Alchemist

Research Question
How does The Alchemist relate to the law of attraction?

1. Don't let the bad/small things get in your way/ bring you down.
- theives, tribe encounters, near death experiences
2. The universe conspires to help you achieve your goal.
-The king, the alchemist, omens, wind, sun, God
3. You have to keep your eye on the end result, not on how you are going to get there because you have no control over it.
-Boy was planning to go to the pyramids right away, not realizing what his journey was going to teach him. (oasis, chrystal shop)

Thesis
The Alchemist is similar to the law of attraction by showing us that the universe conspires to help us achieve what we truly want, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, as long as we keep our focus on our goal.

:)

The Alchemist

A couple things I've noticed going on in the Alchemist is the main character really is looking to find his inner self and really gives up everything to find his own way.  I have also noticed that the shepard boy is very trusting of others and learns to follow his own intuition even when things don't make sense around him, just like in Alice.  I think the main story line is very interesting because it touches on the topic of the law of attraction.  I just recently watched a movie called The Secret that discussed the same type of concept that this book talks about (personal legend).  It's very interesting to read the older version of the same concept and then have the more modern version laid out in a movie. 

Crazy or Pretend?

In Tim Burton's version of Alice the characters, like in the book, all seemed to be mad crazy.  However a great difference that I noticed in the movie was that even though the characters come off a lunatics, they still were smart enough to talk about issues and think beyond their normal craziness.  The Hatter even showed empathy when hiding Alice in the tea pot during the movie clip which doesn't seem like something the Hatter would do in the book.  I think that the movie depicts the characters in a more realistic way by showing their feelings and troubles instead of confusing us with odd words and rhymes like the book does.  Something that I wish they showed more of in the movie was the whole concept of time.  The movie briefly dicussed it but not to the level that the book did, which was a very important piece of that chapter.  The movie surprised me with how many things were very different but I think that it was a nice vivid interpretation of the characters and of Wonderland.

Off with their heads!!

"Who is this strange girl?  And who does she think she is talking to me in this manner?  I'm not sure whether to accept her and use her for my own good somehow or just chop off her head.  I will see how she does with this croquet game to see if she can be used to my advantage.  I wonder if she is here to admire my large head.  This seems most likely because it is amazing and everyone is jealous. I'm not sure how I feel just yet but if things go bad she can always be executed!!"
-The Queen of Hearts

Victorian England

With doing a little research on Victorian England after having preconceived notions of what women's roles were I learned almost the exact opposite of what i had thought.  Women of that time were not the cookie cutter housewives whose only jobs were to cook, clean, and have as many children as possible.  The economy back then, which was not highly developed, was tough just to live in as it is today. Women needed to work to help support thier families because many of the jobs that the men had didn't make enough money to feed and house thier families. 
The article that I read explained why many would have come to the same conclusion that I had about women at that time.  The cenus in that era did not record many of the women as workers because there would be harsh tax penalties for the family if they showed as having two incomes.  So many women lied about working in factories or being washerwomen to benefit their families.  By just researching for a short time my whole idea of women of that era was changed and corrected.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/burnett2.html

first assignment

This may sound a little cheesy but my favorite book, or I should say series of books was Nancy Drew when I was growing up.  My mother gave me her imense collection of books from when she was younger that had even survived a fire.  I loved reading all of them because I loved the mystery and suspense of each story and never knowing what was going to happen next.  Starting with these novels at a young age really made me fall in love with reading because they got me involved and hooked onto uncovering the mysteries.