Monthly Archives: April 2018

Lassitude

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Lassitude :Noun

a condition characterized by lack of interest, energy, or spirit

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lassitude

I encountered this word in ch 19 of quicksand.”Helga met Dr. Anderson at the social affairs to which often they were both asked. Sometimes she danced with him, always in perfect silence. She couldn’t, she ab-solutely couldn’t, speak a word to him when they were thus alone together, for at such times lassitude encompassed her; ”

I have never seen this word before I actually thought it meant something along the lines of guilty accompanied by joy.I thought this because of what happened between them,but despite that she’s still around him.Now that I know that this word is basically saying she’s in a drugged like state I’m wondering if maybe it’s trying to become an excuse for her lack of action.

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Processsion

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Procession :Noun

A group of individuals moving along in an orderly often ceremonial way

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/procession

I encountered this word in quicksand on page 215  “Always when she encountered one of those picturesque parades in the Harlem streets, the Stars and Stripes streaming ironically, insolently, at the head of the procession tempered for her, a little, her amusement at the childish seriousness of the spectacle.”

I had never seen this word before however I knew it had something to do with what helga was watching.But I didn’t know wether or not it was negative or positive or if it was a term to classify the people In the group as something positive or negative.

Project #1

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Justin Liang

Professor. Jodi Rosen

ENG 2001-D536

Project 1

Part 1

My name is Mrs. Mallard and recently I’ve been having trouble with my heart.

It was a bright and sunny day. But the day changed when I had heard the news about the death of my husband. I was told by my sister Josephine. She was crying and trying to tell me at the same time. Her husbands friend Richard was there too. He was in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with my husband’s name on the list of people “killed”. Richard wanted to make sure that the death was assure and heard the second telegram and came as quick as he could to get to me.

Tears came down my face and I couldn’t take it anymore. I cried in my sister’s arms. But the grief was to much for me and I ran into my room by myself. I didn’t want to have anyone follow me into the room.

I sat on my armchair in front of the open window in my room. I slowly sank into my chair and felt the exhaustion from all the crying.

As I looked out of the window I could see the new spring life. In the streets below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was sinning reached me faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing my window.

I sat with my head thrown back up the cushion of my chair, motionless, and then I began to sob and started to cry again.

I was young with a calm face which gave off a certain strength. But now it was gone and all that was left was a dull stare looking up at the patches of the blue sky. I wasn’t looking up at a reflection, but I was in a suspension of intelligent thought.

Somewhere deep inside me I knew something was coming and I waited for it, fearfully. What was it? I didn’t know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But I felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching towards me through the sounds, the scents, and the color that filled the air.

My bosom rose and fell tumultuously. I was beginning to recognize the thing that was coming to possess me, and I was striving to beat to back with my will—as powerless as my two white slender hands would have been. As I abandoned myself a little whispered word escaped my slightly parted lips. I said it over and over under my breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror had followed in my eyes. It stayed keen and bright. My pulse began to beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of my body.

I did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled me to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. I knew that I would weep again when I saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upper me, fixed and gray and dead. But I saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to me absolutely. And I opened and spread my arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during these coming years; I would live for myself. There would be no powerful will bending me in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as I looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet I had loved him—sometimes. Often I had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which I suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of my being.

“Free! Body and soul free!” I whispered.

I hear Josephine outside the door telling me to open the door. She was begging that I open the door and that I was making myself ill. She wanted to know what I was doing. Over and over she asked me to open the door.

“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; I was drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window.

My fancy was running riot along those days ahead of me. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be my own. I breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday I had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

I arose at length and opened the door to my sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. I clasped my sister’s waist, and together we descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for us at the bottom.

Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was my husband who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He told me that he had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards quick motion to screen him from the view of me.

Then everything went black. My heart aching and then silence.

Part 2

The Story of An Hour is a interesting story because it is written in a third person (omniscient) point of view. The story doesn’t just focus on one person it switches from person to person. So, I wanted to change that a bit and focus on the main character of the story, Mrs. Mallard. I decided to do a first person point of view to show the emotion and thought process that Mrs. Mallard is going through instead of showing other point of views.

The Story of An Hour was originally written in a third person (omniscient) point of view. Using the third person point of view the story shows what is going on with everyone. It shows a different side to what a person is saying. The language of the story is also different. In the story there is a line that says “She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” This sentence gives a sense to the reader that this is what people thought of Mrs. Mallard. Also we can see what other characters are doing when the main character is somewhere else. In the story there is a line that says “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door– you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.” This line was said by Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine who was worried about her sister. The third person narration shows details about what is going on with everyone and doesn’t focus on one person. Which is why I decided to rewrite the story in a first person narration to show readers what is going on with Mrs. Mallard only.

In my version of The Story of An Hour I decided to go with a first person point of view on Mrs. Mallard. My reasoning for this was because I believed that we didn’t get to see what was really going on in Mrs. Mallard’s mind. The introduction of my version of the story was different. I decided to make the intro as if we were in Mrs. Mallard’s mind. I decided to introduce Mrs. Mallard to the readers with a “My name is…” Using this type of introduction I feel like it allows readers to know that we are in someone’s mind. It helps give them the sense that this story will be in a first person narration. Going further into the story things were mostly similar to the original. That is until we reach the part where Josephine was trying to get her sister out of the room. When I got the part where Josephine was trying to get her sister out of the room I wondered, what was going on with Mrs. Mallard at that time? I decided to keep everything the same except I decided to put in that Mrs. Mallard was getting annoyed with her sister. In my version I wrote “Josephine keeps knocking and with each knock I start to get annoyed.” I did this because earlier in the story Mrs. Mallard didn’t want anyone to bother her and Josephine was persistent with trying to get Mrs. Mallard out of the room. I figured this change would surprise the reader with something they didn’t know. Lastly the ending of the story was slightly different. In the original we see that Mrs. Mallard’s husband wasn’t actually dead and she then dies of her heart disease. I decided to show that Mrs. Mallard’s freedom was taken away from her now that she knew that her husband wasn’t dead. My reasoning for this was because Mrs. Mallard felt free from her husband know he died. She says “ Free! Body and soul free!” in the original. So, as soon as she see that her husband isn’t dead I wanted to show that Mrs. Mallard says in her head that she is no longer free now that her husband is back and then dies of her heart disease. Also in the original it says “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.” Seeing this I knew that my version would make sense. Mrs. Mallard was happy that she was free but all that was taken away from her and she dies. This version of the story shows readers the more in depth details of what really went on in Mrs. Mallard’s mind.

Both versions of the stories show something. The original shows the thought process of the other characters in the story. The language also helps the reader get a sense of how the characters feel. My version show readers what Mrs. Mallard thinks and what she is going through. I feel like the language I used helped readers know more about Mrs. Mallard. In the end both stories tell what happens to Mrs. Mallard in their own way.

 

Anthology Project

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Mahnoor Sheikh

Professor. Jodi Rosen

ENG 2001-D536

Project 1

 

For the first time in my entire life there is a loud KNOCK! That echoes through my wings and startles me and makes me rather annoyed. Now. Moments from my timely death, something different decides to happen. Then another vicious sound cuts through the once silence room, CRACK. Which shakes loose dust from all corners of the room and ignites a cluster of intense buzzing. There are flies screeching hysterically flying back and forth into each other. There are so many of them though frantically flying that they look like a rising spike of smoke ascending from the still figure on the bed, into a dark black cloud. BZZZZ, BZZZZ, BZZZ. They are furiously buzzing louder and louder, much louder than any cluster of bumble bees. Still there are more flies rising, like a black sheet or a vortex of fear and consumption.  I want to get as far away from this meddlesome noise, of both my fellow flies and whatever that louder sound is but my body is weak. Regardless, I still decide to make an effort. I fling myself with all my strength towards a solitary narrow crack in the wall, where an ever slight breeze blows in. The air coming in is contrary to that of the environment of this confined space, it is fresh and clean. Against the stale, sour air within this room. I am able to slip through the crack, but before slipping through into sanctuary, I hear deep sounding murmurs coming from the other side of an old wooden door. The same door the ruckus is coming from. These brand new sounds differ to those of the shrill voice that are usually made. These voices sound different, they sound angry. I should leave immediately and pass away in peace, but I am paralyzed, by an aroma familiar but better. Blood. There is warm, gushy, tasty blood in those sounds. I have never had it fresh. The shrill voiced figure who I have not seen in a while she had blood, but it wasn’t fresh. It was old and the flavor was bland and vaguely metallic, lumpy and cold. They were so cold. But I was never too picky so her blood was mine. The shrill voiced figure had a friend who never made a sound in the entire time I existed. They were not tasty at all but they were accessible. Never moved, never winced, me and millions of other fly and maggots devoured them. Day after day. They would not swat at us. They just laid there without a care in the world. The shrill one would at least get up sometimes walk around look at their reflection in the mirror, comb their hair and eat. But this one, still. So was their blood. They never moved a muscle. And they were colder than the other one. If the shrill one was ice, this one was a winter day in the arctic. The two figures interacted a lot, the shrill one would cuddle up against the still one often. They kissed. And laid side by side for hours on end. Wrapped in each others embrace. But, the shrill voiced one, has not been around for a while.

Suddenly.

One last large wallop and BANG. The door gives way, and opens. My curiosity has piqued and I look to see several monumental figures but none the shrill one from before. All of the flies false confidence disperses as they all start flying out through the newly opened door or cracks in the floorboards or through keyholes or windows. I caution towards my crack. But still look on to see the expressions on their faces. These figures look different they are larger and their flesh is not discolored. Some hold a handkerchief to their noses, while others started coughing and gagging, one of them looks completely immobilized from fear. I observed them closely, every step closer into the room, every bit of dust their bodies disturbs. And then one figure with the look of horror on their face nears towards the exposed figure on the bed, who is almost like them. This figure’s flesh near gone and he has oozed and fused all over the bed in an array of browns, reds and blacks. He is literally apart of the bed. One of the more pink and motionful figures leans close towards the bed and on a pillow beside the cold figure, and picks up a solitary strand of hair he appears to be sickened and he begins gagging again. He drops the hair into the hand of one of the other large figures and rushes towards the door. In his path he unwittingly side steps and his shoe comes down in a swift motion going to crush me. And I am left to accept,

That this is the end.

Anthology

 

My first reading of a “Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner was, in all honesty, confusing. For starters I did not personally understand why I would want the extremely limited point of view of an unnamed person from town, that made any information they provided seem like gossip. Then there was the way this no named civilian dictated the unraveling of events, in a disorganized, non sequential manner. They jumped from one moment of time to another so rapidly it was difficult to tell what was past or present. For instance talking about going to Emily’s home requesting she pay taxes to the moment the town started complaining about her house smelling bad, while the town complaining chronologically preceded the town asking Emily to pay taxes. Point of view of the narrator and the temporal unraveling of events, depicted through the use of tense, are both key elements of storytelling. The nature of tense that is narrated can create a tone, nostalgia if the the narrator is remembering previous events, such as in memoirs, or to build suspense if in present tense and we, the audience, are experiencing the events at the same moment as the protagonist, which is common to the horror genre. The narrative style establishes how much the reader knows and sets up bias based on who the storyteller is and their relationship to the story. In my retelling of Faulkner’s short story I change who the narrator is, the person they narrate in, the tense the narrator is talking in, and make the series of events run linear rather than jumbled up in order to reduce confusion of which events happened before others.

As previously acknowledged Faulkner’s narrator is an unnamed person from town, very little is known about the speaker but what can be inferred is that they are white, since they referred to Ms. Emily’s servant Tobe, as “the negro”. It can also be inferred that the narrator is a man because of the line, “Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it”, referring to women as naive, it can be assumed that a woman would not make a generalized negative statement about all women.  The benefits of this narrator is that they are witnessing the events but are not a main character, which means they had no influence in the events of the story, we only have access to their perception of them. This does not make the narrator completely reliable though, the narrator reveals their bias through their word choice, they seem to pity Emily Grierson. Admitting that they and the town felt “really sorry for her” and describing her as “SICK”, saying “poor Emily”..

I did not want my narrator to have any condescension for Emily Grierson, so clearly they could not be anyone from town. That left Emily herself. But then her bias would be much more extreme since she is the protagonist, she could not be objective in describing her own actions. So, I used defamiliarization, presenting common things in an unfamiliar way. My retelling is from the point of view of an objective fly who is about to die and is one of many other flys who have been eating Homer Barron’s decaying body. A fly has no understanding of morality, race, gender, classism, but most importantly no knowledge of Emily Grierson’s name and the respect that was once attached to it. As opposed to Faulkner’s narrator who describes Emily as someone metaphorically falling from grace losing her father, her money, and the towns respect as she physically and mentally declined over time. The fly just refers to Emily as the “shrill voiced figure”.

In my story the fly dictates events in the present tense the audience is experiencing the the events at the same time as the fly, this creates a suspense. Neither the fly nor the audience is aware of what the banging sound is on the other side of the door. Seen in lines such as, “For the first time in my entire life there is a loud KNOCK! That echoes through my wings and startles me and makes me rather annoyed”. And, “Then another vicious sound cuts through the once silence room, CRACK”. In my iteration of the story I stay within the same present tense a majority of the story only implying what happened previously. For instance how there had never been any loud banging before that day. While the opposite is apparent in the original version of the story seen in the transitions of talking about when it was assumed Emily purchased poison to kill herself to the town assuming she had passed away to her relatives moving in with her and then her dying years later. In my rendition all of the events are chronological so nothing is out of place.