After reading the two acts of Othello, I believe that Iago is the main one to look at. Iago is very sneaky and has impacted the characters greatly, or at least he is trying his best to. Iago tries his best to make Othello look like a bad guy. He makes sexual references about Desdemona to the male characters in this story to get them to stumble and say something wrong. The story always seems to come back to him. He is the one trying to get people in trouble, but he is one who should be locked up. He is just a lonely, jealous, creepy guy that has nothing better to do with his life, so he messes up the others lives. He starts all the drama of this play and tries to turn everyone against Othello. He plays games and tricks to make people believe him and do what he says. Yet, that is all he is he is just a smart but evil man living his life through others so he does not take the blame. In the beginning of the first Act it shows us how Iago wants his revenge for not getting the position that he thought he deserved. He then convinces Othello that his wife is cheating on him with Cassio to get Othello to trust him more. He also gets Cassio drunk so that he does not remember killing the man, and he tells Othello he does not need a drunken man like Cassio. So Iago goes through all that trouble, and makes everyone look like fools, just to be at the position he thinks he deserves.
Langston Hughes has a different writing style than what we have read so far. He seems to be clear with what he is trying to say. He does not use unnecessary words that confuse most people, or beat around the bush. So far, Hughes may turn out to be one of my favorites. His poetry is direct and is not very hard to understand or figure out what he is trying to say. His poetry has a main topic or theme and that would be talking about the discrimination of black culture. He talks about how it is hard and unfair of how they have been treated. Hughes’s poem, “Song for a Dark Girl” is straightforward and I believe it means exactly what it says. He talks about a black girl, and how she was hung down in the South. This story could be about one of his friends or even about one of his lovers. In the poem it states, “I asked the white Lord Jesus, What was the use of prayer.” This talks about how no matter what they did the white people were still going to harm them. Plus it takes a deeper meaning that Jesus is white, and does not listen to him when he prays. He is saying that it does no good to pray to a white Jesus because he let his black lover die. Hughes was one of the first poets who spoke out on the discrimination of his people, all he hoped for was that people would listen and take a stand with him.
I liked Emily Dickinson more than John Donne, but poems tend to confuse me in general. They are so hard to understand what the author is truly trying to say. For example, in class we talk about the Emily’s poems and write what we think it means. However, when we were told what she was really trying to say it was a different opinion. Emily’s poem, “Wild Nights” I understood what the meaning of the story was. This poem was talking about making love to someone, but in reality the reader needs to go into more depth than that to understand what the meaning of writing something like this means. After reading this poem you have to think deeper, as to: who the speaker is, why did they do it, was it only one Wild Night? As we read more poems on Dickinson I begin to think that she is just not right in the head. Her poems range from sex to death to just being happy. Most of the time author’s have a certain theme in all the poems they write. I can see where Emily may have developed the unusual characteristics from. She never left her house, then went off to college for a year, and then came home and stayed in her room. This woman had some issues and was probably bored and frustrated that she never did anything in her life. Later on her poems would be published, but most were after her death. I believe that she just wanted to write as many poems as she could and in all genres so that at least one would get published and she would leave her name with a legacy, since her life was lacking.
When I read poetry, the first object I figure out is how the title fits into the poem. I ask questions such as why would they name it that, how does the title make any sense, or what the heck does the title even mean? As I read the poem however the title begins to sum up what the author is trying to say in the poem. In Shakespeare’s, “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” it seems like he is only talking down about his “lady.” However, as you look deeper into the poem and you read the last line it says, “As any she belied with false compare.” Shakespeare was trying to say that some men compare their women to all these wonderful objects of life, but his woman surpasses them all. He is saying that there is no comparison when it comes to describing my woman. He has found the woman of his dreams and to him there is none better. He knows that she is a beautiful woman on the inside, even if some may say she is ugly on the outside. I had to read over many of the poems for them to make much sense at all; most of them still do not make any sense. I wonder what he was thinking, and I am also glad that people do not write like him anymore. In his work, “Shakespearean Sonnet” I do not understand the point he is trying to make. His sentences have no structure or any flow from idea to idea. If he was in your class, then I have a feeling that he may not have a very good grade.
I chose to do John Donne’s, “Batter my heart, three-person God, for You” because it was short and looked fairly easy to understand. However, the more I read and analyze it the more complex it becomes. If you merely skim over the poem it seems to be talking about God and how he wants to follow him, but as you look into the poem it starts to have a deeper meaning. The man wants to follow God and have a relationship with him. He wants God to change his heart so that he can worship and follow God whole-heartedly. He knows that everything in this world is pulling him away from God, and that is why he talks about being “betrothed” to God’s enemy, which is the devil. He is saying that the devil is pulling himself away from God, and he does not want that to be the truth. He wants to be free from the devil, and he wants God to help him turn away from the devil. The man is wants the Lord to take him and never let the devil drag him back down. He does not want the devil to take hold of his soul ever again, so he asks and begs the Lord to help him. I believe that this poem is talking about Christianity in a way. The man wants to give up what he has and follow the Lord completely. He wants to flee from the devil and worship the Lord only.
Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean-Well Lighted Place” was a realistic story about how age can affect the way we act. The young waiter just wanted to rush everyone out and get home to his wife, but the older one had a different view. The old waiter wanted to keep his café open to the weary ones, the ones who were lonely or maybe needed a place to be alone and think. The young waiter did not understand this feeling because he still had a wife to come home to when the older men did not. I can picture in my mind a lonely, quiet, old man who comes to a bar that has no music, few people, and is well light, not to drink because he has problems, but to drink because he has no problems. He has no problems because he has no wife, no children, but plenty of money to spend. Many wonder why is that such a bad life, well without the bad times, how will we ever learn to appreciate the good times? The old man was so lonely that all he did was think about his life and how there was nothing good or worthwhile still in it. I see why he would want to kill himself because he had no one to share his life with anymore and no more struggles to overcome in victory. Instances like this can happen and people do get lonely and think killing themselves is the easiest way out, and that is why I thought this story was a Realism portrayal.
The setting of Kate Chopin’s “The Strom” not only explained where they were, but explained what was going on also. The surrounding of this story had a deeper meaning to them, and I believe that is what Chopin wanted the reader to figure out. The more you read the story the more you understand what is happening. In the story there is a storm with terrible rain, thunder, and lightning, but as you look deeper into it the storm is full of deception, trickery, and secrets. Calixta has an affair with her one of her old flames and does not want her husband to find out about it. While he is staying at Friedheimer’s store during the storm an even bigger “storm” is happening. However, in the end Calixta hides the truth from her husband. She does not want to lose her husband or her son to just a fling or “one stormy night” so she covers up the tracks. She acts normal and happy to see her family home while hiding a big secret. “So the storm passed and everyone was happy”, this was the last line of the story and brings it to a close. Even though Calixta and Alcee had an affair with each other they loved their families very dearly and did not want to lose them. They did not tell either of their spouses about the short lived storm that had come and gone. Plus, due to the fact that Alcee had to write to his wife it makes the story set in an older time period where divorces were very rare and people were not fond of them. They knew that if their spouses were to find out the truth they would most likely get a divorce, and the storm would destroy them for the rest of their lives.
In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, by Poe he demonstrates how certain people react to situations. He wrote this article as if he was inside that particular characters head and said anything and everything that came to mind. This is an example of a stream of conscience based story. The first paragraph of the story talks about how nervous, smart, and mad he is because of what the old man’s eye does to him. He has many different emotions throughout the story, but in the end the main emotion is that he is mad, in the crazy type way. He felt nervous when the eye looked at him. The old man’s eye was “glazed over” and was creepy so it drove the other man crazy. However, I think the man was already crazy. He took hours just to get into the room, and he went in there every single night. Now, who in their right mind would go in and out of the room multiple times just to look at another man’s eye? He even tries to explain why he isn’t mad or crazy. This could mean that he really was and that was his first instinct to explain that he was not insane. Another reason he was not sane is that he was motivated to kill a man because his eye was abnormal. He did not want the old man’s money he just wanted the eye to be gone forever. Yet, when he finally had the guts to kill him he caved in and told the police where the body was when they arrived at the house. He sold himself out instead of being normal and acting casual around the police. No sane person would be stupid enough to give himself away.
In Updike’s article he discusses the fact that people have the nature to judge others as a primary instinct. The moment a person walks through a door he or she is judged on their appearance. Whether, the thoughts being good or bad, a person always encounters judgmental thoughts. Updike shows this through his article how a nineteen year old boy judged three young girls that walked into the store only wearing bikinis. This is a prime example of how human nature reacts to the environment. The article is written in the view of a young boy’s eyes and how he picks apart every detail about each girl that comes in and the way she looks. Sammy, the young boy, was so enchanted by “the queen” or the main girl in the group that when she gets embarrassed, by his manager, he stood up for her and quit his job. Yet, he did not even know her name. Sammy only knew that she looked good on the outside, but had no idea what was on the inside. He followed his instincts and chose to stand up for the girls and in return they never even gave him a chance. In the end, the girls were long gone, and Sammy was left without and job or a girl. Updike’s article proves the fact that we humans act on assumptions alone for many choices. Sammy assumed that the girls would wait on him or thank him for what he did, but that was not the case. Sammy learned the hard way that our nature as humans is one based on judgment and that not all judgments are the same.
abbyrmorgan 