DVoices in SLiterature

2006-05-03T10:08:00.000-04:00

In mondays class we discussed a little bit the effects of sexual abuse on children. This is something that I don't really know a lot about but I found it very interesting. The masturbation scenes in the book are a little on the disturbing side for me because when I think of young girls, I think of childhood which is a very precious thing. For kids to experience things like this is very painful to read about. Acts like the ones their step father is commiting are ripping their childhoods away from them. Out of all the books I would have to say this one is my favorite because a lot of the issues we have discussed are being looked at in much more depth.

2006-04-26T18:43:00.000-04:00

I decided to take a closer look at the poem, "Sleeping Out At Easter." I found the poem to be a little bit confusing. I think this poem has a theme much like the other ones we have looked at in class. Dickey wants us to take a closer look at the finer things in life. Soceity changes us and we forget what is truely special in life. When he mentions animals I think that this is the idea he is trying to represent. Animals are not complicated but a society, they just live. They live in the moment and they live life in a very whole way. When he speaks of birds singing, I think of the choir in chruch. On Easter people attend chruch so I wonder if this was the idea he was trying to create? I also really like how the last lines of each verse come together in ther end to make a little poem of their own. I think that last verse that is put together out of the lines in attalics is about rebirth and it is very religious.

2006-04-12T19:53:00.000-04:00

I thought that the presentations were all very interesting. The one that I really enjoyed was the one about Southern music. I think it is interesting that rock n' roll is slightly different here than it is in Europe because simply because the black population is from a different part of the world. I would be very interested in learning more about this. I wonder if there are other differences that I'm not really aware of because of this?

2006-04-05T18:53:00.000-04:00

I have really enjoyed reading Flannery O'Connor's work. I think it is really interesting the way she intertwines religion into her writing. She never makes it obvious that she is writing about it but I think that is what makes a good writer. They challange you and you have to focus on the reading so you can unpack the clues they give you. It suprises me that the characters always have these realizations during a terrible experience and they always die right after. They are never given time to react to the realization when it occurs because it is in there last moments. I wonder if she does this on purpose?

2006-03-29T20:08:00.000-05:00

I really enjoyed reading A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and then watching the film. I think that when I read the play I really pictured the characters much like they are potrayed in the film. The only difference was just how bad their living conditions were and how badly the men were dressed. I also didn't picture Blanche and Mitch being as flirtatious as they were in the film. I think that Blanche is a very sexual character. She really uses her eyes to set the mood. I also think she uses her voice to make the mood more sexual. She is also aware of how close her body is to others. The scene in the film when she kisses the young boy who comes to Stella's appartment was something that I found very disterbing. I will also be interested to see what other changes there are between the written play and the film.

2006-03-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

In class we discussed the ending of Their Eyes Were Watching God. People had differing opinions of the end of the book. In my opinion the last few lines of the novel were the best in teh entire book. "Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the wrold and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see(pg 231)." I think these lines did a great job of of pulling a lot of the symbols that were present in the rest of the novel together. It also does it in a very poetic way that makes you sit back and think about the meaning behind everything. It is also the end of Janie's jounry to find herself. She was gone out and lived and now she is home and content to live out the rest of her life. The one thing that I didn't like about the ending was that the book never really made reference to Granny again and she was such a strong presence in Janies early life.

2006-03-15T13:49:00.000-05:00

Within the first few pages of Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, we were already presented with many complex issues. The first issue presented was the idea of womenhood. As soon as Nanny saw that Janie had her "womenhood" and began to act on the desires that came along with her reaching that point in her life, she wanted Janie married right away. I think this was because Nanny was aware of the way the world during that time period and she wanted to protect Janie from herself, from men, and from the community passing judgement on her. Nanny tells Janie, " 'Tain't Logan killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it's protection!" Janie struggles against Nanny pushing her to marry and this shows that Janie is naiive. It is also the first time that Janie tries to go against what is "accepted" in society. This is something she struggles with throughout the novel. She wants people to accept her to a certain extent, but there is also something in her that pushes her to try and achieve somethings in her life that aren't the norm. This pushes her to challenge, at least in her thoughts, a lot of the gender roles that society creates.

2006-03-01T19:30:00.000-05:00

I really enjoyed reading all of Katherine Ann Porter's work. I found them very refreshing to read because I thought that they were written in a lighter style, which was more story like. It was also nice to see things from a women's perspective. Grandmother's character was fun to read about because I can relate the things she does to my own Grammie. When people reach their old age there is often a pull between the values they grew up with and the values that are accepted in the present times. We definitely saw this with Grandmother's character. A quote from the text that really proves this point is, "They would agree that nothing remained of life as they had known it, the world was changing siwftely, but by the mysterious logic of hope they insisted that each change was probably the last; or if not, a series of changes might bring them, blessedly, back full-circle to the old ways they had known."

2006-02-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

In finishing Faulkner's novel I am not really sure what I think about the novel. I didn't really get very into any of the characters or any of the story lines because it was so all over the place, especially in terms of time. I also had trouble relating to any of the characters because they were presented in a very masculine way. This is one of the main reasons I didn't really enjoy reading the book. I like books that I can relate to my whole life and this was definitetly not one of them.

2006-02-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed reading The Old People because it was something a little different than what we have been working with. All of the books we have read so far have really focused on the relationships between African Americans and whites. I enjoyed reading about the Indian heritage and seeing how that fit into the picture. I thought it was very interesting that Sam Fathers, I believe it was, was sold into slavery by his father who was a chief. I never really thought about someone who is basically "free" beginning sold back into slavery. Although when you think about it that is what is going on currently in many 3rd world countires. Was this the beginning of the new form of slavery?

2006-02-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

Kate Chopin's "Desiree's Baby" and James Weldon JOhnson, from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, were by far my favorite pieces that we had read so far this year. I think the actual text was written very well and was very interesting because it didn't really come straight out and tell you anything it was all alluded too. So as I was reading I was figuring out what the author was trying to tell us and it made the text that much more ingaging. I think the subject the text brings up is also something that must have been very controversial in the past. Identity is something we place very high in society. Where you came from, I think sometimes people place at a higher importance, than where you are going. As for the people in these stories everything they had ever believed about themselves came tumbling down. It would almost be like growing up being told you were your parents child and then finding out that you were adopted. It shakes everything you grew up believing. Except for these people finding out they had colored ancestors placed them in a lower class in soceity which much have been even harder to gravel with.

2006-02-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

After reading The Storm, I get the feeling that this text is packed full of symbolism. I think the entire text in itself represents something entirly different than what it is presented as. To truly understand it I think you would have to have background information on the author as well as what was going on in the world at the time it was written. I found it interesting that the 4yr old boy, Bibi, was represented as such a little adult. The two lines, "Bibi was four years old and looked very wise" and "Bibi laid his little hand on his father's knee and was not afraid," struck me as very unusual. I am interested to learn what the symbolism here might be.

2006-01-22T21:33:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed reading Note on the State of Virginia because it was set up in a manner that was pretty easy to follow. You knew exactly what you were reading about because of the title at the beginning of each section. I thought it was very interesting that the author, Thomas Jefferson, compared Indian's from the South and those from the North. I was never aware that the personalities of the Native American's changed so much as you traveled North or South. It makes me wonder how accurate these discriptions really are.

2006-01-19T12:23:00.000-05:00

As I was reading John Smiths excerpt, "From A Description of New England" I obviously took notice of how different the language was from that of present day writers. I was wondering if because there were so few people with the skill to write there were multiple variations of words? For instance, today it is very easy to pick out when a word is misspelled and I was wondering if it was as easy back then, or if as long as people got the general idea of the word it was considered correct?