Reflection Paper

Huanxi Zhang

Jeffrey Klepper

ENG113B

Dec.13.2013

Reflection Paper

This semester is going to end. There are many scenes in English writing class that has impressed me. Listening to the other’s opinion always give me many surprise. After so many assignments have been done in this semester, I have improved my writing skill. I learned how to write strong thesis to lead my essay. Through several practices, I can now write an effective, clear and original thesis statement. Then, a very significant part of the essay – format; the MLA format will be use to all the papers we are going to write in the university, which is useful. I also learned how to write different types of essays, such as Narration and Description. Get to know more about Narration helped me a lot with telling a store or recount a series of events. Then practicing Description helped me to describe and create a verbal picture.

Compare to the first essay I wrote; I can say after many practices, now I make less grammar, tense and spelling mistakes. Also keep working on sentence structure to make it variety and more fluency. I’m happy with all these useful things I’ve learned in this class.

Portfolio Essay 3

Huanxi Zhang

ENG113B TTH

Jeffrey Klepper

Dec.13.2013

Evey in V for Vendetta Analysis

There are a number of different parts between V for Vendetta film and graphic novel. Though they both involve repressive governments that monitor their citizens’ behavior, hunt after any voice of resistance. Both governments control the media, and enforce their tyrannies with terror-inducing branches of themselves. And, most importantly, both involve an encounter with the horrifying that tests the value of truth. This is embodied in Evey Hammond. In this character, the creator of each film and graphic novel reveals his opinion of the resilience of the human spirit and its thirst for truth in not exactly same ways.

The difference is a difference of emphasis in film and graphic novel, which deals with the resilience of human determination. Evey Hammond and her respective torture experiences typify this. On the other hand, reached a point where her knowledge of what was right and true outweighed any torture or death she might face. For her, denial was worse than death or anything else. Sure, one could argue that the first two differences were factors that added to her resolution. Or it could be said that her torture was not as severe.

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot. I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot." (14)

This story is talking about the future of the British scene, when turmoil in the world, while the British controlled by the dictator Adam Sutler, led by authoritarian governments to limit their freedom of speech, control public opinion, creating panic, developed a curfew, and the clandestine manufacture virus weapons and whatever is in the living body to do experiment. Secret police monitor air as the people with anything, any immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals and opposition parties, who had the plague or sent to concentration camps would die, the people under the dictatorship of silent resentment at Sutler, tends to numb.

Evey is not introduced as a would-be teenage prostitute, although she is supposedly on her way to a sexual encounter with Gordon Deitrich when she is caught and nearly raped by Fingermen during the city curfew, being subsequently rescued by V. And the background of her family is changed. In the film, she has an older brother who is killed by a virus that was secretly developed from the experiments on V and other inmates at Lark Hill. Her parents become political activists and participate in anti-government protests. The Hammonds are arrested by the Fingermen and die in Belmarsh prison. Evey's last memory of her mother is of watching her head being covered by a black bag as she is dragged away. Suddenly orphaned, Evey is sent to a child reclamation camp, "re-educated" and released back into society.

In the comic book series, V abandons Evey after he kills Lilliman; in the film, she runs away from V, then goes to Deitrich for protection. Evey does form a relationship with Deitrich, but the two do not become lovers, as he is homosexual. Soon after, however Dietrich is mercilessly beaten by Party Leader Peter Creedy as he raids Deitrich's home and captures him, official revenge for satirising the Chancellor on television. V gets to Evey before Creedy does and captures her himself, though she is led to believe she's in the hands of the Fingermen. The ensuing sequences involving the torture Evey undergoes, the inspiration she finds in Valerie's letters, with her character's transformation, which are taken from the graphic novel.

Unlike in the graphic novel, Evey does not personally take up the mantle of V after his death, but she does grant him his final wish and give him a Viking funeral in a train car filled with explosives. Unlike the graphic novel, London's chief of police, Inspector Eric Finch, discovers her. Also, unlike the comic book series, Creedy and his men have already mortally wounded V, thus he is dead by the time Finch finds them. Finch, who secretly sympathizes with V's cause, lets her pull the lever triggering the explosives. Evey and Finch then watch as Parliament is destroyed by V's funeral car, ending Norsefire's oppressive reign over England.

During the scene where Eric Finch tells his partner Dominic Stone about his visit to Larkhill - and his feelings about the chain of events of everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen - a very short shot of Evey Hammond can be seen. She wears a turqoise dress while tending to a bouquet of Scarlet Carsons and then turns away: the reflection in a mirror behind her sharpens, revealing either Eric Finch or Domonic Stone sipping a drink while in a chair. This seems to suggest the two end up in a relationship after the film concludes as, unlike the shots of other events, this does not occur in the movie itself.

When Evey is tortured by the “government” into betraying V. Although we see that V was the one who was behind the torment of Evey, she does not give in and betray him. This change in storyline led to Evey becoming apart of the cause, in terms of overthrowing the government. (Rich) The main character in V for Vendetta use violence to obtain results and reaches out to the citizens in order to achieve his goal in revolting against the government. V also helps achieve his main goal through violence. By changing the tactics in V for Vendetta, the citizens overthrew the government, thus having the movie end happily. The novel ends with the main characters brainwashed and the government succeeds in stopping the rebellion. These changes were effective because it gives the audience feelings of hope for society in the future.

Works Cited

Rich, Joshua. “V for Vendetta.” Entertainment Weekly, 869 (2006): 10-11.

Moore, Alan. “V for Vendetta.” Illus. David Lloyd. New York: Vertigo-DC Comics, 2005. Print.

Bulloch, Douglas. "V is for Vendetta: P is for Power a Film Reading of V for Vendetta." Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 35.2 (2007): 431-434.

Williams, Tony. "Assessing V for Vendetta." CineAction, 70.70 (2006): 16-23.

Portfolio Essay 2

Huanxi Zhang

ENG113B TTH

Jeffrey Klepper

Dec.13.2013

Summer Palace

Summer Palace is the largest and best-preserved imperial garden of China; it was originally a Qing dynasty emperor’s palace and garden. In addition, it is known as the royal garden museum. When the Summer Palace was built, it learnt some lessons from Jiangnan gardens’ design and techniques in order to create a large natural landscape palace. Many people visit the Summer Palace because it has social value, gorgeous archaic architectural style, and uses space wisely.

The Summer Palace was found in 1750, and built in 1764. It was severely damaged in the second Opium War. Then it was rebuild in 1888, and finished rebuild in 1895. In November 1998, the Summer Palace was list in the "World Heritage List". Summer Palace the best one of the Qing Dynasty’s three mountains and five state parks, and even the last one of Chinese imperial society built large imperial garden in the Qing Dynasty. The area of Summer Palace is 290 hectares, contains about three-quarters of water. (http://www.summerpalace-china.com)

The main lake Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace is about 220 hectares. There is a 17-hole bridge lying on the lake, the three islands on the lake also has three different forms of classical architecture. The 17-hole bridge that built on Kunming Lake is very famous, Kunming Lake is the largest water zone in the Summer Palace, and the bridge is overall 150 meters long and eight meters wide. The bridge is named because there are seventeen holes on the bridge. The 17-hole bridge is white and made of stone, which makes it looks beautiful on the lake; moreover, there are more than five hundred different looking carved stone lions stand on the bridge. The 17-hole bridge is also the largest stone bridge in the Summer Palace. Another build on the Kunming Lake that catch peoples’ eye is the Qingyan Fang. Qingyan Fang commonly known as stone boat. In the western end of the lake, it is the only building that with western-style; its predecessor was a released temple station. Qingyan Fang is thirty-six meters long, and it was piled up with marble, the overall looking is white. It has two levels; the bottom floor is made of floor tiles; there are stained glass windows on the side, for the top roof, there is brick decoration on it. There also are four tubes go through the boat from the top roof. When it rains, the water flows from top of the ship through those four tubes located in the corners, at the end of the tubes, there are four dragon heads craved by stone that leading the water into the lake, which is a very clever design. (The Summer Palace, Peking)

The main buildings are located on Front Mountain, which near the palace’s main entrance, so it is more convenient to start the tour here. The Front Mountain faced south; you can see the overlooking of the Kunming Lake on the mountain. Those craftsmen who built the buildings on the Front Mountain focused a lot at here, such as the Buddha Pavilion. Buddha Pavilion is a magnificent religious building; it’s the center of the architectural layout of Summer Palace. The name of Buddha Pavilion is in praise of the Buddhism, and it is built with Liuhe Pagoda in Hangzhou as a mode. The Buddha Pavilion used red, green and gold as main color, and it’s more colorful when we see it closely. The Buddha Pavilion built in the 20-meters platform made by stone; it has eight sides, three levels and four eaves. The pavilion is forty-one meters high; there are eight wood pillars straight through the top in the pavilion that makes the Buddha Pavilion as hard as we can imagine.

On the south side of the Front Mountain, there is he Long Corridor, which is another famous architectural design in the Summer Palace. “The Long Corridor is facing the Kunming Lake; the length of the Long Corridor is 728 meters, and it has 273 separate rooms in total.”(Jia, 72) The Long Corridor is one of the longest verandas in China. In 1992, the “Guinness Book of World Records” recognized it as the world’s longest veranda. Each of the pillars in the Long Corridor has those beautiful paintings on it; there are more than 14000 pictures had been drawn on those pillars in all, including landscapes, flowers, birds, fish and insects, allusions draws on them.

Over the years, the Summer Palace stand on "cultural construction of the park" for the purpose, in-depth mining culture, and vigorously promote the protection of the Summer Palace, management and do research about the environment, water, ancient relics, and landscape of Summer Palace's protection, established a complete system of protection and management of the Summer Palace. For continue the social value of the Summer Palace, people has done a lot of work to ensure it is being protect well.

After visiting the Summer Palace, where everything is so gorgeous that makes people can’t forget. It has both magnificent momentums and man-made natural beauty. With those artistic architecture reflects the wisdom of ancient Chinese, we should cherish those artwork that ancient people have left to us.

Works Cited

Jia, Jun. “Beijing Summer Palace.” Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2009. Print.

Zhao, Wei. Jin, Mingzhe. Summer Palace. Shanghai: Yangtze river literature and art press，2011. Print

CUMMING, C F GORDON. "The Summer Palace, Peking." Littell's Living Age (1844-1896), 164.2121 (1885): 434.

http://www.summerpalace-china.com

Portfolio Essay 1

Huanxi Zhang

ENG113B TTH

Jeffrey Klepper

Dec.13.2013

Network Resource Sharing

      The rapid development of modern information technology has greatly improved the ability of collecting information.  Technology development has made network resource sharing the most efficient and convenient way to obtain the required information. Sharing information on the Internet has a lot of benefit for people, and it is our right to getting information on the Internet.

       Internet as a one of the fastest carrier to transport information and resources in modern society, it makes our life more convenient and gives us more knowledge. Thus, the progress of human society requires the convenient features of Internet; human knowledge can be more quickly and appropriately improved only when accumulated more idea. [No library today can be expected to directly hold all of the resources to fulfill all the needs of its users. Rather, most libraries supplement their local collections through resource-sharing arrangements that allow them to offer their clientele access to a broader universe of materials.] (Breeding Marshal) According to Breeding Marshal said, Internet plays an important role in support of resource sharing; even library uses Internet as a effective way to sharing and offer people articles and knowledge.

       Some of the people said there are some harmful sides of sharing articles and information on the Internet. Some people thought although the information technology is rapid developing, so that we can save much more time for put those information and articles online, digital technology also makes it easier to share the information. However, human knowledge is created in different languages, different history background, different publication types and different carriers, so online literature information resource is not standardized yet, that makes online information very complex, and making them very difficult to be used in a effective way. Also internet is an open system, everyone can share information on the internet, and any individuals and groups cannot interfere in other people's online behavior. Then cause information uncontrolled and disordered, making information on the Internet very massive, this characteristics of the Internet itself causing information pollution. However, that information that mixed by many different culture and different languages can offer people more chances to know something we didn't know before. Besides, everybody needs to fully understand and learn to sensibly deal with the role of Internet in the complicated information networks. Secondly users need to learn to filter useful information, so that the Internet gives full play to its role. Additional use sensible vision to deal with the negative effects of the Internet, to improve their own ability to exclude invalid information.

       Moreover, we all have to admit that Internet changes the way our society works. One of the strongest thesis is that in the last few years is information sharing on the Internet. In a very short period of time, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter and YouTube have all become a part of modern life, while people are sharing everything on the Internet or on their personal websites. Moreover, users do not need any software, without any advanced technical training, people can choose to add a huge variety of space and upload their own observations and knowledge. In the book Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig said "As the Internet has been integrated into ordinary life, it has changed things. Some of these changes are technical—the Internet has made communication faster, it has lowered the cost of gathering data, and so on."(7) Although these are not the focus of this book, he was trying to state an effect of the Internet beyond the Internet itself in this book. From the introduction, Lessig thought The Internet has caused an important effect and some unrecognized change though its improving. This change will completely change the tradition that was recognized by the public. In most cases, if the publics recognize this change, they may reject it, but most of the people do not even see the changes that the Internet has introduced. I agree with this point, the Internet has changed the way people communicate with each other. A great amount of information can be obtained from the Internet. It changes so fast, so that we are changing our habits of getting information. In the past, many of us were accustomed to learn about news by listening to the radio; few years later it changed to watch television for news show, then search news on the Internet. In the past, people learnt industry information through meetings, nowadays; they can web browsing related web site to learn information about their work. Some people might like to read magazines and newspapers previously. But now they even have some favorite blog that they would read on time.

       We can't deny that sharing and getting information on the Internet have become a big part of our life. Then what we need to do is that try our best to keep the Internet environment clean, because we need to look at the whole picture, not just its parts. Secondly, we need to share information better. In other words, the Internet environment will be better if most of the netizen are responsible for the information they shared. Internet engineering can help resolve many of the system problems, but not those information shared by the netizen all over the world. The thing we can do is to be responsible to the works we did or the things we shared on the Internet.

      Many people can learn a lot of things through rational use of network. Nobody knows what will happen if there is no such a rapid and convenient place which contains all the excellent resources that can truly reflect their own values. At the same time, this problem may make a lot of people that very sensitive and may still be the focus of peoples talking, those opinions listed below are just me as an ordinary netizen to express my personal views.

Works Cited

Breeding, Marshall. "Introduction to Resource Sharing." Library Technology Reports,     49.1 (2013): 5-11.

"Sharing is Everything." Geospatial Today, (2012).

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004.