Hurston

I thought of this as a coming of age story. The main character, John, really wanted to go out to sea and see everything that his father wasn’t able to because he was stuck there in Florida.  John talked about it his entire life, starting when he was just a small boy and continued talking about it into adulthood.

The mother, Matty, is a huge hindrance to John. I understand a mother’s need to keep their children near but by keeping him at home I think that she indirectly killed him. When John reached adulthood he stayed because she wouldn’t give her approval and he kept saying one more year for her to get used to the idea of his leaving. Then once he married Stella he still wanted to leave and go to sea, even though he now had a wife to support. Stella was a second voice that was keeping John where he was, she didn’t want him to leave.

John knew that it was his destiny to go to sea but not in the way that he finally did. John had an opportunity to go into the Navy and see the world as he has wanted for years but when he told his wife and mother his mother told him that if he left he shouldn’t ever come back because he would no longer be her child. This made him stay once again but I think this was the fatal flaw for this character. Because this was shortly before he was asked to help with the bridge before a strong storm came through.

John went to help with this bridge and told his father to stay behind because it would be too difficult for him. While they were working the storm arrived and John was one of the few that didn’t survive. When he was seen and was known to dead his father told the rescuers to let him float out to sea because that is where he had wanted to go. John did get to go out to sea but not as he expected.

Frost

Home Burial

As I read this poem it really surprised me that a man had written it. I think as the woman did that a man couldn’t understand a woman’s loss of a baby. After carrying a child for 9 months then to lose it would be un-bearable. The man in the poem was trying to be understanding for his wife but it wasn’t really coming through. He obviously loved his wife and wanted things to be as they were before but couldn’t understand that she needed more time to mourn.  She was apparently the type of person that doesn’t want to talk about the things that bother her where he seems to be the type of person that needs to talk about it. She was so deeply wounded by her loss that she also couldn’t understand how he could talk to people about other things on the same day that they buried their child.

The Road Not Taken

I have heard this saying for years but never knew that it came from a poem by Frost. I really liked it. The meaning is clear and shows how people never know where the road will take you until you make the decision to take that road. You can always take the same road as everyone else and never be worse for wear but then you can take the road that not that many people are taking and end up so much better off.

Fire and Ice

I liked this poem because it gives an opinion. Fire or Ice we will never know till it happens, each will be painful for those that are living and both have the ability to heal the earth from the damages that humans have inflicted on it for the last 300 years, but which will be the end?

The Other Two

I really like “The Other Two,” I found it interesting to see the point of view of Mr. Waythorn. When he married Mrs. Waythorn he didn’t really seem to think about her two ex-husbands until they started to become part of their lives.

Mr. Haskett was depicted as a terrible person to me at the first mention. Then once he starts to show up in the story he doesn’t seem that bad. He just wants to have a part in his daughters live and wants to see that she has the proper up bringing for her station. Mr. Waythorn though he doesn’t seem to agree that the governess which was currently tending to Lily wasn’t good enough he still fired her when Mr. Haskett asked. The fact that Mr. Haskett was coming into Mr. Waythorn’s house seemed to be Mr. Waythorn’s biggest issue with the situation.

Then there is Mr. Varick was the second ex-husband of Mrs. Waythorn, which Mr. Waythorn didn’t really have a problem with but was uncomfortable with associating with him at first after marrying his ex-wife. They seem to work through any issues there was with the comfort zone when Mr. Waythorn’s partner became sick with the gout and Mr. Waythorn had to take care of Mr. Varick’s account. It seemed that it was going to be an issue when by chance Mrs. Waythorn was speaking to Mr. Varick at a function and Mr. Waythorn was uncomfortable about it until she explained that she thought that it would be better for her to speak to him than to ignore him and walk away. By the end of the story society had even started to invite them to the same parties

The last page was interesting when they all seemed to end up in the library by accident. This seemed to show the best outcome possible when a woman from the early 20^th century has two ex-husbands.

The Open Boat

I was not impressed with the Open Boat. This short story could have been much shorter. I did find interesting the quote “If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am  going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand the trees?” This was repeated a few pages later but why did the author make this into such importance to be repeated. Because they are trying to make it out of their situation alive shouldn’t they be praying to which ever gods they think would help them most? Not belittling them like they start doing.

I didn’t really understand what happened to the people on shore that saw them did they get too far way or did they just leave the beach?

Then they are talking about pie, of all things pie I understand that they were hungry but talking about it would just make it worse. I believe that this was based off a real experience the author had on a trip to Cuba but I believe that he just put too much into it.

In the end they reach land once again but they knew that they wouldn’t be able to get the boat there so they got the boat as far as they could then when it capsized they swam the rest of the way.

Stephen Crane Poetry

In the Desert

“In the Desert” was very interesting it was like someone’s nightmare in a poem. I thought that he did a very good job describing the creature that was eating his own heart. I think that it was saying something about the creature since he said that his heart was bitter so to me it tells me that he was a bitter creature in everything that he did.

Supposing that I Should Have the Courage

I think that the author is trying to infer what the payment for being virtuous should be. He questions what he will get for being stabbed with the “sword of virtue.” He asks about a castle or a kingdom but when he finds out that hope would be the only reward then he is ready to be stabbed. This shows what kind of man the author was he is saying that having hope is the best reward there is even if it is for being virtuous.

A Man Feared that He Might Find an Assassin

This short poem was very interesting to me. These two men both feared opposite things so in saying that they both feared to meet each other.  The last line leaves the reader questioning who is the wiser of the two. I think that the one fearing to find a victim is the wiser because there are so many people could be the victim but there are not as many people have the evilness to be the assassin.

Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind

This poem is giving the wrong impression. War is in no way kind. This poem is telling maidens that war is kind that it killed your lover but war is still kind???? Whatever! Don’t weep war is kind we just kill the young men. It continues to tell both babies and mothers that war is kind and that their father or sons were killed but war is still kind. It is such a misconception in that it is lying to these people that war is a good thing.

The Awakening by Chopin

It was only after the first 40 pages that I finally arrived at the conclusion that this was a story about a woman finding her freedom. I feel like Mrs. Pontellier has always done what has been expected of her and never thought for herself. There always was her father there to make any decisions for her then she married and her husband made all the decisions.

She is a mother but she doesn’t seem much like a mommy, she seems to love her children but isn’t the always there mommy. Mrs. Pontellier’s character seems to me an example of how many women would have been like back then because girls were never allowed to think for themselves and pushed to marry at an early age before they really had been able to find out her they were.

Mrs. Pontellier’s affair with Alcee Arobin was her final step to her awakening of her self. She had just done what was expected of her that with Robert spending so much time with her and finally having to make some of her own decisions while out on the island for the summer without her husband she saw that there was more to her than just the dutiful wife and mother that she wanted so much more. Though she did ill fatedly fall in “love” with Robert, it only served to help her see herself.

I don’t think that she was knowingly planning to kill herself when she swam so far out, but underneath she was tired of this world and didn’t want to live in it without Robert.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I think that Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” would be an excellent story to tell around Halloween.  Her characters slow spiral into complete insanity was thrilling. I think that she really pulled from her experiences while she was going through her own depression.  

Jane, the main character, really didn’t seem that sick at the beginning of the story. It sounded to me that she was going through at normal bout of post-partum-depression, which would have been treated with medication now. John, her husband/doctor, is treating her how they treated these types of issues in that day. I don’t agree with how he took her out into the country and isolated her but if he really believed that would be the best thing for her maybe he should have stayed with her. This also makes me think that Gilman may have been treated in this manner as well when she was “sick.”

The yellow wallpaper was what Jane focused on since she was made to spend so much time in her room. She was made to take an hours nap after every meal and to sleep in there at night. This in my opinion was one of the things that made her condition worse. She just kept staring at that yellow wallpaper and started to see things in it until it became an obsession. Then discovered what she thought was a woman trying to break out of the paper. This, to me, was symbolizing her trying to break out of the depression. Though quickly her hallucinations get worse when she starts to see the woman “creeping” around outside during the day. It’s like she sees herself as she is moving around during the day, though she does say the woman hides when a carriage comes.

This continues until the last day that they were going to be living in that house and John wasn’t coming home. During that night she started ripping all the paper off the walls trying to help the woman escape her trappings. When Jennie, her husband’s sister, came to see her in the morning she had most of the paper off and Jane convinced her to allow her to stay in the room to “sleep.” Jane not wanting to be disturbed locked the door and through the key out the window.

Then I noticed that it says “I” but then has Jane as one of the subjects so I think that her depression had gotten so bad that she had developed schizophrenia and the “woman in the wall” was the second personality that finally took over when she peeled the paper off.  I didn’t quite understand what she did with her “well hidden rope” but I think that she used it to kill her husband so that she (personality #2) couldn’t be suppressed again.  I could be really off with my analysis.