Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

My initial reaction to the movie is highly unfavorable. In my opinion, it is extremely gruesome and unnecessarily vulgar. As I understand, the movie was considerably popular during the time of its inception and that it is still considered a ‘cult classic.’ Despite its popularity, as a public service, I warn the squeamish, as many scenes in the film made my stomach turn. After giving some more thought to the film, I realized that it was more socially relevant than I had originally given it credit for. The many critiques contained in the film were very pertinent to the social and political atmosphere during the time.
The film began with the quote: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” This is a very insightful statement. One meaning that could be attributed to this statement is the abuse of mind altering substances such as alcohol and narcotics in order to escape the everyday pain of being human. This take on the quote sympathizes more with the abuser. However another way to look at the quote is that drug users are using drugs to escape their realities and responsibilities and in this, they become subhuman. There are many examples of the main characters making beasts of themselves. For example, at one point they are checking into the hotel and scaring the other guests as they are out of their right minds. They also trash their hotel room and when they leave it looks as though some ferocious beasts have wreaked havoc on the room (they leave blood on the walls, bodily excretions, a pool of water across the entire room). Another way they make beasts out of themselves is by constantly mentally removing themselves from other humans. They interacted with other humans much in the same way that animals do…they were present but in a sense they were subhuman due to their inability to communicate with anyone. Their actions, as are the actions of any drug addict or alcoholic, are merely temporary. Using illegal drugs to treat their problems was like putting a band-aid on staff infection during its beginning stages. Sure, the band-aid will cover the small mark, but the infection is bound to spread and the small bandage will no longer be able to conceal the problem. In their case, drugs were only a concealer to issues that were much larger than their figurative “band-aid.” Once they come down from that weekend-long high that they were on, all of their problems (in addition to the many problems that they made for themselves while intoxicated) will all be waiting on them. So, no, drugs did not relieve the pain of being a man.

The Importance of being Earnest

Like a number of our short stories, The Importance of Being Earnest is overly concerned with the issue of identity. Should we take Wilde's discussion of identity seriously, or does his humor conceal critical ideas regarding how we know who we are?
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I enjoyed reading The Importance of Being Earnest. The wit and sarcasm behind many of the ideas is what kept me interested throughout.

I do not think that Wilde’s humor conceals critical ideas. I think (much like Homer’s Iliad and Milton’s Paradise Lost) that Oscar Wilde expresses very hot-button issues in his work. In the same way that these epic poems had to have relatively concealed messages in order to be permitted, The Importance of Being Earnest was likely written in the way that it was so that it could be published and reasonably shared with his contemporaries.

For example, consider Jack and Algernon and the schemes that they devised for themselves in order to be free from the constraints of society. They both created separate lives for themselves early on in Act I and they maintained this level of dishonesty and added to the web of lies throughout the entire play. To watch this was very entertaining but it also spoke volumes to the theme of identity. These two men were unhappy living as the men they were supposed to be and so they found new ways to re-create themselves and live out their fantasy lives. This is a very introspective analysis on identity, even among modern-day analyses. Although this book is full of humor, the theme of identity often outshines this wit and satire and gives a very in-depth rendering to the concept of identity and reinventing oneself.

Taming the Shrew

“Thus in plain terms: your father hath consentedThat you shall be my wife, your dowry ‘greed on,And will you, nill you, I will marry you.Now Kate, I am a husband for your turn,For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty— Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well— Thou must be married to no man but me,For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,And bring you from a wild Kate to a KateConformable as other household Kates.Here comes your father. Never make denial.I must and will have Katherine to my wife.”
(II.i.261–272)

The relationship between Petruccio and Katherine is one that generates unexpected humor many times throughout the play. The above words are the words of Petruccio, expressing his intention to “tame” his love interest. At the beginning of the play, Kate has an awful temper and terrible manners. She is absolutely against her expected gender roles and the way that she is supposed to aim to please her suitors and admire her father. Given her difficult and abrasive nature, Petruccio’s trying to mold her into a gentle maiden is often humorous.

For example, in Act II, Scene I, Petruccio and Katherine get into a battle of wits. The sharply call each other names and sarcastically make fun of each other until they’re blue in the face. When Katherine asks Petruccio where he learned all this “goodly speech” and when he says that it is from his “mother-wit” she responds “a witty mother! witless her son.” Petruccio also makes fun of her abbreviated name “Kate,” and adds insult to injury by calling her the “prettiest Kate in Christendom.”
Oddly enough, the culmination of all of these arguments is a marriage between the two of them. The play ends with Katherine’s expressing her complete turnaround and the new viewpoint that she has regarding men.

The Lottery (and not the money-winning kind)

This is a great story! Although, I wonder why people would live in a town that participates in a selection act such as this, I think that the moral lessons are of high importance. I have read this story before and so I pretty much knew what was coming from the beginning. Given that, I just wanted everyone in the story to run away from town. I wondered how it could be that for almost 80 years this has been going on in a town and with no contest. But then I thought of the unfair rituals and policies that occur in many communities across the country that have gone unchallenged for even longer.

“The Lottery” begins with a description of the story’s setting. The reader is told that there is an annual impending annual event in this small village and that it is taking place during the summertime. The two men who come in to initialize this annual “lottery” process are Mr. Summer and Mr. Graves [a foreshadowing of the approaching summer graves (tombs/death) or grave (solemn/ serious/ unfortunate outcome) summers.] It is also worth mentioning that the person who forgets to show up is named Clean (perhaps foreshadowing a dirty/ tainted outcome.)The “breathless pause[s]” and people holding their breath due to nerves can also signify lifelessness and the lingering death in the nearby future. When Bill Hutchinson draws the paper, based on his wife Tessie’s reaction, it is finally clear to the reader that it is not a good thing to be the one to draw it. Tessie continually cries about how unfair it was and becomes overly protective. The fact that she is so upset about it leads the reader to believe that she may bear the brunt of this lottery.

The immediate lesson that seems to be reflected in this is that people who go against the grain have to suffer the most. The only one who was affected by this was Tessie (even her family seemed not to be fazed by Tessie’s being selected to be killed.) She was against it and she thought that it was unfair. The conversation that takes place between Mrs. Adams and Old Man Warner further shows that this piece was written to inspire the reader to stand for what they believed in. Mrs. Adams tells him that other villages are giving up the lottery tradition and Old Man Warner says that they are crazy for giving it up—solely based on the fact that it is tradition.
Another lesson that the author may be trying to give is that goes contrary to the Puritan work ethic. Tessie seemed to have been trying to do things right, she had a good conscience and a large family, however she was still the one to be killed. The concept of a lottery determining one’s fate seems to imply that individuals have no control over their lives.

Bernice is Crazy!

This is a great story! It definitely made me think twice about being mean to my annoying cousins. Before she becomes vindictive and attacks her cousin, I sympathize with Marjorie because I can definitely recall a time or two when my family members came to town and it ruined my social life. Family is family, and even though you love them, you don’t have to like them all the time. Although I sympathize with Marjorie, Bernice’s character is fun too. I think that it’s really funny that she chops her cousin’s hair off at the end.
This story is in a sense Fitzgerald’s rendition of the ugly duckling. Bernice (being the homely and anti-social woman that she was) once introduced to Marjorie’s friends and suitors becomes very well liked and even admired by some of them. Bernice agreed to let Marjorie change her into someone who would be better received by the other young people. Bernice changed in many ways, and I think that this is an analysis of identity that implies that it can be fickle and ever changing. In the beginning of the story, Bernice seemed very quiet and nice, but in the end she acts in a very spiteful manner—cutting her cousin’s hair off and tossing it onto the porch of one of her cousin’s suitors. Fitzgerald’s take on identity is that identity isn’t really what defines a person because it is changeable.

Updike's "A&P"

I read Updike's “A & P.” I laughed at the end of the story. I’m sure that is not the reaction that he wanted to get from his reader. But I’m no average art critic or media/ literature connoisseur (I laughed watching Saw II). I guess to some degree, I felt bad for the narrator because he quit his job for no reason. He lost his job and he didn’t get the girls. Dag. The things men do to try and impress us! *Sigh.* If they only knew, we don’t want guys without jobs, which means that even if the girls would have saw him quit his job they would not given him the time of day. No girl wants a broke brotha. PS: This story was boring. It was waaay too descriptive and a there lot of pointless jargon. Updike needs to take a lesson from Dickinson and Hughes, simplicity and clarity make for a way better read. Perhaps I should dig a little deeper into this short story, I’m sure that there is something worthwhile; I just didn’t catch it the first time.


The reader doesn’t get too much insight on the details of the narrator’s life. Besides the fact that he is eighteen years old, that he has a family and that he works at A & P, the reader has little to work with. What the reader does know; however, is that the narrator quits his job. He does this in hopes that he will get the attention of the girls who inspired him to quit and so on the surface, it seems as if the narrator from "A & P" quit his job to impress them. However, a closer look at what happens suggests otherwise. In the last sentence of the story, the narrator says that his “stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” This implies that since he now understands injustice and realizes that he must stand up for what is right; he accepts the reality that his life will be a lot harder now that he has quit his job in the name of justice. The type of transformation that can be observed in this narrator is shown in the narrator is most apparent in his attitude towards the three girls in the story. In the beginning he describes them as objects and is just an objective observer of them. He labels them “the fat one,” “the chunky one,” etc. This objectivity somehow warps into an affinity for them; the narrator refers to them as “his girls.” The fact that the narrator began the story with “You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar?)” but ends up quitting his job to stand up for these girls, demonstrates a genuine transformation.

E.E. Cummings Form & Meaning

I really enjoyed the selected poems by E.E. Cummings that we were assigned to read. Not to sound like a freak or anything, but I love to read sex poems (especially when they’re tasteful). In my opinion, Cummings is the great at doing this—that is, writing poems that are overtly sexual but not quite Playboy or King Pen poems.

E. E. Cummings’ use of form in these poems definitely adds to the meaning of them—specifically the hypersexual tones in them. In “She Being Brand” Cummings divides his stanzas in a way that reflects the speed of the actions in the poem. For example, if he is describing something that is happening at a slower pace, he places that section of the poem in a single line, thus forcing the reader to actually slow down in reading the poem. This extraction of the poem illustrates this.

“slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slow-ly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-oh and her gears being inA 1 shape passed
from low throughsecond-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity.”

Cummings also uses form in “I Like My Body When it is with Yours” in order to add to the meaning of the poem. The final two lines being separated from the rest of the poem really emphasizes the point that this is definitely about having enjoying the sexual company of the poem’s subject. When reading this aloud, the breaks also make the reader slow down in reading, thus also hinting at the sexual context of his words. The bulk of the poem is a relatively subtle expression of how wonderful the speaker feels when his body is with the subject’s body and this is all in one stanza with no breaks. The final two lines are separated with breaks, reading “and possibly I like the thrill/ of under me you so quite new,” causing the reader to speak slower and put emphasis on the sexual climax of the poem.

ENGL200 Blog #1

What is the relationship between Hughes's "I, Too" and Whitman's "I Hear America Singing"? How does Hughes respond to Whitman's conception of America?

1.) Langston Hughes’ poem “Dream Deferred” has always been one of my favorites. Reading this poem gives me a sense of pride in, and connectedness to, African-Americans living during the Harlem Renaissance (and African slaves in America). I do not get the same sense of inspiration and awe from the Whitman poem. Though aesthetically pleasing, “I Hear America Singing” is boring and unrealistic.

2.) The most obvious relationship between the Hughes’ “Dream Deferred” and Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” is of a contrasting nature. Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman were in two very different positions in life; they therefore wrote poems from two very contrasting perspectives. Whitman wrote “I Hear America Singing” with the opinion that people in America are generally content, have realized their potential, and are living their dreams. The characters in this poem represent men and women from all walks of life singing, in a sense expressing their satisfaction with the American experience.

Hughes is on the opposite side of the spectrum. He expresses the iniquity that embodies the living experience of many Americans. While the men and women in Whitman’s poem were living happily, “each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else…with open mouths their strong melodious songs,” those living in Hughes’ poem were forced to wait on their unrealized dreams and potential. Walt Whitman describes the condition of American citizens as ideal; however, Hughes goes up against this notion of the “Protestant work ethic” by presenting the reader with his version of the story, one that includes struggle and opposition to a dream.

In addition to this contrast, Hughes also presents a different perspective on work in America. He alludes to festering sores, sagging heavy loads, drying up in the sun…all of which could very well be references to the experience that many field hands (specifically African slaves) would have been experiencing during Hughes’ lifetime. Walt Whitman didn’t mention those aspects of work, only the singing that took place (which according to Hughes and those who were experiencing the same thing was a false and unrealistic expression of complacency).

The “other” texts that I suggest we read are writings that originate with the ancient African slaves’ tradition of storytelling. The tales of the slave trickster (and the history of them) is very intriguing. African American folktales that originated during slavery in America speak volumes of the resiliency and wittiness of the captive slaves. These would be very relevant due to the unmistakable impact that literature that originated in West Africa has had on American literature (specifically that which has been historically contributed by African Americans.”One popular folktale from this era is called “The Tar Baby.” Another is “Why Mosquitoes Buzz in Peoples’ Ears,” and there is also “Anansi, the Spider.” These folktales will probably be familiar to many in the class, but I think that their significance (both modern-day and historical relevance) will be something new to the most in the class. Also, I think that it would be interesting to engage in this reading in a manner that is native to the West African custom.
“Many of the folk tales have musical participation by the audience that adds much to the tale. It is common for the audience to answer questions aloud, to clap their hands in rhythm to word repetition (chorus), and to join in the chorus….Some of the tales have a repetitive quality to them (such as, the same chorus may be used repeatedly) because the audience wants to enjoy the story and participate in the experience for as long as possible.”
I would be interested in adding music to this and having the entire class participate in this in some way. There are many other stories of African trickster tales that became part of the American slaves’ oral tradition and eventually part of present-day mainstream America.