Do NOT go Gentle into that Good Night

This was one of those poems i really didn't care for. however, after a class discussion or two, i understand it a bit more. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas is about a man with his father on his death bed. It's very heart wrenching and quite sad once the reader understands the poem. Written as a villanelle (19 lines), the repetition in the poem takes over and takes away from the beauty of this simple poem. The phrase "do not go gentle into that good night" is repeated every other stanza as well as the phrase "rage rage against the dying of the light.

The stanzas start out as memories and similes and metaphors but then transforms into a sad poem about a man watching his father slowly slip away; With depressing lines such as " Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray". Its sad reading about this man crumbling because of his father. Thomas seems to have written this from somewhat of a personal standpoint, which helps a lot when writing a poem or short story. It begs the question, did Thomas write this in the first person, or is this simply a made up poem?

The part I didn't enjoy were the repetitions actually! It doesn't seem to fit within the rhyme scheme, however it does end up completing and pulling the poem back to it's original thought. I thought the two repeated phrases could have been uses in the beginning and the end. the rest of the poem should have been filled with more descriptive stanzas about the situation.

Kate Chopin Works

I really loves Chopin's story Desiree's baby. It surprised me that Chopin would have the courage to write such stories especially back in her day! She was a white woman living in the south writing about a man who supposedly hates black people, who actually turns out to be half black, and unknowningly abandons and resents his 100% white wife and child. You find yourself asking the question "how did he not see that he was half black?" which then gets the answer, it was a different time back then. Which then makes you think about how much times have changed yet also how much they are the same. Chopin's writing transcends centuries with her ability to connect to independent women as well as women of color.

"It means...that the child is not white; it means that you ate not white." Chopin writes this for the husband to say to his supposedly "not white" wife and it is so eye opening to think that is how it was back in her time. Women had to deal with being second rate and their feelings were put on the back burner, never to be a priority. So, Chopin's works are all about empowerment and Independence for women. Surprisingly mainly of a sexual nature!

Langston Hughes Troika

Let America Be America Again, Open Letter to the South , Harlem

I was only briefly introduced to Hughes' work in the 5th grade but after reading these three poems, I can now fully understand and appreciate why he is the most celebrated African American writer of his time. The saying "you write what you know" proves to be very true in all of Hughes' works. America and Open Letter are both deep poems about the need and want for equality among races and more importantly equality for all people in America. In America, he repeats the phrase "i am the..." followed by a certain occupation or race. This repetition draws the reader in and really makes you proud of this man for wanting such lofty things for America especially for his day and age. For example at the end of Open Letter, he writes "White worker,/Here is my hand./Today,/We're Man to Man." This no doubt had some controversy surrounding it back then because it was so unthinkable to have a black man even want to befriend a white man. But the way Hughes writes and the vocabulary he uses, the reader can feel his voice saying these words and it makes you want to keep reading, if not these poems then any of his other works. He even denounces a prominant member of his own race, Booker T. Washington for saying "seperate as the fingers" referring to blacks and whites. The most important line of all 3 poems, I believe, Is in America, "The steel of freedom does not stain." I found it very inspiring and really brought the poem together.
The poem that most people my age are probably familiar wih is Harlem, known to many as A Dream Deferred. This poem speaks volumes of the struggles African Americans were going through during the civil rights movement. The poem is short and to the point but it packs a lot of history into 11 lines. The most powerful line is no doubt the italicized last line "or does it explode?". Now depending on your mood, this could be taken very negatively or it can be seen as an inspiration. This was written when Hughes was almost 50 so he has pretty much found his niche in life, so it's interesting to read a poem about dreaming big and wondering where those unused dreams go.
I think Hughes was a stepping stone for every poet or story teller out there because he pushed peoples buttons and inspired so many other people with his words.

Young Goodman Brown: Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude means the appearance of being true or real. This is what Young Goodman Brown was going through during his "journey" through the woods. What business would a seemingly normal Puritan man have in the depths of the forest late at night?
Nathaniel Hawthorne's take on Goodman Brown's journey through the woods is quite a dark twisted story of Brown's past and his family secrets and his future. However, the main theme is Brown questioning his faith. The fact that Hawthorne named Brown's wife Faith, is a huge symbol/ foreshadowing to the rest of the story. "And Faith, as his wife was named..." is a huge precursor to what Hawthorne wants the reader to think as they read the story. Also this double entendre of a phrase "Faith kept me back a while...", is a very obvious clue that Hawthorne has struggled with his own faith in his family. As many people know, Nathaniel Hawthorne's family were largely involved with the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne has condemned their involvement and it shows in his writing.

As I was reading, I noticed some of the vocabulary used by Hawthorne was very telling that this entire story may in fact be a dream or hallucination of the characters. For example, the words used to describe the person Brown is meeting are "figure"and "appearance" and "shape". It's as if Brown is dreaming and this "shape" is what his subconscious has made up for him. All these symbols and hidden meanings in Young Goodman Brown are all part of an extended, intricate allegory.

Position Paper

One thing I have learned from the research writing process that I will use for future papers is that is important to prepare. The hardest part was figuring out which topic to research. I knew which side of every topic I was on I just had to pick one. In order to even begin an eight to ten page paper, you need to set up some parameters for your topic. Guidelines help lead you in the right direction in regards to your view on a topic. If the topic is too broad or general, it is easy to get lost in your own writing and nothing will make any sense. For example, if your topic is poverty in the US, there should be a theme of that topic that is going to be the focus of your paper, i.e. how much and where has poverty grown in the past decade. Once I took a position on my topic, it was easier to conduct my research because I knew what I was looking for. Before I started writing I went through books and articles about my topic and pulled quotes and statistics that supported my position. This is where my detailed outline came in handy because I could easily place my quotes in the appropriate paragraphs, then build my argument around those facts. I structured my paper so that there was a good amount of quotes from the naysayer side of my topic, but carefully selected info that enhanced my position.

The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock Prompt #1

I agree more with the critical essay by Charles Walcutt. T.S Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is somewhat confusing to read but if you focus on what he is saying and where he is and what he is doing, it's really not too complicated. Referring to these line in Eliot's poem "Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets/And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes/Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?..." Walcutt says "these otherwise puzzling lines make easy sense" which they do because they are fairly straight forward. It's true you can find a hidden meaning or allusion in every line, but Eliot's poem is really just a nervous, scattered dialogue in his head. Walcutt also describes Eliot's character of Prufrock of being "so unsure of himself" as well as being shy and feeling inadequate to accomplish what he wants to do, which is presumably "propose" to this woman. "And should I then presume?/ And how should I begin?" these lines make a strong argument for Walcutts point of view because Prufrock is second guessing himself and shows little confidence in actually proposing to this woman. Also, not mentioned much in Walcutt's essay are the very descriptive lines of Prufrock describing his insecurities about they way he looks. "With a bald spot in the middle of my hair", "My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin", and "(They will say:"But how his arms and legs are thin!")". A man who wants to have a brief sexual encounter with a woman as Bruce Hayman's essay suggests, wouldn't second guess his looks for a one time encounter. However, I do agree with Hayman that Eliot did suffer from "sexual repression", but the entire poem is hardly about a one night stand. Even though Eliot was only 30 years old when Prufrock was written, these is much more meaning behind this simple yet complex piece of literature than just a sexual desire.

**above picture is one of many images of Dante's Inferno. The epigraph of Prufrock had a quote from Inferno***

3 student papers

Highlights

1. The first essay was good, easy to read and straight forward. Nothing was too off topic.

2. The second one has a lot of good facts about the authors life and ties them into their topic which allows for the reader to have good background info.

3. The last essay i enjoyed the topic of the paper, it was something that kept me reading. I like that he used current events and recognizable names and quotes.

Low lights:
1. The first one seemed like she didn't give enough of her position, but just packed the paper with research ABOUT her position.

2. Although using big portions of an autobiography, it sometimes bogs down the paper with facts that aren't important.
3. The last essay, while interesting to me personally, was a bit casual in regards to referencing gossip in Hollywood. It could have been a bit more professional and used more appropriate language.

Overall, i think i can uses these samples to guide me in the right direction in regards to structure of my position paper. It helps to know where to place quotes and how to build a paragraph around it.

What is love, baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver was a a thought provoking read i thought. I finished the story the same way the charachters did, "i could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyones heart..." (684) This story really makes you think about what your personal beliefs on love are. Does it even exist? and if so what kinds of love are there? As mentioned in the story, there is carnal love, sentimental love, and spiritual love. Or as I call them, BS, BS, and more BS. But that's just me. I walked away thinking all this love talk is crap because of the way Terri kept insisting that the man who beat her and almost ended her life, "loved her". I was getting angry just like Mel was as she kept trying to defend her relationship with that monster.

I think Mel and I am on the same page sort of because he was in shock about the old fart who was depressed " because he couldn't look at the fucking woman."(683) How does one fall in love so deeply that not having a visual of that person breaks your heart and sends you into a depression! I think this old fart needs to take some lessons from Louise Mallard in The Story of an Hour.

So in conlusion, i think Carver wrote this piece to get his feelings out about what he's talking about when he talks about love! Tres interessant!

*This is what i'm talkin bout when i talk about love!

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

I really enjoyed Kate Chopins three short stories. As a woman, reading them, i felt i understood how she feels about love and marriage. I liked that in the end of all the stories it was all about the power women have over men.

The Storm is a story very ahead of its time I believe. The way Calixta, with no hesitation, allowed herself to have a quick sexy afternoon with Alcee is not something i would picture a woman doing given the time period. I noticed that Chopin only described what Calixta looked like and never said anything about what the man she was sleeping with felt or looked like. Also, the fact that Calixta just went about her day with her husband and child like nothing ever happened says a lot about what Chopin wants the reader to think. It made me think Calixta was thinking like a man and just wanted that one afternoon of passion. Truly a story made for a woman by a woman.

The Story of an Hour is my favorite of the three. I love that Louise was not shy about expressing how happy she was to be "Free! Body and soul free!" from her husband. It makes Mr.Mallard look like a real shitty husband if you ask me! "She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long."(660) Wow, what a slap in the face that is! I was so happy for Louise finally getting her independence and being able to start a new life all for herself! Until Mr. Mallard showed up and killed her with his presence. Unfortunately the husband will never know she died because the sight of him alive was so disturbing she'd rather be dead. But Chopin freed her anyway, death before dishonor right!!!

Desiree's Baby was interesting. First let me say that Armand must have be white as snow to not see that his skin was darker than most white folks. Anyway, again given the time period of 1892, I am not surprised that Desiree just did whatever Armand told her to do and obviously being a man he never would have believed that she was 100% white and he was the one with the black in his family. This story is a big middle finger to men. A screw you I was right all along type story. Although put much more eloquently than that, i think that was what Chopin was aiming for. I also identified personally to this story a lot because i am half black and I can't imagine someone i love, let alone have a child with, despising me for that!

Chopin was one brave chick to write these provocative,strong, sexy stories in her time.m No wonder none would publish her!

LA struggles

1. What was difficult about the Lit analysis paper? Why?

• Well first it's hard (for me) to complete a paper longer than a page.
• The real difficulty was not creating the thesis, but writing a whole paper around my thesis that made sense. It was obvious with my rough draft that weaving my ideas together into one cohesive paper was not happening.
• The story I chose Young Goodman Brown was not the easiest. I really had to sit down and read every sentence in that story as if I was writing a paper about each sentence. Reading it over and over again helped me pull quotes and find meaning in those quotes that supported what I wanted to write about.

2. Do you expect to have this difficulty with the CA paper?

• Thanks for asking! Yes i do expect to have the same difficulties. Mainly because like i said before, this has to be longer than 1 page and this paper involves analyzing 2 or more stories or poems.
• Creating cohesive ideas and focusing on one point rather than jumping from idea to idea will still be a challenge, but that is what rough drafts are for!
• However, because of what i now know from struggling with the LA, i think i will start to prepare much earlier for the CA. i.e. not was until a week before to figure out what i want to analyze.

3. How will you negotiate this difficulty?

• Read the stories over and over and over and over....and over until i know pinpoint exactly what i want to compare between the two.
• Test out several different thesis sentences. I found myself creating 1 strong thesis in the LA then thinking i had to stick to it, so it made writing the paper more difficult.
• Read MLM for some ideas on what to do and not to do in CA papers.

Like Mother like Daughter? I think not.

We all know the saying "I want to give my child the life I never had" or some form of it, but what if your child doesn't want whatever it is that you didn't have? What if they just want to blaze their own trail with whatever it is you can provide for them?

I am grateful to Amy Tan for writing Two Kinds because in some way everyone can relate to it, whether you are the stage mom-ish parent or the resistant, seemingly ungrateful child, certain parts of this story hit home for every reader. I for one, at one point was the bitter, ungrateful child. Now being an adult (sort of) I really sympathize with the mother because it is so hurtful when all you want is for your child to be their best and they keep rejecting you.

Tan starts the story off at 9 years old watching Shirly Temple and in fact being just as excited as her mother about her possibly becoming some sort of prodigy. She describes herself as being "like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity", in other words she was starting her journey to child prodigy-dom. Well all good things must come to an end right? Later on in the story, after many failed tests given by her mother Tan says "something inside of me began to die". I found this statement very profound because it seemed so grown up of her to reckgonize in herself that this is not what she wants, "I won't be what I'm not", she says. So from that point on the story, unfortunately, takes a sour turn. Theres no more piano, no more over bearing mother, just life. Tan tells us she dropped out of college and never really accomplished her dreams, which may or may not still have happened had she had a little more respect for her mother, but then again she was a child being pushed into something she was not confident in herself doing.

Cut to the end, where the mother has died and Tan is in her 30s and is cleaning out the piano when she finds the two sheets of music aptly named "Pleading Child" and "Perfectly Contented". I quickly recognized this as a metaphor for their mother daughter relationship. Tan's childhood was less than ideal with the stage mom and their adult relationship is what Tan would have liked when she was a child, for her mother let her do her thing and just be a normal mom.

On a side note, I think this story is rich in educating the reader about the work ethic of immigrants and how they pass that on to their children. Children of immigrants, who are born in America, typically have great respect for their parents who worked so hard to build the American dream for them. However as Tan proves, it doesn't always transfer generations... at least not right away.

** Above is a picture of Amy Tan and her mother. Click here for a great biography of Tan.

Pardon my french but...WTF

I started reading The Yellow Wallpaper last night and I thought it

was just another run of the mill woman-in-peril type story. However, after finishing the last paragraph, I must admit, I was scared to be alone! Like I had just finished watching a horror movie. When Gilman writes at the end "I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder"(MLM p.937), I imagined this demonic, crazy looking woman a la the excorsist looking back at me, which then resulted in me mouthing to myself a long exaggerated "whaaaaaaat?".

So back in the begining, the narrator is apparently suffering from a hysterical tendency (which today means it was that time of the month for her), her husband John, decides that with all his great medical expertise, she should just be put in a room with wallpaper so bad she describes it as "committing every artistic sin" (MLM p.927). She goes on and on about how horrendous this wall paper is, yet after about a month, after being on bed rest and not being able to write down her thoughts, she says shes "really getting quite fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper"(MLM p.930). Now this is when I believe she starts losing her marbles. She is so intrigued by the patterns on the paper that she spends all hours of the day and night just trying to get from point A to B. It's really quite sickening that this all could have been avoided if her husband would have paid more attention to what was really going on with her.

Let's talk about symbols shall we!? So obviously the main symbol here is this damn wall paper. It is the bane of her existence during her time in the house yet it becomes her saviour. She BECOMES the wall paper and the wallpaper becomes a part of who she is. The pa

per is slowly coming off the walls which can speak to her sanity slowly dilapidating. Speaking of hallucinating, the narrator in this story reminded me of the main charachter in Franz Kafkas brilliant novella The Metamorphosis. Both these stories really tap into ones own psyche during times of emotional distress.

So to conclude, The Yellow Wallpaper is a testament to how far psychological medicine has come since the time period of when this was written. Historicism plays a huge part in analyzing this story, however feminism is prevelant because there is no mention of any female doctors or even females giving their opinions as to why Gilman is going through these emotions.

In other words ladies, don't let a man tell you how you feel! (unless it's a real doctor! then you should probably listen up!)

True love or great sex? What's going on Sharon Olds?!

So today we went over the poem by Sharon Olds called True Love , and I didn't really think much of it until we really started deconstructing it line by line as a class. For starters, the opening line is very alluring, "in the middle of the night when we get up after making love". How can you not keep reading after that! The rest of the poem talks about how the narrator, (who I concluded was in fact a woman due to her trouble walking down the hall after making love), and her husband are bound together in various ways using similes and metaphors. As i get to the end of the poem, when I read the "I cannot see beyond it" lines, I automatically get this sinking feeling because I interpret that as though their relationship stops being good after they stop touching. However after the class discussion I realized that this poem is in fact about true love and I believe Olds not being able to "see beyond it" is a testament to her deep love and admiration for her husband, and her not being able to see past the love they share. Oh and apparently they have great sex.

Overall, as short as it was, this poem was really powerful and touching. The enjambment style that was used really kept the poem flowing and made it easy to read.

(Above is a picture of what I consider to be Olds' poem in human form. And heres a link to and extremely cheesy montage of the two pictured above. I repeat EXTREMELY cheesy)