Author Archives: Imani Morgan

I Had Enough!

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I had enough of these novels ending when it’s just getting good! I was hoping to find out where Offred was being taken too, details in what she said and who she said it too, and what would be done to her. The author left us with an absolutely cliffhanger!

But I have a question, in the historical notes tapes were mentioned, is the novel based on true events? Like was someone recording themselves tell the story, since that’s basically what was happening the the novel Offred was telling us a story. 

back to the summary..

As I’m finishing the novel I start to think of how secretive the people of Gilead are. The whole system of things are in secret. Now, I always knew that no one is to really communicate but it didn’t hit me until after the salvaging and Offred is waiting for Ofglen and when she realizes that the handmaid that’s approaching her isn’t Ofglen and asks her if Ofglen has been transferred and the new handmaid responds with she is Ofglen. When I red it I was puzzled.Like what do you mean you are Ofglen. You’re clearly not, but then I read on to find out that they (whoever in charge of transporting and renaming handmaids) use the same names for replacing handmaids so you won’t be able to track them down (283). These people in charge don’t want any sort of real communication from these women, no friendships established, no connections made, no secrets being revealed, no plotting. Everything is so confidential, the law is literally stripping these women from their natural human rights. To have conversations they (by they I mean handmaids, marthas, etc) literally have to talk in code, like for example when Offred and the new Ofglen were walking and Offred mentioned may day , from the response the new Ofglen gave it was clear that she wasn’t “one of them” and was basically telling Offred to become submissive to the new rules of the new world they are living in.  I know when Offred was told that Ofglen committed suicide it hit her straight to her core, especially how she found out; by Ofglen whispering it to her and walking off. I don’t know if I missed something but what is this van the new Ofglen mentioned? If it’s the same van that came for Offred at the end? 

I really feel bad for Offred reading through the last parts of the novel. It’s clear that she’s still has flashbacks on her life with her husband and she misses him but she longs for love and I don’t think we will understand how she felt until we lose the same natural human desire, love and physical contact with the ones we love. So, because of this lack of desire she found it somewhere else, with Nick which is so risky it can cost her her chance of ever seeing her daughter and even worse, her life. But because she longs for that human affection she’s taking chances and it has to remain as ‘no strings attached’ but Offred would want what the have to be romantic but they don’t want to risk anything. (262) But if you turn back a couple of pages we see that the Commander takes Offred to a hotel to be romantic with each other but Offred isn’t feeling it at all. She doesn’t want any romance with him, she doesn’t even like him, she even closes his eyes when she kisses him. These two situations show that natural feelings can’t be forced and even if you’re longing for human contact if it’s not genuine it doesn’t matter. Offred states, “Fake it, I scream at myself inside my head. You must remember how. Let’s get this over with or you’ll be here all night.” (255)

Going back to my question about this novel being real experiences of someone, on the top of page 268 it’s like Offred is leaving these stories for someone specific to read, or hear. She states, “because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance, if i meet you of if you escape , in the future or in heaven or in prison or underground…I believe you’re there, I believe you into existence.” 

Oh My..

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Where we were assigned to read in the Handmaid’s Tale becomes clear that the relationship between Offred and the commander is growing. I couldn’t help myself from thinking about the different scenarios of Offred and the Commander getting caught together by a worker or even worse the wife and all hell is let loose.  The relationship they have going on is a real dangerous one, since we saw how the wife expects the relationship between the three of them should be, “As for my husband, she said, he’s just that. My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It’s final.” It’s clear that the wife doesn’t want and doesn’t expect any other relations to go between the handmaids and her husband, which we saw that she’s also included into the ceremony. If the relationship between the Commander and Offred becomes more intimate than it is, it can start a whole new problem in the house. I definitely didn’t see this coming, the relationship that has grown bigger from tradition to actually genuine emotions. We see that they made arrangements when Offred can visit the Commander on page 154. We see on page 155 when Offred is describing the first time her and the Commander arranged to see each other,”The first time, I was confused. His needs were obscure to me…there had been a letdown of sorts. What had I been expecting, behind that closed door…Something unspeakable, down on all fours perhaps, perversions, whips, mutilations?… To be asked to play Scrabble, instead, as if we were an old married couple, or two children, seemed kinky in the extreme, a violation in its own way.” The Commander doesn’t want a sex partner, he wants a friend. Offred and I as well was surprised at his requests because why risk the rules just to play Scrabble and converse with each other? In a situation like this, erotix sex wouldn’t be a surprise from the Commander, but i think it’s more deeper than this, more deeper than sex, he wants a companion, someone to just have conversations with and enjoy themselves. So far in the novel we don’t know much about the relationship between the Commander and the wife but stated on page 161 Offred says, “Partly I was jealous of her; but how could I be jealous of a woman so obviously dried- up and unhappy? You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. Nevertheless I was jealous.” Is this a sign of Offred gaining feelings for Commander? She has a part of the Commander we don’t see while he is with the wife , what more could she want? Maybe to have her spot as the wife? This just reminded me about the housewife before Offred, what happened to her? Did the Commander have a ‘lowkey’ relationship wit her too and the wife found out?  Back on page 11 Offred gives us a snippet of a conversation between the Martha’s which stated, “Stillborn, it was…Stabbed her with a knitting needle, right in the belly. Jealousy, it must have been, eating her up..” Could they have been talking about the handmaid before Offred? Will the wife find out about Offred and the Commander secret relationship? If she does will she kill her?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Living in a World with No Freedom

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The first two parts of The Handmaid’s Tale raised a few questions for me . Who are the Angels? Did the war lead to the anarchy rule of the country ? What does the term waste not want not mean? Is the narrator a wife too ? Or a handmaiden? Can one be both , a handmaiden and a wife ?

From reading the first two parts it’s clear that these women, and even the Guardians don’t posses any Freedom. For example, on page 4,last paragraph the narrator mentions that her and the other girls from the Red Center slept in an gymnasium on old U.S. Army cots and they weren’t allowed to speak or touch one another , it States “We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hand across space. We learned to lipread, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other’s mouth.” What kind of place are they in ? What government rule is going on ? This is like confined imprisonment! Their freedom of speech and human interaction is being taken away, it’s our human rights.

Another part of the novel that reflects that these women have no freedom is on page 16, where the narrator and I’m assuming the main wife is having their first interaction. We learn that the narrator is replacing a former wife (so is the narrator a wife or handmaid) and the ‘main’ wife stated, “As for my husband, she said, he’s just that. My husband. I want that to be perfectly clear . Till death do us part. It’s final.” What kind of wive isn’t allowed to be with her own husband? In my opinion it’s either the Commander has one wife or removes the jealous one. After reading the chapter I started brainstorming and put two-and-two together. Here on page 16 is clear that the wife is territorial over her man, and the narrator doesn’t know why the wife before her was replaced and on page 11 we read that the narrator over heard the Martha’s over saying, “Stillborn it was. Or, stabbed her with a knitting needle, right in the belly. Jealousy, it must have been, eating her up..” well we do know that the widen knits, so maybe the wife before the narrator slept with the Commander and gotten pregnant and the wife was jealous and poisoned or killed her. I might be overthinking the text but I think somethings up with the wife and she’s not fond of her husband having multiple sleeping partners. This gives the other wives lack of freedom as well. One, they probably don’t want to be part of his hold and on top of that they can’t share the man who they’re all tending too.

Another piece of evidence that the lack of freedom is like an elephant in the room is that these women are under watched 24/7. When they’re allowed outside they MUST walk in pairs , not in a group, but pairs, they have guardians and angels who watch them and Aunt Sara and Elizabeth, whoever they are and on page 18 the narrator refers to Nick as an Eye. She, the narrator is literally paranoid whether if he’s part of the Commander protecting the girls , lack of freedom .

Survival at its Finest

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“Survival is insufficient”, some might say but throughout the novel ‘Station Eleven’ by Emily St. John Mandel that’s how the characters got by. Survival might not be enough for one to live life but it sure is needed to get through a flu pandemic. Throughout the novel we see the difficulty in adjusting to a new world and what it takes to stay alive. People are creating spiritual cults, closed off cities, living in airports, and even created a traveling music and theatre group. Though some characters in the novel think survival is not enough, surviving brought a few of the characters a long way and I will discuss few of the characters who successfully and unsuccessfully depended  on survival.

One of the main characters in the novel who subconsciously depended on survival is Kirsten Raymonde. I refer to Kirsten as a subconsciously survivalist because even though it’s not exactly stated in the novel that Kirsten agrees with the quote survival is insufficient it’s tattooed on her and on the side of the caravan(58) of the musical theatre group she belongs too which gives me the impression that she does agree with the quote; but as long as the outbreak and the after outbreak has been in effect all Kirsten has been doing is trying to survive. On several pages such as 113, 185, 188, and 195 Kirsten is having an interview with François Diallo, a liberian, publisher and editor of New Petoskey News where she tells him about the times her and her brother has been surviving by themselves after the pandemic. In one interview where Kirsten stated but didn’t realize that her actions and circumstances were relied on survival is on page 113, where Kirsten is addressing how she found the Traveling Symphony. She states, “Ohio. The town where we ended up after we left Toronto, my brother and I, and then after he died I was there by myself.” During this period of time Kristen was fourteen years old, and she doesn’t talk about much of her journey by herself in the novel but perceived from the quote it’s obvious that she had to survive on her own after her brother died, and she did an outstanding job at the age of fourteen because soon enough she was founded by the Symphony and continued to survive alongside with them. Along with the quote on Kirsten forearm, she has another tattoo of two knives crossed together on her right arm, which we found out that they stood for the amount of people she had to kill (265). In chapter 22, paragraph 1, Kirsten reflects on Alexandra, a child part of the Traveling Symphony and how different she is, she states, “Kirsten thought, that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone. She was a younger fifteen- year -old than Kirsten had ever been” Kirsten mentioned about killing at the age of fifteen, maybe that’s the age when she first had to defend herself and killed someone; and at the age she was by herself,  her brother died when she was fourteen so she had no other option than to protect herself at all cost. This is survival by any means necessary, even if that means having to kill someone at a very young age. But throughout everything, Kirsten has always been trying to survive to get by in this ‘new world from the youngest of age to her successfully becoming a grown up’, this is survival to its finest.

A second character who turns to survival is Jeevan Chaudhary. Jeevan can be seen trying his best to survive throughout the parts he was mentioned in the novel. The very first time we as readers see Jeevan in survival mode is in the beginning when he first finds out about the flu outbreak. He goes hysterical into survival mode and buys the whole store and pushes all seven carts to his brother Frank house(25). Another sense of survival is the multiple jobs Jeevan had. You could say he didn’t receive his calling until that night Arthur died on stage. One of his jobs as a paparazzo can be seen a survival job. Jeevan had to do whatever to get good pictures of celebrities, even if that meant “stalking celebrities from behind sidewalk planters and lying in wait in parked cars.” He had to do whatever to survive as a paparazzo, which isn’t an easy job.

The last paragraph isn’t so well constructed because my life started spiraling out of control and I felt like I needed to rush and get this done before it was marked late, but I know i ca do a lot better. 

Writing has always been a part of me. English was always my favorite subject in school so reading and writing was a breeze to me. My first time writing on my own (without my teacher giving me an assignment) was the summer of 2010(I just finished fourth grade and that following September I would be entering the fifth grade). I was in Albany, NY with my cousin Simonia and she would bring me to work with her everyday and one day I ventured off into the copy room where they had a type writer and I wrote my first piece of writing..on a type writer. I had left it there thinking it was nothing and three years later my cousin coworker showed me that she had found my piece of writing and loved it, even though I didn’t finish it she took it and gave me a copy  of it, to which I have no idea where I put it today. But I do remember what I wrote; I was writing a story about a girl named Tatiana, and Tatiana felt alone in the world, no one at home paid her any attention, all her parents would do was cry and at school it was like no one realized she was there, she wanted to disappear from the earth.Plot twist and spoil alert, she actually had been kidnapped a few years back and was found dead and it was just her spirit wandering around. That was supposed to be the ending but I never received the chance to finish it and I remember it till this day. Ridiculous right?! Image result for i can do this forever

But even from that point I never took writing serious. I went on after that day coming up with stories to write but I never succeeded into actually putting my thoughts on paper. But soon enough I was given the opportunity to let my imagination run wild again when my cousin boyfriend asked for my help in a play he was putting on at a high school where he works at in Albany; it was the summer of 2015. My job was to help the kids he was working with to improve on their skit ideas and he even made me write a script for the play, which I took part in. Again, I was told I should start writing my own pieces but I never took writing serious, just something to do when I had the time. Only a short period after that my friend told me I should start writing books on an app called Wattpad. I was familiar with it already, I would go on and read all types of books of the other members of the app. I took my friend advice and started writing. It took me a while to think of a topic (stupid writers block)  to write about but I tried not to think so hard and just started typing away. By the time I knew it I was on Chapter 3. I would constantly work on it all day and night. At the dinner table, in the car, while using the bathroom, on the Amtrak, you name it. But after a while I stopped writing, I don’t know the reason why, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore so I took a break..which lasted about almost a year and then I started on a new book, which I didn’t finish either (I have a tendency on starting things I don’t finish).The fist book I wrote is called “Kayla’s Life Story”. I only let one person read it because I was too shy. That was in late 2015,early 2016 and I haven’t touched either of the books I wrote. Here and there I get ideas on things to write about but I never sit and write them out, but I think I’m going to start again. Writing always has been a hidden passion of mine, writing helps me to escape reality and allows me to create a different one, where I have control in what’s going to happen next and I love it. When I was going through a rough patch in my life writing was what helped me express myself, it was like being on a different planet by myself, just my phone and I and no one could bother me. Writing became my safe haven, and that’s why I like to write. If any one would like to read my book I’ll personally email or send the link (still a little shy) .Image result for i can do this foreverImage result for i can do this forever

 

Is the End Here Yet?

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Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

There are a couple of things I wanted to touch on so I broke it down in parts .

Page 123

In this part of the book we learned that a little girl from St. Deborah , Eleanor ran away and hid in the Symphony caravan because the prophet wanted to marry her.Reading this part of the book disgusted me because how low this prophet stooped , marrying a child? What does she have that she can offer you at such a young age? Whoever came up with the saying ‘History repeats itself’ was absolutely correct. The remaining people threw out their morals and took up the old ways of arranging marriages and what makes it worse is that she’s only twelve years old. Eleanor stated, “He had a dream where God told him he was to repopulate the earth”, which was the prophet reason for having many wives and to get married to Eleanor. Out of all the women in the city God told you to marry a twelve year old? I find that sickening , the fact that he thought his reason was acceptable. This reminds me of an article I read yesterday about the Supreme Court in India no longer permitted men to have non-consensual marital sex with girls as young as 15, as the Supreme Court made their decision, the government of India disagreed with their actions because “its part of their tradition.” Regardless of what happens on earth, morals shouldn’t change, if marrying a twelve year old is wrong before the collapse it should stay that way after the apocalypse. Some morals shouldn’t change, regardless of how much the population decreased.

Page 133

In the beginning paragraphs of chapter 22, it starts off with Kirsten analyzing how different Alexandra is at the age of fifteen from when Kirsten was fifteen. The narrator states, “Alexandra knew how to shoot, but the world was softening. There was a fair chance…that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone. She was a younger fifteen-year-old than Kirsten had ever been.” The world was softening. Could that mean that the world has become more soft, less chaos since the beginning of the outbreak? So because the world was becoming ‘soft’ Alexandra won’t have to worry about killing anyone because everything is slowly dying down and might go back to normal? From this quote it’s obvious that after the flu broke out Kirsten had to do whatever to survive, which mans that she most likely had to kill people at the age of fifteen to defend herself, and she was so young. Now since times are not that bad anymore, Alexandra, now fifteen years old won’t have to do that. The narrator stated that Alexandra was a younger fifteen year old than Kirsten, meaning that Kirsten had to mature at fifteen, she was either on her own or traveling with her brother but she had to survive in a way fifteen year old before the outbreak shouldn’t have too, maybe Alexandra reminds Kirsten on how ‘regular’ fifteen year old would act before the apocalypse

Page 178

In the first paragraph on page 178 Jeevan is looking out the window reminiscing and it stood out to me, “..when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points or origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines.” I think as Jeevan is thinking about this he realizing how much you take for advantage when you’re living life before something serious happens, and he’s right. As humans we do take things for granted but it’s not purposely, we get caught up with the latest phone release or the next vacation and don’t realize that the life we live could change in a blink of an eye. It’s hard to grasp that for however long you have been living things that don’t seem important because we’re use to it like walking into a grocery tore to pick up something you forgot for dinner or going to the doctor because you feel ill could change one day where life isn’t that easy. This made me realize how much i take for granted and how much I need to appreciate life .

Page 181

Chapter 31 is a dialogue between a librarian and Kirsten during year fifteen of the outbreak. As Kirsten is getting interviewed on the very first night when the flu spread throughout the city and where she was and what was happening at that time.She tells a summary of the night Arthur died and brings up Jeevan, but she doesn’t remember his name and the interviewer replies “I’m not sure anyone does”. That sucks, to know that Jeevan was the first responded to Arthur collapsing and even tried to sooth Kirsten and take he away from the chaos and one knows his name. He’s getting no credit for his work and that night when he took charge of the situation he was so happy, he felt like he found his calling as a EMT and not one person knows his name.

Page 187

Jeevan and his brother Frank are locked away in Franks apartment and he reads out loud to Jeevan the book he was working on and ass he read it all of it made sense. The  philanthropist Frank was writing about touched on something I found important to even our times, celebrities bringing attention to charities and causes. He stated, “What I like to see is when actors use their celebrity in an interesting way. Some of them have charitable foundations, they do things like try to bring attention to the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan, or they’re trying to save the white African rhino..” This is true, celebrities do use their fame to expose people to charities and causes and as they’re doing that it allows their fame to rise and gives them a good name, for example, after the flood in Texas, BeyoncĂ© went to her hometown and helped the people in need, Chance the Rapper donated one million dollars to public schools in Chicago to fund their art program. Deeds like these expose other people and even other companies to help and pitch in. These actions causes them to be remembered. Frank also writes, “First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” Which I find true, people don’t become celebrities to help bring more notice to charities, they usually become famous because they want their talents to been seen, and remembered. When celebrities do outstanding things for the people who needs help it changes how we see them, not only is Chance the Rapper a well song writer, he cares about the people of his city enough to donate his own money to help keep art programs running , that totally changes how people see him, and because of his actions, he will always be remembered, probably not by students in NYC but the kids who met him that day, and all the schools he helped , will definitely will always remember him.  Which goes back to my point about Jeevan, even though Arthur still died and a killer flu broke out right after no credit will be given to him because no one knows who helped to save Arthur but the cardiologist, who probably isn’t alive and Jeevan didn’t even jump to action to be seen, or to be considered a hero, but because he felt that it was right. He gets no recognition.

I also have a question about Kirsten tattoos for anyone who read ahead, does she explain what the tattoo of the two knives mean ? and if she doesn’t does anyone know what they mean ? Does it stand for something ?

 

Run for Your Life!

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As I finished part 2 and 3 of the novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel my heart was beating a little fast. I have so many questions I don’t know where to start. On page 2 it states, “Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city.” After reading this I was so confused, the setting of this novel is all over the place in opinion so after reading that it went back to Jeevan walking in the park and I was a little lost. So far in the book Jeevan seems like an innocent soul.   He doesn’t have much friends, doesn’t have a lot of family and he’s just getting his life together. From the readings it’s obvious that Jeevan was sad about the death of Arthur but he was proud in the actions he took and wanted it to be known, hence when he was about to tell his long time friend Hua about what happened at the theater. Everything was going smooth as butter (besides the fact that the whole night flipped upside down) until Hua told Jeevan about the Georgia Flu outbreak. At first, like the cashier at the grocery store where Jeevan cashed out in when Hua was informing Jeevan about the outbreak I didn’t think about it as much, that’s not really something strange to hear, we had the outbreak of swine flu, Ebola, and others so reading through the dialogue was nothing until you read more into the book when Hua calls Jeevan again for the third time and tells him to leave the city with his brother and Laura. When he started going into details about how many people were in the ER and how many people died (Thirty-seven patients were dead including every patient who had been on the Moscow flight and two ER nurses who’d been on duty when the first patients came in)my heart started picking up speed. My first thought that came to mind was an apocalypse . I’ve watched too many movies where a sickness broke out and it ended up killing thousands of people, World War Z, Quarantine, Quarantine Terminal 2, The Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead, etc. Jeevan had the right mindset of going to the grocery store and leaving with seven carts full of food just in case of a crazy outbreak. But as in reality, the news minimized the situation to keep the citizens calm in time to find out what’s happening but Jeevan was not playing at all.  I could only imagine how Jeevan felt this night, he gets tickets for him and his significant other to watch a play and during the play the lead role dies on stage, which is where Jeevan jumps into action and tries to save his life, then his girlfriend Laura ;eave him there through all the chaos , and now his friend is telling him that he needs to take his things and the people he love and get out., and what makes it worse is as he is telling Laura to leave the city because of the flu outbreak she is on the other end of the phone being real calm and not listening to the instructions Jeevan was telling her to do, “because she doesn’t like watching the news before bed.” (3) I don’t know much about Laura but I can tell I already don’t like her, especially not for Jeevan. To makes matter worse, Jeevan brother Frank is in a wheelchair so he wouldn’t be able to travel a far distance with him through the snowstorm and on top of that he left the grocery store with not one cart but seven carts full of necessities he thought he would need just in case he had to be inside for a while ( an apocalypse in my opinion) , had to push all seven carts in the snow to his brothers apartment , which he lived on the twenty-second floor. Jeevan is having a very long day.  Now going back the beginning where I quoted page 2, when the narrator said “Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. ” I think he meant that they died from the flu . I think the narrator gave us a hint on what is going to happen throughout the book and I think the whole city is going to be affected by the flu and Jeevan might be the only one that survives. I thought this novel was going to be boring but I can’t wait to find out more details.

The Theater

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From when you read the first couple lines on page 1, it is clear as day that this part of the novel was written in the third person .  I wasn’t all focused when I first started reading so I had to reread the beginning again and that’s when it became clear to me that the author started off part 1 taken place at a theater in Toronto where the play ‘King Lear’ , a tragedy written by William Shakespeare was being acted out.

I decided to look up the play since I’ve never heard about it before and apparently the play is about a king who disposes of his kingdom giving bequests to two of his three daughters, bringing tragic consequences for all.

In part 1 we learned about the perspective of the story being told and we also was provided with plenty of characters such as Arthur Leander, who played the King and suffered from a dramatic heart attack, Jeevan Chaudhary , who was a former paparazzo and currently studying as an EMS, Laura , who is Jeevan significant other and a few cast mates  such as Kirsten, a little girl in distraught, and Walter Jacobi, the cardiologist.

First thing first, the King’s dramatic death. I know actors take getting their lines correct seriously and improvise is the last thing they run to but as cast mates seeing the lead role start to lose his breath and skip lines I would be worried. For someone who was having a heart attack he was really calm ; but one thing that touched me was “…because he’d wondered all his life what his profession should be, and now he was certain, absolutely certain that he wanted to be a paramedic. At moments when other people could only stare, he wanted to be the one to step forward.” This quote spoke to me in a way because to be a paramedic you have to have the guts for it and you have to be fast and in my Social Psychology class I learned that the human instinct to do something when chaos is going on is to do nothing so for the humans who do act on a timely manner when something important is going on are hero’s and Jeevan is proud of himself (As he should) and it put a little smile on my face . He also didn’t hesitate to make sure that Kirsten was okay and safe with her guardian.  We are also told that Jeevan bought the tickets to the play as a romantic gesture to Laura , claiming that all they do is argue, but instead of waiting for him after he took the first gesture to trying to save Authors life to congratulate him or to be there for his mental support, she goes home without even leaving him a message and then messages him asking him to bring home milk? I feel like throughout the novel the narrator is going to give us more details about their relationship because how the author portrayed their relationship in the first part make me curious to know more about them. So far I think im going to enjoy this novel and m excited to get a better understanding with everything .

Class Notes 9/5

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Announcements

  • Classroom change :  N705. This will be PERMANENT 
  • Blogging Workshop Thursday
  • Quiz on Elements of Fiction Thursday 9/7
  • Bring in stories for class Thursday (reread and annotate)

Definitions 

  • Genre: A type of literature
  • Character: The people who have a part in the story
  • Agency: To do things on your own
  • Narrator: Story teller who may or may not be apart of the story
  • Point of View (P.O.V): How the story is told
  • Omniscient: Knowing things that happen outside the story (Omi =all) (Scient= knowledge)
    • First person is associated with pronoun I or We
    • Second person is associated with the pronoun You
    • Third person is associated with the pronoun He, She, It
  • Limited: Knowing only what one person knows
  • Voice: The persona of the text
  • Tone: How the narrator feels about the story
  • Juxtaposition: Placing two things side by side
  • Forestall: To prevent something from happening
  • Hastened: To move quickly
  • Personification: Giving human characteristics to something not living
  • Simile: Two things being compared using the words ‘like or as’
  • Metaphor:  Two things being compared WITHOUT using the words like or as

Story of An Hour

Characters:

  • Protagonist : Mrs. Mallard
  • Richard : Mrs. Mallard husband friend
  • Brently Mallard : deceased husband
  • Josephine : Mrs. Mallard sister

¶2 “It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.” -Shows that her sister was beating around the bush , trying not to hurt her.

¶3 “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arm. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away too her room alone…” – In this paragraph we find out how she reacts to hearing the news of her husband passing away

  • “Storm of grief” is a metaphor which her grieving is being compared to being a storm without using the words like or as.
  • “Wild abandonment” brings out how deeply the news of her husband affected her

¶4″…facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” – In this paragraph this is where the tone of the text changes from sad to slightly freedom.

  • “A comfortable, roomy armchair”, armchairs are only for one person, how can it be roomy? Maybe foreshadowing?
  • Imagery is presented a lot in this paragraph, “..the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair”.

 

 

Reading Response 1

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As I was reading ‘Girl’ by Jamaica Kincaid it was like the text was speaking to me. Throughout the text, the narrator recites the good and bad things her mother tells her such as, “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are  so bent on becoming”, and ” this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming”. The reason why the text spoke to me is because I grew up with a Caribbean mother and even though she didn’t disgustingly as the narrator mom, they did have things in common. My mom always has a duffel bag full of chores and things she tells me and just as the narrator, her mother insists that sings benna in  Sunday school even though the narrator said she doesn’t that’s exactly how conversations with my mom goes.