Mad World - Gary Jules...

Reflection...

English 102 with Professor Jennifer Mignano-Brady was a very well developed class, something that I would highly recommend to anyone who is in need of an English class that is able to teach you better writing skills and analysis of any sort of piece, from poetry to playwrights.  I very much enjoyed the class in the fact that any question I had was answered willingly and if I ever was unsure or uncertain of saying something, the class had a very welcoming environment and a laid back place to be able to share your thoughts.  I feel that my experience may have been different from that of other students, but I absolutely enjoyed the class from the lectures to the “fishbowls” that had us in a circle, able to throw in ideas whenever we saw fit, like a Socratic seminar.

To say that I have grown as a writer, poet, and speaker, would be an understatement.  I think my experiences in this class have prepared me more for what is to come in later years, whether it is another class later on in my college life or sometime in the future when I have a job that fits me as a person.  In 5 to 10 years and beyond, I see myself still writing on the side of whatever my profession may be.  Maybe much further down the road, about 15 to 20 years, I will be teaching my children how to read and write, maybe even a bit of explanation into the more complicated sides of writing and literature, like advanced rhetoric.  I honestly think this class has prepared me for real life more than I would have expected in the beginning.

In the beginning, I felt that it was just going to be another English class to breeze through, but was I wrong.  The challenges the professor gave us were great and they definitely pushed me to the limit of my potential and got me thinking outside the box.  I feel that the things I will take away from this class will be more knowledge of not just the material that we studied, but how the time period and the society around us shapes our bodies and minds.  Also, the more that we go into the society around us, the more we can understand about ourselves, like how the writing from the past deeply explains everything that happened back then.  If we were to read the literature coming out today, we can see how we are reflecting on the future.

Lecture #3, Love Fishbowl

             In this class, we all first defined what true love was to us.  This may be difficult for some and easy for others, but honestly, most feel that it doesn’t have one true meaning or definition, all because it is a subjective thing that is different for every person.  I was able to definitely connect to this lesson in the fact that love is a powerful thing and I think I do know what love truly feels like.  Understandably, the lesson was to explain different poems about love and the feelings that are evoked by anything that has to do with a relationship or love, whether it be new love, something that has been going on for years, or a very painful break up, every part was covered during this fishbowl lesson.

Lecture #2, Hemingway/Hills Like White Elephants

             This lecture was all about the very famous author, Ernest Hemingway and one of his short stories, Hills Like White Elephants.  I enjoyed this lecture since it was a very active fishbowl discussion that had all of the students explaining their views on the short story after we had learned the history of Hemingway himself.  Even though the short story was, as written, quite short, it has a message about many present issues that cannot be solved by just one small decision, but by multiple ones, the issue of abortion.  Pro- Life or Pro-Choice, this was a very touchy argument that envelops this story and its very vague characters.  Also, Hemingway always had some sort of connection to his writing, yet he might have come to quite an ultimatum or crossroads in his life to be able to explain what happened in this short story.  Sadly he committed suicide, but all of his work lives on and is still spreading messages in the present day.

Lecture #1, Short Story Timeline

            The lesson that was the introduction to the short story unit was all about the literary time line.  I was able to fully understand every section of literary history from the early 1800’s to present day, from romanticism to the post-modern world we have now.  The lecture was truly informative in its layout, slowly defining everything that happened during those times and connecting the main focus to how the writings are reflections of the time periods.  All of the concepts presented could be summed up into the sectors of the generations that existed at the time and what major world events were taking place.  Generation Y is the generation that we are part of, showing that we are some of the big names that appear when speaking about post modern novels and short stories.

Paper #2, Choosing Your Own Destiny

           The way we as humans live is by choices, as we live, more and more choices of our pasts pile up and the human mind is burdened by any guilt from those choices past.  Even if we have made some problematic choices much earlier in our lives, like some characters in Hills Like White Elephants, Interpreter of Maladies, and The Dark Knight Rises, we still are able to bounce back and live our lives to the fullest as well as making ourselves better people.  These two works, Hills Like White Elephants and Interpreter of Maladies, along with The Dark Knight Rises, identify multiple themes, all leading to one combined idea, the fact that all of these pieces explain the way people think.  The main theme between these two pieces is people choose their own destinies, no matter what direction life takes, people always are able to choose their own path.   

            

            Hills Like White Elephants exemplifies how people have the right to choose the way that their world works, even if they are pushed into a situation that could ruin their lives, they still are able to make their choice.  The American, one of the main protagonists in Hills Like White Elephants, states that, “'…the train is coming in five minutes.'” (Hemingway 117).  This explains that the train, as a symbol for a choice made by both the girl and the American, is nearing and that a situation is about to become something real and that the climax of their journey together has come to an end.  Neither the American or the girl have anywhere to hide from their impeding decision because “…on this side [of Ebro] there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun.” (Hemingway 113).  This shows the crossroads between their decision, one side being one of the train tracks and the other track being the opposite, they have no shade, no trees, nothing to shield them from God’s will or the decision that they will have to make whenever that may happen.  Any sort of decision they make is final and that no matter what, there is no turning back once they make it.  Problem is, the American is trying to make the decision for the girl, yet the theme declares that she must make the decision for herself.  When she yells at the American to “please please please please please please please stop talking,” this makes her the dominant one of the two lovers.  While the characters in Hills Like White Elephants have decisions to make, Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das in Interpreter of Maladies have already made their decisions that have changed their lives for the worse, sadly not for the better.

            

            Even though Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das have made decisions in their lives that they now regret, they are still able to control what goes on in the present.  While Mrs. Das has her secrets, she still confides in Mr. Kapasi and later is disappointed when he asks her if “it is really pain [she feels], or is it guilt?” (Lahiri 73).  Even though Mrs. Das gets angry with Mr. Kapasi after this, she chose to tell him, yet in doing so, she opened the Pandora’s box that was her suppressed guilt.  When this happened, he lost any and all lust and yearn for her as well as gaining all of the guilt that she laid out when she told him about her affair.  After telling Mr. Kapasi her secret, he “felt insulted” and wondered why she had told him that information.  Mrs. Das chose to tell him since she felt that an interpreter like Mr. Kapasi could help “heal” her ailment, even though it was not much of an ailment to begin with since she chose to cheat on Raj, her husband, and never tell him that one of her sons is illegitimate.  Problem is that these choices may not ever seem to go towards anything good, always the decisions made blow up in the faces of those who actually are involved. Any problems between characters are always created when these decisions become something that may ruin the lives of one or both of the people involved.  The Dark Knight Rises, a movie directed by Christopher Nolan, definitely emphasizes the meaning of choosing one’s destiny.

            

            Destiny is one of the main themes of the movie, The Dark Knight Rises.  Since this movie has many twists and turns, the choices made by specific characters like Bruce Wayne/Batman and Catwoman, determine the fates of every citizen in Gotham City.  This movie creates so many situations that are unavoidable, yet with the personalities and ideas of characters like Bane, many flaws in humankind are shown through his madness and the choices he makes.  In my mind, these unavoidable situations, like when Bane fights Batman over and over happen, you need to look back over the movies that came before, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and see the decisions that Bruce Wayne made to begin the chain of events that follow until the end of the trilogy.  Bane almost uses a nuclear weapon on Gotham City and kills everyone, but Batman saves the day in the end, sacrificing himself because it was his choice to die the hero instead of living long enough to see himself become a villain in the eyes of the people.  In this choice of sacrifice, Bruce Wayne, commits suicide by nuclear bomb to prove that it takes only one man to save so many and to explain how with money and power come great responsibility, even though he had lost his parents to a petty criminal so long before any of this occurred.  The way that these choices effect all of the characters in the story is all conglomerated into the climax when every character comes together and battles or when Bruce Wayne climbs out of the colossal prison that Bane had put him in.  The way Bruce Wayne trained every day and night just to get back home was a choice above all choices, when a man goes from his lowest low to the top of the world.

The combined ideals of all of these stories show how much our daily choices affect our futures.  People today do not think before they act on the most part, thus creating such turmoil later in life.  Even if certain events remain unnoticed, people will always be able to choose what their lives become.  Problem is, people love to choose the wrong path, even though it may not be good for them, just so they can fit into the society around them. Hills Like White Elephants, Interpreter of Maladies, and The Dark Knight Rises, all create one generalized idea, no matter what direction life takes, people always are able to choose their own path.