We’re Halfway There! (Livin’ On A Prayer…)

Even with the clear Bon Jovi reference, we are still halfway through the semester. So far we have looked at every literary term I can cram into my skull (even if I couldn’t remember some on my mid-term…. {OOPS!}), read a few short stories, and read up on horror movies. I am actually pumped to move on to poetry and most of all drama. Don’t get me wrong the stories are amazing (better than reading up on history), but I am way more interested in the drama side of literature and poetry is in middle ground. Sometimes I wish Lit. classes were just drama oriented, but beggars can’t be choosers. 

Now we enter the crunch period of the semester. This is the beginning of the end of the year and I have a research paper and group project due at the end of the year plus a final sprinkled on top. This is like a crazy college literature sundae with me at the top as the cherry and Mrs. Sizemore as the happy person getting to eat it all up. I just hope its sweet and doesn’t leave a bad taste in her mouth. Though the research paper doesn’t scare me much, there is that constant nag in the back of my mind asking what its really supposed to be about. I’m a constantly confused person and even now as I chill on my bathroom tile I am confused where I am even going with this blog. I’ll be good though (I hope), because I know I am not alone I have other classmates probably in the same position as I and are just winging it as much as I am. 

Either way I’ll be just fine, I mean i’ve been worse off and gotten through it with just a few bumps and bruises. By the end of the year when the final blog I write comes out it’ll probably be some weird Queen reference stating that we made it and that we are the champions, you know me.

White elephants?

And in other news there is a new topic up for blog this week.

Have you ever read the story Hills like White Elephants? If so you know a bit about the author Ernest Hemingway. You know that he writes a whole lot of dialogue, earning him the title of “Master of Dialogue.” He was raised in a strict household with 5 other siblings and with high expectations. Ernest was very intelligent and was writing from a young age. He actually published his first literary work at the age of seventeen. From there Hemingway became a journalist and then an ambulance driver in Europe during World War I.

In this story the bulk of the text was dialogue between a man and woman speaking of a solution to an unplanned pregnancy. Though I didn’t figure that out right away. After reading it about three times I had to finally look it up and finally the fourth read through made sense.

In this story as well there are many different symbols to look for like the main one which is the hills. She says the hills look like white elephants, which shed light upon the elephant in the room meaning that there is something that no one wants to talk about.  Another form of symbolism in this short story is the “jig” they speak of. This jig is telling the reader that the two characters dance around each other in the dialogue.

A Good Man is Hard to Find. (Isn’t that the truth?)

Okay, new story for a new week.

This story required about zero percent of thought to figure out the ending. I only really enjoyed it because I was right about the ending. I feel that is the only thing that kept me reading as well, the curiosity that i felt to find out if I was right or not. The ending was a weird twist though.

*Careful, Spoilers*

In the ending the grandmother realizes that the antagonist is one of her children and in that moment of realization she was shot in the chest. 

With this I think the ending was a bit of a cliche to kill or be killed situation I felt that I knew she was either going to die or he himself was going to be emotionally “Killed”.This man was already in an emotionally hardened state and her realizing that she was his mother or in any such way connected to him in that way would soften that and him being a criminal couldn’t take that chance.

The grandmother though is a very almost manipulative person i think because I only really read her saying something trying to change someones mind. She never was defined as a loving and caring individual in the story.

I’ve also wanted to state the places that tipped me off to, or really showed me, the ending.

Like how at the beginning she went on and on about how there was an escaped con and that he could kill them if they went over to Florida. I guess its a common flaw in writing, the author states something about 4 or 5 times and boom there’s the ending. Its common in a lot of stories, but names do not come to mind as of now so please do not ask.Also another place where I was “Tipped off” was when she began talking of the secret panel. At this point i pretty much new that something was going to happen, mostly because she said she wasn’t telling the truth.  Most of the time the lies that are told in stories lead to something going wrong. Why wouldn’t this one?

Poe Preference

Hello again. Time for a quick look at one of the most depressing (if i am to be brutally honest) authors I have ever encountered. Edgar Allan Poe was destined for a life in the arts mostly because both of his parents were actors. Though shortly after his sister was born his father left and then once he turned three his mother died of Tuberculosis which sent his sister and himself into foster care. We read two of his stories this week, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of The House of Usher. I’ve been asked which i preferred between the two and my answer was The Tell-Tale Heart by a landslide. 

Now don’t get me wrong they are both great stories, but The Fall of The House of Usher rambled on for what seemed like forever. I finally just lost interest completely and had to find someone else to explain the gist of what he was saying with each sentence. 

The Tell-Tale Heart just kept my interest the entire time and was quick to the point. I also could understand what he was saying in the story. He kept it (even though it is a cliche’) short, sweet, and to the point. I’d rather know what the story is saying than have to try and decode it like the Da Vinci Code. 

A Rose for the Yellow Wallpaper.

I’ve been asked which of two stories I liked from my reading this week. I have never had a harder choice, well in my college career that is. I’ve had to choose which gothic story I liked better. A Rose for Emily or The Yellow Wallpaper. And if I was to realistically choose it would be The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Mrs. Gilman suffered from postpartum depression from the birth of her first child. She emulated this into her writing and wrote her most famous tale in her career, The Yellow Wallpaper.  I’ve always had a sort of soft spot for insanity and the process of how it tears down the most precious things in your mind and then makes you go and take them away from yourself.Like how the narrator goes from loving John to fearing him and then finally to just separating herself mentally from him so much that she can’t even worry any more. Though one must not forget about how the woman goes from hating this disgustingly yellow colored wallpaper in her room to being in “love” with it and tearing it down, claiming that is herself and that she could not be put back together again. This story takes a real issue in the hardest time in a woman’s struggle and especially the time in which it tool place. The story took place within the time of male domination, to put it strongly, probably around the late 20’s early 30’s and gave the reader insight into what really could happen behind firmly shut doors. I probably will never understand what it must have been like to be put into a house that scares you and mystifies you for months without being able to go out and do anything. Nothing to keep your mind busy, so for her she had to make something to make her mind busy. She turned to this ugly wallpaper and began to make her own world to escape to and with that she turned herself from this sad individual with no one to talk to into a crazy woman with friends that could listen to her and play with her.

You have to admit that this woman did what anyone stuck in one room long enough would have done.  You can’t blame her.