Family Unit- Blog 5

Edward has killed his father and there seems to be no remorse for this. I speak not of Edward from that vampire movie but of Edward from the poem, Edward by Anonymous. With the descriptions of blood you would think it was Edward from the Twilight Saga though! Edward has just killed his father... The sad thing is it seems like he does not feel any remorse or guilt from it. Instead he wants to flee and is telling his mother that he will leave his wife and children to tend for themselves. I do not understand why Edward has done this. It sound to me that he had some sort of anger towards him. He is insane! He tells his mother that "The curse of hell from me shall ye bear..." [Perrine, 978]. He obviously has bad feelings about his mother as well. The family was probably very broken and his parents did something to him that made him react in this way.

Family Unit- Blog 4

Imagery of cold can go in two ways, cold as in being cold-hearted or cold as in being temperature cold. In Those Winter Sundays by Anonymous, both images are portrayed to create a feeling of sadness. "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking" [Perrine, 781]. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The double meaning of the quote symbolizes the actual cold that was present because of it being winter time and also because of the distance that seemed to stand between each person in the family. It is clear that the family is not close and that there is hard feelings towards each other. No one ever thanked father for what he did and it seemed that father never acknowledged the people om his family. There was "chronic anger," a constant distressing thing. A family cannot function with constant anger towards each other. In order for a family to function there must be love and understanding and neither seemed to be present in this family. It was quite sad how the author would relate his family life to the cold winter.

Family Unit- Blog 3

The Drunkard by Frank O'Connor is my favorite short story of this unit because of the humor and irony that were present. In a household where a alcoholic resides, the affects on the child are more than one can imagine. In this case, the 9 year old son watched as his father goes through phases of being drunk and then not drinking and realizes that he likes his father more when he is in his phase of not drinking. When taken to his fathers' close friend's funeral, the little boy drinks the alcohol that his father has. The humor comes in when the boy thinks, "I was astonished that he could even drink such stuff. It looked as if he had never tried lemonade" [Perrine, 347]. The boy thought that the taste was disgusting and was surprised as to why his father had not tried any other drink (hahaha). Clearly we know he had, but it was the feeling that caused the father to drink, not the taste. The irony comes in when we think about the boy, son of a drunkard, getting drunk himself. The boy was on a mission to try to get his father to stop drinking and he himself does what he was supposed to get someone else to stop doing. The thing is that it actually worked though! His father was so ashamed about the incident that he probably never drank again!

Family Unit- Blog 2

I was very disturbed when reading Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer because of the ending of the story. The author of the story is very bothered by not being safe and lives in constant fear, which is what creates the characters in this "children's book." I do not understand why a person would make a children's book such a scary story though. Usually children read this before bed, and reading about a kid being hurt by such a horrible fence would not bring about good dreams. Another disturbance was the fact that the characters in the story lived happily ever after but they lived in constant fear of being killed or robbed. Living happily ever after usually doesn't involve having to worry about being killed or being robbed. I also found it weird that they called the grandmother, the "witch." I guess it is because if it weren't for her idea of putting up all the security and have given the book to the boy, the boy would have never been hurt. I also felt like the story was trying to degrade people who were not rich, because only people with money can afford these fences and "perfect lawns," [Perrine, 235]. It was an all around disturbing story to read and it did not appeal to me.

Family Unit- Blog 1

In the short story, A Worn Path by Eudora Welty, Pheonix was portrayed as a strong woman. In my eyes, I see her as a rather weak woman. Her cane was a big indicator that she could not walk alone, therefore she was weaker than most people. Her age was the result of the use of the cane and another indicator as to why I believe that she was weaker than she sought to be. When walking, she hallucinated about seeing people. Another indicator that her age was becoming a big burden on her. "She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. 'That would be acceptable,' she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air," [225, Perrine]. Her insanity was a sign of weakness, of abnormal behavior. Her lack of fear when the man that she saw on her trip into town was beyond dangerous. A man of this type could have killed her easily, and her lack of fear would have left her alone and dead with no one to help her. Her insanity could have lead her to imagine more things that could have strayed her away from her path, another danger. So although she seemed tough, Pheonix was very weak in mind and body. 

A Raisin in the Sun- blog 5

          In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Walter and Beneatha Younger both want a better way of life for either themselves and/or their family. They each have their own approach and each desire to gain something different from it. Walter has been talking to his friends about starting a new business, a liquor store. He brings it up many times because he wants Mama to use the insurance money to sponsor the liquor store. Throughout the play, Walter is becoming crazy with the idea of this project and when he sees that he is not getting his way, he becomes a madman. He changes the mood of the story from having a  hardworking, sincere family to having a broken up, crazy family. As the play continues, his desire to reach his goals bring him to trust his supposed "friend" to keep the money and in return is fooled by his "friend", who steals all of the money. Beneatha wants the life of a white person. She wants to be modern and wants to be able to do all of the things that rich people do. The problem with this is that the Youngers don't have money for her to be pleasing herself this way. Beneatha has to learn that things can't always go her way and that if they do, she must be thankful. By the end of the play, Beneatha has learned that in order for her to earn what she has, she must work for it. Asagai asks her critical questions, "But did you earn it? would you have had it at all if your father had not died?" I think Asagai makes a great point here about how everyone is fighting over this money that if it weren't for Big Walter, they would not have. I think at this point Beneatha has to understand that she can not be selfish and mad about Walter losing the family money.

A Raisin in the Sun- Blog 4

         Mama from A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, is a women of great strength. She is quite a fighter with being the head of the family and being in charge of making sure everyone is where they need to be. I love her innocense about her children and the world around her. She was always quite sure that her son and her daughter would do the best they could for the family. Walter took advantage of this when he was given the money that he was supposed to use for the family and failed at taking care of it. She was manipulated several times, and time after time she would still trust her children to do the right thing. She was patient with them but she was also very naive. When talking to Beneatha about an African boy coming over, Mama says "I don't think I never met no African before." This ironic comment is somewhat humorous to me because they are all African American. Yes, maybe she has never met a pure African but she has definitely met an African American...SHE IS AFRICAN AMERICAN! I know that her meaning of it was that she had never met someone directly from Africa but it was still ironic that she would make such a remark. I thought it showed her naive side some but I still respect that woman for the way she held her family together.

A Raisin in the Sun- Blog 3

           A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry contained a quote spoken by Asagai when he tries to explain to Mama what "Alaiyo" means. "Aliaiyo" is the word he uses to speak to Beneatha and it is a Yoruba word. When he tries to explain to Mama what it means, he can't quite find the cotrrect way to explain it. He says to her, "Well...let me see... I do not know how just to explain it...The sense of a thing can be so different when it changes language." Being Mexian myself and being bilingual in Spanish and English, I can relate to this feeling of disturbance from not being able to fully explain what something means. There are words like "Bueno?" that people in Mexico say when answering a phone, but translated literally mean "good." It doesn't make sense to answer the phone and be like "Good?", but to those in Mexico it is a greeting and a way to say hello. Like not being able to translate words exactly from one language to another, we must realize that the Youngers are not all alike. They all have their own manner of speaking and acting towards different situations. Their approches are different and to the others there is no way of literally understanding what it means.

A Raisin in the Sun- Blog 2

            In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the character of Beneatha gives me a feeling of disgust and hatred for an unreal person that I have never felt before. I dislike her attitude and her egoistic remarks more than anything. For example, when she has just learned about Ruth's pregnancy and Ruth has told her to mind her own business she replies with, "It is my business-where is he going to live, on the roof?" I understand that the Youngers had merely enough money to go around for the 5 of them and a 6th person would be overwhelming, but the way that Beneatha has took the news is ridiculous. Her shallowness shows completely throughout the entire story and it becomes apparent even more when Walter has made a mistake with the money of the family and Beneatha is only worried about her school money. I like that she is determined to be something in life but her selfish characteristics take away from anything positive that may remain in her. I also like that she is prideful of her heritage, something that would be hard for me to do when African-Americans were constantly ridiculed because of their skin color. How can you be proud of something that so many people dislike?

A Raisin in the Sun- Blog 1

             My favorite work from AP Lit so far is A Raisin in the Sun, a play about an African-American family living in Southern Chicago, by Lorraine Hansberry. As we begin this play, there is a distinct poem that bring attention to the meaning of the poem. An author is very precise and knowledgeable about his placement and structure of the play. It is to my understanding that the reason for the poem being placed at the beginning of the play is so that we have in mind that this play is about this family's dream and how it is put off. It all makes sense to me! In the poem, we are asked if a dream deferred (an ambition which is put off) is like a raisin in the sun. Is a put off ambition dried up so much that it looses its value? In the play, this is what happens to the family's dreams of becoming something better. It is put off for so long that it takes the family so long for them to make a change. It becomes hard, just like a dried up grape becomes hard. The raisin still has value and nutrition, as does the dream of the Younger family to become a better people. As time passes, that raisin becomes drier and drier, just as the dream of the Younger becomes drier and drier as time passes. It is harder because nothing happens and all they can do is wait. I believe that the poem's metaphoric title and the storyline of the play match perfectly.