Once upon a Time Revised Intro

        Nadine Gordimer portrays the married couple in Once Upon a Time  as alert and overprotective people who try to turn their home into a safer place. Gordimer portrays them this way to warn others against resorting to extremes because the results may be catastrophic. At first, they only seem cautious  when it comes to their security.  As the story progresses however, they start to make more drastic changes in their home and turn it into an uncomfortable place to live in. Towards the end, their need for protection makes them paranoid and causes the death of their own child.

 

I. When the couple is introduced, they seem wary about their security just like anyone else might be, and they have the basic means of caution.

a) " They had a housemaid who was absolutely trustworthy and an itinerant gardener who was highly     recommended by the neighbors. 

b) "They were inscribed in a medical benefit society, their pet dog was licensed, they were insured against fire, flood damage and theft , and subscribed to the local Neighborhood Watch."

II. Soon enough, the couple begins to worry more and more about their safety and they begin to install bothersome mechanisms in their house.

a) "So from every window and door in the house where they were living happily ever after they now saw the trees and sky through bars"

b)When the little boy's pet cat tried to climb in by the fanlight to keep him company in his little bed at night, as it customarily had done, it set off the alarm keening through the house."

III. The couple's need for protection turns into an obsession and their son suffers the consequences of their actions.

a) " Next day a gang of workmen came and stretched the razor-bladed coils all around the walls of the house"

b)"the bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the security coil with saws, wire-cutters, choppers, and they carried it the man, the wife, the hysterical trusted housemaid and the weeping gardener into the house."

 

Short Works Intro

          Characterization is the way an author depicts a character, and it allows us to understand the actions of those characters. The married couple in Once Upon a Time believe that their neighborhood is dangerous and in order to ensure their safety, they isolate themselves from the outside. Nadine Gordimer portrays the married couple as alert and overprotective people who try to turn their home into a safer place. Gordimer portrays them this way to warn others against resorting to extremes because the results may be catastrophic.

 

 

Dreaming of the past

        In Robinsons poem, Miniver is a character that wishes he had been born in a different time period and feels like he doesn't belong. 

As I read the poem, the first thing I noticed was that Miniver Cheevy is a pretty odd name for a character. The meaning behind it actually gives us an insight on the character himself. The word Minniver is the name of a type of fur used in the old days for robes of nobles, and the word cheevy is similar to the word cheval which means horse in french. This shows us that perhaps Minniver sees himself as a noble wearing those fine robes, and also as a knight. Unfortunately for him, that is not the case. 

Miniver spends most of  his time "[dreaming] and [resting] from his labors". He sits around wondering how it would be like if he had been born in the "days of old". He chooses to blame faith for his situation instead of doing something to make his life better.

What Robinson is trying to tell us through her character is that we must not pity ourselves if we are feeling miserable; instead we must do something about it and appreciate what we do have.

Isn't it Ironic?

      In Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy, the irony starts right off the bat beginning with the title. When seeing the word Barbie one immediately thinks of an image of perfection, and this creates expectations that will not be met.
      The poem starts off with the author setting up a normal,young, and beautiful girl like any other. This image immediately changes in what the author calls,"the magic of puberty,but of course there is nothing magical about it because the girl gets criticized for having a big nose and fat legs. This is an example of verbal irony because the author doesn't mean what she's saying.
      Furthermore, the author goes on to say some good qualities about the girl, "She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity."This description shows masculine traits that don't fit the conventional ideas of beauty. People told her to change, but eventually she grew tired of not being accepted and, "so she cut up her nose and her legs and offered them up." meaning she took her own life.
     It's not until she's lying in her casket that people call her pretty, and the poem ends saying that it is a happy ending, presumably because the girl got what she wanted and was finally seen by others as pretty. But do they really mean it? Do they truly see her beauty now that it is too late or do they simply feel bad for her and feel the need to say it? Yet again more irony.
     I believe that the author uses irony in her poem to create exaggeration and really stress the point of how far you have to go to be accepted by others.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

         Hello, my name is Erika and in my blog I will write about my ideas and thoughts about literature, and by doing so I hope to discover more about myself as a reader and a writer. 

        Without a doubt, my favorite summer text was The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin. As I read it, I tried to imagine the perfect city that the author was describing, but towards the middle of the story the author shattered the image of perfection that I had created in my head. When she mentioned the poor child that was kept in the basement, I was intrigued by the fact that the citizens of Omelas truly believed that their happiness depended on the misery of that boy. I also found it very inhumane that although everybody knew that the boy was in there, and they even went to see him, they didn't do anything to help him. This aroused a strong feeling of impotence inside of me because the child didn't deserve to be in that situation.

        It was a bit of a comfort that at least some of the people that went to see the child just couldn't deal with it, and to find out that, "They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go to is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness." The people who leave are trying to escape the unfairness of what the city is doing to the child. Still, instead of helping the child or taking him with them, they simply leave and think they are doing the right thing by not being part of it anymore. They leave towards a mysterious place that they hope won't involve the suffering of others.