The Dew Breaker

by: Edeidge Danticat

      I read about 4 of these short stories and surprising myself I found many things that I could relate to on a personal level. For instance the way the woman in the first story was so worried about ther father who had gone missing. I felt the same way when my father left my family. Only it would be another fourteen years before I would see him again. 

     In the second short story a Haitian man comes to America to save up money and send for his wife, although it takes 7 years to happen, and he left Haiti the day after they were married. My first wife and I we separated in a similar fashion, where straight off of us both living on the street we both went to Job Corps in Astoria Oregon at the same time and got pregnant while we were there. She completed before I did and went to live with her parents in central Oregon until I was done (about 3 months). After I completed the program they got me a job in Massachusetts of all places, 3000 miles all the way across the country working for an Interior Plaster company. I got a very small apartment while there and had to work much longer than expected to make enough money to bring her and our six month old Daughter out there. when they did arrive I was living with the same guy that I had been since I got there, another Job Corp Graduate from Baltimore, I don't recall his name, but I am sure he experienced quite a shock when they actually got there. Going from living with just another dude to having a full fledged family in the apartment with him. Needless to say it all didn't really pan out and we were all 3 back in Oregon within a year.

     The last one that I read was about woman who was grieving about a child she had lost in the womb, and the broken relationships that followed with her then lover and her mother and father. I do not know of the monumental loss that she experienced, but I do know about not wanting to call home for extended periods of time because I was feeling inadequate. The woman in the story was puropsely neglecting to call her parents, and I did the same thing while I was on my own at the start. I kew my mom worried for me because I was a seventeen year old out on the streets, but I just did not want to hear about it all the time, so I barely called. I have matured much since those days and have a much better relationship with my mother.

SiddHartha

by: Herman Hesse

     This week we were to discuss a passage, scene or segment of the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. We were to focus on our own understanding of the text and comment on whatever personal connections we can reach within the text. I chose the passage where Siddhartha is questioning himself and the teachings he is getting from family and The wise Brahmans.

     As I read this section, I became increasingly aware of all of the questions that were being narrated. It was one question after another doubting what he was being taught by his Father and the Brahman. This passage takes place just as Siddhartha is about to begin a great journey to Nirvana, the Ultimate Enlightenment. I to had many questions when I was a young man, and it seems so long ago now. At the age of sixteen I was questioning everything around me, from the drunken ways of my stepfather, to what I had to learn in school. I always felt as if there was more out there, and although I did not have a deeply religious or spiritual means to my journey of backpacking around the country for three years, I still reached what I would think of as my own personal Nirvana because I was just existing with the flow of things happening around me. If someone had said "Hey, let's go to Venice Beach today," and I was in Portland Oregon, my answer would have been yes. 

     

     In this short passage Siddhartha commits himself to the belief that everyone around him has nothing left to teach him, and in this I can relate with remembrances of my youth on a personal level if not a spiritual one.

examining

Pride and Prejudice

     I found the book to be very difficult to pay attention to, mostly due to the content. It is just not my kind of story. It was about People of means... trying to raise their means thru marriage and matchmaking by mothers of their daughters to suitors who they seem fit. There is some revelation to be had in that the most proud is actually turns out to be the most helpful reenforcing the old adage that you cannot read a book by the cover.

     I am not that interested in adult romance, but I did read it because I had to for the class. 

Why is the Great Gatsby a Literary work...

     It's hard to imagine a more twisted tale of excess than through the eyes of  Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby. In the story we get to see how a man of lessor means view those with money and power, both fresh off the millionaires truck and those whom have lived there whole live never knowing want. It seems to me that this book is the ideal description of what an "american" piece of literature should be if not just a literary work. It has the foreboding to younger generations about the folly of excess; much the same as any other work of literary folk  tales would. It is clearly a tragedy in the utmost. 

     I was upset reading most of this story, wondering how people of such means found no better use of thier time than affairs, drinking, parties, and murder. I can not safely say for certain that I would not be corrupted given the same wealth as Gatsby, but I would damned sure try to live longer. It is my ultimate ignorant opinion that this is indeed a literary masterpiece that went unnoticed for far to lang. I am glad to have read it and look forward to my next book to post about.