Vincent Maldonado

My most successful work during this semester was when we were doing the poetry portion of this class. I was honestly very surprised with how well I did on the essay since I got a 95 on it, which was the first time in my life I ever got a good grade in something to do with poetry. Something I could’ve done much better on was putting more time and focus into the discussion boards, since many times even though I may have given an answer, I wouldn’t go into depth and use a lot of details for my answer. A skill I learned taking this class was specifically in poetry, when it was reading beyond just the words. Poetry isn’t a straightforward type of reading, as not everything is meant to be taken literal, and the message may not always be understood by the reader unless they almost put themselves in the poem themselves and really compare their life to the poetry they are reading. In real life, many times like poetry not everything is just black and white, and sometimes you have to put yourself completely in someone else’s to understand the decisions they may choose to make regardless of how illogical that is, and that is a skill I learned in this class during the poetry portion.

One personal experience of mine that echoed while reading “In the house of mango”  was definitely the struggles and living environment that Esperanza has. This is because now that I am an adult, I don’t live nearly as poor as when I was a kid. However growing up, I was very poor due to many personal problems after my parents had split, to the point that up until I was 11 years old I had to sleep on a couch in a living room and put all my school books and personal belongings underneath the couch since there was 7 people living in a one bedroom apartment, in a very small apartment. This made many simple things difficult, whether it be trying to sleep, waiting to use the bathroom, having no sort of privacy whatsoever, and always comparing my living situation to my more fortunate friends, especially when they had nicer things whether it be shoes, clothes, you name it, and living in a better safer neighborhood than I did.    

The difference between the short story “Where are you going, where have you been?” (Joyce Carol Oates)” and most typical horror movies is the way that the horror is built up. When you watch a movie, everything is in front of you. The scenes where the villain is terrorizing people, the gore, the backstories, everything can either be seen or heard. However when you read it, as in this short story, it is up to the readers imagination and interpretation of what is going on in order to really fully capture just how terrifying the situation the protagonist (or other side characters) are really experiencing, based on what is written. If you were to compare a simple horror movie like “a nightmare on elm street”, compared to the short story, the difference is that when you’re reading, there is so much more description, so much more important dialogue that really make up the whole situation, while something like a freddy krueger movie really just has the antagonist going around killing people in their dreams.

When it comes to the research paper, one thing I am really interested in is writing about the deeper message of each of the fairytales, along with the origins of it. By this I mean comparing the fairytale that as kids we all grew to watch/read, know, and love, to the grim brothers truly original dark fairytales that were more of a horror fantasy than anything else.

After reading fairytales this week, my view on fairytales have completely changed. I always thought that fairytales were all nice, sweet, and with happy endings, like the ones you grow up with either reading or watching things on TV like Disney. After the reading, I began to look more and more for the origins of fairytales and found that many of them originally were more creepy horror stories that were told. A good amount of fairytales (and majority of cartoons that are for kids) originate from the Grimm stories. When I was a child and had seen/read snow white, I though of it very innocently. However reading it as an adult made me realize just how dark the “fairytale” really is, and how the message behind it can connect even into real life.

There are many things that the article created based on the story “A good man is hard to find” Highlights. One of the main things that the article helps bring light to is the Christian aspect of the story that is both very important and can also to extent be easily forgotten without reading the article. In the story, one of the most important characters is the grandmother. Although the grandmother likes to portray herself as this good, upstanding Christian lady, her morals show different. It isn’t until the complete end of the story that she has an “epiphany”  losing that superiority complex of hers, and realizing that she is flawed just like everybody else, even calling the misfit one of her children, to the point where even though the misfit is still gonna kill her, and does, he recognizes it as a truthful and honest/compassionate act from the grandmother.

My ability to examine and understand the play “Oedipus the king” is a 8/10. Some of the symbolism and just wording in general I can say were a little challenging for me because I couldn’t understand everything all to well, however from beginning to end I really enjoyed this story. One of the main ideas that were in Oedipus the king was this idea of free will. I liked how much of a leader and how strong willed at the beginning to the story, always one step ahead ready to go, especially during the plague. Oedipus the king ultimately ends with him fulfilling a prophecy to where he ends up killing his father and marrying his mother, a disturbing twist of fulfilling a prophecy to where even as a king he was nothing more than a pawn in a destiny that was forced upon him with no escape (I’ve always enjoyed reading literature that question things like free will), which also gives readers questions as to whether or not one can escape their destiny regardless of what choices they make. If I had to choose to be a character, it would probably be Creon, due to the fact that in the end, the sideline character gets all the benefits the main character should’ve had, without nearly as much loss.

When Covid-19 started, it was like the whole world had changed. Everyone was scared to go outside, go to public places, etc. I remember sitting on a bus or going on the train how everyone was so scared to even be near each other. And things like social media only made it 100 times worse. With the amount of stuff popping out on the news all over the world about covid-19, the vaccines, politics, etc. all caused problems for everyone. To this day there are still people that are so paranoid that they separate in public area much like before and refuse to stand close to each other. Its become so normal that even when it comes to sitting in areas its almost second nature to have space between each other, something that wasn’t so big to do before Covid. In “Oedipus the king” this is very similar to real life due to how everyone was so scared of the plague they experinces and no one knew what to do.

After the past 2 weeks, I can definitely without a doubt say that my ability to read poetry has greatly improved. I know I still have a very long way to go due to the fact that I haven’t read poetry in so long and it hasn’t been much to read, but it’s still very refreshing to read poetry again. I rarely if ever will read poetry on my own time so doing it for class re  introduces it. I still have to get better at identifying everything from a poem and getting the complete message from the poem, I realize that a poem can even be somewhat enjoyable to read. A very important habit I need to break when reading a poem is reading it very quickly because I have a tendency to quickly skim through everything that I read, but with poetry every stanza is important because missing one thing can completely throw just about anyone off.

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it”(C.S Lewis).  This is the quote I have chosen to use for my essay, which will be written based on the short story Araby, written by James Joyce’s. This quote connects all too well with the quote because throughout the story, we are shown the thoughts and feelings the narrator has for his friends sister through more than just words. The author heavily uses symbolism and imagery throughout the story, making her seem as without flaws in the narrators eyes, almost as if the girl is like the only star in a dark blank sky. Throughout Araby, we are shown just how important this girl really is too the narrator also due to the fact that the narrator wants more then anything for something to be different in his boring, depressing, bland life. The author also uses this by then showing how the narrators feeling for the girl we just fake, when he really just liked her because she appeared different and peaked his interest, nothing to do with him actually liking her because of the type of person she was,

The sentence that the student gave was ineffective. This is because all the student did was just state what the author did, with no explanation whatsoever. as to what the author was trying to do. If someone including myself, were to read it, they would have no idea as to what the student was trying to express. If I were to Rewrite this students sentence, I would include how the nameless narrator has a crush on his friends sister, and the way he momentarily see’s life differently when simply either thinking of her or being around her. He completely begins to become lonelier and lonelier, distancing himself from even his friends all due to the fact of how much he imagines of the girl he is “in love with”. The sentence could also have the development of the character from the beginning of the story to the end, something as simple as mentioning how he believed he was in love with his friends sister, not realizing that he was just intrigued due to him wanting something more and different.

If I were to write an essay that would be less focused on the social-economical problems in the story “The Lesson” and more about the actual story itself, I would focus more on the symbolism that is shown in the story, more notably the toy store. The main reason that I would focus on the toy store is due to the fact that it was a perfect representation of the separation between those that are more fortunate to have, and those who don’t. It wasn’t all about just the money that someone had and how it represented the difference between rich and poor, but more so the different level of opportunities that someone with more money has over someone with less. The toy store also helps the main character realize how much more experiences wealthy people with money have over those that are poor. This eventually helps her grow as a character as she realizes this.

I believe that the reason that professor Conway chose “the most handsomest drowned man in the world” was because the main themes of this story had to do with compassion and imagination. This is because throughout the story we see the way all the characters wonder so much about this man. They are curious about a complete stranger who they have no genuine idea where in the hell he came from. And they all make up and imagine what this mans life and experiences must have been like. They imagine what it would have been like being so tall, so large, and so much different compared to all of the villagers/neighboring villagers that they are so used to seeing. And even though they do not know who he is, they care for his corpse and try their best to give his corpse as close to a proper burial as possible.