iupengl121-colleengalloway

Invisible Man

2005-04-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

The book Invisible Man is about a black man who was always told by white men that they can/will help him succeed in life, and that as long as he worked hard they would help him get to where he wanted to be. Throughout his life he was given many bad breaks. First he got thrown out of school for something that was not his fault and out of his control. Then he moved to New York to find work while under the impression that he could return to school in the fall, only to be told that this was a lie and that he better come up with a new plan. Then he is stripped of everything he knows when he is in an accident at the paint plant. After this he is recruted to join the Brotherhood to make speeches and to persuade the black communitys of New York. Throughout the entire story he feels as if he is working to better himself and that he is surrounded by people who want to see him succeed. Yet through each stage of his life, he finds that the only person he can truely count on is himself and that he can't really believe anyone. While in the Brotherhood, he finds that the white men are just using him to cause more havic in the black communities and to tear them down as a people. They lie to him and form him into their pupet. It isn't until his good friend is killed that he begins to catch on to their plan and it is then that he decides that he no longer wishes to be apart of their clan. Yet when he goes into Harlem he finds it to be out of control and that Ras has turned everyone against him. After running from the police, he falls into a man hole and the cover is drawn above him. It is then that he decided to stay underground and to only live by his rules and advice, this was he may remain true to his own identy instead of reforming to socities demands.
I found this story to be really good and thought provocing. It is a story of the struggle of finding oneself, and learning to be true to your own believes without letting others influence you to behave in a certain manner. I found it really sad that he had to go through so much just to realise that the only person he could count on was himself. Yet I believe the benefit of learning your true identity, even after it has been completely wiped clean out of you, is enough reward compared to the hardships he had to face to discover it.

The House of the Spirits

2005-03-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

The House of the Spirits, by Allende, was a tallented book. I found it a bit confusing at first but by the end of the book everything fell into place and I really felt connected with the characters.
At the begining of the book, we find that Clara has a magical power and that she is very different from most children. Clara soon stops speaking after she foretells her sisters death for since she predicted it, she blames it on herself. Later on in the story, Clara begins speaking again once Esteban Trueba calls on her for marriage. Once married they begin a family and we begin to see Esteban's true identity. He cares for no one except himself and everything he owns. Since he sees his family as a possesion he even even tries his best to control them as well. He thinks only of himself as right, and leaves no room for discussion of any other ideas or ways that things can be handeled. By doing this, he pushes his entire family away. He also has no respect for people who are not of the same socail standing as himself. He continually rapes the woman of Tres Marias and takes no responsibility for the children he fosters. His daughter Blanca meets Pedro Tercero Garcia at Tres Marias and they becom instant companions and fall in-love with eachother. Their love grows as they mature and they realise that Esteban would not approve if he knew, so they hide their relationship. Until one day the are exposed by Jean de Satigny. Esteban bans Pedro from ever returning to Tres Marias again after attempting to kill him, and sends Blanca away, telling her that he is in fact dead. Yet Blanca is already with child and Esteban is outgraged when he discovers his daughters condition. To avoid a scandel, Esteban arranges for Blanca to marry Jean de Satigny. The two of them aggree to coexist with out much interaction to deal with the arrangement. Until one day Blanca finds nude graphic pictures of the servants that work in her house and returns home to give birth to her child, Alba. According to Clara, Alba is born lucky and she is the only one in the family to form a close bond with her grandfather, Esteban. After her mothers death, Alba returns to the university and falls-in love with Miguel who, like Pedro, is not of her social class. Alba helps Miguel rescue people from the government and hides them in her house until she is able to help them find freedom. She does all this without her grandfathers knowledge, until one day the military comes to take her away. At this point Esteban forgets about what he believes in and begins fighing for his grandaughter's freedom. He eventually frees her, but not before she is sexually and physically abused by Esteban Garcia, her half brother from Tres Maria's that no one knows of. She goes through a lot fo life changing events, and often prays for her mother and grandmother to help her die. Yet she lives and during the time she is gone, her grandfather has even befriended Miguel. Esteban seems to have turned over a new leaf and begins to make up for lost time. In a way he help save Clara and Pedro's lives by sending them to Canada, so wecan look at this as him bending his ways to help the people he loves most.
I believe Esteban came a long way in his self discovery. He was strong willed and he almost lost him family over it, yet before it was too late he did change and he did do good for his family in the end.

Rachel Blau Duplessis Question

2005-03-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

I think if I had to ask one question, I would ask if there is a poet that you admire most and if you get any inspiration from their poems? If so, could you please explain how reading their original work inspires you to create your own work?

Antigone

2005-03-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed reading this play. At first I found it a little hard to follow, but getting through the beginning, I began to pick up on who everyone was and how the were related to each other. This made it easier to follow and to understand.

This play can be compared to modern day wars that our grandfathers, fathers, and maybe even we have fought in. I believe it rarely occurs that a war is started for the reasons that the "public" is lead to believe it is. Mostly wars are initially engaged to gain power. Sometimes power means land and other times it means money. I'm sure the list could go on and on, so I will let your imagination take you from here.

Kreon led his people into a war under false explanations of his reasons for doing so. He also led them to believe that they were winning the war, when realistically that could not be so. He used his power of authority to conduct a war for all the wrong reasons, and in return lost everything.

Cortez

2005-02-21T19:15:00.000-08:00

From reading this story I learned a lot of interesting facts. This story was passed down through many generations, and still is being told today. Yet it was originally never written down, instead it was passed by word of mouth to the different generations. This left room for many different versions of the story to exist and be told, and because of this today there are many different versions in writing that vary from story to story with most of them keeping to the main story line. I found it really interesting to read and compare them all to the first one we had originally read, and underline the difference and likes that are found in all.

I found that after reading all the different versions of the story, I seemed to favor the first version I had read first. I think this happens with most people, even if what they hear first is the wrong version of the story, the majority of us tend to want to believe it is true because it is what we heard first. I believe the reason why there are so many different versions of this story is because after time, details often become forgotten or remembered differently than they actually happened. Thus leading to sections of the story to get made up and blank memories to get filled in with details that "could" be true but aren't necessarily true at all.

Another interesting thing that I noted in my Commonplace book is the references to Cortez resembling Jesus and the man who turned him in to Judas. By making that connection between the bible and the story, I guess that the story was easier to remember and also for it to be passed on by word of mouth.

Blood Wedding

2005-02-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

When I first started reading Blood Wedding it seemed weird to me that the mother was so concerned with knives. Yet as I read on, I realized that the reason for her concern and worry streamed from the death of her husband and eldest son. It took me until the end of the story to realize just how big of a part her concern for the knives played in the story line. What I don't understand is why, at the end of the story, she gave her son the knife and encouraged him to go after Leonardo. I believe she knew that he would be killed, so then why encourage him towards his death? That part just didn't make sense to me.

Another thing that surprised me is the fact that the Bride did run off with Leonardo in the end. I felt bad that she was marrying for anything but love, but I didn't see her running off with Leo coming at all. I know that anything is possible, but I didn't think that at that time in history women made many choices like that for themselves. I don't really think the Bride knew what she wanted and so she just ran from everything in her life with the first and only man she ever loved. In a way this could be seen as a twisted "Romeo and Juliet" story but without the passionate love.

The Awakening

2005-01-31T22:22:00.000-08:00

I'll be truthful, I didn't like this book. Maybe this is because I never felt like I knew exactly what was going throughout the story, or maybe because it didn't grab my attention the way I would have liked it to. Yet either way, I don't think I'll be passing this on to a friend any time soon.

The Awakening was about a woman who had never been true to herself, I'm not even sure she knew what it meant to be true to yourself. She married not for love, but for money. She didn't care for her children the way most loving mothers do. There wasn't even much said when her children went to live apart from her, this tells me that they were not an important part of Edna's life. For the most part Edna meets Robert and realizes that she can't continue to live her life the way she's been living it. Yet she doesn't exactly attempt to change it that way most would have expected her to. For example, she could have left her husband and found true love. Instead, she pulled away from everyone, she distanced herself. She started making her own rules, and stopped doing as her husband wanted. Yet I don't really think she ever found what she was looking for. I believe this is why she killed herself, why she gave up in the end. After Robert resurfaced, she had nothing more to hold on to. She could no longer pretend as if she was waiting for him, he had never resembled her own true love. Instead, I believe that Robert resembled what she knew she had given up when she married for the wrong reasons. Robert stood for the true love, the happy life, what she should have gone after in the first place. He also stood for the realization that she would never find it, that she had lost it all so long ago, and that it was too far gone for her to ever get it back. At least this is my opinion.

The Yellow Wallpaper

2005-01-27T15:12:00.000-08:00

I had to read this twice to fully understand what I was reading. The first time I read The Yellow Wallpaper, I finished it and I couldn't have told you what I had read, I was too thoroughly confused. So I read it again, and this time I tried to figure out what the narrator was trying to tell me.

What I got from this story is that it was about a woman with a mental disease who saw herself as trapped and wanted to free herself from the disease. Yet she felt that everything her husband and physician, were telling her she should not do, were really what she needed to do in order to free herself. She felt compelled to write in her journal, to put down her thoughts into something more concrete and to make them seem more real to herself. She hid the journal from everyone, she wrote in secret, she even complained of writing at times, yet she never stopped. She also felt a burning need to figure out the wallpaper in her room. I see this as her wanting, in a way, to figure out her disease . She said that she was certain that a woman lived behind the wallpaper, and that she was trying to get out, but that the wallpaper bared her in and kept her from breaking free at night. Yet then she saw the same woman during the day "creeping" around outside. To me, this is her trying to tell us, that she felt as if during the day she was a more free to discover what she was going through, because she could write in her journal and do mostly as she wanted without being watched all the time, but she was still "creeping". Yet during the night, her husband was there and she couldn't do as she pleased because he was always watching her. At the end of the story, she was able to rip off all the wallpaper and free the woman behind it. I saw this as a breakthrough, because she was finally free from the bars and she had found a way to get rid of them for good by ripping all the wallpaper off. Although I am confused as to why her husband would have fainted when he finally got into the room and saw what she had done. Maybe this is her trying to show us the shock he experienced when he realized she had freed herself without his help.

Douglas

2005-01-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

In class we talked a lot about how this narrative wouldn't have been as powerful if it hadn't been written by Frederick himself. I would have to say that I totally agree. His words speak from the experiences of a slave who lived through such a horrible time. A time that many find hard to believe could have existed in America, "the land of the free".

After reading this narrative, I can't say that I was shocked that these things went on. I know that when people are given too much power, even the ones with the best intentions, let things get out of control and abuse the power after realizing that they can. It's sad, but all too often true. I just can't believe that slavery went on for so long. The white people had to of known that what they were doing was wrong, I would have thought that the women would have at least made the men be a bit nicer to the slaves, yet the women went along with it too. I guess it doesn't really matter, woman or man, the need for power is all too compelling.

Yet Douglas showed us more that just what slavery was like during his time. He also showed us what can be accomplished when you are determined to see something done. Against all odds, Douglas learned to read and write. He proved that he was intelligent, and that he could make something out of himself. He rose above the chains of slavery, he fought for his own freedom, and freedom he found. He also turned around, and pointed out the people that had hurt him, he showed how wrong they had been and he allowed everyone else to see it as well. I think Douglas was very brave to stand up against the white men who enslaved him, after he published his work I'm sure the white men noted in his book weren't exactly thrilled.