Samir Ahmed

My ideas of poetry have changed a lot as I got a better broader understanding to what is poetry and how people write poetry and what’s the true meaning behind it is from the video I watch about poetry I know poems should and have a lot of rhythmic and frequently metaphorical lines and each different types of poetry from what ever genres use some sort of rhyme rhythm repetition sound imagery and form. I learned poetry is a short form of art writing work of literature that doesn’t have any type of rule or writing but a way a type of person express there feelings or mood or what they want to say weather its a poetry or line that has lot of  repetition or words and rhythm. The main point from the video I learned and better understand about poetry is that each type of poetry has a mood or tone that attracts the reader and gets there attention in ways they can relate to or even be inspired by.

The literary work i am focusing for my research essay is “Araby” which is a short story written by James Joyce. This short story is about a young boy in Ireland obsessed with the girl living across the street. When the young girl mentions how badly she wants to attend a certain bazaar, he sees an opportunity to win her heart by attending the bazaar himself and bringing her back a gift.The story opens with the narrator’s description of his home and neighborhood, in which we first see Joyce’s use of the close first-person narrator to convey the full sensory range of sensory detail – sights, smells, colors, textures – that comprise the setting. The author is James Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. I have searched for options in the BMCC databases and I still haven’t been able to find one that matches my story that I choose.

In “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson, the narrator talks about her past memory during her childhood how she didn’t really have the best childhood  because she had to leave it all behind and give up her childhood in order to be the wife. She tells us that the idea of being a wife is like having to make a big sacrifice or just leaving behind things you couldn’t now do anymore more in all the possibilities you had in life after becoming the wife and having more responsibilities then to focus on yourself and your own life.  “If aught she missed in her day of amplitude, or awe, or first prospective, or the gold in using wore away”. These lines from the poem demonstrate the wife’s curiosity and questions of what could have been her potential or possibilities.  Also, it really tells us that how she  isn’t really  that happy in her marriage or getting married but it’s something that is not talked about during that time period of the story. “The Story of an Hour” relates to the theme of “The Wife” because of how both the women aren’t really that happy with their marriage and how that is a topic, during that point in history, that was not talked about. But the wife in “the story of an hour” is filled with new found hope of independence freedom from the women after hearing about her husband’s death. She repeats the word “free” and is now happy over the thought of living a full long life being free. Both the poem and story show how women felt about the role of being a wife and wondering  the possibilities and potential they had in their own life’s way behind of their lives  before becoming a wife and not having the […]

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.

In the reading of “Oedipus the King”, timeless human experiences or behaviors I found was since birth Oedipus didn’t know about his real parents and he ended up killing his father and marrying his mother (Jocasta) who he didn’t know about it till it was revealed after. This led to Oedipus accusing Creon of Laius’s death and planning his exile or death, to Jocasta killing herself after finding out the truth that she’s Oedipus mother and wife on her own, and lastly, Oedipus dying from all the misfortune he’s had and from my take of the Chorus saying “he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.” (1728). Oedipus’s real father Laius and Jocasta sent their kid to be killed after a prophet told them that their baby will kill him and marry his mother, even after trying to change destiny, it still happening, proceeding to show that you can’t always force a change on an incident because it’ll end up happening again. Changing the outcome also caused plenty of people to get hurt in the process.

The lines from the chorus that I’ve chosen to analyze from the reading “Oedipus the King” refers to the blind prophet Tiresias, who had refused to obey the king of Thebes, Oedipus, by helping him to find who killed his father. After he refuses to cooperate, Oedipus accuses the prophet as being one of the murderers of the king. Further, in a headed argument, Oedipus and Tiresias exchange feverous curses to one another.  On the lines 535-540, Tiresias says: “He shall be proved father and brother both to his own children in his own house; to her that gave him birth, a son and husband both; a fellow sower in his father’s bed with that same father that he murdered.” Hence, the prophet not only condemns the king as the murderer of his own father, as he also curses Oedipus to a life of shame and sin, by taking his father’s place in the family and  being now the father of his brothers, and also laying down in the same bed as his own mom, while performing to be her husband.  Further, the chorus performs on the lines 560-575: “He is sad and lonely, his feet that carry him far from the navel of earth; but its prophecies, ever living, flutter around his head. 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.” Here, the chorus uses from a hyperbole “flutter around his head” […]

The story “Araby” is a short story  which is written by James Joyce. The story is about a young religious boy who falls in love with his friend Mangan’s sister. His friend’s sister and him don’t talk much but He’s obsessed with her. He would feel and do anything to make her happy. When he does daily activities he begins to think like more about the girl he loves. The boy is scared to express his true feelings to her because he barely knows or talks to her. Mangan’s sister announces she couldn’t attend the trip to Araby due to her going to a retreat at her school. The boy took this opportunity to attend the Araby for the girl he wanted to impress her with a gift. When arriving at the Araby the boy felt disappointed with what he saw and wasn’t able to buy her anything. The author uses situational irony when showing how the narrator envisioned Arabys to be this amazing place to gift the girl with an item but in reality, it was the opposite of what he expected. In the end, the message of this story is about the coming of age and becoming an adult. The boy started seeing things for what they truly are instead of what he fantasized about. He realized his mistaken belief of love was false and began rethinking his love for Mangan’s sister when being left alone in the bazaar.  

Miss Moore takes the children to the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store in Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson.” This was a high-end toy store, and she was curious to see how the kids felt about it. Sylvia and Mercedes are the two characters I’m going to compare in this narrative, which takes place in Harlem, New York. Mercedes differs from the other characters in that she appears to be mature than the other children in the narrative. Mercedes appears to have the financial means to purchase such pricey items, and she even claims that her parents would buy her anything if she asked for it. Mercedes also seems to have more comprehension than the other kids due to her social status even though she still lives in a poor neighborhood. Meanwhile, Sylvia recognizes and is irritated that individuals can buy these toys for the sheer joy of them, but her parents can do several things for the same cash. Miss More had given them a crucial lesson about social status and where they were in society in comparison to people who could buy those expensive toys, but Sylvia refused to accept it. This reading also emphasizes that miss Moore is attempting to persuade the kids too take action that will have a positive impact on society. This would necessitate they’re standing out and speaking up, to be unique.

Langston Hughes’s “Salvation” begins with a twelve-year-old Langston delighted to be saved by Jesus. According to Langston’s aunt, when you were rescued, “you saw a light and something happened to you on the inside!” Langston believed his aunt and the stories he had heard from others about what happened to those who are saved. He waited peacefully in the church for Jesus to approach him. Langston waited a long time to see Jesus, and he stood there and watched as all the young people rose to their feet and were saved. He was the final person remaining who waited for Jesus to come and save him, but he eventually gave up hope. He recognized he would not be saved and was embarrassed, but he rose and lied. Langston was moved to tears by the revelation that he had lied to his aunt and misled the congregation about his salvation. Langston, twelve, went from being overjoyed to be saved by Jesus to questioning whether there was really a Jesus anymore.

After reading the story “The Most Handsome Drowned Man”  I believe the reason why you assigned this as the first story in our course is probably because  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.”