Week 14 Project Planning

Choose one short story or novel excerpt. Write a piece in which you explore the following:
1. In what ways could this story be considered an artifact of history?
2. What does this story teach us about history?
3. How does a story teach us about a time or place differently than a history book?

The question is asking us to talk about the history in three different parts in the context of history. The first part is to show why this is important to history. The second part is what do these story or moments in history teach us about the past or what do we learn by looking back at are past. The third part is asking what do story teach that history books do not and is it similar, different or something new. The readings i will use is James Baldwin "Notes of a native son" because it seems interesting to talk about and it is talking about time in history were slavery / racism was very big  which has change now. The literary devices I might use are Imagery, Symbol(ism), Tone, and Point of View which I see a lot of examples that I could use. These device could help me answer the the project question because it will help give insight to the authors point of view as well as what he is trying to say. The exact example Im going to use i do not really know just yet I am still figuring out how I want to do this. I can come up with at least a working arguable thesis are something close to is which I might change when I figure out what info I will use exactly. my thesis idea is history has changed from a time of great racism to a period of a more undressing and equal society which is one of the most important period in American history.

Week 14 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of leopold sedar senghor poem letter to a prisoner. "I write you from the solitude of my precious—and closely guarded—Residence of my black skin. Fortunate are my friends Who know nothing of the icy walls and the brightly lit. Apartments that sterilize every seed on the ancestors’ masks And even the memories of love.You know nothing of the good white bread, milk, and salt, or those substantial dishes that do not nourish, that separate the refined from the boulevard crowds, Sleepwalkers who have renounced their human identity Chameleons deaf to change, and their shame locks you In your cage of solitude. You know nothing of restaurants and swimming pools Forbidden to noble black blood And Science and Humanity erecting their police lines At the borders of negritude. Must I shout louder? Tell me, can you hear me? I no longer recognize white men, my brothers, like this evening at the cinema, so lost were they beyond the void made around my skin (p. 682 -683)". I don't know why but this stood out to me the most because is was talking about a person writing a letter to a prisoner and he also seems to understand what the prisoner is going as well. This text is basically saying that he is writing to him a person who sees himself as a pensioner. He also talks about race a lit bit saying that there is still this segregation of black people, yet he see people as all the same not the color of there skin. He uses a lot of words that paint a picture of scene as well as words that he use to compare things and people. Before I really did this analysis I thought the theme or thesis to his poem was something else like comparing someone free to someone who is a prisoner which is part of it but there was much more to it. What this tells me about the author is he was born into a period were racism was big in society as well as him trying to understand what do people treat each other different just because of the color of there skin. So the thesis of this poem to me is two parts one is the idea of freedom and the second is race, so its how can and does race restrict your freedom.

leopold sedar senghor "Letter to a prisoner". The Norton Anthology World Literature, Third Edition, Vol. E. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pages 676-686.

Reading Notes W 14: leopold sedar senghor, Part B

Léopold Sédar Senghor was a poet, a founder of the Négritude movement, and the first president of independent Senegal. His poetry takes as its central subject the encounter between Africa and Europe. The harsh circumstances of the encounter on both the personal and social levels, the conflict between two races and their conceptions of life, provide the background to his intense exploration of the historical and moral implications of the African and black experience in modern times.

Night in Sine
Senghor is describing the beauty of Africa by using the image of a woman to convey its significance. He asks the woman to mother him by placing her hand on his head and by cradling him, as they listen to the heart of his African heritage. Everything has gotten quiet, ''even the storyteller,'' whom he likens to a child asleep on his mother. The author encourages the woman to light the lamp and listen to bedtime stories, like the ones parents tell their children. Specifically, he wants to hear from the elders, those who died but ''did not want to die.'' He wants to gather all their stories and use them to speak through him before he sleeps. 

Black Woman
Directed against an entire Western tradition of literary praise for white-skinned and light-haired women that reaches from Dante to the twentieth century, this poem celebrates the feminine beauty of black skin for its own sake.

Prayer to the Masks
At the prayer point, Senghor greets the spirits in silence. The altar is a place of solitude. It's a place where masks representing each of the mighty tribes of Africa are displayed and where worshippers congregate to pay their respects. Senghor believes "masks of the four cardinal points where the Spirit blows" have a forceful presence that protects all corners of the world. These spirits come together at this sacred place to be honored and praised in silent prayer.

Letter to a Prisoner
He is basically writing a letter to prisoner who are black and is saying how sorry he is that they can't enjoy what lays outside there prison walls. He also says he is writing to him because he is bored and he would like a response back.

Reading Notes W 14: James Baldwin"Notes of a native son", Part A

The story "Notes of a native son" by the author James Baldwin.  A leading African American novelist, James Baldwin was one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century. He is best known for his remarkable essays that, in poetic rhetoric drawing on both the classics of English literature and the tones of biblical prophecy, combine personal reflection with a wider view of social justice.
The first group of essays focuses on the black person as artist and on his or her image within the cultural canon. In “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Baldwin, once an enthusiastic fan of Harriet Beecher Stowe, labels her an “impassioned pamphleteer” and criticizes Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other “protest novels,” including Richard Wright’s Native Son, for falling short of their lofty aims, abusing language, and overtaxing credibility. Baldwin goes on in the second essay, “Many Thousands Gone,” to recognize Native Son as a literary landmark but questions its actual power, given the depersonalization and mythification of blacks as Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima. In essence, the “native son” is a monster created by American history, and it is American history that must confront and re-create him. The third essay in the group, “Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light Enough,” criticizes an all-black production of a theatrical standard for perpetuating racial stereotypes.

Topic Brainstorm 3

1. From a piece of fiction (short story, section of novel, or a play) choose a female  
character on whom to focus, and create a project that discusses some of the following questions:  

• What is the author’s attitude towards her? (how can you tell?)
• What is your attitude towards her? 
• How do (at least 2) other characters view her? 
• How does she view herself?

I choose this topic because there is a lot of stories that we have read that focus on women roles in many different societies during many different time periods. What I would like to learn through this project is more about the author and how they refit themselves through there characters. The strengths I think I would bring to this topic is how much i will dig deep and think about a character from many point of views. What I have learned from the first project process that has helped me is critical thinking to help me with gathering info.

2.Choose one short story or novel excerpt. Write a piece in which you explore the following:

1. In what ways could this story be considered an artifact of history? 
2. What does this story teach us about history? 
3. How does a story teach us about a time or place differently than a history book? 

I choose this topic because one I have not done a brainstorm on this topic yet and second exploring the historical context of a story seemed interesting. What I would like to learn through this project is more about how much these stories reflect actual history and how has history influenced these stories. The strengths I think I would bring to this topic is how much i will do research outside of the text. What I have learned from the first project process that has helped me is information gathering.

3.Choose a reading selection. Then choose one of the following questions, and write an argument in response to it: 

• How does the work reflect the period in which it was written? 
• What does the work reveal about the cultural behavior contemporary to it? 
• How are class differences presented in the work? Are characters aware or unaware of the economic and social forces that affect their lives? 

I choose this topic because one I have not done a brainstorm on this topic yet and second it gives me options within this this topic. What I would like to learn through this project is more about how much these stories reflect actual history, peoples behaviors, culture, economic and many other things during the stories time periods. The strengths I think I would bring to this topic is how much more I would like to know about the author and other outside influences that have affected the book. What I have learned from the first project process is a better way to take notes as well analyzing a stories from many point of views.

week 13 analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis T.S.Eliot’s poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land. The theme I seem to she is this idea that the modern world is in ruins yet somehow very beautiful and is deeply meaningful. I also think that the author has multiple sub themes within this be theme, which kind off made it hard for me to focus on only one idea. I think his theme plays out very well because he shows both that we are dying and moserable society yet we still can find the small things in life beautiful. The literary device that i see the most is imagery because he is building these were you can kind off picture it yourself if you close your eyes"Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”". What i think this tells us about the author is that there is a balance between life as well he is real about what is happening around him because he is paying attention.

Reading Notes W 13: Eliot, esp The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, Part B

The poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, the earliest of T.S.Eliot’s major works, was completed in 1910 or 1911 but not published until 1915. It is an examination of the tortured psyche of the prototypical modern man overeducated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem’s speaker, seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to “force the moment to its crisis” by somehow consummating their relationship. The first section of The Waste Land takes its title from a line in the Anglican burial service. It is made up of four vignettes, each seemingly from the perspective of a different speaker. The first is an autobiographical snippet from the childhood of an aristocratic woman, in which she recalls sledding and claims that she is German, not Russian. The woman mixes a meditation on the seasons with remarks on the barren state of her current existence. The second section is a prophetic, apocalyptic invitation to journey into a desert waste, where the speaker will show the reader “something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; He will show you fear in a handful of dust” The third  section describes an imaginative tarot reading, in which some of the cards Eliot includes in the reading are not part of an actual tarot deck. In the final section the speaker walks through a London populated by ghosts of the dead. He confronts a figure with whom he once fought in a battle that seems to conflate the clashes of World War I with the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage . The speaker asks the ghostly figure, Stetson, about the fate of a corpse planted in his garden. The section concludes with a famous line from the preface to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal accusing the reader of sharing in the poet’s sins.

Week 12 Analysis

This week I will be doing a close reading of "A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN" by the author Virginia Woolf. The part of the text the was intriguing to me was "It referred me unmistakably to the one book, to the one phrase, which had roused the demon; it was the professor’s statement about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. My heart had leapt. My cheeks had burnt. I had flushed with anger. There was nothing specially remarkable, however foolish, in that. One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man—I looked at the student next me—who breathes hard, wears a ready-made tie, and has not shaved this fortnight (p.356)". What this passage is basically saying that her teach which i believe is a man is saying how much lower women are in the context of intelligence, physical ability, and a variety of other things. While she is listen to her teach say this comment form a book to the class she felt angry and mad that someone could think this and actually say out loud to people. She also thinks to herself as to why people do not see women and men as equal since we are all the same human beans. She uses a lot a bit of metaphors when she is describing her anger for the subject, like when she's comparing her heart beat to that of the action leap. The theme that the author Virginia Woolf is trying to show is that there is a big problem with the inequality between women in men in that time period around the entire world. She also envisions a future in which there will be no gender-based division of labor and were men no longer hold this power in a patriarchy society.

Reading Notes W 12: Joyce:The Dead, Part B

James Joyce experiments with narrative form helped to define the major literary movements of the century, from modernism to postmodernism. By developing methods of tracing individual consciousness, Joyce, along with Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, helped us to understand the functioning of the human mind. Several aspects of “The Dead” recall—and transmute—elements in Joyce’s life. “The Dead” is divided into three parts, chronicling the stages of the Misses Morkan’s party and also the stages by which Gabriel Conroy moves from the rather pompous, insecure, and externally oriented figure of the beginning to a man who has been forced to reassess himself and human relationships at the end. The story "The Dead" bu author James Joyce starts off at the annual dance and dinner party held by Kate and Julia Morkan and their young niece, Mary Jane Morkan, the housemaid Lily frantically greets guests. Set at or just before the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, which celebrates the manifestation of Christ’s divinity to the Magi, the party draws together a variety of relatives and friends. Kate and Julia particularly await the arrival of their favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife, Gretta.  When they arrive, Gabriel attempts to chat with Lily as she takes his coat, but she snaps in reply to his question about her love life. Gabriel and his aunt discuss their decision to stay at a hotel that evening rather than make the long trip home.The party continues with a piano performance by Mary Jane. More dancing follows, which finds Gabriel paired up with Miss Ivors, a fellow university instructor. Miss begins to ask him a whole lot of question then she start to criticize him based on his answers. Later on Gabriel gives a speech to thank many people for there help in the event today as well many other table conversation happen. After that he bids his guest a good farewell and continues to have a conversation with his wife about the day. After talking for a while Gabriel grows irritated by Gretta’s behavior She does not seem to share his romantic inclinations, and in fact bursts into tears. Gretta confesses that she has been thinking of the song from the party because a former lover had sung it to her in her youth in Galway. This makes Gabriel question himself as well as other things around them.

Reading Notes W 12: Woolf: A Room of One's Own, Part A

The story "A Room of One's Own" is written by the author Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf was one of the great modern novelists, on par with James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann. Woolf is known for her precise evocations of states of mind—or of mind and body, since she refused to separate the two. The story begins with her doing an investigation at Oxbridge College, where she thinks about the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives. She then spends a day in the British Library perusing the scholarship on women, all of which has written by men and all of which has been written in anger. She looks at historical evidence, she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she decides to reconstruct their existence in her imgaination. In light of this background, she considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the nineteenth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer. She is figure out and change the position of women in society and what she has learned is that women have been stuck in these roles. She see women have much more potential than that. (p. 336-371)

Week 11 Analysis

This week I will be doing a literary analysis reading of the story "The Death Of Ivan Ilyich" by the author Leo Tolstoy. The literary devices I bellevue Tolstoy uses is dialogue, plot, point of view in this story. They use Dialogue beginning of the story when people are talking to each other about Ivan at his funeral and then a bit throughout the rest of it. The plot is mostly in a sequence of events expect for the beginning were they start at Ivan funeral, then they go back 30 years to show all the moments in order up to his death. It has the point of view of Ivan only when he is having a conversation with other people but when he is not the story continues in a regular point of view of third person story telling. I really do not know how I want to say this is but the theme of the story to me is when you reach the end of your life or about to die you reflect on what you could have done differently or changed in your life. I think this idea means a lot to everyone aseptically when look how you gotten to this point in your life and wether or not you made a different choice in specific moment in your life would things be better for you. I think this plays out well in the story because Ivan sees his pain, suffering, the way his family treats him, and eventually his death were because of the actions he has made and now kind of regrets. I think this connects to the author very well because he probably fells that there are things he has done in his life the he wishes he could have taken back or rather not have done like many of us feel.

"The Death Of Ivan Ilyich". The Norton Anthology World Literature, Third Edition, Vol. E. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pages 735-778.

Reading Notes W 11: Tolstoy, Part A

The story "The Death Of Ivan Ilyich" by the author Leo Tolstoy, is a story about Ivan Ilyich. It starts out at the end of the story were they announced that Ivan has died then it goes back and tells the story of his life before he died. It does mention Peter Ivanovich who was Ivan best friend and shows how he is dealing with his death, when all he can think about is promotions and transfers. When the story tells Ivan life it starts 30 years into the past. Around the age of thirteen he attends the School of Law which later on Ivan becomes an examining magistrate. Ivan marries a women named Praskovya and then things change when she becomes pregnant. Praskovya's behavior begins to disrupt the proper and quiet lifestyle  Ivan cherished so decided to spends more time in his official work and distances himself from his family. Time passes and Ivan moves up in his work due to hard work. He expects to be awarded the post of presiding judge in a University town, but he was not chosen for the promotion. Due to his anger he decides to leave work and move his family to his brother in law house in the country. Ivan decides to look for a new higher paying job in to St. Petersburg. He learns that due to a change in the administration of the Ministry of Justice, a close friend has landed a position of great authority. So because of this  Ivan is awarded a higher paying position in the city. Life is going for him until he has an ascendant which leaves him with discomfort in his left side and an unusual taste in his mouth. As time passes by he gets more and more sick due to this he starts to look back on his life and the decisions he has made. As he looks closer at his life Ivan realizes that the further back he looks the more joy there is. As the pain worsen he has came to the conclusion that he is dying while everyone around expect his son think he is just sick. He also has these dreams which you could say symbolizes him struggling to live and then passes on.