The Invisible Man

Yet another book about blacks in earlier years that got me thinking yet again. This man claims to be invisible, which he's really not, saying he lives underground, and burns light bulbs like crazy while listening to blues on record. All this just makes me think that he's just crazy. But then the story reads on to say how he is actually a very intellegent writer & how he gets a scholarship to college from his writing.

After he goes to college a lot of weird shit happens to him like when he takes Norton around the college or when he was in the hospital. Most of it happend because he was black & the people that did the things to him where white. Like I said in Douglas' Narrative, I knew that in the past blacks were treated very poorly, but I had no idea about all the weird things that they went through other than the issues of slavery & racism in schools.

House of Spirits & Ideology

This book was a hard read for me. It skipped around a lot & had different people kind of narrating at different times. Having a.d.d. doesn't help because I lost focus a lot and got annoyed very easily.

There is a quote in the beginning of the book that I absolutely loved. "Psst! Father Restrepo! If that story about hell is a lie, we're all fucked, aren't we ..." It really isn't something that a regular child would say, especially in church, but it was funny all the same. It was embarrassing to her politically popular father & it could've worked against him, but it really had no effect.

There are many definitions of IDEOLOGY, but in the Toolbox, the one that puts all the definitions together is "the intertwining beliefs that makes possible certain kinds of cultural consensus or knowledge, but precisely because it is everywhere & nowhere, ideology tends to disappear - so to speak - "into" the things that it makes possible."

When thinking of the House of Spirits & Ideology together, the first thing that comes to mind is Senor del Valle. He was involved in politics. After the 1st quote above, Senor del Valle was more worried about what people would think of him, his family, & his life, rather than why his daughter said that or a punishment. Ideology in the Toolbox is used to "cover over a social or political problem".

Antigone

So ... this book is your typical Greek story. There is death, love, and war. The big controversy of the story is due to the fact that Antigone's brother is dead & she has to make a decision about his burrial. Overall it reads like anyother Greek story ... which is boring. Every other person I asked in class had read this or atleast heard of it before this class. Myself on the other hand, had not. Maybe it was because I came from a small town? But the more I thought about it, my english teacher in 9th grade taught us nothing but Greek mythology & we read some other stories, so maybe it really wasn't such a good story after all & maybe it didn't deserve all the hype that it's gotten.

Gregorio Cortez

I don't know what to think about this story. I know it's supposed to be a true story & that he was looked up to as a heroic figure ... but was he looked up to as a religious or semi-religious figure too? There is a passage in this story that makes me think he was supposed to be looked upon as such and another passage that has to do with religion.

"Now there are 3 saints that the Americans are especially fond of - Santa Anna, San Jacinto, & Sanavabiche - & of the 3 it is Sanavabiche that they prey to most."

"He turned & walked back until he came to a place called Goliad, where he met 11 Mexicans, & among them there was 1 that called himself his friend. This man was a vaquero named El Teco, but Judas should have been his name.

When Gregorio Cortez saw what El Teco had done, he smiled again & said to him 'Teco, a man can only be what God made him. May you enjoy your reward.'"

Did they think of Cortez as a Jesus figure in Mexico?

Blood Wedding

"Knives. Knives. Cursed be all knives, and the scoundrel who invented them. And guns and pistols and the smallest little knife - and even hoes and pitchforks. Everything that can slice a man's body. A handsome man, full of young life, who goes out to the vineyards or to his own olive groves - his own because he's inherited them ... and then that man doesn't come back. Or if he does come back it's only for someone to cover him over with a palm or a plate of rock salt so he won't bloat. I don't know how you dare carry a knife in your body - or how I let this serpent stay in the chest."

Yeah so this is what the mother says to her son in the beginning of the story because of what happened to her husband & her other son. She is very protective obviously, but in the end it doesn't seem so, or atleast as much so. She tells him to run after the man who just stole his wife, partially knowing that he most likely wouldn't come back due to who the other man was.

In the movie we watched, i felt as if the mother was protective, but even more ... almost to the point of obsession. It was really weird to me but maybe it was just the directors take on the relationship.

The Awakening

I really didn't like this book. Although it was short, it took me a long time to get into actually reading it long enough to finish it.

It seemed as though all this book was about was a woman that was unhappy in pretty much every aspect of her life to eventually kill herself in the end. She was unhappy in her marriage (even though it seemed as though he was cheating anyway), she was being controlled in a way by her husband that was never around, she had children that she really wasn't a mother to because she had someone else to do it, she was followed by men that ended up loving her but as soon as she got bored with them she wouldn't want to be with them anymore. Pretty much she had no one to blame in her life for being unhappy other than herself.

Yellow Wallpaper

This story was one of the stranger stories I've read in a long time. I don't know what was more strange about it though ... the fact that the family had total control over her everyday life or how mental she turned out because of it.

"it is like a woman stooping down & creeping about behind that pattern." ... "the woman behind it is as plain as can be." ... "By daylight she is subdued, quiet."

It's just like her. She can't do anything by day but by night she is semi able to do what she wants. She isn't under watch because everyone is asleep so she moves about almost without anyone knowing other than if someone wakes.

I don't understand the ending either because nothing is really explained about why the husband faints. Is it because when he walks in the room is torn apart because she was trying to get to the woman or was she just acting mental maybe trying to kill herself?

Douglas' Narrative

I thought that "Narrative" was a very powerful writing for more than one reason. Douglas has a very strong standpoint on what exactly went on in the times of slavery & it is conveyed in such a way that even if you were to think that his writings were fictional, you'd still have a hard time believing so by the end.

I like how he got into such detail with the things that happened to him in his years as a slave but also had the decency to keep some things with-held (as in names of people that had helped him). He also was very into his ability to be able to read & write & telling how he got to be able to do those things as it was almost "illegal" to be taught to do so in those times.

"...he was only able to buy one slave; and shocking as is the fact, he bought her, as he said for a BREEDER. ... After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel Harrison, to live with him one year; and him to be used to fasten up with her every night! The result was, that, at the end of the year, the miserable woman gave birth to twins." - Is this really how the poorer slave owners came to own many slaves over the years or did the few slaves that they did have make them enough propfit to eventually buy more?