After Images - Emmett Till Poem

I am so glad that we can write about this poem. When Dr. Hollingsworth read it aloud in class I new that I wanted to write my final paper for this class on this poem. I read it a second time after class and think it is such a powerful poem on many different levels. The poet does such a great job of relaying what is going through their mind, and I think that writing a paper analyzing this poem would work great. What happened to Emmett Till was absolutely horrible and sad on every level, and this poem captures the sadness pretty well. We are being exposed to the poets reactions to these horrible events from the very start: "However the image enters its force remains within my eyes." This is very saddening, but powerful poem, and I am so glad that I got to read it.

My...Decompression

I feel as if I should decompress in a sense, after finishing that Kate Chopin deconstruction. I had never written a deconstruction before this paper, therefore I was so afraid of doing so. I used the notes we took in class and focused on binaries and did exactly what my Approaches to Lit. textbook told me too. I have that class currently, so it is actually kind of neat to be taking them at the same time. I use the text book for that class a lot when it comes to writing papers. I was difficult at first to wrap my head around the idea of just writing about the things that I did (binaries and gaps). I felt sometimes like I wasn't being clear, but other times, I did, and this feeling flip-flopped often. I liked writing the paper though, and I think the things I learned in the story wouldn't have come about if I hadn't taken this approach. I liked this writing style, though it was quit taxing, it was rewarding just the same.

Hegemony

I decided to do a little bit of research on the word "hegemony" after it came up in class last Tuesday. When i searched the word on Wikipedia, I got an eye-full that I didn't realize I was asking for. The whole page was based on history and hop hegemony relates to history. To those of you who already knew what hegemony was, forgive me. I then searched hegemony in literature and liked what I saw. I also understood it a bit more. The definition I got was this, "The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others." So, is it fair to say hegemony can be both a good or a bad thing? It can be good for someone who likes to be a part of the influence and is fine with going along with it, but it is not good for those that they are trying to influence? For instance, let's say that there are a group of men in some town who hang out. They expect "their women" to do everything fo them, and generally the women go along with it. This is just fine for the men, and even the ladies that do these things because it's just simply what they do. But of a women who doesn't feel that this is ok, but also lives in the tiwn, it is not ok, because the men will expect her to be like all the other women. I hope I'm understanding hegemony correctly...

Deconstruction

I am really glad we discussed deconstruction in class yesterday. I have never written a paper using this method, so we shall see how well (or not well) I do. I think I'm going to write about the binary of imprisonment and freedom in "Story of an Hour." I think there are some great example, for instance she feels free when she is next to the window, yet as soon as she goes back down the staircase (stairs, surrounded by a case? A case is like a prison...hmmm) and it is after she leaves her window that she becomes back to being imprisoned. She sees her husband and her whole new outlook has been shattered.She then escapes imprisonment, this time by way of death. Dr. Hollingsworth did a great job explaining it yesterday, and my ENG 205 book gives some tips on deconstruction papers. I'll be looking for a few more binaries to throw in too.

Chopin - Symbols in "Story of an Hour"

What a well written story to say it mildly. There is so much to unpack from this story. Like her story "Ripe Figs," it is short in length but not in content. "Blue sky" and "delicious" are words used to describe the things around here when she is looking out the window. They help the reader see that she sees good things ahead, and do a great job of relaying her emotion. I like the subtle hints that pass along an emotion that Louise feels. Like all of Chopin's stories, there are so many symbols, enough it would seem that if you read it everyday you would find more than the day before.

I meant to post this last week...as well - Professions for Women

I loved this article by Virginia Woolf. I idea of killing the Angel in the house is so wonderful, and I have honestly been thinking differently since reading it. I have always had this "wild and crazy" feminist streak running through my veins, but it is flourishing lately. When I watch television and I see a woman tell her husband to leave so she can do housework I scream and bitch at the poor thing, saying "Are you seriously going to live up to what your genetics and the historians tell you to do?" You are genetically a woman, and because of this you are going to do what is typically asked or expected of a woman? My poor boyfriend..bless his soul for loving me, but I am on his tail lately. Two nights ago I couldn't sleep, and I woke him up to ask him when it all started and how. How did women become inferior? Why were we ever suppressed? And so on. He talked to me and I talked to him...He's a great guy, and agrees with me when I talk about women being oppressed. He knows there is still a problem with even today's society and how it views women, especially wherever the media is concerned. I give him my opinion and he gives me his. I sure am not ready to sleep now, so I turn on the television and yell even more at the media for portraying women as "BOOBS." Women = BOOBS. Go to hell. What's with that? At any rate, I just wanted to thank Virginia Woolf for her article, and for killing the Angel in the house. I have killed the Angel in mine as well :)

Meant to submit this last week - Chopin

I was really excited to learn that we get to write a paper about Chopin. I know that it is not one of the stories linked on this page, but one of my favorite Chopin stories is "Ripe Figs." It has so much to delve into, especially considering how short it is. We have a girl who is maturing, and an older woman who has already done so. I think this story does a fantastic job with symbolism: The ripe fig being the girl who has matured, and is in the early stages of adulthood, and the knife in which the older woman uses to cut the fig. The knife I fell, represents man, and is symbolic of how they two will come together at another time now that she has matured, be it in a romantic way, or a sad way (he will hurt her and break her heart perhaps?) Regardless of how the knife symbolizes man, it is a symbol and it is put to work nicely in this short but fantastic piece. Just thought it was cool how symbolism IS the story here...nice.

Today's Group Project

During the group presentations today, Jada brought up a very point. She talked about how the house is seen as a feminine place because it shelters women. She also made a reference to a drawer and how it does the same thing. She went on to talk about how women have a womb, and that is, in a sense, home. A womb houses a baby. I thought about this a lot and realized that no matter what a woman does, she will have this house inside of here, always. She will always be physically a woman with something inside of her that's soul purpose is to shelter another human being. This made me a little sad, as well as claustrophobic because I know that I will always have this thing in me that makes me susceptible to oppression. Damn it! I do not dislike children by any means, this has nothing to do with that. I am just uncomfortable with the fact that my body is meant to house a human baby...Yeah it's weird to think about it that way. I love my Mom! Without wombs, no one would be here, so I'm not anti-womb. Gosh, I guess I don't have a point. I'm fine with being a girl, I just wish that gender wasn't an issue in today's world. It shouldn't be, but it is. Again, I love my Mom and all people and all things, and I do understand that no womb equals no people. I just wanted to make that clear :) I know somebody has to do it, I just wish that people with wombs (women) weren't viewed as weak because they have a womb. Yeah, I like that statement, I think that's my point.

Simone de Beauvoir and My Angst

It is not the actual male authors Simone de Beauvoir mentions in her piece “Myths” that are the point; it is the fact that their ideas are oppressing, even though they did not realize it. These men feel that they are doing women a favor by saying lovely, nice, pretty things about them, such as Stendhal. He felt that women could do MORE things than men, sounds good right? Nope. What he goes on to say that women can do and men cannot is open their hearts and create a shelter: essentially be more oppressed. He does not do women a favor what so ever with this statement. He may as well have said that "women can do things men can not, and that’s scrub floors really really well, and cook very good spaghetti. I mean, I can sort of do these things, it's just that women do it better." Why couldn't he have just said that men and women are equal or something along those lines? He's not breaking any stereotypes by saying that women can open their hearts, so what is the point him saying it? To make women feel better? Thanks Stendhal, I can rest well now that I know that there is at least one thing I can do that a man cannot, and that is create shelter. (I'm being sarcastic by the way...)

Montherlant – We know he is a transcendent from our text. He is obviously an antifeminist author, and finds great pleasure is findings ways that men are greater that women. What was interesting to me was that he would purposely and consciously put women in a place lower than he, and then relish the fact that he was superior. Montherlant’s cycle of novels he wrote entitled “The Girls” involves a man who is adored and admired by women, yet he is always rejecting them. It speaks out against feminine possessiveness as well as for male dominance.

Breton – Felt the exact opposite of Montherlant. He felt that women brought peace. He feels that women tear him from his subjectivity. He was very interested in eliminating the differences between dream and reality, subject and object, sanity and insanity.

Stendhal – Simone de Beauvoir felt that Stendhal was distinctive in demonstrating the understanding his women as actual human creatures who are like men. He felt that they were destined for mediocrity because they were female. He feels that there are some things that women can do that men can not, one being the fact that she can open her heart to him and shelter him.

Claudel – Claudel viewed women as “soul-sisters” and felt that they should give as much as men do in terms of love, and they should be just as devotional. He seems to feel that women are a possibility for either salvation or temptation. He is one of the least arrogant out of the many authors she discusses.

Poem - Discourse on the Logic of Language

When I first looked at this poem as it was being handed out in class, I honestly couldn't imagine how much could be gotten out of it. Turns out that the meaning lies greatly in it being read aloud. I enjoyed hearing Dr. Hollingsworth read this piece aloud because she did it without messing up once. It seems like one of those poems that if it is read aloud wrong then it could loose most of it's impact. But because she read it very well, it kept all of it's impact. I can see how this poem would sound fantastic if it were read aloud by a group of people. I was hoping that we could all read it aloud as a class but i was too shy to make such a suggestion. The whole poem reminds me the free-writing exercise. Most words resemble the others, and they are common in meaning. I felt that this poem was a great piece to discuss on Thursday, because it went so well with out free-writing discussion. Very cool poem, and I would like to hear a group read it sometime.

Free-Write - In Class

I had a lot of fun doing the free write in class on Thursday. I liked taking a word, "Woman" in our case, and writing words that came to mind for a couple of minutes. It was neat to see what everyone else said their last word was, and to see how they correlate with everyone else's in class. The last word on my exercise was "angry." A few other people had an emotion as their last word and I found this interesting. I liked the other exercises that appeared on the worksheet we discussed in class, especially the one where you have someone read to you a pretty scene and then you are given a box and it is to your discretion what is inside. Very cool packet of exercises to get ya thinking.

Freud and Poe

When I learned that we would be discussing Poe next week after Freud, I got very excited. I admire Poe and find him great to talk about around this time of year (Halloween!). I thought about Freud and his "Uncanny" when I saw we were going to be discussing Poe. There are many aspects of Poe's stories that make them scary, but in the "Tell-Tale Heart," one of the most scary moments is perhaps the repetition of the beating of the heart throughout the end of the piece. This reminded me of the repetition/fear factor that is mentioned in "Uncanny," and of course I thought this was cool. The repetition of this makes it suspenseful and scary. Very cool, Freud...very cool. He got this idea right on the money in my opinion. I liked that we read Freud before reading Poe, because now when I read these stories, such as I did with the "Tell-Tale Heart," I'll look at the psychological aspects of them.

My Dream and Freud

Yesterday afternoon, I talked to my Mom about a day trip my boyfriend and I took. I told her about how much fun it was an how my sister would really enjoy it. She told me that maybe in the Summer she'd come down here with me for a few days and I could play tour guide. This made me so happy, especially since I've been seriously missing my family lately. That night, I had a dream where not only was my sister at my apartment, but my Mom was. I was taking her around the place, showing her random things with great pride, such as my toaster and my book shelf. I couldn't help but think about Freud after this. Though there was no mention of my Mom coming down in the conversation, I still wanted her too. It was never stated that I missed her, but I do, and greatly. Don't get me wrong, I miss my sister as well, I just thought it was cool how my Mom was the main character in my dream, especially since I have missed her very much over the past week.

What the People Wore in Oedipus Rex

I think the costumes the performers wore in Oedipus Rex should not go unmentioned. I read Oedipus Rex a while ago and had a very hard time visualizing what the characters may have looked like. I liked their hands and faces, and I especially liked how dramatic it was at the end when Oedipus' mask and costume comes off and we now see his face and body for the first time. This is powerful because with the tall wooden head and robe, he seemed bigger, greater, and almost untouchable. But after he gouged his eyes out, he was small and frail. This was very appropriate since he was also full of shame during this time. The costumes do a wonderful job of symbolism (though I am having a hard time understanding why their hands were shaped the way they were, I know it was for a reason, hmm...) as well as they do a great job of amping up what is going on at the moment, for instance the end of the opera.

Oedipus Rex: Subtitles

When the opera first began, I payed extremely close attention to the subtitles, not wanting to miss a word because I was afraid I would miss something important in them. As it progressed however, I found myself paying more attention to what was actually going on in the play, and by the end of it I rarely looked a the subtitles, yet I feel like I still understood what was happening. For the performers and the music to come together and tell a story visually and aurally is fantastic. It didn't matter that it was in Latin! Even if I could understand Latin, I don't think that I could have enjoyed watching this anymore than I did, which was a great deal.

Horace - The Art of Poetry

"It has always been granted, and always will be, to produce words stamped with the date of the present. As trees change their leaves when each year comes to its end, and the first fall first, so the oldest words die first and the newborn thrive in the manner of youth, and enjoy life." I found this quote by Horace on page 85 of our book to be thoughtful to say the least. I know it's not very related, but this reminds me of the name "Brittany." This name didn't come into common use until the 1970's after a character in a TV show was named Brittany. I have searched the internet through and through trying to remember what the TV show was but I can't find it. When I do I'll post the name of it. At any rate, I'm just curious as to how long this name will continue to be used, well, as a name.

Dante and the word "Anagogical"

In part seven of "Letter to Can Grande della Scala," Dante discusses how there is not just a single sense in the work, but several senses (polysemous). While I understood this word, especially after he followed it up with a short definition, I had a bit of trouble with "anagogical." I looked it up in the OED and found that other words that are related to this are mystical and spiritual. I liked the short definition I found online that stated an "idealistic striving of the unconscious." After looking this word up, I felt that I better understood what Dante was trying to say. He felt that there was a literal way to look at a letter, but also a second anagogical way. Though he also used the words moral and allegorical, they didn't really help me understand what he meant by anagogical. No worries now, however :)

Comparing Two Flannery O'Connor Stories

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are both very similar stories, but the similarity that I found most interesting was the fact that the people who thought they new all of the answers both “got theirs” in the end, not that this is a good or a bad thing, I’m just saying…At any rate, the cool part about this is how in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” the Grandmother is very close minded, and refuses to see the bad in everything unless it is deemed “good” by her standards. In “Good Country People,” Hulga is very educated and dislikes folks who are close-minded. Both of these characters are very different from each other, and would probably want to scratch each others eyes out if they ever were to meet, yet they are so very similar. Both, in fact, are close minded, and take being this way to the max. I just thought this was really cool to think about in the sense that they are opposites, but on the second hand, not so much.

"A Good Man is Hard To Find"

The first time I read this story about two years ago, I was so shocked at how it ended that I re-read the last couple of pages numerous times, trying to make sure that what happened actually happened. I couldn’t believe that she died, right there on the page, after having lead herself and her family into these woods in a cause and effect sort of way. It is sad what happened to the family, as well as the grandmother. I can honestly say that though she didn’t have all of the answers like she thought she did, she didn’t deserve death, and nor did her family. Her poor grandchildren, I feel had no choice but to act the way that they did. They were young, and children behave the way the people around them do, therefore I was really saddened by their deaths. I’m sure that had the grandmother survived this ordeal with the misfit and had only been scared into being an actually “good” person, then her grandchildren would have changed as well. It’s a shame that the Grandmother died right after finding redemption in a sense.

Beauty

I really enjoyed this discussion in class about beauty and its meaning. I found the exercise about what we thought beauty was to be very fun to say the least. I liked hearing what people in class had to say about the subject. Though everyone had something different to say about beauty, most everyone’s responses echoed similar messages. This was uniting in a way, and though it’s cliché, gave me a “warm feeling.” I also enjoyed the discussion on Thursday about the Venus de Milo, and how disabilities do or do not affect beauty. All in all, I liked both of last weeks discussions, and felt that they tied into each other very well.