kxc0616

Wow, I do not get short stories.  They never seem to have an end to me.  I have even tried listening to Selected Shorts on NPR to accustom myself to them, but I am just not getting there.  I did not realize that we did not need to read the entire book, so I read all the stories.  Not a bad thing, they were not very long, and they were interesting, but they always left me wondering why.  Why did someone feel that the world would be a better place once this short story was written?  Why did the author not include some kind of growth/change?  But, I am sure that I am missing something because short stories do seem quite popular.

The Cubs had this really annoying narrating style.  It took me a couple paragraphs to figure out that it was a group of people talking, all at once.  Still it seemed cruel to put hardly any punctuation in the story at all.  I realized later that the lack of punctuation gives the story a more accurate feeling of what it would be like to be talking to the group as they tell their story.  In the end, I chose to write my paper on that topic. 

For my paper, I focused on the grammatical because I am still not comfortable dealing with the different interpretations, especially when the author says that it had no symbolism in it.  I did try to look below the “surface meaning”. 

I started with the thought that when penises are involved, it is hard not to psychoanalyze.  The psychoanalysis would make it easy to explain that the author did not even realize that he was using symbolism.  But I could not find anything else in the novel to discuss on that idea.

I tried looking to history.  Perhaps Cuellar could represent Latin America losing its global power, and in the end petering out to global non-importance.  But I found nothing to go with that either.

In frustration, I thought that there is always some connection to Christ, right?  I found that the dog’s name was Judas, and there is not much more betraying of a boy in Latin American society than biting off his thing.  Cuellar does kind of walk on water when he surfs on the water that is deadly.  And he did die at a young age.  But, none of this shows me anything, so I dropped it.

As I have thought many times before class, I am quite currious to see what other people understood out of the story that I did not. 

I was surprised that poetry could be that long.  I mean, I have read some epic poems, but they always seemed to have more of a plot to them than this. 

I found it most weird how most of the poem has punctuaion, but there are times when all punctuation is left out, most notably on page 12-13. 

I did note some interesting ways to define himself in that area that is not definable.  That area that post-colonialist talk about that is not self, and not other.  I liked the picture that I got when he says that he includes himself between latitude and longitude.  I saw that as saying that he is not definable using the standards that we know today.

I did not follow the discussion about which English word best matched the ideas put forward by the French words for black.  I understand that languages are not going to match up word for word, or even thought for thought.  What seemed weird to me was the words that they did choose.  But maybe that is because I am not familiar with all the denotations and conotations of the words in my own language.  I was just surprised that negritude was choosen as a derogatory

The word choice was phenomenal in this work.  I enjoyed the descriptions, rather than just feeling that they slowed down the book.  One of my favorites was towards the beginning when the road to Comala is being described as rising and falling, which would make us think of a hilly road, then it continues by explaining that the road rises when you leave and falls when you come.  It could have just been said that the town is at the bottom of the hill, but that does not give the eary feeling that you would be drawn into the town and not be able to escape it. 

The blending of reality and “non-reality” is one of my favorite things about Latin American literature.  I faked my way through every book report that I had to write until my junior year of high school when my teacher recomended that I read One Hundred Years of Solitude.  It was the first non-children’s book that I read in entirety and enjoyed!  So I have quite a warm feeling for the “realismo magico”.

In Pedro Paramo (as well as the later magical realism books), I have a hard time usinf the term “fantasy” or “illusion” for the non-reality characteristics.  They are too real to the novel to be considered not real, even though it could never happen in real life. 

Due to the interesting order of the narratives, I might have enjoyed more of a discussion simply comparing in what order we thought the action took place.  It may be that there is only one interpretation, but I would not be surprised if other students would have different interpretations than I did.  The ending, similarly was somewhat vague as to what was happening.  I am thinking about using this book as my book for the final project, due to that possible flexibility in interpretation. 

Wow, what an interesting work.  Before class I felt that I had enjoyed reading it, but figured that I was reading too much on the surface, and had probably missed a lot.  I was quite happy to find out that I was not missing much.  The symbols that I had noticed were as important as I thought, in that they could be symbols, but they did not particulary lead to any general ideas.  I find that kind of text very interesting.  It seemed to allow for much discussion from many different points of view, but there is not really any one that is “right”. 

Even though it was a dark topic, I felt that the absurdity of the conversations kept it lighter than it could have been.  I love the fact that weird things are happening and no one seems to notice that it is weird.   

One last thought on Sab… I found it interesting that noone mentioned Teresa in our discussion of what is “romantic” about Sab.  Her description almost always uses the word sublime, as she is characterized as not the normal beauty, but none the less having a beauty of her own. 

I greatly enjoyed the discussion of many different interpretations of the book.  I had not taken my reading to that level, but it was helpful to see the variety.  I have traditionally tried to stay to what seems to be the author’s intent.  I kind of like the idea that the meaning is up for interpretation, because that means that as long as I can explain my interpretation it is not wrong (as was the case in school).  However, I am not willing to accept that simply because they are not wrong, I should agree to hold that view.  Specifically the thought that Sab’s vomiting blood at the end was connected to the blood lost by Carlota at the loss of her virginity was a bit much for me.  I can see where it comes from, but…, yeah…, too big of a jump from what is on the page for me to get yet, maybe someday, but not yet.  

I enjoyed reading Candide.  I found the paper a little harder though.  Every definition that I could come up with for Enlightenment seemed to go against something in Candide.  Voltaire was having such a good time making fun of the optimism and pessimism.  It is almost hard to see him as an enlightenment thinker. 

Not much to say on this topic, because I bet that the movie will fit into later “isms” better, but… I noticed a similarity between the enlightenment focus on truth, liberty, and happiness and the bohemian ideals of truth, freedom, beauty, and love from the movie Moulin Rouge. 

Ok, I have been freaked out about what I was going to write in here, and so I have delayed quite a bit.  I think that it is one of those blank page things, that the longer that you stare at it, the harder it is to write.  But, time has come, so here goes.

When we came to class on Monday, I felt that I had a pretty good grasp of what Humanism was, based on the reading and some searching on the internet.  Basically, it is an interest in “antiquity” (aka the Greek and Latin cultures).  That seems easy enough.  So, when I read the poems, I wanted to compare them to poems from the old greek poems, or the old latin poems, or perhaps to compare them to other non-humanist poems of the time period so that I could see the differences or similarities.  There I ran into some trouble; I don’t know enough about either of those groups to make any good comparisons.  Nor am I even a fan of more recent poetry.  So, I attended class curious as to how the discussion would go. 

In the end, I think that I was looking for something more concrete.  (example “This is written in iambic pentameter, which was not used until this poem.)  But I should have been looking at the topic, word choice, and voice.  Furthermore, not all of those will reflect humanism in one work.  The part of the work that reflects the humanist ideals may change, and the way in which it reflects those ideals may change.  

So, when I left class, I knew more than when I came in, and yet, it clouded up the picture of humanism.  However, I beleive that class was probably suppose to do that. 

Hello.  I am excited to get back to classes, something comforting in the pattern.  I teach 8th grade Spanish at a middle school in Plano.  Due to the demands of teaching, or more grading, I am taking the master’s degree pretty slowly.  I am in my third year, and hope to graduate in Spring 2008.