Lorianny

The vignette that surprised me was “The Family of Little Feet” because of the confidence of the girls in the story. Having the confidence to go out wearing high heels, knowing that as young ladies it draws men’s attention and the consequences that come with it but still choose to wear whatever they feel comfortable with. Their confidence really caught my attention because those moments are so awkward.  The one that intrigued me was “Red Clowns.” This is a really confusing vignette because of the symbolism used. We all clearly know what happened here, but why would “your friend” leave you to that? Why would someone close to you let this happen? A lot of questions come to my mind reading this narrative and I can feel this girl’s fear while I read it.

The story is about a rebellious 15 year old girl named Connie, whose mother constantly berates her for obsessing over her appearance and not being more sensible like her older sister, June. Oates wants to emphasize the inequality of men and women, and at the same time she is bringing forth her feminist beliefs that should be known to society. Connie, one young woman out of a country of young women, must confront her own questions and anxieties as she transitions into adulthood. The story’s title points up the threshold on which Connie stands, looking back to where she has been (childhood) and where she is going (adulthood). She presents a different version of herself when she’s home and when she’s out with her friends for validation.   

While reading poems I always have a problem which is I always think I will understand it on the first reading and feel like there’s something wrong with me since I never understand what it means immediately. This is the prior assumption I made, of the three mentioned in “how to read a poem.” While reading “White lies” by Natasha Trethewey I started reading so confidently and thought I could understand it at first reading just by reading its title. When I was done I noticed I didn’t get its meaning or what was really behind it and had to go back, read it slowly, and analyze it. At first, I thought it was just about a little girl lying, but after reading it back, word by word, I understood it had something to do with color and race. “I could even keep quiet, quiet as kept, like the time a white girl said (squeezing my hand), Now we have three of us in this class.” The girl felt like lying was the only way white people would be nice to her. She would lie about where she lived, and also about being African American. 

  “Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.“ In order to understand a poem, the reader has to get into it and read it as they feel it, paying attention to the language and tone of the poem, which would be the attitude. As well as having a technique to help understand such as looking up confusing words, connecting related ideas, listening to its sound and rhythm and paying attention to repeated words and literary techniques used by the author.    In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like The Sun” the author uses irony to emphasize the beauty of his mistress, by comparing her to things that show she’s not perfect but he still loves her.  “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” (Shakespeare lines 2-4) It took me a while to understand because I wasn’t really getting the point, but then I realized he was comparing her and being realistic about the woman he loves, as many poems try to idealize and exaggerate woman’s beauty, he did the opposite. My attitude while reading this changed after I read it a few times, at first I was confused, then i read it as a love poem and my technique was just reading it and trying to figure out the author’s message, technique and ideas. 

The greeting card “Why do I love you so much?” and the Browning sonnet “How do I love thee” have their subject in common, but differ on their elements and literary devices. In “How do I love thee” the author emphasizes the depth of her love using many literary devices to engage and communicate her feelings to the audience, such as imagery, alliteration and simile. The sonnet uses rhymes, a formal language and tone to emphasize what she’s trying to communicate. On the other hand, the card just states the reasons why he/she loves the person, having no tone, rhyme, or any other element to catch the audience’s attention and also having simple language and structure.

For my research essay I’ll be using the story of “Araby” by James Joyce My thesis word for word is: “In this story, the author shows us the harshness of disillusionment through the main character and his experience. He lives in a fantasy and romanticizes every action of the girl he likes, which eventually leads to disillusionment” To support my thesis I haven’t found any article yet but I think I will be using a literary critique because it would be helpful to read another person’s point of view or interpretation of the story. I’ve been exploring the BMCC library and Gale in Context to find an article that would help me. 

Something that surprised me from the story “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant was its abrupt ending because it was totally unexpected. The Loisels spent many years paying off the debt of a necklace that at the end of the story is revealed to be fake. Imagine living 10 years in poverty and making the effort to pay something that has no value at all.. Something that intrigued me from this story was how Mathilde’s urge to appear wealthy and become higher class led her to make the huge mistake of borrowing a necklace and having to face the consequences when loses it and lives 10 years of misery, after paying off her debts and learning the lesson, the situation seems to humble her. Why would you want to hide who you really are? Why would you want to adopt other people’s habits? Why do we believe we need to impress others with things we can’t even afford sometimes to be loved/ be part of their daily lives?  Something that puzzled me can be found in “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson “She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife.” This puzzled me because she refers to what she likes to do as “playthings” as if it had no value. I think this might be because women’s work is less valued than men’s and they see it as something to spend/kill her time. I’m a little confused by this. Also, referring to her “wife role” as an honorable role? while her dreams, passions and expectations are “playthings”? 

In Flannery O’Connor’s short fiction, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family is preparing to fly from Georgia to Florida for a vacation. The grandmother tries to talk the family into traveling to Tennessee instead because she has relatives there that she wants to see. But instead of disclosing her genuine intentions, the grandma uses deceit. The grandmother makes the claim that a criminal known as The Misfit has broken out of a federal prison and is rumored to be traveling to Florida. She expresses concern that they might run into him while traveling. It examines how appearance and reality clash. The grandma presents herself as a ladylike Christian, yet her interaction with The Misfit demonstrates that she does not adhere to the fundamental principle of christianity. Yet she believes herself to be a fountain of wisdom, offering advice and opinion on a myriad of topics. The Misfit, on the other hand, is exactly what he appears to be. The exchange between the Misfit and the grandmother leads to her moment of epiphany. I think what’s in the interior is the revealing of grandma’s true identity and the point that goodness can be found in the most unexpected places and people, even in an evil creature.  

In the play “Oedipus the King,” one can observe numerous timeless human experiences and behaviors throughout the entire reading. The behavior I’m going to focus on is the search for truth. The search for truth is important to humans because it is a natural urge to understand the world and our place in it and it provides purpose to our lives as well as helping us make sense of everything that happens. However, people tend to make mistakes and make bad decisions chasing the truth. In the play, Oedipus had been metaphorically blind to the truth for his entire life trying to find out who his parents are. He ends up killing his father and marries his mother without knowing they were his parents. When he eventually learnt the truth, he blinded himself by poking out his eyes. This is an example of one of the many timeless human experiences one can discover in this play. 

A scene and passage by the chorus that I liked was “This is a terrible sight for men to see! I never found a worse! Poor wretch, what madness came upon you! What evil spirit leaped upon your life to your ill-luck—a leap beyond man’s strength! Indeed I pity you, but I cannot look at you, though there’s much I want to ask and much to learn and much to see. I shudder at the sight of you” (1488-1497). I chose this passage because its language and expressions are deep and interesting, and the message behind it is easy to understand. The Chorus cries in agony that Oedipus let his anger take over him and is too terrible for eyes to see, that he has been punished in both body and soul and claimed it would’ve been better death than blindness.

The young boy in the story “Araby” by Joyce, can be described as an innocent, sensitive, impulsive and attentive boy. At the beginning of the story, one can see how the boy pays attention to every detail of everything in his surroundings, such as the streets and the person who lived there before him and his belongings. This demonstrates he was attentive. He noticed every little detail and described it as it was. He also was so sensitive, the way he acted every time he saw the girl he liked are examples of his sensitivity. He felt some kind of mixed emotions, felt so nervous and cried without explanation, he could barely speak to her. There are a few examples that show us he was so vulnerable and had intense feelings. This also shows he was so innocent, he didn’t know what he felt and didn’t know how to control his emotions. Also, his feelings for his friend’s older sister made him make some desperate decisions because all he wanted was that she liked him back so he wanted to get her a gift. In some scenes one can observe the boy’s behavior as an impatient person, such as when he was supposed to go to the bazaar to get the girl a gift, and his aunt told him “he may put his bazaar off for that night” (Araby), and he took the money and left. This is an example of the boy being impulsive. At the end of the story, he gets angry and frustrated by the fact that he was late to the bazaar and couldn’t get anything for the girl. This situation opened his eyes and he realizes he’s obsessed with her and if it wasn’t because of that he wouldn’t be so desperate to get the […]

In the story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, the two characters that caught my attention were Sylvia and Mercedes. The story begins by illustrating a group of students who are going to be taken on an eye-opening trip to FAO Schwarz, a toy store, with the purpose of showing them and teaching them about economic inequality. Throughout the story, one can appreciate how economic inequality affects children and their development and also can see how they act after they see the expensive toys at the store. Sylvia was a low-income kid from Harlem. She was so disrespectful and expressed her anger verbally attacking Ms. Moore because of her proper behavior. At the end of the story, she realized the lesson Ms. Moore tried to teach them and becomes more reserved and well behaved as this lesson changed her life perspective and she kept thinking about the inequality and unfairness of how money is divided in America, while one has plenty of money, other families suffer. Mercedes, unlike the other kids, was wealthier, well-spoken and open minded. The kids used to make jokes and mock her because of that every time she talks about her family’s money. At the end of the story, she doesn’t seem to get the message at all, she values things based on their price.