All posts by eliyahoo

Week 5

Setting of The Cottagette and The Yellow Wallpaper

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The Cottagette is in a serene environment, high in the mountaintops in a remote beautiful landscape. It is in a resort where all the needs of the visitors are looked after, and where everyone is supposed to be happy and enjoy life.  This is the perfect setting for a story about falling in love. Before Ford “pops the question”, the setting described is a perfectly romantic one, “”stopped by a spring… saw the round sun setting at one end of a world view, and the round moon rising at the other..”. This fits the story’s theme perfectly.

The Yellow Wallpaper is set in an almost haunted house. The house itself is nice enough. It has a nice big garden and plenty of rooms, but after being left uninhabited for so long has a spooky air about it. Then the room is mentioned. First noting the bars on the windows, then the wallpaper,she describes the nursery, specifically the wallpaper, “Stripped off in great patches…commited every artistic sin…color is repellent, almost revolting…no wonder the children hated it..” you can really get a feel of how the narrator feels about it. The narrator is then confined to the room with minimal interaction between her and anyone else. for someone with post-postpartum depression or someone with a predisposition to mental illness, this is the absolute best setting to have someone go crazy.

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Glossary

Firmament

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” While he gazed upward, into the deep arch of the firmament, and..” (47)
Firmament is the curve of the sky thought of as a solid object.
Firmament
fir·ma·ment
noun

1) The heavens or the sky, especially when regarded as a tangible thing.
2) A sphere or world viewed as a collection of people.
“one of the great stars in the American golfing firmament”
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Week 4

Metamorphosis and Young Goodman Brown

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I think “Metamorphosis” by Frank Kafka  could be read metaphorically. This could easily represent a story of someone who got very sick and the family can’t deal with him in the condition he is in. Not only do they have to care for him (and guard him from sight), they now have to go to work since he cannot support them anymore.

Throughout the story he gets to be more and more of a burden, and he slowly gets more and more neglected.  When his mother and sister try to help him out and rearrange his room, he is spotted by his mother (who couldn’t bear to see him in that state) and she faints.

Near the end, Grete is trying to convince her parents to “get rid of it” (Gregor isn’t referred to as he at this point). At this point we see that he is nothing but a burden to the family. This can (sadly enough) be a metaphor for someone withering away in a coma. He can understand them and hears more than think, but cannot communicate with them. When they were getting near the point of “pulling the plug”, Gregor passed on, relieving the family of their tremendous burden.

 

In the first few paragraphs of “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Brown is talking to Faith, his wife. It seems that at the same time Faith could also be a personification of his actual faith.  “Faith kept me back awhile” (12) is a great line. At this point in the story the reader doesn’t know where Brown is heading, only that is something bad.  He was kept back by his wife, but also by his belief, and his knowledge that what he is doing is wrong.

Essentially Goodman is in fact a good man and changes his mind before committing the evil deed. “My Faith is gone” he cried after hearing his wife is there with the sinners. This is referring to  his wife but can also mean he lost the faith he so barely held onto moments before.

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Week 2

A Rose for Emily

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A rose for Emily is a story about a woman with a mental illness. She obviously had trouble coping with reality, and couldn’t come to terms with the issues she was presented with. The story gives us a few examples of this.

When she was presented with her tax notices, and even called upon by the sheriff’s office, she paid no heed. Even when they came to her house and explained how there was no reason for her not to pay taxes, her reality held strong and what she believed in was simply the truth. When her father passed she refused to accept it, saying he was still alive. Only after three days  did she finally  give in and allow for his burial.

Then Homer Barron came along. She finally had someone in her life again, and now her father wouldn’t be diving him away as he had done to suitors in the past. She probably saw this as her last chance not to be alone, and must have been heartbroken when she found out he was “not a marrying man”. But, she would not accept it. She took matters into her own hands and ensured that her reality prevailed.

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Glossary, Uncategorized, Week 2

Bier

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Bier   noun

  1. a table or platform on which a coffin or dead body is placed at a funeral

A Rose for Emily, Part 5 Paragraph 2

 

“they held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men…”

Reading the story, I figured the word bier meant mantle,  this certainly paints a different picture.

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Week 1

Story of an Hour/Jury of her Peers

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In Jury of Her Peers, the conversations of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters provide us with a picture of Mrs. Wright in her younger years. We see a beautiful young women with a wonderful voice.  That women is in stark contrast to the women Mr. Hale walked in on that morning, a women living with worn out clothing, in a lonesome house, with no children, and once again, no pets. After all those years, when she finally had something that gave her joy, only to see her husband take that away from her as well, it is very easy to validate her actions. In a way, her husband took her life before she took his.

The Story of An Hour begins with a frail woman receiving terrible news.  As the story progresses we see what this news meant to her, a chance to be free, a chance to live. After living for someone she didn’t love for so long, and to be given another chance at freedom, I would say her thoughts toward her “late” husband are completely acceptable.

Both stories are set in the same time period, a time when women were seen as housekeepers, and are there to serve their husbands, and raise children. I think the attorney saying  “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” is a great example of the general attitude toward women at the time. Although in today’s day and age the attitude toward women has changed, both stories are still very relevant. There are many people trapped in loveless and abusive relationships, and it would be easy enough to adapt the story to present day.

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Introductions, Uncategorized

Interesting Title

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Hello, my name is Eli Shtauber. I was born and raised in Brooklyn NY.  What else would you like to know?

I come from a large close family and always had my siblings to talk to and to play with. Five years ago my parents and younger siblings moved out of the state, and I now have an apartment with a couple of roommates. It’s tough not being close to my family (and doing my own laundry/cooking/cleaning :/ ), but I try to go visit whenever I can.

I finished high school in 2007 and decided not to go to college. There are plenty of things I am good at and figured not to spend the time in school. I worked as an  electrician for a couple of years, and learned a lot. It was a decent job but I wasn’t enjoying it. I had a couple of other jobs, and in each I gained many useful skills, but I never found something I really enjoyed. In the summer of 2011 (I had just quit working as a bus mechanic) I heard a friend talking about the mechanical engineering program at City Tech. He had taken a tour of the school and told me all about it. I looked into the field  some more, and was enrolled for the fall semester shortly afterwards.

I love to read (!) and especially like Stephen King and Lee Child. I’m currently reading Christine by SK. I enjoy listening to music and usually have something playing in the background.  Another hobby of mine is working on old cars. I bought, fixed, drove, and then sold a couple of cars. I am currently rebuilding an antique electric car, and I hope to use the machines in the engineering department like the 3d printer and cnc machine to make a couple of parts I’m having trouble finding.

Anyway, hope we have a great semester, and hope we get to read some great stories.

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