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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