Category: Reflections

Toni Cade Bambara did an excellent job of portraying a child who is on the verge of growing up. I had no idea the narrator was a child until a few paragraphs into the story, where Hazel speaks of having to sit in the kids section at the theater. I’m very intrigued with Hazel because of how her maturity and childishness (if that’s a word) come together to create such a confused little girl. She has been brought up not to take s**t from anyone, and stands up for what she believes in. At the same time, she lights candy stands up in flames while throwing a temper tantrum.

As a reader, I felt that Hazel was wise beyond her years. I desperately wanted her to be a teenager or an older woman because I felt so bad that she didn’t understand her uncle’s promise that he would marry her one day. I wanted to be able to picture a strong, older woman with great things ahead of her in life. Instead, there’s a little girl named Hazel who still has plenty of growing up to do.

Toni Cade Bambara is saying a lot through the characterization of Hazel. It takes a lot to make such a young child so mature, and I feel that Hazel is so strong because she is an African American girl in the south who has to put up with the racism that surrounds her on a daily basis. Hazel is a grown woman when it comes to standing up for what she believes in, but she is also a little girl who has so much left to see in this world. Hazel has so much drive and self belief. The end of this story leaves me wanting to know more about her life and how she grew up.

Something that I had noticed about Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour was the similarity to her book The Awakening. In her short story, Chopin portrays Mrs. Mallard as a woman who is “trapped” in an unhappy marriage. However, because it’s a short story, the reader is unsure why the Mallard’s relationship is unhappy because the husband doesn’t seem to display any of the stereotypical traits an abusive husband would, so the reader cannot come to a conclusion of their own as to why the relationship failed. In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is also an unhappily married woman, except this time, Chopin’s character chooses to have an affair with a younger man, therefore defying what women were at that time, submissive to their husbands. Even though this is a book, Chopin still remains tight lipped as to why the Pontellier’s relationship failed, which leads me to believe that Chopin has no faith in the institution of marriage. Instead she chooses to focus on Edna’s affair, her growing agitation with her husband, and her reliance on herself for what she needs. At the end of the short story and her book, both Edna and Mrs. Mallard die. Edna commits suicide by walking out into the ocean, and Mrs. Mallard’s heart kills her. I was a bit confused as to the reason for Mrs. Mallard’s death, but I assume it was a combination of shock and disappointment that her husband was, in fact, alive. Chopin seems to think the only escape to an unhappy marriage is death.

-Lisa Lewis

I agree that The Story of an Hour was one of the more thought provoking stories I have read all semester. I think that it is an ironic story with a twisted ending that could be a more modern day reenactment of Romeo and Juliet, only Romeo lives. The characters switch roles at the end of the story. At the beginning of the story we discover that Mrs. Mallard’s husband has just died in a railroad accident and her sister Josephine, and Mr. Mallard’s friend Robert are there to comfort Mrs. Mallard. Josephine, as the story mentions, tells Mrs. Mallard the news of her husband’s death in a gentle manner, keeping in mind that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition. Mrs. Mallard cries at first, but then goes off alone to mourn her husband’s death in the privacy of her bedroom. Once there she goes into a deep state of contemplation and reflection on her own life. It is at this point in the story where Mrs. Mallard comes to a realization that she is free at last, a free women, with “no one to live for.” (450) Chopin is trying to make a point here about woman’s role as “wife,” and how the husband in a sense has some possession over his wife. Now that Mr. Mallard is dead, his wife finally feels free from his possession. The ironic twist however comes when her husband walks in the door, bringing about her death, proving that even in his death he has control over her. I also noticed that while Mr. Mallard is thought to be dead his wife is referred to as Mrs. Mallard, but after his return she is referred to as his “wife” again. I thought this was significant.        

The Story of an Hour (pp. 449-451)

This story is very ironic.  The story begins with Mrs. Mallard, who learns becomes aware that her husband, Brently Mallard, was just in a horrific train accident.  Her husband’s friend worked at a newspaper, his name is Richard.  After getting the news and verifying it, Richards believed Mrs. Mallards’ husband was dead.  Mrs. Mallards’ sister Josephine gave her the bad news in broken up sentences.  Mrs. Mallard then wept.  Mrs. Mallard then remains at home and is very depressed; she becomes ill as she thinks spirits OR joy possesses her.  She acted like she had nothing else to live for toward the end.  The end is ironic as when Josephine, Mrs. Mallard are walking downstairs to meet up with Richard, Mrs. Mallard’s husband walks through the door and the sight of him causes Mrs. Mallard to die due to heart failure, “of joy that kills.”

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings (pp. 451-455)

Pelayo and Elisenda are a couple who live near the sea.  They have to constantly remove all of the crabs both in the yard and in their home as the stench of dead fish is unrelenting.  One day at noon, the sky was very dark and Pelayo spotted what looked to be an old man stuck in the mud or sand.  The man was later discovered to be an angel as he had real wings.  A woman who knew all about life and death said the rain knocked him down out of the sky.  The couple put him in the barn with the chickens.  The local town’s people all become intensely interested.  When this occured Pelayo and Elisdenda charged five cents for people to come by and look at him.  The angel would not eat mothballs or lavish meals, the couple would rarely if ever see him eat at all.  After awhile, the couple had saved up enough money to buy a new house farther away that would keep the crabs out in the winter.  They also put steel bars on the windows to keep the angels out.  Throughout the story, various carnival actors came to try and make money on the discovery.  Toward the end, Elisenda was slicing onions and a strong window blew throughout the kitchen.  Elisdenda looked outside and she saw the angel was trying to fly.  His first attempt he fell down, his second attempt he gained some altitude but then failed again.  On his third attempt he flew away and was no longer an annoyance to the couple because he was then an imaginary dot on the horizon on the sea which represents him flying far away into the distance.

The Use of Force (pp. 459-462)

This is a story of a doctor who goes to a mother and father to inspect their child for a possible diphtheria infection.  Both the mother and father are described as being very big.  The child stared the doctor in the eyes and did not express any facial movements.  The child had a fever for three days, when the doctor asked if she had a sore throat; the parents said that she did not.  The doctor then asked the child but she did not say anything.  When the doctor got close initially, the little girl leashed out at him like a cat would directly at his eyes.  While she did not get his eyes, she knocked off his glasses.  At this point the doctor started to become infuriated.  Knowing the risks of a possible diphtheria infection, the father allowed the doctor to proceed and force opening her mouth.  He put a wooden spoon in her mouth to keep it open while he attempted to get a throat culture, before he knew it she had crunched the spoon and it had become wood splinters in the back of her mouth.  Throughout the ordeal the child had also bittern her tongue, which was now bleeding.  The doctor then stated he was going to continue and they were going to get through this.  The doctor, at the peak of his frustration overpowered the child and forced a heavy silver spoon between the back of her teeth and down her throat until she gagged.  Then, he discovered that she had been lying all along as he discovered both her tonsils will covered by membrane.  The girl had fought every attempt to keep the doctor from knowing her secret.  At the end, the girl was crying in defeat, almost because she did not win the battle between herself and the doctor.

I have read other works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and understood what point the author was trying to make, but I was really confused by A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. The old wise woman says that the man blown in by the storm has to be an Angel, because he has wings. A priest is mentioned, indicating this is a Catholic community, so the Angel assumption is not surprising. What is surprising is that the people are not afraid of him, but rather treat him as a freak and with very little respect. Whenever an angel appears in the Bible, the Angel always announces “Be not afraid”, making the reader wonder if the Angel is scary looking, and not as the cherubs or Fabio’s as we all thought?

Another really interesting point made is that the Angel does not really perform miracles the way the inflicted want them too. Instead of curing a man’s blindness, he grows extra teeth. The leper, who is unclean and dying, has sunflowers grow out of his sores. Sunflowers are living things, and the flowers growing out of the lepers sores is ironic because they are the living healthy thing the man wanted to happen to him. The miracles happening are miraculous, but seem to be made by an Angel who does not care, or is starting to get feeble and unable to do what he really meant to do.

The people in the Bible always treats the Angels with reverence, and they always do the Lord’s work or something amazing, so is Marques trying to imply that the reverence for religion and staples of religion is fading?

The Story of an Hour

 By Kate Chopin

 

 

I think this is probably one of the more thought provoking short stories for me.  She uses so much imagery that I was lost in it.  I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, because sometimes I find myself not know what the heck it was that I just read, but then some lines are so beautiful that I found myself reading it twice to soak it in.  “When the storm of grief had spent itself”, one of my favorite lines, and I don’t know why, it’s simple and complex at the same time.  After my first read, I was a bit confused because I forgot the lady’s last name, and when Brently walked in the door, I had no idea what his relation to the woman was.  I also thought that she didn’t pass away, that she walked down the stairs with her sister.  It wasn’t until the very last line, that I realized that the woman was dead. 

Needless to say I went back for a second run.  The pieces started to make more sense.  It’s the story of an hour in which this lady, consumed by the news of her husband’s death, has no more reason to live, so her heart gave up and she died.  In that hour of death, she sees herself leaving her own body, so it’s like an out of body experience.  The irony to this story is that her husband didn’t die, that he was far from the scene of the accident, he made it home only to discover his dead wife.  I don’t know why, but for some reason, while reading this, I keep thinking the story is alluding to the subject of suicide.  I think because she’s telling her spirit to go free, to be free.  Then there’s the discussion she has with herself about not having no one to live for, and that no one has a right to force you to live (at least that is what I interpret the following sentence to mean).  To me it didn’t seem like she fought at all to stay alive, but rather she embraced the possession.  Thats just my take on it.      

In the blog “What happened to enjoyment?” my fellow class mate mentions that he thinks that these websites have no meaning, and are only meant for enjoyment. Although I would agree that they are placed on the net for our enjoyment I do not agree that they have no meaning at all. I feel that in saying so you are cutting this literature short. Though they are confusing and don’t seem to make sense at first, as you read them and enjoy the creativity that has gone into them all, they begin to make you think in much the same way that some literature does. To pick up a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and say that this is just meant for our enjoyment and is just a strange story, is without a doubt not looking at the text in the way it is intended to be looked at.
what intrigued me the most from the websites for the reading this week was “Bust Down the Doors!”. As with many types of text, when this first plays one might look at it in puzzlement. It is hard to even make out the whole of the text, but as you watch it over and over you begin to piece it together. Once you have done this you then might question why, when this character is pulled out of bed and killed in front of his neighbors, it is “life saving” to remember the dream he was having about the beach. Once the cycle finishes telling you the story with the person this is all happening to, being “you”, it begins to restart; this time it tells us it is happening to “him”, and it continues in this fashion through a few different variations. It then proceeds to mix them all together before restarting its cycle again with “you”. Although I can’t tell you the direct meaning of this, if I were to take it off of a website and place it onto a piece of paper it could easily be argued as poetry, First of all there are so many different emotions expressed in this piece: the hatred of the onlookers, the shame of the person or persons killed, and the release that remembering the dream brings to those killed. Another peculiar thing about this web sight is that all the letters “O” in the text are crossed like a numeric zero.
I understand the argument that people do tend to over analyze many texts, but in my experience that only happens when the meaning is clearly stated and the reader decides to go out on a limb and pull some absurd meaning out of another wise simple story. Some forms of literature are intended to be looked into. Although the author may not have had an intended meaning or moral, they want the reader to be provoked in such a way that it makes him or her think about the text, and learn from it, or at least attempt to make sense of its madness. Even though I am not able to tell you the meaning of this and the other the hyper texts, it is easy to see that one could look into them from many different angles and derive multiple meanings from them that are otherwise not clearly given to the reader.

It has been said that today’s book is very conservative.  That is to say, as Professor Sample put it, “we pick up a book and expect certain things;” consecutive page numbers, for example.  In dealing with hypertext, specifically the assigned links and especially “Hegirascope,” we experience the complete opposite.  The reader – or viewer in this case – still has his or her expectations but they are not met.  Not only are they not met but that are, in many ways, challenged.  Nothing seems to flow in a way that one would expect, words flash too quickly for one to take in, there is no specific direction.  In spending time with each of these sites, one question remained a constant in my mind: What.  Do.  I.  Do?  One feeling remained a constant: frustration.  What I find interesting, however, is that, despite my frustrations, I kept returning to the site; I was determined to figure it out.  As if there were something to figure out.

            In his 2005 Fall For The Book lecture, author Tim O’Brien discussed the purpose of reading a story.  He claimed that it seemed as though everyone was so busy trying to find a deeper message in the story that the reader missed a crucial aspect: enjoyment.  Sometimes the purpose of a story is simply to entertain, not to teach a lesson or impart a set of morals.  I feel that this could also be the case for the hypertext as well.  In my relentless returns to the site to “figure it out” I was missing out on the enjoyment factor, missing out on just being able to read what someone had taken the time to put before me.

            After Professor Sample’s lecture tonight (and, consequently, after learning how to work a few of the sites, “The Bomar Gene” to be exact) I went back to a few of the sites.  I went back initially to see if I could find that deeper meaning.  Then I gave up.  That’s when it hit me.  These sites should be enjoyed; they should be taken for what they are worth.  In some of them, the message is obvious and I let that be enough.  (As I write this blog I’m sitting here listening to an old Red Hot Chili Peppers cd and I’m making a weird connection.  If you ever read the songs, half of them make no sense whatsoever.  But you listen and you enjoy, the music is still pleasing to your ear.  If you like the band, that is.)  Finally, after letting myself just enjoy the text, I do not feel frustrated anymore.  I still do not completely understand the meaning behind it, but perhaps there is no meaning other than what is right in front of us…

 

     I thought that it was really interesting, and funny, about that long s that appeared in the old printing of “The Flea.”  I decided to look up older letterform and find out more about why texts appeared this way.  The practice of using the ſ in place of s died out before the 1800s in Roman and Italic type faces.  The International Phonetic Alphabet uses a similar symbol: ʃ to represent the “sh” sound.  There is even an example of a long s in the United States Bill of Rights. 

Some times French and German printing still uses ligatures for s’s though. berlin 2002

In calculus a version of the long s symbol is used to stand for the latin word “summa,” or sum.  The way it made us laugh in “The Flea” others have used the confusion between the long s and the letter f for humor.  The long s was never used to end a word.  For example the word sentiments would look like fentiments. 

            Another letterform used in the past was the “half r” or r rotunda, which was used to replace the letter r if it followed another letter.  This may have been to save space.  It certainly would not be able to give words double meanings like the long s though. 

Here you can see the half r and long s in the title Hystoriae ecclesiastica:

 

 

 

 

Cherrylog Road is a poem that depicts a boy and a girl having sex in or around Georgia during the 1930s to 1940s. There are three main characters: a boy, a girl named Doris Holbrook and her father.

What makes this poem rather unusual is the importance of the setting and situation. The setting in the story takes place in an automobile junkyard. The boy in the story exquisitely describes the different types of vehicles and automobile parts throughout the poem. The boy also gives the reader an inclination of the current weather conditions when he states “… Like a mouse in the southern-state sun.” This gives a hint that it takes place during the peak of summer in the southern United States. The situation brings suspense to the story. The boy mentions Doris; the girl he is supposed to meet may not be able to make it if she cannot escape her father’s eye. In the middle part of the poem, the boy primarily ponders whether Doris will be able to make it to the junkyard. Next, Doris arrives; the setting and situation then come together. The boy and Doris not only have sex; they do so in a place that should be off-limits to kids and only if her father knew what she was doing.

Another interesting note to make is how the author contrast’s youth and the age. This occurs in the beginning of the poem when the boy is describing the old, torn up automobiles in a junkyard. The boy and the girl represent the youth in the story. The boy is then excited further knowing what is going to happen in particular because it is risqué. It is not as if he was in bed at his or her house at night; instead, it is at an old junkyard during daytime, which increases his excitement.

The last three lines sum up how this experience had affected his life. When the narrator states: “Drunk on the wind in my mouth, Wringing the handlebar for speed, Wild to be wreckage forever.” This shows the boy heading back home to his normal life; however, one may infer that he is changed forever.