Writings of Martinez

1. Writings of Martinez Nic Martinez McGee 1A

2. Table of Contents • Letter to the Reader • 25 Things to do Before I Die • Six Word Memoir • AP English 12 Writings • Crisis In Darfur Research Paper • My Soul • Throwback Essays

3. Letter to the Reader When I first started writing in 1st grade I had no idea what I was doing. I never wrote much and didn’t like to write. I found it very difficult and didn’t know how to spell. As I approached middle school I started becoming fascinated with writing. After 8th grade I learned how to express my feelings better through writing. I could articulate much better than I could in 6th grade. Practice makes perfect. I would write on my free time just to get my thoughts out and it actually improved my skills in grammar. After getting into high school and fully immersed in research papers and critical analyses, I become much more refined with my writing. I became obsessive with how my thoughts would be expressed. Writing became a philosophy to me.

4. 25 Things to do Before I Die 1. Earn a Ph.D. 2. Find my spirituality 3. Get married 4. Have a daughter 5. Have a son 6. Go to China 7. Make peace with myself 8. Take a stroll through Central Park 9. Own a personal, respectable library, just like Jefferson 10. Meet Jon Stewart 11. French braid my daughter's hair 12. Play catch with my son 13. Find out where I actually came from 14. Get a six pack 15. Become a published author 16. Learn Italian 17. Go to Italy 18. Ride my bike along the entire west coast 19. Camp in Canada 20. Become completely drug free (ie. caffeine, Tylenol) 21. Learn to play the cello 22. Learn how to sing 23. Become a recognized artist 24. Jump out of an airplane 25. Find the link between quantum mechanics and general relativity

5. Six Word Memoir Shut up, Do work, Don’t complain.

6. AP English WritingsCritical Analysis Nic Martinez Mcgee AP English Literature April 15, 2010 There is an Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde projected a sensational point within his play The Importance of Being Earnest giving a premise for the rejection of conventional Victorian values. Wilde’s contemporaries saw the work as a blasphemous piece that shot down morals. It is widely seen as an amoral play that is meant to reduce the morals of the time to nothing and restructure them. Wilde achieved this repudiation of morality through a satirical humor that shocked the audience of Victorian England. One way to look at the play is to see it as a critique on conventional marriage practices. Wilde implemented his own voice into the script by placing the dandy character of Algernon Moncrieff. This character was full of wit and epigrams that poked fun at Victorianism. Algernon’s butler, Lane, says, “I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.” Algernon replies with, “Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?” (Wilde 458). This shows that he believes that the institution of marriage has degraded into something that doesn’t posses true loving values anymore. Marriage is meant for business and is arraigned through the parents as Lady Bracknell would like to do with Jack Worthing and Gwendolen Fairfax. Algernon is set in place to revolt against the Victorian ideal of marriage as being a business deal. Algernon states that, “The very essence of romance is uncertainty,” which shows that he thinks that marriage should be based on an unpredictable relationship that truly exists, not something that is planned with assets like something in a stock exchange (Wilde 460). Algernon continues to whip out epigrams such as, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” showing that he thinks that life with relationships shouldn’t be controlled but lived in truth and honesty with dire circumstances (Wilde 465). Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist is distinctly pro-Victorian. As Algernon makes statements to shoot down Victorianism, Jack says such things as, “For heaven’s sake, don’t try to be cynical. It’s perfectly easy to be cynical,” (Wilde 467). Gwendolen supports the idea of Victorian manners. She says to Jack, “We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in and age of ideals,” (Wilde 471). Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother, says that, “A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is,” which shows that she follows a set of ideals that bring people of London to high standards (Wilde 475). She follows a life of aristocracy. This whole structure of having a set of characters that are keeping with polite society gives Wilde a chance to play with how much or how little he would like to satirize them. He creates the humor in the play by setting these characters’ ideals into place and using Algernon to shoot them down blatantly. The resolution of the play ends up that Algernon marries Cecily and Jack marries Gwendolen, as desired. But this resolution is reached by keeping up with deception as expected. Wilde makes his point that English society holds marriage to a business standard instead of something of true love. Love in the story is meant to be structured, but there are also purposeful problems set into play to show that it shouldn’t be that way. Wilde wrote Importance of Being Earnest with the intent of showing audiences that Victorianism should be stripped down and the hedonism that exists in London should be reduced to nothing. His point was that there is indeed an importance of being earnest because people should lead a life of honesty. Wilde wanted the aristocracy to stride towards a life of action and responsibility instead of frivolity. The piece enforces this point by satirizing and parodying Victorian society in England in the 1890’s. Works Cited Wilde, Oscar. Importance of Being Earnest. New York: Bantam Dell. 1982. Print.

7. AP English 12 WritingsHamlet Analysis

8. AP English 12 WritingsHamlet Analysis

9. Crisis in Darfur Research Paper 10th grade

13. My Soul

14. Throwback Writing • 1st grade journal

15. Throwback Writing • 4th grade letter

16. Throwback Writing • 4th grade creative writing

17. 4th grade creative writing continued HOME