Translations

The ending of the play "Translations" kind of threw me off.  To me, it seemed to end very abruptly when Manus just left and Captain Lancey comes and tells the classroom that the town will basically be destroyed if Lieutenant Yolland is not found.  We are given hints as to where Manus has gone, to be with the Donnelly twins, and that the Donnelly twins might have something to do with the disappearance of Yolland.  The ending also sounded like the beginning of the Irish Revolution to me.  I do not know much about the Irish Revolution so I found a website that gave some information.  I hope this information helps anyone else who might have been somewhat confused like me!

Translations

I have just started to read the play "Translations" and I am very confused.  The play so far has been interesting and engaging.  What I am confused on is when the characters are speaking English and when they are speaking Gaelic.  And to be honest I am not sure what Gaelic is.  I went to youtube and found a video of the Lord's Prayer in Gaelic.  Since I know what the Lord's Prayer should sound like in English I thought it would be a good thing to look at for a comparison.  It really did help.  I did not know Gaelic was so different from English.  Since it is spoken in Ireland, which now English is a very predominant language in, I assumed Gaelic would have some words sound different than the English words.  I was totally wrong.  If someone was to speak Gaelic to me I would have no idea what they were saying.  Hearing The Lord's Prayer really helped me identify with the characters Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland.  Both of the men are in a country where they do not speak the language.  I have never been to a place where there wasn't at least ten other people who spoke the same language as me.  I cannot imagine how much extra work the language barrier adds onto their job.  I am interested to see how Yolland does with learning some Gaelic and see if the language barrier will be as big of a problem as I think it will be.

Power

Beliefs and knowledge.  The two words can mean many different things to many different people.  The way I understand the meanings of beliefs and knowledge to be are just as Merriam-Webster defined them.  It is not clear that Omishto agrees.  He understandings and stances of what are beliefs and what is knowledge vary throughout the book, but they mostly agree with beliefs and knowledge being the exact opposite of what I understand them to be.  Since Omishto and I have opposing opinions on what beliefs and knowledge are, I wanted to get the opinion of a third party.  Frater Achad wrote the article "Beliefs versus Knowledge".  He describes beliefs and knowledge in terms of religion.  "In regard to religion it will doubtless at once be evident that a great deal could be said on the subject of Belief, it being, one might almost say, the principle on which most, if not all, Exoteric Religions are based. It will also be evident, though perhaps in a lesser degree, that all these various religious beliefs, held by masses of people in all lands, must have arisen in the beginning out of the Personal Experience of a few who had somehow obtained a direct perception or knowledge of certain facts in regard to 'The Absolute', 'God', or at any rate some Being or Beings of a distinctly higher order than themselves".  Achad seems to agree with Merriam-Webster and myself with the definitions of beliefs and knowledge.  Since Omishto's opinions of what beliefs and knowledge are has varied so much in this first part of the novel it will be interesting if her opinion ever becomes the same as Achad, Merriam-Webster, and my opinion.

Power

Nature is a key element in Linda Hogan's novel Power.  Nature has played a role in so many events already in the novel, and it's only been the first two chapters.  The role nature took on in the novel that has stuck out the most to me so far is the fact that it is Omishto's safe-place.  Usually a safe-place is a room in a house someone goes to to get away from everything.  Omishto takes it to a different level when she gets on her boat and goes out into the lake.  Omishto describes being on the lake in the first chapter; "It is beautiful here, this place I call mine, where clouds are born from water" (2).  You can picture this beautiful landscape.   The picture to the right is what I picture the lake to look like, engulfed by trees, calm, and beautiful.  It seems that Nature holds a special meaning to Omishto, especially the lake and her boat.  When the storm came Omishto was not OK with leaving her boat untied, so she risked her life to go and secure it.  That seems kind of ironic to me.  Omishto risks her life to save her boat, which is her main connection to nature, yet the storm, nature again, could take her life.  I am interested to see how nature affects Omishto's life, in a positive or negative way, throughout the remainder of the novel.

Lucy

I never really understood the cover to the novel Lucy until I read the middle section of the book.  The cover is a painting of a naked woman.  I am assuming the girl in the painting is Lucy.  I did not have a clue as to why Jamaica Kincaid would have picked this as her cover until I read the section that included both Peggy and Paul.  I now am guessing that the painting was done by Paul because at the party Peggy takes Lucy to where she first meets Paul she learns he is an artist by the many paintings around his apartment, some of naked women.  I am wondering if in the last part of the book we hear of the time Paul painted this or if what I have just speculated is just thoughts made up in my head.  I can see this painting have an influence on Lucy and Peggy's relationship because just the fact that Lucy has a sexual relationship with Paul rubs Peggy the wrong way.  I have a feeling that this painting will in some way change either the direction of the story in relations to Lucy's life or just in relations to Lucy and Peggy's relationship.  I hope to learn an answer in the last pages of the novel.

This Blessed House

At the end of our class discussion on the interview of Jhumpa Lahiri and the story as a whole, the question "is everything you do a performance?" came up.  My first instinct was to say no, but then I got to thinking and realized the answer is much more complicated than a yes-no answer.  In the story, Twinkle could be interpreted as putting on a performance when she wants to display the Mary statue in their lawn and Sanjeev could been seen as putting on a performance when he acts like he doesn't hate the christian trinkets in front of his guests at his party.  I also started to think of everyday instances where people, including myself could be preforming instead of acting as myself.  The first occasion I can think of when I do put on a performance instead of acting as myself is when i meet people my dad works with.  This only occurs ever once in a while when my family has a party or my sisters and I go downtown to meet him for lunch.  Are there times in everyday life that people are putting on performances?  Are some people's entire lives performances?  I have never know a person whose entire life is a performance, but then again how would I know?  The only time I have seen this is in movies and books, but that is because as a reader or viewer you get to see all sides.  Everybody does their little performances in certain situations but I would like to believe that a person's entire life is not a performance but it could be.  

This Blessed House

I found it very interesting that Twinkle in a way converted to Christianity because of a game.  She was inspired by the many Christian knick-knacks she found hidden throughout her new house.  She treated each new trinket as if it was the best thing in the world.  When she started finding the Christian paraphernalia she was not Christian.  Her and her husband, Sanjeev, were "good little Hindus" (Lahiri 139).  Sanjeev was not very happy with Twinkle displaying the Christian symbols in his house.  He especially did not approve of the statue of Mary lawn ornament.  I find it a little strange how quick Twinkle was to change her religious beliefs, in a way.  She never started practicing Christianity but she refused to throw away or hide any of the items she found throughout the house.  As a reader, we do not get to find out much of Twinkle's past so we have to infer a reason for her quick change of heart.  There are many reasons and hopefully in class tomorrow some of my classmates might have come up with some of these reasons.

O

In class the question of why basketball was chosen to be the main sport for the movie was brought up.  I was very intrigued by this question so I decided to do some research on the history of basketball. I found one website that I really found interesting.  One thing the website claimed that I think is one of the main reasons basketball was chosen for the sport was "basketball has symbolized the best and the worst of American culture". Throughout "O", the best and worst qualities of Oden are revealed.  He starts out as a very nice, dedicated basketball player, he loves his girlfriend, and is friendly towards most people.  As the movie progresses, Oden becomes extremely jealous of what he thinks D is doing.  Just as basketball symbolizes the worst of American culture, Oden's worst qualities start to come out and are shown at their peak when he pushes Mike down in practice and attempts to beat him up before he is pulled off of him.  The website also shares that basketball is associated with black men most of the time, and Oden is a black man.  I couldn't find anything on wither or not the actually playing of basketball has any significance which could help in determining why it was the sport chosen.  I found the short article on the website very informative and if you were wondering why basketball was the sport chosen also check it out!

Othello

We spent time is class last Thursday in groups laying out what we thought the scene would be for the final act of the play Othello.  Above is a picture that I found online that resembles the one my group drew.  I thought this was a very interesting exercises.  Each group had a different interpretation of how the furniture laid out and what was included or not.  Each group also had different takes on the lighting and music, which sets the mood, for their scene.  After listening to the groups explain their layouts we were asked to watch the scene on YouTube and then next class we watched a more modern take of it.  I was interesting to see how the scenes my classmates and I laid out compared to the two film takes.  There were many creative differences between the two films and even more between the films and our drawings.  It is fascinating how many different interpretations there are for one scene.  The scene is written out, but how the directors decide to have them play out on screen was different.  Lines were cut out, angles were taken by the camera, lighting was done, and music was played in the background.  All of these lead to very different outcomes.  How can there be so many different takes on one piece of writing?  The writing doesn't change.  The language is the same for every person that reads it.  It boggles my mind how different each person's take is.  I have to wonder why this is.  All I can come up with is people see different events in different ways.  Certain events provoke certain emotions in people and it was the emotions of the directors of the films that were portrayed in the two different Othellos. 

Othello

In the play "Othello", one of the characters is named Iago.  Iago is the most cunning and manipulative character in the play by far.  Reading some of the things that Iago makes the other characters believe made me wonder if there were people like that in the real world.  I am fairly certain that there are some people like that, but then I questioned if I knew any of them.  None of the characters could really know the true Iago because he acted differently when he was in their presence and when he was not.  It was not until the end of the play that the other characters came to know the true Iago and his ways.  But if it were not for Emilia, then the characters would have never know Iago's true character.  I can only hope that there are people like Emilia in the world that can catch the people who are manipulating people and call them out on it.  

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted, was a very interesting and strange movie.  The title, "Girl, Interrupted" is very strange itself.  We ended class on Tuesday with the question of why it is titled that.  Here is my interpretation.  An interruption is something that is not planned.  It is something that changes the course of your original thought and can sometimes make you forget where you were going with your original thought.  An interruption also has the ability to be either a good or bad thing.  Winona Ryder's character's Susanna Kaysen, who is also the main character, has a lot of interruptions in her life, both good and bad.  One of the first interruptions is when she sleeps with a family friends' husband.  This interruption is what makes her close herself off to everyone and leads everyone to believe that she is going crazy.  She is sent to Claymoore, a private mental hospital, where she has an eighteen month stay.  This interruption starts out as a bad one but becomes the best interruption in her life, in the movie.  As a result of this interruption, Susanna learns how to make herself into a better human and how to deal with things without taking them to the extreme.  Throughout the movie, the audience sees the results of all of the interruptions in her life.  That is why i believe the movie is titles "Girl, Interrupted".

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The main character in The Yellow Wallpaper, as with the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, suffered from a disease of depression.  In the story, the woman suffers from postpartum depression and Gilman suffered from a severe and  continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia. Gilman, and the woman in the story, were prescribed the "Rest Cure" which involved them doing absolutely nothing.  The women were not allowed to write, paint, or do anything creative and they were told spend much of their time just lying in bed.  This does not seem like a smart cure to me.  We touched on this subject in class and one of my classmates brought up the fact that if the women were told to lay in a bed all day by themselves, all they would have to keep them company would be their thoughts, which were one of the main causes of their depression.  The "rest cure" to me does exactly the opposite of what it was aiming to accomplish.  It is evident in The Yellow Wallpaper when the main character starts believing that there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper and at the end of the story she believes that that woman was her and she was not going to be put back into the wallpaper.  The "rest cure" could possibly be the worst thing to prescribe to someone suffering from depression.  

Virginia Woolf

At the end of class today, my class and I were discussion a claim Woolf made at the end of chapter two. Woolf asserts that if she had to choose between money and the right to vote she would choose the money because it is much more important. This made me think. Women before her had worked so hard to gain women everywhere the right to vote and she was claiming that money was infinitely more important? How would those women who fought so hard for that right react to this claim? I then started thinking about what money in the hands of women during that time period meant. Money could provide so many opportunities for women, for example a woman could pay for an education or hired help. Were these opportunities greater then voting? Money could also, for the most part, guarantee something; voting was could be seen as just giving your two cents on a certain matter. When it comes to voting, what you say does not always happen, but with money, if you pay someone to do something they are obliged to do it. In a way money is a way to guarantee what you want to happen does actually happen. This does not always happen with voting. Looking at all of these different options and possible outcomes of events that include either money or voting, I would have to say I agree with Woolf when she says money is more important than a vote. Money, especially in the time of this book, granted so many more options and gives more power to women then a vote did.

writing metaphor

My writing process is like a person catching a wave on a boogie board. There are many small waves that come but you know they aren't the one great wave. That is similar to the many small ideas I have when brainstorming about a paper I  need to write. I will think of many different thesis's but none of them are that one great thesis, just like none of the small waves are that one great wave that will bring the rider to the shore. When I do think of that great thesis, it is smooth riding. Just like as the person catches that one great wave and rides it smoothly all the way to shore. There might be some bumps while riding the wave, just like how sometimes I get stuck and can't think of what to write next in a paper, but just as the rider know that the wave will bring him or her to shore, I know that my thesis will allow me to write a great paper.