Week Eight

8.1 Quiz (Done)



8.2 Comments on "The Chrysanthemums"

This story descibes the struggle of a woman attempting to gain influence in man's world. Elisa tried to define the boundaries of her role as a woman in such a stereotyped society. The story open up with Elisa working in her garden, surrounded by a wire fence that symbolizes her life's barrier. As the story progresses, Elisa struggled extending feminine power outside her sphere. She learned that she possesses that kind of power that was weak for that time.


8.3 Refelection on the life and work of John Steinbeck

Steinbeck is another Nobel Prize American author, he accumulated his masterpieces from his familiarity with the farming country, ranches and blue collar folks of his own native state; the novel Tortilla Flat exemplified this. He was a popular man who was scared his own popularity. Branded as a communist due to the nature of his writing. Hated by some political characters and disowned by his native state, yet venerated after his death.


8.4 Reflection on The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

A theme in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” is the idea that good must coexist with evil. That is, there cannot be light without darkness, pleasure without pain, or good without bad. One cannot be without the other, and both must be present for either to have meaning. Le Guin is trying to make the point that no matter how brilliant the society or how advanced the technology there must be evil somewhere in the equation.

8.5 Reflection on A Vey Old Man with Enormous Wings

This is a short story that begins with Pelayo and Elisenda finding a very old man in their courtyard during a stormy afternoon. They watch in astonishment the enormous wings attached to the body of the old man as he struggles to get up from the mud. The couple attempt to communicate with the old man but is unable because he speaks in a different language. Their neighbor comes over and lets them know that the old man is an angel who has come to take their sick child. Pelayo locks the angel in a chicken coop overnight. Early next morning Father Gonzaga along with the rest of the community tests the angel to see whether or not the old man really is an angel. Elisenda, tired of having the community at her house, decides to charge an entrance fee to see the angel. The family becomes rich and builds a mansion with the money collected. The crowd soon loses interest in the angel for another freak who has arrived to the community. The new town attraction is a frightful tarantula who tells her misfortunes to the audience. Meanwhile, no longer trapped in the chicken coop, the angel is free to roam around the house until one day his wings are strong again and flies away into the horizon.



8.7 "Pan's Labyrinth" and "For Whom the Bells Tolls" have the senarios on history, geography and politics. They both have Spain as their Location, civil war between the Spanish government and the insurgent communist rebels as their occasion point. Both leading character sacrifice their lives for the sake of the cause. However, the only difference between them the fushion of fantasy on Pan's Labyrinth.

Earnest Hemmingway: An Autobiography

Ernest Miller Hemingway, personifies an image of successful author; yet ironically he committed suicide in the end. The complexity of his life and personality still fascinates the prose and poetry vernacular, but his nobel prize award sealed his destined stature.

For Whom The Bells Tolls

7.1 The best features of the leading character - Roberto is his unrelentless trust to men even when they are failing because he set his face like flint to his goal. He will do everything to fulfill his goal. The weakest feature of the character is lack of nerve to fight through the war and survives it.

7.2 The theme the story is all about the issues of courage in the face of hard adveristy.

7.3 The values that are represented by the Spanish insurgents is life of sacrifice for the greater cause. They knew that stepping up to the plate will get things done.

Comment on Roman Fever

The story opens with two middle-aged American ladies enjoying the view of Rome from a restaurant’s terrace. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley have been lifelong friends, thrown into intimacy by circumstance rather than by true liking for each other. Both are spending the spring in Rome, accompanied by their daughters, Jenny Slade and Barbara Ansley respectively, who are roughly the same age. The story begins with a description of two wealthy, middle-aged women at a table on a restaurant balcony in Rome. After glancing at one another, both women gaze down at the majestic view with the same mildly disinterested, but content expression.
Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley have been friends since they first met as young women in Rome, when Alida (Mrs. Slade) was engaged to Delphin Slade. This friendship forms the enduring tie between Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley. However, their friendship is undercut by the deeper, hostile feelings they have for each other, feelings that they hardly dare to admit. Because each has something to hide about the early days of their friendship, they have not been honest with each other in their friendship.

"Roman Fever" is set in Rome, Italy, around the mid-1920s. On the one hand, the ruins of Rome become the focus of Wharton's skill at descriptive writing. On the other hand, the ruins of Rome remind both women of an earlier time spent in Rome together when their friendship and rivalry both began. More generally Wharton shows the kind of life a woman of independent means could lead in Rome at that time.

The setting of Rome is contrasted with the home neighborhood of the two women on Manhattan's East Side in New York. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley have lived across the street from each other so close that each woman knows all the mundane details of the other's everyday life. But this setting is too confining to allow them to communicate their true feelings. It is only in Rome that Mrs. Slade feels able to reveal the truth to Mrs. Ansley. The setting of Rome is contrasted with the home neighborhood of the two women on Manhattan's East Side in New York. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley have lived across the street from each other so close that each woman knows all the mundane details of the other's everyday life. But this setting is too confining to allow them to communicate their true feelings. It is only in Rome that Mrs. Slade feels able to reveal the truth to Mrs. Ansley.

Comment on the short story Reunion

Reunion

(John Cheever)

This short story is told on a young boy’s point of view, Charlie, who brought back to mind a meeting with his father who he hasn’t seen for more than three years. He meets up with his father during a stop over between trains in New York.

The author relays this image with the use of formal language during the communications between Charlie and his father, “His secretary wrote to say that he would meet me at the information booth at noon”. This in contrast to the less formal style of writing used when Charlie is involved, “at 12 o’clock sharp I saw him coming”. That last quote also shows that his father is punctual which strengthens the businessman stereotype we have already placed him in, yet to his surprise this image was kind of confused, when his father invited him to go to club and hinting him to pick up some girls in and around where they at……… (to be continued)

Barn Burning

Barn Burning is a discourse morality and beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge of the past. Throughout the story is confronted with painful choice and that is going with his father’s influence or choosing rather to surpass his father’s estranged ways, Sarty is a young man who recognizes that he must follow his own code of morality with respect to his willingness to tell the truth even though it may bring punishment to his father. Sarty allows three of his father’s actions to help him realize that he does not want to be like his father: a burned barn, a ruined rug, and a second attempt to burn a barn…….(to be continued)

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO WOMEN & GOOD YOUNG MAN BROWN

These two stories are distintively different from one another. The Two Women is all about practical sense; it talks about reality of life. While the latter, is all about spiritual. The element of human resolve is what these two stories have one thing in common.