Translations

I thought that reading Translations was a nice close to the semester.  I had read a similar story in my English class here freshmen year and I enjoyed Translations just as much as I had enjoyed that story.  I find the name of a place fascinating.  A name can tell you so much about a place and what it  means to the people who live there.  Doing what the British did - taking the Gaellic names of all the Irish cities and towns and hills and mountains and Anglicizing them - I think helped take away part of the charm of Ireland.  Gaellic is a unique language and the English showed little respect for it by just barging in and manipulating the people into changing the name of the place in which they live.  Did they not realize that they were taking away the identity of the Irish people?  Did they know and just not care?  Should the Irish people have tried to do more to stop it?

Power

On Tuesday, we talked about the power in Power during class.  Another example that I came up with was when the police came to take Ama away for killing the panther.  The passage read, "Ama knew they would come.  She is ready for them.  It was part of the bargain all along - or should I call it destiny" (76).  Ama did what she did and she did not back down from it or try to hide from it.  In her own way, I think she created her own power by not running away from the police.  

Short Paper 2

Before I began writing Short Paper 2, I was extremely skeptical about the assignment.  Being an Accounting major, I don't usually have to be too creative.  Most assignments I have have a correct answer and is worked out logically.  So I thought I was going to have a problem being creative.  But once I decided on which of the works I was going to write on and I really thought about what I wanted to add to "The Yellow Wallpaper," I was not as scared of the assignment as I thought I was going to be.  In fact, I have a feeling I am going to enjoy writing it.  I have a lot of ideas as to what happened to the narrator after the story was finished and I am going to enjoy forming those ideas and putting them to paper.

Lucy

I just finished reading the novel Lucy. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It goes fast and I like Jamaica Kincaid's style of writing. She has created an extremely complex character in Lucy herself. Lucy has a lot of emotions boiling up inside her, especially with feelings about her mother and father. I don't particularly think that Lucy had a tough childhood, although she did witness a lot around her that was difficult, such as her father's other women and what her father's childhood did to him. Nevertheless, Lucy seems like an extremely angry person to me. While in America, she continues to lash out and while she may not always tell people what she is thinking, she is certainly not thinking positive thoughts about them. She also develops an odd relationship with Mariah too. She loves and hates Mariah at the same time, just as she feels towards her mother. I feel as though she takes a little bit of her anger at her mother out on Mariah. And I do believe that she does love her mother; in some ways, I think she is just a normal teenage girl taking her anger and confusion at the world out on her mother in order to make herself feel better.

This Blessed House

I found "This Blessed House" to be one of the most interesting readings we have had this semester. I did find it frustrating that the story did not really seem to have much of a point to it and that it also just kind of ended. But at the same time, I found it to be easy reading. I found the contrasting characters of Sanjeev and Twinkle to be especially interesting. Althought it seemed that Sanjeev treated Twinkle as if she was a child at time, I thought that her character was free-spirited and full of life. She did as she pleased without regard to what anyone else thought of her. I thought Sanjeev cared entirely too much what people thought of him and that doing so made him appear on edge all the time. I do believe that having somewhat of a contrasting character between two people is important in any relationship, but the way Sanjeev treated Twinkle made me wonder how much Sanjeev really cared for her or whether he was just listening to the others around him in deciding to marry her.

More O Film Viewing

I was extremely frustrated by the end of the film. I did not find the ending to be very believable. Not only was the plan not very well thought out, there were too many holes that any normal person would have questioned. In real life, I do not believe that Odin would have gone along with it. First of all, deciding to murder someone because you're jealous is not a very good reason, especially since Odin had no real evidence. Second, I feel as though Odin should have been smarter and questioned why Hugo was so interested in helping him. Third, there would have been no way for them to carry out this plan because I do not think that they would have been able to go to the game on their own. Even if they were suspended, they would still have to ride with the rest of the team to the game.

Even though the plan clearly blew up in their faces, I think in the end Hugo still got what he wanted. I think he did probably know that the plan wouldn't have worked. But attention was finally being given to him. People were finally going to be focused on him. And that was his ultimate goal.

O Film Viewing

Right now, we are watching the film O in class. I knew that it was a modern spinoff of Shakespeare's Othello, but I did not realize how close the storyline of the film would follow the plot of Shakespeare's play. Knowing this however, makes the film seem a little silly and outlandish. I don't know too many guys who would give a girl a scarf as a present. I am looking forward to the conclusion of the film. I feel as though it may turn out to be slightly on the ridiculous side and not very realistic.

One thing that I do like about the film though is that you can see how easily Hugo is able to plant a seed of doubt in Odin's mind about Desi and Michael. I like that the film gives a reason for Hugo's behavior (his being on some type of steroid and the trouble he is having with his father). It makes Hugo seem more human. In the play, Iago just seems to be a cold, heartless person. The film gives Hugo more of a life and emotion. It is also easy to see how the fight that Desi and Odin got into when she couldn't find the scarf was a misunderstanding on both of their parts. As a viewer, it is extremely frustrating because I can see where they both think that they are right and that because they are not communicating with each other clearly, they are only making the situation worse and exactly what Hugo wants.

Othello Film Viewings

Last class, we viewed the final scene of Othello in a move made recently.  I enjoyed watching the film, although like most of Shakespeare's work, I found the scene somewhat cheesily overdramatic.  I find the character of Othello especially to be overdramatic.  He is overdramatic when he accuses Desdemona of cheating on him and refuses to listen to her when she trys to tell him that she has been faithful.  He is equally dramatic when he finds out that she had in fact been telling the truth and feels the need to kill himself.

I am looking forward to watching the move "O" and seeing how that film differs from the one we saw in class and the one we saw on YouTube.  

Othello

Personally, I am not a huge fan of William Shakespeare. Even with footnotes, I really don't understand very much of what I'm reading. And I find a lot of what Shakespeare writes to be extremely depressing. Two people fall in love and one or both of them ends up dying. That seems to me to be the plot of most of Shakespeare's works.

The character of Othello is meant to be portrayed as a hero; someone who is brave, powerful, well-respected by those in his community, and someone who is deeply in love with his wife Desdemona. While Othello admits that he has not had a great education and therefore is not as intelligent as some, I feel as though Iago convinced him way too easily that Desdemona was cheating on him with Cassio. Iago never actually presented Othello with concrete evidence to back up his accusations simply because he did not have to. Othello just completely trusted him, something that I feel should have been obvious that he should not have done. So I feel as though the praise put on Othello by everyone around him was not always warranted.

I also feel that the way that people treated Desdemona was not warranted. People, especially her father, treated her as if she were a piece of glass unable to make any decisions on her own. I think that that perception of Desdemona is not true. I think she is a strong woman, capable of forming her own opinions and making her own decisions. I admire her spirit, refusing to back down and wanting to go with Othello to Cyprus. I like that she did not let her father push her around.

Girl, Interrupted film viewing

I viewed the film "Girl, Interrupted" on Monday evening for class. I had never seen the movie before and while it was not the kind of movie I would normally watch, I did rather enjoy it. I thought that most of the girls portrayed in it were completely nuts, but I also thought, just as Valerie did, that Susanna was not really ill. I think she was more or less just upset and confused about where she was in life and being around all of the other girls made her think she was even crazier. Once she realized this, she was able to help herself get better and eventually be released from the mental hospital.

One thing I found extremely interesting in the film was the appearance of Lisa. She always wore white or beige washed-out clothing, her skin was especially pale, and her hair was even a dull color. I think this was done on purpose to enhance the character. I also think the casting directors made the right decision hiring Angelina Jolie for the part because she played it well.

Something else that I found interesting about the film was a line that Susanna used at the very end of the film: "Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or life is. . . Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified." I think that in their own way, everyone is a little bit crazy whether they show it or not. I think the definition of normal is in the eye of the beholder. Can anyone really be classified as normal? What is normal? What is crazy?

The Yellow Wallpaper

I enjoyed reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". In fact, it was the reading that I have enjoyed the most so far. After I was through reading it, the first question on my mind was "What?" I thought the narrator in this piece was absolutely insane. She just went off on these tangents for the entire reading, mostly about yellow wallpaper, of all things. She imagined that it had an awful smell, that it reminded her of all the yellow things she'd ever seen - "not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things", that there was a woman hiding behind the paper, and that at night the wallpaper had bars across it. Although her husband was not aware of it because such a condition did not exist at the time, the reading talks of a baby that this woman just had. Clearly, she is suffering from post partum depression.

Yesterday, we discussed in class of the relationship between the narrator and her husband John who is a doctor. Although on the surface it appears that John is domineering and does not let the woman have a mind of her own and is constantly telling her what to do, I feel that it is just not that simple. It is clearly obvious at the end of the reading how much John cares about her because he is willing to knock down the bedroom door with an axe to get to her because he fears she is in trouble. I think that, like most men, he truely cares about her and thinks that he is helping her when in fact, because he thinks he knows best, he may be harming her more than helping her.

"A Room of One's Own"

I have enjoyed reading Viriginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own". Woolf was a woman who lived in a time where men were regarded as the superior sex and women should be "seen and not heard". Women did not have their own money and their own homes -- they went straight from their father's home to their husband's home. What I like about Woolf is how she went against the grain and she dared to be different from what others said she should be. She also had no problem saying what she thought of how men treated the women of her time. Woolf felt that it was okay for a woman to strike out on her own, but that in order to do so, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" as she states on page 4. These are things that men have and Woolf feels that a woman must also have these things in order to be able to be successful.

Viriginia Woolf is a beacon of hope to the women of her time. Where society said "You cannot", Woolf argued "We can." She realized the value of a woman and that a woman could contribute greatly to society. She said exactly what she was thinking and challenged the standards of the time.

My Metaphor For Writing

I thought long and hard about what would be my metaphor for writing. It's a lot harder to figure out than one would think. But I would have to say that I finally came to the conclusion that my metaphor for writing is a sunset on a beautiful day. There is no greater beauty than natural beauty and no greater beauty in writing than putting pen to paper and just writing what you feel. You can just sit there and watch the sun set on a beautiful, warm day and feel nothing but absolute contentment. This is the same way with writing. Sitting in a spot that makes you feel content and just writing whatever you want to write can be relaxing and calming. Once the feelings are on paper, they are gone from you. They can make you feel better. And even though the sun eventually sets, you can leave it knowing that it will be back again. In writing, you can always go back to your words and create more.