Week 10

Week 10

Eudora Welty

Powerhouse

            Eudora Welty lived from 1909-2001.   She was born and grew up in Jackson, Mississippi.  She graduated from University of Wisconsin in 1929.  She began writing a few years later. She wrote about society news for a Memphis newspaper.   In June of 1936 her first short story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman” was published. She wrote several novels until 1972.  She had a strong sense of the southern ways of life. 

            Powerhouse was a weird story to me and I really didn’t care for it much.  Powerhouse was a black man doing a show on a tour of some kind.  He is described horribly in my opinion.  He is described as Asiatic, monkey, devil.  It sounds like Eurdora Welty is rather racist.   Powerhouse is playing music and he talks an awful lot through out his performance. Half of the time I do not know if he is kidding or not.  In the story segregation was still a big part of the normal things going on.  Powerhouse and his band must play a white dance song, in which only the white people may dance.  This just brings sadness to my eyes.  Everyone should have a right to dance regardless of who is there.  I still do not understand why he is talking about a telegram about his wife being dead.  I am just not sure if he is serious or not, or if it’s just a part of a song.  He sounds like he really enjoys his music and is able to feel the music in his soul. He spends a lot of time talking to his band mates.  It sounds more like a comedic show instead of a music performance.  The songs through out the performance are really appropriate for the time.  I don’t think they enjoyed playing for the white people and in their own way have their own prejudices going on.

John Steinbeck

           

Flight

            John Steinbeck lived from 1902-1968.  He was born in Salina, California and used much his locale in his works.  He often wrote about native migrant workers and their struggles.  He had many different jobs since he was a young boy.  He worked as a newspaper reporter, bricklayer, chemist helper and sometimes a fruit picker.  He earned a Pulitzer Prizes in 1940 and in 1962 he earned a Nobel Prize in Literature. 

            In the story Flight, he was a great story teller who uses great description through out the tale.  Even though the story ends tragically it was a good read and kept me on my toes.  It starts out on a farm near the ocean in California. Pepe is a young boy who is the oldest child in the house of 3 kids.  His father was killed ten years ago from a rattlesnake bike to his chest.  Pepe is no help around the farm at all. While his little brother and sister catch fish for dinner, he simply plays with his father’s old knife. Pepe’s mother needs him to ride a horse into town in order to get medicine and salt.  He feels he is now a man for going on this jouney alone.  But his first  night away from home he gets into trouble.  He is supposed to stay at Mrs. Rodriguez house to rest.  While he was there they are all drinking whine and he gets into a fight with another man/boy and ends up throwing his fathers knife at him, killing him.  He rushes home where his mother packs him some things and sends him on his way in order to escape the men coming after him.  He is in no way ready to be out alone already.  Upon his journey he is cut  on his fingers and its all down hill from then. The men eventually catch up to him and he is shot dead. So sad at such a young age with so much life left to live.  Maybe his mother shouldn't have sent a kid out on a real man's journey.

Richard Wright

Native Son

            Richard Wright had a troubled childhood. His family was abandoned by his father and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. Growing up in the South in the 1920’s and being black he had many obstacles to overcome in school. He graduated as Valedictorian and already had stories published while still in high school.  He fled north up to Chicago where he worked several menial jobs.  He ended up in New York where he wrote Native Son.

            Native son takes place in Chicago where Bigger is a young black man looking for a job to help support his family.  He is hired as a driver for the Dalton family.  One of his first jobs is to take Mary the daughter to her University.  Soon as she is in the car she directs him elsewhere.  All the while he just wants to do the right thing for his job.  While out with Mary and Jan he is very uneasy.  They make him feel as one their own and he hates them for it.  He is not used to being treated equally.  I thought this was a great story with equality instead of the usual slave stories.  They end up drinking too much and he is loosening up.  At the end of the night Mary is too drunk to make it up to her own room and Bigger must help her.  He finally gets her into her room and suddenly Mrs. Dalton who is blind appears.  He is so afraid of being caught and fired he does everything to keep Mary quiet, he ends up pushing the pillow so hard on her mouth that she is suffocated and dies.  Even though what he did was wrong I can see his side of the story.  He of course would be punished and probably hung for murder when he was not intentionally trying to kill her, but he wanted that job so bad he just wanted to keep her quiet in order to get out of her room.  I felt sorry for him and the ending was sad.  But it was much better than reading Powerhouse.

Week 9

Week 9

William Faulkner's        

 

 "That Evening Sun"

            William Faulkner lived from 1897-1962.  He received a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.  After that achievement his reputation spread around the world.  He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He used this town in many of his writings with some small changes.  He traveled a great deal, and trained as a pilot.  I find it interesting he never graduated from college yet accomplished so much.  Goes to show if you are truly talented you will succeed.

            “That Evening Sun” takes place in Jefferson.  I thought it was a rather odd story.  It was ok and kept me engaged enough to get through it but I really don’t see why it would be so special.  I read it as if a white family has a maid named Nancy.  She has a ex husband or boyfriend who was in trouble with the law and had left town, she is horribly scared he is back and wants to harm her.  After her job is done with the cooking and cleaning she doesn’t want to go home.  She instead just sits quietly in the family’s kitchen.  We find out she is afraid to walk home alone in the dark so Jason the man of the house walks her home with his 3 children.  His wife does not like this at all.  She thinks Jason cares more about he negro help than his own wife and family.  I thought it was really nice of him to care about her well being.  Soon enough Jason is tired of walking her home and tells her,  her husband is not out there.  She manages to talk the 3 children into walking her home with promises of fun.  When they arrive there is nothing fun about it for them. They want to go home but she offers them popcorn and stories so they stay. I was glad their father showed up to bring them home where they belong.  What if her crazy husband really did come back and harm them all.  I believe the constant worry drove her insane and she began drinking. In the beginning of the story she was in jail trying to hang herself.  It was confusing jumping from the present into the past and the two kids constantly talking during the story because they were too young to really understand what was going on with Nancy and Jesus. Overall it was good but another sad story about how unfair blacks where treated in those days. 

 Langston Hughes

Hughes' poetry and  "On the Road"

            Langston Hughes was born in 1902 and died in 1967.  In grammar school he was chosen as a class poet and in high school he published two poems in magazines. He had many talents including humorist, historian of blacks. He wrote many novels, short stories and poems.  They also included children’s books, songs, and operas.   He had great black heritage and living in New York City picked up tastes in jazz music which you can clearly see in his writings.

            I enjoyed the few poems we had to read.  In the poem,   The Weary Blues I can easily picture a low lit club with a piano player at his piano and small tables gathered about.  The piano player is playing his blues and the person in the audience is just getting caught up in the music forgetting their own worries.  In Harlem, I picture a person who has a dream that is put on hold.  They are wondering what happens, Do they dreams dry up?  Do they fester? Or just explode.   I thought the majority of his poems were easy to understand and I liked them. 

            “On the Road” was sad to me.  We have a man called Sargeant who gets off a freight train looking for a place to sleep.   He is so tired and hungry he pay’s no attention to the snow coming down on him.  He goes to a church where is he is turned away and referred to a shelter which he has already been rejected because they are already full and he is also a black man.  He is banging on the church door until cops arrive.  I believe they knock him unconscious but he is having his own dream of breaking Jesus off the cross and them leaving together and he finds shelter for the night and Jesus goes on to Kansas City. Sargeant wakes up to what he thinks is being beaten on his hands by cops again but he realizes he is in jail from the earlier incident.   I find it very sad because he was black he was not accepted by the church.  I bet if it were any white man they would have been given a spot to sleep. 

Ernest Hemingway

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

            Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois.  His father was a Physician who gave his son many adventures in fishing and hunting.  After high school graduation he went to work as a report in Kansas City.  He was in World War I and the first American to survive after being wounded on the Italian front.  He often wrote about a modern world filled with sterility, failure and death.

            We were assigned to read The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.  In the story we have a wealthy family of Francis and Margaret Macomber who are on a safari vacation in Africa.   This story keeps with his themes of failure and death.  The Macomber’s are out on a lion hunt with Mr. Wilson.  They finally find their prey and Francis first wants to shoot from the car which is a big NO NO.  He ends up shooting a lion but he does not die and they must look for him in the brush. Francis is very scared of the big kill and you can tell he just does not want to go through with it.  The time comes and the lion charges and Francis runs away like a chicken.  His wife is just downright disappointed and calls him a failure.   Back at camp for the night Francis wakes up and his wife is missing.  Turns out she has been with Mr. Wilson for a few hours and we can only imagine what they are up to.  She finds Mr. Wilson desirable because he is not afraid to kill the lion unlike her husband.  They both think the other will not leave each other because Mr. Macomber us rich and Mrs. Macomber is beautiful. 

            They are out on another hunt for buffalo and Mr. Macomber gets his kill and is very proud of him self. He has conquered his fear. Again he only wounded the buffalo so must go in the brush to finish him off. The buffalo charges again and he shoots and shoots but keeps hitting the horns which bullets just bounce off of.  Mr. Wilson is also shooting and Mrs. Macomber takes a shot and accidentally shoots her own husband dead.   I think this was their secret plan to get rid of him so they could be together.  This way she walks away with all her husbands money and Mr. Wilson.  The death could look accidental to most but only they know the truth. 

Week 8

Willa Cather

A Wagner Matinee

Willa Cather lived from 1873-1947.   She grew up in Nebraska and often dressed and acted like a boy.  She returned to the east and worked in a Pennsylvania newspaper and also taught high school English.  She wrote or ordinary people who often struggled with  finding the meaning of their lives. 

            An example of this was in her short story A Wagner Matinee.  In the story  we have Clark,  boy who is being visited by his Aunt Georgiana, who is in town to attend a settling of the estate from a relative. In her past she had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory.  She had fallen in love with Howard Carpendar and moved west and had to give up much of her music loves. Clark has many great memories of his Aunt raising him and all they shared together.  He thinks it would be a great idea to take her to the symphony. She is a bit out of place and underdressed compared to the others but is willing to go.   At the symphony Richard Wagner is playing and plays, “ The Flying Dutchman”.  This song brings back a lot of emotion out of Georgiana who begins crying during the performance.  In the end everyone leaves and she just doesn’t want to go.  I think  this brought back a lot of regret in her life.  She could have lived the life she wanted had she not left.

Paul’s Case

This story was very sad to me. Paul is a young boy being raised by his father. His mother passed away shortly after his birth.  Paul is very interested in music and not so much school. He gets in trouble at school and everyone seems to look down on him.  When he is at the theatre he is a different person.  He is happy and carefree.  He gets in trouble again and everything he loves is taken away from him. He can no longer go to the theater, see his friends and must get a job.  In doing so he happens to be in charge of a large sum of money and steals it.  He takes off to New York’s Carnegie Hall and has a weekend like no other.  He buys fancy clothes, stays at a fancy hotel, and hangs out with people just like him. He reads in the newspaper that he has been found out and his father is in New York looking for him. He cannot imagine going back to Cordelia  street ever again!  He travels back to Pennsylvania and desides to end his life by jumping in front of a train. So very sad no one ever listened to him. He could have made so much of his life had he just tried harder and not given up.

Susan Glaspell

Triffles

Susan Glaspell grew up in a time that woman were seen and not heard.  They pretty much did what they were told by their husbands and tended to the family and house.  She struggled to show the  struggle woman had for identity, equality and power to be seen and heard. I just can’t imagine growing up and living in that time of the century.

            In her play :” Triffles” she writes of some of the challenges she deals with every day in her own life.   In this play we have  Mrs. Wright who had murdered her husband by strangling him with a rope in their bed.   The county Attorney, Sheriff, Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peters are all in the home while Mrs. Wright is at the jail. They are investigating the murder in order to find some clues.  Of course only the men are looking and the woman are downstairs trying to assemble some items to take to Mrs. Wright.  The men talk about Mrs. Wright like she is a bad wife. The house is not kept clean enough for them, there are dishes about the kitchen, not what they would like to see.  They cannot seem to find any clues they are looking for.  The woman are finding clues though.  They find that the bird has been strangled and saved in a box maybe for a proper burial.  They can immediately tell the bird has been strangled. They both know it’s a clue because Mr. Wright was also strangled and who else would want to strangle him but maybe his wife because he strangled her only joy and happiness.  They also find the birds cage door is broke as if someone flipped it too hard to get at that bird.  I wonder why they keep quiet. Is it because they are woman and feel that they will not be thought of as serious in their findings?  They seem to stick to do what is expected of them. Maybe they feel he deserved to die after killing an innocent bird and keeping Mrs. Wright home to do nothing all these years. 

Zora Neale Hurston

How it Feels to be Colored Me

Zora Neale Hurston lived from 1891?-1960.  She lived in a time that slavery was no longer legal but there discrimination was still very well known.  I really enjoyed both of her stories that we had to read. They were both really inspiring to me. 

            How It Feels to be  Colored me is about a little girl who had a happy childhood. At the age of 13 her mother died and she was left to be cared for by her father. Her father could not care for her so he sends her to live with various family members.  This is when she realized that she was not like everyone else.  It sounded like her mother gave her great self esteem and growing up in a all black city she was very much secluded from the real prejudices of the world. Zora Neale Hurston had a very similar life and managed to overcome so much. She was able to get into great schools to study and was always recognized in her literary writings.  She went on to write several great novels, short stories.

            The Gilded SixBits was probably my favorite reading of the week.  It was good to see a couple so in love and sad to see it almost ruined by greed and money, especially to find out Mister Otis D. Slemmons was a cheat and liar. Pretending his gold was all real when it wasn’t.  Missie May seemed like such a loving and caring wife. I never thought she would betray her husband in that way.  Made me really  sad how money and greed can come between a couple so in love. I was shocked that Joe did not up and leave right away but stayed until they found their love back to each other.  Im glad he had the faith that he had and they were able to find each other again. 

Week 7 Robert Frost

Robert Frost

After reading a few of Robert Frost’s poems I can see where he grew up has a lot to due with his settings.  He grew up in Salem, New Hampshire.  In many of his poem’s he talks about the cold winters with snow falling. As usual I do not understand much of what the poet is trying to say, but with a few of his poems I can relate to some parts.  The first poem we were assigned to read, Mending Wall really was the worst.  Maybe I need to read it a few more times but I did not understand a word of it.   I think my three favorite poems were: Home Burial, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Desert Places.

          The poem Home Burial  was very sad!  When reading it I picture a setting with a husband and wife.  They are talking about having a infant that died and they are trying to deal with his death in their own way.  It sounds like the wife wants to run away and not deal with it, Or she runs away and confides in someone else on how she feels about it.  The husband wants her to stay and talk about it.   She doesn’t understand how he can just dig the grave and go on like it was no big deal.  I think this would be a typical conversation with two people trying to deal with grief in their own ways.

          The poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy evening was nice and short.  There is nothing special about this poem but I like the flow of it and the picture in my head.  I believe he is riding his horse and he stops in someone’s woods to just watch it snow. He has a long way to go but wants to just watch the beauty of the snow falling, covering up the woods.

          The last poem I chose was Desert Places. I chose those  poem because of its flow again. I like when they rhyme and make sense.  He sounds very lonely here.  He explains its loney out there in the woods. Maybe he is traveling.  But again he is in no hurry to get home because it is lonely there also.  Most of his poems are nice. I enjoyed them. 

WEEK 6

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane had a short life of only 28 years. During this Stephen Crane had a short life of only 28 years. During this time his life went many different directions.  He had hoped to be a soldier but left military prep school to study mining-engineering. He later left that college and played sports for a few years and began his writing career.

I am not a huge fan of poems.  I find that most of them are hard to understand.  I wish writers would leave some type of interpretation behind so we could all know what they were really talking about, not to just interpret them by ourselves.  After reading Crane's ten poems I still feel the same.

I read most of the other classmate’s posts and everyone seems too really like "In The Desert"   I don't really like it at all.  Why is he even thinking to write about someone eating his own heart?  Just weird!  Many of his poems are located out in the open land. I think he may have spent a lot of time outside.  They also seem to talk of war time and I think that is because of the years he was growing up and what he saw around him. I think he initially wanted to be a soldier but got scared and that is why he changed his major.  In the poem " A Man Feared that he might find an assassin" I think that would be a war image.  You picture two soldiers on opposite sides. They are each looking for a victim and if they find him they become his assassin.  Of course the wiser one is who is left alive.

"Black riders came from the sea"  Sounds like maybe war ships attacking. Darker skinned soldiers appearing off a ship.  They are coming with their swords and shields making noise, rushing upon their victims to kill them in sin.

The Open Boat

The “Open Boat” is a  true life story.  Stephen Crane was a reporter for a newspaper.  He had joined a gun-running expedition to Cuba in which the boat he was on sank.  He ended up on a small dingy with 3 other survivors.  Throughout the story he shows great detail in explaining the waves crashing upon the dingy, the look of the horizon in a distance and how the land looks so small and far away . This was really a good story that I could easily picture in my head.  I can see them stranded out at sea just praying to make it back to land.   At one point a huge storm comes.  They see lightening, hear thunder, fight with large waves trying to crash them.  It shows how tiny 4 humans are compared the large sea and the universe.  Who would really miss 4 people in the grand scheme of life? 

At one point they come really close to a lighthouse.  I am not sure why they expect people to come looking for them if no one even knows they are missing.  They didn’t have cell phones or TV’s so it is not like a family member can call and ask how they were doing and they surely were not on the news. 

I really admire their determination to survive. They never gave up!  They were always respectable of the others who needed to sleep and rest.   They kept going and looking until they found land.  I think their saying “ If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven made gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?”  ( pg 789)  This would have really given me hope too.  I was very sad to read the oiler did not survive the ordeal. 

Edith Wharton

“ The Other Two “ written by Edith Wharton was a good story.  It seems sort of odd it is from so long ago.  It would really be normal to read something like this today.  Usually in those days   woman were married once and here is Alice working on her third marriage.  I found that kind of odd.  I think today it is more odd to find someone who is married only once.  I think Edith Wharton wrote about this because she herself was divorced before.

 This story had a lot of the same struggles that families have today in dealing with visiting fathers, ex husbands, and new husbands. I don’t think Alice ever imagined having to deal with her old husbands on a daily basis.  In the story Alice’s daughter   Lily, becomes ill. Her father is really involved in her life as he should be.  He comes to see his sick daughter and Alice’s new husband Mr. Waythorn doesn’t really like the idea of him visiting her in his house.  In the end he realizes he loves his daughter and has every right to see her as anyone else.  I think he admires that he has moved from his good job to be closer to his daughter.  Another ex husband was   Gus Varick.  He had no reason to be involved with Alice anymore.  He came into the picture because of   Mr. Waythorns business. 

In the end we see Mr. Waythorn coming home to what he thinks is an empty house.  First he walks into his office and sees Mr. Varick who unexpectantly shows up for a business meeting.  Then out of nowhere comes Mr. Haskett who wants to discuss Lily with Mrs. Waythorn.  I think he handled the meeting quite well with offering them cigars.  Soon Mrs. Waythorn comes in and is shocked as well.  She manages to pull herself together and greet her ex husbands. How uncomfortable she must have felt standing there with 3 different husbands.  I think the jealousy Mr. Waythorn was having is now gone. He has come to realize that Mrs. Waythorn is the way she is because of the past men in her life. There is a reason they are ex husbands and not husbands still.

Week 5

The Yellow Wallpaper

I really enjoyed reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  This story kept be quite entertained. Usually I am counting down the pages to the end and with this story I was shocked it was already over.  I feel very sorry for the lady in the story.  Her husband John thinks she is very ill.  I think maybe she had some sort of post pardon depression from having their baby.  Because John thinks she is so ill she must remain upstairs in her room. 

    She cannot stand the yellow wallpaper in that room.  It's a horrible shade of yellow, it's very old and musky smelling.  Eventually I think she starts really going crazy.  Her brother also a Physician agrees with her husband.  I think if everyone thought I was crazy I would probably really go crazy.  Day after day she just sits on her bed. Eventually she starts to imagine a woman trying to get out of the wallpaper behind bars.  I think this signifies her  own life as she is always trying to escape her room which she is ordered to stay in. She is wishing to go out in the garden and breathe fresh air.  She expresses her wishes to write in her journal and suggests ways to improve her health and each time she is shot down by her controlling husband.   I think in this writing she is describing how she felt as a child always being sick and being told what to do by her parents.  I was really expecting more of a true horror story not a depressing one. I guess in the say and age that she wrote it, they had less understanding about depression being a sickness and better ways to treat it. In the end she works and works at tearing down as much paper as she can.  She is seen by her husband running around and around the room. At this point I think she has truly lost it.

The Awakening

The  "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin was a sad story to me.  I think Edna Pontelliers was constantly searching for something she couldn't have. Sort of the grass is always greener on the other side.  She was a married woman  with children living the life of the upper class.  While most would be content living that sort of life she was not.  She never seemed very motherly compared to her friend Adele Ratignolle.  

     Chopin wrote this story in 1899.  This was a time when men where the money earners and the woman was to stay home with her children.  She was the cook, cleaner, caretaker.  I don't think Edna ever wanted that in her life.  She often had images of the bluegrass fields in Kentucky as a child and of the ocean at Grand Isle in the Gulf Of Mexico. This was an escape from reality for her. She did not want to bother with her children and taking care of them.  Her husband noticed this too.  She felt trapped as the birds in the cage were trapped. Her friend Adele Ratignolle is complete opposite. She is very motherly to her children and tries to guide her the right way. She begs Edna to think of her children before leaving her husband.  Edna could not do it though. She leaves her husband gets her own apartment, gets a job selling her paintings.  She is living the life she wishes.  Her lover Robert ends up leaving her behind because he doesn't believe they can overcome the the marriage she has.  She is very sad and depressed.  She swims out to sea and swims and swims and eventually just gives up on her life. I think if she had been born at a later time she may have been successful but she could not compete with the role of wife and mother expected during that time of life. 

Week 4

Editha

     After reading  Editha by William Dean Howells I couldn’t help but think how sad it was.  He never sounded like he was liking the thought of war but Editha made it sound like if he didn’t go she would not be around for him.   She wrote him that nasty letter  giving all his stuff back. She had such a view that war was glorious and fun.  I have never found war to be glorious at all.  I have never thought of young men going away from their loved ones to fight anything to be happy about.  Many don’t get to come back at all and if they do they are so traumatized they don’t ever lead a normal life again.  I can see why Mrs. Gearson was so mean to Editha.  Her husband had been in a previous war and came back with one arm.  I am sure he told her many stories of the real side of war and that is why they raised George to not be so willing to go and fight.  Here comes Editha to show up at her home, I would be furious as Mrs. Gearson.  Editha still has her long life ahead of her.  Poor George is dead and his mother has lost her son forever.  I would have liked to see Editha sign up to go and fight a war.  I bet she would have changed her mind real fast. Although I appreciate our freedom and all of the soldiers have died for us, I just am so scared of my own kids growing up and wanting to go.  I am thankful they are still young but with the current war just going on and on and young men dying all the time.  It just breaks my heart when I see a story of another soldier dying.  I don’t think we ever see the real side of what really goes on while fighting a war. 

Tennessee’s Partner

     I was a little confused reading Tennessee’s Partner by Bret Harte.  This story is taking place in a bar called Sandy Bar in 1854.  It seems everyone there gives the customers nicknames to go by.  I am not sure what Tennessee did to be called Tennessee but it had to have something to do with a previous happening.  After reading the whole short story I see a story about true friendship.  Here we have friends Tennessee and Tennesee’s partner.  They have been friends for many years. Even after Tennessee running off with Tennesse’s partner’s wife, he still welcomed to his home with a handshake as he was glad to see him.   He has helped his friend many times when he was drunk and unable to get home.  As Tennessee is on trial for robbery Tennessee’s partner attempts to offer his life savings of  $1700. Something only a true friend would do.  Maybe he really just didn’t want to live his own life alone.  In the end he is the only one to show up for Tennessee’s body and gives him a proper burial on his land.   Throughout the story you see a lot of  silly humor that just would never make sense.  The trial alone doesn’t sound very real.  Here you have a  person just show up and start trying to bribe the judge in front of everyone.  He slaps down all his money not worrying about what is right and wrong.  Also when they are about to hang Tennessee. Instead of a dreary funeral you hear words like birds singing, flowers blooming, sun shinning just like it’s a cheery day. It seems in the end Tennessee’s partner may have died of a broken heart.  He missed his friend terrible and by the time the rainy season came he had taken to his bed and passed away.  I also liked this story because I am from a town near San Francisco so when I hear that and Stockton I can almost picture Tennessee traveling back and forth.

An Occurrence at owl Creek Bridge

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge turned out to be a pretty good story written by Ambrose Bierce.  In section one we get the beginning of the story. Peyton Farquhar is about to be hung.  He is surrounded by soldiers on a railroad bridge overlooking a river. His hands are tied behind his back and a rope around his neck. I’m sure this is just a few moments in time but it goes on forever with such great detail that it seems like hours could have passed by.  I think this part would represent his fear of the unknown.  He is thinking of his wife and kids he must leave behind.

             In section two we learn who Peyton Farquhar really is.  We learned about his life as a well to do planter and how he came to the position of being hung.  This is the shortest section of the story.   Peyton Farquhar is trying to stop the troops from expanding on by burning the bridge they would cross.  He had heard the troops many times will burn innocent families homes and wanted to prevent that from happening to his home.  I guess he is caught while attempting this and that is why the troops are hanging him. 

            Section three was by far the longest and is the point that the soldiers let him fall which again takes merely seconds in real life.  But as he falls it seems like an eternity.  He is envisioning what he wishes to happen.  He wants the rope to break in which he will splash into the water and make his great escape. He is able to get off the ropes tying his hands, he doges bullets being shot, a vortex from shooting cannons shoot him out of the water into the forest which he runs and runs to make it home.  He finally arrives there after running non stop to see his beautiful wife waiting for him. At the moment he was waiting for to embrace his wife he thinks he is shot in the neck but really it was just the rope breaking his neck and him dying. 

Free Joe and the Rest of the World and How Mr. Rabbit was too Sharp for Mr. Fox

     After reading Free Joe and the Rest of the World you can see the typical stereotypes.  You have Free Joe who was the free slave.  Being free is something he probably always dreamed of.  He is finally a free man but is still not happy.  He doesn’t have his wife to be free with because she is still a slave.  Even though she is not free she is able to meet him under the poplar tree. They go about this way for awhile until her master finds out and she is shipped off to far for him to ever reach her.  While he waits for her he hears slaves singing away happy as can be.  He insists he hears her singing loudly above everyone else.  I think the stereotypes suggest that the grass is always greener on the other side. You always want what you can’t have.  I think he would have been happier a slave along side his wife than living alone all that time.  It’s such a sad time for me to read about.  I think of all those people who were treated so horrible for years and years. 

     The story How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox was hard for me to read. The dialect is awful.  From what I get from the story you have Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. Brer rabbit has been taunting Brer Fox for some time.  Brer Fox finally has Brer Rabbit exactly where he wants him, it the tar baby.  Brer Rabbit welcomes him to do whatever he wants but please don’t throw him in the Brier patch.  Since he has requested this so many times Brer Fox thinks this is a great way to get him back.  So he tries and Brer Rabbit gets away. Brer Rabbit has outsmarted Brer Fox again.   I think this is a great tale using animals and reverse psychology.  He is really expressing what he really wants Brer Fox to do but disguising it as what he is begging him not. Brer Fox isn’t very smart in falling for this trick and gets what he deserves. No Brer Rabbit barbecue for him.