Sonny's Blues

I have just finished reading the story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin. I found this story really hard to analyze after the first time I read it. The language that he wrote it in was kind of hard for me to understand the first time but after a second read through I began to comprehend more and more of what he was writing. I still found certain aspects of this story hard to analyze however.

The one thing i noticed about this story is how different the ending was from the beginning. It was different from other stories however because when I was done reading it, it just seemed like a completely different story. It was an aspect that I found very interesting in this story.

The main character in this story is never named which is a fact that I really enjoyed about it. this is similar to a movie "Fight Club" where the main character is referred to throughout most of the movie simply as "The Narrator". Anyway, the narrator in this story changes a lot from his introduction. Just like in the story "Cathedral" the changes that are made in his character are pretty sudden. Throughout the entire story he is trying to protect his brother from drugs and thinks that he is fighting a losing battle the entire time until he realizes at the end that his brother is so much more than he thought. I really liked this about this story. It was a pretty big shift in the story as well.

There are several different moods that are in this story as well. While reading this story i felt differently about every page. It started out as a pretty depressing mood and then went into a very mellow laid back mood and then went into a kind of awkward angry mood and ended in a pretyty happy mood. it took the course of a typical drama sort of movie. I thought this choice was very interesting.

The way that the narrator tells this story through many different flash backs is a kind of interesting method as well. I think that the end of the story might not have had as much feeling because this way you knew how the narrator felt about his younger brother in the present even after their complicated past, and then to have his views changed suddenly made the ending a lot more effective. If he had used the linear traditional style than it might not have felt like much. This is also becoming a really popular style to do movies in.

This story was a very interesting read. It used some styles that i had never read in stories before and it was a new reading experience for me. I can really learn a lot from this story and i think it was a very interesting read.

Essay 1

I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do for my first essay. I have re read all of my different journal entries concerning all of the stories we have read thus far and have decided on certain issues I want to focus on.

There are a lot of important stories that we have read thus far but I think I want to focus on the story “A Good man is hard to find”. There are a lot of different themes in this story that I really enjoyed when I was reading it. The overall outcome of the story is also one that I really enjoyed.

One of the first themes I really liked was how the writer made the villain not exactly a villain. This style of writing is a very interesting style. I find that it works almost every time a writer uses it. He made the villain seem superior in motive to that of the main character and he made the main character just not that identifiable with. I thought this worked really well.

One other theme is the use of the epiphany in this story. There are many different uses of this in this particular story. The main villain has one and the main character has one. They are at really well done places too. The two epiphanies occur at the exact same time. I really enjoyed that about this story.

I am really excited for this essay and I think that I have chosen a proper essay to write an essay about.

Our Hurried Children

I just finished reading the article “Our Hurried Children”. This article was written in 1981 and I found it to be very interesting. I don’t normally like or read that much nonfiction writing but I thought this article was very well thought out. I don’t think there are going to many many thingsa to try and find a deep meaning for but I will discuss it.

I agreed with most of what the author said in this article. I didn’t however agree with some of the things that he was talking about. I don’t think that the expression “Early ripe, early rot” should apply to all of these aged children. I think this has worked for some children. I have actually had friends with crazy parents who only wanted to talk about how their kids were so smart and would make their kids skip grades and stuff. These kids still turned out fine however. The only problem with some of these kids I know is that they are a little conceited in their own self image, but truly who isn’t a little conceited.

I did agree with the sexuality of teens becoming a huge problem though. This is becoming a huge problem in today’s society. Adult clothing companies are targeting younger and younger ages and it is getting pretty ridiculous. The fact that 9 and ten year olds are wearing the same type of clothes as 17 and 18 year olds is a huge problem. The fact that girls are wearing make up at a younger age is pretty bad too. It doesn’t make sense because from the second a girl puts on make up the brain automatically thinks that she can’t look good without it and the girl is constantly having to wear makeup. Things are definitely getting worse.

This article was very appealing to me because it was on a topic that I like to talk about. Most non-fiction writing bores me and I am unable to focus on reading it, but this article was a very good read for me.

Cathedral

I just finished reading the story Cathedral by Raymond Carver. This story was a very weird story to me. I felt happy after it though.

The narrator was the main character in this story. He was also a very dynamic character. He changed a lot throughout the course of the story. I feel that he was a different person at the end of the game. In the beginning he was not to keen on the blind visitor that his wife was having over. Throughout the course of the story he slowly learned that even though he was blind he wasn’t that different from himself. He showed this by the end with all of there common interests. When first reading this story you would think that this guy was just a typical rich arrogant person.

The wife was a weird character. It was very hard to analyze this woman. Her personality was changing all the time. At times it would seem that her husband and her hated each other but then a couple of sentences later it would be as if they had always loved each other. It was a really strange way to make a character.

I think the blind man was a really important character. He was a lot different than I thought of him. His recurring reference to the narrator as “Bub” made him seem a lot more casual than most. The narrator even seemed to take offense to it at the beginning. This character was really laid back and I thought it was surprising how much he affected the narrator in such a short time.

This story was really hard to analyze. There were some really surprising points that made me laugh and some that made me just ponder them for a little bit. I don’t really have an opinion on this particular story. It was really interesting and I think that with a couple more read throughs ill catch something different.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

I have just finished reading the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’ Connor and all I can say is wow. I really liked this story. It was a very engaging read.

I noticed a ton of different things about this story and the first thing was that the family was white. When I first started reading this story I thought that they were black until when they were in the car the grandmother said a word that I will only refer to as the n-word. She was referring to a boy waving at them from the side of the road. This was really interesting to me because it also revealed the time period to me, because of the fact that she said this word period and the way that she said it. It was written that she said it as if she was referring to him like it was a normal word to use for him so that meant this probably took place in the thirties or maybe the forties because the grandmother also mentioned not liking Europeans. These were just the biggest of the couple of clues that there were.

The mood of this story shifted in an instant as well. It went from a typical drive of an innocent family to a suspenseful thriller. I think the transition that the writer used was smooth as silk as well. The mood just gradually grew more intense as it went on. I really like how he did that.

He didn’t use that much character change in this story however. The only dynamic character I got from the story was the grandmother. She seemed to be the only character that showed any different emotions throughout the story. Even the parents showed ignorance to what was happening at the end of the story. The Misfit actually did change a little bit at the end which was a really cool change. He was a really coolheaded person until the very end when the grandmother said “You’re one of my babies, You’re one of my own children!”. I didn’t get if she was being serious or if she had just gone crazy but this rattled the misfit to his core and I really enjoyed that change in him even if it was just a small change.

Finally I liked how he made the Misfit. I am a huge fan of the collected calm and somewhat nice villain in literature. I think it is one of the most popular lately as well. This one was different though. He didn’t show any remorse for what he had done but he didn’t show any clear reason as to why he did what he did. He was a really interesting villain. Usually when a villain is questioned as to why he did something he usually gets defensive and rattled, but this guy just stayed calm and answered as best he could and wasn’t rattled at all. He was only rattled by the quote above and I thought the sudden change in his character was really cool.

I changed my mind about my favorite story so far. This is my new favorite story. I know Clary doesn’t care if you like it but I really enjoyed this passage a lot.

Once upon a Time

The story I just read is called Once upon a Time. It was a very well written story and I enjoyed it a lot.

This story has a pretty classic theme in my opinion. I have seen it a lot in literature. This is the fact that you always need more. You see something that someone else has and despite the fact that what you have is just as good you need their’s too. This idealism will also lead to the downfall of a loved one or yourself.

This story has a lot of elements that are seen in fairy tales as well. One element in this was the presence of an old witch. This old witch has played many roles in fairytales from attempted assassination to the gift bearer. This witch played the gift bearer and was seen in the nice role. She brought the child a space suit and a book of fairy tales, which I also thought was interesting as this story has a lot of those elements in it. I think this was the most important recurring role in this story.

One thing I found very cool about this story was that it happened in a modern day sort of setting. It was a typical rich couple with a son that all of these things were happening too. They need a lot of security and I thought the final execution of the end of the story was incredibly well written. The fact that it happened to the one character that could care less about all of this made it all the more ironic. I liked how he did this though because in most of the fairy tales I have seen this in the downfall is that of the one who wants everything. I really liked how it was.

In conclusion I think that this is my favorite story so far that we have read. I hope there are more like it because this was a really entertaining read.

A & P

I have just read the story “A&P” by John Updike. This story was rather unique in my eye because it was a story I could relate to in a way.

I have worked during the summer in my pool’s snack bar for the past four years and have been managing it for the past two. I love the job for the most part, but sometimes I just have days like the one Sammy had. I think the predominant theme in this story is the epiphany and how it can happen as randomly as on this Thursday. I think it is a recurring theme in literature as well. The author made perfect use of it in this story I thought.

I think that this story could easily have taken place during any time period. It could have taken place 70 years ago or even 7 years ago. This is a very easy story to set within any timeframe. There would be some slight differences however. I think one of the main differences would be the age of the characters and the choice of clothing the author picked to portray the girls. I also think that the manager would have been depicted as a really evil mustachioed black haired man if it were to take place in the 30s as opposed to the 90s where he probably would have been an old lanky bald man. The ability to place this story during any time period still goes undamaged though.

By the end of the story I really just found Sammy to be another awkward teenager trying to impress some girl he had never met before. He had an epiphany that had the perfect timing for a halfway upsetting conclusion. The only thing I didn’t like about this story is that I didn’t feel like anything got resolved.