#7: Why We Read "The Yellow Wallpaper"

In a literature class, there are thousands upon thousands of things you can use to teach students, yet only a relatively handful are chosen. That's because they have stood the "test of time" and they're messages will almost always be relevant to the readers who read these stories. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about woman slowly going insane from having too little stimuli, a reaction that occurs in the real world as well. This can be metaphorically taken in many regards: a woman going insane because she's not allowed to be creative, a person going insane from not being allowed to be his/herself, or a person going insane from not having his/her mind fed with knowledge. This is an issue almost everyone can relate with and is presented in a sympathetic manner, letting the reader feel a connection to the author and the story she wrote. This is why "The Yellow Wallpaper" has stood the test of time to me.

#6: Show Don't Tell

In a purely text narrative, a writer may need to use at least one paragraph to establish a scene, a filmmaker does the same thing when setting up shots in a film. A writer can only spend one paragraph introducing a new place or several; a filmmaker can use only one second to establish a scene or several. A good writer only tells the reader about things that are important, a good filmmaker only shows things to the viewer that are important. A good writer and a good filmmaker both show, don't tell.

#5: Archetypal Criticism

Archetypal Criticism is a form of criticism where a work is compared to other works that have done similar things, used the same tropes but in varying ways. This can make a story interesting as this can help us realize how effective an author can be in story telling, how much the author can say in little words.

Using cliches is not a bad thing, in fact they can be very good. Introducing a character with a line from a certain cliche establishes that cliche into the character, allowing you to say a lot with very little. From there you can do things badly by playing the cliche straight and adding nothing new, or you can use it for something interesting. Use it a launch pad for character development, use it as a deconstruction of the cliche with the character's actions or use the cliche to subvert the reader's expectations with a plot twist, Frozen uses that last part very well.

Being aware of common tropes is not a bad thing for a reader to have, rather its a good thing. It expands the reader's thought process beyond what is happening in the story and compares it to other stories and lets the reader point out the differences.

#4: Point of View Usage in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

In this story, a man is being hanged and dreams of escaping the hanging to return to his wife; however, it is discovered at the end that this delusion of grandeur is nothing more than that and he dies. The choice to use 3rd person limited as a point of view is worth considering, as its possible to tell the same story with that point of view, so we need to examine what 3rd person limited can accomplice that first person cannot.

First of all is the distance between the main character and the reader. In 3rd person, the reader is like a spirit, watching over the events of the story while unable to interfere. In first person, the reader is the main character, and as such the actions of the main character become more personal. This metaphorical distance can completely change the moral of the story. In 3rd person, the events of this story serve as a warning, a "what if" scenario used to demonstrate a point. In 1st person, the events of this story becomes punishing, more personal. It punishes the reader for believing that Pyton Farquhar could avoid the inevitable by making his eventual death more personal, the reader would be in Farquhar's shoes and believe the same things he does, as we have no other characters to believe in.

So the biggest difference this point of view would make for this story is the effect on the reader, in 3rd person the metaphorical distance between the reader and the protagonist makes the story serve as a warning, as compared to a hypothetical first person version of this story where the reader would be metaphorically executed along with Farquhar for believing in his delusion of grandeur.

#3: The Setting of "Desiree's Baby"

We're not told a lot about the setting in "Desiree's Baby" but through the language used and the details we are given, there are some assumptions that can be made. Based on the author's biography and the french terms that are used throughout the story, it's easy to assume this story takes place somewhere in Louisiana, and Chopin had spent a good amount of time there and its the part of America where French would commonly be spoken. And it can be assumed that because Armand is a slave owner, this story takes place before the civil war. And that's all I have.

#2: Why "Powder" is Enjoyable to Read

To me, "Powder" is more pleasant to read than "Girl" or "Christmas Tree" because it follows standard paragraph formatting. I have a hard time reading "Christmas Tree" because the line breaks are at weird places, I know its because so the poem will look like a tree but its still irritating. "Girl" is a little better, but not by much; its one big long paragraph. My eyes look at that big block of text and think "this is an eyesore". "Powder" is pleasant to read because it makes good use of white space to create a story that's pleasant to the eye and pleasant to the mind.

In high school we're told that we should make a new paragraph when we move on to another line of thought, but the real reason we do so is to create white space that makes reading pleasant to the eye. "Powder"' has a lot of paragraphs that are five to six lines long, but has a lot of paragraphs that are much smaller mixed around those large paragraphs, this creates a smooth line for the eye to follow. Also studies show that taking a big task and separating it into a bunch of smaller tasks makes things easier for us to do, and the same goes for the reading eye. And because "Powder" mixes up the lengths of its paragraphs, its more fun to read than "Christmas Tree" and "Girl".

#1: Response to "Immigrants" poems

These two poems offer very different, possibly opposing, views on how immigrants view coming to America. Frost's poem claims that every ship coming to America has had the ideals of the pilgrims on the Mayflower as their guide, or all immigrants coming to America have come for the same reason as the pilgrims: to explore a new world and lead a better life. By contrast, Mora's poem is about how anxious immigrants are when coming to America, and how much they worry that their children will fit in.

What may help establish these poems even more is the context they were written in. Frost's poem was written in 1920, when many immigrants were coming to America to escape World War I and its after effects. Given this context and the meaning in the poem, its fair to assume that Frost is defending the immigrants, saying that they come with the same intentions as the original immigrants that founded this country. Mora's poem was written in 1986, a time that I'm not very familiar with, but if its anything like today's climate on immigration, Mora is trying to defend immigrants, showing how much they work in order to fit in, how they come with pure intentions.

When looked at by themselves, these poems offer two different messages: a positive one that shows that immigrants come with noble intentions and a negative one that shows how hard immigrants work to fit in. When looked at in the context of the time the poem's were written, these poems are both attempts to defend immigrants, to show the motivations behind why immigrants come here and what they do when they arrive.