Reading Notes W 10: HIGUCHI ICHIYŌSEPARATE WAYS, Part B

The first major Japanese woman writer in six centuries, the poverty-stricken, barely educated Higuchi Ichiyō seemed to emerge out of nowhere. she developed a realism all her own, focusing on the lives of poor and insignificant city dwellers. Higuchi Natsu was born at a time when Japanese women were not expected to receive much in the way of education, but she read as widely as she could, immersing herself in classical literature. One of her most famous stories was separate ways. “Separate Ways” by Higuchi Ichiyo, is a tale of abandonment. Kichizo a rather misshapen and small 16 year old boy is the main character. Kichizo works as an apprentice in an umbrella factory and he has no family. He was adopted by the factory’s former owner a massive woman named Omatsu. She however has been dead for two years and Kichizo’s birth parents have been dead for so long he can barely remember them. Okyo is a seamstress and is similar to Kichizo in the facts that she does not have an immediate family. She becomes friends with Kichizo because she moved into a home near the umbrella factory. They meet because the owner of the umbrella factory is her landlord, so she decided to help mend the factory boys cloths. One day Okyo says she has to movie away to live a better life even as a mistress. He tells her that she is like everyone else who abandons him 

Week 9 Project Action Plan

in my action plan the prompt that I will be using is Pick a subject: love, work, freedom, etc. Then choose two selections and discuss how that subject is discussed in those selections. Use literary devices to help frame your discussion?  The two reading I was thinking of using for this prompt would be Equiano: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. I was thinking of using the subject of freedom to bridge the two stories together I was also thinking of using NGUYÂN DU:The Tale of Kiều as a subsittue for one of the other stories. I will be using two of these three stories to discuss how freedom is such an important thing in there lives and how its not something to be taken for granite. since all of these stories were set during periods of time were African American and even women did not have any rights in society. I do not just yet how I want to structure this and what specifically I want to say about freedom because I know freedom is kind of a broad topic and that there are many kinds of freedoms I can discuss in my project. The Thesis I am looking thinking about is In the past many people throughout the world did not have the freedom to choose one's state in life. I want to talk about each story separately in the the beginning then I want to later in my project compare these stories and how they are similar in this idea of freedom. For each story I will talk about what kind of freedom that story is displaying the most. I do not know just yet of what literary devices I will use to discuss this just yet but I was thinking of Theme, Dialogue, and maybe Plot.

Week 9 Progress

I feel good about my progress but I know I can do better. The class assignments that I enjoy the most would have to be the literary analysis blog post because thats were you can dissect the reading as well as use your own thoughts in it. I have used any extra credit option yet.

For the second half of the semester I would like to focus on working ahead of time on assignments so that I can make sometime to work on the extra credit assignments. The challenges or possible mistakes I want to try to avoid is missing assignments and try my best to complete all of them. Something new I want to try is what I kind of said earlier is extra credit assignments and work ahead of time.

Week 9 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of Nguyan Du's poem "The Tale of Kiều". The part of the poem that intrigued me the most in this story was "By what means could she save her flesh and blood? When evil strikes, you bow to circumstance. As you must weigh and choose between your love and filial duty, which will turn the scale? She put aside all vows of love and troth—a child first pays the debts of birth and care. Resolved on what to do, she said: “Hands off—I’ll sell myself and Father I’ll redeem.”" (p.563). This is saying that because her family is in trouble with being charged with theft if i could by a silk dealer. In order to help her family Kieu has decided to sell her body which will get her money to free her family from prison. Due to her selling her body she decided to give up marrying the person she love because her family is the most important thing over her own happiness. The way she phases this whole passage like flesh and blood to show how significant family is and the importance of it in this society. The word bow which in this case would be used to show something or some one has a certain control over you. Also the phrase filial duty is something that kids should have towards there parent like actions, services, and attitudes. After reading this story it has not changed my initial thought that this would be a story were the women in all older asian cultures have no rights and power will always be mistreated. This also add more to what I thought this is also a story of sacrifice for ones family over everything else. This is important to understanding the character because for her to willing as well as have this kind of society upbringing that you must filial towards your parents, to sell herself to help them. Shows what she kind of person and daughter she is and what she believes how a daughter should do what ever they can for there parents since they did everything for her.

"The Tale of Kiều". The Norton Anthology World Literature, Third Edition, Vol. E. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pages 546-586.

Reading Notes W 9: NGUYÂN DU:The Tale of Kiều, Part A

"The Tale of Kiều" is a poem by the author named NGUYÂN Du. Nguyan Born 1766 into a very learned family. His father had been a prime minister in the Le Dynasty and his brothers was also a high ranking officials in the Le Dynasty. The story centers around the character Vương Thúy Kiều, she has a younger sister Thuý Vân  and brother Vương Quan. While She was out with her siblings she meets and later promises to marry Kim Trọng who is a young and promising scholar. But they did not get marry and had to postpone their marriage because Kieu family was framed by a silk dealer and has all their wealth taken away by the government, and her father and brother are facing imprisonment. To help her family Kiều decides to sell herself to a Scholar named Mã, while her sister takes her place in marrying Trong. She later finds out that Ma is a pimp that brought girls to a brothel. He rapes Kiều and takes her back to the brothel, but she refuses to serve any guest and threatens to commit suicide if she is forced to do so. After some time a  Student named Thúc uses his wealth to buy Kiều out of the brothel and marry her, although he already has a wife named Lady Hoạn, who is the daughter of prime minister Hoạn. Kiều life of unfortunate events continues on like this for a while in kind of a similar pattern. During all of this Trọng becomes an official and uses that to help provide housing for Kiều's parents. while ar the same time searching for Kiều, and eventually he finds her with the Buddhist nun Giác Duyên. Kiều is reunited with Trong and her family which ends her cycle of misfortune. She marries Trọng yet she refuses to have a physical relationship with him because she thinks she is damaged goods. 

Topic Brainstorm 2

1) Pick a subject: love, work, freedom, etc. Then choose two selections and discuss how that subject is discussed in those selections. Use literary devices to help frame your discussion. I am interested in this topic because you are taking this big idea and comparing it within two different whether they are from different regions or even time periods you can see how they are similar. I would like to learn more no matter how different people are that these idea translate across culture. The straight I would bring to this topic would probably be great detail especially when it comes to comparing two things to one another. My first project taught me to pay attention to what the question is asking of me. 
  

2) Choose a reading selection. Explore the relationship between elements of the selection. For example: how does setting influence character development? I am interested in this topic because seems more open ending for me to mold the specific question I want to answer plus it seemed very different than what I would usually choose. I would like to learn more in how to craft a good essay for a question like this because I do have trouble figuring how to do that. The strength I would bring to this is trying to stay focused on the question even though I might not fully understand it, as well as critical thinking on how i would attack this question. What I learned from my first project is try not to have multiple idea in an essay single it down to one coherent idea.   


3) Think about a theme you see running through your life (failure is the best lesson, love is eternal, etc). Choose a reading that you think also discusses this theme (even if it reaches different conclusions about it). Explore connections between how the theme plays out in your life, and how the theme gets played out in the reading. I am interested in this topic because you are relating the theme of the story to your life, which makes you more invested due to how personal it is. I would like to learn more about some of these characters or writers have dealt with the same problems or just experiences I have and if they have any solution to how I can deal with them. The strengths I would bring to this topic is a lot of details and explanations because it is partly about me. What I learned from my first project is that I need to be more clear when it comes to my explanation and in general.   

Week 8 Analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis on What Whitman' poem "Song of Myself". In this this poem he uses the literary devices like symbolism, imagery, first person, and style. He uses symbolism and imagery through out the whole poem to explain how he sees the world .Like in the beginning of his poem he describes a piece of grass in a way that it reminds him of a spear, he this a lot thought out his poem. Also there are times that he decries or explains something in first person, you can tell this clearly because he use the word I to show this feeling, emotion, or whatever is coming form him personally. He uses this style were he i just speaking to you but it gives off this kind of transcending or higher plain of thinking. The theme in his poem is the identity of self and he breaks it down into three sub themes. The first is the idea of the self, the second the identification of ones self with other selves, and the last the poet's relationship with the elements of nature and the universe. What this symbolizes to me is this idea of trying to figure out who you are and what that means, as well as how do i fit into society as well as my purpose in it. Also the part about the universe and the elements he talks about are such big picture question. I think this works very well as a metaphor for him trying to explain what everyone one has thought about at one point or multiple points in there lives. Like I said before he use I when he is talking in his poem but I also think he means us the reader. I know I read a little background before I read his peom that said Whitman favored an internal spirituality over formal religious doctrines. After reading this poem you see very clearly that this influences his writing style and what he writes about. 

Reading Notes W 8: Whitman:Song of myself, Part B

These notes are on Walt Whitman's poem "Song Of Myself" but first a bit of his background. The young Whitman grew up among Deists and Quakers, creeds that favored aninternal spirituality over  formal religious doctrines. He also worked odd jobs in his youth as a printer then later as a school teacher, builder, bookstore owner, journalist, and poet. Whitman always loved the theater, and he deliberately adopted many voices and persona's in his poetry. He saw regular speech as the best source for his poetry. through out his poem he has three main points he talks about. The first is the idea of the self. The second is the identification of the self with other selves. The last is the his relationship with the elements of nature and the universe. a lot in this poem comes off as a very spiritual and how he sees himself in the world. Whitman wishes to maintain the identity of his individual self while at the same time he desires to merge it with the universal self. This was Whitman's way of expressing to people of how he sees the world as a whole and him as an individuals and how those two work together and separately. This poem was a bit different than the others I have read because he was talking about a big picture subject. 

Reading Notes W 8: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Part A

The notes for this week were on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave which is an autobiography of Fredrick Douglass. Douglass tells the story of his life from slavery to becoming a well-educated black abolitionist. He starts out talking about how he is different than other slaves that he knows when he is born and who his parents are. His mother was a slave by the name of Harriet Bailey, who was a field hand who eventually died when Douglass was seven years old. Also that his father was probably his first white master, Captain Anthony.  He talks about a term mulatto which simply means a mixture of races, he implies that mulatto slaves are the result of white masters raping black slaves. He talks about the harsh and inhuman conditions of being a slave. when he became a free man in the North, he heard whites talking about that the singing of slaves is evidence of their contentment and happiness. Douglass disagrees with this stating that slaves sing in order to relieve their sorrow much like tears relieve an aching heart(p.240-242). He also talks about how the slaved responded when they were asked about there conditions, as well as how they felt behind closed doors. He talked about an experience when this new overseer gore killed a slave Demby for not listening to him and how killing a slave is not considered a crime by the courts nor by the community in Maryland. A white slave owner by the name of Mrs. Auld was the one who taught Douglass how to read even though many though if Douglass was educated it would ruin him as a slave. Learning how to read changed how Douglass looked at the world and how badly blacks were being treated, he also came across the abolitionist movement reading in the newspaper. When he became older he struggles to figure out his purpose and what he should do after learning how to read. In 1835 Douglass began to think seriously about escaping, which ended in a failer and prison. Sometime later Douglass successfully escapes to the North. After some time adjusting to his freedom, he came across anti-slavery convention on August 11, 1841,  where he spoke for the first time about the horrors of slavery and how it needs to be abolished and then the rest was history. 

Week 7 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of "Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener" by  Herman Melville. The section of text that I will look at closer is "In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”"(p.302). This passage is shows the first of many time the boss would ask his employe Bartleby to examine a document, which is part of his job as a Scrivener. Bartleby would respond with I would prefer not all the time, even though he was the one to respond to the ad for the job. It funny how Bartleby use the word prefer instead of something else like I do not want to do it or you know F*** this shit. To me this seemed polite and never seemed aggressive, this was a passive aggressive tone that I soon realized was throughout the entire story. At first I thought he was being super rude and defiant but he was being a little more polite than I thought at first. As well as his boss who was also kind of passive aggressive when came to dealing with his employe Bartleby. I think being an employe or just working during this time especially on wall street gave people this feeling of wanting to work when they want to. I think it also show this kind of relationship between boss and employee that it was never very easy to deal with someone who doesn't want to work even thought they are very good at there job. As well as when does a bosss need to put there foot down when an employee is not doing what they are suppose to.

Reading Notes W 7: Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener , Part B

In the "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville, it tells the story of the Lawyer who runs a law practice on Wall Street in New York. United States in the nineteenth century—Walt Whitman and Herman Melville—were born in New York in 1819. In his teens, Melville worked unhappily as a copyist and errand boy in a bank, and then became a sailor, setting out for the South Pacific at the age of twenty. Melville career as a writer went no more smoothly than his family life , which was marrying someone he did not like to then get a divorce years later and having his son commit suicide.  Many of his works were judged very hard those stories included Typee and its successor, Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), Moby-Dick (1851), and Pierre (1852). So Melville published an anonymous short story in Putnam’s Magazine called “Bartleby the Scrivener" because he needed money. It was not until the 1920s about 30 years after his death that Melville’s would rise to become a popular author. 

The start with an elderly man who is lawyer talking about a person named Bartleby who was a scrivener when he was younger. Before he goes into detail he introduces and describes three others who are also working in the office at the time, they are turkey, nippers, and Ginger nut. He goes on to say Turkey is an excellent scrivener in the morning, but as the day goes on particularly in the afternoon he becomes more prone to making mistakes, dropping ink plots on the copies he writes. As well as his mood changes to something more undesirable. Nippers at twenty-five years old, who is an exact opposite of Turkey, because he has trouble working in the morning. Then theres Ginger Nut who is not a scrivener, but an errand-boy. That called ginger nut because he is always picking up ginger nut cake for Turkey and Nipper. He them goes on to introduce Bartleby who is a new hire in the office that responded to an ad for help. One day the Lawyer has a small document he needs examined. He calls Bartleby in to do the job, but Bartleby says "I would prefer not to"(p.301). Which was big shock since his main purpose of being there was to work. Then the rest is about all the characters interactions with one another.

Reading Notes W 7: OLAUDAH EQUIANO , Part A

In "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" is a biography of Olaudah Equiano life. Equiano was born in about 1745 in the Niger River Delta area of present-day Nigeria. Kidnapped by local raiders around the age of eleven, he was carried to the coast and sold into slavery. After a harrowing journey across the Atlantic, Equiano was purchased by a Virginia slaveholder. later a British naval officer, Michael Henry Pascal, bought him as a present for friends in England. To be funny Pascal renamed Equiano his new slave Gustavus Vassa. Equiano was treated very well that he was given the opportunity to learn to read and write. Later on, he eventually earned enough money to buy his freedom and chose to live in London where he worked as a hairdresser, valet, and a doctors assistant. He talks about his life before he was taken and sold into slavery. He talks about the marriage structure of his society and the roles that men and women play in this. He kind of gives a reason kind of why many of his people were enslaved since they were an agriculture-based culture. Equiano also states that the white West Indies planters favored slaves taken from this country because of their "hardiness, intelligence, integrity, and zeal". Their religion the people believed in one Creator who lived in the sun and governed major events such as life, death, and war. Equiano also explains how his memories are bittersweet, especially given the events of his early years with his siblings which he had seven brothers and sisters. He then goes on to talk about his experiences as a slave like the conditions he lived in, how strange their culture was to him, and how he felt and acted during this period of his young life. (p.77 -98)

Week 6 Analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis of barbauld which includes both of her poems “a little invisible being who is expected soon to become visible” and "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven". The literary devices she uses in both of her poems are imagery, symbolism, and you could say it has a bit of a tone. she uses imagery a lot in her all throughout both of her poems when she talks about the excitement and anticipation of the child she about to give birth to. Here is one of the sections that show her imagery "And see, the genial season's warmth to share, Fresh younglings shoot, and opening roses glow! 

Swarms of new life exulting fill the air,— Haste, infant bud of being, haste to blow! (line 9-12)".  She uses symbolism in a way that is not so straightforward like in the poem she talks about her baby and does not say whether it is a boy or girl more from the point of view of it being a human being. She also seems  to me to be talking about equailty for men and women. Also her tone did not come off as an aggressive one but more of a relaxed and calm kind of way she expessed herself. The theme i belive she wanted to point out to us was equality and agure to say war is a bad thing. I think it works pretty good if you read a little invisable a couple of time to see her view on equailty but her view on war was pretty straight forward to see. It made it much better to understand if you read some background information on barbauld. This was a time period were women did not have any rights or say in society. This is why she was a feminist because she want to do something that women of her time noramlly didnt do because they usually stuck to traditional norm. What I choose show a lot about her that she want to be heard and listen on matter of society just like any man was.