IUPENGL121-CrawfordHeather

Things Fall Apart (Extra Credit)

2005-04-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

This book is basically about the life of Okonkwo. He is constantly fighting a battle with in himself and there for is never happy. He believes that in order to be happy he must be very wealthy and have a high title in the tribe. His father was a man who owed money to everyone and didn’t care much about it. He loved to play his music and be merry with his friends. Okonkwo wanted to be nothing like him and he strived to be seen as powerful and manly in every aspect of his life. He had a large farm and grew lots of yams, and had three wives and many children. He never really showed any type of love towards his family because it would be seen as a sign of weakness. Even when Ikemefuna the boy he was to watch over was ordered to be killed to avenge the murder from three years before he shows no weakness. He had grown very fond of the boy and having him around also made relations better with his own son. When he found out he was ordered to be killed he did it himself because he felt if he didn’t it would be showing a weakness. After this happens everything starts to fall apart in his life. His son distances himself from him and the rest of his family is afraid of him. He ends up getting banished to his motherland for accidentally killing a member of the clan. When he returns he finds that the white men have come into his village and set up schools and churches trying to convert the tribe members to the Christian religion. Some of the villagers do follow the missionaries including Okonkwos eldest son. In the end Okonkwo hangs himself and his body is sent into the evil forest because it was shameful to take your own life. He ended up dieing a shameful death and being thrown in the evil forest just like his father only his father was at least happy with his life.

Going back to the Theory Toolbox the people of the Igbo tribe are very ideological. They all have the same beliefs in their culture and they never question them. It is just the way things are and if you do it differently they believed you would get punished by the gods. That is why when the white missionaries came into the village eventually people converted themselves to Christianity. For the first time they began to question their beliefs and began thinking well maybe everything didn’t have to be the way it was. The ones who stayed in the tribe and went against the Christian beliefs however were still very ideological in their ways. Even when Okonkwo hung himself not even his best friend would cut him down, because it was against their ways and you just didn’t do it. Their ideological ways of thinking was what brought their village to fall in the end because of the white men. They were totally against the white man and his ideas and felt that he would ruin their tribe, but since it you just couldn’t hurt another clan member they couldn’t do more than resent the white men because they were part of the tribe.

The Invisible Man

2005-04-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

When the narrator learns that the brotherhood forces some people to shake his hand and put aside their racial inclinations he doesn’t know how to react. I think back then he should have reacted a little more extreme than he did. The brotherhood was using him to represent the black community to get their support, but they still didn’t consider them equal. They were just using him to get their approval. They didn’t think that blacks were equal or should have the rights they do, but they wanted them to think they were going to make the community a better place to live in. Today I would compare this to a fraternity, sorority or when you get a job. In these situations you have to put aside your differences to work towards a common goal. When you are in a frat you can’t single someone out or be mean to them just because you don’t like them. The frat in a way makes you be friends with them or at least treat them with respect while you are around them. It is the same way with a job today. You can’t not acknowledge your employees if you are all working towards the same goal to better the company. If you started treating your employees badly your boss would fire you. I think this is the same as the brotherhood they all were coming together to make the society better so they had to set aside their differences and come together as a group and not as individuals while they were working.

Ideology and The House of Spirits

2005-04-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

In The House of Sprits Esteban forces Blanca to marry a man she doesn’t love as soon as she gets pregnant so it wouldn’t reflect badly on his political reputation. Back then it was looked very badly on to have a child and not be married. Today, however, it is very acceptable to be a single mom, but other things are looked down on for public leaders and their families to do. Back then and still today the reputation and actions of a government officials family reflects on their reputation. It is very important that a political leader and his family don’t have any family secrets of things that might be looked down upon in order to keep their good reputation among the public people. Government officials are always put up on this pedestal in a way. Things that might be ok for the public are not acceptable for them to do. This can be seen in the book with Esteban worrying about losing the election because of Blanca’s actions and also in the elections today. When the presidential elections take place the media is constantly trying to find out dirt on the candidate of his family to bring up and make him look bad. The only difference between now and then is the fact that since the media is always digging around for dirt on the presidential candidates him and his family have to be careful of their actions, but a lot more things are acceptable than they were back then.

Rachel Blau Duplessis Question

2005-03-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

How long does it take you to write one poem?

What is your inspiration for the poems?

Antigone

2005-03-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

Antigone is a story about a young woman who isn’t afraid to rebel against the rules or laws of the land to follow her morals and feelings. The story starts out with a war started by a greedy king for more money and land. The elders of the land are promised money if they support him so in the beginning they do. Antigone’s brother flees from the war and is killed. His body is left in town and everyone is forbidden to bury him. Antigone and her sister get into a argument about burying the body. Antigone will risk death to respect her brother and bury him. Her sister wants no part of it until Antigone is put to death for burying him. Her sister then feels guilty about not respecting her brother and tries to be part of it but Antigone won’t let her. She almost makes it like it is a curse to be left living because when she dies she is bringing the country down with her. When Hamon the kings son hears of his father putting Antigone to death he comes home from war enraged. He is in love with Antigone and ends up killing himself because without her he has nothing to live for. The war soon comes to the country and the king knows he is going to lose and his people are going to suffer for it. The elders then realize that they are not getting money anymore and say they have no part in the war anymore. Antigone would make an excellent movie. The way the story is set up and the plot it could be set in any time period really as an action romance movie.

Gregorio Cortez

2005-02-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

Gregorio Cortez is written in many different variations. It started out as a song and was changed a little bit over the generations. Each different variation of the story is different in some ways as to the places he goes, and how many sheriffs he kills, how he turns himself in or how he gets away. The different variants are all different so that everyone can relate to them. When a person retells the story they make it so Gregorio has some characteristics of them maybe he is a tall person, or short and fat. One thing all the stories have in common is that he is a hero in all of them doing what he does to honor his country in some of the variants he is even looked on as God-like. He is also the strongest man and best at everything and anything. Another thing the stories have in common is the way they show American verse Mexicans. Mexicans are usually looked at as the bad guys who are always doing dirty things and tricking people and the Americans the good honest hard working men. However in this story the Americans are the bad people the rangers are criminals that get taken out of jail to chase down people just so they can get money. They don’t care about anyone but themselves. The Mexicans in the stories however are the good honest people who honor their country and think of other people before themselves.

The Blood Wedding

2005-02-14T10:22:00.000-08:00

The Blood Wedding was a tragic play about tow men dieing for the love of one woman. In the beginning of the play we meet the groom and his mother. The mother of the groom has lost her son and husband and is giving her son a lecture about knives. The son says don’t worry and what not and then starts talking about his bride to be. The mother is skeptical about this match because the bride was courted before by Leonardo who is from the family that killed the grooms father and other brother. They go to make the wedding date and the bride’s father sees the marriage as them bringing their lands together and gives his permission. Meanwhile Leonardo is married but still can’t get over his love for the bride. He rides his horse out there every day just to see her in the window then lies about where he has been. His wife is suspicious of this and brings up the fact that the bride is getting married. I think when Leonardo hears this news he plans it right then to take her away so he and the bride can have a life together. The bride is still very much in love with Leonardo as well. I think maybe they didn’t end up getting married because maybe her father didn’t think that Leonardo was a good enough match for his daughter. On the date of the wedding the bride and groom are married and then next thing you know Leonardo runs off with the bride. The mother then urges her son to take knife and go after his bride. She thinks about it saying she will sacrifice anything to someone who has a horse for her son to go get the bride it is like she is almost thinking I will even sacrifice my son to save my pride. I think she looks as it in this family took my other son and my husband they aren’t taking the bride too. The groom goes out after his bride and when he finds them Leonardo and the groom start battling. I think the groom went after the bride and fought Leonardo just because he felt he had to. Both of the men die in the end and the bride is left with the guilt of knowing both of the men died because of her.

The Awakening

2005-01-31T13:46:00.000-08:00

The Awakening is a book based on a woman’s struggle with living in an unhappy marriage and unhappy life. Edna is married to a man she says she married because he was well off, not because she loved him. She has children and is very unhappy with her life. She doesn’t keep up the house or show as much devotion to her children or her husband as the other woman do. As time goes on she falls in love with a man named Robert. They spend most of their time together in the summer at Grand Ise, until he decides to go to Mexico. After the summer is over Edna goes back to the city where she find herself even unhappy. She just lives life day to day almost wandering about and looking for meaning. The only thing that brings her true happiness is going to visit Mademoiselle Reisz and reading the letters that Robert has written to her about Edna. Edna soon becomes more and more alienated with her husband, family and duties as a housewife. She then decides to move into a little house of her own and she makes all the arrangements and does this while her husband is away on a business trip. One day she goes over to Mademoiselle Reisz and runs into Robert. He never told her that he had returned from Mexico they spend some time together and she confesses her love to him and him to her. Edna then has to leave to see a friend who is sick and Robert promises to wait for her. However, when she returns Robert is gone. This drives her to go back to Grand Ise and drown herself in the ocean. Without Robert she felt there was no true happiness in life for her.
I think Edna is a character that portrays how woman lives were back then. They were expected to be good mothers and wives and that was it. They couldn’t do anything for themselves like one of the women justified her liking to play the piano by saying she kept it up for the children. Edna painted because she liked to paint and she gave no other reason. She defied all the unwritten rules she was supposed to follow and did what she wanted and when she wanted even if it reflected upon her husband and made him look bad. She didn’t care what people thought of her. All of the other women seem to have these perfect lives and they pretend that everything is perfect so they don’t feel bad about their lives. Edna often refers back to her childhood and I think this was the only time she was truly happy in life. It also refers back to this in the last paragraph in the book when she is dieing and she says she hears the voices of her father and her sister and some other things about her childhood. It is like her heaven when she died was going back to her childhood.

The Yellow Wallpaper

2005-01-23T17:19:00.000-08:00

The Yellow Wallpaper was a short story about a woman trying to deal with her mental illness. She wrote about being in this room and how the yellow old peeling wallpaper was making her crazy. She saw a woman behind the designs of the wallpaper at night and during the day the woman came out of the wallpaper and she could see her through the windows creeping outside. I think the woman she was talking about being stuck behind the wallpaper was actually her. She felt trapped by her husband and her sister in law who were always watching her. They didn’t want her to write because they felt it made her sicker. She would write during the day in secret and in a sense creep around about it so her husband and sister wouldn’t find out. At night however she was trapped in a sense because her husband was there with her watching her to make sure she didn’t do anything she wasn’t supposed to. In the end of the story she has peeled all of the wallpaper off the wall and is creeping around the room when her husband comes in and faints at the sight of what she has done. She states in the end she is finally free to do what she wants and she no longer has to creep around. She feels by getting all the wallpaper off the wall and making her husband faint she has won a battle with him about the wallpaper and he can’t control her anymore.

Douglass Narrative

2005-01-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

I think the Douglass Narrative and the Author/ity chapter go together well. I think Douglass has more power and authority over his readers because he actually experienced the things he wrote about. It makes a bigger impact over the reader that he was there and it is a real story than if it was just fiction. Douglass’s Narrative also shows the power being able to read and write holds. He saw the ability to read and write as his pass to freedom. Which I think in the end his freedom finally did result from his knowledge. His master telling him it was dangerous for him to be able to read and write made him want to learn even more. He discussed the problems he faced learning since he had to teach himself and how he tricked others into teaching him new words. Douglass once even said he envied his fellow slaves for their stupidity because once he learned to read and write he learned what was really going on around him. His fellow slaves just accepted their lives as the way things were they didn’t know any better. His being able to read and write however made him want his freedom even more and helped him to reach it and educate others about slavery.