Overall Thoughts On the Class (Last Blog!)

This is my last blog.  To finish up, I'd like to summarize my thoughts on the class.  I started out this quarter being excited to learn more about Literature.  As the class went on however, I began developing a deeper understanding of Literature, not just the entertainment value of it.  It came to mean something to me.  I'd give an example but every poem, short story, or any other piece of literature we read for this class has had a completely different impact on me and will forever shape how I see Literature as a whole. 
Overall, a fun class in which I learned a lot and met a lot of cool people, some with my safe values, some I disagreed with. 
-Thanks for a great quarter!- :)

"The Lottery"

I couldn't think of nything to blog about but I know since this is a literature class, somethingliterature-related is always welcome.  I'd like to just take a minute and talk about my favorite short story "The Lottery."  I had to read a lot of different poems and short stories for my English 113 class last quarter but surprisingly, "The Lottery" was one that was not required, just suggested.  I thought I'd give it a try even though I don't care too much for most short stories (yet I'd still rather read a sort story than a poem anyday).  I liked "The Lottery" so much because it moved me to think about serious issues that are currently upon our society today in a new way.  This short story shows us just how seriously people follow tradition, even to the point of killing a close freind or family member.  It's a very moving short story and I encourage anyone who has not yet read it to do so. 

Quick note on "The Starry Night"

The poem I recited for class, "The Starry Night" by Anne Sexton, is hard to wrap your head around at first and almost sounds like pure gibberish the first time you read or hear it.  Buy since I had to completely memorize it, I had to read it quite a few times.  After reading it a couple dozen times, you start to understand it more.  It is truly a very dark poem.  Sadly, it doesn't revel much on the "why" Sexton wanted so badly to die, only the "how."  I encourage you all to re-read it if you enjoyed it.

Peer Review in Class

I enjoyed doing the peer review and I also found it extremely helpful.  Before class, I was trying so hard to figure out what the paper as a whole was supposed to turn out like.  After the hour and fifteen minute of class, however, I came out knowing exactly what was wanted, expected, and required.  This is also largely due to the sample paper we read in class.

In-Class Disscusion We Ran Out of Time For (Part 2)

The other thing I would lik to mention is the creationist view versus the veiw of evolution that was breifly mentioned in class.  Again, I'm a Christian and I believe that God created all that exists: the earth, the sun, all the planets and stars, everything.  I'm not completely denouncing evolution here.  I believe that God created the world, and then certain plants and animal evolved, to a degree!  I'm not saying God put a fish in the sea and it crawled out and a million years later became a snake.  That's called macroevolution, the belief that all organisms that exist today started from single-celled organisms or some other species entirely.  This I do not believe.  I believe in microevolution, the belief that organisms put in certain environments can develope certain physical traits that help them to survive this new environment.  So yes, I believe in evolution, to a degree.  And I believe that all the species of organisms on this earth today (some having a few minor changes due to microevolution), were originally placed here by God. 
Even evolutionists have to have a theary of where it all came from.  And don't just answer the big bang.  A mixing of chemicals is not a valid answer because a mixing of chemicals would mean there would have to be cheicals to mix.  And where did those come from?  If you are an evolutionist, I'm not saying you're wrong.  I'm saying you're missing part of your theory.  I believe that God holds the answer.  If you don't believe this, that's fine.  It's your choice.  We all have a free will.  I'm simply saying you should make sure you have the whole picture.

In-Class Disscusion We Ran Out of Time For (Part 1)

I would like to address two things said near the end of class which I had no time to respond to. 
The first is the mention of a scientific reasoning to the parting of the Red Sea.  As a Christion, I believe that God parted the Red Sea to saved his people.  True, there's no evidence for this.  That' why what Christians have is called "faith."  We believe what God tells us through His word without question.  The parting of the Red Sea is one of these instances where at first we had no reasonable explanation, but we believed it regardless.  We went on faith.  But now, with this scientific discorvery of how theRed Sea was naturally parted (by the way, we see in this alone that scientists admit what the Bible tells us is true about the parting of the Red Sea), those who don't have a great faith or non at all can see realistic evidence of God's power. 

Entropy - Thomas Pynchon

I enjoyed this story.  I loved how two different stories are going on at the same time and the confussion we get from that.  It interests me and makes me want to read it further.  Most short stories I can bearly manage to finish, but this one held my attention. 
I like hois w the party on one floor, then the extremely well-kept rainfoest is right above it.  And when that window was broken and that rainforest-like environment which is supposed to be held at a constant temperature mixed with the outside air, it caused maddness. 
Again, very well-written story that held my ttention very well.  And hats off to the team that presented on it.  You did great! :)

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"

I'd like to talk a bit about Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl."  We had to read it for class and it honestly made me sick.  I couldn't get over the constant talk of "pubic beards" and "balls and cock."  It's an extremely vivid and vulgar poem that was not at all in good taste in my opinion and I found it to be very offensive as a strait man.  From the context, I take this to be Ginsberg's point in writing this poem.  He wanted to "stick it to the man" (the strait, upright man that is).  He also wanted to create a following, which he accomplished.  He and his followers didn't last very long, however.  True, they may have started a "revolution" in the homosexual society, but they really haven't come all that far.  Not many poets today have kept up what Ginsberg started. 
As a Christian, I believe homosexuality is a sin and that's why I feel the way I do about this poem and about Allen Ginsberg.  I apologize if I offended any of you, but I believe I have just as much a right to speak about how I feel as Ginsberg did. 

"The Invisible Man"

Now, I haven't red the entire book of "The Invisible Man" but I can tell you from what I have read of it and from what we've talked about in class, it's a book about racial problems and how certain black men were able to overcome them and show the white men their equality in society. It was very well written and showed the blacks' side of the story extremely well: what they thought about the white men, how they acted around them.  It's a great piece of literature that we can really tie our history too and I very much enjoyed it.

"A Box" from Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons"

To me, this piece of Gertrude Stein's famous writing "Tender Buttons" is saying a few things. First look at the first line: "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question..."  If this is your first time reading something from "Tender Buttons," as it was mine, this can be hard to grasp.  You just have to step back and get the whole picture.  For instance, "out of rudeness comes rapid same question" can mean any number of this by itself, but taken as a whole with the rest of the line, it is more likely to have a meaning.  This meaning can very from person to person but it is my personal belief that Stein is telling how kindness can lead to something negative if it isn't honest.  We see in the next line "...out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle," that Stein is telling how we learn by what we see or take in with our eyes.  The second part of this however, is a bit harder to understand.  My personal belief is that Stein is saying we should treat each other alike, as equals.  If we make "selections" it causes pain.  The last line reads "So then the order is that white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analyzed and see a fine substance strangely, it is earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again."  This doesn't exactly do a great job of tying the piece down.  It just leaves more unanswered questions.  We can only assume what certain things mean.  The only reoccurring themes in the piece are a variety of colors: red, white, and green.  Perhaps Stein is trying to use these colors to make a point about moods which I find well done when she uses "redness" to describe what I picture as something negative.  It could also just be a way to add color to this picture Stein paints in our minds.  Everything I've described about the piece holds water in some small way, but I believe when we try to analyze a piece like this, and it leads nowhere, there's only one of two possibilities of why we don't understand it.  One, we can't find the deeper meaning the author is trying to convey.  Or two, the author isn't conveying a point at all.  I believe that's what's happening here.  Stein is simply paining a picture with words as we read and is not trying to convey to us a deep meaning.  Though we all may intemperate a different meaning, this is the result of our own knowledge, not that of Stein, brilliantly put into jumbled up words.