Gabriela Gonzalez

My most successful work in this class was the poem flyer. I loved that you gave us the change to choose between an essay or the flyer. I believe that is a great option for the students that are not that good at writing essays. It also lets me show my creativity because I love designing on my computer. Something that I could definitely work on is on my essays, specially in their structure, and the MLA format lol. Something that I learned with this class was to cite sources in my papers that I know I would be doing it as long as I continue to be a student 

One personal experience that is reflected on Hairs, one of the vignettes from The House on Mango Street, is the variation of personalities that exists inside of a family. I like that the author used something so varied as hairs that because of textures, colors, and length is so different from one person’s hair to another. I personally identified myself with how the author explained the texture of the mother´s hairs as a reflection of her sweet and kind personality. I liked that description because that is exactly how I would explain my mom’s personality as well. Someone warm, caring and sweet. I also enjoyed how every member of the family is described just by specifying their type of hair. The main character described her hair saying that ¨never obeys¨ which made me laugh because that is exactly how her personality is. 

After reading “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, I noticed that his style of writing is simple. To me, he writes in a way that is not complicated for the reader to get his ideas. When I was reading the story (Cathedral) I found it very easy for me to keep up with the flow of his writing. However, I don’t understand the ending lol. I had to read the ending a few times to try to understand it. In “Photograph of my Father” he also writes in a very simple way to be a poem. “In jeans and denim shirt, he leans against the front fender of a 1934 Ford”. In contrast we read poems from authors like Robert Browning who write “My Last Duchess’ ‘using a deeper style of writing. In my opinion, his poem is way harder to read because of the language that he used. For example “The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned” This quote from “My Last Duchess” is an example of how his style of writing is way different from Carver’s style.  

I believe that for my research paper I would try to focus my thesis about how fairy tales often describe the absence of parent’s figures. Fairy tales like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel reflect how parents are absent in situations that they were most needed for.  I will try to drive my research on the psychology view of this topic to try to make a deeper analysis of fairy tales. I was looking for a good article to support my arguments. However, I haven’t found the right one yet. I’m going to do a little bit more research on the BMCC database to find an article that can support my thesis. I believe that as I mentioned before I would include Snow White in my paper. I’ll probably pick another one but I’m still thinking of which one. I would come up with another fairy tale to back up my points. 

Before this week my attitude towards fairy tales was pretty simple. I used to think about fairytales as stories for children. However,  after we read “Snow White” which is a very famous fairy tale, my mind changed. I noticed that inside of what seems to be an innocent story for children, there are a lot of details that have a deeper meaning inside of them. For example, I realized that behind the stepmother’s behavior there are a lot of psychological details that I didn’t pay attention to in the past when I read this story for the first time. Another detail that I noticed from the Snow White story is the fact that the story itself is very focused on beauty, which to me, is not what we should teach to little girls. I would say that this has also religious reference inside with the “poison apple” that Snow White ate. To me, that is a direct reference to Eve from the Bible. I don’t know, maybe  not but that’s what I thought about the apple.

  If I hadn’t read the article before reading the story I think that  would have misunderstood what significance has0 the gesture of the grandmother had at the end of the story. When she expressed to the Misfit that he was one of her children, I believe that it was her way to after all, seeing someone without a superficial eye. Through the whole story the Grandmother made up her perceptions about others based on what they have with expressions like “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!” I think that if I hadn’t read the article I would have missed a lot of the grandmother’s behavioral components. At the beginning of the story I found her very selfish but at the end as she found herself facing death she finally did something that for the first time in the story she behaved like a caring grandmother.

  If I had to rate the way that I read/understand Oedipus the King, I would rate myself with a 6/10. The play is very interesting, that is something that I liked. Every character brings something different to the story. However, there were a lot of parts when I found myself confused. The vocabulary used in the story is complex, so a lot of times I had to go back and read through lines very carefully to understand. I loved to participate in the reading as well. I feel like I was playing the actual role in the play lol. Overall, it’s a very interesting reading but challenging as well. I also believe that the fact that it is a long story may have confused a few people in the class just as I was, because we had to read the story in parts. That confused me because by the time we were able to read the next part in the next class I already forgot what we had read in the past class. The character that I would choose would be Jocasta. Because she was so caring and wanted to understand Oedipus every time. I liked her role a lot, I think that she contributed a lot to the development of the story.

  In the past two weeks we have been reading different poems that I can say that I had never read before. I’m still trying to improve my ability to read poetry because this literature genre could be a little bit hard to understand and so I try to read it. When it comes to poetry I do like it but sometimes it is a little bit confusing because the words used in the poems that we have read are a little bit too odd. Sometimes I have to go back and read the whole line to try to understand a certain word. That happened to me a lot when we were reading “Oedipus the King” lol. If I had to rate myself when it comes to poetry/and reading it I would give myself a 6/10 just because I feel that I have to read more poems in order to get more comfortable with it. 

During the pandemic I was still living in the Dominican Republic. I remember that people’s behavior changed a lot during the lockdown. I remember watching the news and seeing people acting desperate at the grocery store trying to buy as much food as they could so they could stay at home and not be exposed to the virus. The [lay showed how the people of Thebes were suffering because of the plague that was attacking their city. They went to their king Oedipus to ask him for help because a lot of people were dying as a consequence of the plague, as it is expressed in the next quote. [and the house of Cadmus is emptied of its people while black Death grows rich in groaning and in lamentation.”  I choose this particular quote because during the pandemic people were desperate to get medical attention to their loved ones that were sick of COVID. In my country, people used to go to important institutions to ask them for help to save their family members. That is why I choose this quote to connect how the desperation of a population makes them decide to go to an important person (in this case, Oedipus the king) to try to save their family members.

The quote that I choose to focus my second essay on is “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it” (Lewis). I choose this quote because I do believe that literature is a beautiful way to express one’s reality. A way to deliver a message about what is happening, about something real. To me, it is also a powerful way to center your reader on the story that you’re telling by giving them descriptions of the scenario as well. The story that I felt was connected to this quote was “Story of An hour” by Kate Chopin. I choose that one because I feel that the details and the descriptions used inside of the plot is exactly what the quotes mean about how literature describes reality. I feel that the story and the quote are very well connected, that’s why I tried to do when I wrote the essay. It was a hard choice for me though, because they were a couple ones that I also liked.

This sentence is too general and is not saying anything concrete about the story itself. If you are not familiar with the story you can not get what this sentence means. This sentence is not giving specific details, or communicating in any way what happened in the plot of the story in a way that someone can make a connection from. It needs to be more specific, so the reader that is not familiar with this story can get the writer’s point of view. Another factor that makes this sentence ineffective is the choice of words, words that are too broad. When I read this sentence I went like “what does this even mean.” I couldn’t understand what this person was talking about, even though I read the story.  If I had to rewrite this sentence, I would correct it as: In “Araby” by James Joyce, the tone that the narrator uses is aimed to express a character that is going through a melancholy’s life.

  I think that for this easy I would focus my thesis on analyzing the variation of characters that we have in the story. I would start with Silvia which I think we can agree could be one of the main characters of the story. I would focus my opinion on the fact that she may be a good girl that is trying to not be seen as someone vulnerable. I think that her personality is a product of that behavior too. I think that I will also write about Miss. Moore because she is very important in the story too. I think that my title for this essay could be “A reality shock Story.” This could (not that is going to be my actual title) be my title for this essay. I think that can help me to explain some of what happened in this story. Maybe later I’ll come up with something better but for now, I think that could work as a title for this essay. 

I believe that you picked this as the first story, to make us expand our mind when it comes to stories of this kind. I also think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a perfect author to help us introduce ourselves into the magic world of writing and storytelling. I’m a latin student, of course I knew about Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His stories have left a big mark in our culture. It was my first time reading this one though! I truly loved how his wiring’s style is so magic, and even fascinating. I actually love the way he used words to catch the reader’s attention using his magic style to write. This story is the perfect example of how a hopeless palace can turn into an extraordinary one just because of one event. Esteban really changed the village’s environment. To me, the most ironic part of it is that Esteban wasn’t even alive, that makes me think that the people of the village only needed something unusual like the discovery of Esteban’s body to bring the village that hope and brightness that they needed.