Tuesday, November 27, 2012
A Taste for Literature
During the past three months, we've considered mostly essays and only a few short stories. However, as I mentioned last week, we will now be shifting to focus almost exclusively on literature. Given the works we've considered thus far, which is your favorite short story or novella and why? Please defend your reasoning in 7-10 thoughtful sentences.
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I have very much enjoyed reading and discussing Kafka's novella, "The Metamorphosis." Although the story was somewhat different than stories I'm used to reading, the language style and writing were very interesting. I also enjoyed trying to keep up with the intricate plot and coming up with questions about the story. I have especially enjoyed our discussions on this tough piece of literature and feel like our class's discussions as a whole have improved because of it. Many great questions have been asked and many great points made. The connections to other topics that have been brought to the table about this story, such as those about the apple, have been very interesting as well. I hope to continue to discuss this story and look forward to the potential of writing an essay about it!
ReplyDeleteI forgot - I also very much enjoyed "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Despite its dark plot, the story was written in a very engaging and interesting manner. As others have mentioned, it was very thought-provoking.
DeleteMy favorite short story or novella that we have read so far is "A Good Man is Hard to Find". This is because the story line, while dark, was very clever and it kept me interested the whole time. Not one scene was unnecessarily put in the story to fill up space. The ending was great because it followed the short story's tendency to end with a twist. The writing style was easy to understand, yet figurative language was not neglected. This story is also very thought provoking. For example, it made me think about how life can be very unpredictable, and where you are at a certain time can make a huge difference. I am very interested to see what everyone's favorite story was.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite short story that we analyzed and discussed was "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." The reason that this story is my favorite out of those we have read is primarily because of the discussion it sparked in our class. The story itself was very engaging, not only because of the bizarre plot, but also because of the descriptive wording of the story. The discussion that we had in class about this story was one of my favorite ones because of all of the possible meanings and metaphors of the story. The fact that our class partially disagreed on the issue of whether the angel in the story was a burden or a blessing also added to the overall success of the discussion. I, personally, was also able to read the deeper meaning of the story from many different angles, which made reading the story and writing a harkness log on it fun for me. I read the story much like I read fiction on my own time, but with the added component of having to analyze it that I really enjoyed.I hope that when we read literature, we are able to read absurd fiction stories like "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" as well.
ReplyDeleteThe short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, is my favorite piece of literature so far. I enjoyed the interesting way it showed a complex story about an angel and a family, while reconsidering the importance of a holy figure and giving it a whole new image. Furthermore, the fact that so many wishes and cures for illnesses and blemishes were expected of the angel by the family and townspeople, which he could not fulfill, was peculiar. It’s a well thought out story and I liked it’s organization, because it was easy to track the characters journey and how they evolved into stronger/weaker characters. The mentioning of misfits/outcast related to how it feels to be unique in the modern day. Something that was also relatable was the desire for money and the extremes we will go to achieve wealth. This was truly a layered story and I figure that if I re-read it in the future I will have a different experience and like it just as much.
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed many of the short stories that we have read, but "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson stood out to me. It is possible that I have chosen this story simply because it is freshest in my mind, but either way, it is a fine piece of literature. I thoroughly enjoy the twisted plot line. Though that sounds crazy, the ideas presented in the story and the ways that we think about tradition are explored in a way that reveals parts of the culture of our society. The text is full of irony and deeper meanings which make reading it a pleasure. I was particularly fond of the irony and meanings of names of the characters such as the "Delacroix" family, "Old Man Warner," and "Mrs. Hutchinson." Shirley Jackson was very clever and put a lot of information into every aspect of this story making it a delightful read, even with such a depressing topic and ending. Shirley Jackson injects meaning into this story in a way that makes it very layered and dimensional. The horrifying ending comes as a huge surprise and only adds to the irony of the story, making it a success.
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed mostly all of the stories that we've read in class so far, but I'd have to say that "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" was my favorite story. This is simply because the author described the angel very much, and I could almost picture the angel in my head. Also, the author left it up to us to decide whether the angel was representing good or evil or something like that. Not many authors do that. I'm not even going to lie. It's really boring when an author tells the whole story without making the readers have to think. I think that if an author wrote a story, then it is made for us to analyze it, and that's what Gabriel Garcia did in this story. I also liked how the author described how the family changed when they found the angel. He was very descriptive and precise about it. This story had almost everything that i look for in a story; descriptive details, important themes, and question being raised by the story.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed many of the short stories that we read this year, but I particularly liked "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. I generally like stories where the ending has something unexpected. In "The lottery", it isn't revealed what the lottery is until the end. I thought this was an interesting technique, especially because of the nonchalant and somewhat excited additude that the characters expressed preceding the drawing of names, which made the reality of what the lottery was all the more surprising and intriguing. I thought Jackson made an interesting statement about society in this story, and there are a lot of hidden things in it that seem to express significance. For example, two of the town leaders are named "Grimm" and "Summers". The characters' personalities were well developed for a short story, especially the woman who "wins" the lottery.
ReplyDeleteThe short story I have enjoyed the most this year is "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." I Enjoyed this story more than the others because it was very abnormal and had a very interesting storyline. This essay was also the most interesting while I was reading it, I followed along in this essay the easiest out of all the essays. The discussion for this essay was also very interesting hearing everyone else's points. This essay, in my opinion, also aroused the best questions and discussion out of all the essays with all of the different point of views. It wasn't like any of the other essays we have read, except The Man Who Sent Rain Clouds, which reminded me of this slightly. I am excited to write my essay about this essay!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite story that we have read thus far is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. To be honest, when I first read it, it was confusing and I did not like the story. I understood it was about a guy who turned into a bug and was disliked by his family, but I did not get much more than that. As our conversations in class progressed however, more and more of the metaphors started to make sense to me and I began to truly understand some of the ways to interpret the book. After I learned what was going on in history at the time this story was written, I thought I knew which of the many interpretations of the story I thought was true. The reason I enjoyed the story so much, was because of the many different interpretation and because of all of the metaphors that were not immediately apparent to a reader. This was not only a fun story to read but it was also one that made me think more than any of the other stories, and that is why I enjoyed The Metamorphosis.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite story we've read was "The Lottery." I read this story last year and the story just seemed so dark and arbitrary, but after reading it again this year it didn't seem as random. I like how the story is almost a little twisted and the ending is so unexpected. I like stories that aren't predictable.I like how this story had a bit more dialogue than the previous stories as well and that it's not only the thoughts of just one person throughout the entire thing. I think the story is really intriguing and has so many things about it that could be discussed into a lot of detail. I can't wait to discuss it more and figure out some of the significances of certain things.
ReplyDeleteOverall, my favorite short story has been James Joyce’s “The Dead.” I quite enjoyed the plotline, and I loved reading about the character Gabriel, about his constantly conflicting emotions towards how he should act versus how he wants to act. His confusedness, awkwardness, and self-identity woes ultimately led him to have his epiphany about the dead, living, and passion, which, along with many other things in the story, generates a multitude of discussion questions and can lead us to many different meanings. Personally, I prefer these intense stories with lots of layers and themes because we can come at the story from all sides and relate each of these interpretations and meanings back to life in general. I am interested to see how “The Dead” discussion will play out.
ReplyDeleteOne of the short stories I particularly enjoyed was "The Bear Came Over The Mountain" by Alice Munro. The overall plot was rather intense (and sad), and the ending was extremely unique. From our discussions, it seems as though the end can be interpreted in two ways: either Grant was reunited with Fiona (more probable but less interesting) or Grant "traded" Fiona to Aubrey in exchange for Marian's love. Either way, the story was very intricate and well written. Another key element to the story was the title. Personally, I dislike titles that simply reflect the story (such as "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"). This title made an interesting discussion. It's amazing how the author related a depressing story about the loss of a woman's memory to a children's song. The connection was powerful, and made me see the story in a new way.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite story would have to be A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings because it seemed like a very simple story at the beginning. However, the strangeness kept it interesting as I kept trying to figure out why, of all things, an old guy with big black wings appeared outside someone's house. Because there were so many things that he represented throughout the story. Many of us interpreted the story as a test put on by the old man, which is a uncommon topic in short stories. Best of all, it was maybe the only story this year that ends with an uplifting note, with the man returning to his old strength and leaving.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have enjoyed reading and discussion all the short stories/novellas we have read, my favorite is "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". This is my favorite short story that we have read because the story presents so many metaphors that could be interpreted in a variety of ways, and made for an interesting discussion. In addition to being equally intriguing throughout the story, it lead me to think of more questions and theories even after reading and discussing it. The amount of description in the story prevented it from becoming boring and monotonous, such as "The Dead". I also think that this story can relate to many other story stories and novellas, partly because of the ability to take on several different interpretations. I would love to read and analyze other short stories or novellas written by Gabriel García Márquez to find if there is a common theme throughout his pieces. When we were assigned the essay topics, I immediately decided I would choose the prompt that included this story, and I am excited to revisit it and interpret it even further.
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ReplyDeleteMy favorite story was the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. At first it seemed like this story was relatively simple, guy gets turned into a bug, family hates him, dies and family is happy about. As soon as we got going into discussion I knew that it wasn't that simple. Within the Metamorphosis there are many themes and many ways to interpret those themes. The thing that I like about the Metamorphosis is that the story can be about many different things like modernism, religion and even a perverse fairy tale. That in itself makes the story a whole lot more interesting and shows what difficult yet significant story. Overall I really liked the Metamorphosis because Kafka allowed the story to be interpreted in many ways covering a wide selection of topics where the same things could be interpreted entirely yet they both make sense.
I liked A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, one main factor that goes into this is that it wasn't very depressing and it was very interesting and thought provoking. A Man To Send Rainclouds comes close to this, but it had death and so I used that to choose between the two. I really liked it because it provoked thought in pure weirdness, not strange ideas about morality and death relating things like A Good Man Is Hard To Find or The Metamorphosis. First of all, there is the "angel" which is denounced by the priest and abused, but the abuse is questionable and confusing, and there is also the supposed message of the angel that is really unclear. To add to that are the crabs that keep cropping up and a symbol we never were able to discern, at least to my memory. It is also full of paradoxes, the most prominent being the angel, he's dirty, pathetic, and is even said to possibly not be an angel. Though, by the end of the story, he flies away, still a nuisance, and leaves more questions than he answered. I feel like this is a light hearted story that isn't trivial, so we can have deep and interesting discussions without probing into confusing questions about morality, death, and other confusing things that most of the other stories at least touch on. Though it seems like I am poking fun at how all the stories we are assigned to read are either about death or are depressing, I don't really mean to, I just mean to express my opinion. And that opinion holds no grudges against any of the other stories, just that I like one more.
ReplyDeleteWe have discussed many short stories in our class but the one i enjoyed discussing the most was Kafka's the metamorphosis. It may not have been my favorite story but i quite enjoy discussing the struggles of gregor as he has turned into a bug. I particularily like how Kafka said that he did not want the bug to be drawn because it really made me think what was the purpose of describing the bug in such detail yet requesting it not be drawn. Even though this story wasnt very clear and was difficult for me to comprehend, i enjoyed discussing the many possibilities wether Gregor was a bug or not. After learning the backgroung of Kafka and the time period in which this was written, our class came to believe that the story dealt with internalized oppression. This story has many different components to consider when coming up with a onclusion such as how the title, the metamorphosis, may mean how Gregor changes throughout the story. This story really made me think when coming up with conclusions which is why i enjoy this story as well as my class's discussions raise many interesting questions.
ReplyDeleteOne of the stories I liked was The Bear Came Over The Mountain. I thought the plot was good and kept the reader interested. I also liked the fact that it had lots of character details. This helped a lot with discussion because we could imagine what characters would do in certain situations. We had a good discussion about the ending, and whether or not Fiona is truly losing her mind, and who she likes better, Aubrey or Grant. Another thing I liked was the title. Other stories had descriptive but boring titles, like How I Met My Husband. This one had a title interesting enough that we could analyze it and figure out what it meant.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite short story that I have read so far is “Big and Bad”. Because this is one of the few stories that made me question my opinion. Before I read this short story, in my mind I believed that big vehicles such as SUVs or trucks would be a lot safer that other smaller cars. But once I read the story, the author made a very good point about how if someone’s in a big vehicle the person will be less careful and aware of the surroundings because the car makes the driver “feel safe”. Although one thing I didn’t like about his writing style is how he had to much statistics and not enough followups to it. Also in the class discussion, many people had their own opinion and disagreed and explained their own side, which I think is very important in a class discussion. I would love to discuss this essay in class again.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite story we have read so far is "How I Met My Husband." It brought up some interesting topics in our discussion, such as its feministic qualities, and some class issues. However, my favorite part of it was the writing style. It didn't follow some unusual format, it didn't take great lengths to be poetic, or metaphoric, it simply read like a novel, and I enjoyed that. I like it when lit books feel the same way to me as books I read for fun. And this one even had a plot I might have enjoyed in my own time; I prefer my stories to be more classic, and less ambiguous. While I understand the purpose of lit class is to discuss and analyze literature, I think that's impossible without complete understanding and at least some enjoyment of the story. I hope we read more like it in the future.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite story read so far this year was The Dead by James Joyce. Although we haven’t discussed the story much yet, it is something I’ve been very excited to do. Strangely enough, I found the lengthly and monotonous parts of the story to be very interesting, not because of their content, but because of their motive. I found my self fixating on every obsolete detail in the story and trying to figure out why exactly Joyce had written it down. This process of thought is also directly applicable to the main character, Gabriel, a man who is extremely insecure and at times very hypocriticle. His actions and those of the author, along with the moral and existential questions presented in the story, made reading “The Dead” extremely enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite short story this far was "Caring For Your Introvert" by Jonathan Rauch. I enjoyed it (and am apparently the only one) because it can be interpreted in a number of ways, although not as many as the Metamorphasis. In Caring For Your Introvert, Rauch uses comedy to make his story more interesting and fun to read as well, which is always something I like in literature. Rauch's story can be interpreted as him talking about actual introverts and the way they differ from extroverts, but the reader can also interpret the story to be analogous with gays/other "outcasts" of society, and just just introverts. I've enjoyed other stories a lot as well, Kafka's "The Metamorphasis" seems incredibly complex and can be interpreted in a lot of ways, as well.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite so far was probably "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. I liked this story the most because it was a lot different than most of the stories I have read. Instead of a progression of a character or a happy ending, it showed the degression of Gregor as a person and ended on a sad note (which i don't like, but its nice to have diversity in your stories). The other reason I enjoyed it was because while reading it, I didn't exactly pickup on all of the hidden meanings and metaphors. But, during our class discussion, my classmates and I were able to figure out most of them. It was fun uncovering the meanings like when we discussed the significance of the apple Gregor's dad threw at him. It helped me get a better understanding for the book and really helped me to see to what other meanings could be found in other short stories or books. I also like the essays "Big and Bad" and "Caring for Your Introvert."
ReplyDeleteSo Far in the short stories and novels that we have read, my favorite would have to be the bear came over the mountain. It talks about forgetting what used to be looked as a perfect lit between Fiona and Grant. Because Fiona has Alzheimers, she doesn’t quite remember Grant at some points and falls for a different man at the nursing home. I could somewhat relate to this because I have a grandfather with Alzheimers. He often doesn't remember where things are in our house when he came to visit. For example, when he visited over thanksgiving break, he had forgotten that we have a cat and asked when we got it. Even though our cat is from the same litter as their which were born before me. Throughout the story, the plot stayed strong and kept me interested and the relationship or bond between the people kept me feeling like I was in the story with Grant and Fiona. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this short story and look forward to reading others.
ReplyDeleteSo far, my favorite short story would be The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. I hold this position because of the way the story shows transitions of the characters, such as Fiona and Grant, as Fiona's Alzheimer's developed. Alice Munro was also able to represent the feelings and reasons for why Grant had an affair with his college students, as more of a way to appose Fiona, in a younger woman, than just a reason to have fun. I also like the story because of how the author was able to show that in the end, you don't actually know whether or not Fiona loves Grant, or the other man. The way the author leaves hints of mystery, without consuming the story with it, makes the story also more believable, an the relationships more thought out and complex. Aubry's wife, representative of someone having the same situation as Grant, was also able to show how the reasoning Grant might use for having an affair evolves throughout the story. In the end though, Grant's reasoning for being with the other woman (I forget her name) changes into what I think is a more honorable reason to get Aubrey back with Fiona, and to save Fiona from closing up completely.
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ReplyDeleteThough my class did not discuss this short story, my favorite piece of literature we read is The Lesson. This was my favorite story for several reasons. My first reason is how the story is written in another dialect, African American Vernacular English(AAVE). This is the only piece of literature that I have read that is entirely in African American Vernacular English(AAVE) . By Bambara, writing in AAVE you understand can better understand who Sylvia is as a person and her background. What I like most about the short story is the way it’s overall message was conveyed. Bambara tackles the issues concerning the intersection of class, gender , race , education , and socioeconomic status in an unconventional way – a personalized story. I feel like a lot of essays about society ignore that intersection, can be seen as unintentionally insulting , pseudo-intellectual, and bombast which take the “social” message out of the writing. A lot of the times these said essays sometimes convey the message to the reader that underprivileged and oppressed people are not human but lazy, lechers of government spending , and parasites. By focusing more on the children in the story and their experiences with society Miss Moore and each other, “ The Lesson” appeals to readers altruistically. I enjoyed the story, but while thinking about what “The Lesson” that was being taught by Miss Moore I was saddened. This story was written in the 1970s and takes place in New York , but in 2012 , less than 30 miles away from The Paideia School there are children in the same position as Sylvia and her companions --- they don’t have access to an exceptional education, a normal childhood, and things that come out of being able to afford those opportunities.
I think that my favorite short story was “The Lottery.” The reason I liked it was because I felt that even though it wasn't long you could put a lot of thought into the back story of it and why the lottery started. Because you think of why it was started there can be many reasons and the reader get to decide. Another reason I liked it was because at the beginning you couldn't tell anything bad was going to happen and then there was a huge plot twist. Lastly I liked it because it really told something about our society and traditions. I think that the story was supposed to show how people have just started to think of holidays as a break from work or school instead of what the holiday is for and they just do it because thats what we have always done. Because of these three things and some others “The Lottery” was my favorite short story we have read.
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