Poetry Packet: Themes

1. Beauty isn't everything, and if looked beyond the surface, something else may be found.
2. Passion leads to extraordinary things.
3. Death is a hopeless experience.
4. Youth is a joyful thing, don't waste it.
5. If something isn't ready, don't let it go.
6. Enjoy youth, and don't let it pass by.
7. Experience gains knowledge.
8. Appreciate ignorance in life, because things become more complicated.
9. Beauty; both inside and out, is allowed to be adored.
10. Nothing of great power can last forever.
11. Enjoy life, and experience what is possible.
12. Unconditional love from a parent is all that children really need.
14. Being jealous leads people to commit unrationable actions.
15. Even the most powerful of figures can fall.
16. One small tragedy doesn't corrupt everything.
17. Nothing lasts forever, so appreciate the little things.
18. Understand what someone else is going through to be able to have an opinion on them.
19. Holding grudges does nothing but ruin good relationships.
20. The truth may be hard to accept, but acceptance is key.

Grapes of Wrath Action Project

For the Grapes of Wrath action project, I thought I would base my studies around the minimum wage. After contacting the NYS Labor Union, I realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere. So, I called some Tops Associates. The secretary was extremely nice, but she wanted me to give my name to be able to talk to someone higher up in the company. With the fear of losing my job, I refused. So I decided to stop worrying about things that NYS has control over, because I felt like I was going to get nowhere.

After thinking further about what concerns I had, I chose to keep it simple and something I’ve always wondered about in clothing stores. Why aren’t average teenage stores based around the average size? I was recently at Hollister Clothing Company trying on clothes, only to leave frustrated because I tried on the largest size of jeans there and they weren’t anywhere near fitting. You could say that I’m content with my body shape. I know it’s not me, it’s the clothing makers. Hollister being a popular clothing store with teens, I would have assumed that they would have a larger size range, considering there are people all shapes and sizes. So, that’s what I focused my studies around. I had my ammunition ready, with statistics and everything to prove what the average size is in teens and called 866.901.FAKE (3253). I was skeptical at first, thinking that it was actually a “fake” number, but I got a hold of someone. I talked to a woman named Trisha on April 9^th, only to have my question thrown back in my face. She basically said that I shouldn’t shop at Hollister if I couldn’t fit into their clothes. Frustrated, I called back again a few hours later. This time instead of talking to the first person who answered the phone, I tried to get “the big cheese”-named Michael S. Jefferies. He is the CEO if Abercrombie and Fitch Co. (Hollister is a division of Abercrombie). But of course with Hollister being in 12 countries, I had no luck. He was either “unavailable”, or I could be put on the waiting list to speak with him (which I can only imagine is pages and pages long). I really want to be able to put my research to use, and feel like I was right. So I emailed them at BP_Tips@hollisterco.com. I kept my message short and sweet, but only to get the same kind of response. “We appreciate your help and will put your ideas into consideration”. They gave me more numbers to call, and things like that, but it was almost as if they didn’t even care. If anything, wouldn’t they want a larger population going into their stores? What’s holding them back is the fact that if your jean size is larger than a 9, then you cannot go in there to purchase jeans. My biggest point was if they made more sizes in their clothes, then they wouldn’t have to make everything so expensive with the fact that more people will buy them. Not giving up, I decided to call once more on April 12^th. This call was fortunately the best. I talked to a woman named Jacqueline, and she helped me tremendously. I simply asked my questions about the size range of their clothes. She told me that their main consumers are pre-teen to teenagers. This being confirmed, she then talked about the obvious. Pre-teens haven’t yet grown hips and stuff like that. So, their average size is smaller than the mid-teen to adult stage by 3 whole sizes. Hearing that, I was stunned. Shopping at Hollister, I always thought that is was based around older teens; like high-school students. But talking with her, I realized who they really were trying to focus their consumer basis around. I told her I appreciated it so much, and that she really helped me. But, it shows that it definitely wasn’t easy as expected.

Doing this project makes me feel the pain and frustration the Joads have in Grapes of Wrath. Not being able to get one straight answer for a serious concern only brings up the question; who do we shoot? I had absolutely no idea how to dig into my first idea, because I was clueless about who to contact. but I realized that the “Hollister Clothing Company” is similar to “the East” because it is all protected. You have absolutely no idea who to call, or who you need to talk to in order to get your problem solved. I think that is why most of us found ourselves becoming frustrated because everything wasn’t based around one person. We didn’t know specific names, positions, or divisions to contact. Now I feel the Joads’s pain because you have absolutely no idea who exactly to point the finger (or gun) at.

An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Chinua Achebe, the author or the novel; Things Fall Apart goes into great detail in this self-written article about how Conrad's viewpoints in his work The Heart of Darkness is racist. Even though I believe Achebe has a great arguement in this article, I believe that he is taking it from a bias perspective.

In today's socratic seminar, we discussed where the line is drawn between "labeling" a group and being racist against them. But in reality, you think about those limits, and are people really being racist? Conrad is just going based on what he sees on the outside of the tribe. He doesn't actually know what it is like to be them. It goes back to the concept of "don't judge a book by its cover". It may be assumed that you are judging someone based on your first assumption of them. That is the exact problem Joseph Conrad got himself into when he was writing this novel. Basically, he saw what the tribe was acting like from an outside perspective. So it wouldn't have been racist in Achebe's mind if Conrad used a different lense in the looking glass. It is very possible that Conrad had racist remarks in the novel, and Achebe writes that it was degrading that Conrad wrote the "natives" conversations in a different language. It is remarkable to me that Achebe wrote his novel in one language (except for religious or cultural purposes), to show that we all really are united, and there isn't much difference between all of us if we look past the surface. I absolutely love where Achebe is coming from in this section of the article. It is almost like Conrad was "dumming the natives down" when he decided to make them speak a different language. How are we as readers supposed to understand their viewpoint if we don't know what they are saying? Unlike Conrad, Achebe made sure we knew both sides; the Christians and the Umuofia tribe. That's why I appreciated his work a lot more compared to Conrad's.

Overall, this article was very insightful to read. I wished that maybe Achebe wasn't the author because of the fact that this whole thing was about not being racist. But from an outsiders perspective, it can be labled as racist against Conrad and his work. I enjoyed reading it, but I think that if it was from a different author, I would have agreed with their viewpoint a little more.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Dissenting Opinion

In the article I chose to read, author Hugh J. Dawson writes about how Edna Pontellier’s character is the number one reason as to why people do not enjoy this amazing piece of literature. 

Dawson first states how Edna isn’t following Creole society and that hurts her tremendously. The expectation isn’t something that she wants to surround her life with, so she decides to do her “own thing”. Doing whatever you want when you are a female during that time period, usually doesn’t happen. So Dawson uses the metaphor that she is “swimming away from society”, into her death. Also, Dawson explains how many things in this novella are irrelevant. Chopin would have had a much better piece of writing if it wasn’t so fluffed up. Many characters, scenes, and lines are extremely useless. The reader could be spending a lot more time getting insight to important things that are taking place, instead of unnecessary and useless information. Dawson is very disappointed with how Chopin chose to write this entire novella. He claims it is very amateur and words that are used are particularly “adolescent”. Dawson mentions in the article about how Edna does things that suits her at the moment. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this section because of the fact that we talked about this topic is one of the class Socratic Seminars.it is explained that this thought is the only one going through her mind. Readers get frustrated with Edna because of how selfish she is, and how she goes away and finds a romantic substitute instead of pursuing the right man, or even taking care of her children. She was extremely unwilling to fulfill her duties as a mother, and she came and went when she wanted to. She was someone who only thought of herself, and this is what led me to be extremely agitated with Edna’s character.

The argument in this article was presented amazingly. Not only did I nod my head in agreement with this article, but I think that everyone can take little bits and pieces and apply it to their daily life. We read about Edna, and the suffering others do just because of her rotten and immature personality. I believe that others who read this will take a second glance of how they project themselves, and some could even try to minimize the horrible traits one could possess.

The Yellow Wallpaper

In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the relationship between man and wife was extremely strange. First, I thought it was completely irrational to put the person he “loves” basically in solitary confinement. Sure, it was one of the cures for something like this at the time, but it obviously did a lot more harm than good. I think everyone knows the feeling that when you are in a room for so long, things start becoming intriguing, and they may not be as they seem. You’ll see something deeper than what it really is, or start imagining wacky things. Also, I can only imagine how claustrophobic she feels. It’s completely insane that she didn’t stand up for herself! She was in a room that she basically hated, with horrible wallpaper, she couldn’t see anyone (not even her child), and she had some kind of emotional problem. I feel very sympathetic towards her with the fact that this is her only option. Just because her husband is a doctor, he thinks that this is the best thing for her. But I believe that now in society, this would be looked down upon in many ways. Also, the relationship they had with each other was awfully strange. It was almost like he was her father and she was the innocent, helpless child. He is also extremely controlling towards her. Because she had this “illness”, she is too screwed up to be thinking for herself. Today, the class discussion was about feminism, and I think this plays a role in it some ways. Since the narrator is a woman, the man thinks that he is doing what is best for her and making her decisions for her. She has no say in the matter, and what he thinks is right is automatically what is going to happen. This shows the dominance of the male in the relationship and whatever they say, is what it is put into play.

Ethan Frome-Article Analysis

"Under the Granite Outcroppings of Ethan Frome"
by: Helen Killoran

In the article I chose, the thesis talked about how immoral Ethan Frome was for society. She discussed each character and if you look through each character, which one was more immoral than the other. Her findings shocked me. Of course most believe falling in love with your wife’s cousin is bad, but I thought Zeena would have been the most immoral. I was extremely wrong. In fact, in this article she is actually praised for having the most moralistic character. She discusses how Zeena did the right thing by trying to get rid of Mattie, and how horrible it was for Ethan to try and get her to stay. She also talks about reasons why Zeena couldn’t be without Ethan for several reasons. She was extremely “sick”, and she needed constant care, and also there is the theory that she had a miscarriage. When Wharton writes about the “dead cucumber vines dangling from the porch like the crape streamer ties to the door for a death” (Wharton 51), most believe she is referring to the fetus tied to the umbilical cord of Zeena. This shows one of the major reasons for Zeena trying to make this marriage work between the two of them. She and Ethan have been through so much, and I think she believed that there was no other way. Ethan was the most immoral character of the entire novella. He falls in love with someone while he is married, he can’t provide children for his wife (so he gave up and doesn’t want to care for her illnesses), and he tries to commit suicide. This shows how little his morals are as a person. I think that this argues its thesis extremely well. Helen Killoran knows exactly what points to make and really turns this whole book around. I found myself almost hating Zeena, but now I understand why she did what she did. I was unaware of all of this background information. Killoran does an amazing job showing the readers what is going on through Zeena’s perspective. I agree with what she writes, but I can also disagree. If Zeena really loved Ethan then she would be looking out for what is best for him, not her “wellness”. I think that you love who you love, and maybe Ethan just wasn’t feeling it anymore. In Ethan’s defense, she didn’t act to loving either. Most thought that she didn’t care about him at all. But overall, this was a great read and I’m glad I got to see it in another perspective. I think it changes my overall outlook on this great novella.

Sonnet Reflection #130

The sonnet by far is probably one of the most cruel we have yet encountered. He went from being with the boy, where it was all about needing someone and wanting them, and trying to win them over, and in these Dark Lady poems, it is all about carelessness, and insults. If I were to receive this poem from someone, I would be absolutely humiliated. All that is talked about is how horrible this lady looks, smells, talks, and walks. What shocks me at the end though is that Shakespeare writes about how he loves her. I find it completely odd that he just got done writing a list of things he hates (which is pretty much everything), but he doesn’t care about any of that because he cares for her. In some way, I figured that he is talking about how beauty is materialistic. Maybe he is showing how personality is the most important thing. Personally, I would much rather have a poem complimenting my personality rather than trashing my looks.