Hi, My name is Jade Osorio but I prefer to be called Jay. My pronouns are they/them or she/her. I’m a second year student at BMCC and my major is History. In my free time I like to either read or play cozy games. I also enjoy writing short stories or poems. I’m excited to take this course and help refine my writing skills, especially research essays. I’m also looking forward to the different genres and stories we’ll be reading this semester. I grew up in California before moving to New York my junior year of high school. I currently live in Manhattan with my family.
Daily Archives: February 1, 2024
3 posts
“The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a story that is different, a small town being affected by a washed up corpse that changes the perspective of life for every person that looks at him. Assigning this story first is a decision precisely on the fact that it can broke into different interpretations. It has a larger meaning to it and it can be different meanings to others. In this story, We are introduced to men and women in this small town with a daily routine. This routine was then interrupted by a corpse, who they all began to obsess over. They began to build a story for his life and how he could’ve ended up here. This story is not only different, but very descriptive, which sets a perfect example of setting and imagery that we will be exploring throughout this semester. These quotes are from the overview of the story, “…stories about how one interprets unexpected events in one’s life…” and “…demand that the reader approach interpretation–and the process of reading these stories–with an awareness of the problems of interpretation.” These quotes bring out that the reader is who is breaking down this story and giving it meaning for themselves. In this course, We will be writing essays on stories and using our knowledge on the stories to write. This is why “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World” is preparing us to do the same for other stories.
I’m currently poring over some rudimentary annotation (mostly just underlining) that I did with a browser extension while we were reading “Overview of ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man'” in Wednesday’s class, and the sheer size of “POWER OF STORIES/IMAGINATIOI [sic]” scrawled in the margin of the final paragraph makes me laugh. It’s a potential that I strongly connect with as a former “professional escapist” through media. I just hesitated to use the term “escape artist” in a word-playing sort of fashion, but I was that too! Interpretation is an art form, 100% !! My screenshot of the notes I took is slightly cut off, but it looks as though when I wrote the above, it was beside a box I made around Raymond Williams’ quote re: ‘suspending disbelief when interfacing with literature because rationality is limited when it comes to the human experience’, which I obviously agree with. It’s about immersion, about self-inserting and empathizing even when it doesn’t make sense to Make It Make Sense — enjoying reading and writing about reading, that is! “Expect the magical, take advantage of the miraculous when it arrives at your doorstep”… “The Handsomest Drowned Man” and indulging the fullest extents of creative, if esoteric thought both embody that in spades. That’s why I think this short story was chosen for the course’s first — it’s a good Introduction to Literature- my god I can’t make that the last sentence without acknowledging how corny it is-! A partly-related to this current subject, personal experience that’s not part of the word count under read more, and hopefully it works! EDIT: it does not seem to work! mayhaps because “read mores” are opened by default when looking at “full posts”. I’ll make a Pastebin link next time, probably.
