Before week 11 readings, I didn’t know much about poetry. I knew that they rhymed and thought they always had a special code you had to crack throughout the poem. After reading activity two, I have seen that this is a common assumption made and there is more to poetry. “The second is assuming that the poem is a kind of code, that each detail corresponds to one, and only one, thing, and unless they can crack this code, they’ve missed the point”(Hirsch). This one really stood out to me because referring back to high school, this is what I was told by my English teachers and I had carried that way of thinking about poetry ever since. Another thing that changed the way I see poetry is from activity three, sonnets. These were usually written about love from suitors to woman that they liked. Other topics were about nature and man’s roles in the world. These are always written in 14 lines and only about one subject. This is something very new to me because I did not know poetry has more meaning to it than just rhyming and short lines. I definitely see poetry differently and as something very exciting now.
Araceli Cortez
I have chosen “Salvation” by Langston Hughes for my research essay. My thesis statement is “the author shows how the narrator’s mood changes throughout the story. Langston is seen as an excited, curious young boy at first, but it changes at the end which is very obvious “. As you can see, the literary work I focused on was the character’s mood. I believe a secondary source that would support my thesis is a biography of Langston to see how this real-life experience shaped him into a person in the future. After reading some readings, I have read that Langston was not religious growing up and this may be from the experience he had as a child and the church,
“She rose to his requirement, dropped The playthings of her life To take the honorable work Of woman and of wife” The first four lines relate to Mrs. Mallard’s emotional state in “The Story of an Hour” because she did not really love her husband. Mrs. Mallard probably had to be forced to be with this man because of how things were in the nineteenth century. She had to leave who she was before the marriage, her true self, to be with someone who had destroyed this. If aught she missed in her new day Of amplitude, or awe, Or first prospective, or the gold In using wore away, Mrs. Mallard was not able to be herself during her marriage. She questions how her days are going to be freeing since her husband is dead now. She thinks of her spring and summer days and how those days will be her own. She repeats to herself that she is free. This is her “if”. It lay unmentioned, as the sea Develops pearl and weed, But only to himself is known The fathoms they abide. From the end of the story, we can see that her husband never was in the train wreck. He walks through the door and Mrs. Mallard has died of “heart disease” once she sees him. Her emotions are locked forever because she is not able to say how she really felt about her relationship. She was not able to express that she was unhappy in her marriage and did not really love her husband. Now, her emotions had sunk in the sea and turned into pearls and weeds.
While reading Oedipus the King, I was able to find timeless human experiences. Jocasta, Oedipus’s mother, had killed herself when finding out who the murderer was. She felt distraught about it being Oedipus, who is her husband, that made her commit suicide. She even said that the prophets were lying because she did not want to believe it. These are human experiences because when finding out something very surprising as this, the first thing you want to do is shut it down and not believe it. In this case, it ended up being true which cause a dark ending to her life. The same had happened to Oedipus the King when he realizes that he had killed his father and married his own mother. He blinded himself because he did not want to see what he caused.
Antistrophe In the unnumbered death of its people the city dies; 205 those children that are born lie dead on the naked earth unpitied, spreading contagion of death; and gray-haired mothers and wives everywhere stand at the altar’s edge, suppliant, moaning; the hymn to the healing God15 rings out but with it the wailing voices are blended. From these our sufferings grant us, O golden Daughter of Zeus,16 210 glad-faced deliverance. The chorus is stating that their are many deaths in the city, including children. “Spreading contagion of death ” means a disease from a close contact of someone. This is probably what caused the numerous of deaths. There are old mothers who are begging at the alter. Their voices are heard by Apollo and they are seen as suffering people probably from all the deaths.
“Araby” by James Joyce is about a young boy who we do not know the age of, being infatuated by his friends’ sister. He is always on the lookout for her and watches her whenever he is able to. He watches her by the window and thinks of her very highly. I believe that he associates her with a bright light whenever seeing her. She eventually talks to him and the bazaar came up. She really wanted to go but could not because of a retreat she has to attend. He says that he will go and buy her something. Now, he feels like it is his mission to go to this beautiful bazzar and get her something. The night of, his uncle had forgotten to give him money because he was drunk but he ended up getting it and going. On his way there, he was disappointed about it being closed and dark. He was not welcomed by one of the sellers there that were still open. He was shattered because it was like the light for the girl had also gone to dark. He does not see her as highly now because of this place. I believe that this story is to show to not think highly of someone or something because something not so good may occur. It is like an expectation versus reality situation.
“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is about Miss Moore taking children on a trip to the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store. The children live in poverty. This was an expensive toy store and she wanted to see the outcome of the children’s view on it. Mercedes had a different approach and view on the store. When asked what she thought about it, she said she would want to return with her birthday money (Bambara). From the text, I can tell that she enjoyed it because when the other kids were not ready to go in, she squeezed in between them to go first. She had a few smart remarks like asking if the other child’s boat runs with water and that she has a stationary desk from her godmother. The readers can tell that she does not suffer from poverty like the other kids since she is able to return to the store and has things that the other children do not. On the other hand, Sylvia is the complete opposite. When seeing the clown toy that goes for $35, she thought of the things that her family can do with that much. “Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Grand-daddy Nelson in the country. Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill to” (Bambara). She was stunned that people can spend so much money on toys when there are people in poverty that would use that money for more helpful things. She feels like it is not right that people are able to do that when her family and the others are struggling.
“Salvation” by Langston Hughes shows how 12-year-old Langston changes from the beginning of the story to the end. In the beginning, he believed his aunt that when you are saved, many great things happen to you. The author included many exclamation points when describing what his aunt was saying. I feel like this enhanced how positive she was about Jesus saving you. You are able to see a light and you would feel Jesus with you after that (Sharpe). He believed this so much that when he was waiting to get called, he expected all these great things to happen. Langston saw everyone get saved and was the only one who hadn’t. He saw someone he was sitting next to get up, but Langston knew that the boy hadn’t gotten saved either. He eventually got up to pretend to be saved by Jesus. Langston lied and pretended because he felt ashamed and didn’t wanna get in more trouble. This made Langston feel guilt and brought him to tears that night. He stopped believing in Jesus because he didn’t come to help him. At the end of the story, you can see that he definitely doesn’t feel positive about getting saved, he feels sad and betrayed.
While reading this story, it really caught my attention. I feel like this was assigned as the first story because it shows us that the stories we will be reading from now on will be similar but different. Similar in the way that every story will be eye-catching and you’ll want to keep reading. For example, I was able to imagine a big blue sea and the village just being a little ahead. I wanted to watch Titanic after reading this because of the way it was described and this movie was the first to come to mind. It will be different by all the themes and settings that all the stories will be held at. I believe that the stories ahead will all have the similarity of being interesting and there will be a deeper explanation to it. Them seeing Esteban really changed the way they wanted to live and this shows how one person/thing can impact many people for the better.
