The vignette from “The House on Mango Street” that surprised me was the adaption quickly of a Kid who realizes the rough situation that they are in. The main character notices that they are in poverty moving from apartment-to-apartment longing for somewhere to truly call home. When they got to that point moving across the town to Mango Street it was nothing like they envisioned. One vignette that intrigued me was ” My Name” She looks back on her family history as she considers her name to be special being passed down from her grandmother. While breaking down the multiple meaning of her name she talks about she would like to change her name. It intrigued me as I wanted to change my name at point because it didn’t fit who I w
nyhiem Remsen
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Throughout the reading of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” written by Anne Sexton there were a lot of small and large things I picked up on while reading the psychological oriented story. A major theme that stood out to me throughout the story was jealousy and envy. The stepmother turned on Snow White as soon as the mirror deemed her a better fit, the Queen had an internal struggle that she couldn’t come to terms with as her beauty was being eaten up by age. Another specific observation I noticed in the story was the little bit of foreshadowing when it came to introducing the Seven Dwarfs. It was seven everything from the mountains, week, all the way down to the beds and number of forks in the home. Jealousy and ev=envy really could take over a person as the Queen was plotting on Snow White’s demise.
My understanding of the story is that immediately from the start it takes a sad turn and dives in deeper in deeper as you continue reading. Highlight the main protagonist a 15-year-old girl named Connie. Known to almost everyone including herself she was not your average girl; she was extremely beautiful. In fact, her own mother treated her poorly and was even jealous of her. Her father was no better, not even speaking to the family going to work, coming home to read the paper, and eat after that off to bed. Connie’s life and upbringing has a theme of neglect. Her parent not caring about the slightest of things she does, and it causes major problems. While her mother disliked Connie she loved her big sister June. She was constantly being compared to her and was seen as an outcast within her own family. Her still being a teenage girl has caused her to have impaired thinking as she’s trying to navigate life. A predatory man Arnold turns the story from a sad story to a dark and twisted one where one’s quest for recognition will attract unwanted attention from some very bad people.
In week 13’s reading ” Most reader’s make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem” it hits on some valid key points about what many readers myself included tend to do when reading poems as if it’s an involuntary action. I myself am guilty of the latter I fall underneath the second category where in my heart I truly do believe that there is an undercover meaning behind and thus why it was written in such a way. In the poem “White Lies” written by Natasha Trethewey made me think of that poem in such a way and yet I failed to even realize it. Right from the opening line I thought that this short poem was supposed to have a deeper meaning behind it when it stated, ” The lies I could tell, when I was growing up light brown near white high yellow, red boned in a black place were just white lies,” In my head I thought the protagonist past had caught up with them and they would have a sort of epiphany were they would seeing the error of their ways when it came to being a liar.
I would describe greeting card lyrics “Why do I love you so much?” as more lineation as opposed to “How do I love Thee” which was more imagery for me. The lines I “Why do I love you so much?” had a break at the end of each line which got me into a flow reading this poem almost immediately. How do I love thee had a lot of imagery in the poem from parts talking about their smiles, and tears. To a moment where it feels like their soul can reach. It paints a picture for me in my head going through emotions making me feel connected throughout the poem. Although I do like the sound of “Why do I love you so much?” a bit more the typical format worked as it felt like a rhyme a little bit. I read each line of the poem as if there was a beat attached to it.
For the most recent class we were task to write our first draft. The story I chose to use as inspiration was “The Lesson” by Toni cade Bambara. The story perfectly hit on many points that I use even in my life and was the perfect choice for ne to write about. The thesis of my story was Life is situational if you want to change your situation you have to go beyond your imagination to achieve your goals nothing is given but all is earned. A secondary source I used to help support my thesis was a literary critique. The literary critique I used to help support my thesis was from JSTOR and it gave a lot of information about Toni Cade Bambara and her upbringing as a Harlem born author who chose to embrace the language of her culture and community. She used that to convey a strong message of empowerment in her story as if she had something to prove.
One thing that surprised me from the short poem “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson was how short the poem actually was but the message that it gave off in such little time left me a little baffled trying to think of a response for it. It hits on a topic of a women at the ready of her man for in any given moment she would drop everything for him. The same thing that surprised me was also what intrigued me in the language they use to describe her actions. “She rose to his requirement dropped the playthings of her life.” That metaphor gives me almost everything I need to get a sense in this story. She’s given up everything for her man but at what cost. The last part puzzled me as “But to himself is known the fathoms they abide.” I cannot decipher it to internalize its value at all. In the “Story of an Hour” The only thing that came as a Suprise was the woman actions after finding out her husband had died. The happiness could be covering something much deeper that hits only the surface, but it really made me think. Something that interested me was how the woman began to see two options be sad and sulk and grief or move on with a newfound freedom and opportunity.
The story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner entails a family of six trip down to Florida that quickly takes a turn for the worse. The story shows how one’s true colors in the face of adversity. Midway through the second page we learn how even after such a long life the grandmother still isn’t ready to face death. Some elements do make the story work with any action unlike any other in the story here’s where the part of the story comes where I feel it’s interior. When the grandmother is last alone facing the Misfit, we the reader point out all of her flaws that got her to this point being manipulative and sly. It lets you start to see a theme from the story with morality and narcissistic only in the face of death we saw the error of her ways.
Some tireless hum an experience i get from reading Oedipus the King are pride and fate. Oedipus is a very powerful leader and throughout the story you start to see that he wants to outrun his fate in hopes of it not happening. Soon we start to see that the pride becomes his downfall He tries to stop his destiny but ends up meeting the requirements unknowingly. Pride is a really big behavior that I see all during the whole story as because of that it make Oedipus susceptible to his own fate add along with that his pride try to use his power to control everything ended up in disaster for him.
After reading “Oedipus the King” translated by David Grene. the quote that stood out to me from the story that exemplifies one of Aristotle’s criteria for great tragic theater comes from line 195 to line 200 it says, “our sorrows defy number all of ship’s timbers are rotten taking of thought is no spear for the driving away of the plague 0 You may see them one with another, like birds swift on the wing.” I picked this passage because it gave until a look inside to what seems to be hell on earth. Every day they wake up and go through the same thing over and over bit by bit their hope is being teared away as they realize this is their life and that’s it. They chorus contributes as the deeper you get into the story, they praise Zues and the War God Ares calling him the “Lord of Lighting” begging for help. It pierces through that they still have a slither of hope left.
In the story “Araby” by James Joyce is the story of a boy who becomes attracted to his friend’s sister. and become easily influenced and almost obsessed with them. Some of the words that I would use to describe the boy in the story are, hopeful, absent minded, and obsessive. He was very hopeful as he thought someday, he might end up with her. This also draws in on him being obsessives as on the bottom paragraph of the first page it state “Every morning I lay on the floor parlor watching her door. Even the boy being so absent minded was cause by his attraction to this girl. He started to answer few questions in class and his master thought he was beginning to idle. This affects what happens to the boy in the end because he thinks everything he did up to this point was useless as he now knows the girls works there.
Two students that I picked after reading “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara” were Sugar and Rosie. Both of the girls had some mix feeling after visiting the Fao Schwarz toy store. Rosie has hopes that someday she will be able to go and visit the store again and actually buy something. Sugar comes to the realization to see the difference in income level. The money that one family of six could be used to be supported, was getting spent on a toy boat by another family. Both of their response are similar as they both target the wage gap between lower and middle to upper class. Rosie sees a light at the end of the tunnel where she’ll get to this level one day, and Sugar see the struggle it takes to even build up to that kind of level.
After reading “Salvation” by Langston Huges the boy in the story who is the main character suddenly becomes very appealing to me. His character is someone that seems like all he wanted to do was be saved so that his aunt would believe him. Some of the words that I would use to describe him is optimistic, confused, and worried. I say this because the longer he sat there he could tell that it was going nowhere. Although he wanted to try and be saved watching all of the kids get picked up and passed by him, he felt as if he had no other choice but to fake it and act like he was saved as well. By the end of the story, he is a bit different as now his faith is at stake. After lying his way through church, he questioned everything he’s ever know because “he” was supposed to come down and help but didn’t.
For the first reading of the semester, we got to read the story “The most handsome drowned man” and after giving it a read I could tell that there was more than meets the eye with this story. I think that you may have assigned this as the first story of the class because it gives you a sense of not to judge a book by its cover. The other men when they found his body realize he was the tallest and strongest man ever. All of the men even started to get a bit jealous and started cultivating their ideas about sending him where the divers go to die. Everything changed when. they realized that he was there’s once they removed the handkerchief. This could be the first story we read during this class to show me to not judge anything just yet even though it is an online course it might still be worth my while.
