Alissa's Blog

The project prompt I will discuss in my final project is "Choose a reading selection. Explore the relationship between elements of the selection." So this question is asking me to explore the relationship between elements of the selection meaning for example: How does setting influence character development? This topic is interesting because you can choose any elements to compare and contrast on. You can do a character and the setting. The theme and the setting or even the theme and the character. This topic gives you a variety to pick from and I like that because then we can write about something were actually interested in. I think the reading I'm going to choose to write this topic about is Ichiyo. The main character, Kichizo is a dwarf who was basically bullied his whole life because of his height and because of the bullying setting, I can talk about how this setting influenced Kichizo. The environment and setting Kichizo is placed him kind of makes him who he is. ...

Close Reading on Clarice Lispector's, "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman" (808-814) The thing that intrigues me about this reading is the use of simile's and imagery. Lispector creates these vivid images in your head when speaking because she describes the situation so clear. For example, when the husband and the kids leave the woman home alone, she says, ""Oh what a succulent room! Here she was, fanning herself in Brazil. The sun, trapped in the blinds, shimmered on the wall like the strings of a guitar" (810). I like this quote because at least for me, I can perfectly image this scenery in my head and it give me a snip of what this story is like in reality. This story, "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman," reveals deeper possibilities in this woman. She is unhappy and full of rage. The reasons for her misery all reflect on the choices that she has made while seeking security and protection and the social conditions that foster such poor circumstan...

Lispector (808-814) Clarice Lispector is best known as a writer of intense, tightly structured short stories that portray the external world through  character's innermost thoughts and feelings and that emphasize sensuous perception to attain intuitive knowledge beyond words (808) "The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman" (1960) is a disturbing tale it begins with the protagonist in bed at home, possibly already drunk, and goes on to show her flying into alcoholic rages and bouts of self-pity (809) the story reveals deeper possibilities in this woman the reasons for her misery and repressed rage, the choices that she has made while seeking security and protection, and the social conditions that foster such pitiable circumstances her identity appears fragmented , her self-image either in shards or swollen and unreachable as she congratulates herself repeatedly on being "protected like everyone who had attained a position in life," and viciously criticizes a more ...

Postwar and Postcolonial Literature (671-675) in the middle of the 20th century, the 2 superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union found themselves locked in a Cold War by 1949, with success of Communist Revolution in China, led by Mao Zedong, almost half of the world's population lived under communism to avoid planetary disaster, both sides fought war by proxy, notably by Korea and Vietnam (671) Joseph Stalin were repudiated, after Stalin's death in 1953, by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev during this period, the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were briefly allowed to be published (672) while the Communist world was undergoing radical transformations, the colonial powers of Western Europe began to relinquish direct political control of their colonies in Western Europe, the postwar period saw rapid rebuilding and further industrialization  Tadeusz Borowski shocked his compatriots with his account of life in Nazi concentration camps while the Romanian-born Jew, Paul Ce...

This week was not so bad. I completed all the assignments for this class and my other classes and currently working on the extra credit assignments. Although I'm at a B-range in this class, I really want that A, so I'm doing as much of the extra credit assignments that I can. There's only 4 weeks of the semester left so only 4 more week of extra credit assignments to do. It sounds doable, therefore I will do them. Last semester was my second semester getting a 4.0 GPA and I really don't want that to go down. The weekly readings in this class were not that interesting to me this week. Usually I like the extra credit readings because they're different, but this week didn't offer an extra credit one? Ever since I started doing those extra readings, I enjoy them more. That's maybe because I don't necessarily have to do them so in the back of my head I know it's an option so it won't hurt if I don't do them. But like I said, I really want to earn ...

1 out of 3: Choose a reading selection. How does the work reflect the period in which it was written? I potentially might do this topic because time period can be tricky, but it can teach you a lot. All eras throughout time are different, therefore the readings we have read in class can relate around the period it was written in. One of the stories I want to write on was last week's extra credit reading and I think it was called the Tattooer. I'm not sure if it would fit with this topic but maybe there's a connection and I just have to dig deeper. 2 out of 3: Choose a reading selection. Explore the relationship between elements of the selection. This topic is interesting because you can choose any elements to compare and contrast on. You can do a character and the setting. The theme and the setting or even the theme and the character. This topic gives you a variety to pick from and I like that because then we can write about something were actually interested in. For ex...

Literary Analysis on Akhmatova (565-574) Requiem is an elegy written by Anna Akhmatova. It's a lyrical cycle, a series of poems written on a theme, but it is also a short epic narrative. The "I" of the speaker throughout remains anonymous, even though Akhmatova describers her personal emotions in the central poems. Requiem is both a private and public story. It's a picture of individual grief linked to the country's disaster, and a vision of community suffering that extends beyond contemporary national tragedy into medieval Russian history and Greek mythology (567). One of the big themes in Akhmatova's Requiem is grief. Requiem voices a single mother's grief, which was based on Akhmatova's son. He was in prison and eventually sentenced to death. The grieving speaker returns from religious transcendence to earth and current history. In the Dedication poem, it says, "Mountains bow down to this grief, Mighty rivers cease to flow, But the prison gate...

Anna Akhmatova (565-574) Anna Akhmatova was one of the great Russian poets of the 20th century she expressed herself in an intensely personal, poetic voice, whether as lover, wife, and mother or as a national poet commemorating the mute agony of millions she was born in a suburb of the Black Sea port of Odessa she was the daughter of a maritime engineer and an independent woman of revolutionary sympathies  took the pen name Akhamotova from her maternal great-grandmother, who was of Tatar descent in 1910, she married Niolai Gumilyov although they divorced, his arrest and execution for counterrevolutionary activities in 1921 put her status into question during WWII, her interest in larger musical forms motivated her to develop cycles of poems instead of her accustomed individual lyrics Requiem (1940) is a lyrical cycle, a series of poems written on a theme, but it is also a short epic narrative the "I" of the speaker throughout remains anonymous, in spite of the fac...

Modern Poetry (507-508) romanticism aspired William Wordsworth to speak in the "real language of men" (507) a century later, romantic reveries about natural beauty or the soul had become just another set of poetic cliches French poets, Charles Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarme, saw the late 19th century symbolism as an overwrought kind of romanticism in which personal vision counted for more than precision and formal innovation (507) William Butler Yeats and Constantine Cavafy stress the power of what Yeats called "masterful images" both poets found inspiration in the storehouse of images associated with myth and legend to create complex personal mythologies that enriched their poems Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot incorporated elements of ancient myth in their poetry their aim was to achieve impersonal objectivity  Rilke became known for his "object poems" Eliot used complex metrical play and surprising rhymes to revitalize the resources of En...

Since it's becoming closer to the end of the semester, a lot of the work has been piling on. I've also been working a lot still and it's quite difficult to manage. I try to get the most I can done but it is definitely a challenge. The weeks are only getting tougher and having to do more work but I am happy to say that the past 2 exams I took in my other classes I passed. In my political science class, I got a 90% and in my drama class, I got a 99% on the exam and to be honest I was so worried I wasn't going to pass. I studied like crazy though so that helped out a lot. But in this class, my favorite reading this week was the extra credit reading, The Tattooer. It was different and I really like tattoos so it was attention grabbing. Although I don't have any tattoos myself, this story defines the agony and pain of getting a tattoo and it just made you want to clench your teeth with how detailed and descriptive the story was. Overall, I enjoyed that story and I've...

Jun'ichiro: The Tattooer (78-84) it was an age when men honored the noble virtue of frivolity, and when life was not suhc a harsh struggle people did all they could to beautify themselves, some even having pigments injected into theit skin courtesans of the Yoshiwara and the Tatsumi quarter fell in love with tattooed men (80) exhibitions were held where the participants would strip to show off their tattooed bodies and boast if their own designs and criticize each other there was a young tattooer named Seikichi and he was praised on all sides as a master the equal of  Charibun or Yatsuhei, and the skins of dozens of men had been offered as the silk for his brush the clients he did accept had to leave the design and cost entirely to his discretion his pleasure laid in the agony men felt as he drove his needles into them, torturing their swollen, blood-red flesh (80) whenever a man complained or even made a gesture or face, Seikichi would say, "Don't act like a chi...

Close Reading on Fusako: Memoirs (400-408) In Fusako's reading, there was a particular passage that stood out to me. On page 402, it talks about how Ryukyuan's can't help but share the loneliness of being a Ryukyuan. It is that said, "a loneliness that echoes in our hearts like the sound of the sanshin, yet we never speak of this plaintive sound. If one of us broaches the subject, we avert our eyes, coldly, like two cripples passing on the sidewalk" (402). It's like as if these people are not allowed to speak of their lonesome because it's not something that is welcomed. They should not come together on a topic like loneliness there it's forbidden to speak of, hence the "we avert out eyes, coldly..." part. They keep on going like nothing is wrong. I like this passage because I think it can be relatable in other aspects. At first I didn't know what a "sanshin" was and when I looked it up, it's a 3 string instrument that rese...

Fusako: Memoirs (400-408) Kushi Fusako is known for, "Memoirs of a Declining Ryukyuan Woman" (1932), her only work (400) she was visiting a friend who had just returned from a family funeral on their home island her friend wanted to bring her mother to Tokyo and help her start a business in selling Oshima tsunami cloth but said, "The problem [was] her tattoo" (402) tattoos have caused suffering in almost every Ryukyuan family even if a woman can save enough money to send several sons to a higher school, she is destined to be left behind in her hometown until she dies all because of the tattoos on the back of her hands (402) in worst cases, grandmothers died not knowing of names of their grandchildren "the more their sons succeed, the more strictly mothers have to be confined to their "homes,' where they are given a tiny bit of freedom and supported by whatever petty allowance their sons care to provide" (402) Ryukyuan intellectuals aren...

Modernity and Modernism: 1900-1945 (3-13) at the beginning of the 20th century, the world was adapting in ways it never has before there was new means of transportation like the steamship, the railroad, automobiles, and airplanes so it allowed people to travel quickly the telegraph and telephone also allowed people to communicate instantaneously these vast transformations in human experience can be characterized as modernization (3) the production of weapons were increasingly effective as well the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history: as many as 200 million died in wars, revolutions, genocides, and related famines (4) in response to the horror, the old dream of  a unified, peaceful world became ever more appealing due to the light of new technologies and optimistic ideas of progress (4) as Europe and North America became industrialized over the course of the 19th century, they extended their political power to cover most of the globe yet as the 20th century ad...

Tagore (889-904) Tagore was born in Calcutta in 1861, into one of India's most famous families His grandfather had a great fortune in agriculture, mining, banking, and trade in British India, and helped establish Hindu College, Calcutta Medical College, the National Library, and the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India (889) His grandfather also co-founded the Brahmo Sabha - an influential association dedicated to far-reaching reforms of Hindu religions and social life, which his father expanded and renamed Tagore was educated in several schools in Calcutta but rebelled against formal education so strongly that after 14 years old, he was trained by tutors at home in history, science, mathematics, literature, and art Through 1875-1880, he spent his time in England, first in Brighton and then in London, but returned to India after failing his law degree In 1880, he published his first two book of poems in Bengali His family arranged his marriage to Mrinalini Devi,...

Literary Analysis of Ibsen (781-800) Hedda Gabler is the daughter of the famous General Gabler. She grew up in a upper-class family and was used to living luxurious. Her husband, Jurgen Tesman lived the opposite life and came from a lower middle class so you can imagine the differences that went on between them. On page 780 it says, "The collision of between Hedda's and Tesman's respective classes, expectations, and attitudes centers on the bourgeois home." And later on throughout the reading, the readers learn that Hedda only married Jurgen and convinced him to get the house out of boredom and after that she found herself trapped. Because she felt trapped, I think that's what caused her character to be more manipulative of her husband and her husband's friends. The story says, "Hedda Gabler may be a manipulator, but she is a manipulator with a vision. She is driven by her hunger for a more fulfilling, ideal, and beautiful life" (780). Hedda Gabler ...

Tolstoy (735-778) Leo Tolstoy was many things, like: a gambler, womanizer, aristocrat of the highest rank, vegetarian, pacifist, anarchist, and a passionate advocate for the Russian peasantry (735) He was world-famous for his wisdom on the subject of marriage But, suffered through a terrible marriage himself He became widely known as a moral and religious sage, but he was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church (735) He produced some of the century's best fiction Born in 1828, Tolstoy was the 4th out of 5 children His parents belonged to the highest class of Russian society Tolstoy never took advantage of his high birth to pursue a grand career as a diplomat or courtier His mother died when he was 2 and his father died when he was 9 so he spent his youth years very isolated He was an orphan that moved from one household to another He was close to his siblings and they all imagined a perfect society based on a universal love At 14, Tolstoy started to visit brot...

Ichiyo (905-913) Okyo - a stylish women in her early twenties Kichizo - "dwarf" sixteen year old and worked as an apprentice at the umbrella shop People mistaken him as 11 or 12 years old because of his small face He was teased because of how short and small he was that people dubbed him as "dwarf" (907) Okyo is poor  and teases Kichizo about sewing him a kimono if she could but she doesn't have the money for it - she tells him, "I'm sewing to support myself. These aren't gifts I'm making" (908) Kichizo tells Okyo that he'll never succeed in life because he'd rather stay where he is in life, meaning he'd rather oil umbrellas because that's what he was born in to Hanji is the mean, stuck-up owner's son of the shop and will be a future boss Kichizo tells Okyo that she reminds him of being his sister but she says she's an only child Kichizo has no clue where his family is or where his family whereabouts Beca...