Happy Endings

Analysis

• What I got from this story was that no matter what, to get a happy ending you are going to have to go through some tough times. A is the happy ending, and after each of the other options A was the conclusing thing. The other stories all ending up being depressing, but no matter what a certain person had a happy ending. The characters battle many different situations, but they always end up with A. You have to go through pain in order to have happiness is what I think Atwood is trying to say in this story. I think she did it in a neat way of showing this. She also took a different approach with stereotyping the characters. She didn't follow the normal stereotypes of the genders. She adds a little twist to each little story.

Abtract

• The story begins off saying John and Mary meet. Then what? A begins off with a happy way of look at the marriage of John and Mary. They get married and have two kids and live happily ever after. B says Mary falls in love with John, but John only uses Mary for sex. They have the same routine everyday, and this makes Mary cry a lot. One day, John complains about the food, and this upsets Mary even more. She has never heard him complain about the food. Mary's friends tell her they have seen him with another woman named Marge at a resteraunt. It makes Mary more upset that they went out to eat because he never took her out to eat. Mary is so upset she ends up killing herself. John and Marge end up having the happy ending. C says John falls in love with a much younger Mary. She feels bad so Mary sleeps with John. She is in love with a guy named James. John is in love with Mary though, but he is also married to Madge. One day, Mary and James get high together and end up having sex. John walks in on them, and is heart broken. He ends up shooting James and Mary and himself. Madge marries Fred and they end up with the happy ending. D is when Fred and Madge are very happy, even though there is a huge tidal wave that knocks down house. They are still in love, and end up with the happy ending. E is when Fred ends up dying, so Madge devotes herself to charity until the end of A.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Analysis

• This short story gives the perspectives of love from four different people. They all have a different way of looking at love. Instead of hearing words like happy, wonderful that are normally linked to love, you hear words like pain, jealousy, and misunderstanding. They all have different points of view because they all have different experiences with love. This could be looked at from a feminism critisim because Mel kind of over powers Terri's opinion. He tells her to shut up, and he basically says her way of seeing love is wrong.

Abstract

• Four friends are all sitting around having a drink. Mel and Terri are married, and Laura and Nick are married. Terri starts off by saying what she had with Ed was true love because he would die than not be with her. Ed was her boyfriend, but when they broke up, he took it hard. He threathens her and Mel because he is so in love with her. He ends up commiting suicide because Mel is with Terri. Mel is slowly getting very drunk as these stories are going on. He brings up a story about an old couple that were hit in a car crash. They were literally on their death beds, but the husband was upset because he couldn't see his wife. Laura claims her and Nick are in love. Even though she had loved other people before meeting him. They all had loved someone before marrying eachother. The story ends with the couples finishing off the gin, and there was no more discussing on what everyone thinks of love.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Analysis

• This story can be looked at from a psychological critism. In the end, the Arnold ends up getting Connie to come outside without even forcing her. He plays mind games with her in which she choices her destiny. She decides to go off with him without phsycally forcing her in order to do so. This story is also a lot like today's society. Connie acts like someone way different when she is in her house, but when she is at the mall, she becomes more slutty and flirty. I don't think her parents have any idea what she is like outside of the house. Connie lives off vanity, so when boys are responding to her flirtiness, it boosts her self esteem. She believes looks are everything to her. I think Connie has some insecurities, so that is why I think she acts the way she does.

Abstract

• Connie is a fifteen year old girl. Her parents were always in favor of her sister June, so Connie has a self esteem issue. She is an innocent little girl when she is at her house, but when she is out with her friends, she becomes very different. She was more flirty towards boys, and even is taken to their cars to have sex. One sunday, Connie gets up and takes a shower. Her family goes to a barbecue, but she decides not to go. After awhile of being alone, a car pulls up her drive way. It is Arnold Friend, and his friend, Ellie. He begins to yell at Connie giving her compliments and insisting she comes in his car for a ride. He is being kind to her even though she keeps denying to get in the car with him. Connie becomes instantely freaked out by him, so she threatens to call the police. He says if she picks up the phone she will come get her. He is getting closer to the house as he continues to persuaded her. He also mentions if she doesn't come with him then he will kill her family. She freaks out and picks up the phone, but Arnold doesn't do anything. She doesn't call anyone, and actually she begins to head out with Arnold.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find & A&P

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Analysis

•    This story is about religon. It can be looked at from a psychological criticism because granny kind of gets into the killers head. She tells him she believes he is still a good man even though he is about to kill her. The killer begins to reconsider it, but still ends up killing her anyways. She ends up finding her "good" man who is god. The writer of this story is a very religious so that explains why that is the good man in the end.

Abstract

•    A family is taking a trip to Florida. They get lost on the way, but Granny never tells them this. They then run into a man, and Granny recognizes him as the killer. He now feels obligated to kill the family, and he kind of feels guility about it. The guy ends up killing her family, but the granny tells him she still thinks he is a good man. This makes the man question if he should really kill the woman. He says if she were always had a gun pointed at her, she would be a great person.

A&P

• This story is about man who works at a store called A&P. This could be a gender critism. The man obviously lusted over one of the girls, so he felt bad for when she was humilated in the store. I thinking looking at today, when a man lusts over a woman, he will do crazy stuff for her. He quit his job because not just because she was humilated. She was wearing skimpy clothing which I think made him want to quit more. He became obsessed with seeing these girls in their bathing suits because he looked at them every chance he could get.

Abstract

• The narrator works at the A&P grochery store. Three ladies walk in only wearing their bathing suits. The narrator watches them the whole time as they move through the aisles. He especially watches this one girl that has no shoes on and the straps of her suit are off her shoulders. They eventually find what they need and proceed to the narrators check out stand. The manager looks out from his office and sees these ladies. He comes over to inform them that this is not a beach, and they need to wear more clothes next time they are in. The one lady becomes embrassed and blushes. They are out the store when the narrator says he quit because he feels it wasn't right to humilate those girls. He leaves even though he needs the money and searches for the girls. He can't find them.

The Lottery

Analysis

• I found The Lottery a very confusing story. It was easy to read, but I kept asking myself why they are innocently killing random people. I would understand if they thought it was a sacrifice, but there wasn't anywhere that said it was. This can be related to things that have happened in our past. If you think about it, we have been through things that we thought were right because we didn't know any better. This is a lot like the lottery because they didn't know that this was a bad thing to do. It was a tradition, so children and adults thought this is what is supposed to happen and never questioned it. It can be related to slavery. We used to think that it is right to have slaves because everyone else had them, and no one thought differently until people stepped in.

Abstract

• The town gets together every year in the summer to hold a lottery. Everyone from the town comes in, and they call each person up to a slip of paper. Mrs. Hutchinson was late, and she didn't want the lottery to take place. Ironically, her husband draws the slip that has his family up for the lottery. They all grab a slip of paper, and everyone is relieve except for Mrs. Hutchinson who draws the slip of paper with a mark on it. The town grab stones, and they stone Mrs. Hutchinson to death.

Battle Royal

• This story can be look at from a historical critisim. Nobody would never really understand what is going on if they didn't know what happen that caused the civil war. It would seem like a cruel and unlikely thing that would happen if people didn't know that blacks used to be slaves. You could critise this story from many of the other critisims, but I think this is the main one.
• This story is about a men's club that find's cruel punishments for black people. They ask this boy to come in because he can recieve a scholarship to go to college by meeting with them. The boy comes, but it turns out to be a bad place. They first send out a naked woman to get them arroused. This shows that the white men are in complete control of the black men. They then blind fold the men, and say they need to fight for the scholarship. The put fake change on a shock mat, and the black men reach for it. It sends a major shock into them. It is torture. They end up fighting blind folded, and the young man wins. They allow him to read his speech, but he is chocking on his blood as he reads, and the men are not really paying attention until he said equality. This makes them stop and ask the boy some questions. He meant to say social responsibility. They end up giving him the scholarship, and he goes home to tell his grandpa. His grandpa informs him that he used to do whatever the white men said, so he was a trator.

The Chrysanthemums

• You can look at this story from a feminist and gender critisism. The man kind of over powers the woman in the story. This is a traditional role today and back then. She works very hard on her garden, and this is what a traditional role of a woman would be. She never tells her husband that she is unhappy which is like some women. They had their feelings from their husband because they are in the end, scared of them. She also ends up dressing up just to impress her husband to make him love her more.
• Elisa is married to Henry. She is a very hard worker when it comes to her garden of chrysanthemums. Her husband teases her by asking her if she would like to go to the fights, but he ends up saying she wouldn't like going anyways. This upsets Elisa. A man appears after Henry leaves to the fights looking for work. She offers him to fill pots. She takes a bath and looks at herself. She tries to make herself appealing to her husband by dressing up and putting make up on. the husband is surprised by her appearance. It kind of puts Elisa down, but she goes out to eat with him. She is excited to go to eat with him, but he says she is different. In the end, her husband upsets her, so she cries.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

• I think this story is relating to people who are scared of facing the darkness, so they are always looking for light. All the men are scared to be alone. It hints it a lot in the short story. They all live alone, and they want to stay at the bar as long as they can because they are scared to go home and be alone. The room is "light" and leaving it will only leave them in the darkness.
• This is a story about three men. There is a young waiter, old waiter, and a deaf man. The two waiters talk about what they know about the deaf man. He has tried to commit suicide, his wife has died, and how they need to send him home before he gets too drunk. The man doesn't go home any sooner than 3 a.m. because he will be alone after that. The waiters both don't want to go home either. They would rather stay at the cafe because they have nothing waiting for them at home.

The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

• The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall can be looked at from Formalism. The story is from Granny's thoughts before she dies. It is things that she remembers from her life and how she feels about death. I think it was pretty important to do it from her perspective because it would be a completely different story, but it is in 3rd person.
• Granny is in the hospital because she is slowly dying. She already came to peace with it by paying her last visits to her family before she was there. She is very annoyed by the doctor and her daughter that she is there, so she seems to be very grumpy. She thinks about what she needs to do tomorrow and how her dad lived to be 102, so I think she is in slight denial that she might die. She lays there remember times in her past. She remembers being a hard worker and when she almost married George. She begins to kind of forget things because she thought she saw the doctor 5 mintues ago, but it really was a whole day. She begins to think more about George, and it makes her mad. She believes he is in hell. It causes pain thinking about him. She tries to reach out to god, but then she dies.

The Rocking-Horse Winner

• The Rocking-Horse Winner can be related to marxism. The boy becomes very obsessed with winning the money that it eventually just kills him. The short story was pretty easy to understand  because the language wasn't difficult to comprehend.
• The story is of a poor family, but the boy recieves a rocking horse that tells him what horse will win in the race. The boy becomes obsessed with winning the money for his mother because she doesn't like being poor. The boy would do anything for his mother, but the mother only cares about the money. The boy is so obsessed with winning money he eventually dies.

The Metamorphosis

• I find this story really weird because the Gregor never worries about himself being a bug. No one ever questions why he is a bug.  Kafka uses his life kind of to write this story. His father was also a big selfish business man. This is a lot like the father in the story. He had a harsh relationship with his father, and I think that is why the father is the way he is in the story.
• The short story starts off with him waking up as a bug on his bed. He cannot firgure out how to turn over, so this process takes awhile. He is very worried about how he is going to catch the train and get to work. He misses work, but someone from his work comes to check on him. He finally gets out of bed and tries to open his door. When this happens, everyone behind the door is shocked. Gregor just keeps to himself, and his wife leaves him food and milk to drink and eat. He over hears some of the conversations that they have in the family room. The father won't let his mother see him. The only thing Gregor wants is for his daughter to be a violinist, but she is being a maid pretty much. One day, his dad begins to throw fruit at him, trying to kill him. They still have no idea if he is really Gregor or a bug. He eventually is locked in a room and left to die.

The Necklace, The Story of An Hour, and The Yellow Wallpaper

The Necklace

• I really did enjoy this short story. It was a clear a story, and I understood it. It had irony in the end of the story. You could look at Femenism in this story because the wife plays the "traditional" role of how it was back when this story was written. She also is very worried about her apperance which is like today's women. We are trying to impress people with how we look.  
• This story is about a poor husband and wife. She is invited to go to a ball, but she wants to look nice. She asks for money from her husband, and he gives her some. She also wants jewelry too, but the husband will not pay for jewelry. He tells her to go to Mme who has plently of jewelry. She borrows a beautiful diamond necklace, but by the end of the night she loses it. The wife is so worried she tries to find the same exact one. She does, but it is worth a lot. She buys it anyways, but now the family is in debt. It takes them years to get out of debt, but they eventually do. Mme is very sick and old, and that is when the wife confesses what she had done. Mme replies saying hers was fake, and it wasn't worth as much as they paid for.

The Story of An Hour

• You could look at this story from feminism. She obviously was over powered by her husband and that is why she wasn't too sad that he died. He control her which was like a typical woman back then.
• Louise is married to Bently. Everyone believes he died in a train accident, and they want to tell Louise in a nice way because she has a heart condition. She takes the news hard, but she only cries and stares out the window. She also is happy because she is now single and ready to live her life for herself not for anyone else.They eventually tell her to come downstairs, and she sees her husband. She is so happy by seeing him that she has a heart attack and dies. She also could've been sad to see him that is why she died.

The Yellow Wallpaper

• This is an ok story. It was a weird mind twisting story. It is a creepy story, but actually decent. This goes with psychological theory. Her ego is telling her that the wallpaper is bad, and it makes her nervous. She also believes there is a person that lives in the wallpaper, so that goes a long with her mind. She has a disorder, so this explains a lot of why she believes this way. This story is all about the mind and how it plays with the authors conciousness.
•  The author of the story has post partum depression, and her husband is her doctor. She believes her house is "haunted." She sleeps in a room that has yellow wallpaper, and it makes her very nervous to be there. She wants to change rooms, but the husbands decides its better to stay there because she will just find something else to be nervous about later. She is slowly becoming crazy.The yellow wallpaper takes over her mind, and she believes there are people that live in the wallpaper that only come out at night. She believes that creep on her. In the end, her husband finds her tearing down the wallpaper because she believes she is trapped behind the wallpaper and a creeper. The husband ends up fainting.

The Cask of Amontillado & Bartleby, The Scrivener

The Cask Of Amontillado

• I like Poe as a writer, but I didn't understand most of the what he wrote in The Cask Of Amontillado. It uses different words that made it hard to understand what it is trying to say. I've read this story before in class, but I still don't understand it as well as I could. My summary of the book isn't well because I still have a hard time understanding the material. The wording probably confuses me the most.
• Fortunato did something to the narrator that made him want to seek revenge on him. Fortunato is proud of himself, and people looked up to him. I think he was rich and loved to drink wine. The narrator runs into Fortunato and tells him he has a cask full of wine. They drink together. Something happens with bones, and they drink more wine. Somehow, Fortunato dies because of the narrator. I think he gets chained up and then sealed with bricks.

Bartleby, The Scrivener

• The story was a lot easier to understand more than Poe. He still used confusing words in which it made it hard to understand, but I got the gist of what he was trying to say. I do not understand the point of the story though. I think it is about helping out people in need and charity.
• The narrator is a very old man. Out of all the people he has done business with, Bartleby sticks out in his mind. He works with 3 other men who go by Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. Turkey is an Englishman who is his age. Turkey is also only good with working in mornings, but terrible when it comes to later in the day. Nippers is 25, and he is very amitious. He has a smaller income than Turkey, but better dressed? He is opposite of Turkey because he is not a very good worker in the morning. Ginger nut is 12 years old. His dad has died, and he was sent to the office everyday while his dad was alive. He was sent out to get ginger nut cake for Nippers and Turkey. That is how he got his nickname. The narrator put up an advetisement for a new worker, and Bartleby answered to the advertisement. He hires him, and Bartleby starts off doing great working there. One day, the narrator sits him down and begins to tell him what he needs to do today. Bartleby replies "I prefer not to." The narrator is very stunned by his comment. Instead of fighting with Bartleby, the narrator orders Nippers to do what he wanted Bartleby to do. Then he calls for a meeting so they can all look over some paper work, but Bartleby still says "I prefer not to." He asks the others if he think he is being too unreasonable. They all agree that Bartleby should be kick out of the office. The narrator ignores it and makes them do his job. They are all very upset by this. The narrator notices that Bartleby never leaves for dinner or for any meal. He is always at the office. Ginger nut always is bringing him food so he never has to leave. He thinks that Bartleby is poor, so even though he isn't doing his work, he keeps him working there. The narrator also finds out that he has been living there, so he still keeps him around.  He asks him many questions about Bartleby but all he replies is "I prefer not to." Bartleby now refuses to even write because of his vision, so there is really no use in him being there anymore. He moves his office to another building, but the lawyers do not like Bartle living there. He is always asleep on the stairs. They threaten to call the police, so he talks to Bartleby. He asks if he wants to live with him, but he refuses. So Bartleby is taken to prision. He refuses to eat and is very upset with the narrator. Bartleby eventually dies in prision.

Young Goodman Brown Journal

Journal Entry

Response:           
         The short story “Young Goodman Brown” was not a terrible story, but it was quite confusing. The literature is from the 1800’s making it very different from today’s literature, and going into formalism, the word choices he uses makes it sound like it’s from the 1800’s. There is one part in the story that says “Sayest thou so?” That has different wording from what we would use today. The wording Hawthorne uses makes it difficult to understand, but it isn’t impossible either. I think I got the main points of the stories, so that is all that matters.

            This short story uses psychological theory. Goodman Brown goes through an experience where everyone turns into the devil/evil. His wife turns into a witch, and even the priest turns evil. At the end of the stories, Hawthorne makes you question if it was a dream or real life. Brown doesn’t know what to believe so he takes it as an omen. He believes they are all secretly evil now, and now he is very conscience around all the people in the village after his “dream” or even could be “reality.”

Abstract:           
Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, but I’m not really sure why? He begins his journey by walking. He soon runs into a man who has a cane that is in the shape of a serpent. He asks him if he wants to use it to help walk fast, but Goodman Brown refuses because he believes it is evil. He also runs into someone named Goody Cloyse, and she thinks he is the devil. Brown then heads over to a ceremony of evil people and the minister of his church is going there too. Brown is shocked and believes the world is turning evil. At the ceremony, there are two converts that are going to show that they are ready to expose that they are evil. One of them is Faith. Brown shouts for her to resist the evilness and look up to heaven. He doesn’t remember much after that, but the next morning he heads back to Salem. He is very hesitant when he is around faith after what he believes was reality. He doesn’t know if it was a dream or reality, so he distrusts everyone in the community. He believes they are all evil, and he dies believing that everything that happened at the ceremony was either an omen or true.

Notes Over 1263-1369

Tips to help you with reading

•  highlight or underline important thing
• write notes in margins of why they are important
• ask questions about the text
• "argue" with the text
• looking for unusual languages
• look at it in your own words

Make sure you ask questions about:

• text
• author
• cultural context
• reader

When choosing/ writing about a topic remember:

• pick a topic that interests you
• spend time thinking about it
• you can seek guidence
• call upon you background knowledge

Developing a thesis

• should be clear and specific
• relevant to your topic
• debatable
• original
• in one sentence
• appropriate to the assignment

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