Poetry-Voice/Figures of Speech

Voice/Figures of Speech
In the poem "My Papa's Waltz" i really depicted the voice of the narrator to be a adult male telling the story of his childhood. It was through his language and figure of speech that the author portrays the mans emotions towards his father. It is through the characters voice that the tone of the man comes through. He seems as if he has respect for his father, but has a great amount of resentment towards him. In poetry when the poets use figures of speech like similes and metaphors it helps to strenghten the voice, and the images, just like it did in this poem.

Poetry-imagery, Word choice

Imagery/Word Choice
"The Fish" poem is my favorite of the eleven poems we had to read this week. This poem was my favorite for many reasons. The two main reasons for this is the imagery the poet created, and the words she choose in order to create such imagery. The description of the oil spills creating a rainbow in the water, making so the only thing the fishermen was seeing was the rainbow. Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow. It was because of seeing that the fishermen decided to let the fish go. That and the five hooks that were in the fish's mouth previously. The way the poet describes the fish gives me the picture that the fish is a strong fighting fish. Because of the line where the fisher says that the fish did not fight made me believe that maybe this time the fish has had enough and was ready to give up the fight.

First half of One Day in The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

At this part in the story Shukhov is being punished for committing a crime we the readers are not even sure he actually commited. The point of punishment is to teach an indivdual the wrong doing in their actions, and to take personal responsibility for oneselves. When people are punished for things outside of his or her control the idea of personal responsibilty looses all meaning. With wrongful accusations crime rates can actually rise because people tend to become less caring about difference between right and wrong. Especially if they are going to be punished anyway.
The author constantly using different names for the same person was incredibly confusing. At first it seemed as if they were to separte characters, when instead i think the author wanted the reading to translate it as Ivan no longer being the same person after being at the camp. This idea is probably really stretching it though, just something i noticed. In the camp it seems as if none of them have an identity.
Each day the prisoners are striped and searched for forbidden items that they may have possibly some how smuggled. The prisoners have to take their clothes off in freezing cold temperatures and in front of everyone. The daily strip and search serves as a way for the camp to keep communist. If no one is allowed to have anything forbidden then they are all of the same class even though they are in prison.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

First of all this story was incredibly creepy!!! I think her naive attitude towards strangers fits the characteristics of teens now very well. If i was Connie and i was home alone and did not know a car that pulled up in my drive way i would not have even bother to answer the door let alone go see who it is before they even come to the door. The character of Connie was portrayed very detailed and incredibly well. Carol Oates did an amazing job of building her up from her physical portraits to her attitude and lack of experiences. Same thing goes for Aronld Friend, he was a flat out creep!

A Good Man is Hard to Find

From only reading the title at first i assumed this story was going to be a typical love story. When i got to the third or fourth page i remembered i had read this story for my advanced comp class in high school, this is a recurring situation in this class. It is going to sound really weird but i really like this story, it grabs the readers attention, and keeps them guessing as to what is going to happen next. I found the underlying message the author was trying to portray was that no matter how bad some people are there are always still people out there who have hope for them. In this story the misfit is obvioulsy the bad guy, and the grandma was obviously the one who had the hope for him. The grandmother was still beggin for him to pray with her when they pulled the trigger on her and shot her dead.  I found the discussion in the beginning of the story about the misfit in the story to be a foreshadowing of what was to come. In this case the encounter with the misfit on the gravel road. The behavior of the mother really surprised me. I could not believe she went off into the woods without even so much as a word, even though she knew what was going to happen if she followed bobby lee and Hiram. This entire story was just crazy ironic. Grandmother really wanted to go to Tennesse to visit family so at the beginning of the story she threatened them with the run in of the misfit. Only for them to later acutally run into the mistfit. Another ironic moment was the fact that she was so insistent upon going to this house that she swore she knew was right down the road, but it turns out the house was a complete different state. Which wound them up in front of the misfit. The last bit of irony i had was the cat. The cat had to be hidden because no body wanted him on the trip. Grandma didn't want the cat to be along, but because she brought him they were encountered with the misfit, and everyone was murdered leaving the cat along forever.

Greasy Lake

The story of Greasy Lake is written with the main character being the narrator, and is a captivating short story right away from the beginning. One aspect of the story that really stood out from me was the way he described nature. The first time he describes nature is at the beginning of the short story, and he does so by describing the garbage, and only the crickets and frogs. Where as the second time he describes the nature he describes every thing around him that is mean to be there and how because it is so still it is nature, this was very interesting to me i don't know why. I think it just showed that after this experience he may have grown up a little and looks at things with a more mature eye, rather than a nine teen year old boys eye still. As for the rest of the story in my opinion these boys were being the steryotypical nineteen year old society sees. They were drinking and doing multiple other illegal activities, and came across a car they thought was a friends. With the hope of seeing a naked girl they approached the car only to find out it was not their friends. When the man came out he attacked them and they began to fight back. In that moment i think it was just bad timing, and an honest mistake. With that being said though once they had beaten the man up they went after the girl with the intentions of raping her. It was then that the little bit of sorry i had for the three boys vanished. They were defending themselves when they beat the man off, but going after the girl was not defense it was in the efforts of pure pleasure. When the car came they are three vanished off into the woods. One of them going into the lake where he encounters a dead body, which the reader later finds out is AL the guy the girls are looking for at the end of the story. I think that the car being destroyed was a matter of karma because of what they were trying to do to the girl. With that being said the way the responded to the two girls looking for AL at the end of the story showed that they were scared out of their minds and done fooling around with people. I believe that before they were attacked and he saw the dead body, they would have went after these two girls and messed with them. But instead they practically blew them off driving in the other direction away from them and what had happend.

Backpack (Achebe & Jackson)

Dead Men's Path Page 269
In chinua Achebe's short story of Dead Men's Path the symbol of the path is much more than just a path of grass flattened by the walking of many individuals. I think Achebe was trying to symbolize how the path was not just a walk way, but i way of life. The students who were walking there are going down the same path their family members had previously walked on. There are multiple times when the narrator of this story hints at the path being more than just a walking path.