The Yellow Wallpaper

Looks kinda like what the author and narrator was imagining, doesn't it?

            So what we have here is a first person narrative story revolving around a woman and yellow wallpaper. The story begins off rather simple, with the first day being set in as the expository. That being said, what is being exposed to the reader is that the woman is taking to writing about her ventures on her summer vacation from life. According to the woman, she is on vacation and is not to work until she is feeling completely better - because of a simple nervous condition that her husband and brother deems is "really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency (266)." Yet the troubling antagonist in this story appears not to be the condition but the yellow wallpaper. No matter how many times the reader is convinced that the nervous condition is growing ever out of control, the author kindly reminds the reader that it is primarily the yellow wallpaper, and the millions of creeping ladies in the pattern that are frightening, that are enticing her. There are people that keep her in check, especially the husband and his sister, to make sure that she is not writing, for the narrator "verily believes she thinks it is the writing which made me sick (269)." Unconditionally, the writing is meant to be a tool of expression and it appears that the narrator feels confined enough to want to write, and with the need to avoid her watchers. This confining causes her to express, but the application of expression allows her vivid imagination to run wild - thus allowing the creeping woman to come out in the day. The creeping woman is, again, one of the creations of the narrator and as well a sign of her degrading mentality. But again the author forces the narration to appear that she is feeling well until next mention of the creeping lady out in the yards. Ultimately, however, the nervous depression turns into a depravity and insanity. It seems that there is still some conscious separation between herself and the imagined woman in the walls when she states "I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight 276)!" and then contradicts it by stating "I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once (276)." And when she finally snaps, it is when she flees to the wall and "peeled off yards of that paper (277)." The ending, however morbid, shows that she had lost her personality however. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" and she continues to creep by the wall, right over the fainted body of her husband. So inevitably, what is the limit of sanity, here? It appears to me that the yellow wallpaper and the imagined woman is the symbol of her degrading sanity, a sort of a gauge for the reader to see.

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

                This story, the same as any story, has many layers of meaning to it. According to Kennedy/Gioia, we must - in order to find the meaning - "look to other elements in the story besides what happens in it (171)." As well as that, "a theme aims for a deeper and more comprehensive statement of its larger meaning (171)." These statements are rather important for the understanding of the story. Since this story takes us through a squad's adventures in Vietnam. The people in the war seem to all be very flavorful, very colorful - there are a lot of things to be said about them. But what is the story talking about? To me, in order to FIND the theme, I had to consider all the layers of meaning behind the story:

1. Duty, ascertained from the ending which the lieutenant burns the letters and photos.

2. War veterans and soldiers carry, and not that they carry just anything, they carry huge burdens both physically and mentally. There is central story progression on the fact that soldiers "carry."

3. Soldiers are still people; they are not without fear and they all dream of freedom.

                A theme I have found is derived from these three meanings, not that they are the only meanings but that they are the most prevalent for me. These meanings do come together as a larger theme from my understanding; and that it is "Soldiers must carry heavy burdens, but the heaviest burden of all is duty." This theme is sort of the most prevalent because of the focus on Lieutenant Cross' obsession with Martha having turned him to blaming himself for the death of subordinate Ted Lavender. The story is straightforward, and not all that complex, but the meanings are deeper and the theme teaches a moral. The moral of the story is essentially that, "When duty is at hand, distraction from it will lead to unhappy consequences."

                However, once the theme is found, it's necessary to explain theme. One line that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross thinks surmises the whole story: "It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do (354)." Yet this is largely in part due to the fact that he constantly blames himself for Ted Lavender's death due to his obsession over Martha, such as: "He felt shame. He hated himeslf. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war (350)." Because of this shame, it led to on the morning after Lavender's death to him wanting to "comport himself as an officer (354)."

To Build a Fire (1903) by Jack London

               Whilst looking at the time of creation of the book this story was derived from, the Klondike Gold Rush seemed to be a faint legend about a time of dreams to get rich and fast. This Gold Rush became something of a symbol like the California had, drew the attention of San Franciscan novelist Jack London. This book or short story appears to have been written through his studies of the Yukon area, where the Klondike Gold Rush was located near. Nevertheless, the story has its own distinctive nature - one of the fight against nature.
                Throughout the short story, there were adequate descriptions of the environment as it was the central antagonist - though arguably it could also be the secondary antagonist to arrogance. The main character was a man, and a man just like any other man; a man that thinks he is stronger than nature and that nature is not crafty nor simple; a man that highly underestimates the absolute power of nature. The Yukon trail that the man is travelling is at the time seventy-five degrees below zero. The man must travel through the snow to the camp and find that there is more or less danger at every corner: for example, there was an accident involving a hot spring that left him wet halfway to the knees and, under the weather conditions, would soon freeze his feet to the point of immobility. In the end, the battle against nature makes it so that the setting is also the antagonist.
Pictures!

 

I feel that this picture is particularly appropriate because of 1) Jack London is somehow in it, 2) The game is largely based in Yukon, 3) the video game creators have made a game called The Oregon Trail in which players must travel through the trail to reach California and it's a battle against nature (important note), Indians and for survival

I feel that this picture is relative, due to the story containing a dog companion that travels alongside the unnamed man. The man even had the gall to attempt to kill the dog and use its corpse as a heat source.

 

I actually found this picture somewhere; it's a depiction scene of the man and his attempts to build fire. The namesake of this story is an important note because it was the only chance he had at survival following the accident and it was a high goal for him for a good third of the story.

 

Just another depiction of the Yukon Trail during Winter. (Kind of hard to find a picture of similar conditions to the story because I doubt anyone's stupid enough to take a picture when it's that cold.)

 

This picture's decision was also to put the dog into perspective as a support character. It can be argued that it is also a main character, but its main purpose was to show the difference between instinct of animals and the laughable wisdom and folly of man. The dog in the end survives because he did not need to rely on intelligence nor stupidity nor arrogance - purely the instinctive drive for his travel. The man on the other hand was arrogant and did not believe anything from a man of experience until his death was at hand.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

Blog about "A Rose for Emily." What is the point of view of the story? Who is telling this story? How is this unusual? Why would Faulkner select this point of view? How does the point of view fit with the theme of the story? What specific lines in the story give you clues about who is telling the story? Quote them and include page numbers.

From the very beginning, the view point is made clear by the tone, by the language. The person knew or knew of Miss Emily Grierson, but throughout the story there was never any mention of delving through internal thoughts of anyone but the narrator. It seems more like the narrator is explaining to someone – perhaps a relative or someone who was interested in the history of Miss Emily Grierson – with relative information regarding the fascinating snobs in his or her limited knowledge. This point of view is, by the absence of omniscient value, an objective one.

To choose a point of view, Faulkner perhaps wanted to draw a connection of rather than a snobbish woman with her head held high, above the town, to one of the town or in fact as I believe, a representative of the town. The narrator speaks of Emily Grierson as if she WAS a monument as put by the narrator him or herself: “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument…” (33) In this case, it is perhaps the most apt description for the attitude of the town. The narrator does not really display how high of a status that he or she stands within the town, so it gives an impression of common-folk that is easily understood. Nor does this narrator speak disrespectfully of Miss Emily Grierson; rather, the narrator attempts to only explain the fascinating spectacle of a woman as objective as he or she could.

In the order of events that the narrator goes over, it becomes more fitting as we are able to understand the town and the feelings of the town, rather than the typical overcompensated feelings of the rich individual. To present the story as if the enigma could only be discovered postmortem, it must be through the eyes of common people that we can identify. The story presented is as a feeling of being explained about through a personal manner to promote the imagination.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Blog about “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”  Does the plot surprise you?  Why or why not?  When you started reading the story, what did you think would happen?  If you have seen any films by the Coen brothers (especially No Country for Old Men), can you see how they were influenced by Flannery O’Connor? 

To say the very  least, I found this short story in the book to not be very surprising. If one pays attention to the details, there was perhaps an excessive amount of foreshadowing. I admit that the tone of the story changed strongly from beginning to end, but that did not exactly catch me off-guard. The beginning started off with a large, happy family tone - but the introduction of "The Misfit" from the news and the grandmother's sudden obsessive fear of him had drawn me towards the apparent importance of the character. I didn't truly know the direction of the story up until the actual meeting between the family and the Misfit's group, however.

Introduction

So here we are, blogger or more commonly known as blogspot. My name is Eric Cheng-Jie Lin, and there's nothing absolutely fascinating about me - Indonesian/Burmese/Chinese boy born in the United States. I'm a computer science major and although I doubt that anyone in the class is  going to be looking for me to write a major program, I can fix most major computer problems and also at least provide some level of assistance at the software and hardware level.

I'm a super nerd, I'm a decent athlete. I'm proficient in the English language, have learned how to read and write French, and am beginning to learn how to write in Chinese and Indonesian. The alien languages that come out of my mouth when I'm not speaking in English are Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, French and Indonesian. I'm not particularly fluent in the latter two but I can definitely hold a conversation in Chinese.

Badminton is the major past-time that I have in my life, the second would be playing video games. I used to have the hobbies such as writing short stories, cooking, reading, and messing around with computers; alas, those are things that require much time, and I can only do so little in so much time. Each person is a world to be explored, however, and I'll keep this short.

Eric Cheng-Jie Lin