Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Homework for Feb 17th

In the readings for this week, I found that I really enjoyed "Greasy Lake" but, after much thought, I decided my favorite was "Milk". I really enjoyed the relationship he had with his wife, Annie and how they were very honest with each other. I was actually a little confused at what he meant towards the beginning when he said "We had grown up together" in describing their relationship. he did list off a bunch of things they had done together but it wasn't said if he meant that, through those things, they had grown up together or if they had literally grown up throughout childhood together. In my opinion of their relationship it seemed like they had only grown up together through the events they had done together. I only say this because, in my experience, people who grow up close to each other have the most trouble being together romantically and they seemed to be completely understanding to each other. The fact that they understood each other greatly was shown throughout the story like when he grabbed her wrist and dragged her around on a rant and all she had to say about it was "Can I have this back?" in regards to her arm. I know that, while I was reading that particular part, I expected her to flip out and try to get away from him and was surprised when that was her only response. On a side-note, I also wanted to add how I loved the way he described his children, Lee and Bobby. Every time he saw them he always seemed to describe them as Angelic and wonderful no matter what they were doing.

My other favorite aspect of this writing was basically the main point of the story: How the milk cartons with the pictures of missing children had really affected him more than even he understood. It depressed him so much that all those children could be missing and had him hoping desperately that the world wasn't as bad as the Milk carton children made it seem. It even got to the point where he couldn't look at people without imagining what their milk carton would say. On a geeky note, I actually connected a bit with that thought since, after being on facebook for so long, sometimes my thoughts will come to me in third person as if it were my status. Just shows how our minds can get used to something that they automatically follow the pattern. The thing that I found very odd in this story was the reaction his mother and wife had to his reasoning for not wanting his kids' fingerprints taken. He said that the fingerprints were only taken to identify bodies which meant that the only reason to get them was so, if Lee or Bobby were taken and killed, they could be identified. When he said this, I know I felt almost hurt and surprised that that realization had never come to me before but his wife and mom just seemed to shrug it off like nothing. I suppose that maybe they had had the conversation enough that it didn't affect them anymore.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

homework for Feb 12th

The Story I am going to analyze is "Fiesta" from our list to read for Thursday's class. I was happily surprised to find that I was pulled through that story and was actually able to keep it as a pretty fluid thought instead of broken as my reading usually is. If I had to guess, I would say that this was due, in part, to the language and voice used by the narrator and protagonist, Yunior. There were a couple times where I actually laughed a little bit to myself with the honesty and sarcasm (two things that don't usually go together very well but you get it...) he used while he described things like his relationship with his family. It really made his story believable and able to be connected with by the reader since all families have some level of dysfunction in them. Granted, my dad doesn't constantly beat me or my brother as Yunior's does to him and Rafa. The relationships he mentioned like with the aunt "you have to visit", though, was very true to me. Another thing that made me laugh was how he threw up in the van all the time and the family just knew it would happen and weren't phased by it too much anymore. I laughed only because my family has kind of gotten to that point with me in that I get light headed and usually vomit or pass out if I have to get a shot or blood drawn or anything like that. Like Yunior, I don't understand why it happens exactly and I don't want it to. It just does.

One major thing I didn't like about this story was the lack of quotes when people spoke. Every once in a while, I would read over something someone said and not realize I had just read a quote until someone answered it and I didn't understand. I understand that different people write differently and that isn't a big deal but that bothered me a lot.

As I sat here, wondering how to wrap this up, something came to me that I hadn't thought of prior to this. Though he talked about a lot of his family and their faults, he seemed to keep a main idea that he was a part of the family and he wouldn't turn his back on them. I found this to be a great theme since many people can support it. Most everyone can see a lot of faults in their family and, many times, will "not want to be a part of it" or "wish that someone wasn't in the family" but, when it comes down to it, we all will stand up for our family.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Homework for Feb 3rd

Catastrophe was definitely an odd thing to read as well as see. I actually didn't even see much of a point to either but then, there are a lot of great things in the world that have no point so maybe someone else loves it. Oh well...

In seeing the play after reading, there were only a few differences that I really picked up on. One, of course was the difference between a cigar and a flashlight. Those are very different things and it almost seems silly to switch them out. Though, I do kind of like the idea of the flashlight better since it makes the director much more believable. I have never met or heard of a director who has an assistant to light his ever-extinguishing cigar and theatres are definitely dark a lot of times so it makes more sense to me. There were a couple of other slight changes but all and all, I think the two were pretty much the same. It has been shown over countless movies made out of books that it is very difficult to convey what the book makes the reader think of and the readers are usually let down. I think that also happened for this since my imagination showed a different scene than the movie but that's life.