Blogging with blogger... yo

For the past seven weeks, our literature class have been using blogger as a medium in which we post our work. Personally, i feel that blogger is a great idea, and I am glad we are using. I also believe that we are fortunate to have such a good thing going, plus its free!

Blogger has brought forth to us a totally new way of submitting work and keeping up with the new age of technology. Another benefit is that we don't have to use paper, so blogger is also good for our environment. I think that blogger is great also because it doesn't automatically fix your words and put in the correct punctuation marks where they need to be, so students are more careful when posting work on blogger. I feel that blogger has broken the barrier that holds our two classes apart. Not only do we learn to appreciate literature, but literature by our peers who happen to be in the other class and our own also. I think that blogger is perfect the way it is, and that we should continue to further conduct our work on it.

To conclude, I think that blogger is great, and we should continue using it to post our work.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby was a very interesting tale about one man, finding truth in his life. Nick had moved east from his home in the Midwest to embark on a new beginning. Upon his settling, he is reunited with his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan. The couple's relationship was very unhealthy, but they simply did nothing about it. Though there once was a burning fire, now their relationship lay in ashes. I can tell this because if Daisy and Gatsby were so in love, that she was willing to forget about him to marry Tom, than the love they shared must be stronger than that of the bond between her and Jay.

I think that Nick moving to the east taught him a very valuable lesson. People who have a higher rank on the financial ladder tend to use their money as a rebound or a getaway from what they put up with to attain their wealth. Such as Tom and Daisy. The two people who are well over the status of being financially stable, but deep down inside they were both insecure about themselves and each other. Therefore they delve themselves into infidelity and other unmoral things. Another example of this idea is Jay Gatsby. He dropped out of college because he could not withstand the humiliation of working at the school as a janitor to pay his tuition, and went on to pursue a luxurious lifestyle that was introduced to him by Dan Cody. Now, he is one of the most wealthy men in the area. He throws these highly lavished parties in which he barely even attends. But he throws them to attempt to lure his sweetheart Daisy back to him. At the very beginning of the book, Nick was telling us how his father had taught him to never judge people because they might not have gotten the privileges he had. Nick proves that he abides by this idea because he does not judge Tom for cheating on Daisy, or judging Daisy for leaving Jay for Tom, or Judging Gatsby for trying to win his love back from Tom with his money. This, I feel is honorable.

To conclude, The Great Gatsby was a very good book, and i recommend it to anyone who wishes to read a good story.

The Great Gatsby (the beginning)

After viewing the first few chapters of the book, I've really come to notice a lot about Nick's character. First, he seems like a good person, and a good son to his father also. His father taught him to never judge people because they might not have had the advantages that he had growing up. This, to me was a very wise piece of advice, not to mention noble. To be able to keep these probing thoughts from invading your train of thought just because it is the right thing to do is just amazing. So amazing that I don't think that Nick's capabilities can handle, though I do give him credit for attempting to. I personally think that everyone judges people who aren't like them, but some of them have the courtesy to keep it to themselves. Another thing I picked up about Nick's personality is that he is an intelligent being. He attended Yale after graduating high school, and that was only 25 years after his father had graduated from Yale also. Finally, I saw that he is a a listener. When he was at dinner with the Buchanans, and Daisy had a plight. He was the one to take a walk with her and listened to her inner thoughts even if she is a distant relative to him.

"Their house was even more elaborate than i expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walls and burning gardens_ finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run." I chose to analyze this quote because it really stood out to me when I read it the first time. The choice of words by Fitzgerald really paints a vivid mental image in my mind that sharply describes the scene.

To conclude, the first few chapters of The Great Gatsby are the preliminaries which i can feel will unravel to become a very interesting and memorable piece of literature.

Eating Together by: Li-Young Lee

Eating Together By: Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is an American poet. He was born on August 19, 1957 in Indonesia to Chinese parents. His great grandfather was actually the first republican President of China who attempted to crown himself Emperor. Lee's father was a personal physician for Mao Zedong for some time, and then the family was relocated in Indonesia. There Lee's father helped found the Gamaliel University. In 1959 the family fled to escape anti-Chinese sentiment. After five years of running, through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, the Lee family ended up in the Americas in 1964. Li-Young attended a few Universities such as the Universities of Pittsburgh and Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He went on to teach at a few universities including Northwestern, and the University of Iowa. He wrote several novels and pieces through the years, and is now residing in Chicago, Illinois with a wife and two kids.
After reading "Eating Together," I noticed a few things. The beginning portion of the poem describes the dinner of the family. He uses sensory, and some imagery, to paint out a picture of the dinner table, and the trout center piece of the meal. The words he used makes the reader feel like they are reading a piece with "Smellavision." The second section of the poem is describing the death of his father. He transitions from the first portion to the second be describing how his mother will be eating the sweetest meat of the fish, the head, just like his father had, before he died.
"Then he lay down to sleep like a snow-covered road winding through pines older than him, without any travelers, and lonely for no one." He is comparing his father's death to a light snowfall to show how his father died peacefully. And even though he is alone, he will never be lonely because he will always be in their hearts. And whenever the family gathers to eat dinner, they will always be eating together.

Three Poems By: Li-Young Lee

I will be writing about the first poem out of the three, "A Story." The plot if the poem is that a child is asking his father to tell him a story, but the father does not know one. The father is trying his best to muster up a story to satisfy his son's wants but he fails. Instead he imagines the future. He sees his son all grown up, and ready to move out of the house. The boy is packing and looking for his keys. The father all of a sudden wishes to tell the boy a story. But now he knows many stories. He feels that he has failed his son by not being able to recite a story when he asks. But just because he cannot tell him a story does not mean that he does not love his son. The way i see it, the mother will raise a child with care and nurture, but a father will raise a child with wisdom, and knowledge that will benefit in the long run. Just like a mother's love, a father's love is also unconditional. The man then snaps back to reality and the boy is still here. Waiting on his father's lap, for a story. But still the father is unable to tell him one.
"It is an emotional rather than logical equation, an earthly rather than heavenly one, which posits that a boy's supplications and a father's love add up to silence."
I do not think that there is any specific reason why his work is considered American other than the fact that the poet is American.

Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin's style of writing compared to those of the American romantics we have read are quite similar. From the title, the short story seems like it would be more pleasant and jubilee, but in reality, the story has a more darker meaning. Similar to the American romantic's. In "A pair of silk stockings," a woman possesses fifteen dollars, and she plans to spend the money wisely, but once she goes out, she ends up spending all the money on herself. I think this is depicting the situation that many Americans are in today. With our struggling economy, we all should spend the little money we make wisely. But the question is, do we? Another ominous theme i see is in the other story, "Lilacs." The tale is about how a girl grew up in a convent but chose to move out when she has matured. Once in a while , she would come back to visit. But she only comes to visit when she smells lilacs. When the sweet fragrance of lilacs make contact with her nostrils, she must go visit the convent, at all costs. I think that she has mental issues, or some problem. Therefore, she has been banned from the convent. So, there is some type of Realism depicted in the two short stories.
I think one of Kate Chopin's main focus is society. In both of her stories, the main character is a woman who is struggling in society. In the first one, the woman finds it hard to keep money in her pocket in a society where people need to conserve. In the second story, a woman is trying to keep a part of her past with her in the present, and fails. Society is "the real world," and as every parent will say to the children, "the real world is a cruel place."
After reading these two stories, I feel that Chopin is writing to women, and she is writing for women. I think she is using writing as a sanctuary, where she can communicate the true feelings of a conflicted woman, with other women. But i don't think minds when men read her work.
As a male reader, you might say that her writing is of no relevance to me, but it does. I mean just because the story depicts a woman, doesn't mean that a man can keep money in his pocket either. From reading her work, I can really see that our world is in a tight place, and it is up to us to fix it. It is all up to use to make the decision not to buy the pair of silk stockings, an expensive meal, and other unnecessary luxuries.
"Now, there was only room for tears. She leaned her forehead against the heavy oaken panel of the door and wept with the abandonment of a little child." Chopin uses metaphors countless times in her writing, and they really bring out a sense of sympathy from me, as the reader, to the main character. Another thing she does, is that she infuses another language with her text which heightens my skills in context clue usage.
To summarize, Kate Chopin has a very unique and distinct way of writing and after reviewing some of her work, I learned to really appreciate her writing. Even though i feel that her audience range didn't really include me.