Blog Post # 6: Alisia

1) Love in L.A.: Men tend to act and say what they think a women wants to hear while women are honest and open from the beginning.

2) There are some dramatic elements in "Love in L.A.". The exposition is when the Jake's car is described and we learn a bit about him. The rising action is when he runs into the back of Mariana's car. The climax is when they are talking and Jake is trying to get her to go out with him. The falling action is when they go back to their own cars and she write's his license plate number down. The resolution is when he pulls back onto the street and is thinking about what he wants for his car.

Blog Post # 5 Alisia

2. A lot of focus on the girls in the store: take on the veil of a feminist critic and analyze any of the models: the biological, cultural, and linguistic models of feminist criticism I introduced you to briefly in class.  This is just dipping a toe in – play with it and see what you come up with. Try to come up with a number of ideas given the three possibilities here.

Sammy focuses on the three girls in bathing suits the whole time they are in the store. He notices a lot of little details about the girls as they go around the store. He notices what kinds of suits they have on and what they look like. It is also brought up that normally people would put on some piece of clothing before going into a store. The other people in the store, like the woman he is ringing up, are also physically described. He also notices the way the “Queen” walks, like she doesn’t care what other people think of her. All the other women in the store are also described a little. The other women aren’t even called women, they are sheep or houseslaves. I think that it is pretty important that the girls are described in this way because it shows more about who Sammy is and who he wants to be.

This was written in a time where it wasn’t appropriate to wear such little clothing in a public place. You could tell how the other people in the store felt about the way they were dressed by the looks they were giving them. You could also tell because they were surprised and had to double check to make sure that they weren’t seeing things.  

Blog Post # 4 Alisia

GROUP 1 

I read the short story "The Lottery". By analyzing it through a Marxist, I found that bourgeoisie, proletariat and revolt really stand out. The bourgeoisie of the story is Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves. They are the ones that do the lottery. Mr. Summers calls the names for people to come draw a paper. Mr. Graves helps he set it up and stands with him. I think this really shows Mr. Graves support to the lottery because everyone else stand back a little ways. You could also say that Old Man Warner is part of the bourgeoisie because he is the oldest man in town and some people would look up to him for that. He has also taken part in the lottery and agree with it. The towns people are the proletariat. They take part in the lottery because they have been told that they have to. Tessie Hutchinson is the main revolt in this story. That is because she makes a big scene about how the draw wasn't fair when her family got the dot on the paper. Some other people that could be considered a small revolt would be the townspeople who bring up quitting the lottery. They don't say that they should quit it but they bring up that other places are doing it. To me, this seems like they are testing the waters to see how people will react to quitting. 

GROUP 2

In "The One Who Walk Away From Omelas", there is a child in complete misery who has to stay this way so that the rest of the town will be happy. The child is sacrificed for the happiness of town. In "The Lottery", one person each year is sacrificed for the well being of the town and for the growth of their crops. In "Omelas", it is always the town against one person. In "The Lottery", it is the town as a whole then one person is chosen for the town to turn against every year. 

In "Omelas", the people are allowed to leave if they wish but then they won't be guaranteed a great life. In "The Lottery", the people are not allowed to leave, they are forced to participate every year.   

Blog Post # 3 Alisia

Question 3:

When you meet someone the first thing you see is them, how they look and what they are wearing. The first time we see Carol, she has on plain jeans and a big sweatshirt. The first time we see John he has on a nice suit. She looks like a student trying to get by, while he looks like a successful teacher. When Carol was in his office, asking for help, she had an innocent and confused look about her. She looked like she really didn't understand what was going on in the class. Then as the film went on, she started dressing nicer and using big words. She would also move around his office instead of just sitting in a chair like he told her to. At the end, she was dressed very nicely and looked smarter, this went well with how she was acting. When John tried to explain things to Carol he would walk around his office, always looking confident. He was always patient with her and would use real world experiences to help her understand. Later in the film, he looked more worn down and would have less patience.   

One thing I found interesting was that when she asked him why he was helping her and he said that it was because he liked her, she would repeat it as if to point out that he said it. You would think that he should have realized that she was focusing on things like that. 

Blog Post # 2: Alisia

1) I think that combining "art" with moralizing can be a good thing or a bad thing. If there is more to the book/ movie than just the moral then it can be a good thing. When reading or watching a movie, people want to be able to think for themselves, they could see the story one way while someone else sees it a different way. If we are told the moral and that's it, there is no entertainment in that for us. We are told what happened and how we should see it. If the reader/ watcher has to think for themselves and come up with the moral, I think they would respect and understand it more even if it's different from what someone else got. 

6) I really enjoyed Oates's version of the story. In Chekhov's version you got to see everything from the man's point of view. You knew that he had affairs often. In Oates's version you see it from the woman's point of view, you don't know that he has affairs often so you see him as this nice guy who talked to her. During the whole story, Anna is conflicting with herself. She isn't truly happy with her life and husband so she has an affair. She knows it's wrong and knows that she should stop but she doesn't really want to. In the end, she realizes that she is not being unfaithful because in her heart she is married to her lover.

Blog Post #1

I picked "The True History of Little Golden-Hood" to write about. This one is quite different from other because the girl had a gold colored hood instead of red. The gold color could represent her innocence or naiveness. Another thing that is different in this version is that the wolf does not eat the Grandmother because she is out. The Grandmother ends up catching and throwing the wolf in a well, where he drowns. At the beginning of the story, Little Golden-Hood's mother told her not to talk to anyone she doesn't know. Then she runs into the wolf, who she doesn't know, and talks to him because he knew who she was. He even says that he is her friend, saying that he is "Friend Wolf". In this version, Wolf could be a metaphor for a man trying to take advantage of a girl because he tells Little Golden-Hood to remove her clothes and climb into bed with him.  

A conflict that I noticed in this story was with the Wolf. He wants to eat Little Golden-Hood but he doesn't want to get caught. So he comes up with a plan to pretend to be the Grandmother that she is going to see, he dresses up and lies on the Grandmothers bed. When he tries to eat Little Golden-Hood, her hood burns him and saves her, then the Grandmother comes and throws him in the well. One thing that I found interesting was that Little Golden-Hood had no issues with stopping to tell a stranger where she was going or with taking her clothes off and getting into bed with her "grandmother" who look a lot like the Wolf.  

Another conflict could be with Little Golden-Hood. She asks all these questions like "Oh! what a big tongue you've got, Grandmother!" to her Grandmother that she should know. Shouldn't she realize that there is something off about her?