Entry 10

The Fish

        I didn’t feel like reading it when I first read the tile which is “The Fish”, because I knew it is going to be a poem about a fish, or may be more than one fish. The only part that I like about “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop is the details that Bishop uses to describe the fish and I did learn few new vocabularies from the poem. By the way, I also dislike the details because there are too many details in describing a simple big fish and a strange part is that the descriptions finally become the reason for the narrator to let go the fish. Overall, I would like to recommend the poem to friends since it would make us to learn more about how to describe things vividly.

Entry 9

Fire & Ice

          When I first see the title of the poem “Fire & Ice” by Robert Frost, I was thinking about an image of an enthusiastic man chasing after a woman who feels indifference about everything. And, the poem is totally not about what I imagined. It’s interesting that the author says the world may end in fire or ice, but I think the world will end in water since 71% of earth surface is covered with water. The part I like in this poem is the tone or the style of the author; it made me feel like someone is directly talking to you and his words are easy to understand. The part that I dislike is that I believed there might be some deeper ideas that Frost is trying to express but I couldn’t find it. I would like to recommend this poem to my friends since I want to hear different interpretations and opinions of the poem.

Entry 8

The Lottery

            “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a story that has a much unexpected ending. When I first saw the title of the story and just started the reading, I was expecting a scene of a lucky person who wins the lottery and a celebration for the winning. Instead, this is not a story with a happy story and it ends up with the death of the lottery winner. I like how the author describes the stones and uses the stones as a foreshadowing for the following plots. The ending is the part that I don’t like at all since it shows that cruelty of the society which is the idea that I’ll never like to face in our real life. I would not like to recommend this story to a friend because I don’t like it so much.

Entry 7

Young Goodman Brown

           “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a very religious story. By just reading the title, I was expecting to read a story about a good young man who named Brown. However I was partially correct, it is a story about a young man whose name is Goodman Brown. Same to the author of “To a Locomotive in Winter”, Hawthorne also uses early modern English to write this literature. It is hard to fully understand the story but I still like his way of using early modern language since it gave me a chance to be similar to this kind of literature. I also like how the author keeps change scenes between dreaming and the reality. The part that I dislike is the ending, because I personally hate tragic endings and the ending of the story is about Goodman Brown’s mind of suspecting everybody around him are evils. I would like to recommend the story to my friends who believe in god since the protagonist has a very strong believe on god.

Entry 6

Lonely Hearts

When I first see the title of the poem "Lonely Hearts" by Wendy Cope, I thought it would like be something very personal and may involve some elements of sadness. However, what the author actually writes is not what I really expected to read since his way of expressing her loneliness is very direct and adventurous. Personally, I don’t really like the way she “sells” herself to others but I do love her openness. Overall, I would like to recommend “Lonely Hearts” to a friend because it’s somehow interesting and special way of expressing one’s heart.

Entry 5

This Is Just to Say

            From the way William Carlos Williams names title of this poem, I guessed he just want to say something simple in the poem since the title is “This Is Just to Say”. I felt interesting when I saw the length of the poem because there are only 27 words. It is about the author eating the plums that someone saves for the breakfast. However, I read it many times and it seems not so bright as it looks, but unfortunately, I do not understand what Williams is trying to say in the poem. I like the length of the poem which is extreme short and I dislike the meaning that is hidden under the fact that the author eats someone’s plums. I would like to recommend this poem to a friend, because it is short and I need someone to explain the meaning of the poem to me.

Entry 4

Ask Me

Since the title says “Ask Me”, it must be a work that writes about the author, William Stafford. “Ask Me” is a very short poem with only two stanzas, but the two stanzas contain lots of power. I love the way William Stafford compares his life or people’s lives to the river and describes the current under the river to indicate how life is unpredictable. There was nothing that I dislike, and I really like to share the wonderful poem with my friends because it touched my heart and made me to think a lot about life. The feeling remains a long time after I read the poem.

Entry3

To a Locomotive in Winter

            Honestly, I did not feel like to read the poem when I see its title because I guessed it is something about a locomotive that works during the winter time. Since the poem “To a Locomotive in Winter” by Walt Whitman was a reading assignment, so I read it and I found it is not as boring as I thought of. Similar to “Young Goodman Brown”, Whitman uses early modern English to write the poem since he uses words such as, “thy”, “thee” and “thyself” throughout the poem. I like descriptions that praised the locomotive; Whitman describes the sound, the appearance and the feeling of the locomotive via personification. The part that I like the least is the object that Whitman focuses on—the locomotive. I would feel more likely to read it if Whitman writes about a tree in winter, so I do not recommend it to my friend.

Entry 2

The Yellow Wallpaper

       Before I read the story, I saw the title mentions wallpaper, so I thought there must be some connections to some kind of house. However, the story does have a setting in the house.  I noticed "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman is a interesting story when I was reading the first few lines. Just like what I wished the story becomes more and more interesting as the protagonist "I" gets crazier. I love the way the author uses participant narrator to express the protagonist's imagination about the yellow wallpaper which really attracted me into this image. The part I like the least is that there are too many imagination going on throughout the story and I actually have skipped few lines that I thought isn't very important in general. I highly recommend this story, because it's one of the few stories that would bring me into the scene and make me imagine the things "I" sees in the yellow wallpaper.

ENG102 blog 1

A Rose for Emily

          When I first saw the title of the short story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, I told myself that this may not a story with a happy ending since I have read another book which named "Flowers for Algernon". The book ended with the failure of its protagonist's brain surgery. As I expected, "A Rose for Emily" isn't a happy story at all. William Faulkner uses the literary technique flashback few times throughout the story. I like this the most, because it's very interesting and it divided up the plot of the story into several layers. However, I hated it as well because it made me confused when I read it for the first time so I have to read some parts of the story over again to make sure I'm clear with what's happening in the story. I would like to recommend "A Rose for Emily" to a friend since it's hard or even impossible to see a real person in real life who will isolate themselves from outside world for their entire life as Emily did. Now, we can experience it in this story.