Thoughts of 223

     I must say I am glad to see this semester come to a close. I have really enjoyed this class and the different things that we have read but boy was there a lot of it! I can say with much certainty that I am still not a huge fan of poetry. I must not be a very deep reader because for the most part I do not see the hidden meanings that a lot of people see. Oh well won’t lose any sleep over that. I have found several authors that I will follow up on such as Flannery O’Conner, Kate Chopin, Alice Walker, William Faulkner, and James Baldwin; although Going to Meet the Man was disturbing I think I would like to read some more of his work. I was at a book sale at the Walton Library and found a paper back copy of The Red Badge of Courage that I thought I would give to my son to read, if not for this class I may not have even gave it a second glance. I would also like to find a copy of A Streetcar named Desire to watch. I have enjoyed reading the discussion posting by all of my other classmates and have decided that I have been missing a lot of information when I read because y’all see way more things in those pages than I do.  So a big thank you to Mrs. Siemens for recommending that I take this class it has broadened my horizons.

Sisterly Love

      In the play A Streetcar Named Desire the sisters are like so many other sisters that everyone must know. Blanche is so animated in so many ways from the very beginning of the play to the end. When she arrives at her sisters she feels as if she must have gotten the address wrong surely her sister would not be living here. She says to Stella “I thought you would never come back to this horrible place”. Blanche was great at pretending to be a social drinker she would sneak a drink and put the bottle back and wash the glass out she was definitely hiding her taste for the alcohol. Blanche also carried on about how Stella was only there for the funerals; the actual deaths that Blanche had to contend with at Belle Reve were so hard on her. Because funerals cost so much and no one had prepared for their deaths, this is why she lost Belle Reve (not true).  Not to mention all of the trouble that she caused with her indiscretions at the Flamingo hotel in Laurel and with the teenage boy at the school where she taught. The deceitful life that she had created eventually caught up with her when she tried to tell Stella what Stanley had done, too little too late.

     And then there was Stella always there to defend her sister. This caused trouble between her husband and herself. She defended Blanche saying she is sensitive. When Stanley revealed Blanche’s affairs at the Flamingo Stella replied contemptible lies pure invention. Stella tries to explain why her sister is the way she is the loss of her young husband, finding out he is homosexual but none of this seemed to matter to Stanley. In the end Stella is crying as she packs Blanche’s trunk for her to be taken away by the matron and doctor. Stella feels as if she has let her sister down.

     It seems that in most families there are weaker and stronger siblings. And as we love our siblings we often defend them to the bitter end. After all they are usually the only ones that would be there for us no matter what, whether we agree or disagree with their lifestyle or choices that they have made they are our family.

What troubling times!

 

The story “Going to Meet the Man” was very interesting and troubling for me. I have read over this story several times which is more than I usually do. I am troubled by the way people were treated during this time period. Although I must have known in the back of my mind that this kind of cruelty happened, I never put much thought to it. Not only the extreme cruelty to the black man but the mental cruelty that parents exposed their children to both in the black families and the white. I suppose this is all an attempt to teach them that if they do something bad that there will be punishment for it. I am not really clear as to what he actually did do, was it that he raped Miss Standish or simply knocked her down? Wow, how far we have come since then. Now you can murder someone and the punishment may be that you are put in prison for life, but not strung up and tortured.  Mr. Jesse actually seems to get excited physically at the thought of inflicting pain on another human being. Did Jesse get the idea from his father that desire and pleasure for your spouse must come with the thought of cruelty to others? I guess in his masculine dominating thought process he enjoyed seeing the pain of others. How sad for him!