I am slightly disturbed and a little confused with the scene where Estha jacks off the orangelemondrink man behind the counter. It just seemed like a very strange occurrence in the mood of the whole novel. I am not sure if it will play as a little bit of foreshadowing and the man will come back into play, but otherwise i am unsure of the purpose of that scene. Not to say i disliked it but it would really be helpful if someone might explain what the significance of Estha being molested has to the whole novel. I am pretty... Continue reading

In this post I would just like to express my adoration of Ammu as a character. For me she is the most interesting person in the novel. She embodies a certain independence that is not always portrayed in female characters. "The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber." (44) My personal favorite scene is on page 42, after she has been beaten in one of her husbands drunken stupors, she grabs "the heaviest book she could find on the bookshelf" and beat him while he was unconscious on his head and legs and back and... Continue reading

I feel silly saying it but Toni Morrison continues to exceed my expectations, in particular the eloquence of her speaking in the interview that we watched today. Its a terrible thing to be prejudice but i think that that in terms of social stratification, a slightly overweight, female, african American naturally causes the most pre-judgment. When i first looked at the picture at the back of Beloved I immediately stereotyped Morrison as a highly emotional Oprah-type women who preaches about morals and the evils of slavery. After reading the first few pages of the book, I realized how dumb I... Continue reading

apocalypse now heart of darkness and dead man all have evidence of representing a personal journey in a persons life everyone experiences a journey but this is more of an enlightnenment like thing its like people go through a river of learning or a train of success or they just live in cleveland in there mind but then by a simple twist of fate there life changes and they get off that train and start really seeing things or go into the jungle and find that the things they once found to be savages have some secrets about them that... Continue reading

On the surface Dead Man may seem like pointless weirdness, or in high school terms "super random." And although I find the symbolism loose and confusing, I do think that there is still a very clear message to the work. This is one of many times I have seen the film but i think it made more sense this time because of the work we had done with, Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse now. Besides all of them having a symbolic river in it (as I cleverly alluded to in the title), these three works have many parallel motifs and... Continue reading

My favorite book was the stranger (maybe Light in August). My favorite poem was the Dylan Thomas one. The best movie was Trust. My favorite writing assignment was the personal narrative. The most helpful thing we did was writing the college essay. The best short story was the Hemingway one. The hardest thing to do was reading out loud. This year helped me to discover a simple use for reading that I had not previously considered. Up until now I had hoped for a book to provide solutions. I had overlooked the important feeling of comfort that is gained from... Continue reading

This is in response to Connors post that compared movies and plays. While I sympathize with the belief that a more realistic performance will sometimes result in being be "better", I do not think that it is necessarily always true. As i see it, the stage holds a vital awkwardness that most movies cannot accomplish through its rigid perfections. And although Movies have their difficulties, I think that a proper theatre performance is much more of a triumph and probably better at conveying the overall meaning of the play. It could be due to the element of human error, or... Continue reading

From the little I know about Shakespeare I know that his messages and themes are usually universally timeless. I would like to explore the contemporary application we can derive from the first scene so far. Excuse me if I am over-stretching a concept. I think maybe, with imagination, we can apply the division of land to the modern music industry. Let us begin by imagining king lear as being ourselves, the consumers of the music, and the three daughters as being the musical artists. The whiny king asks the first daughter to profess her love. She (Goneril) is at least... Continue reading

From what we have discussed in class i gather that poetry is assumed to be the densest form of literature. I guess i would just like to talk about what i think the benefits of poetry are. I also think that the work that we have been doing on poetry should have come sooner. In freshman year we were ordered to write a poem, usually on a select topic, but these poems were usually free versed and whimmed. I think that if we did this extensive study of poetry earlier we would have created some more successful poets at our... Continue reading

In Perine's What is poetry? essay he proclaims "If we limit ourselves to looking in poetry for some lesson, message, or noble truth about life, we are bound to be disappointed." This for me, was a disappointing low to the essay. I guess the biggest issue I had with this was that he is trying to generalize what is a very fluid way of art. Due to the heavily subjective nature of poetry, the only things that could possibly limit it are words like these. I don't think it is right to tell someone what to go in looking for... Continue reading

Suicide is not a prevalent topic in Light in August. Still I think it is an intriguing topic. Its a taboo topic for many people, but I don't think that means it shouldn't be discussed. In fact silence of the subject seems a bit counterintuitive. A common argument is that suicide is an act of selfishness. Its also said to be against God's will. To me it seems like all problems derived from it are usually based in a religious belief. Feel free to disagree. Personally, suicide looks like a somewhat simple way when compared to common natural ways of... Continue reading

-The significance and detail of streets- Dark and light> Faulkner uses a lot of light description when describing roads, streets, and paths. The description is usually limited to either extreme of pure light or pitch dark. Never a median, never a middle. Black and white> Black often represents a more risky yet mysterious and perhaps ill-conceived side. A place maybe tainted by the shadows cast upon it. The shadows that conceal its details. Black is not as clear cut as white, which lies as a place for safety, comfortability, maybe reliance. No one has to think to much when in... Continue reading

The beginning of chapter 8 opens with a scene about a restaurant. It happens to be a scene littered with a plethora of intriguing motifs. The watch- "But he did not need a watch to tell him he was already late."(171) The watch is very, very, telling in the matters of the situation. The watch becomes the need to incessantly fill holes and abstract values. There is no time, there is no such occurrence as time, but already those without a watch are behind and the watch only reassures this. Trees- the lane on the way to the restaurant was... Continue reading

I would like to acknowledge an often overlooked masterpiece of "the absurd." In the song Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan provides us with a detailed examination of the human condition through mind-twisting imagery. The most important thing to recognize here is that a tambourine cannot play songs, they just merely make funny beats. This seems to be the essential part of Dylan's message. Are we as humans fighting an absurd struggle, trying to make a song with tambourines? yes, i believe so. Since there has been a lot of discussion about leading an authentic life, i thought this would be... Continue reading

A prison-the accepted antithesis of freedom-becomes a place of liberation for Merseault. It is the prison that reassured the strength of his beliefs. Merseault had realized that the incarceration of existence cannot truly be escaped. We see this through the reacurring descriptions of the sun, the heat, and the light. Whether it is inflicted by human attempts or the inevitable, no one will ever really be free. In saying this, we still cant help but think one situation of life is more free than the other. For example, the rich verse poor, or the business man in cubicle verse the... Continue reading

Amazingly, a large amount of our very own students have discovered the seceret of complete agreement. Go to any post and with a scientific assurance the first comment you see will start with, "I completely agree." I find it intriguing that we have so many students with exactly similar thought processes. In a world of political war, intellectual discourse, and trivial argument we have managed to tap into some ancient lost psych of total acceptance. Evidently we have been blessed. Perhaps this is a new dawn in solving the debacles of the world. Nonetheless, we have stumbled upon something trully... Continue reading