Steven Falcon

No speak English on page 76 resonated the most with me because my grandparents came to America not really knowing English and my grandpa still to this day has broken English and is still judged for it because many people have the ignorant belief of that if you’re in America you have to speak English, which is just not true as this country was built by immigrants and should be more welcoming to immigrants not to mention that my grandparents created many jobs as my grandpa owned a store in Brooklyn where he sold a lot of items and was very well loved throughout his community. He was so well loved that he would even have protection from the locals if anyone tried to mess with him or tried to rob the store it just goes to show that even if you may not know the language everyone deserves to be respected and cared about because they’re people at the end of the day that can bring something to the table no matter what.

“The House On Mango Street“ is a collection of short stories or vignettes that are quite relatable for many people. The vignette that I relate to the most is page 6 “Hairs” I relate to it because my family and I have completely different kinds of hair as I’m half Cuban and half Puerto Rican, my father and his sister have straight hair while my brother has thick curly hair and I also have curly hair but it’s not as thick. I think this story sort of highlights that even though you can all be from the same family everyone can have completely different traits whether it be hair eye color or whatever, I also relate to it because besides hair I’m one of the only ones in my immediate family that has hazel eyes as the rest of my immediate family has brown eyes, I get this from my grandmother who’s on the Cuban side of the family. This story related to me a lot also because I’ve always felt like an outsider in my family somewhat because I have different hair and eye color but this story helps to highlight that it’s not a bad thing and that it’s quite beautiful to see the diversity in just one family.

Some observations I made Between both stories is that they both show the innocence of childhood and having to follow this traditional way of being ladylike, it also goes on to show how much materialism is expected in Snow White specifically it shows thy at material things (the Apple in this case) leads her to wickedness similar to the story of Adam and eve. Both stories seem to have somewhat of a religious connotation to it as well which is shown specifically in Snow White with the Apple.

I think this story is a story about a girl who has to deal with the traditionalist and Christian worldview that her parents and those around her have while trying to navigate talking to a boy and growing up while those around her are continuously judgemental and doesn’t seem like they want the best for her. I also agree that it is kind of like a fairytale in a way kind of similar to Romeo And Juliet where her parents don’t really want her to be talking to boys or doing what she is doing but because as the boy states “your father is at the barbecue” but she is still hesitant about going for a ride with him and seeing where things will go because she is scared what her father would say or do if she saw the two of them. Eventually when Arnold starts getting aggressive and insults Connie’s sister she threatens to call the police and eventually leaves. I think this story is a fairytale that ends up not being able to work out because of the patriarchal and religious beliefs that are going on around her which she doesn’t seem to want to follow which in the end leads to her leaving and not trying to work it out with the boy because of the worries she has of how she will be perceived.

I chose The Lake Isle Of Innisfree this Poem is very sad yet beautiful because it highlights certain factors about what the author is going through and what he thinks of himself for example he states “ Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade.“ In this line he is higlighting loneliness that he feels but at the same time he thinks that this life will be peaceful where he says And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;“ here the author is saying that even though it can be lonely here that he is content with it because he can have some form of peace that he never had before and by the end of the poem he comes to grip with the reality of the situation and accepts it by saying “I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” This is the author realizing that he has to accept what is happening, after reading the article how to read a poem it helped me to complete it because in it it states that everyone can see a different meaning in the poem so while others may find this poem depressing I find it beautiful that he’s able to get past the loneliness and to be at peace with the life he is living now.

After doing all these activities I learned that poetry is a lot more complex than I previously thought, especially when it comes to sonnets and the differences between the Italian version and the English version. Sometimes I would go and read poems or stories and realize that I didn’t really understand the true meaning of the poem but when looking at the how to read a poem activity and the activity on Shakespeare also helped me to understand poems and poetry in general a lot better. I also learned about the Shakespearean sonnets which are split up into 3 sections while having 4 lines each while Italian sonnets don’t seem to have any couplets, Shakespearean sonnets also wrap up the end of the third section by giving a brief line or two summary about what the message of the poem was. Overall this week’s activity helped e to come away with a much better understanding of poetry writing and overall how to read poetry and stories in general and it was overall a helpful week of activities.

My essay is on “Araby” by James Joyce and my thesis statement is: Although it seems like a love story “Araby” is really about a boy who creates a fantasy to help him escape from the harshness of his reality. As for the BMCC database I have looked and have seen some articles and literary critiques about the boy in the story and other resources about the story in general which should help me to prove what my thesis statement is saying.

The theme of Emily Dickinson’s “The Wife” relates to the emotional state of  “The Story Of An Hour” because they both take place during a time period where women didn’t have the same rights as men and overall highlights the unhappiness that women during this period felt for example in “The Wife Emily Dickinson states She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife. While in The Story Of An Hour the women loses her husband  (falling into the sea) but after she is finished crying she comes to the realization that she’s free (“Develops pearl and weed”,) these stories overall highlight how women felt at the time when it came to being at the behest of their husbands and not having being happy about their life or freedom until their husband passes away then they will be able to be free.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor has a lot going on emotionally from the start the grandmother comes off as super condescending and deceitful the rest of the characters come off as somewhat like able in their own way but the grandmother seems to drag everyone down with her negativity and manipulation. She also is super racist saying that a black child must have stolen the watermelons that Edgar Atkins left. I think the interior of the story is that everyone can have a human character that people may like but that doesn’t make them any less of a bad person as we see with the grandmother and her soul mate Red Sam and we see how those kinds of people can have an effect on children and potentially raise them to become bigoted and manipulative like they are. The grandmother also seems to know that she is a bad person to a certain extent as well as when she comes in contact with The Misfit she starts being nice and seeing the good In him while also talking about Jesus it seemed like she knew she was going to have some things to answer for if she was to be killed in that moment.

Oedipus the king has a wide range of emotions and human experiences and behaviors one that stood out to me was the citizens praying to Zeus to protect their king and to make anyone that would bring harm to him to be struck down. This is still somewhat common in terms of people believing and religion and praying to help a family member or someone they know to be protected during surgery or for them to be healthy religion and a higher power has been a thing for thousands of years in human history and will continue to be so. Another experience that I noticed is Oediupus’s curiosity and wanting to find the truth on who killed Jocasta only to find out that Jocasta hung herself after finding this out Oedipus becomes quite emotional and ends up doing what happens in the rest of the story this is also a timeless human experience because he acted out of emotion after losing someone they cared about which still happens today because humans are emotional and care about the ones they love deeply so when something happens especially the loss of someone humans do crazy things out of emotion and from the pain of the loss.

Oedipus  the king is quite the interesting read with a lot of double meanings and nuances the part of the passage I picked is What is the sweet spoken word of God from the shrine of Pytho rich in gold War God ringed with the cries of men, a savage God who burns us; grant that he turn in racing course backwards out of our country’s bounds to the great palace of Amphitrite19 or where the waves of the Thracian sea 215 deny the stranger safe anchorage. Whatsoever escapes the night at last the light of day revisits; so smite the War God, Father Zeus, beneath your thunderbolt, 220 for you are the Lord of the lightning, the lightning that carries fire. This is said shortly after Oedipus talks about the previous king that was murdered and promises that he would not have the same fate as for the chorus I believe they’re trying to be optimistic somewhat and have a good outlook by saying that anyone that is trying to turn the country backwards or is trying to set it back will be taken care of by their god (Zeus) by first denying the stranger any safe anchorage to make it harder for them to get in. They even go onto to say that whatever ends up getting through at night time will pop up when the day comes and that Zeus will take care of the war god by striking them. I think that the stranger they are talking about is a metaphor for war and anyone that is trying to hurt their new king and trying to turn their country into a less stable more chaotic place and that they have full faith in Zeus to take care of it which is why I believe it has […]

The short story Araby by James Joyce isn’t a love story as it would appear on a surface level it’s more of a story about a child who is infatuated with Mangan’s sister he is obsessive and even goes to the point of wanting to get her something from the Bazar when she hasn’t really shown much interest in him but after his uncle gives him money he goes to the Bazar but realizes it is closed and it disappoints him because he couldn’t get her something when he promised her he would. He also started to realize he had too high of expectations when he was the only one that was showing interest and was infatuated  her which causes him to lose hope and be disappointed in the end because his love wasn’t reciprocated and it seems that he was more so obsessed with her than in love with her for who she was as he didn’t really know her well in the grand scheme  of things which is why Araby is not a love story.

In Salvation by Langston Hughes the narrator starts off super naive in and gullible he had an obsession of being saved because it was what he was told for his whole life, he even got to the point of waiting for Jesus and he had an optimism to him but as the story goes on he starts to lose his sense of joy and optimism as he sees other children being saved while he wasn’t and by the end of the story he is lying to his family that the reason he is crying and hiding under the covers is because he was saved but the truth was he was the only one that didn’t get saved and didn’t know why. In the end he comes to the conclusion that because he didn’t see Jesus and that Jesus didn’t save him that he didn’t believe in jesus anymore because he didn’t see the point anymore after he felt abandoned.

The short story the handsomest drowned man ever is a story about a village that ends up finding a drowned man and accepting him even though he was much bigger and was different than anything they have ever seen before, to me the message of this story is not to judge a book by its cover and to be open and willing to change. This relates to me as a student because as a student you have to be open to and willing to learn about new topics and subjects. It also shows that you should accept new things and be open to new things instead of trying to stay in your ways. It also shows and talks about how one should be accepting of other people even if they’re different or don’t fit in like everyone else, because for the villagers in the story they were confused at first but after being accepting the man fit right into their village.