January 4, 2010 -Afternoon

Today was successful. Our discussion today centered around our thesis statement. We were a bit confused originally, thinking we had to write an essay comparing the points in Yertle the Turtle to elements in the second World War, and then use these comparaisons to prove a point. Confusing, right? Mr. Blauer cleared that up, explaining to us we're actually writing an essay pointing out the comparaisons between the Dr. Seuss book and the real life event of the second World War.

A helpful thing in this project is that both Isabel and Jesse are currently taking history, and did study WWII, and therefore know plenty about the basic facts of the war. Some interesting things we noted today, after reading the story over again:
-The story starts off by saying the pong was clean and neat. But Yertle falls into mud, not into clean water. Did the water muddy, over time, with all the turtles trampling over to make Yertle's throne? Or did Dr. Seuss just create a patch of mud for Yertle to fall into? The mud could be connected to the way Germany's economy and general well0being did not get too much better in Hitler's time, in fact, it got worse (bombings, major war).
-Both Yertle and Hitler had untrealistic goals: Yertle's was to be higher than the moon, Hitler's was to conquer the world.
-The turtles (with the exception of Mack) all blindly listened to Yertle, the way many Germans blindly listened to Hitler. We think this is because both Yertle and Hitler talked big. Yertle said, "Hey, I can be king of everything!" and the turtles thought, "Well, if he's king of everything, we'd better obey him". Hitler said, "I can conquer the world, and make life better for all of those 'deserving of life'" and the Germans thought, "Well, that sounds better than what we have now, so let's go with it." Later on, neither turtles nor Germans had no choice but to obey, since Yertle and Hitler because rather all powerful.

Those are just some of the connections we're starting to see. With a little more solid research, we should be ready to start writing soon. We should also have a thesis statement written and ready to go by tomorrow.