During this semester, the text I liked the most was “Araby” by James Joyce, and the one I liked the least was probably “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles. I liked Araby, because it’s a story about love and how it sucks sometimes. The story is relatable for anyone who has ever been on the wrong side of unrequited love or who has ever felt let down by life. On the other hand, I didn’t really like “Oedipus the King” because he killed his dad and married his mom. The story is pretty sad, bloody, and gross. He eventually gouges out his eyes and exiles himself. One thing I did like about the story was the sphinx, because I like mythological creatures, and like the sphinx, the Greek mythos has many interesting and intelligent creatures and monsters. The story also uses dramatic irony, where you know more than the characters do, which makes you feel like everything is doomed and hopeless.
Kamol Farrell
The quote “reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique” is basically stating that reading poetry well and correctly, requires both a certain mindset and a set of skills. With regard to the attitude component, it means approaching poetry with an open mind and a curious mindset, free of preconceived preconceptions about what or how it should be read. The technique part refers to specific skills that can help readers engage with poetry more effectively, such as asking questions and analyzing literary devices. Take Shakespeare’s “my mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun” for instance, A person might be more inclined to read with an open mind and a sense of curiosity rather than expecting it to follow the norms how they love sonnet. The poems use of metaphors and similes could then be examined in order to better grasp its meaning, for example “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.”
The greeting card lyrics “Why Do I Love You So Much?” and the Browning sonnet “How Do I Love Thee?” share some similarities in their themes of love and affection, but they differ in their poetic elements. The Browning sonnet “How Do I Love Thee?” is a love poem that expresses the speaker’s love for her partner. The poem uses various poetic elements such as imagery, rhyme, meter, and sound to convey the speaker’s feelings of love. For example, the poem uses imagery to describe how much the speaker loves her partner by saying “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach”. The poem also uses rhyme and meter to create a musical quality that emphasizes the speaker’s love for her partner. On the other hand, the greeting card lyrics “Why Do I Love You So Much?” express a similar sentiment of love but do not use as many poetic elements as Browning’s sonnet. The lyrics use simple language to convey the speaker’s feelings of love for their partner.
Throughout the story of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’ Connor, we understand what’s the borderline surface of this story. A family going on a road trip that eventually encounters a group of criminals along the way. The story in its interior, is much deeper however, showing this through the use of the grandma. At its interior, the story is focused on death of how the Old South operated and a birth of a new era. This is shown through the grandma, a flawed character who in the beginning, wanted nothing more than to visit the old plantation house. Her selfish desires to do so can be inferred her longing for the past, and not wanting to accept the current present on how things are now. She was represented at this point, as the old South and how things used to be. Then, when the criminals came and killed her and the entire family, it was to show the death of this Old south. With the death of the Old South, it would come with the birth of a new era. She wasn’t able to accept the change of the modern day, and as a result, she was killed off.
“Araby” by James Joyce is a short story about a young boy that falls in love with his friend’s sister and tries to buy her a gift from a bazaar, basically another word for market. some words to describe this boy would be naive, romantic, infatuated, imaginative, idealistic, disillusioned. His character affects what happens at the end because he realizes that bis love was based on a fantasy and illusion, and he feels angry and ashamed of himself. The boy’s infatuation brought him to dote on this so intensely that he’d watch her from his window, waiting for the very moment she’d come into his eye view just to catch a glimpse of her, shameful of the possibility of the getting caught doing so. His infatuation with this girl also brought on a level of impatience and fear of the idea of not being able to retrieve this gift for her, in this aspect he isn’t alone when it comes to love we find ourselves doing strange and unreasonable things.
