have ever heard from them or pick at it until i separated the truth from the lies 3) to follow directions. The last memory that i will share that has a big influence on me is from when i moved here. Moving here really gave me a perception of the world. Before that i though Boston was a state, Miami was a country, Antarctica was half of the globe and China was an island. I was so excited i forgot EVERYTHING i knew. I was so scared i didn't like speaking English, i sounded ugly. I missed my dogs and my house and my pool and the fact that i was getting paler and paler everyday made me think that i was becoming a "gringa." But my sister was even more scared, and as her big sister it was my job to help her feel at home- our new home. That month, September of 2005, i grew up.

I carry that day at the race track, all the manuals of every toy i ever had and the weight of my sister's fright.

 

 

In the end, we all carry things. They make us who we are. They create a present us, a future us and a past us. If it weren't for our memories, our goals, or even our physical appearance we wouldn't be ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Middle Child

HELLO! This week's topic is to describe what the "third" option is for children to keep heritage and respect but still be progressive in creating their own identity.
So.. what is a middle child? The one born between the first and the second? The one with moderate ideals? The one with average grades? Yes and no... The middle child could be born in the middle, could have give-and-take ideals and/or average grades. But this idea of a "third" option is complicated. This "Middle Child" has to be able to balance heritage whilst detaching themselves from "unattractive" traits of such said heritage.
The moment I read the prompt I couldn't find a better way to explain this other than using  Mulan 2. First of all, most Disney movies have their heroines break free from tradition and seek "adventure in the great wide somewhere". Belle, Pocahontas, Ariel, and Mulan herself, but in this super amazing sequel to one of the most awesome Disney movies ever created, there are 3 literal characters; each with different ideals.

• Ting Ting- super traditional, wouldn't DREAM of falling in love with someone her father hadn't engaged her to. Her only purpose is to represent China and that is final! She is the oldest sister and constantly tells Su and Mei to follow her footsteps and behave respectfully. She will make a great Empress.

 

• Mei- obviously the crazy one that hates tradition and just forgets it all to fall in love with Yao. She is the other extremity, completely wants to break apart and "BE LIKE OTHER GIRLS!"

• Su- she is like Mei in that she wants to be herself, but she also respects her tradition. She is shy and quiet, the way she was taught, but is also not afraid of wanting to not be perfect all the time. You could say she is the middle of Ting Ting and Mei.
  

So if that is the case, how do you achieve it? How are you, a real person, supposed to act? How can you honor/celebrate/respect your parents culture but establish your own identity? This is one of the hardest things for people to do. I moved to the U.S when I was 8, i have lived half my life here and half my life in Venezuela. The biggest problems i have with establishing "my own identity" are my culture and traditions. But not really in religion, or other main aspects of cultural identity. I speak Spanish at my house and i still have my Venezuelan accent and use the colloquial dialect of my region. However, there are some things i can't comply with, like:

• Educational Habits
• According to my mother i have an extremely strange school schedule. I don't take enough classes, i don't study enough, i don't divide correctly. It's little things like that that make me FEEL rejected.
• Social Acceptances
• In Venezuela, by the time you are 16 you are considered an adult. Period. By then you are in college, but you still live with your parents. I'm 16, but the moment i get into college i'm out! That is another thing that makes me feel detached, both my parents lived with family until their late 20's and i can't say that that's what i want. 
• Duties
• Out of all of them, this one bothers me the MOST. Since 16 year old Venezuelans behave like 20 year old Americans, for the past 4 years i have been nagged at to do certain things that i am NOW getting around to. When i turned 12 it was like all of a sudden i was 20. But how do i tell my mom that i didn't want to do those things and verbally reject the culture i grew up in from day 1 until i turned 8.

So the question still stands; how do i honor my parent's culture, my culture, without being completely submissive or fully reject it for the one i developed in? It's not easy, i think it just comes down making a decision. Of course you are going to have to concede on some things, and others you are going to have to keep and pass it down to your children and just hope that THEY keep it instead of disregarding it. I came up with the following list of what to keep and how to keep it.

• Language/Dialect- whatever language or dialect your parents used around you as a little kid, those first few words you learned besides "mom" and "dad", is worth considering to keep. This doesn't mean limiting yourself to strictly that but know it enough so its natural and you feel comfortable around it.
• Story- You should know some sort of history about your family, it doesn't have to be extensive but just enough to where you feel like you have roots, this will increase your sense of "loyalty" to your family.
• Cuisine- one really nice thing to know for yourself and your family is to learn to cook exact meals your parents cook, its a nice touch and your parents will be so happy. And now you know how to cook at least something!

Now, again those are just suggestions- I'm 16, what do i really know? But some things you should be able to gain by not being super dependent on your family traditions are:

• Ambition- you need something that makes you happy to pursue and be passionate towards outside your family's norm.
• Acceptance- by opening up yourself, you need to be open-minded about what you are going to encounter.
•  New Beliefs- this one is a bit of a stretch and is very vague. What I mean is that a progressive way to "celebrate" your heritage isn't to strictly believe things that have been believed in always, but if you are open minded you might find yourself believing in things your parents don't and that is okay! It helps keep the balance between loyalty and independence.

Although everything can be really hard to understand or justify to yourself, you just need to make a decision. If you don't decided or regret going towards one side, you WILL be unhappy and live in an uncomfortable state. In the end, it comes down to picking which one of the princesses you want to be, Ting Ting, Mei or Su.

 

 

Poe's Techniques at being better than everyone else

SALUTATIONS! There was absolutely no feelings attached to that title. (I have had this blogpost written for a couple of days and I was just too lazy to press the "Publish" button... that's true procrastination) This week's topic was to read Edgar Allan Poe's story The Fall of the House of Usher and take five techniques that you would copy when writing your own Haunted House story.

The first one, and I think the most important, is to be vague. The human mind is a powerful tool when left to wonder, especially when it is on the topic of horror. Horror happens to be so unnatural in our default way of thinking that everything we ever hear that scares us- even just a little bit- sticks with us forever. Poe is very vague when describing the details. Not the concrete details like color or setting, he makes those VERY clear to make you feel scared or uncomfortable when reading. Instead he is vague in how the characters react. That has to be one of the scariest factors of it. Not knowing everything that surrounds you. The "human" aspect of the story, wait... it is weird to say human, makes it realistic. ALTHOUGH there are many things that are not mentioned about them. Are they ghosts? Alive people? Zombies? You don't know. That's because Poe makes those details so vague that you can believe WHATEVER you want to believe and it still fits within the story. (because the rest tends to be vague too)

Another technique Poe uses that correlates wit the vagueness is a limited amount of characters. He has 3.. 3! This leaves you with no sort of comparison on behavior. They are whatever you make of their actions and they may behave awkwardly or they may not. Again, it leave your mind in this void of "normal-abnormal" that you NEED to fill because we are human (as long as we aren't in a Poe story).

 

Poe's setting has a very prominent influence on the effectiveness of the story. He doesn't make it scary at the beginning, he doesn't make it sad when Madeline dies. Instead he keeps it gloomy throughout the whole story. But what is gloom?! It is darkness, mysterious, unknown. But gloom is what makes us feel creeped out when watching a scary movie or reading stupid chain letters at 3 in the morning. To be able to play with gloom can be tricky. Fright can both be evoked by gloom or create a gloomy atmosphere. Poe does a PERFECT job of being consistent and making the audience feel as if they were right there sitting in the Usher's living room.

 

The literary device that he used all over the story and really impacted me/the reader is symbolism. But not just with anything, with doors. The house has heavy doors, the family tomb has heavy doors, Madeline bangs on a heavy door. Okay, he doesn't use the word heavy every single time but you get the idea. Why, do you think, does Poe describe the doors constantly? TO KEEP THE DEAD IN! It doesn't have to be the dead, whatever you filled the details in with, I believe that they're all dead. Doors definitely add to the gloominess, mystery and vagueness of Poe's story.

 

Lastly, my favorite technique. LITTLE SENSE OF TIME! I LOVE this one! Mostly because I have horrible time perception but also because it makes everything fit together. The only instances that Poe mentions time elapse are when he says that days have passed since they buried Madeleine, and the amount of time before she "dies". This is definitely factor number 1 in the scare techniques. While you are reading you have NO IDEA how long its taking or how long they have been sitting there. And the fact that whenever he mentions time going by, he just says "several days have passed" and not, "five days later". again, its very vague and time is crazy. It subconsciously draws you in because we value time to much that thinking a lot of time went by scares us jus the same as thinking that it all happened in a short amount of time.

 

To retaliate, Poe is a wonderful genius that makes everyone else seem irrelevant and whatever he did was utter perfection.

 

 

America the occult

SALUTATIONS ONCE AGAIN! As before, I am Vicky. This week's topic is to relate America's current pop-culture to the constant-everlasting obsession of the occult.

As a young child living outside of the U.S, my most memorable experiences were barely being at school (the rest of the world values childhood), eating products made with REAL sugar (it exists, I know- WEIRD), and watching Disney films. Since I moved to the U.S, and grown up, which apparently happens...ew, I have learned that school is a lifestyle that's forced upon everyone under 18, that high fructose corn syrup is in EVERY SINGLE FOOD ITEM MANUFACTURED HERE and that America does not equal Disney, sadly. Fortunately, although the sugar got worse and the school hours longer, my experiences with movies grew and all of a sudden it wasn't just princesses and talking animals. It was wizards, vampires, mythical creatures, hidden aliens, supernatural forces... It was too much to keep track of! It was like a new area or zone... It was the:

 

 

Rod Serling. He is everything we love to fear at the same time as being everything we fear to love. I have had nightmares with him in them, as well as dreams. In some episodes seeing him is a comfort blanket and in others it's the opposite. The little introduction to every episode taps into every single nerve and emotion we have. The scene just fades into him and he does his business creeping you out and then he is gone. You know just a little bit of what is going to happen and you are already nervous or scared out of your mind (depends how low your scare-tolerance level is and how scary the episode actually is).

 





 

 

The Twilight Zone is the first TV programme to introduce America to science-fiction horror. None of the episodes correlate with each other making the idea of horror sci-fi a little like modern day reality tv; fake enough to shake off, but with a certain element of reality to make you wonder. The show has a wide variety; episodes include apocalypse, body swapping, time travel, ghosts, immortality, haunted inanimate objects. You name it it's there.

But that's not the only effect that the TWILIGHT ZONE had on our society. The show ran from 1959 to 1964 and had 5 seasons with over 150 episodes. PEOPLE WATCHED THIS SHOW. And not only that, they craved it. They wanted more. They wanted it SOOO much they wrote books, made movies and made more seasons, not to mention Walt Disney World's Tower of Terror attraction.

Most of the modern-day fears are derived from episodes in this show.

The fear of talking dolls or dolls that are "out to get you" can be accredited to an episode called "Living Doll". It is one of the most famous ones and definitely has had its toll on everyone since. Preceding Chucky by about two decades, Talking Tina is INVINCIBLE, SCARY and slightly passive. She plays with the possibility of rather than the manslaughter Chucky is responsible for making her even more creepy. Anyone that has watched this episode can tell you that their fear of dolls came from here... (Other similar episodes are "The After Hours" and "The Dummy")

 

Another episode with a long-lasting effect on our minds and media is the  "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" so yes, murders and monsters-figural and literal. This episode is apparently meant to have influenced Steven King, he was a big fan of the show, into writing The Mist. A lot of the episodes are developed around the theme of aliens, but this one does it differently. It plays with your emotions, you aren't sure whether they're responsible or not; this forms the basis of mystery in many stories created after the Twilight Zone.

 

The Twilight Zone episodes tended to have a sick plot twist at the end, being the first of its kind it really set the bar for future branches of this new section in pop culture. it was a further push into being deeper and deeper in an addicting obsession of the unexplainable darkness.

 

I'll show you to the door

 

SALUTATIONS! I am Vicky and this is the blog I have created for my AP Language and Composition class! This week's assigned topic was to analyze a modern day antihero and relate him to Ichabod Crane from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. My favorite book (so far) is The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, so I have decided to make this blogpost about Jake Barnes, the protagonist of the story. I shall begin.
(Quickly though, I hate the fact that whenever I press the tab key nothing productive happens.) I will start with some background on our wonderful Jake. Jake Barnes is an expatriate, its just a fancy word for someone that is living in a country that is not where they grew up or were born in, that lives in Paris, France. He is a journalist that likes to drink, party and stay out late- Hemingway created him, what else would you expect? However, life isn't all fun and games for him. He is a veteran of the first World War and due to an injury on the field he was left impotent (a.k.a castrated). This frustrates him terribly when it comes to Lady Brett Ashley, the love of his life!!! (They're way too cute together,  she totally digs him too) But whatever, this isn't a Nicholas Sparks novel.

Okay, so what exactly makes up a hero? I see a hero as someone you WANT to be like, an idol. In order to be considered a hero the character has to do something Great! He should be flocked by women, men should admire him, cities named after him. A hero's story should be his legend. But not Jake. He tells his own story, the only woman is a prostitute he ditches, and while he is respected by most of the men he meets, none of them would trade shoes. On the other hand, there is Ichabod Crane, a greedy, insolent and sneaky man. Although it seems that they don't have much in common, they do.
The firsts anti-hero characteristic they share is being a hopeless romantic- neither of them has a partner. In fact, they both spend most of their story trekking after some girl that they don't end up with. For Ichabod it is Katrina, the daughter of a wealthy Dutch man, but because he is an anti-hero he doesn't get her instead he dies and the town-stud wins. But either way, his motives were not too Great, he was just a greedy kid.

Similarly, in the other hand, Jake Barnes is SUPER in love with Lady Brett Ashley but because of his war injuries the whole relationship would not work. Brett is young and she is MARRIED/ENGAGED throughout the whole story. So if anything Jake's situation is worse because he has a need that can never be satisfied and Brett knew that. Jake is in love with Brett and Brett likes Jake but because of his impotence their love can't go farther than, basically, that. Anyway, Jake invites his friends Robert Cohn, he is this guy that thinks he is the coolest but really he is sort of lame (plus he says that he is in love with Brett too), and Bill Gorton, he is very similar to Jake, to go to the Bullfights in Pamplona. Brett and Mike, her Scottish fiancée, decide to tag along which causes some trouble for Jake as the story progresses.

Another characteristic that they share is laziness. Both men are more lazy than not. Ichabod just picked teaching because all he has to do is pretend to be authoritative, and in return, get a bunch of bribes. (Which sounds like a couple of teachers I have had in my life- NOT Mr.Thos) Once he gets what he wants, which is most likely a place to eat excessively and sleep he is unmotivated until the needs arise again.

Jake is the same. At the beginning of the story he just constantly leaves work to hang out at bars and cafes, he blatantly says that he can leave whenever and go off wherever. Which he does, he goes fishing and then he goes to Pamplona for the bullfights and then he comes back home like no big deal. (His only true passions are fishing and bullfighting.) Neither of them is lazy in the sense that they don't do anything, they just do what they please. Its the equivalent of not doing your homework so you can go on tumblr. You are still doing something, but not really what you are supposed to do.

 

Lastly, this one is a stretch because it more symbolic, neither of them are "manly" in the sense a hero should be. Ichabod is a tall and lanky guy that does not like to solve his own problems realistically and instead runs from them and still does not blame himself for his situation. Jake, as much as I love him, he drinks his problems "away" which result in bigger problems and even more drinking. And symbolically, the WW1 injury he suffered (which ,ironically, is where he met Brett)  takes away/decreases his manhood. This leads to the whole theme of the book and the plot and the subliminal messages-just kidding, but kind of not.- and the whole "Lost Generation" thing.

In conclusion, anti-heroes can still be interesting protagonists, but once you break them down you  begin to realize that there is nothing truly heroic about them. That is when they fall into the category of anti-heroes. Personally, I love the idea of the anti-hero, it gives the story some sort of honesty. Not everyone can be a Hercules, but no one is stopping you from being a Tyler Durdend. In reality, anti-heroes are just realistic main characters, sure they may not do something Great, but they make US feel Great! on that note...

 

 

Enjoy this picture of Brett and Jake.