The Rainbow Never Tells Me

The rainbow never tells me
The rainbow never tells me
That gust and storm are by,
Yet is she more convincing Than Philosophy.

My flowers turn from Forums --
Yet eloquent declare What Cato couldn't prove me Except the birds were here.

- Emily Dickinson

When I first read this poem, I didn't really understand it, but after reading it over again and really concentrating, I liked it. The first stanza is my favorite, the second stanza is harder to understand. I think she's saying that there is more to rainbows than what we see.

ALMOST DONE!!

I am pretty excited about this semester ending! It's been...fun, but I am so ready for summer. I wasn't so sure about this class in the beginning. It was better then I expected, but I definitly rather sit in a class than have an online class. A class motivates me more than the computer does. It was definitly a learning experience. I enjoyed some of the books as well and the poems weren't bad at all! I think the blog was the funnest part for me. I liked setting it up and making it look how I wanted it to. My least favorite part was group discussions!

Barn Burning Morals.

Barn Burning was about a man that burnt down someone's barn to get back at him for not fixing the fence after he had warned him and provided that man with all the materials he would have needed to fix the fence. The man's pig got out once again, so Abner burnt down his barn. Was this right? No, people can't go running around burning barns down to prove their point. No one would have a barn left, plus it is also endangering many people. Should the man have repaired his fence? Yes. This whole story and reason for burning the barn down was ridiculous. But, my favorite part was when the little boy had proved that one can learn right from wrong even when growing up with people that make bad life choices.

Winter Dreams

I really liked Dexter in F. Scoot Fitzgerald's novel Winter Dreams. Dexter was a smart boy who always took chances. He didn't have many regrets and he didn't stop to think what if. He trusted himself enough to know that whatever he did, he would be good at it. His only downfall was he fell in love with a girl that isn't one to settle down and stick with one guy.

BARN BURNING!!!

William Faulkner's Barn Burning; in this novel, the young boy, Colonel Sartris was my favorite character. Despite growing up with an immature father that had poor manners, he had a good heart. He wanted to be proud of his father but couldn't be because Abner went around burning barns to prove his point once he didn't get his way. Abner didn't know right from wrong, he was arrogant, but somehow the little boy learned right from wrong and tried to do the right thing. He was brave and strong in my eyes.

Every Day Use

Alicia Walker's Every Day Use was about three women from a family that have gone through a hard time. The novel tells how each of them cope and look at life. This was definitly not one of my favorite novels that I have read. I found it confusing and hard to read. I couldn't pick out a theme.

My least favorite character was Dee. She talked down to Maggie and acted as if she was better then her and Mama. Dee felt that they should get out and make something of themselves. That may be true but she went about it all wrong.

I liked Maggie the most. She was happy and understood life way more than what Dee gave her credit for. In the end, Maggie smiled a real smile. I may be wrong but I think she was smiling because she knew she out smarted Dee.

STELLA!!!!

"STELLA!! STELLLLA!!! I want my baby!"

Stan and his friends got a little drunk and rowdy while playing poker. Stan may have had a drink, but does that give him a right to push around his wife? Should Stella have went back to him everytime?

There is no excuse for violence in the house, Stan should never have pushed her around or anything. Stan needed to work on his anger problems. I can feel for Stella becuase I know how hard it is to leave someone you love, especially when you do no think that it is bad. But, Stella needs to understand that it could get worse overtime.

Poor Emily

William Folkners' A Rose for Emily.

Was Emily really poor? Could she have helped herself? Did the people of the town really care about her and want her to be happy or did they secretly want her to be miserable?

Emily was a sad women that was crazy, no one said it or avoided that subject, but after her father died, she was crazy. She never left the house and never spoke to hardly anyone. She had one love and when he died she never spoke about it to anyone she left him in the room so she could continue to be with him. The town people were more noisy than anything. They were curious of her house and money that is why many of them went to the funeral. Yes, I believe she was poor because she had no friends, but I also believe that was her own doing. She could have had many friends if she tried.

No Difference

Small as a peanut,
Big as a giant,
We're all the same size
when we turn off the light.

Rich as a sultan,
poor as a mite,
we're all worth the same
when we turn off the light.

Red, black or orange,
Yello or white,
We all look the same
When we turn off the light.

So maybe the way
To make everything right
Is for God to just reach out
And turn off the light!

-Shel Silverstein
(this isn't American Literature, but it's one of my favorites.)

The adventures of Tom & Huck and my childhood.

I'm not a huge fan of American Literature. I really do like reading Mark Twain though. His books are always full of adventure and mischevious which reminds me of my brother and I growing up. In the adventures of Tom and Huck the boys were always getting into trouble which is how my brother and I were. We would try to run off and find a bunch of ways to get out of doing chores. We would also torcher each other kind of how Tom would tortue his little brother Sid. We didn't have a huge issue of racism and never dealt with slaves, since slavery is now illegal. Mark Twain has a lot of imagery to explain whats going on. He is probably my favorite American Literature authors.

don't judge a book by its cover.

I won't lie, when I first looked at The Great Gatsby, I thought it was going to be really dumb. The cover of my book that I got from the Library has a face looking at a city. I thought it was going to be really weird and I was not looking forward to reading it, at all, but I was happy that it was semi short. In the first paragraph, I read "when you feel like critizing any one, Just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." I really like that, and took it to heart. I'm not going to lie and say I've never talked bad about someone, my friends and I have a bad habit of it, along with everyone else in the world. Hearing this, really made me think about everything in a new way. I'm not very far along in the book but, so far it isn't too bad!

Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin, has been one of my favorite authors of American Literature. I really like her novel The Storm and At the Cadian Ball. It was about a woman and her family. There is a lot of adultery in these two novels. The Storm is a sequel to At the Cadian Ball. Adultery is committed bewtween to people in which the marriend woman cheats on her husband with a married man. Often wonder if Chopin is for or against adultery. I think she writes about it to show how common it really is and that it often goes unnoticed. In this novel, both people get away with cheating. Which often happens in today's society with some people.

Poetry

Last week's pod of Poetry was quite interesting. I am not normally a big fan of it.I prefer to read novels. In a novel you can always tell the meaning of the story. In a poem, you often have to make your own theory of what the poem is about. I like novels where it is right before your eyes. Out of the poem section, my favorite poet was Jack Frost. He had a way with words!

Mark Twain and the "N' word.

I never really liked reading stories that are hard to read, but Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Fin was really good. The dialect was sometimes hard to read, but it made the book so much better, being written in their dialect instead of ours. Now people are saying that Mark Twain uses the "N" word to much and they want to take it out. I feel that this would be ruining a classic novel. Back then, that is how people spoke. It may be defensive now, but people have to realize that, that is how they spoke and it is just a novel. Mark Twain used dialect to distinguish what kind of people they were. The less educated had a different dialect and you could tell. I feel that if you were to change the dialect it would take it away. What do you think?