Samra Tariq

The reading “Salvation” by Langston Hughes  had the most meaning for me because it deeply connected with me due to its powerful description of of the conflict between faith and personal experiences, the part that connected me was when  when the young boys prayers go unanswered, it reminded me times when I prayed for alot of things and those prayers were never answered at that time and had a caused me to doubt on my belief in good and religion, However as time passed thats when reality hit me that every prayer that is not being answered at that moment is in the betterment for myself  and things do no go as planned, God has better plans for us. The reading “Oedipus the King was the my least favorite reading in this semester because in the start of the play it focused on  the background and setting, which felt slightly slow-paced and less attracting as compared to the later events, The play was difficult to understand which made it challenging to follow and connect with the characters on an emotional  and deeper level.

One vignette that surprised me was “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark.” This vignette is about Esperanza’s father, who works hard all day and comes home late at night. Despite his exhaustion, he still wakes up early in the morning to write poetry. This vignette is surprising to me because it challenges the stereotype of a hard-working father who is only concerned with providing for his family. Instead, we see a father who is also a creative person and has his own dreams and aspirations. One vignette that intrigued me is “The Family of Little Feet.” This vignette is about a group of girls who put on high heels and walk around the neighborhood, feeling powerful and free. This vignette is intriguing because it shows how something as simple as wearing high heels can give a group of girls a sense of empowerment and confidence. One vignette that puzzled me was “Chanclas” In this vignette, Esperanza describes the relationship between her father and her younger sister, who he calls “his horse.” The vignette tells us about the father’s love for his daughter and his insistence that she wear a pair of his old chanclas. The part that puzzled me was why the father was motivating and insisting that his daughter wears the sandals.

What specific observations in Bettleheim’s psychologically oriented reading of the story strike you as insightful and relevant to “Little Snow White,” “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, or the poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” by Anne Sexton? One of the observations that  Bettleheims have noted is that the mirror in “Little Snow White,” represents how the step mother is obsessed with her beauty and cannot tolerate anyone being more beautiful than her, and how the step mother asks the mirror every time who is more beautiful and upon  receiving the response that “snow white is more beautiful” she ends up killing the snow white after multiple tries. Bettleheims also analyzes that the huntsman can be considered as a father figure because he ended up letting snow white run away into the woods and killed a young boy took out his liver and lungs to prove to the queen that he has killed snow white. Bettleheims also noted that little snow white is a story about a psychological development of a girl that is growing up, and even though the seven dwarfs tell her not to be aware of her step mother and not open the door for anyone, Snow white still opens the door every time once for eating the apple, the other time for buying the comb and laces, even though she knows that she was attacked on each and every time.

Most readers make three false assumptions when addressing an unfamiliar poem,” writes Edward Hirsch in his article “How to Read a Poem” (Activity 1) Which of the three prior assumptions did you make with respect to one of the poems read this week? Be sure to refer to specific lines or phrasing in your discussion.   The First assumption that I made while reading the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” on the Poets.org website, while reading t the line “And live alone in the bee-loud glade,” the phrase “bee-loud glade” I though that the speaker wants to live a free and simple life which is close to nature, but after doing some research it the lines meant that the speaker is referring to the sound of bees buzzing and is trying to create a peaceful environment. The Second assumption i made was that in the line “There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow” I thought that the speaker is talking about the different colors of the sky at night or during different times at night, but then i realized that by the word “glimmer of midnight ”  and “noon a purple glow “the speaker was talking about different mood swings and the color purple meant to convey a sense of warmth and comfort The third assumption that i made was in the line “While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey” I thought that the speaker is physically standing on the road or on the sidewalk but it turned out be that the speaker is using a metaphor to explain its mental and emotional state, it could also mean that the speaker is trying to tell us about. his daily routine and hustle in his everyday life.

1. Restate this in quote in your own words. ““Reading a poem is part attitude and part technique.” This quotes can be restated in my own words as to understand a poem you do need to have a right mindset and basic skill to understand it. 2. With specific reference to one of the week’s sonnets, discuss your personal experience with these two components of reading poetry. Be sure to support your response with a short quote from the poem you are discussing. When we read “”Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day” by William Shakespeare, if you have a positive mindset and attitude you would be enjoying this line and thinking about love, In order to analyze this poem you do need to have a right mindset of understanding it and comparing it with beauty and love. Understanding a poem also involves on how you  approach the poem and some people do compare it with their past experiences, so if they had any bad experience or they lack in knowledge it would effect the understanding of the poem.

The greeting card Lyrics  “Why Do I Love You So Much?” in relation to the Browning sonnet “How Do I Love Thee? both do share a theme of exploring the depth, affection and the reasons behind loving someone . The lyrics in the greeting card have simple and straightforward words that expresses the feelings of the speaker for trust and relaying on the person they love.The While in the Browning sonnet “How Do I Love Thee? it uses more complex words to express love and also uses metaphors in it.The fourteen lines of the poem are rhyming and there is a repetition of the phrase “I love thee” which shows the intensity of the love of the speaker.

1. Identify the author and the literary work you are focusing on for your research essay. I am focusing on the literacy work “The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for my research essay. 2. Please share the actual word-for-word thesis statement of your research essay in your post. . The drowned man’s physical appearance throughout the story which leads the people from the village to question his life and create different stories about his character.The story they create convey deeper themes of life, death, beauty, and acceptance. 3. Explain what specific kind of secondary source information you feel will support your thesis. I think that the secondary sources that will help support my thesis is the Authors Biography because the author was also grew up in a small town in Columbia, and had always been famous for his imagination and story telling abilities which I do think might have reflected in this reading.Another source that i can possibly use is by looking for articles that would discuss the villagers reaction to the drowned mans beauty and how that would give me a better understanding of the meaning of the story. 4. Identify the BMCC databases you have explored to date and what the results have been I have used the Jstore data base and found a biography on Gabriel Garcia Marquez,I also used the Academic Search complete database and found a really good article on Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his point of view on telling stories and his dreams.

In the story “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant, one thing that surprised me was from the end of the story when Madame Loisel found out that the necklace that she actually lost was fake and was not even close to value that her and her husband had taken the loan for and had spent years paying off the debt by working hard.One thing that intrigued me was the character of Mathilde Loisel how she was very curious and fascinated with her dreams of being rich and living like the upper class that she borrowed a necklace for the party, lost it and then had to work hard all her life in order to pay it off.One thing that puzzled me in the reading was that why did she not tell her friend that she lost her necklace and why did she not have any conversation related to the necklace in years? because if she did tell her friend she could have found out the actual worth of the necklace and would not have to take on such a huge debt.

I feel that the stories interior is based on the grandmother who has transformed herself from being a person that is self centered and who manipulates other people to having sympathy and a warm corner for other people including the killer.It also tells us no matter how many bad deeds you do in life but as long as you repent to God with the intention to be a better person and not repeat those mistakes can actually bring you close to God. The interior of the story also tells us how a person thinks that everything they do is right no matter how big the crime, instead of realizing what actually is the right thing, which causes a conflict between our moral and ethical beliefs and our actions caused by those beliefs

Some of the timeless human experience and behaviors that I find in the reading of Oedipus the King, is the struggle for finding the truth about his identity and his past, but once Oedipus finds out the reality he just cannot believe it and is in a state of shock.Another  timeless human experience or behaviour that I found in the reading was his desire for keeping his power and protecting his people from the plague.Another timeless human experience or behaviour that I found in the reading was that Oedipus started taking taking responsibility for his actions and mistakes and realized that he would have to face all the problems that are associated with it. Another timeless human experience or behavior that i found in the reading was that Oedipus realized that he would have to marry his mother after killing his father, and there is no way to stop this from happening.

The passage that I have chosen from “Oedipus the King”   is “First I call on you, Athene, deathless daughter of Zeus, and Artemis, Earth Upholder, who sits in the midst of the market place in the throne which men call Fame, and Phoebus, the Far Shooter, three averters of Fate, come to us now, if ever before, when ruin rushed upon the state, you drove destruction’s flame away out of our land”.  (Lines 190- 194) This passage tells us about how the importance of religion and the believe in luck in the greek society.The greek people do believe that Gods do have a huge impacts on the  during the  lifetime of the people and they can interfear with it in either to benefit the human or to harm them.This passage also tells us about Hubris, which is a concept in which the humans that they are better than God and God does not have any effect on their lives, but they do turn to God during bad times or when they are facing troubles in life.

In “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, the two characters that i would compare are Sylvia and Miss Moore on visiting the FAO Schwarz toy store because Sylvia is from a poor family and a neighborhood that has low income, she is excited to visit the store but when she sees the high prices she becomes distressful on the prices of the toys and their value and on the fact that neither her or her friends can afford a single toy from the store. After visiting the store she realizes  the fact that how much discrimination exists in the society and she cannot do anything about it.Sylvia does show signs of frustration and stress and is not interested in listening to Miss Moores lesson about economic inequality. On the other hand Miss Moore is a college educated women, who want to empower kids so takes them on a trip to visit the toy store because she thinks that the children should be aware of the privileges that exist in the society and want. the children to realize  the economic issues and  inequality issues that they are facing. So while comparing Sylvia and Miss Moore we can see that Sylvia is frustrated with the fact that she cannot buy any thing from the store while  Miss Moore is trying to educated the children to think critically about the world around them.

I think the reason that the professor assigned “The Most Handsome Drowned Man” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as the first story  in the course to make us realize that there are two types of people, we should not judge a book by its cover, and it applies to judging people as well, the first type of people can be compared to the little boys that helped the drowned men and took him out of the sea and laid him on the floor, trying to help him in every way.while on the other side in the story the women started comparing the drowned men to the men of there village and started passing comment that if the drowned men were to live the same village as them the doors of the house would be really wide, the women started judging the drowned man without knowing the struggles or the difficulties that he went through.That is why I think the professor assigned this as. the first reading to make us aware that there are two different ways to look at a situation.