In reading all these poems, my view on poetry has not changed that drastically. I still think poems are drastically overdramatic and annoying, but I have learned that not all poems are as bad. There are basic poems with little lines that can evoke many feelings, while others do not. I have learned that poems drastically differ from one another depending what type of poem you are writing. There are ones that rhyme and ones that do not. Most are written to evoke a feeling that most people will understand and connect with in some way. That is the whole point of poetry to evoke some kind of feeling in someone and understand it in their own point of view. Also, I have learned that repeated lines are meant to draw attention, I always tended to ignore the repeated lines and get annoyed at them and stop reading the poem like in Sonnet 43 how the author repeats “how they love thee” in different ways.
angela gertsovich
I am writing about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World.” This story is about how everyone is so entranced by a man’s beauty that they change for the better because they imagine a world where this handsome man lived and thrived. The article that I will be using for research is one that supports the same views as in my essay which is “Beyond Magical Realism: Teaching Creative Thinking Using Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ Donna A. Gessell.” In this article, she talks about how this story is “more than an opportunity of teaching elements of magical realism; it offers lessons in the creative thinking process itself.” There weren’t many article about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Most Handsomest Drowned Man In The World”, but knowing that her article still stands out a lot more than the rest which is why I chose this article from the BMCC library. https://web-p-ebscohost-com.bmcc.ezproxy.cuny.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=aa5a5142-6230-4dec-a30d-b26ca1fafef7%40redis
Back then, women were oppressed and had to abide by the males in their lives’ wishes. In “The Wife” the woman is stripped of her identity when she is married off and abides by her husband’s wishes. In “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard’s husband dies and she becomes distraught with grief at first and end up mourning the loss of her husband. After she is over the initial shock and mourn, she locks herself in her room and ends up realizing that she is free of him and doesn’t have to abide by his every whim. Both characters are in similar situations in feeling trapped in their marriages and end up realizing how dim their personalities are in said marriages. In, “The Wife” she ends up mentioning giving up “the playthings of her life” in this sense she means everything that makes her, her including most of her personality and in “The Story of an Hour” she mentions on how dim her personality gets with being married off and spending the rest of her life trying to please a man that doesn’t love her and ends up realizing she has “a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” They are both inherently sad deep down and know that marriage traps them.
This story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” in its interior is about suspense and karma. The suspense is all in how he keeps the old woman on her toes wondering if she will live or die. He is toying with her the whole time as if attempting to show a false sense of a moral dilemma about whether he would kill her or not, knowing full well the whole time she was dead from the start as soon as she crossed his path. The karma is in how the old lady’s manipulative words finally didn’t get her what she wanted and actually ended with her family dying because of her letting it slip that she recognized him as the misfit. It was also a lesson to show the old lady not to be so judgemental and in the end that judgement bites her in the butt and at the last moment she finally sees that judging people like she has was wrong and sees him as someone as her own child just gone down the wrong path.
Oedipus the King has a lot of timeless human experiences. One of most, being the tragedy between family because of secrets. Another timeless experience would be the copulation of mother and son which to this day their names are remembered, Jocasta and Oedipus, as the Jocasta and Oedipus complexes. The Jocasta experience being the incestuous sexual desire of a mother towards her son and Oedipus complex being the opposite of where son has an unconscious sexual desire for the mother. Another timeless experience would be, the blatant fear and paranoia of people and what they are willing to do in order to not feel that anymore, as in Laius trying to kill Oedipus. As fate would have it, Oedipus ended up fulfilling the destiny that was prophesized in the end. Oedipus would have probably ended up fulfilling his fate either way even if Laius didn’t do what he did or didn’t hear the prophecy because of fate which in itself is a timeless human experience. Fate ends up happening even if you try to control the outcome as is with Oedipus and killing his father and all that led up to it including Jocasta’s death and Oedipus blinding himself left to wander.
The passage I have selected that the Chorus mentions is 564-577 “The augur has spread confusion, terrible confusion; I do not approve what was said nor can I deny it. I do not know what to say; I am in a flutter of foreboding; I never heard in the present nor past of a quarrel between the sons of Labdacus and Polybus, that I might bring as proof in attacking the popular fame of Oedipus, seeking to take vengeance for undiscovered death in the line of Labdacus.” They call the fortune teller augur in this case Teiresias and are fairly confused to how someone who saved them (Oedipus) could be framed as the one who will eventually cause them more suffering. They truly cannot fathom how Oedipus has anything to do with future suffering when so far he has been a good ruler who had saved the city from the Sphinx with her famous riddles. They are shocked to how Oedipus’ character can be attacked by this fortune teller or augur. They are fearful of something bad happening and cannot ignore that feeling. They feel shocked that Oedipus would be accused of killing the king and are fairly paranoid now with the knowledge the augur brings.
“Araby” is really about a coming of age boy who realized the distinction about the fantasies he builds up in his own head and the distinction of reality of said thing he is imagining, in this case the bazaar Mangan’s sister describes to him. He has built up such a version of Mangan’s sister and purely believes anything she recommends is good come to find out expectations versus reality are not the same. His expectations of the description of the bazaar his crush gave him were not the same of what he experienced at the bazaar, Granted, he did come at night when everything was closing up, but he still becomes disappointed with the revelation of what’s left at the bazaar and how the girl at the stand treats him when he is just trying to find something for his crush. He ends up leaving empty handed and having the bazaar basically close and not getting a good look at anything really because it’s so late.
In “The Lesson” the children are all being taught by MS. Moore. Ms. Moore especially likes to make sure Sylvia is taught because she can tell that she is the leader of her little group and can influence the others. Sugar ends up being the one to answer Ms. Moore’s question about the F.A.O Schwarz store. Sylvia ends up trying to shut her up twice to make sure she don’t answer Ms. Moore because Sylvia cannot bare to give Ms. Moore the satisfaction of winning. Sylvia is too stubborn to admit what they all already know which is the economic inequity they all face. Sugar and Sylvia differ in the way that Sugar doesn’t see Ms. Moore as someone that she should defy while Sylvia will take any chance to defy her because Sylvia is prideful and won’t let no one “win” against her. Sugar on the other hand doesn’t mind and tries to at least think for herself. The girls are the same in the way that they both might think the same on some level and actually are smart enough to learn the lessons being taught by Ms. Moore.
In the beginning, the character starts out with a sense of belief in faith and is truthful. He is totally hopeful that he will see what he believes everyone else will see. Throughout, when the other boy goes up even though he did not see anything and has no consequences, the protagonist still tries to hold out hope until he realizes that he is just holding everyone up by not going up. When he finally gives in and goes up even though he sees nothing, he basically just gives up this sense of hope he has in his faith. He later ends up crying out of guilt and shame. He ends up questioning his faith because of what is said was supposed to be seen and him not seeing anything and not enduring any punishment for lying even though his faith says otherwise. He basically ends up having a crisis of faith because of said thing not happening and is too embarrassed and ashamed to tell anyone.
The story “The Most Handsome Drowned Man” was assigned to set the tone for the rest of the stories that we will be reading in class which will most likely have some type of mystic feel to them. I thought it was interesting how the most interesting to happen in that village was a dead drowned man showing up out of the blue which means that town is one of those peaceful towns where nothing really happens. The mystic aura of some dead man showing up and yet cannot be identified adds to the mystery which is what I think the women were mostly attracted to. The women were mostly the ones imagining things up about him and were mostly why the town was influenced to be and do better, well that and the obvious fear of dying and being unidentified and forgotten. People mostly never talk ill of the dead and especially not when they are “handsome.”
