The Tempest

I do not think it is fair to classify a Shakespearean play in only one category.  I do feel there is a "serious" tone to it because of the plot line and what is actually happening in the story; however, there are very many lighthearted jokes made throughout the play.  There is the magic and fantasy element in this story which does put the play into a darker realm of entertainment, but I just feel that because of these times where the characters make these jokes, the play cannot be classified only as being "serious" and dark as the poster below displays.

A Doll's House

Although "A Doll's House" is a unique work that deals with the empowerment of women, it does deal with a common theme with "Yellow Wallpaper" that we read earlier.  In "Yellow Wallpaper", the woman telling the story is talking about how much her husband makes her very subservient to him. She feels that he is so much smarter and better than her, when she sees his flaws. Eventually she goes crazy from her husband basically putting her on lock-down for too long.

In "A Doll's House", she pretends to be this woman that cannot do anything for herself when she actually did something quite genius and helpful for her husband behind her husband's back.  There is this similar theme of men needing to feel superior to their wives, when in fact their wives are capable human beings.  There is also a sense of male pride becoming ignorance in both of these works.

Oedipus

I do see the story of Oedipus as a tragedy. He is a tragic figure in this plot line. Being a tragic figure means that he must have had a position of importance that had a fatal flaw that brought his downfall.  Oedipus is a good king, but he had a flaw of being too proud. He misread his wife's attempts to stop him from furthering his understanding of knowing his heritage. Because he misread her attempts and saw it as her questioning his royalty, he becomes overly proud, which brings about his downfall. It does end gory and sad as most tragic figures must. 

Moral Issues In Dramas

As far a problems there were in translating a moral issue into a drama, I would just say that the morals might have changed with time. Things change and the terms they used back in those days were not exactly what we use today, which does make some of the deeper meaning lost if you do not understand the language.

I do definitely find this presentation of a moral issue much more effective than a lecture. Lectures can only go so far. Words cannot paint a picture in someone's mind. Also, one's mind can wander during a lecture while when there is a story as interesting as a drama, one's mind cannot wander.  When the players can paint this picture for people, the audience can understand something much easier and the picture remains in a person's mind for much longer than anything else.

As a drama, moral issues come across very strongly. The point and importance of the moral issue is exemplified in the drama.

A new understanding of "Out, out - "

I wrote on "Out, Out -" and I had already had a good understanding on this poem.  Having written on the poem in previous classes, I have a good amount of points to make with the point. Also, when we had conferences, I wrote down everything she gave us and pretty much wrote on that. I did research and found out that Frost's theme of a loss of innocence of young boys reflects his loss of a childhood thanks to WWI that happened when he was a child.  I should have written about this, but I already had plenty of good points, so i chose not to do use it.
 robert frost

In general, I have seen the rhythm and the beat of poetry and have a good appreciation of what poetry is all about.  It makes sense why we would need to read poetry.

The Poetry

This was a fairly good collection of poems for us to read and I usually liked what we read, but some were somewhat difficult. I felt that the "Flea" was difficult to understand due to the language it is written in.  None of the poems were really that hard to understand as long as I could decipher the language, which is sometimes difficult.  Shakespeare always makes it difficult for me to understand what he is trying to convey.
 I do feel, though, that they are kind of failing as a writer if they cannot convey their point because their language is too strange.  I do get that it is that time period, but it still just does not make sense to me.  "The Last Duchess" was somewhat difficult in the fact that it did not grab my attention. I got bored after a few lines and it became difficult to press on.

Now, even though there are some hard poetry out there, there was some easily understood and enjoyable poetry that we read.  I found that the "Unknown Citizen" was really entertaining and grabbed my attention immediately.  It was easily understood and the satire was incredibly interesting. I found what the poet had to say important for society to hear, which, to me, is what makes a good poem.

A New Understanding?

I do not really think my view changed that much during the writing process of our first paper. I did a lot of pre-writing thinking in order to isolate exactly what I wanted to speak about particularly in "The Chrysanthemums" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place".  Because I put a great deal of thought into the paper before i even started writing anything down, I did not really need to change my opinion all that much, if at all. I do know,since poetry is my weakest part of English, that I will have a lot of changing opinions when it comes to analyzing poetry critically, but i could surprise myself depending on the topic.

Terribly Simple

Dear Blog,
In "The Death of Ivan Ilych", Chapter 2 states that since Ivan's life was simple and ordinary, it was a terrible life. I think that this quote is the reason for the first chapter or everyone's reaction to his death.  Since Ivan lived an ordinary and simple life, he never got to experience everything life had to offer or to really enjoy what he would have possibly wanted to do.  That regret of not challenging himself in his life is what makes it terrible and people can feel bad for him because of this.  The terribleness of his life stems from living a non-important life.

Also, I think that Chapter 1 describes the ordinariness of Ivan's life by the reaction of his friends.  These men are suppose to be his colleagues and friends, but when the news hit them of Ivan's death, they immediately started thinking of how to fill his position and the monotonous routine they must follow to help the mourning widow.  They seem almost not to care that he has past and that exemplifies the terribleness of living an ordinary and simple life.

"Yellow Wallpaper" How Unreliable

Dear Blog,
In the short story "Yellow Wallpaper", the audience experiences a first-person point of view, which, as the narrative progresses, we realize that this point of view is very unreliable.  It is quite interesting and accurately done how we are taken on a journey through this woman's decent into insanity.  We know that she is going crazy because of the things she is telling us that she is thinking about; however, she thinks that her insanity is perfectly sane.  She creates this new world in her mind on this wallpaper and to her, it is perfectly normal, but we can tell from the other characters that she is not well.  Also the details of the room such as the bars on the window and the bed being bolted down lets us know that she is not sane, since she is living there.

Now, since we know that she is going insane, the audience can assume that she is an unreliable narrator and that things she is describing are not necessarily true.  This affects how the audience can read the story and interpret it.  We don't really know if what she is describing is real or not real, making this story an interesting read.

I would also like to say that it is her sensory deprivation that sends her into this craziness and there she hallucinates about things.  I feel like the author is touching on a topic of questioning reality.  It just makes you question an interesting topic.

Now the experience of reading this piece because of the point of view is very difficult to interpret what is really happening and what is really just insanity talking, but it does lead the audience down a road of what going insane is like inside the mind of that person.  I found that part of it quite interesting.

A Mess of Time for "A Rose for Emily"

Dear Blog,
In the short story "A Rose for Emily", the narrator, who seems to be a townsperson that sees her life in only what he hears from gossip, jumbles the timeline of Emily's life story to the point where it is a little difficult to understand what is happening in which order.  By the end, however, the reader is able to decipher what the order is and why the narrator chose to tell this story out of order.  There are many interpretations I am sure, but I believe that he chose to tell the story in such a way in order to build this suspense.  The most shocking, climax-like part of her life story is when they find out that she had been keeping Homer's body in her house and sleeping with it every night.  This scene would have shocked the audience, but after this is revealed to the audience, there is no more point to the story.  It is the fact that they bounce around the timeline that builds this suspense and curiosity for Emily's life.  They give a small detail that there was a smell coming from her house, so the audience is left to wonder what it is, while the audience is also given the ability to see how the townspeople interact with her.  The author purposely arranges the story in this way to build that suspense.

There is another reason why the author could have chosen to jumble the timeline and that is based on the type of narrator they chose.  The narrator is a person who sees her life from the outside and the facts that are given to the audience is given through the gossip thrown around town.  Gossip does not always come to a person in order, so the author was trying to depict that this story was told through gossip.

I know that when i was reading this, I could tell that the events given to me were not in order and that I needed to sort out my own timeline. This caused me to pay close attention to details of Emily's progression into seclusion and insanity.  I could tell from how secluded she acted when this certain event had taken place. And i believe that is why the jumbling of time is done also.  Because there is this need to pay attention to Emily's sanity level in order to create their own accurate timeline, the reader, with the attention on her isolation, can see the emphasis Faulkner is putting on the horrible nature of being isolated from a community.

Daily Show "Leave it there"

Dear Blog,
It was very interesting yesterday in class when we got to watch a clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  The segment he was doing was lampooning CNN's reporting ability.  With a comedic spin, Jon Stewart points out the problems with CNN and their fact checking abilities.  He shows clips of what CNN shows and then he interprets them, exposing their flaws.  I actually learned quite a lot about the follies of news reporting and with the exposure, I was able to learn more about critically analyzing news reporting.  I learned that news stations are focused on much more on marketing and ratings rather than the actual story.  I thought it was horrible that CNN cuts off important debates and vital information from crucial topics to show a youtube video of a kid doing something silly.  They are a news station.  Find things that actually matter.  Leave the entertainment to access hollywood and Entertainment Tonight.  CNN promises serious news and it should deliver what it promises, and not just tease its audience with information that has not even been fact checked enough.  News stations need to step up on the caliber of their reporting, or they will become obsolete in the race with online news.
Mike