Author Archives: Marvin Hernandez

Lying Part Four

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When reading this last section of the book I can see all the lies Lauren is capable of and has done throughout the book. When reading “but there is no Dr. Neu.”(pg.175) I was surprised that she lied about him throughout the book and made it sound so real. If Hayward Krieger, the professor of Philosophy, who supposedly had written the introduction of this book doesn’t exist and now we find out Dr. Neu doesnt exist either, I wondered if anyone else in this book that was mention doesn’t exist. Lauren’s childhood was the cause of her being the way she is because she never got the attention that she needed especially from her mother which is someone she really cares about. Her mother was practically never there when she needed her and missed out certain important events because she was always drunk. Lauren feels sad and lonely and just wants all the attention she never got when she was young so she feels the need to lie and does a good job at it.

Joining the AA group did well for Lauren because she starts to face reality and all the things she had done wrong. “my disease got worst. I started, you know, doing it at home, in school, all the time, just stumbling around and making a real fool of myself. When I think back on my behavior now, I am humiliated. Just humiliated.”(205) Lauren confessing to the AA group about her disease and how it got out of hand and now she realizes how she was making a fool of herself and how she is humiliated of everything she’s been through with the disease she says she has. “Well, I’m not surprised. I always knew you didn’t really have epilepsy. I always knew these seizures were just a thing you had to grow out of” (189) Lauren’s mom was very sure that Lauren didn’t really have epilepsy and that all Lauren had to do was grow up and see for herself that it was all in her head and not something that was really true. This goes back in the part when Lauren said she couldn’t see and her mom was like ofcourse you can see proving to Lauren that it was all in her head and she can actually see. Lauren’s mother and her childhood are an important key of what Lauren goes through in this memoir. She just seeks for attention and wants it always on her and since she can never get it, it becomes a habit of her lying which makes everything that she says questionable and whether if it’s true or just another lie.

Lying Part Two

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Furthermore we learn more about the sickness, Epilepsy. Lauren continues to want more attention from her mother. She just want to impress her mother and make her proud even tho she suffering from this sickness. ” Spin, she would shout and i did it. “Leap now,” she shout, ” with your toe turned out,” and I did it, even when my lungs burned and my lips lost all their moisture” (28). Lauren even going through a lot of pain and falling down in the floor hard she still kept going because she she felt the more she got hurt the better she was. She wants to prove her mom that she is capable of doing whatever she tells her. I feel that Lauren is trying to get her mom to love her more than what her mother shows her and wants all the attention from her mom now that she is going through more seizures.

I see her that mom is still taking control of certain situations and her dad is just going along with what she says. Lauren mom is a strong and dominant person in this family and she wants to do just what she thinks is right. When the doctor told the mother about Lauren attending the school in Kansas the mother is not too happy about it and doesn’t really want to send her. The medication Lauren has to take its gonna increase and the mother doesn’t want to increase it due to fact that Lauren gets rash. The father takes no control in decisions that he thinks are better for Lauren, he just goes along with whatever the mother think is right and makes her happy.

Lying, Part One

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When reading part one of Lying it made think if everything the narrator says can be reliable. “Epilepsy is a fascinating disease because some epileptics are liars, exaggerators, makers of myths and high-flying stories” (6). After reading this I said to myself, so when is she lying? How do I know if everything she says is just a lie? How far can she be trusted with what she says? Does she just want attention? I can already see that reliability is going to be an issue just like there was with Humbert and his writing. The narrator then goes and tells us more of her sickness which is epilepsy and how this sickness often starts with strange smells that are bad or good; her having the good smell. It was kind of interesting learning further of this sickness I didn’t really know about and how it can cause this odor smell and other things I wasn’t aware of.

The narrator sounds as like she wants to make her parents happy but more to her mom but due to her sickness she really can’t do it. She believes her mom deserves the best and from what she says her dad doesn’t achieve that. Her mother seems the dominant in the relationship that whatever she says goes and her dad just has to go along with it. I feel that also the narrator doesn’t get the most attention that she wants especially from her mother. “Some time during the night my father must have told her… and so I waited, but she never appeared to nurse me that night, and this is a grudge i still hold” (20). After her first seizure her mom was nowhere to be found and when her dad told mom about it she seem not to give it importance like she should’ve have. The narrator wants more attention towards her due to fact that she suffering from this sickness and I feel that when she exaggerates thats the reason that she does it. She wants more attention from her parents but for the most part her mother.

Lolita 247- 309

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After finishing reading the book Humbert ended alone like he should be. All that journey with “his” Lolita comes to end after Lolita disappears and Humbert finds out that she has a husband and is pregnant. All those years that he didn’t hear from Lolita, Humbert suffers a lot because be becomes very lonely. Seeing what Humbert was doing just to find Lolita made me realize that maybe Lolita did mean something to him and not only wanted her for sex. When Humbert meets Rita, I feel that she was just someone he use for his loneliness and so she can keep him company due to fact that he didn’t have Lolita anymore. What surprised me was the fact that Humbert got with Rita even though she was nowhere near a nymphet and that fact that he was obsessed with nymphets in the first section of the book.

After reading Lolita’s letter that she send Humbert it just shows that Lolita all she wants from Humbert is money.I feel that she just manipulating Humbert due to fact she is always asking him for money and she knows that if she asks him he will do it simple fact that he wants her and would do anything for her. Lolita just wants to get money out of him and I’m guessing that now she realizes more of the damage Humbert has cause her for years and that even her mom’s life was taken away where she addresses to Humbert as her “murdered mummy”(286). Humbert confesses that he loves Lolita and I can say that he also cares about her so much and shows it at the end of the book when he tell hers to be true to her husband and hopes that he treats her right or else his spirit will come after him and wishes the best for their baby. He also showed that he cared when he went furiously after Quilty and ended up killing him. He didn’t like fact of the things that Quilty did to Lolita and wanted him to pay for hurting her even though Humbert had already harm her enough before he kidnapped her. I really saw a whole different Humbert at end of this book from the beginning and this Humbert showed the good and caring side that he can be, aside from all the crimes he committed throughout the book and all the harm he caused to the Hazes.

Lolita (143- 247)

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In this section of the book we start to see a different Lolita than we are used to see. This Lolita is a Lolita thats older and starting to mature. Humbert sees a new behavior in her and is scared that Lolita will say anything about their dirty secrets. “While I stand gripping the bars, you, happy neglected child, will be given a choice of various dwelling places, all more or less the same, the correctional school, the reformatory, the juvenile detention home..”(151) He manipulates her explaining to her that if the police ever finds out about what he’s done to her he will go to jail and she will an orphan and no one to look after her like he does and she will end up in a juvenile detention home. Throughout this section Lolita behaves bad which Humbert fear increases about their secret to be revealed and he starts to get jealousy feelings when he sees Lolita talking to boys. Humbert wants to have her away from boys and thats affecting her and her behavior which her headmistress from her school thinks “sexual maturing seems to give her trouble” (193).

Lolita’s behavior with Humbert gets worst and as I can see plays games with him. She be lying to him and in a certain way I’ll say manipulates him. I feel that now that she is maturing Lolita understands the bad things Humbert has committed and will keep doing. Since she knows that she has power to accuse Humbert she wants to do whatever she wants and will do anything to keep annoying him and manipulating him to get whatever she wants. But Lolita also can’t live without him because several times she runs back to him because she feels lonely and they end up having sex. Both Humbert and Lolita are crazy and reckless but soon it stops for while because Lolita goes missing after she was taken by her uncle after she had been sick at hospital. Humbert is a crazy human being and as he been saying throughout the book he will do anything in order to be with Lolita and will kill anyone that gets in his way so most likely someone will die.

Lolita (34-97)

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As we read more the books gets better and HH ideas of how getting Lolita gets only worst. We are introduce to Lolita and she is living where HH finds a new home to live in. When HH first sees Lolita he says there is his “Riviera love” (p39) referring to as Annabel and the love he had for her. HH claims that he had “fallen in love with Lolita forever” (p65) and he knows that Lolita is growing up and wont be at the stage of nymphet for long and soon will turn into a “young girl” and then “college girl” so he wants to take action as soon as he can. The way HH addition for Lolita is and thinks of her proves that he shouldn’t come out of that sanatorium he’s been because his illness will never go away. He’s not only going to harm Lolita but people that surrounds her due to the fact that he becomes addicted to her and wants her all to himself.

As the book goes HH ideas get dirtier and just wants to take advantage of every alone time he can with Lolita. His passion and love for Lolita get bigger that he is capable of doing anything to anybody to get what he wants. HH mind comes to point of thinking on eliminating Mrs. Haze to be able to be with Lolita and not having anyone to interfere. He shows no emotions on things that may happen to anyone surrounding him as long as he sees Lolita. For example when we see the murder of Mrs. Haze he was just thinking on getting rid of evidence that prove his dirty proof that Mrs Haze had found on proving HH dirty mind and all he thinks about after her death is being with Lolita.

Lolita (Pgs 1-34)

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In order to really understand what’s going on in this book I had to reread several parts until I understood it. There are key words that we need to know their meanings in order to understand what the author means in certain sentences so I had to look up words to know what they meant. But overall the beginning of this book is good because the author tells us characters within the story, who they are and clearly gives us a details on what the plot of this book is going to be about. It makes u want to keep reading to know what will happen next and what type of things are going to happen as we keep on reading.

We are introduce to, Humbert, a man who basically is a pedophile and is obsessed with “nymphets.” In the first chapter he describes to us Lolita’s name and describes her name in different ways and what some meant. We also learn that he had a previous lover before Lolita. He also then calls us readers as a jury saying, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury”(pg. 9) as in preparing us to hear his dark tale or all his crimes that he have committed. Humbert then goes on telling us that was born in Paris 1910 mixture of Swiss, French and Austrian descent (pg. 9). His father owned a luxury hotel on the Riviera where he was raised. His mother died as in what he called a freak accident, “picnic, lightening” when he was only three years old. He also tells us that he grew up as “happy and healthy child.” (pg. 10) He attended an English day school near the hotel where he first met Annabel. When he first met her he had no one to talk about or consult about matters of sex or anything he needed because most the time his father was away on trips. They both hooked up several times holding hands under the sun at the beach. Annabel died of typhus. From what Humbert’s talks in the story he becomes attracted to young girls since he was with Annabel and thats why he claims that Lolita and her are connected and his reasons for doing the things he does. Annabel is the main key factor for why Humbert is attracted to young girls because he was so in love with Annabel and her being the first love he had since he was at young age explains his actions and ways of seeing females.

As you read more in this book you start feeling that you want to know more and more of Humbert’s life story. Is a very interesting plot that we are given which makes the book good. Aside from the vocabulary in this book we need to really understand many words to be able to really understand the details the author gives us. But overall this book gets better and better.

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

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Reading this story was kinda weird in the way the people in this city live even though everything in the Omelas is pleasing except for the secret of the city. And its sad at the end when we are told the secret of the city. The people in this city are described a lot as cultured people and on keeping with good taste. “Old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race.” (Pg 1) The narrator says that the way he/she describes the Omelas and how happy the people are and living sounds like a city as in how it would sound in a “fairytale.”

The good fortune of Omelas requires that a single unfortunate child be kept in a never changing disgusting dirt, darkness and misery and that all the people there should be told and be aware of this. After being expose to the truth some people came to terms to live in such manner of as of to make the suffering of the unfortunate child worth it. “They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.”(Pg 7)  A  few others young or old silently walk away from the city and nobody knows where they go. In end when the narrator tells us this I thought it was sad and disturbing having a child suffer like that and having the child live in that environment for years in a basement. If it was up to me on living there or leaving, I would be one of those people walking out of there and walking far from it.

The Yellow Wallpaper

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When I first started reading this story I felt like the narrator was going to tell one of those horror stories like in those horror movies with haunted houses and creepy things going on around the house making the people in the house lives miserable. But in fact the story went another way than what I imagine it would be. The story is told in a first person point of view. At the beginning of the story the narrator explains to us that her husband, John, brought her to this house for the summer.She describes the house in many different ways for example as “a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house.” The house is very big and it looks like its been abandoned for quite a while which in my opinion it’s kinda of creepy. She also wonders why the house been abandoned for so long. The narrator tells us about an illness that she suffers and that she’s been prohibited to do any types of activities and writing is one of them.

Her husband, John, is a doctor and also her doctor which he takes very good care of. John has many cases out of town so isn’t really much around and comes home late. So the narrator also suffers from her marriage apart from the illness that she has. She describes the house a lot and soon she describes to us her bedroom walls, the bars in her window and especially the yellow wallpaper. She sees many things wrong with the wallpaper and she describes it as strange formless patterns. She also talks about how it changes light colors in the day and then at night is different. She becomes obsess on finding out whats behind that wallpaper and she wants no one around to take a look because she wants to figure it out herself. She finally comes the conclusion that she discovered that the pattern does move and that there is a woman that shakes it. She says that she feels sometimes that there are great many women behind and that there are sometimes that there is just one, that she crawls around fast. At the end she becomes very insane and tells John that she is finally out of the wallpaper and that in fact she was that woman trapped inside the paper and that he can’t put her back inside.

The Story of an Hour

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Even tho she had heart trouble and finding out that her husband had died, Mrs. Mallard had freedom which looks like what she been wanting. Once she got the news there was crying but joy ness at same time. In my opinion she been wanting that freedom and that was the last thing she wanted to have before she died. Once she got what she wanted and enjoy her last few mins in her life she was then happy and dies with joy right before her husband came home and finds out truth about her husband being actually alive.