Humanities Lit Blog

Invisible Man

2005-04-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is about an African American man who struggles through racial equality. It is interesting to watch how he grows and changes throughout the novel. Especially when he struggles through his identity from the past and the present. My favorite part is when he refuses the pork chops and grits because he felt as though he was being picked out and stereotyped, but when he is told to sing because "all colored people can sing" he brushes it off and doesn't feel as though he is being stereotyped and blames it on the fact that the man must be drunk. He is very confused about who he is and goes back and forth from being ashamed of who he is and then being proud of it. I feel that this novel can still apply to the issues of today. African Americans and other minority groups are still stereotyped and struggle with finding their own identity or place in a society that is very judgemental. It is not as bad as it was in the novel or in the past, but racial equality will always be an issue, especially in such a diverse society.

The House of the Spirits

2005-04-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

The most ideological character in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits is Esteban Trueba. He yells at Blanca for getting pregnant by a peasant, but he does the same thing. He has slept and impregnated women of a lower class. He thinks since she is a woman and his daughter that she doesn't have the same right to do exactly what he has already done. When Clara confronts him about this he explodes because he knows that she is completely right. He doesn't want to admit that he is wrong for yelling at Blanca and destroying what she has with Pedro Tercero Garcia. It is easy to judge other people and tell them that they have done and made the wrong decisons. I have done the same things Esteban Trueba has done, but definitely not to extent that he has. I'm sure everyone has judged someone else for their mistakes, but have forgotten that they are also at fault and have done them too.

Duplessis

2005-03-20T17:05:00.000-08:00

In my group we had to examine Draft 47: Printed Matter, verse 7. It was a very confusing poem to read and it was hard to understand where actually she was going with it. But we put together some of the words and phrases, and figured that maybe it was about a newspaper and the process of writing and putting it together. We came to this conclusion becuase of the words Xeroxing, fax, and violence. A certain headline for a newspaper was, "Who put those guns in Children's hands?" And we came up with four different ideas of what was in the poem and what it could have been about: 1. newspaper/headlines 2. Headlines are usually bad 3. spoken in a different language 4. Play on words "ecco" "echo" and "root" "route" I'm still not exactly sure what it was about, but Duplessis definitely has interesting poems and ideas.

Gregorio Cortez

2005-03-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

The Legend of Gregorio Cortez was interesting because the hero was actually different from the typical heros in the majority of tall tales or folk tales. The hero of the story was Mexican and he was avenging the death of his brother. He then became an outlaw becuase he went killed all of the men who were chasing after him. It was funny how one man managed to escape that many times from the law. They couldn't catch one man and were afraid of him because of all the stories and rumors that they have heard about him. The section of the variants were the most interesting because the stories were always changing. None of them were exactly the same, but they had the same basic idea. They were kind of like the game, whisper down the lane. Each story was passed along and changed into a new version by the way the author wanted the story to end up.

Antigone

2005-03-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

If one were to take Antigone and make it into a modern movie, using our cultural issues of today, then it would definitley come out to be a very intersting plot. An issue of today would be interracial relationships and how our culture looks at them. The casting for the couple would be Halle Berry and Brad Pitt. They would play a couple who has fallen in love and each of their families do not approve. Their families look at it as unnatural and are worried about how the public will look at them. The parents still look at blacks and whites as being different and believe that they will be faced with many problems if they were to be married. Especially when they decide to have children. Their child will have a hard time growing up and will find it difficult to be able to connect with each part of his race. Our society will look at the child to be different and somewhat of an outcast. Berry and Pitt do not care about the struggles they may have to face or what their families have to say about their relationship. Unlike most of our culture and society, they don't see each other as being black or white. They see their relationship as beautiful and can only hope that their families will someday accept their love and can change the way that the public looks at them.

Blood Wedding

2005-02-20T17:59:00.000-08:00

I thought Blood Wedding was a very interesting play about love and betrayal. The Mother loves her son, the Bridegroom, very much because he is all that she has left of her family. She is uncertain of the marriage because of the Bride's past relationship and her mother's reputation. When both of the families meet for the first time the bride's father is very happy about the union of land, but the Bride isn't as excited and happy as one should be. From the very beginning I figured that the Bride and Leonardo would get together, but I didn't expect for the Bridegroom to die also. This play was full of symbolism and made me take a closer look at the different characters and scences. The only thing I was suprised about in the end was the fact that the Bride wasn't punished for what she had done. I thought that Leonardo's wife was going to take revenge for the fact that she took away her husband and her child's father.

The Awakening

2005-02-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

In, The Awakening, Mrs. Pontellier is struggeling to find herself and figure out what she wants in life. She isn't happy with her husband and even her children can't fulfill her needs of happiness. When she was spending time with Robert I definitely thought that they were going to run away with each other, and was kind of surprised that they didn't. They had so much chemistry together and it didn't seem like she cared what happened with her husband just as long as she was finally happy.

I was very surprised by the ending because I thought that she was finally figuring out what she wanted to be happy. And the thing that I thought she wanted was Robert. I liked the ending because it wasn't what I was expecting and it wasn't a they lived happily ever after type of ending. In a way I feel like she got what she wanted to make her happy and that was getting away from all of life's confusions and troubles.

The Yellow Wallpaper

2005-01-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

While reading The Yellow Wallpaper, I didn't know that it was a story about post-pardum depression. I just thought that the women was going crazy. I liked how Gilman, at first glance, tried to make you think that the women was really just in a nursery. But I do believe that she was in some type of mental institute because of the barred windows and the bed being nailed to the floor.

The relationship between the woman and her husband was a bit strange. He took care of her and was her physician, but she was getting to be afraid of him. While I was reading that part of the story, I thought that maybe he was being abusive or that she was becoming scared of everyone around her.

I feel that the question of author/authority wouldn't be important if Gilman hadn't gone through something like this. If she just made it all up I don't feel that it would be as powerful and I wouldn't connect to it as much. But finding out that it is true on some level makes me feel more moved by the story and feel more for what she had been through.

Frederick Douglass

2005-01-24T13:30:00.000-08:00

I thought that the selected chapters that we have read were very interesting. The way in which Douglass wrote about his life as a slave was impressive. He really makes the reader connect to his life and see how much pain and suffering he had been through. While I was reading it I found it so crazy and hard to believe how hard it must have been to live during such a horrible time.

I loved the part where he finally learned how to read and write. Something so everyday that we take for granted was such a priviledge for him to know how to do. He even took it a step further and tried to teach other slaves the same priviledge. It was sad to see that maybe reading made it worse for him because now he knew that there was so much more out there. But I do feel that maybe it could have been a good thing because it made him hold on to his life and keep the hope that he would someday be free and be able to the kind of life that the slaveowners had taken away from him.

In class, while we were discussing author/authority, I think that this reading wouldn't be as powerful if it were written by someone who didn't go through all of the things Douglass went through. If I were to find out, after reading this, that it was all made up or written by a white man I would think that it was a good read, but it definitely wouldn't have the same effect. To know that Douglass had went through all of those horrible stories and came out alive is unbelieveable.

practice post

2005-01-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

practice post