Extra Credit Blog: What Are Teenagers Reading?

I just attended the "What Are Teenagers Reading?" Women's Studies Research Forum presented by Kathy Headley, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Naturally, I always loved to read while I was growing up.  At my elementary and middle school, we had Accelerated Reading points, and I always made it my priority to have the most points in our class.  Headley focused on middle school reading, and we talked about some of the reading we did at this age.  Of course, most people chimed in with some Harry Potter talk, though I myself was never a huge fan.  A few of the series mentioned I remembered reading at that age, such as The Princess Diaries.  She also mentioned that many middle schoolers are reading The Twilight Saga  and The Vampire Diaries, which was surprising to me, since I figured these were targeted to the high school age group.  She said that the classics would always be the classics, such as Where the Red Fern Grows and The Giver, but teachers should try to implement pleasurable reading with these assignments.  Research done by her creative inquiry class showed that most students this age do not like the assigned reading.  Around 44% said that they did not like the assigned readings because they weren't relevant to their lives, and 34% said they didn't like the assignments because they were boring.  I agree with Headley's remark that the classics will never be replaced, but perhaps the teachers should try to employ more interesting activities to encourage better participation, and thus better understanding of the readings.  She also discussed the books she read in a group over the summer, which included After Ever After, I Will Save You, and If I Stay.  She said that all of these books dealt with very sad and serious situations, like battling cancer, dealing with a mental disorder, and encountering a car accident.  All of these books were chosen by the readers, showing that middle school readers are not just reading fantasy books, but are also interested in literature about real life situations.  Along with this, she made the point that adolescent students are reading less than ever before, since there are so many other options of spending time.  This is a major problem, and research has shown that teachers and media specialists aren't even encouraging and recommending certain books to students nearly as much as you would think.  Reading helps learning in all aspects, and it is important for students to read in order to build their vocabulary and improve complex reasoning.  Without gathering these skills, students will have a harder time adapting to collegiate teaching styles.  This was a very insightful presentation that really put our youth's reading habits into perspective.

Anne Moore's Life

This short story about the life of Anne Moore practically turned it’s own pages.  I can barely fathom the life she led and experiences she had.   From the beginning, the author had us hooked with the story of Fred, the teenage boyfriend of Anne’s sister, Susan.  The revelation that Fred had killed both of his parents, and quite possibly thought about killing Susan and Anne after driving them over to his house, was the start to a series of shocking and disturbing events in Anne’s life.  The first serious relationship Anne was involved in was with Paul, a painter.  This may have been the beginning of her struggles, in my opinion, for their sporadic behavior seemed to spark even more from Anne as the story progressed.  They just up and decided to travel to Mexico where they met Ruben.  The Frog in Mazatlan that was “frequented by tourists” sounded very similar to the Senor Frogs in Nassau that we visited while on spring break during my senior year of high school.   Returning to Mexico with Paul a couple of years later, Anne found herself having an affair with Ruben, and staying with him in Mexico long after Paul had left.  At this point, Anne had a long succession of men come and go in her life.  From Charles, whose “fondest dream was to have a whore,” who pushed her into selling her body for money for one night, to Tony, whom she married and left only to find that he had killed himself soon after, I began to wonder how she carried on the way she did.  The author wrote, “One day Anne’s love for Tony ran out and she left Seattle.”  This was very interesting to me, since it seemed like her love for whichever partner she was with at the time eventually “ran out.”  While I know this happens all the time, I don’t believe that a person can really fall in and out of love quite as much as Anne did in this story.  I feel like she was just lonely, albeit independent, and used each of these men mentioned, and the other ones following until she was ready for the next one.  I also got the feeling that the narrator had cared deeply and fallen pretty hard for Anne, though it seemed that he was only another one of her victims.  Don’t get me wrong; I know she fought some pretty rough battles.  I assume the disease she developed was cancer, which would be terrifying, but it shouldn’t have made her run away from someone (Bill) who told her that “she could count on his support.”  Perhaps she was scared that she was running out of time and wanted to see the world by fleeing to Europe, but she seemed, in my eyes, to be a very selfish person, never once caring how her decisions might impact others.

Vocabulary Words

-Insufferable:  intolerable

-Imperceptibly: so subtle, slight, or gradual as to be barely perceptible 

-Barbiturates:  any of a class of sedative and sleep-inducing drugs derived from barbituric acid

The Lazarus Project (Pages 249-292)

This last section of The Lazarus Project was rather surprising to me.  As Brik said goodbye to Iuliana, his infatuation with her was evident.  On page 252, Rora even asked Brik, “Did you bang her?” Brik retorts with, “She has a husband,” to which Rora responds, “You have a wife.”  I found this rather interesting.   The way he’s regarded Mary has changed so much over the course of the novel.  He even goes back to say on page 254 that “the thought of Mary leaving me was ever present in my mind.”  While this may be true, his feelings toward Mary had definitely shifted at this point, and would continue to shift as the story progresses.  After facing the death of Rora, his long time friend and accomplice during the trip, Brik is unsure whether he wants to go back to America at all.  I thought it was pretty ironic that Brik said, “He deserved a good beating, but not death.  Nobody deserves death, yet everybody gets it,” in regards to Rambo killing Miller.  This worked as a foreshadowing device for Rora’s fate during his reappearance in Sarajevo.  On their way there, though, Rora and Brik took it upon themselves to save their fellow rider from a life of prostitution.  While Brik’s hand didn’t healthily withstand the confrontation, he knew he had done the right thing.  When they arrived in Sarajevo, memories washed over Brik, and he said, “Home is where somebody notices your absence.”  It is clear in this statement that he no longer finds this place home, but instead a vague recollection.  I also found it interesting that the cab driver in Sarajevo actually wanted Brik to buckle up, which was much the contrary to the other drivers along the way.  I expected the story about Lazarus to end the way it did, though I was definitely taken aback by the contemporary ending when Rora was shot.  Olga was left alone, without a brother, friend, or probably even a job, while Brik was left alone in Sarajevo completely rattled, unsure about his future and where he truly belongs.

Vocabulary Words

• Redolent (Page 258):  strongly reminiscent or suggestive of
• Ululating (Page 270):  howling or wailing as as an expression of strong emotion, typically grief
• Ampoules (page 279):  a small glass vessel in which liquids for injection are hermetically sealed

The Lazarus Project (Pages 53-96)

From the very first chapter, I’ve been hooked on this novel.  Starting out with the murder of Lazarus Averbuch, Hemon used a wonderful tactic of keeping the reader intrigued.  He also accomplishes this by alternating between the story of Lazarus and his own personal goals of getting to the bottom this mysterious murder that happened over a century ago, which relates to memoir The Same River Twice and it’s structure.  This second section begins with the “Fitzes” busting up into Olga Averbuch’s home, interrogating her about her brother.  I thought it was absolutely terrible how they refused to come right out and say he had been shot, but instead took her to the morgue to see his dead body with her own two eyes.  She wasn’t at all expecting to see her brother dead, which was evident in her fainting thereafter.  All of the policemen seem like truly crooked people.  Although it is 1908, and all of the equality rights have yet to be established, it still surprised me at just how terribly this situation was handled.  Even putting the actual shooting aside, the way the policemen bitterly act toward his grieving sister literally sent chills down my spine.  I feel so lucky to live in a society that, while still far from perfect, knows that there is nothing okay about this murder or how the officials are handling it.  I am so interested to learn what Lazarus was there for to begin with; however, I know Brik will have to do a lot of uncovering to uncover this hidden truth, since the chief of police picked up the letter himself.  I have a feeling it had absolutely nothing to do with anarchy.  The police end up telling Olga by the end of the chapter to “Think of others, of their disrupted live.  Imagine how they might feel.  This is a time for sacrifice.”  This really angered me, for Olga merely wanted her brother to be buried according to Jewish tradition, and they wouldn’t even allow her to do so.  They had already killed her brother under unclear circumstances, and now they wouldn’t even let Olga put his body to rest as custom in her society.  And on top of that, they have the nerve to tell her to imagine how others might feel!  How about her feelings?  I cannot even picture the pain she felt.  In the next chapter, Brik and Rora begin their journey to Lviv, Ukraine.  When discussing Rora’s time with Rambo’s unit, the narrator says, “What does not need to be seen will not be seen.”  I feel like this relates directly to the story of Lazarus.  I thought it was really interesting how the blackout Later, when the chapters switch again, Olga reflects on her brother’s life and thinks, “All the lives he could have lived.”  This is repetitive from the beginning of the book, a thought Lazarus had while walking the streets towards the store.  The line, “She will never laugh again,” on page 95 exemplified how much her brother’s death had affected Olga, and at the end of the chapter we see her fantasizing as she lies in bed that Lazarus knocks on the door, and she embraces him, still alive despite all that has happened.  I really hope that justice shines through in the end, though given this time period, I realize this wish is very doubtful.

Vocabulary Words

Moribund:  being in the state of dying

Promulgated:  formally made public

Gossamer:  a gauze fabric with extremely fine tecture 

Loaves and Fishes Writers' Harvest Extra Credit

I thoroughly enjoyed the Loaves and Fishes Writers’ Harvest last night.  Although it was extra credit, I left feeling like my time was well spent.  Last semester, I went to a similar event during Clemson’s Literary Festival in which poems were read in various languages.  I have always enjoyed reading, writing, and basically all aspects of English, so it was wonderful to listen to writers read their own beautiful works of art.  John Pursley III kicked it all off with his poems written from Western movies.  By taking something that had already been created and making something unique to his own style, he really allowed his passion towards writing to shine through.  Lindsey Jones took the stage next, reading a piece about a little Haitian girl she took care of while in America for corrective leg surgery.   I really liked this one.  It was very personal for her, and I loved hearing about her experience.  The next reader, Steve Catz, was a character.  I honestly spent more time admiring his outlandish outbursts than I did concentrating on his poems.   He certainly was a memorable man who was obviously very enthusiastic about his work.  The last speaker before the intermission, Keith Lee Morris, read what, in my opinion, was the most appropriate short story for the audience.  His story concerning two guys that were freshmen roommates was very entertaining.  The entire crowd was intrigued, enjoying his delivery, as well as the impossible events that he conveyed through his outrageous story.  I really liked the part about Ray Charles coming to stay with them, as well as the part depicting a battle of toy soldiers.  I really hated to see so many people leave during intermission; perhaps next year they should consider not having one to encourage higher attendance in the second half.  When Jillian Weise read her poem about Zahra Baker, I was impressed with how she related her life and disabilities to the situation.  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about this case, being a South Carolina resident, and was very interested in what Oberdan had to say about it.  Afterwards, Jillian Weise read several of her poems.  My favorite one was “Pinecone”.  From there, my professor Alexander Kudera shared a piece from his novel “Fight For Your Long Day”.  I was so excited to see him read an excerpt from his book because he had mentioned it a few times during class.  I really liked how he said he went against a “writing no no” and wrote about writing.  However, the section he read depicted his relationship with his father and his opinion about his father’s efforts in finding a job.  All in all, I thought this was a wonderful presentation by several very talented writers, with the proceeds going to an awesome cause.

"Orbiting" by Bharati Mukherjee

In this short story, we discover a family coming together on Thanksgiving Day.  I can relate to this, because this is the one holiday that my entire family comes down to my grandmother’s house to celebrate.  As the scene opens, Rindy’s father arrives with the turkey.  When he says that her Mom thawed the turkey because she wouldn’t have had room in her mini-fridge, Rindy retorts with, “ You mean Mom said Rindy shouldn’t be living in a dump, right?”  I feel like this is the typical among American families.  I know my parents always wanted better for me, which is why I was always encouraged and motivated to do my very best in school so I could continue my education at the collegiate level.  A few pages later, Rindy suggests that her father had been having a time with her mother; having grown up in a culture that didn’t have electricity or running water, her mom didn’t find it necessary to drive anywhere and was content with staying at home.  I liked when she said “She used those wolves for all they were worth…” because as humans, we often find ourselves using any excuse we can to resist change.  I also liked whenever Rindy pointed out that her father “uses ‘even’ a lot around me.  Not just a judgment, but a comparative judgement.”  I thought this was extremely interesting.  I myself often use “even” in order to emphasize something, and the fact that Rindy recognizes this emphasis her dad puts on comparisons in Rindy’s life shows her father’s disappointment.  Later in the story after the family has arrived, Rindy’s boyfriend Ro shows up.  Her dad embarrasses her almost immediately as he encourages Ro to spell his name.  She then kisses him “really sexy so they’ll know I’ve slept with this man.  Many times.  And if he asks me, I will marry him.”  This was completely different from the way I carry myself when I’m with my boyfriend and parents.  I dated the same guy for five years throughout middle and high school, and never once did I hold his hand in front of my parents, much less kiss him passionately.  Even now, being older, when I bring a guy home, I give just as much respect.  I’m scared to even imagine how my father would react to such a show; I would be scared for the guy’s well being, honestly.  I also thought it was interesting that Ro denied her father of a scotch and soda, altering the mood as the father became angry at the realization that Ro doesn’t consume alcohol and he does.  Whenever Franny’s critical personality examines Ro, Rindy says, “I hate Franny for what she’s doing to me.  I am twenty-seven years old, I should be more mature.”  The way Franny was inspecting Ro made Rindy see things about him that made him different, things she had never seen before.  She quickly put it all behind her, though her anger towards Franny did not subside.  By the end of the story, Rindy vows to “teach him how to walk like an American, how to dress like Brent but better, how to fill up a room as Dad does instead of melting and blending but sticking out in the Afghan way,” showing that despite the fact that he may not fit perfectly into the family, Rindy definitely wants Ro in her life for good.

Vocabulary Words

Petulant (Page 60):  showing sudden, impatient irritation

Emirate (Page 61):  the office of an emir

Ferraro button (Page 66):  a political advertising button for Geraldine Ferrraro

The Same River Twice (Pages 153-188)

In this last section of The Same River Twice, the memoir neatly wraps up the latent expectations that I have had from the beginning with Rita’s pregnancy.  When Chris decides to leave Boston to be a naturalist in the Everglades, he had a heck of a time catching a ride that far down.  I thought it was pretty funny how other hitchhikers had left a heads up to the rest that it was going to be a hard task to accomplish by engraving how long it took to get a ride on the back of a road sign.  Once he got to the swamp, he wrote, “Initially, life in Flamingo reminded me of a rooming house—inhabited by kooks and outcasts, dice that rolled off the table, wrinkles on the face of God.”  This quote included several metaphors that helped draw a picture of the type of people Chris was amongst.  However, after meeting the Captain, Chris seemed to find someone to trust in.  Whenever he slept over with the captain and his wife, though, Chris said, “His son has come between us in a way I never understood.  Captain Jack seemed to resent knowledge of him, the way a man feels anger toward a friend who saved his life.”  In my opinion, the captain built a barrier between himself and Chris afterwards as not to get too close to him.  He had seen the same characteristics within Chris when he jumped into the “shark water” to save the boy that he knew his son had possessed to save three men during war, and he didn’t want to get close to Chris in fear of losing him as well.  From there, everything just seemed to get worse for Chris as all of his co-workers seemed to turn their backs on him.  He was at his lowest point, which is well represented whenever he said, “In the sudden rain I realized I was crying, utterly frustrated by my failure to be defeated.”  Failure usually means defeat, but that was not what Chris was seeking.  He wanted to be defeated; he wanted it all to end.  It was as if he had come to an epiphany that he was too old to be living such a reckless, unstructured life, realizing that after twelve years, he had nothing to show from his adventures, not even a reliable friend.  Things started looking up for him after Hurricane Jacob, whenever he left to go back to Boston to stay with Shadrack.  It was there that he met Rita and his life began to fall into place as an adult’s should.  They eventually got married, moved around a few times, and settled in Iowa after he was accepted into a graduate program there.  It was there that they decided to have a baby, and Rita’s pregnancy was recorded in every other chapter of the memoir.  Their son finally arrived in the final chapter, and in the Epilogue he is three months old.  Chris carries him on his back to his first escapade in the woods, remarking, “The load on my back weighs nothing and everything.”  I loved this quote, which suggests that even though the baby is very light, he has come to mean everything to him.  So much as changed in Chris’s life, but he realizes just how much these changes mean to him.  We have finally seen Chris grow up to be a real man with real priorities.

Vocabulary Words

Ø  Vagrant (Page 154):  a person without a settled home

Ø  Androgynous (Page 159):  having characteristics of both male and female

Ø  Corrugated (Page 162):  creased, shaped into folds

Ø  Egret (Page 171):  a heron that is white or buff

Ø  Preemptive (Page 178):  taken as a measure against something possible, anticipated, or feared

The Same River Twice (Pages 54-109)

As the book continues to unravel, Rita’s pregnancy continues, as does Chris’s experiences across the country in alternating chapters.  On page 54, we see Chris contemplate whether one can step into the same river twice.  This references to the title of the book, and in my opinion casts some foreshadowing to future events.  At four months, Rita decides she wants an amniocentesis, which is an amniotic fluid test that is used in prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal abnormalities and fetal infections.  While reluctant, Chris finally gives in and they find that their baby’s chromosomes appear to be “structurally sound.”  Though a short chapter, I found this one especially important.  It ends with a strong image of the circle of life with the words, “The embryo has already set cells aside for its own offspring like a farmer saving seed corn for next year’s crop.  Female mosquitoes land on my skin, needed fresh blood for their young.”  In the next chapter, he heads to west Texas where he takes a job painting houses with Bill, a Vietnam war veteran.  Bill tells Chris that the only adrenaline rush that even comes close to what he experienced at war is skydiving, and he offered to pay for Chris to do it if he would go with him.  Half a mile above the earth, Chris began freaking out a little bit, but he was “…too scared to be a coward” after witnessing the way the instructor regarded another guy that chickened out.  I thought this was an interesting phrase that many can relate to.  I know I’ve experienced this feeling several times in my life.  Growing up as a competitive cheerleader, I got this feeling before every competition.  I would be so nervous that I would get sick, but I’d always do my part because I was too scared to let my team down to be a coward and back out.  Soon after, Bill killed himself without explanation and Chris moved along to Colorado, then to the Grand Canyon where he worked as a dishwasher until a degrading manager took control.  He decided to head to California from there, and the story drifts back to Rita’s pregnancy and their shot at Lamaze classes.  On page 77 when the setting shifts once again, Chris is asleep in the desert when a white coupe comes by to pick him up.  He said, “My mind groped the curious state between sleep and vigilance that stained reality like a minor hallucination.”  I thought this was an interesting and accurate way to explain the struggle to adjust after waking up from a deep sleep.  The two men he hitched a ride with were extremists on both ends of the spectrum, but he finally ended up in California where he soon discovered wasn’t the place for a dreamer and amateur.  From there, the memoir goes back to Rita’s pregnancy and a snow scene where Chris blends in with nature by sitting in a dead maple, concealing himself.  Bad thoughts once again creep in his mind, but he sees Rita at the end of the chapter waiting on the porch, and all of his worries evaporate.  The next and final chapter in this section has been my favorite thus far.  I thought it was really cool that he began working for a circus, and slowly worked his way up from the very bottom of the totem pole, even if he didn’t make it far up.  I loved the part where Gabe wouldn’t participate in the circus activities because of his embarrassment, and it took everyone apologizing and Arnie showing his goods to Gabe for him to accept their mistake and the next day he “performed exceedingly well.”  I also found it interesting that they had Chris dress up in walrus suit to please the crowd and pretend that the walrus was very intelligent.  After drinking martinis with the parrot lady, however, Chris couldn’t perform under the harsh circumstances of heat, and thus “decapitated” himself (took off the walrus head) and didn’t stop until he was headed out of there.  It seems to me that Chris knows when it’s time for him to move on, and he doesn’t stop until he’s far, far away.

The Same River Twice (Pages 9-53)

From reading the Prologue, we are introduced to a very negative view of modern society in a complicated format.  The narrator uses complex phrases, metaphors, and similes that take careful thought to pull apart.  One that especially appealed to me was when he said, “Thumb and cranium lucked us into our current status and we’ve traded curiosity for erosion.”  I interpreted this to mean that hard work and brains have gotten us this far, but we no longer possess the curiosity it takes to maintain our greatness, and thus things will only get worse from here.  These deep thoughts drifted into the first chapter of this memoir, with the mood reversing to an almost peaceful sense as the narrator describes his current location with his wife in Iowa and their circumstance of the decision to have a child.  On page 14, the narrator describes this decision with, “The subject remained with us, floating like an ovum waiting for a sperm.”   I found to be an extremely clever simile and pun.  As the story continues, Chris finally gives in after considering himself a saboteur, a person who commits sabotage (in relation to Rita’s remaining child-bearing years), and decides to try to have a baby with his wife Rita.  However, he struggles with the fear and responsibility of becoming a father throughout these beginning chapters once she finally gets pregnant and the child begins to develop.  With a change in chapter, the narrator shifts the story back to when he lived in the southern Appalachia of Kentucky.  While he talked about his homeland, I came across “VISTA” which is a national service program designed to fight poverty, revealing the lack of wealth where he was raised.   We see that he tried to sign up for the military, but got denied, then hauled off to Manhattan, where he experiences a culture shock.  He saw a “tall woman with a huge jaw” being harassed, so he ran the guy off, and followed her back.  Come to find out, this “woman” was actually a guy, which rattled him for an entire week.  He goes on to say, “…Appalachian men could acceptably fornicate with daughters, sisters, and livestock, but carnal knowledge of a man was a hanging offense.”  I found this a bit odd, since incest and bestiality are, in my opinion, just as appalling (though I’ve always heard throughout my life that mountain people inbreed).  He soon meets Jahi, who takes him on outrageous adventures and introduces him to sex.  After a terrible accident involving a young boy during a leisurely horseback ride that Chris felt like he caused from prompting the horse to gallop faster, he left Jahi’s place.  When she called him a couple of weeks later, he “hung up on her laughter and never saw her again.”  I was surprised that he just completely dropped his only friend (and lover) that he had in Manhattan, although the circumstances seemed reasonable. This seemed to be a reoccurring action with Chris, though, as he went on to leave Manhattan for home when he broke his leg, left home again for Minneapolis, and headed back west at the end of page 53, fleeing from the prospect of marrying the twins’ cousin, Maria.  Each chapter is contrasting various times in Chris’s life, and he always seems to be comparing his life to nature, floods, Daniel Boone, or anything he can think of for justification of his actions and thoughts.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories

“Emergency” by Dennis Johnson

This short story was extremely interesting to me.  As a nursing major, I found it startling that Georgie and the narrator, who were the orderly and clerk of the hospital, were allowed to work there when they were both clearly under the influence of heavy substances.   Didn’t the pharmacists within the hospital notice that drugs had gone missing?  Granted, the setting of the story is in 1973 and many things have changed since then, but it was clear that even the nurse knew Georgie was either mentally disturbed or on some kind of drugs by her statement, “I hope you didn’t do that to him,” whenever Terrence Weber came in with a hunting knife in his eye.  The doctor also said, “That person is not right, not at all, not one bit,” in regards to Georgie singing before prepping Terrence for surgery (or what would have been surgery had Georgie not taken it upon himself to pull out the knife).  However, I almost found it even more disturbing that the doctor seemed so nonchalant about the situation.  When he first peeked into Terrence’s room, he asked, “What seems to be the trouble?” after seeing the guy lying there with a knife sticking out of his face.   A few moments later, Georgie shows up with the knife in his hand, and everyone, including nurses and physicians, just stands there in pure shock.   The first person to speak up was an ICU nurse who only announced that Georgie’s shoelace was untied.  This led me to believe that the entire staff was on drugs, considering that any nurse or physician in their right mind would immediately go see about the patient if an orderly were to pull out an impaled item.  Their driving trip after work proved to be just as entertaining.  When the narrator said, “It was one of the moments you stay in, to hell with all the troubles of before and after.  The sky is blue, and the dead are coming back,” at the beginning of the escapade, I received a strong sense of gratitude for the simple things in life that I often take for granted every day.  Soon after, they headed to the fair and the narrator seemed to have an epiphany when he realized exactly how much acid he has taken after seeing a famous guru being interviewed about his drug use.  Later, whenever Georgie ran over the rabbits, it was obvious that they were not sober after he reversed the truck to “camp in the wilderness” and “breakfast on its haunches.”  This campout was almost disastrous until they “got their eyes back,” or sobered up, since it had started snowing and they couldn’t find the truck.  On their way back the next morning, they picked up one of the narrator’s old roommates who was AWOL, and told him they could get him to Canada.  From there, the story ended abruptly as Hardee asked what Georgie does and he answered, “I save lives.”  This was a very odd response for an orderly, especially one of Georgie’s caliber.

“Home” by Jayne Anne Phillips

Right from the beginning, I got a distinct sense of melancholy from this short story.  It was written so that conversations flowed without quotation marks, although indentations were used whenever the speaker switched so that it was still easy to differentiate the speaker from the listener.  At twenty-three years old, the narrator is living at home with her mother.  Her mother is very old-fashioned, with nearly out-dated views about sex, which posed a conflict between her and her daughter when an old lover comes to stay with her.  The barriers of their relationship became apparent from the very beginning whenever the mother explained how much time, effort, and love she put into caring for her mother whenever she was sick near the end of her life.  She said that guilty people should feel guilty in reference to people who neglect their family when they need them the most.  The narrator goes on to say, “My mother has often told me that I will be sorry when she is gone,” inferring that her mother doesn’t feel like her daughter is doing everything she can to take care of her mother, who we later find out has had breast cancer, which reinforces her obsession with determining whether news anchors and television figures have cancer or not.  I found the part where the narrator dreamed about her father standing over her with an erection to be very disturbing, maybe hinting at some sort of sexual abuse in the past.  The narrator and her mother openly talk about sex, though they have varying opinions about it.  Daniel, one of the narrator’s ex-lovers, comes to town to visit the narrator, and her mother is very impressed by him, stating to her daughter, “You’ve known some nice people, haven’t you?”  However, her feelings changed abruptly the next morning when she hears her daughter and Daniel having sex upstairs.  The story ends in the mother/daughter confrontation after Daniel heads back home and the mother returns from church, feeling completely disrespected and betrayed in her own house.  I feel that she has every right to feel this way.  Regardless of how her daughter feels about sex, she should respect her mother’s opinions when living under her mother’s roof.

"The Crying of Lot 49" Chapter 5

This chapter was jam-packed full of events and information leading up to the purpose and meaning of the muted post horn.  The chapter begins with Oedipa going to Berkeley to try to determine the reason behind the four different versions of the play, but the professor who wrote the preface has moved to San Narciso College.  On her way back, she stops to get tested to see if she’s a “sensitive” at John Nefastis’s residence.  Once she found out that she couldn’t mentally force the Demon to sort the molecules, thus confirming that she indeed was not a “sensitive,” John Nefastis asked Oedipa to go have sex with him.  Although she ran out of his house screaming, this event represents a reoccurring representation in this novel.  Instead of sex being based on love, passion, and sensuality, this novel suggests that it is purely a way to relieve boredom.  Oedipa has an affair with Metzger only because she was bored with her own marriage and this reckless act would spice up her life a little bit.  However, Metzger was the only man she engaged in infidelity with, rejecting all the other men’s sexual advances toward her, regardless of how small.

As the novel continues, we find Oedipa being flocked into a gay bar.  During her time there, we see another image of isolation as she sits there as the only female amongst drunken homosexuals.  This image is maintained as Oedipa begins to hallucinate.  She begins to see the muted post horn or references to it on the bus, then at the Laundromat, in the bathroom at the airport, and overhears a mother tell her son to write to her using the W.A.S.T.E. postal system.  Upon leaving, she sees a garbage can with these letters on it, so she sticks around to follow the letter carrier, which ends up going to John Nefastis’s residence.  Back at her hotel, she ends up dancing near perfectly for half an hour at a deaf-mute convention to no music at all.

From there, she decides to return home, heading straight to Dr. Hilarius in hopes of being assured that this whole ordeal is simply a figment of her imagination.  Upon her arrival, she is greeted by gunshots and soon learns that Dr. Hilarius has gone crazy. Oedipa is pulled into his hide-out room, and he confesses that he worked at a concentration camp for the Jews.  She eventually seizes the opportunity to turn the gun around on him so that the police can come take him away.  Outside, she gives a live account of the encounter over her husband’s radio station.  She then discovers that he is tripping on LSD, claiming that he doesn’t have nightmares about the empty car lot when he takes it.  Oedipa heads back to San Narciso, feeling as though she no longer knows her husband.  This is the ultimate image of isolation as Oedipa is left alone with all these pieces to this massive puzzle. 

"The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon

            This first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49 was not at all what I expected when first cracking open the book.  Each scenario and thought involved with Oedipa Maas seemed to have an underlying irony that was hard to ignore.  In the first few pages, Oedipa receives a letter informing her that her wealthy ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, has died left her in charge of handling his estate.  The series of thoughts following this occurrence seem random to me.  At first, she thinks she is getting really sick, and then immediately jumps into a recollection of her ex-boyfriend impersonating celebrities and talking in various voices.

            When Oedipa vows to herself to handle Pierce’s unresolved business, she begins to think of her husband, Mucho Maas, because she knows he, along with herself, has no idea how to go about carrying out wills.  Mucho, a radio DJ, was once a used car salesman that, according to Oedipa, “had believed too much in the lot.’  This is another ironic point, considering the title of this novel.  Also, the radio station KCUF where Mucho works can be spelled backwards to propose a negative feeling towards his workplace.

            It was also ironic that her doctor called in the middle of the night to recruit Oedipa in participating in an experience involving LSD.  With the name Dr. Hilarius, it all seems to be a big joke that continues into the next day whenever she goes to see Roseman, her lawyer.  Roseman asks Oedipa to run away with him, though he does not have a plan where.  In later conjecture, she remembers always wanting an escape when she was dating Pierce and imagines Pierce trying to climb up her Rapunzel hair, but falling down whenever her hair ended up being a wig.

            While Oedipa suggested earlier in the chapter that her husband’s mental state may be unstable, I can only assume she, as well, may not have all of her marbles from the progression of this novel.

"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams

The last two scenes of “The Glass Menagerie” were very predictable, in my opinion.  It was very apparent throughout the play that Tom was unhappy with his life by his frequent visits to the fire escape, which made his departure in the end unsurprising. However, Tom could not truly escape his past, for he was haunted by the thought of leaving his sister behind, causing him to hold an intense emotional connection to her.

Laura’s glass figurines were a reoccurring symbol throughout the play.  Just as Jim accidently broke the horn off the unicorn, he broke Laura’s heart by admitting that he had to go pick up his soon-to-be wife.  It also symbolized how fragile all of the Wingfield family is.  While reading, I would get an overwhelming sense of doom for all the characters.  Each felt hopeless about important aspects of their lives:  Tom felt like he was going to work in a coffin instead of pursuing what he was passionate about, while Amanda felt like her golden days were over and her children would never fulfill what she thought would bring them happiness and success.  Laura felt helpless, as well, which was evident through by her complex during Jim’s visit.

I was not shocked to discover that Jim was involved with another woman.  Although Laura did warm up to him when left alone, Jim was a completely different caliber than she was.  The pressure that was placed on their meeting to begin with was enough to assume it would not work out.  This was not a fairy tale ending by no means, but instead a very realistic one.  It left me with the feeling that that’s life, and life is rarely fair at all.  

"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

In the beginning of this piece of literature, Baldwin dives right into a sense of brotherly love.  While the narrator cannot change his brother’s decisions, he also cannot let the feelings of anguish go after reading about his arrest in the newspaper.  He obviously cares deeply for his brother, but is only able to grasp how hard his life has been after walking with one of Sonny’s friends on the very day Sonny had been arrested.  After observing the lifestyle of this heroin addict, the narrator is able to see first-hand what Sonny was put through.

The narrator doesn’t write to Sonny right away.  It took his daughter, Grace, dying for him to realize that he needs his brother, and Sonny needs him.  I feel like this happens a lot within relationships.  Often times we find ourselves confiding in the ones we love the most only when we need them the most, and this can be seen throughout this story.  From there, they stay in constant contact until Sonny gets out of jail and comes to stay with his brother and his family in Harlem.

Throughout the story, several flashbacks occurred that allowed us, as the readers, to see the background behind these characters.  A conversation with his mother before her death stuck with the narrator throughout the story, urging him to watch out for Sonny and be there whenever he needs him.  After her death, Sonny moved in with Isabel’s family, and eventually began to skip school in order to pursue a career in music.  Once Isabel’s family found out, he saw what a burden he had been, and decided to join the navy.  It was at this point that Sonny and his brother were the most far away from each other, and it continued this way until Grace died, sparking the narrator to reach out to his brother.

While Sonny and his brother definitely had their ups and downs, the narrator finally saw the reasoning behind Sonny’s love for playing the piano after taking up his offer to go see him play.  The narrator stated, “Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.”  Sonny wasn’t only playing for himself, he was playing for everyone of Harlem.  He was expressing all of the pain, the anguish, and the suffering associated with their lives, and through these blues, his brother finally understood.

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid

When I first began to read this piece, I immediately thought of the lessons my grandmother taught me as a child on how to be ladylike.  However, as I really began to get into the meat of the selection, I was shocked at the reference, "To prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming."  This reoccurring phrase was something that would have never been said to me as a child, which is why I found it so interesting and alarming.  

I was also intrigued by some of what the writer was telling the girl.  She was taught how to "spit up in the air if you feel like it" and "move quick so it doesn't fall on you."  Both of these are quite the opposite of being the lady I was taught to be, and the lady I though the author was molding at the very beginning of the selection.

I feel as though this is almost an intentional stab at how women are suppose to act.  It seems to me as though the author is trying to get the point across that women are not expected to act as they once were with the changing times.

"The Flowers" by Alice Walker

As I began to read this piece by Alice Walker, I was overcome with a sense of déjà vu.  Growing up in Ruby, South Carolina, Myop's activities paralleled with the after-school adventures my older brother and I would take when we were younger.  We loved playing outside and wandering in the woods near our house.  Just as Myop walked to the stream, we always found ourselves fascinated by the creek that ran between our neighbor's home and ours.


The wording chosen by Walker created an image of serenity.  The woods seemed to be such a peaceful place that welcomed her ten-year-old curiosities. In the last sentence in paragraph three, Walker wrote, "Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream."  I feel that this sentence contained a hidden sense of foreshadowing.  Just as the white bubbles disrupted the thin black scale of soil, Myop's happiness and summer was disrupted by what she stepped on as she began to head home.


The ending came to be a huge surprise to me, as it immediately twisted the mood of tranquility to suspense.  The descriptions of the body rotting away led to the notion that the body had been there a good, long while without anyone missing the person.  This shifted the feelings of being one with nature to being completely alone, which was reinforced by the noose found circling a limb.  Suicide is the ultimate display of loneliness, and Myop realized this as she walked into this horrific discovery.  At ten years old, Myop was not mentally prepared to deal with this, which is represented by her actions thereafter.  She laid down the flowers that she had worked so hard to pick and prepare, and the story ends with the line, "And summer was over."


I found this story to be extremely interesting.  The sentence stating, "It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise," threw a curveball into the situation Myop had gotten in to.  It seems as though the man had finally found his own happiness letting go of life, while Myop had found happiness exploring the life around her.

In a Station of the Metro-Test Blog

1. A "Metro" is a subway system.  Each city has a specific name for their own subway system, and Paris adopted the name "Metro" for theirs.
2. The poem conveys feelings of mystery.  There is a supernatural, along with a dreary sense associated with the word "apparition" and the phrase "wet, black bough."
3. I feel that the poem is trying to describe how each face is lost in the crowd of thousands.  While each person together makes up the whole, if one person was removed, no one would notice.  This is insinuating that public transportation, crowds, and humanity are selfish.  The goal of public transportation is to transport individuals safely, but at the same time, each person is just another ticket to the workers.  In a crowd, each person is just someone you pass during your busy routine, hardly noticed.  It is humanity's nature to put yourself first above all else, and this poem examines and magnifies this.
4. Waiting for a Ride--Standing still along the sidewalk;/The students scurry snobbishly to aboard.