Author Archives: Greg

Saying Thank You For Being Corrected When You Are Right?

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In Jenny Boully’s short essay called, A Short Essay On Being she talks about being a Thai woman in America. The reader learns that in Thailand, it is common to say thank you when you are corrected, even if the one correcting you is wrong. We see this first hand when the narrator’s friend corrects her for saying Pot Thai, “I was going to visit a friend from graduate school in Austin. I told her that I would visit and make her pot Thai. She told me, “It’s pad Thai.” And even though she knew I was Thai and even though she knew that I was born in Thailand and had been back numerous times and even though she knew that my mother raised me to speak Thai and still spoke to me in Thai, I thanked her for correcting me.” Her friend knows that she was raised to speak Thai and completely dis-regarded the fact that she could be the one pronouncing the word wrong, and that is how they say Pad Thai in Thai. Instead of the narrator correcting her friend she thanks her and moves on. I can relate to the narrator because whenever someone corrects me and I know they are wrong, I tend to take a step back and watch them do what they corrected me on the wrong way until they are corrected and I just stand there and chuckle to myself.

Elm

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The Bell Jar Passage:
The tears came in a rush, then, and while the sailor was holding me and patting
them dry with a big, clean, white linen handkerchief in the shelter of an American elm, I thought what an awful woman that lady in the brown suit had been, and how she, whether she knew it or not, was responsible for my taking the wrong turn here and the wrong path there and for everything bad that happened after that.

Elm – Noun
Definition: any of a genus (Ulmus of the family Ulmaceae, the elm family) of usually large deciduous north temperate-zone trees with alternate stipulate leaves and fruit that is a samara

Now that I know what an Elm is it is clear to me that Esther was taking shelter under a large tree, and can now visualize it.

://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elm

 

Group Post: Is Doctor Nolan a better mother to Esther then her own mother?

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On page 212 the first half of the page is the dialogue between Esther and Doctor Nolan. To summarize the conversation its about when Esther is going in for her shock treatment and Esther is caught off guard with Doctor Nolan and begins yelling at her saying “You said you would tell me!” To which Doctor Nolan responds explaining that she came to be with her and make sure everything is done correctly this time around.
My group and I took the conversation to mean that Esther is closer to Doctor Nolan then her own mother in a sense that she trusts her more. Esther is not afraid to lash out towards Doctor Nolan. We also agreed that Doctor Nolan sort of took Esther under her wing. We literally see this happen after Doctor Nolan wipes Esther’s face with her handkerchief and hooks her arm around her and escorts her to the room.

The Bell Jar: Bell Jar

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The bell jar is an inverted glass jar, generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity, contain a certain kind of gas, or maintain a vacuum. For Esther, the bell jar symbolizes madness. When gripped by insanity, she feels as if she is inside an airless jar that distorts her perspective on the world and prevents her from connecting with the people around her. At the end of the novel, the bell jar has lifted, but she can sense that it still hovers over her, waiting to drop at any moment.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_jar

Blase

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Word: Blase Adjective

Passage: “We’re on our way to a party,” I blurted, since Doreen had gone suddenly dumb as a post and was fiddling in a blasĂ© way with her white lace pocketbook cover.

Definition: having or showing a lack of excitement or interest in something especially because it is very familiar

This helps me understand the passage because I can see that Doreen was not very interested in the conversation that was going on between the two gentlemen… I find this ironic however because of what happens with Doreen and Lenny.

Midterm Quotes

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1)

Passage “That woman, then, who was born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself. All the conditions of her life, all her own instincts, were hostile to the state of mind which is needed to set free whatever is in the brain. But what is the state of mind that is most propitious to the act of creation? ”

Title of text: A Room of One’s Own

Author: Virginia Woolf

What is happening in this passage is that Woolf is talking about woman’s state of mind. She leans towards the argument that women might be the best writers because of all of the conditions in their life. They would be able to write against the struggle against themselves that most male writers do not have.

This passage connects to larger issues in the essay because it is about women in the 16th century. It talks about their struggles, and how because you are a women you have no chance of following your passion. It argues what state of mind is right for creation? What do males have that the females do not?

2)

Passage: “…who had been born in this dirty, mad, hurrying city, had no home here. She had not even any friends here.”

Title of text: Quicksand

Author: Nelia Larsen

What is happening in this passage is that the reader is learning that Helga Crane has no home, or friends and we learn that she is going to be starting a journey of finding herself

How does this tie into the main themes of the novel? Well especially in the first half of the novel we follow Helga on her journey of finding herself. We watch her move to Chicago, to Harlem, to Denmark, and back to Harlem. We see that she has no real home, and she does not feel comfortable with her mix race.

 

 

Rough Draft 1

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Gender discrimination refers to “the practice whereby one sex is given preferential treatment over the others. The practice of giving social importance to the biological differences between men and women is there everywhere. In some societies, these differences are very much pronounced while in others, they are given less importance. If I were to write about this issue in a bold way I might go for the smaller things that people do not really notice.
The first being; we have yet to have a woman president. 49 other countries in the world have. Yet America has not, granted we are currently experiencing our first black president so I am sure one is coming in the future. Why is it hard for us to vote a woman president? Why has only one run so far that has had a decent chance of wining? What if we look at the opposite of this?
Women get things sometimes at a free or cheaper price then men do simply because they are female. Is this because men see them as objects? Lets look at clubs for an example; these places are known for letting females in for free rather than males. More then often I have gone to house parties and been denied because there are to many males in there already or I don’t have any girls with in my group. But they will let in 5 girls at a time and still deny me. They claim they have to maintain the right guy/girl ratio. I have clearly seen girls use this to their advantage of this though. Whose fault is this; the media for portraying women as objects and not people? Men for only viewing women as objects and not people? Or perhaps it’s the women themselves for not doing anything to change this image. I think it is the media’s fault.

Prim

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Quicksand

Prim – Adj

Passage-
“Quite recently too. Miss MacGooden,
humorless, prim, ugly, with a face like dried
leather, prided herself on being a “lady” from
one of the best families—an uncle had been a
congressman in the period of the Reconstruction. She was therefore, Helga Crane reflected, perhaps unable to perceive that the inducement
to act like a lady, her own acrimonious example,
was slight, if not altogether negative.”

Definition- formally precise or proper, as persons or behavior; stiffly neat.

After reading the definition I understand that the word is used to describe someones behavior. Miss. MacGooden is a proper lady who is rather old and comes from a family with money.

Naxos, where you can not be individual.

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When the novel begins, Helga is a twenty-two-year-old school teacher at Naxos, a Negro boarding school. Finding herself both frustrated by the complacent attitudes of the blacks in Naxos towards racism and unfulfilled as a teacher Helga decides to leave Naxos and her fiance fellow teacher James Vayle, who is black. James’ family does not approve of the match because of Helga’s mixed ancestry.

The first lines in the novel Quicksand are “Helga Crane sat alone in her room, which at that hour, eight in the evening, was in soft gloom.” These opening lines anticipate both the plot and the development of Helga Crane as a character. Helga Crane is a lonely, isolated woman whose life appears to be very gloomy.Helga is biracial therefore not accepted by the blacks or the whites. The author states on page 9, “The great community, she thought. was no longer a school. It had grown into a machine. It was now a show place in the black belt, exemplification of the Whiteman’s magnanimity, refutation of the black man’s inefficiency. Life had died out of it” The school was an example of the theory that African Americans needed to improve their lot, the policy of “Black Uplift”. The education at Naxos, was a place where individualism was very discouraged. Helga becomes disenchanted with the hypocrisy at the prestigious school and begins re-evaluating her career choice as a teacher.

Progeny

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Progeny -Noun

defination found at dictionary.com

A result or outcome.

Quote “I’m afraid I can’t. He is an important man, travels in circles where progeny is essential.” 

This quote makes more sense. Mrs Van Buren is talking about how important her husband is. Hetravels a lot to places where things need to get done orwhere an outcome needs to come to.