Readings that I liked and disliked

I liked reading short stories the most because I was able to read them a couple of times to fully understand them. I liked "The Man From Mars," "The Rudy Elemenhurst Story," and "Pet Milk," because they were really easy to understand and I could picture it well in my head. I liked the comic book, "The Watchmen," because it was my first comic I've fully read. It was a great comic book with lots of symbols, which I enjoyed discussing in class. I Liked the Tupac poems because I have been listening to Tupac forever. I have never read his poems though, and I thought it was good because now I understand what the lyrics in his songs actually mean. I didn't enjoy reading some of the poems because they were hard to follow, but I always have trouble anaylzing poetry. I thought the overall selection of readings were good, and I wouldn't change them.

WATCHMEN

My experience reading The Watchmen was similar with the author of this piece. It was the first comic I have read also. I have started reading other comics but could never finish them, unlike The Watchmen. I would stay up reading late night, much fatigued, yet I could not put the book down. Similar with the author of this piece, I caught myself looking at the photos more than reading the words. I would picture the photos like I was actually there, and I could feel the characters' emotions. I loved reading this comic and the gruesome images. This comic reminded me of the movie X-men with all of the super heros. I would recommend this comic book to everyone, even if they didn't enjoy reading comic books to begin with. Thanks for sharing this comic book with us.

Character who achieves Atonement

Atonement is said to be the the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression. I dont think any of the characters achieved atonement. I think Briony is trying to achieve it but her sister won't meet up with her. She has the most to apologize for since she is the reason Robbie and Cecilia were seperated in the first place. I know that Robbie would of probably been sent off to war anyways, but she humiliated him in front of her family. Briony is the one of the biggest reasons why Cecilia won't see her parents. In Briony's fictional story she kind of gets atonement by Robbie and Cecilia but it is fictional. The truth is no one achieves atonement in the story.

Favorite Story is Pet Milk

I enjoyed the short story, Pet Milk, by Stuart Dybek. It's about a couple in Chicago that plan on going different ways for their future plans. One plans on going to Europe for grad school and the other plans on going to the Peace Corps. I like the story the most because when I was little I didn't really like the taste of coffee. I just thought I looked older and more mature when I drank it. The narrator liked the way it looked when he put the pet milk in the coffee. The narrator says, "It's not that I enjoy the taste especially, but I like the way Pet milk swirls in the coffee. I also like the story because I could relate to the city train. I use to ride the city train, and I use to look through the glass at the people waiting at the train stops. It was an overall good short story. It wasn't too long and it was a good story.

The Vietnam Story

The Plot begins with the beginning of a war between South Vietnamese, United States, and North Vietnamese. The unnamed narrator tells about the war and his struggles in prison in Vietnam. He also tells about his Vietnamese girlfriend named Maria and how much they have fallen in love. His Vietnamese girlfriend tells him she is on his side of the war and that she is going to go back with him to the United States. What he doesn't know is that she is lying to him, and she is really just trying to figure out where all his troops are based so that she could tell her brother and have them captured. He also tells about how bad it is there with the drug problems and all the women and children who have been strapped with bombs and sacrificing themselves to kill the Americans. The heroin is also making the troops get flashbacks of the bombing of their fellow troops, which most of them lost a lot of friends. The narrator also speaks about how they don't think they should be over their helping fight this war. At the end of the story Maria turns on the narrator and he becomes a prisoner of the Vietnamese, and is tortured and punished where he is oblivious to everything because of the drugs and the flashbacks of the suiciding bombing, his girlfriend, and he doesn't understand why he is alive. He wants to just be killed.

Song that symbolizes Rudy Elemnhurst

The song that reminds me of Rudy Elmenhurst the most is I love Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground. The song talks about sex which Rudy is trying to do throughout the story with Yolanda, and it talks about candy which symbolizes drugs in this song. In the story it talks about how Rudy and his friends do drugs in the doorm rooms. This song represents Rudy's two charcterstics of wanting sex and drugs. Here is the link to the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDAXltfj8-Y

Street Car Named Desire

I believe that Vivien Leigh did a better impression of what Blanche would of been on screen. She might of just been a better actress because her accent was what a 1920's southern accent unlike what Jessica Lange's 90's southern accent was. When I read the play I could picture Blanche being more emotioinal and I feel that Vivian did a better job with her emotions then Jessica. I think the quote from Tennessee Williams was best described in the Vivien leigh because she has more unmanagable fear and emotion in her acting then Jessica does. Jessica looks like she is faking her cry and then she laughs at the end of crying which throws me off. I would have to say that the second clip by Vivian Leigh was the better image of Blanche.

Modernism and Postmodernism

The difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernism is old school and postmodernism is new school. In the story, "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story" Rudy demonstrates postmodernism with the way his language is towards Yolanda. He says things to her like lets have sex instead of using the modern term of lets make love. He also demonstrates postmodernism when he gives Yolanda sexual double meanings for images, which in modernism their is only one meaning for sex terms. He then even shows up at her apartment years later saying,"lets fuck," which is way to postmodern for the modern language which Yolanda is used to. This story shows the difference in language with postmodernism being Rudy's language and modernism being Yolanda's language.

Justin Lew

I am in your English 215 class on MW at 2:30. I am from Irmo, South Carolina and my major is Financial Management. My block link is http://justinlew.blogspot.com