cathedral

“Cathedral”

By:

Raymond Carver

In this short story, the author is not looking forward to a visit by a blind friend of his wife. He has preconceived notions about how blind people act, and he does not want one in his house. His wife and Robert, the blind man had been friends since she was a young girl. They had kept in contact by sending each other tapes about what was going on in their lives. The author doesn’t understand the friendship her wife and Robert have had. As the story begins the Robert’s wife has just died. The author has no empathy for the man, but strangely does for his dead wife because she had to live with a blind husband. The author feels somewhat left out as his wife and Robert visit. Later, Robert and the author smoke dope together and visit. Robert has an amazing ability to connect with other people and he does with the author showing him what it is like to be blind, strangely opening the author’s eyes.

lady with the pet dog 2

“The Lady with the Pet Dog”

By:

Joyce Carol Oates

I didn’t like this version quite as much as Chekhov’s. I am not totally sure why. Oates’ work seems so dark. This story had much more character development especially with Anna, but I didn’t like her as much as I did in Chekhov’s story. I got impatient with her and the feelings she had about herself. This story revealed much more about Anna’s husband. I felt sympathy for him throughout the story. I liked the lesson Dmitry learned in the first story about love more than I did what Anna learned about her self in Oate’s story.

Lady with the pet dog

“The Lady with the Pet Dog”

By

Anton Chekhov

Even though this story was written well over 200 years ago, the theme is the same as many books today. The story seems timeless. I liked this story much better than “Araby”. Even with Dmitry’s dislike of his wife and his feeling of superiority towards women in the beginning, I felt empathy for him and Anna.
There was an honesty of feelings between Anna and Dmitry even while they were engaged in an affair with each other. At the end of the story Dmitry understands true love when he looks at himself in the mirror and sees how old and grey he had become, and he marvels that even when Anna sees him as a man, growing older, she still loves him.

“Araby” by James Joyce

“Araby” is a story of a young boy who is just discovering a world outside of the house he lives in with his aunt and uncle and the playtime he has with his friend Mangan. Joyce’s story is full of descriptive language (“The space of sky above us was the color of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns”) and metaphors (“The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces”). The author has a first crush on his friend Mangan’s sister. She knows nothing about the crush, but he imagines and thinks about her constantly. When he finally talks to her, she tells him about a splendid bazaar called Araby. She tells him she can’t go, and he promises to get her a souvenir. He does go, but gets there very late when the bazaar is closing. He sees nothing splendid about the bazaar, especially when a young girl reluctantly asks him if he needs help, when it is obvious she would rather be flirting with the boys she is near. He leaves disillusioned with the bazaar, his crush and his life.

Despite the abundance of descriptive language in this story, it never really pulled me in. It seemed like an accurate portrayal of the times, but it was pretty dark and depressing.

archetype women

I googled and my first picture that came up was venus. Aphrodite Archetype

notes for Feb 24

Do blogs on Brothers Karamazov

cathedral-not aware gifted January 6 (12th night) revelation that something else is going on in the world

Fininide(pulses)-in millions, but limited. "killing time," answer art, song gives you the highest moment of your time.

Prefer Joyce's version better because it is the same language

"gazing into the darkness....eyes burned with anguish and anger", similar to Oedipus

yellow brown represent deterioration, violet is spiritual

Archetype good vs evil

negative female-earth mother, devouring, temptress

positive female-platonic ideal sophia

notes for Feb 22

Blogs are more important than quizzes, Part 2 of the Brothers Karamazov should be finished.

Similarities between Don Quixote and Demitry, and Hamlet and Ivan.

Mr. Sexton loves Russian Literature the best.

In the BK women who have faith-posed a tough question how to pacify a woman who is grieving over her dead son. Further in the book the monk tells her to go to her husband because the child is looking down at them and how hurt he'd be if he saw a broken family.

3 and 7 are big literature numbers

One professor stated that women can not handle The Brothers Karamazov

Alyosha even has violence in him, would want the general to die because he let his dogs kill the child before the mother.

book confronts issues people do not want to face.

read Araby 547, Lady with the pet dog 437 449, cathedral 465

epiphany- sudden realization, flash of initiation recollection

Have you ever tried to tell a blind person what it's like to see?

"pay attention" Henry James, be someone who nothing is lost on