In the Article “How to Read a Poem” by Edward Hirsch, he explains all the ways how to correctly complete a poem. He writes how to “put yourself” into the poem, the reader has to put in the effort to truly understand what the “poet has begun”. Hirsch also explains how it takes time and effort to truly do this, but after a lot of time in doing this, understanding poems is easy. In the poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B Yeats, the poet, is fantasizing about a lake island where it is very peaceful, and it seems he wants to go there. It states “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings”. He utilizes imagery in this poem, showing how his image of this place is running wild and how he is eager to go there. According to this text, I think something might be going on with the poet’s life at this time: “While I stand on this roadway, or the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core”. It shows that he isn’t in this place, by saying “while I stand on this roadway”. It is in his heart where he wants to go, whether this may be going to heaven where he may be at peace, or he actually might want to go on a vacation somewhere nice. In the article that Edward Hirsch wrote, I used one of his ways to read a poem, which is by reading the poem aloud. It sort of helped me understand it a bit more. In the article, Hirsch said that everyone sees a different meaning in any poem. That was in the back of my head while reading […]
Mike Calle
For my essay, I chose “Araby” by James Joyce, the thesis statement that I wrote was “He realizes towards the end of doing this that his feelings for the girl have blinded him. Not only that, but he also had high expectations for the bazaar, and this leads the narrator to have a loss of innocence. He realizes that not everything will be how he wants it to be.” I believe that the type of secondary source information that supports my thesis might be analyzing the author’s history with the Catholic Church and how he uses it in his story to “mock” it. He uses religion as well a tremendous amount in “Araby” and one of the secondary sources I found speaks exactly about this. It is a critical essay I found on Gale, and it criticizes Joyce’s use of religion in the story. The author writes about how the girl affected the narrator’s views and beliefs of Catholicism, and I think I could use this as my secondary resource because of my theme that I’m writing about.
In the poem “the Wife” by Emily Dickinson, the main theme is the self-realization of being a full-on wife. She realized that to meet her husband’s “demands” she has to change her original life and fully support and devote herself as her husband’s wife. In “The Wife”, the author states in the text, “She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife.” Mrs. Mallard realized after finding out her husband is dead, she finally feels that she is “free” and can live how she used to. The two readings both have the theme of realization, In “The Wife”. The wife realizes that she has to drop everything from her life to be devoted to her husband. During Mrs. Mallard’s emotional state, she realizes that she feels “free” to do things how she used to after her husband dies.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, on the surface, O’Connor writes about a small family meeting a serial killer on the loose while on a trip to another state. The interior of this story is that the grandma is very racist and extremely narrow-minded, she thinks that she’s the main character of everyone’s life. She believes she is a good manipulator and even hid the cat her son doesn’t like in a suitcase. The grandma is very ignorant and selfish, and I would say she is the reason she and her family died to the killer. On her trip, she ironically finds herself with the killer and attempted to manipulate the killer into not killing her. She attempted to do the same thing she does with her family by trying to soft-talk the killer and feed him lies. She was saying how a good person he is and mocking him, saying he wouldn’t shoot a lady. All these arrogant acts led to a tragic ending for her and her family’s lives.
In Oedipus the King, there are many timeless human experiences or behaviors. Aristotle also writes that poetry is a higher form than history, he uses poetry to show all of these timeless human experiences. One of them is death and, everyone knows what death is and that we cannot escape it when it is our time also almost everyone has heard on the news about a tragic murder. In the play, Oedipus had to go through the consequences when he found out that he had killed King Laius. Death has always affected humans, centuries ago and even in the play. Another timeless human experience or behavior is religion, most families have their own beliefs and gods they believe in. The play frequently brings up the “gods” or praying to Zeus to protect a king. They really believed in Zeus so much that the citizens would pray about anyone who wants to cause harm to “important” people, like kings, for example, should be harmed. This is an example of timeless human experiences because many people now still pray to their God, not exactly like in the play, but they pray for good things.
LINES 813-836 JOCASTA: Do not concern yourself about this matter; listen to me and learn that human beings 815 have no part in the craft of prophecy. Of that I’ll show you a short proof. There was an oracle once that came to Laius, — I will not say that it was Phoebus’ own, but it was from his servants— and it told him 820 that it was fate that he should die a victim at the hands of his own son, a son to be born of Laius and me. But, see now, he, the king, was killed by foreign highway robbers at a place where three roads meet—so goes the story; 825 and for the son—before three days were out after his birth King Laius pierced his ankles and by the hands of others cast him forth upon a pathless hillside. So Apollo failed to fulfill his oracle to the son, 830 that he should kill his father, and to Laius also proved false in that the thing he feared, death at his son’s hands, never came to pass. So clear in this case were the oracles, so clear and false. Give them no heed, I say; 835 what God discovers need of, easily he shows to us himself. In this passage, Jocasta informs the new king, Oedipus, about an oracle who told the old king Laius that it was “Fate” that he would die by his own son. But this Oracle was not true because the king’s death was by highway robbers. He informs the new King Oedipus to show him an example and to not be feared because he had his own beliefs. He believed that whatever God has planned, “he shows to us himself”(836). Furthermore, he tells this story to him because he and King […]
“Araby” is not a love story. This story is more of a “wake up to reality” for the narrator. Throughout the story, the narrator uses many literary devices to show the setting of the place he lives in and mainly talks about this girl he seems to be fascinated by. In my opinion, he is more obsessive than fascinated. He noticed the times she leaves, so he would leave at the same time, but it wouldn’t be for an actual conversation. This friendship or “relationship” that they have with each other is more one-sided because the narrator seems to be more interested in her than she is. This can’t be a love story if only one person is interested more than the other person. Throughout the story, the narrator talks to the girl and she brings up a “bazaar” that she wants to go to, but she isn’t able to. This led to an idea for the narrator in going to the bazaar himself to buy the girl a gift to show his “attraction” to her. Eventually, he ends up going to the bazaar, but he arrived late due to his uncle not arriving in time to give him money. When he arrived, everything was basically closed and the only shop that was open didn’t have something that was worth gifting. At the end of that night, he felt frustrated, asking himself why he went all this way for something he didn’t need to do. This made him realize he didn’t have a love for the girl and felt that he made a fool out of himself because he went all that way for nothing.
“The Lesson” is a very interesting story by Toni Cade Bambara. In this story, there are two people named Mercedes and Sylvia and they both visited the “FAO Schwarz Toy Store”, they both had different experiences. When they first arrived, Sylvia realized the area they are in is dressed in expensive clothing. It made her upset and annoyed by it, and I think it’s because she came from a family that wasn’t very wealthy. Throughout the whole time, Sylvia was thinking how the money people are using to buy these expensive toys could be used for her family with rent, and more important things. On the other hand, Mercedes came from a wealthy family and was surprised by all the expensive toys and how the world is sort of different in the expensive toy store. She was sort of motivated and wanted to go back to the store with her own money to purchase. Mercedes had a complete opposite “impulsive” reaction that Sylvia had to the toy store. Mercedes was not bothered by the store, while Sylvia on the other hand was completely bothered and made it clear she did not like the place.
“Salvation” by Langston Hughes was a very interesting read because it brings a lot of emotions and perspective into play. Throughout the story, it talks about how Hughes developed a fear over something he believed would be very positive for him. At the end of the story, he states “I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me”. His attitude towards being “saved” completely changed everything for him at the end of the story. At the same time, Hughes was only thirteen years old at the time, and he couldn’t have possibly known what it fully meant to be “saved”. This story also shows, in my opinion, peer pressure. One of the kids decided to just lie and go up and be “saved” and when Hughes decided to do the same, which ended with him feeling guilty and sad about it. And this brings me back to the sentence Hughes wrote at the end of the story because it shows how much his attitude and feelings towards Jesus changed in the end.
I believe the professor assigned this as the first story of the course because it broadens our view of tales and stories. I never read a story like this, I found it very unusual and out of the ordinary. But like all stories, there usually is a message or moral. For this story, Marquez writes about a body that is washed up on the shore-but this man is not an ordinary man like the other people living in the area. All the beds and tables in the village appear to be big for this person, which soon after they named Esteban. This story is very intriguing to any reader and can be found very interesting as well. This is all pure fiction and can also be portrayed as mythical, and this whole story is based off of imagination. In the story, they end up praising Esteban and soon later the men and women began to show sympathy for the dead body, and it brought up questions about how he survived and what his life was like. The men and women portrayed Esteban as a sort of “God” and saw him as a symbol of human suffering. This story has a lot of fiction, mystery, and imagination to it and at the same time, it can be portrayed as a message to the reader, which therefore is why I think the professor assigned us this story first.
