A Great Learning Experience

Taking English 102 made me realize that literature could be really fun and rewarding.  With the discussion in class and the explanation from the professor, boring readings turned out to be interesting in some way.  Our first reading assignment was “A Clean Well Lighted Place.”  It is a short story that has many hidden meaningful lessons that can be learned.   One lesson I learn from this story is that we all need to have a purpose of what we want in order to live a meaningful life without any regrets in the future.  Then our professor introduced us to “A Rose for Emily,” “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and A Doll’s House.  These stories are similar in that males have total power over females.  This is due to the fact the norm of the society created in which women were being treated as the second class citizen.  The social inequality in jobs and social inequality at home caused women to be confined in their houses as the housewives.  Although these stories happened in the nineteenth century, the social inequality in jobs and social inequality at home still exist today.  Women working the same jobs as men are still receiving less as comparing to men.  As we moved on to poetry, I find that it is very complicated to comprehend what the poets were trying to imply.  With the discussion in class and doing my own research, I find poetry understandable and meaningful.    Our last studied was on epic and fantasy play.  I really enjoyed reading “The Tempest” because it has a happy ending.  I don’t know why, but I always love a happy ending.  I did not like Prospero in the beginning because he appears to be evil.  He uses his power to control Ariel, the spirit.  However, it turns out in the end that he is a noble man who would careless about vengeance.  In conclusion, I am glad that I took this class and it has helped me understand literature more than ever before.  Thank You Professor Carrol-Adler.

The Tempest, A Lighthearted play

I would describe The Tempest as a lighthearted play because the play is more optimistic and hopeful than tragedy.  Prospero's intent was to redeem his throne as the king.  He had no intention of harming any of his enemies.  He even tried to create a scenario in which a father, Elonso, had to go through the thougtht of losing his son, Ferdinand, forever.  He wanted Elonso to understand how he felt when he was being banished with Miranda outside on a sea.  Although there was comedy as well as revenge in this play, it all ended with a happy ending and lesson learned.

A Doll's House, The Confinement of Male Dominance

The theme from A Doll's House is similar to "A Rose for Emily" and "The Yellow Wallpaper."  The women were being trapped in a house and had limited of rights.  Each of these women were married, but it did not seem that their husband loved them enough.  They each had to be confined by the authority of their husband.  Tovald was supposed to be her protector, but revealed himself as a selfish man who value reputation over Nora's reputation.  John was supposed to be the narrator's doctor and husband, but revealed himself as male domination over his wife.  Emily was being confined by her father's belief.  She could not get marry without her father's approval.  He controlled who she would be able to marry to.  The stories portrayed these woman who had limited of rights and to be confined to the male domination.  They each found their way to overcome it.

Oedipus, A Tragic Figure

Oedipus is a tragic figure.  He lived his life morally.  When he learned from the oracle that he would murder his father and sleep with his mother, he left his home.  This suggests that he was a moral person.  He was willing to give up a good life style in order to not commit a sin.  When he learned that there was a plague, he was ready to find ways to end it.   This suggests that he cared for his people.  When he learned that Jocasta killed herself, he blinded himself for he could not bear to face reality after he found out that he commited a sin.  All of the characteristics above tells us that Oedipus was good person.  Because his of his ill fate, he had to suffer in life. For a king to give up most of everything, even his eyes, should definitely be considered as a tragic figure.

Moral Issue to Drama

I find that translating a moral issue into a drama could be very challenging.  The first part is to figure out how many characters will be in the drama, which is simple.  However, writing the script for each characters is challenging.  This step requires a lot of time consuming in order to be creative.  When we were trying to translate a moral issue into a drama in the classroom, we had very limited of time.  Thus, it was challenging for us.  We kept on making changes even until we acted out.  The good part about acting out on stage made me realize that it was not as easy as I thought initially.  Hence, we made mistake and learned from it.  It was a good experience for me.

My View on "Daddy"

"Daddy" is a poem written by Sylvia Plath about love, confinement, and freedom.  After doing research on "Daddy," I found out that Plath had a similar life and circumstances as the poem that she wrote.  As the matter of fact, this was her last poem she wrote before she commited suicide.  The more I researched, the more I felt sorry for this poet.  She was very creative in her work and it was easy to follow and understand.  After doing this paper, I felt that I was able to undertand poetry more than I thought otherwise.  Thus, if there is another assignment on poetry, I would not be afraid as I was before writing a paper about htis poem.

Poetry and Its' Meaning

I have not read poems in a while.  The thought of reading it interested in me in some way.  It is a whole new different interpretation as compare to the short stories.  Although some poems are shorter than short stories, the hidden meaning of it is not short at all.  When I read "The Flea" by John Donne, my reaction was that it was quite a simple poem that was written similar to a short stories.  It seemed easy to understand.  However, the discussion in class about this poem blew me away.  My thought of a simple flea is not simple at all.  The man in the poem actually used the flea as a reason to lure a woman to sleep with him.  However, I don't quite understand the relationship between the man and the woman in the poem.  How well do they know each other in order for him to be brave enough to seduce her?  "Cinderella" by Anne Sexton is a great poem and is most accessible to me.  It is easy to understand since I have seen and known the story very well. 

Understanding of The Short Stories

The process of drafting, revising, and working in small groups helped me alot.  Rarely do I have the opportunity to have the classmates check my paper and give me more ideas on how to build a stronger thesis.  It was very fun and I had a great learning experience.  Different classmates have different ideas and to be able to learn from them benefited me a lot.  Also, I really enjoyed reading others' paper and gained additional knowledge from their writing.  Overall, the process of drafting, revising, and working in small groups helped me in writing a better paper than I would have done it myself.

"Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible"

This would mean that Ivan was just a typical average Joe.  He studied hard to attend law school.  He only married just because he had to fit in with the norm of the society.  He had a mid-life crisis with his wife that caused him to stay further away from her with the excused of working.  Because he spend more time at work then at home, he was able to get promotion and eventually became a judge.  All of these characteristics were simple but terrible in some ways.  He did things base on what he believed others wanted him to do, not from what he wanted to do.  Thus, he lived a misery life that in the end he had to question whether he had done any wrongdoings.  If he had accomplished all the things that he wanted to, then he would not have to be hesitated to face death.  In the end, his life was most terrible because he lived for others and not for himself.

First person narrative point of view on "The Yellow Wallpaper"

The first person narrative point of view provides me a sense of the narrator’s thoughts and feeling.  Comparing to the third person point of view, the first person point of view was easier to understand from the main character’s thoughts.  I could feel her pain from the fact that her husband ignored her illness and her thoughts.  However, because this was a first person point of view, there were some disadvantages for me to understand the story.  The narrator kept on complaining how her husband careless about her, but the fact was that he took her to that rented house just to treat her illness.  He ignored her thoughts to make she thinks harder for herself.  Therefore, the first person point of view lacked of fairness in describing other characters’ action.

Significant of time in "A Rose for Emily"

In “A Rose for Emily,” it was confusing for any new readers to understand what was going on.  I was confused myself.  Time was the main confusion in the story.  The narrator, which was the third person, began telling the story with conclusion instead of the introduction.  It was quite an experience to read it at first.  I believe the narrator’s main purpose was to have the readers getting more involved with the story.  By knowing the conclusion first, readers would be forced into different thoughts of the story:   Who was Emily? Why did she die? They would have felt sorry for Emily.  Then the narrator would surprise the readers that Emily was not the victim of the story, but the murderer in the story.  I was shocked when I found out that the reason she killed Homer was so that he could stayed by her side forever.