Final Post

In "Sonny's Blues," a man finally comes to understand the darkness and suffering that consumes his brother, and he begins to appreciate the music that his brother uses to calm those blues. The main theme of "Sonny's Blues" is suffering, particularly the sufferings of black people in America. Although Baldwin presents only one example of overt racism in the story, the death of Sonny's uncle under the wheels of a car driven by a group of drunken whites—the repercussions of the treatment received by black people is omnipresent.

Hemingway's theme in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is a theme that runs through all of his literature: there is no God, no meaning to this world, and man must consequently find something to distract himself from his horrible truth. For the older waiter, a clean, well-lighted café is such an escape. This is an artificial light, made by man for man, yet it is the only way to step out of the darkness of reality: that life is filled with nothing meaningful.

“The Road Not Taken”

This is a wonderful poem with many different themes and ideas. One of the biggest themes is not being afraid to take a chance. Some of the other themes include, not following the crowd, trying new things, and standing for something. This poem stated that the author "took the one (road) less traveled by, and that has made all the difference" so the author is telling the reader that we too should not be afraid to take another path.

Plays

1. What genre is each play? Explain why.

• Captured by Feministas = ____________________________________

Tragicomedy – Because the dialogue is comedic. The play has you laughing throughout the readings and his opinion of a women compared to that of how a woman views the topic. Tragedy comes in because he is fighting to save his life from the women. He seems to be very hypocritical in a way.

• You Know How to Whistle, Don’t You? = ________________________

Melodrama – Because her tone changes throughout the entire play, she goes from being very assertive and head strong, to just being lonely and desperate.

1. How does his choice of diction affect your reading of the plays? Be specific in your response. Use examples as support.
   

I found it hard to understand both plays because while reading it myself I feel that one person is speaking only in both plays, it seems to run on and on, from one subject to the next. If I were to actually see them being acted out, I might be able to understand the dialogue a lot more. It also sets a visual aspect to see the emotions in a way that Rick Najera wanted it.

1. What is the theme for each play? Provide reasons to support your answer.
   

The theme for the first play is about feministas. The man feeling like he is more superior to that of a woman in which he talks down to females and thinks he can control them.

The theme for the second play is a sense more about cultural differences. He is an American and she is Cuban. She wants to experience American life, or what it would be like, but he has no interest in her, probably because of her forwardness and appearance.

1. Define the antagonist and protagonist in each play. Explain how you know.
   

In the first play the man is the antagonist because he is chiding on the women, and the women or the protagonists because they are defending themselves; however, you can also switch it around because the women are in fact inflicting danger upon the man, where he has no way of defending himself.

In the second play, the girl is the antagonist because she is creating all the drama within the play. She is trying to pursue the man in every way possible, and he isn’t paying her any mind.

1. What is your opinion of each play?
   

I found both plays to be quite interesting. Though a little hard to comprehend and understand, due to the fact that I am reading it on the paper with the dialogue I feel should be portrayed compared to seeing it in person. Having seeing the actors express each feeling to the audience might make it much easier to understand what the writer was trying to bring across to the audience; visually would be a key in understanding.

Poems

After reading each poem below, research visual images for each poem, attempting to surmise the poet’s emotional intent. Post a copy of these images (one per poem) and submit a written response to the following questions for EACH poem.

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?



1 – Dylan Thomas – Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night:

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
After reading “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, I feel that when it is about that time to go one shouldn’t ramp and rave. I feel that in the poem it’s a struggle for light which is good to get easily over powered by darkness.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
The image that I chose reflects the emotions conjured by the poem which shows what the sky looks like when darkness is starting to take over. It also portrays the rage with the color of red being present that can symbolize a battle.



2 – Gwendolyn Brooks – We Real Cool

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
I feel that what is mentioned is true, we do think that we are all cool in a way that we can just do whatever we want but when it comes down to it and no matter how cool we are we will eventually die.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
This image reflects the reaction that one can be cool if they dress a certain way and are able to attract the opposite sex with that mind set.




3 – Emily Dickinson – I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
After reading this poem I feel that the message is trying to portray a person’s life is coming to a close and it’s starting with the brain. It still feels the heat making a beat similar to a drum but with less oxygen to it, it makes the body numb.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem? The image is suppose to resemble how time is falling down, like a countdown until it all stops and hits a surface. The image can also represent the time it takes for the body to last without getting enough oxygen to the brain and how things look when your losing consciousness.





4 - Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?

I feel that even though a road might not look as clear hence whatever can be waiting at the other side as long as you feel that you’ve made the right decision everything should be all well.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
This image reflects the path in which you choose. It also shows that there are obstacles in the way that make you choose which way to go just by looks forcing a distraction and keeping you from succeeding.



5- Shel Silverstein -If the World Was Crazy

1) What emotions/feelings do you have after reading the poem?
Through the poem it kept my interest. I felt that this poem was one I truly understood. I felt that the poem put me in that world. I was imagining a world of my own and thinking of how I could phrase a poem like that to share with others.

2) How does your chosen image reflect the emotions conjured by the poem?
I feel that this can better explain what the world may look like in my world. I used this image because in “Alice in Wonderland,” this girl was able to do whatever she wanted and associated to animals and feel what they think.

Poetry

1) Define poetry in ONE sentence – Poetry is…

-Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

2) What do you believe determines what is a poem & what is not a poem?

- I believe that a poem is a type of literature that normally rhymes and expresses feelings towards something special or an occurrence that happened. A poem can be used to calm someone down from stress or cheer someone up. For example, pomes can also express feelings especially if it is used to win someone's heart over. I believe that it is difficult to tell what it a poem and what is not a poem because poems can be short, long, rhyme, not rhyme, and so on.

3) Visit www.Poets.org – review several poet biographies & their poems. Select 2 poets that are of interest to you. Summarize their biographies (one paragraph for each) and select one poem for each poet to share with the class. Post the poem or a link to the poem on your blog. How are these poems an example of what poetry is to you? Explain.

-Langston Hughes- James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whiteman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.

-Robert Frost- Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, ans Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

Poems

Dream Variations

By Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me-- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening . . . A tall, slim tree . . . Night coming tenderly Black like me.

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15610

A Solider

by Robert Frost
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. If we who sight along it round the world, See nothing worthy to have been its mark, It is because like men we look too near, Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, Our missiles always make too short an arc. They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. But this we know, the obstacle that checked And tripped the body, shot the spirit on Further than target ever showed or shone.
http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/A_Soldier

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

1. What is the setting of the story? Why is the idea that a well lighted place so significant to this story?
   -The setting of the story is set in a small, unnamed town, located somewhere in Spain. More specifically, the entire scene of the short story is set in a cafe and a street in a town that could serve as any town in the world. The idea that a well lighted place is so significant is because this cafe also serves alcoholic beverages.
   
2. Why is the characters nameless?
   -The characters are nameless because the author wants us to feel as if we didn’t know someone that it would be sort of weird to talk to someone you didn’t really know and seeing them on a daily basis coming in a place at a certain time and getting to know their habits. The author wants us to realize that minimalism is so very dramatic, in fact, one feels that complexity or sophistication is not simply precluded, but actually written against.
   
3. What is the connection between the old man and the old waiter?
   -The connection between the old man and the old waiter is that they are lonely, a little sad, love to drink, and they take pleasure in a quiet public place.
   
4. Outline the plot to the story use quotes from the text 5 pieces
   -Plot: Begins in a cafe in Spain on a very late night, around 3am.
   -Rising action: An old man in the cafe very drunk wants to order another drink and the young waiter wants to go home but can’t because the cafe rules states that “one must not leaves until their last table is cleared.
   -Conflict: The old man didn’t want to leave the cafe.
   -Climax: The younger waiter finally get the old man to leave the cafe to then go home to see his family
   -Falling Action: The old waiter doesn’t go straight home, and He thinks how he completely understands the old man’s desire to linger at a cafe, because the ambiance of a cafe is entirely different from that of a bar or bodega.
   
5. What is the theme in one sentence example from the story
   -The theme of the story is solidarity because one of the most important aspects of this story is the older waiter expressed solidarity with the old man. The older waiter was able to relate to the old man but the end of the night when we was walking back home and stopped by a bar on the way and noticed what was going on was also in his life.
   

Research Hemingway biographical
-Ernest Hemingway will always be associated with the dynamic group of artists known as the “modernists” whose ideas set the European continent on fire in the first decades of this century. These artists came from many countries, and many of them, like Hemingway, honed their art and thought in Paris in the 1920s.Hemingway’s time in Europe confirmed his decision to be, first and foremost, a fiction writer, even though he never gave up writing journalism and other nonfiction. This time also confirmed his life-long attachment to Spain, its traditions, and peoples, and once he had returned to the states for good, he spent much time in other Latin enclaves (Southern Florida and Cuba). Indeed, he wrote about Spanish and Latin American subjects throughout his career, as in the short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” And although after the 1920s he never again lived exclusively in Europe, he traveled around the world constantly until his death (Africa was a favorite destination).

3 specific elements related to the story

Ernest Hemingway tired to commit suicide just like the old man in the story, and yes he was unsuccessful and his wife at the time even tried to sent him to a psych ward. Also another important fact was that Ernest Hemingway was also a very hard drinker just like the old man character in the story. Shortly after being released he Hemingway was successful and committed suicide by shooting himself with his shotgun. Tragic but is writing was brilliant and creative in that brain of his.

Sonny's Blues

#1 1 - Research the setting of “Sonny’s Blues” – Harlem, NYC.

The setting takes place in the early 1950s in New York City. The story is narrated by an unnamed man who relates his attempts to come to terms with his long estranged brother, Sonny, a jazz musician. John M. Reilly, noting that an "outstanding quality of the Black literary tradition in America is its attention to the interdependence of personal and social experience," has concluded that "Sonny's Blues" both depicts and manifests the belief that the "artful expression of personal yet typical experience is one way to freedom." http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/sonny-s-blues-baldwin-james

2 – How does the setting affect/shape Sonny’s character and create conflict/complications in the story?

The setting affects Sonny’s character by growing up in Harlem, New York in a traditional white society where he feels the pain of institutional racism and the limits placed upon his opportunity. Sonny experiences that being a man of color during this time is not so great and that he feels that it is better to die then to be a drug addict. The problem that lies in the shape of Sonny’s character is the prejudging from society. It seems as thou when he tries to do something we wants, he can’t do it because he is stereotyped as a person that shouldn’t be dealing with that task at hand; it would be meant for another person.

#2 1 – Research the history of African-American men in the military – Pre-Civil

Rights movement.

The history of African-American men in the military during the Pre-Civil Rights movement were people joined together to fight for their constitutional right after 200 years of legalized exclusion. There were also U.S. racial order maintained largely by the domination through segregation, exclusion, physical violence, and deportations that the men were fighting for. The blacks in the military were also promised freedom if they had served the in war.www.imperial.edu/~maryjo.wainwrigh/History%20121/Hist%20121%20Lecture%20Outlines/Chapter%2028.doc

2 – Why is it ironic that Sonny wants to enlist?

It was so ironic that Sonny wanted to enlist because he wanted to fight for the cause to end the racism in the States and for the white society to look at the blacks/ people of color as equals. With him figuring to join the military, it will give him that chance to prove himself worthy of withstanding any outcomes that will come in his way to make his own decisions and not be judged by his color or what the white society seems he should be.

#3 1 – Research song lyrics by Billie Holiday. Find a song or verse that you feel best

represents the suffering of Sonny – his blues. Include song title and lyrics here.

The song I chose was “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do”:

There ain't nothing I can do

Or nothing I can say

That folks don't criticize me

But I'm going to do

Just as I want to anyway

And don't care just what people say

If I should take a notion

To jump into the ocean

Ain't nobody's business if I do

If I go to church on sunday

Then cabaret all day monday

Ain't nobody's business if I do

If my man ain't got no money

And I say "take all mine, honey"

Ain't nobody's business if I do

If I give him my last nickel

And it leaves me in a pickle

Ain't nobody's business if I do

But I'd rather my man would hit me

Than follow him to jump up and quit me

Ain't nobody's business if I do

I swear I won't call no copper

If I'm beat up by my papa

Ain't nobody's business if I do

Nobody's business

Ain't nobody's business

Nobody's business if I do

http://www.metrolyrics.com/aint-nobodys-business-if-i-do-lyrics-billie-holiday.html

2 - Explain why.

I chose this Billie Holiday verse because as I read through, many of the lines referred to some of the feelings that Sonny was feeling in Sonny’s Blues. For example, “ There ain't nothing I can do/ Or nothing I can say /That folks don't criticize me/But I'm going to do/Just as I want to anyway/And don't care just what people say”. This states that Sonny was done taking crap from everyone and is going to doing him.

#4 1 – Research Bebop.

Bebop or simply "bop" was a post-swing era musical revolution in several of its aspects: its harmonic elaborations of altered chord voicing and use of the flatted-fifth chord; its highly syncopated, polyrhythmic and often extremely rapid tempos; its bold exploration of the technical limits of each instrument; its movement away from the danceable rhythms; its use of wordless scat singing and the invention of "vocalize" by Eddie Jefferson and others. Bebop established a pinnacle on the African-American cultural music tree. Its predecessors, swing, traditional, gospel, spirituals and work songs grew from roots in the blues (directly from Africa) and ragtime (with the post-emancipation access to European instruments).http://www.fyicomminc.com/jazzmen/nelsonharrison.htm

2 – Bebop is the music that Sonny favors. What does the music represent

politically and socially to Sonny? What does the music represent to Sonny’s

brother?

The music represents socially the struggle he’s had growing up in the white society where everything he’s done didn’t mean anything to other but just a figment of their imagination and to him it meant that whatever he doesn’t was already set for him to fail. Politically, how all odds were against him he carried on and did what he wanted to do, something that he had passioned for.

The music represents the passing of his father and the uncle he never knew about. From the stories his mother told him before her passing, that “your father’s brother was killed by a car accident when they were young, and we did not mention it because of the how horrific the accident was.” She explained to him that while they were kids, his brother am him were coming home from a gig and they were running home and he was crossing the street and a couple of drunken white kids came around thinking to only toy with them and not really run into them but did and kept going. Still to that day, he carried it to his death.

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