Araby- A Battle Between Light and Darkness

In Araby, Joyce writes these sentences, but they become to have some larger purposes than describing the story. These sentences have become to have connotations have light and darkness. 

With the light, Joyce seemed to have almost all to deal with Megan's Sister. These give you a sense being light, not in your weight, but in your soul. His writing give you the feeling of being in love, but at the same time the actual text is giving off the idea of Magan's sister is pure and innocent, with the juxtaposition of the light in darkness. Joyce describes Magan's sister as a " figure defined by the light from the half-opened door... Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side" Joyce describes her as if she is emitting light. 

Joyce included the contrast of the light with darkness. He places these sentences with the feeling of darkness when describing where the story is in, Dublin. Joyce describes his home as a "uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground." Joyce included words with darkness connotations, such as blind and detached. These thing pertain to broken, or useless things, which is how I felt he is describing the city, as a useless place of destruction. 

Joyce ends the story with the character at the bazaar, looking up to the dark sky, and wishing to be somewhere else. Joyce, throughout  The Dubliners commented on his feelings of it being a dark place, but in Araby he uses the contrast between his wants,his dreams, which are symbolized as Magan's sister, as relating to some kind of lightness, whether it be a actual light or a feeling. He then contrast that with the descriptions of his currents state, his reality, which is the dark descriptions of the town and life there. 

A Rose For Emily, A Reflection

I feel sorry for Emily. Living a lonely, secluded life where people saw you an an obligation, and not a duty or a responsibility. Personally for me, that would be hell. I am a social person, and if I was Emily, I just have no idea what I would do. I have respect for her, not like the men in the story, but as actual respect for surviving as long as she did.

Faulkner is very interesting with the ideas and writing he used for this story. He is not very nice when describing women. He is, at some times, very savage and almost personally attacking them. It reminds me of the burn book in Mean Girls  and how the plastics wrote hate filled things about these women and they seemed to be personally attacking them as people.

I enjoyed  A Rose For Emily. I loved the dark and Gothic feel of this story. The somber tone made the concept of isolation very powerful, but there are parts that bother me. Emily tried killing her husband with rat poison because she had no more feelings for him. In this time period divorce was frowned upon, seen as a sin. But there are other, less illegal options to get away from people with out getting a divorce. Running away seems to come to mind. But  I guess you do what you were taught.

Another thing that bugged me about the society Emily lived in is that she was not found until days after her death. I mean, yes she as a recluse and yes no one actually cared for her, but one person would had to have noticed her not rustling around in her house.

A Rose For Emily was an interesting and enjoyable read. I enjoyed it very much.

A Rose for Emily

A Read Along

I love how Faulkner start off morbid. It feels as if he is describing something that had been dying for, what I can assume by the full capitalization of WHEN, what feels like forever. 

A monument? The men come to pay their respects to a fallen monument. maily must have been a very old, and respected woman. 

I do not like the women. They show up just to see what her house looked like? Assuming Emily is a recluse, I get the curiosity, but then after they see the house all they do is cause drama, and whit a dead woman too. Do these women have no shame?

Emily seems to begin to not seem like she was a respected woman.No one knew what her house looked like, and she seems to have the beginning stages of hording. 

Who describes a woman as an obligation. If anything, a woman should be described as a necessity, if someone shall swing that way. 

I just do not like the idea that because of what your father did, it completely dictates how you will be treated. This reminds me of the character Caroline on the television show 2 Broke Girls whose father ran a ponzi scheme and cause her to loose all her wealth and receive a terrible reputation. 

Whoops! Colonel Santoris (Almost typed Sanders) is not the father (SOME ONE CALL JERRY SPRINGER) hes just a man who Emily's father helped. 

"It smelled of dust and disuse" I really enjoy that line. Not the whole idea of something smelling of dust, but the idea of something smelling of disuse. Its like an abstract smell, like a smell that isn't something you can pin point, but it gives you a felling. I really enjoy the phrase "They smell of desperation" -2 Broke Girls

Man, Faulkner is viscous to women. Describing a larger woman as if she a dead body soaking in water, which for all you that do not understand and are still innocent, is that this woman looks bloated. 

Im about done reading for the night, but I wanted to end describing the comparison of Emily to the angels in stain glass windows. Its such an interesting idea,comparing a sick woman to angels that looked "sort of tragic and serine" I really enjoy this comparison, and how Faulkner used a church, a place to where in those times people go to play for health as medical technology isn't very developed. 

An Interview With Chinua Achebe

"The story of Okonkwo is in a way the story of our culture; he pays a price because he places too much emphasis on strength and manliness"

It is absolutely true. This story, one that revolves around a man that puts too much emphasis on manliness in his society. Throughout Things Fall Apart Okonkwo is constantly remind the men and boys among the village that they must be the strength. He reminds them that they do the heavy lifting, the fighting, the hunting, the protecting. 

This idea continues to be relevant in present day society. Media is always saying the men do the heavy, hard, and dangerous things while the women stay home and do the child care, the cooking, cleaning, the unappreciated chores. In today's society, while it is slowly changing to the idea that woman can do the manly stuff too, its still expected to be the responsibility of the man to be the breadwinner, the provider for his family.

Along with that, society dictates what is manly and what is not. In today's, and most likely in Okonkwo's village, the idea of a man is a strong, muscled man who does not show the feeling that as humans we all have. Mainly in today's society, men cannot like certain colors, or certain songs or movies or books. Even as there is a shift in those feelings, it is still a prevalent burden that has happened among all men. We sometimes get attacked for liking certain things that go against the status quo.

In the novel, this idea is more pronounced and brought up, while in the present times, there is the idea but its hidden inside media and everything that is connected to it.  Whether or not, the idea of man is something that should not be universal to be generalized to all men. It should be something individuals dictate for them selves, and maybe its time for society to change for the better.  

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer By Walt Whitman

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

By Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is becoming one of my favorite poems, and this is my favorite one of his. “When  I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” describes someone, possibly Whitman, in a lecture given by an astronomer. The narrator then “gets tired and sick” and leaves and goes to stare at the stars. Whitman isn't just describing someone leaving a lecture, he is saying that sometimes it is better to leave things as a mystery, then to have them be explained as a something scientific and, in this case, as “charts and diagrams”.

Whitman describes the lecture as a place where “the proofs, the figures, were ranged, in columns”. I see that as the place where imagination died, creativity and the mystery of everything is sucked out and everything is explained. Whitman had the narrator “wandered off by myself” as a symbol for ignoring the facts. The narrator wanders off because he doesn't want to give in to the idea that space, the universe, the entire idea of existence to be explained. The narrator, and Whitman want to keep some mystery and creativity and imagination in their lives, and that  is why  he “looked up at the perfect silence of the stars” or looking up to a place where mystery and creativity and imagination flourish and continue to cultivate.

This poem uses the idea of an astronomer, a person who whole purpose is to study the 

stars and everything around it as metaphor for the answer to a question, but with what 

Whitman is saying, it's sometimes better to leave the question unanswered, than to have an 

answer because mystery is the best way to cultivate creativity and imagination.