I, being born a woman and distressed

it sounds as though the narrator is struggling with her pride and her mind. her pride wants to not let her get abused by people, perhaps a lover, but her mind is trying to let love others. it would seem she has been abused by loving to freely, thus she "finds this frenzy insufficient reason for conversation"; the conflict of being abused for loving too freely to someone who she believes to be dependable is too much, thus she will not make herself vulnerable any longer. perhaps she means that she will no longer love that person without putting up boundaries? very confusing, i'm interested in hearing what has to be said in class today.

The Raven

Some INTENSE alliteration going on here, and some good rhymes to. for someone who likes hip-hop music i enjoyed reading this immensely, i feel like you could put it over a sick beat and get dr. dre to rip it on the mic.

either way, i'm pretty sure it's the man's consiounsce driving him crazy, this bird who nags at him, for his murder of Lenore. He wants to forget about her but the raven won't let him. he stand and waits and tortures him evermore with his 'nevermore' business. pretty funny read honestly, although it might just be how cliche it is today. either way it's good stuff, if you havent read it cuz u think it's too long, well ya it's a long poem and prolly coulda been a shorter one, but i'd still suggest reading it.

The Sick Rose

Reading this incredibly short poem at first is a bit daunting to figure out. It's only 8 lines and everything seems to have a symbolic meaning. I really enjoy how they give you a couple paragraphs at the end of many poems to explore the meaning behind the poem, because it's a lot easier to start a base understanding of the poem if you don't know which way to start (although I do feel like it ruins a bit of the search to find out for yourself). Either way, the paragraphs below the story give a bunch of good examples of how the sick rose, and everything in this poem, is not your average symbolic icon; the sick rose is part of a world seperate of ours because EVERYTHING in the poem has seperate meanings. no longer can someone say "well obviously the invisible worm is referencing blah blah blah in the poem" because everything in the poem is already a reference to something externally from it. Thus, as the info at the bottom of the poem tells, you need to know more about William Blake to understand this poem (the way he writes, the topics he writes about, any other poems that are part of the same universe as this one, etc).

having said that, I do feel as though the sick rose is something that has become sick because of this invisible worm. it would seem as though this worm has gone behind the rose's back and the darkness he represents has somehow made a sickening impact on the rose. then again, because the rose's sickness is mentioned in the beggining, the rose could already be sick, merely the invisble worm has exploited its sickness to utterly destroy it. It'll be intersting to hear other interpretations and other background info about Blake to get the full story.

To His Coy Mistress

It would almost seem as if he's presenting an argument to his love why they can't be idle in their love, including the physical aspects. If they had all the time in the world he would love her still as passionately as he does now, even if she were to be hesitant until the very end. his ability to love her is passive because she is so hesitant, even if she is not trying to be. he says this love grows with time and he would continue to admire her from far. Since humans don't live forever, she could find herself hesitating until her very death, thus his love for her would never be found although his love would continue to sing within his soul even after death.

Death, be not proud

basically John Donne is mocking death for being a supposedly might and horrible thing. He believes death resembles sleep, and that sleep is joyous. This also says that he believes life is tedious and and that the livelihood of day is worse than the unconciousness of night. perhaps this poem was written during the industrial revolution when workers had 12 hour shifts and lived under horrible living conditions. furthermore he shows the accomplices and cronies of death - poison, war, and sickness - showing that death is not accompanied by anything it should be proud of. furthermore, with medicinal products humans can sleep better than they could if they were dead, and much less painfully so than a deadly stroke, so why should death be proud of its effects?

the last two lines are obviously a further mocking of death, but i can't seem to understand what he is implying fully. i'll have to ask this in class tommorow.

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

- This stanza is in the past tense, obviously the father's son reminiscing of his alcoholic father and probably what he said while he was drunk (aka his breath making him dizzy). The son perhaps wants to belief in his father and what he stands for but it's hard for him to stay on this path.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

- Again in past tense, the boy might be reminiscing of his first sexual experiences. after reading the questions and analysis that was posed at the end of this story in the book I realized two odd word choices that Roethke made: "We romped UNTIL the pans slid from the kitchen shelf" and My mother's countenance could not UNFROWN ITSELF". It is as if he wants to change his sexual deficiency when he was younger, but the memories will not change for him, he still bothers his mother in his memories.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

- The son again reminiscing of his father. It is possible to believe the father has beat his son with his hand and his belt buckle. Roethke shows the pain that the son remembers by expressing where the buckle was scraping him: the tender body part of his right ear. he also doesnt blame the buckle hitting him, merely that his father missed and that his knuckle was battered. it can be assumed that the son, while reminiscing of his father's beatings of him, has completely forgiven the acts of his father or believes that it was merely the nature of things in his past.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
still clinging to your shirt.

- Another reminscence of the son's father. His father possibly just came back from a long day's work. He most likely works at a job that requires a lot of physical labor, based on the dirt on his hands. He beats his son again, trying to teach him the lesson of time and how to use it. With the ammount of work he does, he is possibly teaching his son to make something for himself instead of ending up where he is today. the last two lines shows that the father gives the son rest, perhaps even forces rest upon him because of the term "waltezed", which seems to imply a leadership. "still clinging to your shirt" might imply that both in his memories and also now he clings to his father's lessons.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Having watched much of the movie in class I found it pretty easy to visualize the scenes. It was surprising at the end that Stanley needed to rape Blanche even though he had won the war against her already. It was hard for me to really find a character that i could totally sympathize with, each character had an ugly side and a beautiful side. As far as the transference from the play to the movie, their were little to know changes, although I believe the scene between Mitch and Blanche after their date is in a different setting in the movie and her explanation of the boy she fell in loved with and hurt was completely different from the movie (if i'm not mistaken he is depressed in the movie and she calls him weak, but in the book he is actually gay and she calls him disgusting). definitely can't wait to watch the movie version and how it changes the two last scenes, it's an older movie so they probably changed the scenes drastically as to avoid references to rape, although i hope they keep it true to the play; it has a lot of significance to every one of the character's decisions in the last scene.

Didn't realize we had to do a blog post on In the Lake of the Woods, but having checked some of the other blogs that have done it I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.

In the Lake of the Woods is probably the greatest mystery novel Ive read, particularly because it tackles one of the greatest debated mysteries: love. The chapters named "evidence" and "hypothesis" make the reader really try to analyze what happened to Kathy and what the reader is supposed to believe of John Wade and Sorcerer's truest motives. both of these mysteries slowly unfold, yet neither really are fully revealed to us. What is revealed to us at the end of the book is that this indeed is a story about love. I personally think it is debatable whether we can believe Kathy or John really loved eachother (as evidenced in the many chapters that account for the history of the couple and the relationship and self developments, which mainly pertain to John). Their seems to be a theme that love is expressed in many ways and often the love is for the relationship and not exactly the other person (i.e - keeping secrets and the snakes eating eachother/ 1+1=0).

A Hunger Artist

This story seems to explain the feelings of all artists and how hard it can be to accept that their will be people who don't understand, don't care, or pretend to care about an artist's work. The hunger artist cannot find satisfaction in the world of food, and in that way his work is not necessarily fasting at all, rather it is the exact opposite, feasting on nothing. He is not truly disciplined in this way, and thus he cannot respect his own technique, nor can anyone else. The greater pain comes from the people who don't respect the art of fasting, even when his own art is not disciplined as the art of fasting is meant to be.

Young Goodman Brown

Inherit tendencies for humans to act evilly seems to be the theme in this short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The young goodman brown wanders into the forest, which would seem to be the darkness of his mind as the wood road becomes darker and darker. he eventually finds a cult consisting of everyone in his life, even his most faithful wife (Faith) is there, which would seem to show that Nathaniel Hawthorne believes that even the best of us have a dark side that we cannot avoid.

The Jewelery

This story by Maupassant takes a much more laid back approach towards its diction than The Cask of Amontillado. The irony is clearly evident when the reader (and main character) finds out that the wife's jewelery is not false jewelery. In selling this jewelery, the man decides to throw away the sacredness of his and her beloved wife's relationship for the riches that the jewelery will sell for. This choice comes at a larger price, as karma shows in the story that he remarries to a frustrating woman and looses all the happiness that the money promised to give him. the theme in this story seems to be much more pronounced than it The Cask of Amontillado as well.

The Cask of Amontillado

This story by Poe seemed surprisingly focused on its level of tension. It's no wonder why this story was chosen for our discussion of Irony, as the main character's drunkard friend ends up accidently killing himself at the end of the story in the catacombs of the dead. The diction made each sentence feel like a loaded pistol (giving me reason to reread parts in the story), but that's what gave the story it's precision in story-telling. Poe's intense style of diction reminds me of Hemmingway's intense use of symbolism and how precise each of these writer's are in their executions.

A Rose for Emily

A rose for emily is the token story of new generation pushing out old generation. Emily, representing the southern mentality during the civil war era is a legend of her town, almost showing a childish mysticism in her mere presence at the village. thus when she buys arsenic at the drug store many of the townspeople (who is represented by the narrator) come to believe that she will kill herself. This, ontop of the city's authorities trying to have Emily pay for city taxes (after she hadn't paid them for over 10 years because of the kindness of the now deceased sherrif), shows both the lack of trust in this sort of an old mystic understanding of the world but also a less caring and emotional response to the people who come from this age. The new systematic, future is pushing her generations less efficient system out of the way. It shows the lack of empathy in modern society and the greater ability of previous generations to work with and care for its externalities; a much more human approach in comparison to the narrator's lack of empathy for this woman.

The Lady With The Dog

Having read characterization instead of of setting I lost some ability to have a fresh insight into this story, obviously because we spoke about it in class. Chekov uses the setting, specifically the correlation between cities and weather, to chronicle the movement of Anna and Dimitri's relationship and more importantly Dimitri's vision of women in general. by the end of the story it is quite clear that woman have become a less degraded sex as he regards her with respect near the end of the story. I believe most of his ill respect towards women is his passive agression towards the women in his past life whom have tried to belittle him (such as changing the way they say his name to something more "eloquent"), which lead Dimitri to think that all woman were full of stupidity.

Araby

This is a short story about a man's infatuation and his failure to get her something from the Arab bizarre. the theme would seem to be that you cannot buy love nor can you possess it, as shown in the man's anguish that he had reached the bizarre too late to buy the woman a gift. The narrator would seem to be first person from the main character's perspective.

Toni Morrison - Recitatif

Recitatif chronicles five encounters between two orphaned childhood friends and their development as individuals as black and white women. Whether race effects character seemed to be a large theme in this story. I believe the story thought that race does develop one's character, but in neither a negative nor positive way. for instance, Twyla's character initially does not see race and is projected as unaware of the world around her, while Roberta's character slowly develops from a critical awareness to a colorless (although aware) viewpoint near the end of the story; she admits that she cannot remember maggie's color (only that she was old). Twyla also grows an awareness of the colored world around her, but her reflections seem to be more of a self realization that color does hold weight in this world, whereas Roberta's realizations developed from outward actions and promotion against white people into a colorless (but knowing) view of the world around her.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

A very romantic journey through the eyes of dying man's last minutes. In the second chapter it mentions Farquhar's wife and how Farquhar was a soldier at heart; it is no wonder that his last moments are filled by a dream journey of adventure back towards his home and his wife. It makes the journey's dream more apparent when Farquhar begins walking down the road and notices that very few humans had tread it in the past. I actually had to read this story for my english class last year, but sadly didn't ever finish the story (i was reading it before first period and ran out of time), so i'm glad this story came up once more so i could finish it.

Girl

this short short story seemed to be less of a dialogue/monologue and more of a statement of a girl's existence between her and her mother and her upbringing into womanhood. From what I gather, the derivative of the word "slut" in this story is closer to "slovenly" than "whorish". with that being said, the mother's focus in bringing her child upright comes in the form of a woman's place in a man's world (i.e how a woman can be seen as respectable in light of her culture and not her own self). On the other hand, the young girl seems to show more signs of individuality and curiosity over her mother's instructions on what is deemed respectable of woman in the world her daughter will soon be entering. The conflict between these two shows a maturation stage in any girl's life and how one can tackle the situation of becoming a woman; individuality or culture.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

I have previously researched this story after listening to a song by Sufjan Stevens by the same name, so I already had a couple ideas on what the story was about before actually reading it. Although after reading I found a lot of other symbols that further validate and specify my original understanding of the story. From what I gathered, the Misfit is an Old Testament angel who was cast out of God's love after Jesus healed the world with his compassion. After Jesus saved us from sin angels of destruction, such as the Misfit, were no longer necessary under God's regime and were no longer needed for their original purpose, symbolized by the Misfit's psychopathic lifestyle having him being locked up in jail. the grandmother is the kind of woman that an angel of destruction would naturally have killed in the old testament for her selfishness and narrowmindedness. At the end of the story the Misfit mentions how the grandmother would have been a good woman if she didn't need a gun pointed at her every moment of her life; she was only unselfish when she had something to lose.

Hills Like White Elephants

Hills Like White Elephants, like many other Hemingway stories, is chock full of symbolism. The train seemed to symbolize the ever approaching decision of whether the woman should have an abortion and whether the American man was mentally prepared for the woman's decision. The man is constantly asking the woman to consider having another drink, which seems like the man is not mentally prepared to have this abortion. finally at the end of the story the man looks at the other men, waiting patiently with their "bag"s (aka their own "crosses" or problems) and tells the woman that he is ready for her decision.