Like My entry on <u>The Color of Water
the truth about it was that i myself found his story about the angel "An Old Man with very Big Wings" as something different and worthy of a deeper analysis. I like the fact that although the comparison with an angel is very apparent you realy dont get the vibe like the old man that fell from the sky was an angel at all, although through the whole story he dosen''t speak and when he does he speaks in a foreing tounge or a loud mummbled scream yet he is able to understand the people that are around him.
I also like the term that flying means liberation or freedom, basicaly because the first vision that i get when somebody mentions the word flying, or freedom i think instinctively of a bird and is easily to catch that symbolism in most of the stories like in that great book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" the seagulls quest for becoming a better flier and disconecting from the other seagulls, bring towards me not just the concept of flying, but also it instills the notion that freedom comes with the desire of wanting to do better for yourself. i liked this chapter a lot it made me philosophical even in my blog.
]]>Yet at the sametime a sense of melancholy filled me as i read this, as i saw most of the descriptions i realized that my idolized notion of the Victorian Literature is not as modern and romantic as i once thought it to be. Like now i can't help to think that the sublime undertones that once made a novel whimsical and romantic where secret undertones to reveal some very explicit and private act between the characters. Like the curtains in the example of the book altho a sweet undertone in the movie are bluntly telling the viewer that the main characters are going at it.
Yet at the same time there where some interpretations of some stories that for me sounded a bit too far fetched at least for me. Like in the story The rocking Horse Winner, personally i read the story and i dont think that the story had any sexual allegory in it and if it did i think that i dont know...it kinda ruinsit for me i guess. i mean i saw it as something sad a boy that was just trying to keep his family together and the death in the rocking horse was a more sacrificial allegory for everybodies else happiness. i dont i will feel the same way about it if it would had been a odepal complex and he was well 'masturbating' to the horse, it sounds a lil too creepy to me.
but the rest seem pretty much on point
nevertheless i liked the other interpretations of the stories, despise the fact that i dont think is possible to catch sexual meanings in all works of literature that we read.
]]>I loved the character of little Nell and how she developed with the primer, i think that was what i liked most about the story Nell's interaction with the primer and how the book opened her eyes to a world in which she learned and explored things. i think that was one of my favorite parts in the book, the scene that Nell sits with the primer and starts touching the buttons in the screen. i think this was overall my favorite part because i could relate to it so well. I pictured it perfectly, Nell in that old broken down house, with this new intresting piece of material in her hand and she touched its buttons and she felt the interaction with computers, but most importantly with education The primer was more than just book, it was a tool in which she learned everything survival skills, how to socialize, how to flirt. and how to become the woman that she was meant to become.
I think there is also a previous scene in this book in which Nell tries to work the MC for the first time to make a matress for her dolls and finds herself not able to understand the characters, yet the primer not oly shows her what to do its open interaction as he talks to her. i think this is meaningful in the fact that the primer was not just a piece of machine that just played with Nell, but we could also see it with the qualities of a mentor a teacher, a playmate or a parent.
the scene about the buttons also made me think of another scene in another story which i also found quite moving and that was in the machine stops, in which the mother unlike societies values shows her humanity and her love for her son as she fondly remembers tecahing him how to press buttons when he was a little boy. But mostly i like the character of Nell because its a character that retains its innocence through almost full course of the story.i think that nell's innocence is more symbolic to me than what it is absurd and anoying for other people. because it goes again with the idea that in order to survive in the world you always have to be tough.
You can tell that in Nell's world at least which was a very futuristic world in which our same society problems still exist,(even perhaps in some cases worse) because some chracters even have 'guns on their skull. and she was a character that didn't live a what we can say a shelteredlife, she was from a very young age exposed to very terrible things, and it is thanks to the primer that she is able to overcome most of them, but i think that my making her character innocent and childlike you can still preserve that notion that even through a world of pain, a childhood of grievances, you can still preserve your innocence.
]]>Yet once you read it you can see why this play can make you understamd the concept that it brings the thing line that enwtwines the bond between power and friendship. i was hurt but at the sametime facinated by it, and it brought to mind another similar play in which betrayal is also the main outcome "E tu Brutus" comes to mind and the death of julious ceasar how friends and power can become deadly combinations and how can an execution, (In this play of course it was less violent) but of course the final outcome of him actually Axing his friend out of the picture gives us of curse something in which we can talk about.
Also the concept of the machine program, the dueling dragon thing and how he used those skills to actually aplly them to the real world and with that literaly managing to beat everybody in its or hers own game was something that really called on my attention. How he uses something that he was just so good at and uses those skills to get ahead in life is a clear example o self preservation and survial skills. Which brings us of course to the conclution that perhaps we human beings arent diverting too far from the fact that we are but animals adapting to an age in which now we have machines to do our savage work for us instead of having to go about and do it ourselves.
]]>Willy not only managed to take for granted what he had, he also did things to ruin them even more, like the affair he has with the other woman in the road, knowing full well that his wife Linda loves him to piece and would give up the world for him. Its because of this affair also that his relationship with his son Bif deteriorates and he finds himself relieving memories of both guilt and shame because of it. he has illusion about nostalgia of the life he once had, but the truth is once you look at what life he had years ago, you see it was no more magical, or special or true than the one he is living now. He's hoplesly clinging back onto something that clearly dosent exist and nobody else knows about it than him.
Above all i think this play not only teaches us abut ourselves, but it also specifies that the american dream is not simply being the best, is not having a car bigger than your neighbour or being more succesful, or having your kid beat the parkers kid in a spelling bee, or in football. Its being happy with who you are and with what you have compleated wheather or not you feel that you deserve more or not should not even be an issue. True happiness, comes from satisfaction of knowing you did what you had to do and you acomplished it fully, this is why i think this is one of the most thoughtful plays i had the priviledge to read in a very long time.
]]>Im not a technological oriented person, but it would be a lie to denny or ignore the influence that technology had among us through the outcoming years. All the kids fom our generation where raised in an era in which the nanny was television and the world of videogames was starting to emerge. Machines had dominated our ways of seeing and doing this,and in by doing so in modt cases this had brought toward us a helpful outcome.
But by working with machines and coexisting around them its the common fear that some of that dependence for that piece of machinery had also affected us in many diferent ways, dehumanizig us even, changing our ways thinking with feeling and making us instead begin to think more coldly and analitically, turning us therfore into living machines.
In the novel "The Diamond Age" we could clearly see an example this in the very begining of the story. The contast that it maked when we meet Bud for the first time and he describe getting a new model of his "scull gun". Here we have a character with a gun in his head, a piece of machinery that rest in his head.
We could see this as if this instrument would 'make him have a mind deprived of any human and emotions.' in fact as we meet Budd in the story we do realize that he indeed thinks as a computeried being, functioning with no emotion other than to function doing what he does best which is in his case robbing and terrifying people by using the only means of technology that he has available withing his reach, his 'scull gun". Instead of Bud acting with his concience and emotion he choses to be a 'hardhead' and find other useful more 'effitient' meassures to get ahead and succeed.
Also we see this relationship of a society dehumanized by technology in the story "The Machine Stops." This shows us a society in which everything and everyone is ruled by this giant machine, and how we can symbolize this technology and define it in an almost 'subgod' level, they base their whole society around them, they become like the machine, they only believe in efficiency and perfection. Anything unike in their world is considered forbitten. They had loss their humanity to this piece of metal that they themselves created, yet had become greater than that in the fact, that they had left themselves to be so influence by it, they do not realize, or do and not mind being under its control.
the play "The pick up Ax' is also a good example, in which the world becomes a video game in which only the stronger survive, the character in this story are consumed in their emotional loyalty by technology, bringing again the surface and mentality that only the strongest gets ahead. the vauge but present relationship in which echnology goes in between human emotions and friendship.
Also i would argue the possitive side of technology, the one used as a medium of comunication and development. In "The Diamond Age" however we see the relationship between humans in technology in also a very possitive light,, it was the relationship that Nell developed with the primer and how if it weren't for that tool, that piece of machinery that affected her and influenced her to learn and develop, she would had not overcome certain obsticles and most likely would had ended up like the rest of her family, her father, her brother and all the other low end people that where not worthy of the privi;edge of education and the knowledge of ideas.
And also the desire of Hackword's for a better future for his daughter, and the desire touse his abilities as a programer to achive a possitive "although an illegal purpose of achieving the book."
i dont know if to include and contrast with it another work of literature, from either another class or another writer outside it, maybe articles and outside information. I encourage you all to post coments in my site to see how it can be improved or changed.
-Thank You
]]>Zoe seems to me like a character who has everything that she wants, and at the sametime is realizing that those are not the things that are trully making her fullfilled. Like with her house, she mentions that her parents are pround that she;s the first one to own real estate, yet at the sametime complains that the house is too big and she feels like she's just wondering from room to room, and she hasn't even got the energy to decorate it propperly.
Her job in the University althought better than the one she had in New geneva thankfully because she dosen't have to be a Heidi here, has made her awfully sarcastic. In fact her tecaher evaluations are not good and even she herself pictures half of the time just coming in and singing all the words to the king and I.
but what striked me the most really was that rather than tell anybody she knew or as related to her about her possible tumor, she tells Earl, a man she has hardly had one conversation with. i guess i found it kinda confussing...can any one of you tell me if they inderstood?
]]>I also thought a lot about the dream she has in the begining, when she sees a cow or a monster eating her house, her walls everything around her but the Greenleafs. I think that is a foreshadowing for the ending. Because the Bull, although he dosent technically eat her kills her and with her gone there is nobody else to take care of the farm, but Mr. greenleaf, this is thanks to the fact that MRs. May's boys although one is an "intelectual" and the other one "an insurance salesman" really wouldn't care less if the farm goes under, because they are spoiled and lazzy. While Mr. Grenleafs children in the other hand alue the land and are doing the best they can to be hard workers and live comfortable lives with their families. They unlike MRs. mays childen value hard work and this is due to the fact that most of them know what it is to come from very poor means.
In the story i actually feel sorry for Mrs. may, because you can tell she's a woman that has worked hard for her farm, her house and her cows all by herself and now thanks to age and a twisted event evolving fate she would loose it all, to man that worked under her to help it built it.
]]>the fact that there was a puerto rican in this book only peeked my intrest in the war even more. it made me realize how big this war really was, although we ae a theritory as a puertorican i always felt very disconected from the states. even when 9/11 happened i felt like i was away from the tragety, i felt sorry for it, i was concerned, but i didnt see it as something that involed us and many people felt the same way. Now wit this book i could in someway feel the impact that the world had along the world, even tho hugo was frm Harlem it broght to me the notion that even tho we r not a state, we r a territory and we r at least in some extent american and what happens to that soil should hurt uus just as or as deeply as it does them.
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think this chapter teaches and shows a lot about the conflict n his book, the fear for him to be accepted, the fear of knowing that people knew and saw that his mother was white, that his family was different in a time where race tolerance was stil not fully acccepted. i think is movng because i don't think tha child that age fears for ts parents life over something like that.
Also in the chapter he explains how a neibour of the was a black panther and the childs familiarity with the group and utter and absolute fear. And the confussion of finding himself in the middle of orming an identity that nobody in that period of time had any trouble doing.
It reinded me of a saying that i heard onece that said thatoften mixed children have a prolem defining an identity, because they never know whitch culture to claim as their own, does anybody agree or disagree with this and has this particular passage made them think so?
]]>It was sad and unfair to see Blanche taken away in the end because her sister could not believe that her husband raped her. I also saw unlike the other plays a more developed personality than in the other plays. As you go along reading you can tell that Blanche's character is very complex, because she has everybody fooled in the begining. You would never think of her as a person that was madly going through an emotional downspiral because of men and then finally fell into one in the end aas she tried despreatly to run away from the awful past that life handed to her.
When i finished this play i was mad at almost all men, because it was Standley fault that she got comited, Standley raped her, he was foul and evil and nasty...and he got away with it. He ruins her relationship between her and Mich, ruins probably her only chance on hapiness and a happy life and dosen't even flinch at his cold and unmeaninful decisions. But most importamntly he is a character that is disrespectful and mean to all women. he hits his own wife, throws his plates on the floor, talks down to Blanche and Stella and is blindly unawear or unitrested in their oppinions or even their feelings on certain situations.
Yet you also have to see it on the other scale, Blanche lied to everyone, not to cause anybody deliberate pain, but to avoid herself of unesesary perhaps judging and disaproval. And in the begining of the play i really didn't like Blanche because i though of her prissy and stuck up and the end of it, i began to feel sorry for her, because it wasn;t her fault that everything had to go deliberately wrong on her life again just for a few bad choices. Most people see her ways of thinking and acting as prissy illusions in which she drove herself to madness, i saw it as despreate attemps for a woman to escape a cruel and heartbreaking reality.
]]>Just like so many people saw Miranda's character as the weaker link that was manipulated and obedient to follow Prospero's wishes. Others can see a strong character that speaks her mind and even at a point in the play speaks against her father in order to save Ferdinands life. Honestly i think we will never know wether the meaning of the play was meant to express this or that view of a relationship or a meaning, i think deep down is just up to the reader to make his and her mind about a certain opinion.
One thing that i found intresting though about Leinninger's essay was the observation that if Miranda would had been a man instead of a woman the context of the play would had been very different. Mainly because Caliban would had never been punished with the accusation that he tried to "violate" prospero's daughters chasity and plus a son would not have to serve a father' wishes as ardorly as a daughter could.
I mean when you think about it, if Miranda would had been a son and her character would had still followed Prospero's wishes as they did on the play, how would it make that character seem? Week...frail? You would even think him even a weak link to Prospero an unable to be a king and inherrit the throne, for who wants a king that allows himself to be governed by other influences easily. Yet in a queen, obedience, dedication, and love for a father are concidered virtues, and i don't think its because of a anti feminist statement that Shakespeare wanted to portray it was just the a main fact that existed in the society that he lived in.
What do you all think?
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