We have read a lot of different types of books, short stories and poems this semester. Some of the books were hard to understand the true meaning behind them and others were simpler. The short stories on the other hand were challenging. They had so many different meanings behind them and where hard to understand what was going on. We only read one poem in the class and that was challenging to comprehend. The thing with all these pieces of writing is that they made the class think about what was truly going on in the story. It just wasn’t a piece of writing that you read and then went on to the next one.

The writings I am going to reflect on are the hardest ones, I thought, through out the class. The first one is The Lottery By Shirley Jackson. This short story was hard to comprehend because there was so much going on and I couldn’t really grasp the true meaning of what they were trying to do. The Lottery was a story about these little towns that would have to stone someone every year. In the story we read there was conflict with this one family because the mom got picked and she made her family draw again.

The next story is The Street By: Ann Petry. This book I was so confused about it through the whole thing. It’s a book about a lady named Lutie and her child named Bub going through life and how they had to live. It was a good book but very hard to understand. Going through it in class was helpful but didn’t really help me understand what was really going on.

Both of these short stories, and novels were challenging in there own way. The Lottery had me second-guessing the way I read stories and the way I think about them. When Jackson explained the difference of the lottery boxes because they made a new one because the old one was to old I got really confused on what they were talking about (pg. 703). For this part when we had a group conversation all the people in the class knew what she was talking about. So that made me think that the way I was reading the story was totally off and I didn’t comprehend what was going on. The ending of this story I found out I knew what was going to happen. All of the context clues within the story gave me the idea that someone was going to die and it would be painful.

Now the novel The Street was a different story. It made me really think about what was going on and the concept of why they would put that in there. For example when they add at the end that she was beating the guy with a candlestick and saw all the red around her and it turned out to be blood (pg. 429). That part was drug on when it didn’t need to be. So when I was reading that I remember thinking why did they add so much detail about this part when they could of added it somewhere else. Then when I got to the class discussion I understood that they added so much detail to add effect to the book and make her look like the bad guy. The group discussions worked some times but not all the time and when we had the peer teachings those were the best.

The peer teachings made all the books we read in that class make more sense and helped me understand them better. It gave me an opportunity to grasp the real meaning of the novels and short stories. The best part was that my fellow peers were doing the teaching and it didn’t really matter if we would miss the meaning because they would help explain it in the terms that would make sense in the college student’s language. It was more personal then when the teacher gets up there and talks to us.

Along with the peer teachings we did a lot of small group talks and those didn’t do much for me because we would talk about other things then what we were suppose to. I do have to say that in the small groups I talked more then in the larger groups. That is because in the small groups I could say what I wanted and we would talk about it as in the large groups someone would say something and then people would bash on it and that scared me. With this I learned that I am afraid of public speaking and being rejected. I would of talked more in the class but I was too afraid of people bashing my ideas or nobody saying anything.

Group talks were nice because of the fact that it got the class talking about different outcomes and helped me understand what is going on in the stories. Then we started these critical thinking and little background stories of the novels we were reading. These critical thinking and background stories were a waste of time. I learned nothing from them and to honest I didn’t read most of them I just blow them off. The ones I would read I would only read the parts that I found interesting and that was it. So these were pointless for the class.

All of these activities and stories had some point to the class but some of them were helpful and others were pointless. Like the teaching was very helpful and made the stories make sense. Then on the other hand the critical thinking and background information was useless. Just for the fact that we didn’t really talk about them. Now for the stories they all had a purpose for reading them but most of them were very difficult to understand but with the activities we did they helped out. This class was very informational all in different ways.

Prompt: What are your families tradition for the Thanksgiving holidays? How does tradition serve as a basis for families, cultural, and family identity? How can tradition be a positive as well as a negative force for individuals and society?

My family and I have a very simple tradition for Thanksgiving. We have Thanksgiving dinner at my house and invite my mom’s sister down to have dinner with us and go shopping. My mom and I make the food all day to have it ready by 5 o’clock so we can eat then. After we eat and clean up the table from the dishes we grab the new paper with all the ads in it and debate on where we want to go. Normally we have a list of everything we are looking for and a list of what we really need. Then we make a map of how we are going to conquer or list and where to go and what time to go.

This serves as a basis for my family and the identity. No matter what comes up we always have dinner at our house and invite my mom’s sister. This is the basis because we always do that no matter what. We care for our family and we show that by having them come over and share this special meal with us. We only invite my mom’s sister because she is the only one that is willing to come down. Going shopping is the main identity for my family on this holiday because we always go out when the stores open. Everyone we know knows that when it comes to Black Friday we always go shopping to get most of the gifts we give out for Christmas. That is our true family identity on Thanksgiving is the shopping aspect.

Traditions can be a negative because you always do the same thing and it can get boring. As for the positive you know what you are going to do and you can prepare for it the right way. As society wise it keeps people buying most of the same things they normally by and doesn’t cause a world of panic because people don’t know what to do. A negative to the society is that since we have had Thanksgiving for a while we could grow old of it and just skip it.

In the street when she yells at her son for shoe shining and she just wants him to do something better then that then compare that to the writing of the lottery when she says her daughter has to be in the drawing to. This is so wrong and I would go through the aspect of why it is okay to push your kids to do better but not push them as far as hurting themselves like she did in the lottery. The sources I would use would be some about punishing your child for what they do to a certain extent. The hard thing about that is that people have different viewpoints on how to raise and punish their child or to talk to them. It would be hard to pick out which ones would be legit and not fully opinion based. The top question I have is what is so bad with yelling or punishing your child?

In the Lottery and the jury of her peers the women are seen as the ones that do everything for the house. Like in the lottery they are cleaning the houses and taking care of the kids when they have the lottery and then they go back to work. Just like in the jury of her peers the women are in the house to grab the things and clean the house. Some sources for this topic would be how the women got treated back then and try and find sources that would list off the roles they would play. The tricky thing would be that there would be so many of them and it would be hard to pick out which one would be the right one to use. I just don’t understand why the women had to be the “home people” that toke care of everything.

Charity’s relationship to nature is that it shows some kind of innocence to her. It is a beauty that no one else can see but her. On page 55 Edith Wharton say that “The little June wind, frisking down the street, shook the doleful fringes of the Hatchard spruces…across the road into the duck-pond.” This shows the beauty that they are seeing but Charity picks up on it more then anyone. This is evident when she is looking out her window and sees the bird and the flowers but thinks of the calmness of it all.

The seasons of the summer follow Charity’s emotions I think to a point. When she is sad the weather is gloomy and then when everything is going right it is sunny and lovely. Like in the beginning of the book she is happy and content with her life and the weather is perfect not to cold but not to hot for her. Then as the story goes on and Mr. Harney comes to town the weather takes a shift. She starts to fall for him and the weather changes to be hotter. The one time when she was with Mr. Harney going to the house outside of town it started to rain. The rain symbolizes the aspect of something going wrong or a part of her past coming back to her. Take the mountain scene when he mom dies it starts to rain there because she is finding something she doesn’t like and it has to do with her past. Also when she was marrying Mr. Royall the earth seemed to her as it was slipping away and the weather they said was cold and that shows that when she is confused or is numb to the world the weather goes cold.

It always seems like whatever her mood is that is what the weather decides to be.

This speech was different then what I though it would be. I though it would be all about how she got diagnosed and then the process of how she got better through faith. Instead she talked about how she got diagnosed and then just how faith was a factor in her life. How she got diagnosed was very sad, because she broke her back twice because of the cancer. Then she goes on to explain that with the cancer diagnosis she had a lady from the local church came and gave her a prayer shawl and it got her thinking that if that church would do it I wonder if others would to. So she made a carrying bridge site and the response she got on there was remarkable. She said that so many people gave her shawls and then people would send her things she didn’t ask for but still got. She also said that she could put information on her site so people all around the country and world could hear her story. The faith in this is that people would send prayers to her to help her get better but that was about it. That was all about the faith she had in the speech besides the occasional psalm that she through in there.

This speech just wasn’t what I thought it would be considering that she made a lot of indications on how people could help her but that is all. It seemed to me that she just wanted people to help her and that’s it she wanted the attention but didn’t want to give anything back. It was good but very different then what I thought.

I choose Frank Churchill to create a profile for. So far in the book Frank Churchill has done some crazy things to get peoples attention. He also has a great support group behind him to because he is a well-known person that everyone talks about. For example when he wasn’t supposed to be there for another week or so he was talked about all the time because he was coming and everyone was happy about it.

Then when he did come everyone still talked about him. He is a popular person and with that said he has some morals of being that great guy who everyone can look up to. He is also polite and I thin he strives for that then he also puts his family first. For example he shows all of these in little things that people don’t really realize because they think it is someone else. He is a shy fellow when it comes to showing his true feelings.

All these values to him come in handy through out the book. When the piano comes I think he gave it to her because he was being nice. But nobody notices because it is something so extravagant that everyone is worrying about who gave it to her but no one is looking right under there noises. His values are very different then everyone else values in the book because they do what is best for them and he does what is best for everyone else. Like when he moved his Aunt to Richmond because she wanted to move there. He didn’t fight he did it out of love for her. With this view and his values people are finding it strange but also nice because he is caring for others beside himself.

In the book The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins has a lot of detail that is gruesome. When she explains the killing parts she goes into detail that is kind of disturbing. She adds so much detail that you could imagine it happening right in front of you. Here is an example from page 334:

The game makers made the finale so disgusting. They made mutant dogs that looked like the tributes that had already died in the games. The dogs had the same hair color and the same eyes as the tributes and were demanded to attack the remaining tributes. This is disturbing because the capitol has every power in the world to do what they want and I wouldn’t hold it pass them to use the tributes eyes for the dogs. Peeta asked that very same question and I have to agree with him because the capitol is trying to get a point across to the tributes that are left.

When she was explaining what the dogs were doing to the tributes it was very gruesome because of all the detail. She was explaining when Petta got bite by the dog and his leg is gushing blood all over but then the worst was when Cato got hit with the arrow and fell off the cornucopia right into the dogs. She mentioned every little moan he made and the sound of the dog’s teeth against his armor he was wearing. Then the dog’s dragged him to the cornucopia and still couldn’t kill him. But don’t worry she made sure you knew what was going on and how the dogs would bite his head and armor but he couldn’t do anything. She finally ends the gruesome moment when Katniss hits him in the head with one of her arrows.

In this reading there was a community of 300 hundred people who had a lottery about every year but this lottery isn’t the typical lottery. When he opened the story he had kids gather rocks and put them in a pile. I figured it was just like a ceremony to celebrate who go the lottery and then the kids where making it even for them to stand. Then when they gathered and had to stand with there families it only made it look more like they are celebrating as a family.

With this the Kant’s categorical imperative was tested with these people. The Kant’s categorical imperative is where you do a bad action but then you make a rule that everyone else would follow. So like this people know that hurting others is bad but they do it anyway because they got told that it’s okay. They have also been doing it for so long that they really don’t know anything else. With these people who have taken a slip of paper and then realized that what they are doing is wrong but don’t do anything about it. Like when they found out that the other communities aren’t doing the lottery anymore and they get mad because they aren’t doing it and they are supposed to.

My question is what the hell do they think when they are throwing rocks at people that they know haven’t done anything and yet they have to stand there and take it. To me it sounds like it is a whole bunch of brain washing and they do what they are told and that’s it.

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