Opinion on CM1120

I decided to do my last post on my opinions about this course. Where do I start…? First off I’d like to say it isn’t really anything like the English courses taught in high school, a lot more is expected of you as a student, where as in high school you could basically skim by without really making an effort.

            

            Even though I had to work my butt off to complete the tasks at hand I really did enjoy CM1120. I thought the materials the students needed to know were given in a good way, we were expected to have all the pieces read prior to coming to class but that helped us as individuals to build responsibility and a better work ethic. The pieces we read was mostly interesting but like everything you aren’t going to like everything you do, much like this course I didn’t really like them all. Some things that I didn’t like about the course are: I felt that we should have maybe written our own poems and short story that would have been fun for me!

           

             We were also given some writing exercises to help improve our writing skills, I really needed this cause evidentially, I can’t really write well. I also enjoyed doing this blog because it’s something that I haven’t done before; it gave us the freedom to write whatever we wanted, as long as it had something to do with the course. If I could go back and change anything about this semester it would be that I would work more diligently with everything and to attempt to raise my grade a little bit more.

           

Boys and Girls

This short story is written by Alice Munro; she is a Canadian short-story writer and has won many prizes over her lifetime, prizes such as Man Booker International Prize and a three-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award. When I read this story I was unsure of what exactly was its purpose. I couldn’t really pin point why exactly the story was entitled “Boys and Girls”.  When I read the whole story I mustered together what the story was about, I figured out that the theme was gender roles.

So basically the story is about this young girl; who evidentially remains nameless throughout the piece, and her it talks about her life growing up on a fox farm. She feels trapped by her surroundings and doesn’t know how to get out, this girl only wants to feel like the males in her family but instead is looked on as an outcast.  There is a lot of symbolism present this story, a huge symbol is the foxes that they farm, they represent the girl in a lot of ways. It says that the foxes are locked up in cages and aren’t let out until they are taken to the slaughter house and skinned for their pelts. Much like them this represents the girl’s feelings of being trapped in the farm and her feelings of isolation, she really feels that there is no way for her to get out.

Looking back to the theme of gender roles. The author’s choice to keep the girl nameless shows how girls in the earlier days were looked at as having a little position in society and had only one role and most the time didn’t really get praised for doing the jobs that males were suppose to fulfill. I know this because look at the brother, Laird. Laird is a Scottish word meaning Lord. This shows the reader that he has a higher “rank” than the nameless girl and that he is looked up to and praised for doing the jobs, more than the young girl.

At the end of the story she is called “only a girl”, even though she has been called this throughout the whole piece, this times hits the girl hardest; it’s at this time that she realizes that she will only be just a girl and that as much as she wants to be just like her brothers it won’t happen.

        

        I don’t agree with this, I believe that if something makes you happy you should go out and work your hardest at the thing you enjoy. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. but overall I did enjoy reading this story and I recommend you; if you haven’t already, to read it and see what you think of the story!

            

Stones

I know I already mentioned stones in a previous post on Remembrance Day, I feel that this story is so good that it deserves to get its own post! Let me start by saying that this is, hands down my favorite story that we did this whole semester.

“Stones” is written by Timothy Findley, a Canadian novelist and play writer from Toronto, Ontario (yay for Canadian writers!). Let me highlight some key plot points in the story to let you guys get an idea of what it is about just incase you didn’t read it yourself.

Ø It’s around the time of the First World War and the great depression.

Ø David goes to war to serve his country and supply for his family in this time of need.

Ø David leaves a nice man but doesn’t come back the same man he left.

Ø Eventually this post-traumatic stress disorder takes the best of him and the parents divorce for the well being of everyone.

Ø One day Ben, David’s son finds out what happened to his father in the war and understands finally why his father has been acting the way that he has been after the war.

Ø In the end David dies.

The main message that is portrayed from this story is that war is a very serious thing and not everyone comes back the same as they left. The people who come back a changed individual, usually facing PTSD effects more than just themselves in this case it affected everyone in his family, they had to sit there witnessing the hardships that David was experiencing and not fully understanding why. Personally I don’t know what I would do if my father left for war and came back totally different, being abusive towards my mother and the rest of my family. It must be a lot to take in for any family dealing with this. I recommend that everyone should read this piece I give it a 9/10 and I can’t wait to read “The Wars” next semester, another great piece I would imagine.

                     

Araby

When we were told we had to read this story my first thought was… this story sounds quite familiar, than I realized that we had too read it the previous year in my grade 12 English studies! I was thrilled that it would be an easy read because of the fact I already knew what it was about.

Araby is a story by James Joyce published in 1914 in his collection “Dubliners”, and if you haven’t guess by the title of the collection this story takes place in Dublin, Ireland! It starts us off with a young boy who lives in a very drab part of town, on North Richmond Street to be precise. The young boy, who remains nameless, finds himself falling in love with Mangan’s sister. He admires her from afar, and when he finally comes in conversation with her he is in a loss of words. She asks him if he is going to Araby, and he is unsure of weather or not he has said yes or no. She then says she cant go, being blind by his admiration towards her he tell her that he will bring her back something; even though he isn’t even going to Araby.

Realizing what he just did he decides to go to Araby just to buy her something and to make her feel happy (what a guy). However the harsh reality when the boy finally arrives to find only one shop open is quite sad. However it is a good experience for him because he finally realizes that the love that he had for this girl was nothing more than a crush. At the end the boy feel quite stupid for traveling so far for something worth so little.

I guess the lesson from this piece is that love sometimes gets the best of you and quite often you need to think before you act! Cause I know I wouldn’t go great distances for someone unless I was proven by him or her that they are worth the effort! Overall I find this story interesting and it kind of makes me want to read some more of his collection “Dubliners”.

Eveline

Have you ever been faced with a HUGE decision and just didn't know for the life of you what to do? That’s much like how Eveline feels with the decision of whether or not she should leave her home and move away!

This story didn’t really interest me, it’s not really my type of genre for stories but I managed to work myself to read it and ended up find it to be okay! Its about this young woman who has been living at home her whole life and just wants to get out and experience the world but because of a promise made to her mother and father that she wouldn’t leave the house alone and would take care of everyone she is having a difficult time deciding if she should leave or not. This girl find this man named Frank, Frank has been to a lot of places in the world and has a lot of stories to share with her. She wants to be just like frank in the way that he already has experienced what she wants to.  At the end of this piece we find out that Eveline doesn’t leave because of the promise she had made with her mom was to strong to break. I find this to be a very hard but loving thing to do in my opinion. 

I am experiencing a hard decision much like Eveline in my life. I really don’t know what University I should attend to; or what I should do with my life for that matter. My parents feel that I should go to a school that wouldn’t hurt their bank accounts too much! All I have to say that it is going to be a hard decision to face in the next couple of months! 

Falling In Place

What can I say about this story… reading it wasn't the easiest thing to do and was quite difficult to follow. I didn’t really have any idea at the slightest what was going on the first time I read it! However, that being said once I understood how this story was written it made the piece a little bit easier to follow through.

The reason why this story was so difficult to read was because of the authors unique choice of writing, he wrote the story with a shifting narration; meaning that there was more than one narrators present in this story (omniscient, first person, third person and objective to be more precise!). This is the first time that I've come across this and I found it to be unique and caught my attention.

This story isn't the happiest of stories; it involves a Chinese girl leaving the hospital and horrifically standing in front and getting hit by a train ultimately causing her death. The unique shifting narration I mentioned above is important with showing just how closely connected a community is and gave us a good look into how affected everyone was by this tragedy. We get to see this event through the eyes of quite a few people; we see it through the mechanist, the one who takes this tragedy the hardest, Su Lin’s boyfriend who in fact found out about this while at a coffee shop and a few others.  Death isn't always an easy topic to read. But this piece made me realize just how easy your life could be taken from you and that you should live it to your highest expectations.

The Red Convertible - Opinion.

When I read this story it reminded me a lot about a story we previously covered, Stones! In fact the two stories are quite similar. 

The Red Convertible is a short story written by Louise Erdrich. Let me tell you a little bit about the author before I give my opinion. She is an author of novels, poems and children's books featuring Native American heritage. "She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance." -Wikipedia. She is also the owner of  birchbark books, a small book store located in Minneapolis. 

Now back to this story! I found this story an easy read, enjoying Stones as much as I did this story became an enjoyment. This story too tells of two young Native Americans and how one of their lives were greatly impacted by war. Lyman & Henry were the best of friends growing up on a reserve. She breaks the stereotypical outlook on natives in this story, which isn't easy to do but she done it! They both were doing well in life, Lyman owned a restaurant and was doing well with his life, and Henry too was doing well. In 1970 Henry decides to go to war however Lyman doesn't want to because of how well home life is going (I don't blame him, war is a scary thing!). After returning from the war you could easily see that Henry was no longer the happy go lucky person he once was. He now instead was depressed and nothing could make him happy, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder isn't an easy thing to face. Lyman being the good friend he is attempts to do everything to make him feel better, but nothing works! The story ends with Henry and Lyman on the on a cliff. Henry is intoxicated and decides it would be beneficial to jump into the water to cool off. He didn't come back up. Lyman tries to saves Henry but doesn't succeed, he then pushes the convertible in with Henry, this is the end of the story.

       Sometimes life isn't the easiest thing to go through, and people who risk their lives for their country as I said in an earlier blog need to receive respect for what they did for us. It takes a true patriotic human to serve their country, and not only is it hard during the war but as you see it has a huge impact on the person after the war too!

         Overall I find this story was a good read, I give the story a rating of 8/10, something everyone should consider reading J

Remembrance Day - Stones.

        

         Remembrance day is coming up as you all know and I believe it is very important to show your respect to the many people who fought for our freedom. Reading the short story "Stones" by Timothy Findley, and seeing his story of a man and how the war affected his relationship with him and his family shows how hard this is for them during and after the war.

        Every year for the past 14 years the school I’ve attended have had an assembly for Remembrance Day, this is the first year that I won’t. My great-grandfather served in the Second World War, he saved many people during his call of duty and I feel honored to know that someone in my family has done something so spectacular for their country. He isn't the only one in my family who serves in the army; I have uncles and cousins too. I feel it to be my responsibility as a Canadian to show my patriotism to my Country and fellow Canadians to take a minute on November 11th to let them know that we appreciate everything that they have done and are continuing to do for us.

          I just want to leave you with this poem and I hope that you will join me on Friday, November 11th and be quite for a minute and show the men and women of Canada who we have lost in the war that we are proud of what they did and that they will NEVER be forgotten.

They shall grow not old

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4NtSqZcT_4

Dead Men's Path

page 269 from the text.

Is right to change something important to people, and just disregard their thoughts and feelings towards it, just to benefit themselves?

Dead man's Path by Chinua Achebe is a perfect example of this.  The story takes place in Ndume, Nigeria, a new educated headmaster, Michael Obi, is to step in and take over. He decides to close a path that the village has been using for a long time and disregards the feelings of the village people and their traditions.  In return karma bites him in the butt. His wife dies in childbirth, the school is vandalized and the then he is chastised!

An important thing to mention about the setting of this story is that it takes place in 1949, one of the main time periods of colonization ("apartheid")

Wikipedia states " Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority 'non-white' inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and minority rule was maintained."

I feel that this is why Chinua wrote this story; he wanted to get the message across that you can't just come in and change the traditions of people if they've been doing it for as long as people can remember. I also believed he wanted to show how cruel people can be towards people in a lessor power and that most the times they can just walk in and change things even if it isn't the right thing to do! 

I feel this because in this story Michael Obi kind of represents the people coming in to try and colonize the Africans, he wants to change the way the people have lived even if they feel he shouldn't and the fact that he got punished was the way the Africans feel towards these higher power people. They want them to leave and let them practice their beliefs and traditions the way they always have!

Personally I believe regardless of what people think; everyone should have the freedom to believe in what they want, and to practice the traditions that they have always been doing. People need to just realize that everyone is equal and we should all live in peace, but this isn't going to happen anytime soon unfortunately 

Eleanor Rigby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRNrDaoMqw

Most of all McCartney's songs came to him while fooling around with his piano. In 1966 the song Eleanor Rigby came to him, however at first the song wasn't called Eleanor Rigby but was actually called Miss Daisy Hawkins. McCartney recalled he got his big idea from: 

"I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head... 'Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church'. I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name McKenzie.".

He got the name Eleanor from a woman who was in the movie HELP!, her name was Eleanor Bron.

History: Close to where Lennon and McCartney sunbathed and met during a fete in 1957, a grave stone of Eleanor Rigby was discovered! The two claimed to have no idea that it was there and claimed it could have been subconscious and not so much a fluke!

Personally I enjoyed the song,  I haven't really listened to any Beatles up until I heard this! The song is easily understood, and the catchy lyrics are easily stuck in your head. After hearing it I had troubles getting the song out of my head and found myself singing it quite often!