Siu Kwan Eddie Tsui

In William Butler Yeat’s poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” I completed the poem by imagining what Yeat describes in the poem. “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine Bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade.” (Yeat, lines 1-4) He goes off to the Lake Isle of Innisfree to live a simple life, growing vegetables, and farming honey in a small cabin. “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.” (Yeat) He seeks a peaceful life away from his troubles and beautifully describes how it is to live in Innisfree. This poem brings memories of long trips into nature, going on day hikes, and climbing mountains. I have often taken trips out of the city to find peace outdoors, and I can understand the desire to get away from it all, as city life can be overwhelming. While it is not the same as living in a cabin in Innisfree, the reasons why people want a peaceful retreat are universal. I have completed the poem by starting with what imagery it presents and bringing it into my point of view.

After this week’s readings and activities, I now know more about the technical aspects of writing poetry and how to identify what constitutes poetry versus prose. Poetry has rhyme, rhythm, repetition, sound, imagery, or form. (Tom Chester 0:31-0:35) I know the difference between an Italian and a Shakespearean sonnet. An Italian sonnet is 14 lines in length, has an octave consisting of 8 rhyming lines, and a sestet composed of 6 rhyming lines. The octave also poses a problem, and the sestet is the answer to that problem. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains comprised of four rhyming lines each and a two-line rhyming couplet. Shakespearean sonnets are also mainly written about human nature and love. I also learned that analyzing poetry is a journey, not something with a definite end. In well-written poetry, it is possible to learn something new with each new reading of the poem. Citations: Tom Chester. “Poetry Lesson” Youtube, uploaded by thisheather, Dec. 5, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLKengChb-E

I will be working on the author Toni Cade Bambara and her short story “The Lesson.” The story’s central theme is economic injustice, supported by the characters and their trip to FAO Schwartz. I will be looking for a critical essay or a biography that analyzes the story’s central theme and the characters in the story. I have searched through the JSTOR database and found four articles on the lesson, and while they were thoughtful critiques of “The Lesson,” I didn’t think they would help further my thesis. I also searched through the Gale in Context / Biography database and found several biographies, but unfortunately, the information wasn’t detailed enough to help analyze the short story I chose. I also searched through the Literature Resource Center, and I found several articles on “The Lesson,” but I didn’t think these would fit well either. Finally, I looked through the Short Story Criticism database, and I found one article that seemed pretty promising. I will be using an essay by Melanie A. Marotta called “Teaching Toni Cade Bambara Teaching: Learning with the Children in Toni Cade Bambara’s ‘The Lesson’.” for my research article.

The theme of “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson relates to Miss Mallard’s emotional state in “The Story of the Hour” by Kate Chopin, in that it outlines what society expects of women in her time. Miss Mallard plays the role of the dutiful wife as she hears news of her husband’s death and mourns his passing. This theme is shown in the line “To take the honorable work / Of woman and of wife.” (Dickinson) After her initial grief, she then reflects upon her newly found freedom, and her emotional state goes from sorrow to joy at having been freed from her duties as a wife. “If aught she missed in her new day” and “It lay unmentioned, as the sea” (Dickinson) shows that a woman may have hidden feelings of longing for the things that she has to give up to serve her husband, and it would not be surprising if this lead to feelings of resentment. Being liberated from such a burden would naturally lead to feelings of joy.

In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’ Connor, the interior story is the conflict between the grandmother and The Misfit. The grandmother is narrow-minded, superficial, manipulative, and thinks of nobody else’s desires besides her own. Therefore, she spends most of the story manipulating the family to concede to her desires. Things such as going to Tenessee instead of Florida for the family vacation and visiting an old house she remembered growing up are examples of this behavior. The Misfit is a character mentioned throughout the text as an evil criminal that, on the surface, should be a classic good vs. evil story. Instead, what happens is he brings a momentary instance of redemption for the grandmother as she nears the final moments of her life. She attempts to comfort The Misfit with a touch on the shoulder during a moment of vulnerability and says, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (O’Connor par. 135). The Misfit immediately shoots her when he is touched, and afterward, he says, “She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” (par. 139) Therefore, the tragedy in the interior is that it took a very violent and tragic event to force her into showing some compassion for someone other than herself.

In “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles, many things make this story timeless and always relatable to the human condition. One such behavior is the inability to admit when one is wrong. It is common, and most of us would like to think we are immune to such a thing. Still, when confronted with a situation like that, most of us turn defensive and dig in our heels instead of examining the case presented to us and seeing if we are genuinely wrong about something. In the story, Teiresias tells Oedipus that he is the murderer of the king. Oedipus can’t believe his misfortune and gets mad at being told that he is the person who is the one behind the former king Laius’s death. So instead of determining if what the prophet says is true, he gets outraged and sends him away. This situation is an excellent example of literature. We can see in the characters’ behaviors that are relatable to us to this day, even with such a vast gulf of time between us.

“There is no clash of brazen shields, but our fight is with the War God” (Sophocles, line 211) is a metaphor to describe the people’s struggle with the blight that was due to a curse born from the past sin of a man. “a War God ringed with the cries of men, a savage God who burns us”(212) describes the pain and suffering of those who are stricken with the plague. “grant that he turn in racing course backwards out of our country’s bounds to the great palace of Amphitrite or where the waves of the Thracian sea deny the stranger safe anchorage.”(213-214) is a metaphor using beautiful imagery to describe what the people desire. They wish for a sound victory in which they drive the plague from their lands. The clever use of metaphor and imagery makes for a beautiful passage. It entertainingly describes the conflict for us and sparks our imaginations.

“Araby” by James Joyce is about growing up and loving. The scene is 20th century Dublin, Ireland, about a boy who lives in North Richmond Street and lives with his uncle and aunt. The author contrasts dark and light as a metaphor to show how the boy’s surroundings were full of bleakness, and this one girl he likes is the only light in his life. He thinks about her obsessively and believes himself to be in love with her. She asks if he is going to Araby, which is a bazaar. Since she can’t go due to prior commitments, he offers to buy her something from Araby if he goes to the bazaar. He also became obsessed with going to Araby to purchase a gift to win her favor. He fantasized about just how splendid a place this bazaar was and couldn’t wait to go there. Later in the story, when the day finally arrives, he asks his uncle for money to go to Araby. Still, unfortunately, his uncle was preoccupied with drinking and came home really late, so he arrived at Araby late. Unfortunately, most of it was already closed by the time he arrived, and the people at the stall that he visited were less than friendly. He also did not see anything he wanted or could afford to buy at the booth, and his disillusionment was complete. This moment is when the character grows up as he learns a painful lesson about being blinded by love and no longer believing something to be more wonderful than it is.

Silvia and Mercedes are strong contrasts in Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson.” They are children in the temporary care of Miss Moore, a college-educated black woman with proper speech who desires to impart a lesson on the injustices of the economic system by taking them and four other children to FAO Schwartz, which is an expensive toy store. Silvia hates Miss Moore since she forces her into these lessons instead of enjoying her summer vacation. In contrast, Mercedes doesn’t seem to be very bothered by these lessons and seems to enjoy the outing. When they arrive at the toy store, they see all sorts of expensive toys in the window, from a 35 dollar clown to a 1,195 dollar sailboat. Silvia’s reaction to what she sees ranges from disbelief to disgust at the prices. It is all very alien to her upbringing since she is used to being poor, and she wondered what kind of people could afford to spend that much on toys. Even the least expensive item would be far beyond what is expected and could buy many things like bunk beds and a visit to family in the country along with the money for rent and some change for piano fees. She also feels jealousy and anger when she sees her friend Sugar run her fingers along with the very expensive sailboat, although she doesn’t know who to direct these feelings. When Miss Moore asks everyone what they learned from the visit, Silvia is defiant and doesn’t say anything. She also tries to silence her friend Sugar when she says that it costs less to feed everyone in their group for a year than what it costs for the sailboat. In the end, despite her resistance to Miss Moore’s teachings, her emotions are disquieted by […]

The short story Salvation is written by Langston Hughes, and the answer to the question what the difference between the narrator at the beginning of the story and the end of the story is is that he loses his faith and gains a bit of wisdom on the way. At first, he truly believed in Jesus, and he was told about all the wonderful things that would happen if he just accepted Jesus into his heart. He was told by his aunt that salvation would mean he would see and hear Jesus in his soul. This was repeated by many people who were older than him and that reinforced his belief as these many people couldn’t possibly be lying to him. Unfortunately for him, later in the story, after a lengthy attempt by the preacher and the church to bring him to Jesus, Jesus never came. Most of the children had already stood up and were saved except for him and Westley. Westley decided that enough was enough and stood up and was saved even though Langston knew that Westley didn’t see Jesus. This left him alone at the end and under great pressure, he decided to stand up even though he never saw Jesus just to get it over with. This is the point where he changes from being a believer to losing his faith. He is also wiser as he learns that adults lie and that something that is often repeated does not make it any more true.

After reading “The Most Handsome Drowned Man” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’ve concluded that there are many similarities in how the villagers encounter the most handsome drowned man and how we students are encountering this story. The reading shows us the state of the villager’s pre and post-meeting of the drowned man and how they interpret and react to the new experience. By having this as the first story of the course, it forces us into a similar situation in which we reflect on the nature of the story and what our reactions are to it. In the story, the author makes a point of having both the villagers and the body have no identity. We are not given the name of the village nor is the body someone the villagers know. Through interacting with it, the villagers name it Estaban. Pre-Estaban we find the villagers as just some nameless village, lacking any distinctness to call their own. Afterward, the villagers decide to change their village to be as welcoming to Estaban as possible, enlarging doors, heightening roofs, and strengthening floors. Their whole village becomes devoted to Estaban and it gains the identity of Estaban’s village. We, students, are in a similar situation where before we start this assignment we are just names on a roster. After the story, we create an identity based on what we post on the discussion board and we decide how to react to this story and how this helps us grow as students. In conclusion, I think the reason why this was chosen as the first story for this class is because of the similarities of the story and our situation as students and what conclusions we draw from it.