Marvel (verb)
” Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 3 line 19
” I marvel they never spoke of these matters”
Definition
spoke with great feeling, highly believe
Merriam-Webster Definition
Transitive Verb
to feel astonishment or perplexity at or about marveled that they had escaped
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marvel
I marvel that occured in a time of depression.
I strongly believe that happened in a time of great depression.
The story “The Cottagette”, the narrator Malda shows to be reliable. In the beginning of the story, she talks about the love she has for Ford Mathews. She shows her love for Mr. Mathews by doing things she does not normally do. She likes music and art. However, she starts to do housework such as cleaning and cooking to please Mr. Mathews. Lois, Malda friend give her advice on things she need to do to attract Ford Mathews attention.
“Don’t be foolish, child,”said Lois, this is serious. What they care for most after all is domesticity. Of course they’ll fall in love with anything; but what they want to marry is a homemaker. Now we are living here in an idyllic sort of way, quite conductive to falling in love, but no temptation to marriage. If I were you–if i really loved this man and wished to marry him, I would make a home of this place.”
Malda seems to think that Lois has experiences due to the fact that she has been married before, however also has been divorced. She feels that she knows what to look for in a man and what a man wants. So Malda starts to do this things to impress Mathews to please him. Towards the end of the story when Ford Mathews takes her out to Hugh’s Peak and brought lunch that he prepared for them, he proposed. However, Mathews had one condition which was Malda to stop cooking. He knew that her being a homemaker was not her cup of tea. He fell in love with the women who was an artist soul. He wanted to married the women he knew from the beginning who sees beauty and giving it to others. After she started to cook and clean, she stop paying attention to her true gift which is being an artist.
Utopia is an imagined place where everything is perfect, there’s happiness and joy. In “The Cottagette” the narrator Malda found love. Even though she thought she would have to do certain “roles” to keep her relationship from being at stake. The man she loved, loved her for exactly the person she is and did not want to change anything about her. He proposed, as long as she does what she love as an artist, while he’ll take over the cooking. Malda did not have to follow the stereotypical way of what roles women she play in a relationship. Mathews was able to explain that to her as stated,
“It is not true, always, my dear,” said he, “that the way to man’s heart is through his stomach; at least it’s not the only way…”
This settings shows utopia because Malda fell in love and was proposed to without changing anything about herself. In addition, she was able to follow her dreams in what she want to do in life. “It is not true, always, my dear,” said he, “that the way to man’s heart is through his stomach; at least it’s not the only way…”
Demur is a verb
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary demur means: To politely refuse to accept a request or suggestion. To delay or hesitate.
The word demurred is used by the author of the class handout entitled, “The Cottagette on page 53, second paragraph.
The narrator stated, “I demurred a little…” This occurred when Mr. Mathew asked Malda to go on a mountain climb with him. Malda hesitated a moment stating that it was Monday and this was her day to do washing.
In the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, I felt that the narrator was unreliable, especially when it came to her husband. In the beginning of the story, the narrator states “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.” However, her husband John actually does follow these traits, there were times that he did the opposite. For example, when the narrator is not making any progress by showing sign that she is getting better, John threatens her by saying he would send her Weir Mitchell. Later on in the story, John has a different perspective. The narrator states John actually having faith by giving her hope. “John says I musn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics…” These types of actions play through back and forth throughout the story. One minute John is angry and upset, then secondly he shows a different character. The narrator says she becomes a burden to him, instead of doing what the typical wife roles such as helping him and taking care of their baby. However, in this case he is taking care of her as if she was the child and helping her through her depression. “And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.” In this quote, John shows another side of him by being caring and attentive towards his wife.
Dystopia is an imagined placed where things are unhappy, unpleasant or case in bad setting. The narrator in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” was very interested with wallpaper in the room than any other disturbing things that surrounded her. Towards the mid-end of the story she realized a particular pattern with this mysterious yellow wallpaper. She put all her attention towards this yellow wallpaper to figure out the pattern before anyone else does. She became motivated every day and night of coming closer to figure out this image. When she finally did, it was an image of a creeping women, “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! Then she realized the creeping women was her all along inside those yellow wall paper of the person who she come to be.
In “Young Goodman Brown there was two things that really stood out to me. In paragraph 11 The old man, who I believe represents the Devil in this story states “You are late. Goodman Brown, says he.” in paragraph 12 the “Good Man” (Brown) responds with “Faith kept me back a while.” A very clever way of discerning that a good man with faith is hard and challenging to the Devil to tempt in his evil ways. Unfortunately in this story the Devil makes Goodman Brown as a follower with no faith. Now you may ask what was the turning point of in this story of how this occurred. In paragraph 50 after assuming that the pink ribbon is the end of Faith, Goodman Brown states “My Faith is gone!” then goes on to say “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come devil! for to thee is this world given.”. At that point he races toward sin–“And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasped staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest-path, rather than to walk or run.” The devil may not be real entity in our world but this story shows that loss of faith is.
In the second story “Metamorphosis” I am not really sure what the changing of a human being to a to a undesirable useless bug-like creature what supposed to represent, other than the effect it had on Gregor Samsa’s family. At first there was pity on him followed by the hope that it was temporary and that he would revert back. Then there was the relationship with Greta that proved how Love can always keep you going. But in the end reality shows that all can be lost and Gregor became a disturbing entity to all who loved him the most. I think this was a harsh way of showing that. Even though the clerk’s role was short it began the pity I was talking about as he talked bad about him and put him down in front of his family, even resulting of his job loss. Who would not feel bad about someone like that. The hope was that they decided to house him and feed him, until he could become Gregor the human again. His sister became his advocate and his voice to his parents, almost knowing what he was thinking. But the paragraph that stood out was on page 45. “The charwoman stood in the doorway with a smile on her face as if she had some tremendous good news to report, but would only do so if she was clearly asked to.” then she goes on to say after a brief chuckle–“well then, that thing in there, you needn’t worry about how you are going to get rid of it. that’s all been sorted out.”. To me it was obvious that Gregor had become himself again. But the strain that the family put themselves through was too much and they could not fathom any news that was good. What happened next was the family had new life their worries were over, and the future became bright. And that day they started their new beginning without Gregor.
“Young Goodman Brown” is a story about a man deceived by the evil devil. Goodman Brown was tricked and was never the same. He was warned by his wife that evil was lurking in her dreams, to please stay with her. Gooman Brown ignored her and continued on his journey. He met an old man in the forest, that would take Brown to a meeting with the higher up towns people. The forest was filled with lust, greed and deceit.
While in the forest Goodman Brown found an acquaintance of his Goody Cloyse she prayed while she walked through the forest as a worshipper of god. When she saw that Goodman Brown was in the forest immediately screamed Devil. She knew Goodman Brown was there because of the devil deceit because thats why she was in the forest. She spoke of witchery brooms disappearing. Goodman Brown and the old man continued their walk to the meeting. The meeting consitited of the congregation, ministers, deacons and others. As everyone was settled in the old man welcomed his children into their destiny. Their destiny was to follow his way of wickedness to deceive and destroy others.
Goodman Brown couldnt believe what he got himslef into. He finally woke up it was all a dream. But was it? Goodman Brown was never the same, he constantly feared that he could be easily maniipulated and that that people of the church were worshippers of the devil.
I found “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka to be very interesting and easy to attain a firm grasp on the sense of the scenery and story line because of the simplicity of the wording in this story. This experience was a nightmare for Gregor which is the sense that the narrator was trying to give readers because of the use of the word “kafkaesque” which basically describes a nightmarish situation which most people can somehow relate to, although strongly surreal. I deduced this meaning from the sense of a nightmarish encounter that Gregor is having based on the way that the narrator is describing his experience, (Page 2, Para 2) “he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was.” (Page 3, Para3) “all these little legs continuously moving in different directions and which he was moreover unable to control.” This can only be describing a nightmare in my opinion. It helps to read this story metaphorically because this story was not meant to be viewed in a literal sense. It helps to keep an open mind and look for the deeper meanings in fiction writings. The meaning of “metaphorically” is a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance or something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.
The metamorphosis by Franz Kafka was wrote in 1912. the story tells us about the transformation of human being Gregor into a gigantic insect. It’s was very interesting and strong imagination from the writer. It was noticeable that Gregor had an issue with his family. He was totally excluded from them. Gregor was a puzzled victim of sickness. I think the message behind this story is about the shift which occurs to someone and the consequences which can follow this shifting. One someone is ill and disabled, family is mostly the only thing we can rely on. In Gregor’s case was different. He had a hard time being accepted. His mother failed to cooperate with her brutal husband to deal which Gregor’s situation. This failure generated loneliness and hardship in Gregor’s feelings. The mother was hoping good for her son and tried so hard to assist, She thought it was only a temporary sickness and she even kept Gregor’s furniture hoping that he goes back to his normal life but she didn’t succeed because the father didn’t accept a bit of what happened to Gregor. It was mentioned in the story that his father bombarded him with apples which is a sign of not accepting neither Gregor nor his illness.
It was a sad story. In the beginning of the reading, I had hope for Gregor and I thought he will be helped, saved and accepted by his family. But getting to the end of the story, it shows different thing than what i was expecting.
Between both stories, I enjoyed “The Metamorphosis” the best. On some level I think it touches on humanity quite a bit, in the sense of how people tend to treat each other when things get difficult and complicated. There are times in life when something defining can happen to a person: an illness, loss of a family member, financial hardships, and it’s in these moments when a person may see who is truly supportive and understanding in their life. It’s heartbreaking when those that you have given your support and understanding to fail to reciprocate in return.
The passage that stood out to me is the following:
“One day, about a month after Gregor’s transformation when his sister no longer had any particular reason to be shocked at his appearance, she came into the room a little earlier than usual and found him still staring out the window, motionless, and just where he would be most horrible. In itself, his sister’s not coming into the room would have been no surprise for Gregor as it would have been difficult for her to immediately open the window while he was still there, but not only did she not come in, she went straight back and closed the door behind her, a stranger would have thought he had threatened her and tried to bite her. Gregor went straight to hide himself under the couch, of course, but he had to wait until midday before his sister came back and she seemed much more uneasy than usual. It made him realise that she still found his appearance unbearable and would continue to do so, she probably even had to overcome the urge to flee when she saw the little bit of him that protruded from under the couch. One day, in order to spare her even this sight, he spent four hours carrying the bedsheet over to the couch on his back and arranged it so that he was completely covered and his sister would not be able to see him even if she bent down. If she did not think this sheet was necessary then all she had to do was take it off again, as it was clear enough that it was no pleasure for Gregor to cut himself off so completely. She left the sheet where it was. Gregor even thought he glimpsed a look of gratitude one time when he carefully looked out from under the sheet to see how his sister liked the new arrangement.
I think this passage is so reflective of how Gregor is still willing to give when he is receiving so little. He spent four hours moving the sheet to put it on top of himself to spare his sister the uncomfortableness of looking at him. He is still doing for his family and looking out for what what make them more comfortable. He not only provided for them financially, but he is still providing the comfort from unpleasantness. All his sister had to do was take the sheet off. She must have known that not only was the sheet uncomfortable to have on top of him, but also, that in removing the sheet it would have provided the kindness of acceptance and comfort. Even that small act was too much for her to grant him.
As Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, Young Goodman Brown story progressed it remained a mystery as to the exact reason for the journey of Goodman Brown. There are hints that this journey was evil and was against his Christian principles. While journeying through the woods with his companion Goodman Brown expressed doubt about continuing and expressed guilt and shame. He especially wondered how his moral and spiritual advisors, Goody Cloyse , Deacon Gookin and the pastor of Salem Church would feel about him making this journey. The thought of them reproaching him was strong enough for him to hesitate.
A defining moment in the story occurred on page 6, second paragraph when Deacon Gookin said, ” I had rather miss an ordination-dinner than tonight’s meeting.” “……besides several of the Indian powwows, who after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.” I felt this was a defining moment because this is the point where Goodman Brown realized these people that he held in such high regard and who professed themselves to be good Christians were actually evil hypocrites.
It is almost possible to visualize Goodman Brown in his hiding place in shock and disbelief about what he overheard. The evil journey he was reluctant to continue on was being spoken about with great anticipation by the people he looked up to for spiritual guidance.
The devil meeting Goodman Brown participated in along with his Pastor and Deacon appears to be a dream and better yet a nightmare. If this incident really occurred as Goodman Brown slept it is unfortunate that he was unable to decipher real from unreal and allowed himself to live a life of sadness and mistrust with loss of his Christian beliefs.
In Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” this story too has a nightmarish quality. The transformation of Gregor Samsa into a vermin is unrealistic and impossible. The term kafkaesque describes the particular writing style of Kafka. His stories tend to have a nightmarish quality that tend to be surreal and appears to be from a subconscious origin. In the case of Samsa he was probably thinking subconsciously about his life and the overwhelming responsibilities he had. As a young man he must have wondered what it would be like to be free of all his obligations. He was trapped in a job he hated but could not leave because of debts owed to his boss by his father. I thought this was a nightmare he was having because of anxiety about wanting to free himself from his responsibilities. He was worried about how helpless he would be to his family if he quit his job. The nightmarish vermin state showed how quickly his family would turn against him if he was no longer able to take care of them.
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