Victoria Miller’s blog

 Hi Angela! Your thought about how Bello was trying to convince himself that working as a farmer was the life he wanted was something I hadn't considered before and I thought it was an interesting interpretation.

 Ode to Tropical Agriculture has given me a new understanding of how to read poetry. After reading the poem I had an incorrect understanding of the meaning of the poem. After I learned what the poet was actually saying about the poem I realized that I put my own ideas into the meaning of the poem. While looking back on the poem the meaning seemed to be so obvious and I was thoroughly confused on how I missed it so badly the first time. After thinking about it I realized that the first time I read the poem I had put my own ideals about what the poem should mean instead of reading what was written. This might have been because I was already struggling to understand the words that were written or because I didn’t even consider the fact that the author of the poem wanted to create more agriculture by destroying nature. Either way I came to a wrong understanding of the meaning of the poem because of my own beliefs and now know that I need to read poems with a more open mind.

 We all have our heroes in our life whether it be your parents or a doctor. How I define a hero is someone who is willing to sacrifice something important to them for the benefit of someone else. This involves giving up time, energy, knowledge, and even one's life. With this definition we are surrounded by heroes that we often don’t think about. The word hero has taken on this form of someone greater than anyone else, someone who could never possibly make a mistake. Which I don’t think is far or a reasonable belief that we have. I believe this because even the heroes that we as a country recognize have many flaws. I think that the reason that the people of Mexico don’t have some great national hero is because they have many people that played major roles in the fight for their independence but because they are humans they have flaws and made mistakes. If these natural flaws are seen and acknowledged it is hard to see people as heroes.