Harrison Bergeron

I enjoyed the short story, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, because of its sarcastic take of equality. The story takes equality to an over-the-top level in many ways and is a satire of the government. The handicaps that Harrison has, demonstrates the excessive ways this future government functions to dumb down the citizens, “he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses… Scrap metal was hung all over him… Harrison carried three hundred pounds.” Our capitalist economy requires that we survive by our own skill however in this piece everyone is dumbed down to the same level. Hazel is the representation of an ‘average’ person not needing handicaps, where her son is almost perfect and has many. Harrison represents free-will and human rights which the Handicapper General is restricting. This story shows how it’s easier to ‘dumb down’ people than to educate them.

The Lottery

The short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, was a story I really liked. I had been assigned to read this story in high school but just waited until we saw a short movie version; so it was nice to ‘read’ it again. When I first read the title however I didn’t recognize it as the story I had already read/seen. It wasn’t until the lines in the second paragraph regarding ‘stones’ that I started to remember the story and predict the ending. Once I had decided I was pretty sure it was the same story, I was able to read with more detail. Taking in more than just the plot, I was able to‘re-play’ the movie in my head which made the story very enjoyable, even though it’s not a particularly happy story.

poetry

The poetry unit this semester slightly broadened my interest and liking in/of poetry. Last semester in Intro to Creative Writing, it was necessary for me to read poetry of my classmates and critique it, as well as write my own. That class gave me more appreciation for poetry because I was able to read professional works as well as that of my classmates. Writing my own poetry also made me more interested because I was able to be expressive and creative with few guidelines. This class has done the same but in a different manner. The different groups of poems we read all had poems that I had different feelings for. Some I liked and some I didn't or just didn't understand. Those which I didn't understand were generally clarified through the (usually quiet) class discussions, as someone in the class always had some idea or interpretation. The final essay for the poetry unit made me realize even more how much I liked poetry. I listen to music everyday and most of those songs I'm sure also fit the measurements of poetry, as did most of the songs my classmates chose for their paper.

Stereotypes in poems

The stereotype poems we read produced more of a feeling in me as they were read. A lot of the poems we read don’t create much emotion, but some of these poems did; which I think poems are supposed to do. One of the poems which did this was In Response to Executive Order 9066, by Dwight Okita. I think the emotion created was in part due to the extreme sarcasm. The speaker seems very calm and joking while explaining such a serious situation evident by the lines, “I am a fourteen-year-old girl with bad spelling / and a messy room. If it helps any, I will tell you / I have always felt funny using chopsticks.” A messy room, bad spelling and chopsticks are completely irrelevant to the situation but it shows her sarcasm. From line 15 on is where the emotion is really created. Here this little girl is treated differently by her friend; abandoned and put down because of her race when just the day before they were happy together. The final lines, “…told her / when the first tomato ripened / she’d miss me,” shows that it will take a while for her friend to realize the mistake she has made and that it will be too late. This is a sad but true account of how stereotypes occur in people of young ages.

Love Poems

The poems about love seem to be the stereotype of poems. Usually clichéd and over the top, filled with metaphors and sometimes seem old (either time period or writer).  I think some of the poems we read fit this stereotype while others don’t. The Shakespeare poem started us off well with the metaphor of “the star to every wandering bark.” It was probably the hardest poem to read just because of its old style however it was still one of the more interesting poems. The next poem, To My Dear and Loving Husband is the kind of cliché, lovey-dovey kind of poem I think of when I hear ‘love poem.’ It has the metaphors, it seems obsessive and says the love will last forever. This type of poem reminds me of a young girl’s first boyfriend.

In Creve Coeur, Missouri

From the reading, How to Write about Poems, the poem, In Creve Coeur, Missouri by Rosanna Warren, gained my interest. It combines imagery with the story telling of a split second in time. The line breaks in the poem work very well. An example of this is in the fifth stanza, second line which reads, “Tell us that she will stand / again, quarrel and misbehave.” This line break allows Warren to rhyme hand with stand and still continue with her explanation. A final aspect of the poem I enjoyed was the ending. As I was reading I thought that the girl would end up living. The twist in the end of the picture winning a prize but the little girl not making it both brings closure to the poem but also keeps the sad theme that came out. One aspect of the poem I didn’t understand was the rhyme scheme. In the beginning of the poem it seemed to have an ABBA pattern but that isn’t the case.