Ursula LeGuin Video

With the Ursula Leguin video I feel that hearing the authors voice can give the audience a better understanding of the tone in a story. Ursula Leguin in her video reads from her new book "Lavina". She reads it with so much passion, to the point where the audience can understand the mood of her new book. In the video Ursula Leguin is reading in a slow mysterious way, sometimes taking long pauses when new things are unveiling in the story, like when she reveals that a someone the main character known had died. The way Leguin is reading in her video feels like the tone of her new book "Lavina", is a gloomy and ominous tone.

Sandra Cisneros' video

The Sandra Cisneros video gave me more information than the reading which helped me further understand how Esperanza feels about and views her house and family. The video stated that Esperanza, the main character of the story wants to use her abilities instead of chance and marriage to get a "house on a hill". This helped me realize Esperanza may come from a family where woman's place is at home and are not truly active members of society. Esperanza feels isolated because the house she is currently living in is not where she wants to be, not only because it was small, but also because it represents a lifestyle and mentality that she does not believe in. Esperanza wants to be independent and not dependent on her future husband or on luck, like her mom was. She knows that with hard work comes with good payoffs. The house and what it means to her gives Esperanza more motivation to be successful in life.

Handsomest Men and Omelas

Tone shapes and helps people understand the overall mood of a story. In Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," tone not only shapes but changes throughout the story. In the beginning of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" the tone is lyrical, and joyful, because the author speaks of a place with "joyous" and "smiling" people where music plays all the time, a place where everyone would want to live. As the story progresses the tone shifts into a hopeless and contemptuous one. Omela has secrets that would shame any town and is worse than one would think. Le Guin uses words like "terrible justice" to convey how twisted society in the Omelas are. The reader can start to feel pity for the town.

Gabriel Marquez's "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" also shifts in tone but starts out pitiful and hopeless and becomes lively and optimistic. When the body of Esteban is found in the beginning, the story has a hopeless and pitiful tone. The townspeople feel Esteban is "condemned to going through doors side ways"(Marquez 331) because of large stature and his dead body looks "so "forever dead, so defenseless."(Marquez 331). As soon as the people of the town are done weeping for Esteban the story's tone turns into one that is full of hope and joy. Marquez uses words like "startled hens"(332) to show how alive and hopeful the women are about Esteban death. During his funeral the townspeople "fought for the privilege"(Marquez 333) to carry his casket the reader can see with the words like fought and privilege that the townspeople are exited and looking forward to bury Esteban and how positive the tone of the story is.

A House On Mango Street+A Pair Of Tickets

 

Stories give you an insight into an author's life and culture. "The House On Mango Street," by Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan's "A Pair of Tickets," are both stories where the authors backgrounds influence the story. Sandra Cisneros is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who gained her master's degree from the University of Iowa. In her story, she writes about a young girl who's family of six gets a rundown home on Mango street and vows one day that she will be in a better one. It is not a coincidence that Sandra Cisneros would write a short story about a large family and young girl wanting to do better in life, when Cisneros herself is from a family of seven, grew up in Chicago, and is now a successful writer. Once I was done reading about Sandra Cisneros' background, it feels as if it is her and not the narrator thinking, "I knew I had to have a house, a real house.  One that I could point to," after finding out the home that she is moving into is not the one in her dreams.

Amy Tan is an American author who visited her parent's homeland, China as a young child with her mother. Her story, "A Pair Of Tickets" is about a 36 year old woman who visits China with her father and is anxious to meet her half twin sisters but nervous about telling them of her mother's death. Like Amy Tan, Jing-mei the main character and narrator of the story is an American with Chinese parents. I can hear the author's voice when Jing-mei visits and is shocked of how "communist china" has "color TV, and Cadbury chocolate bars". You can tell Amy Tan's experience when she went to China for the first time as a girl affects the way she writes of how Jing-mei thinks about China.

Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"

Jamaica Kincaid "Girl", is written as lists of statements. There are no periods or paragraphs in the short story, just one continuous line with semicolons after each direction the author writes. I feel like it is a list of instructions a mother teaches her daughter so she can become a woman. The narrator seems to be two people, a mother telling her daughter things that she should and should not do to avoid turning into a "slut" or a unacceptable woman in society, and her daughter taking all the instructions in while questioning whether or not if she can follow all the rules. Since it seems like the instructions the mother is giving the daughter is old fashioned "this is how you set a table for tea", the story most likely takes place in the 1950s where it was more common for women to stay at home.

The message Jamaica Kincaid is trying to convey in her story is the constant pressures women are faced with in society, to be what society wants you to be. The instructions in her story symbolize societal pressures that women are faced with. There are so many instructions on how to be woman, that the young girl in the story is overwhelmed, "but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread." Like there are so many pressures women are faced with that they develop insecurities. The mother in the story wants the best for her daughter and is scared of her growing up into a bad woman. She gives her daughter tough love and threatens her with the notion that she is bound to become a slut so she must follow the rules to the last detail. This is saying that women must not make any mistakes in society, and they have to be perfect.

The Appointment in Samarra>The Appointment

why was death a woman in the clip The Appointment? because death was a fortune teller and fortune tellers are usually protrayed as women. (so cliche, so uncreative, no critical thinking involved.)

The Appointment in Samarra is a very interesting short story that has a surprising and compelling ending which made me think more about death and fate. Even though it gives off this creepy feel, I enjoyed the short story and I liked how the author wrote it in a way where I was reading in between the lines to discover the message of "death is inevitable." The irony of the story made me more active in reading it.

Unlike The Appointment in Samarra, the short clip "The Appointment" disappointed me. The 70 second clip did not capture anything i felt while reading the story. Instead it turned the story into a cheesy film, using a cliche like a fortune teller and her cards to signify fate. it was too straight forward in conveying the message of the story and uncreative. I did not even feel the irony in the clip because in the beginning the main character had a flashback of a man shooting him to his death, so I knew what was going to happen in the end, and I also felt the character knew his fate as well. It did not make me think about the message of death because it was too obvious since the fortune teller stated it more than once in the clip. Overall The film did not do the story of The Appointment in Samarra any justice.