Category Archives: Uncategorized

I thoroughly enjoyed the works of the Confessional Poets unit. While the names Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were immediately recognizable to me, refreshing my knowledge of their work reminded me just how much I really do enjoy their work. In fact, I feel that I personally connect to many of Sylvia Plath’s work, which could be a reason why I enjoy her writing so much. I remember reading her work, “The Bell Jar” back in high school, and she has remained to be influential to me ever since and actually was one of the writers that peaked my interest with the literary world.

While this may be an obvious observation, I found the works of these writers to be much different than the other writers we’ve analyzed so far. These writers not only spoke about much different topics, but also wrote in a different, more intimate fashion than the writers we’ve discussed so far.

I was not so fond of the work of the Middle Generations unit. Although many of the times I immediately recognized and remembered hearing about multiple times throughout my experience with literature, when it came to reading their actual work, I did not find myself to enjoy it much.

However, I still found the work to be meaningful and of good form. While the work itself wasn’t my cup of tea, I could certainly understand why other writers and critics have enjoyed these works and why they have made such an impact on the literary world. For me, reading these works were kind of hard to follow which could be why I didn’t enjoy them as much as I feel I should have.

After reading the prompt for this blog entry, I immediately knew that I wanted to write about the show The Handmaid’s Tale. This show is a perfect representation of gender roles and how toxic these roles can become, and how whether or not we understand it, social class affects the lives of everyone on this earth more than we know. However, for this prompt I will stick to one cultural aspect: Gender roles.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a perfect representation of the way each gender views each other: Women view men as overpowering, dangerous and controlling and men view women as submissive, confusing and creators of life. However, despite these views being set into place by the premise of the show, a close look into each character shows that this is not the case- each person is not a “one size fits all” into their gender stereotypes. Despite the fact we see some characters playing exactly into this stereotype, such as commander Fred Waterford being exactly this (overpowering, dangerous, controlling) and handmaid Janine being exactly her stereotype (submissive, confusing, and creator of life) we still get to see that despite the ways each gender views each other, it isn’t true for each person (for example, characters June and Nick both stray from these stereotypes).

While things are a little different because of the dystopian society that this show is set in, we get a good understanding of the ways that these stereotypes affect us and the world around us. After all, it is simply because of these stereotypes that Gilead (the setting of The Handmaid’s Tale) exists and why there are the Handmaid’s vs. the Commanders- the handmaids (women) being controlled by the commanders (men). Femininity is suppressed while masculinity is celebrated in this show, as this reflects the way open and free Femininity is often paired with promiscuity and Masculinity is often paired with strength and courage in our modern society. The Handmaids Tale takes these societal issues with gender and puts a spin on it to the most extreme circumstances, yet highlights this cultural aspect and all of its problems wonderfully.

It is clear from reading the article “Jean Toomer’s Conflicted Racial Identity” that Jean Toomer’s racial identity was something that he struggled with his entire life, which eventually bled into his professional life and in his work. It shines a light onto an issue that many people all around the world deal with, not just those who identify (or don’t identify) as black when the world perceives them this way.

This identity, whether or not a person is struggling with it, is bound to shape them as a person and shape their work, as well. Because self-identification is a concept that exists, the way we see ourselves creates a bias for the way we see the rest of the world. As a white person, we may not struggle at all with our identities, considering the history of white people has been very straightforward without any repercussions happening to our ancestors. But this is a different story for people of color, those of color who have had devastating histories just because of their race and identity. Because of this, some people of color may be hesitant to accept this identity and want to adopt a different one.

I think that this hesitancy would most certainly bleed into the work of those who struggle with their racial identity. Or, it could be the opposite- a person of color may embrace their racial identity and the culture that comes with it in their work. Whether accepting or rejecting, the racial identity of a writer will show in their work, one way or another- whether the writer wants to embrace their identity in their work or wants to ignore it.

I think that because we all have our own identities, while reading a piece of literature that stems from a writer with a different identity, we may not understand the full meaning of the work that’s in front of us. For example, a piece of literature written by a person of color may not be fully absorbed and understood by a white reader, no matter if that writer is wanting to embrace their identity or reject it- either choice impacts the work in a way that this reader may not understand. Our own personal identities may also impact the things we look for in a piece of literature, so we may be looking for something familiar that may or may not be there, impacting the way we read.

During this unit, I learned a lot about the traditional themes that motivate the works of this time, and also the various important roles that take place in these works and how they affect both the plot and how they are perceived by others.

Through the works of this week’s unit, I learned the importance of these themes: Death, authenticity, desire, etc… and practiced my skill in analyzing them and really digging into the roles they play in their given work. Just like with the work from the Harlem Renaissance unit, I learned this not only from reading the works themselves, but also through the discussion questions and learning what others have thought as well.

During the upcoming units, I will be paying much more attention to common and/or recurring themes in works, or in just a singular work itself. I will pay extra attention to these as they can tell us a lot about the desired response from the author and the intended message that the author wants the reader to receive.

As a discussion leader for this unit, I really wanted to create a simple question that followed the questions I had been asking myself while studying this unit. Although simple, I wanted to create a question that could easily generate lots of conversation about the works in various ways. While I think I did a fine job of this, I did not get any responses to my question sadly- meaning that there wasn’t any discussion created. However, I felt that if there were any responses, a good, informative discussion could have easily been created both by myself and by my other classmates.

While reading this unit’s literature, I really broadened my understanding of the writing from the Harlem Renaissance era. While i thought I had an idea before, reading the works of artists such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay gave me a deeper understanding about the writing that occurred during this era.

One thing in specific that this unit taught me is the differences in writing during this era. I assumed that it would all seem the same and be written the same, I was under the assumption that it would all be written from an African-American point of view, with the slang of their culture being used- but I was wrong. In fact, certain artists chose not to write in this way, just to make even more of an impact and giving a deeper meaning to their works.

I learned this by comparing the works of these artists, particularly comparing them for the discussion questions. Through comparing two artists directly (Hughes and McKay) I saw this difference and really noticed it, and therefor was able to analyze their works differently and from a more educated point of view. I really believe that this will be useful in the next unit, as I will continue to read each artists work individually, noting any differences between the artists work and then asking myself what the impact of this is and why the artist may have chosen to do this.

I was amazed while reading this unit’s works. I’ve only read a few poems from the Harlem Renaissance era in the past, so going deep into the works of these artists was new territory for me. While these poems are clearly deep in meaning and apply to those who lived through the time, while reading I tried my hardest to place myself in the shoes of the writers to get a full understanding of these poems. However, despite my best efforts, I could not. But- these poems were all still very touching and deep in meaning to me.

Out of all of the poets covered in this unit, I liked the works of Langston Hughes the best. When reading his poems out loud, they rolled off the tongue easily and were fun to read- yet were still packed with a deeper meaning and told the truth of what it was like to be a person of color during this era. In the poem “A Brown Girl Dead” by Countee Cullen, the lines “Her mother pawned her wedding ring / To lay her out in white” tell us that many people during this era were poor, yet were family oriented and did what they could for each other. It is moments like this that lead me to my initial response to the work.

For this first week of reading, I have found it pleasant and not too difficult. While these pieces are much different than the pieces I’ve found myself reading in my spare time, I enjoyed them. While the pieces I’ve read in my spare time ask of little comprehension on my end or little analyzing on my part, these pieces have drove me back into that state of mind while reading once again.

Honestly, I don’t know very much about 20th Century American Literature. Of course, I know the basics- there’s both poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, etc. But in specific, I know the most famous names include: F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D Salinger, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, amongst many others.

I understand that many of the works from the 20th century are building blocks for writers today. Many authors/poets/writers use the works from the 20th century as inspiration for their own modern work.

I learned through this unit’s literature through our discussion, that there are many different ways to interpret these works. While I originally thought it was just pretty straight forward, instead there are different ways to view these works and to digest them. I learned this when reading others discussion posts, and soon realized that not all of their posts aligned with mine. I think that this will help me come to my conclusion in next week’s unit, because I know that my opinion may or may not agree with others and there is no “criteria” to follow when analyzing a piece of work (besides what the discussion question asks for).