So, in preparation for your impending papers, I suggest you guys pick one quote from any of the stories we've read so far ("Girl", "The Accident", "Hills Like White Elephants", and "Black Man and White Woman in Dark Green Rowboat") and include it in the blog. Why does this quote resound with you? Why did you pick it? How could you tie it in with any of the questions in the prompts you received for the paper due on the 26th? Examples from the stories, as well as from a LiterActive document, is required for the paper. Use this post to start gathering ideas and making sense of the quotations and your own interpretations of the story. This will also help in the development of your thesis for the paper. Looking forward to see what you guys pick...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Because They Said So
Alright, so we're a bit behind because of all the New England weather, so I'm going to use this post as a place to help you all with your papers a bit. On Wednesday, we're going to discuss further Hemingway's and Banks' stories. You guys had great insights on last week's blog, and I want to hear what everyone else has to say who didn't comment on last week's post.
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“Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.” I still find this quote interesting to me because the woman in the story has no respect for her body. She is allowing her boyfriend to make the decision for her, rather than making the decision together. The woman is only doing the man a favor, she only cares about what he thinks. I believe if she doesn’t listen to him, she may think he will leave her. I think it is wrong how the man is in control of her body. As we discussed in class, she is now a “thing” not a person. I don’t think her boyfriend really understands what she is feeling. The boyfriend keeps telling her that it is a simple task to do, everyone does it and things will go back to normal, and they will once be happy again. I don’t think he understands that after she has the abortion, she will have to live with the fact that she killed a living thing for the rest of her life. I don’t think he understands what she is trying to say or how she is going to feel when she gets this procedure done. This is why the woman is now considered a “thing” because she now has no control over her own body.
ReplyDelete-Amanda Bordiere
"I feel fine," she said. "There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine."-Hills Like White Elephants
ReplyDeleteThis quote was so interesting to me because I feel it closed the story on an ominous note. After all the talk about abortions and how the girl doesn't care about her body, is she really 'fine'? Or is she just acting the part and keeping the pain to herself? Earlier in the story the couple talked about how they knew of other couples who went through with the procedure who turned out perfectly happy. Is the girl just projecting what she thinks she's supposed to feel in this situation? I think that she is to please either society or him or both. In this way I think it ties into the third topic: A Person's Invisibility. You can be invisible in more than the physical sense. One could still be involved in society and smother their 'true' self and make the 'real' them invisible. That is what I feel the girl is doing in this story, making herself invisible.
-Jessica Costello
“It’s getting worse with every generation.” (1381). The Accident. I think this quote really demonstrates the stereotypes that everyone is familiar with. This is one example how the older we get, the more we look down on the generations to come. Just like being a senior a high school, you feel so powerful and experienced comparing to the freshman entering this new world. When in reality, you’re going to be the freshman next year in college and those seniors will look down at you. I picked this quote because my prompt for the paper due is about stereotypes and this just shows how someone, who had no idea about the situation of the accident, immediately put someone, in this case a generation, to blame. People are so quick to point fingers, make accusations, and judge without knowing what is really going on. Unfortunately, this is the society we are growing up in, as well as becoming so accustomed to accept people’s stereotypes.
ReplyDeleteMeghan Viola
One quote that caught my eye was in the story, "Hills like White Elephants." Even before Dr. Prussi mentioned it in class it caught my attention. It was..."Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me. What do you mean? I don't care about me. Well, I care about you. Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be fine." This quote caught my eye because it bothered me. I known a lot of girls who had to make the choice of getting an abortion or not. They all had many important factors to think about in deciding whether to get the abortion or not, for example emotional factors. But the fact that the woman in the story's deciding factor was that she just simply didn't care about herself, was for me personally, incredibly outrageous and rediculous. This could help me with the second plot about telling the difference about story and plot because what you read is the two at a train station having a conversation, this being the story. The plot is what their conversation is about which gives a little more meaning to what they are doing and gives some supplement for the imagination.
ReplyDeleteA quote that I picked for my paper is from the story “Girl”. The quote is, “wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothes line to dry”. I picked this quote because it explains how mother is telling her daughter to be a good house wife and telling her what she expects. This quote makes it look like it is a woman’s job to cook and clean the house when now the males could do it too. This could get tied into the paper by saying daughters have to live up to certain expectations.
ReplyDeleteIn the last blog my name came up as manda. This is Amanda Simon, thanks.
"But it was unavoidable. He had no incurable disease, yet, all the same, he was just waiting to die. No one can escape death. And no city is free of traffic accidents." The Accident, 1383
ReplyDeleteThis quote had come off so strong to me the first time I read it because of the strength of its meaning. In a nutshell, it tells the underlying truth of how horrible life can be sometimes and how cruel the world can occasionally act. I myself had unexpectedly lost two friends of mine to a car accident not too long ago. The rumors and crowd reminds me of the crowd around this trolley accident. Trying to make sense of the senceless; the mind needs to find solution to these problems in order to cope with pain and tragedy of these events. People would walk the ground on where the accident happened trying to piece together the evidence to see if the audience could find something they could point a finger at or blame. Whether it be if they were going a couple MPH slower, if that other car was just a couple feet more to the left, or if that tree hadn't been in that spot, it doesn't matter. The deed had been done and it was inevitable because that's how our world works, in a way that we can't describe or begin to understand, because if we knew it all, then the world would know true danger.
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ReplyDelete"But what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?" (Girl, 724)
ReplyDeleteTo me this quote means that the girl is questionnig her mother on the rules that she is suppose to follow. While the mother is surprised that the girl would ven question this after the upbringing she had. This ties into my paper because in my paper I will discuss who the daughter is trying to please by following these rules and the answer to that question is that she is trying to please society and in this quote especially th baker because if he won't let you touch the bread there has to be a very good reason, probably thet you are not considered a lady.
"i'll go with you and i'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural."
ReplyDelete"then what do we do after?"
"We'll be fine afterward.Just like we were before."(Hills like White Elephants,541)
This quote bothered me because any girl who was sex with a boy and late finds out she is pregnant, most of the time the boy will ask tell the girl to take care of it. Many people do not know the consequences of aborting a child, never mind what the girl goes through after. Many boys are ignorant. This can tie into my paper because I am talking about the different way people view things and how it can bother one and not the other.
"This way they wont recognize immediately the slut i have warned you against becoming" Girl
ReplyDeleteWhen i read this quote, it automatically made me think that that is the only thing the daughters mother is concerned about. I picked this quote because it is the main reason for the short story Girl. The mother is controlling the daughter to do whatever she says so she does not become a slut. It would help me on the paper due the 26th because it shows who really is in control and that even today it is the same for some mothers to tell their daughters the chores and rules they have to follow.
"It's getting worse with every generation. The man was wasting his time on that son!" The Accident
ReplyDeleteThis was said by one of the bystanders of the scene of the accident in Xingjian's story. Obviously this person was jumping to conclusions and didn't really know anything about the incident, but it shows how an event can become distorted in the eyes of a spectator. Without even knowing the people involved, this person has already developed negative views about the man and his son. He has judged the son by saying he is ungrateful and dishonorable for not saving his father, and the father by saying he was ignorant for saving his son. Meanwhile, the fact that two people were just killed did not seem to be as important to this person as the attempt to place blame. From a reader's perspective, the man who made this statement seems like the most ignorant person in the situation. However, it would not be surprising for anyone to make assumptions like these, for we are all guilty of reacting in this manner in a given situation. Blame is like an instinct we all have that is used to either hide the truth about others from ourselves, or hide the truth about ourselves from others. Either way, when the truth gets disguised it can lead to bigger problems, which shows that blame accomplishes nothing.