Archetype

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the word archetype means the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies. It can also mean the perfect example. For example, Superman is an example of an archetypical character that represents justice, truth and wisdom. Superman is some typical romantic heroes that save the day and defeat the villain. According to Carl Jung, in order to achieve mental health, one needs t realized our own archetype and make up stories with them in it. For example, in the movie Star Wars, the story is full of archetype. Luke skywalker represents owns own idealized self that we went through adventures in life. The archetype of an evil man is Darth Vader, who in the end is actually a reflection of oneself. An archetype of a mentor or a helper in life is Obewan Kenobe, who help Luke, the self, to achieve own ultimate goals. To make people an archetype, it has to be a model or a typical model of a certain thing. In literature, it often include archetype like the innocent self, evil opposition who gives you the conflict, a helper who give you advices and help you overcome your difficulty, and the ultimate goal of winning back and earning someone who loves them. 

Contemporary

 Throughout the year, we have looked at several literary movements in American Literature class. We have witness the Rationalism period. This is the time when literature contained element that believed that god created the universe and that people arrive truths by using reason instead of feeling. They believe strongly in religion that everything is a reflection of god and that we are ultimately predetermined in our fate since we are born and we work in this word seemly to redeem our sin. Moving on, we then have the Romanticism. This is the period where people started to move away from reason and believe that intuition and feeling valued over reason. Romantic heroes were created during this time and imaginative stories were created. However, as Civil war started, Americans finally realized the violence of war and were brought back to reality. In the Realist movement, people stopped to idealize the world; instead they focus on observing and characterized ordinary events and daily life, trying to portray life as realistic as possible. Then we came to the First World War where we move on to Modernism. In Modernism, artists and writers begin to look and explore the word with a different and unique perspective. In the contemporary, or post-modern, movement, we are willing to look back at the past and use them fearlessly to include culture diversity and all multiple meaning. 

Reflect on Your project

I did a project on the Handmaid’s Tale with Judy and Alyson. When I heard that instead of writing an essay for Handmaid’s tale, we were doing a group project, I felt relieved that I wouldn’t have to type essay again. During the first group discussion, Judy came up with an excellent idea by making a 3D display of the project instead of a conventional 2D poster. We decided to use three shoeboxes with each of the boxes to represent a category of connection including text to text, text to self and text to world. In each of the shoeboxes, we will place cards each with example and a picture of our connection. Each one of us will come up with an example for each category so it will be fair that neither one of us will have to do a harder category of connections. I feel lucky to have Alyson and Judy on the team, who stay till 2 in the morning in school making the poster. We work peacefully and cooperate well all the time. Although we have some sort of schedule problem with the meeting time, mostly due to me, we are able to get the project done on time. Great job everyone! 

A Horror Story?

Is “A Rose for Emily” a horror story? Yes I will definitely say it’s a horror story. Unexpected and horrific things happen at the end of the story. This type of horror story is often called a Gothic horror which combines elements of both horror and romance. This type of horror story is somewhat different from the horror movies of the modern error. Many horror movies or novels focus on supernatural event such as aliens or monster coming out of a corner of dark gloomy rooms. Horror movies often include violence and revolting scene such as blood spilled all over the place in a room or crazy monster that screams and have blood all over its teeth. In horror movies, with the story and the abnormal setting enables the audience to know ahead of time that something terrible is going to happen. As in “A Rose for Emily”, readers don’t really have a sense of fear as the only thing we know is that poor Miss Emily is overly protected by his father and has a crushed on Homer Barron, a Yankee whom the southerner hate. Puzzles pieces were slowly shown to us as we progress through the story such as Homer Barron never ever came out of the house again and the strange smell that lasted for week from Miss Emily’s house. The shocking ending is the final kicker that truly makes this story a horrific one to read. 

Homer's End

The end for “A Rose for Emily” is truly frightening that I was indeed very surprise by the result. After Emily’s death, the town people found a dried mummy of a man lying on a bed upstairs in a room in Emily’s house. The room seems to be untouched for decades that the room is filled with ashes and dust. Everything in the room is beautifully decorated as if it’s a honey moon room. The mummy seems to be Homer Barron that Miss Emily probably poisoned him with the arsenic, which supposedly to be used for rat, she brought in a drug store. Miss Emily probably poisoned Homer Barron because she wanted to marry him so badly that she is afraid Homer will leave her and doesn’t want to marry or settle down. Wishing Homer can forever stay with her, Emily probably put some arsenic in a glass of wine and tricks Homer into the bed with her. After Homer is dead, Miss Emily probably decided to leave Homer’s dead body along on the bed for it to decay for a couple of weeks, which causes an awful smell described in the beginning of the story. She probably later sealed the room for some reason and occasionally come up to lie next to him which later result of a gray strain of hair on the pillow next to Homer. 

Nobel Prize

In Faulkner’s Novel Prize acceptance speech, he urges young writers to tackle the old universal truth such as love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice. In Faulkner’s short pose in A Rose for Emily, he seems to follow the write in terms of the old universal truths that he portrays the truth of love, pride, compassion and perhaps some sort of sacrifice that involve in some eccentric actions. In my opinion, the world today, there is no stuff that is not in the field of universal truths. Everything in the world is revolved around these basic truths. Even things such as the nuclear bomb involves with love, pride, compassion and sacrifice. Nuclear bomb is used for to sacrifice millions of lives to prevent billions of life from death and the continuation of war. Nothing in literature is averted from the old universal truths. Although poetries today seem to convey not such a clear universal truth, everything in the end is still connected to it. Everything in life or I should say big important things that motivate people are connected to the universal truth. People live to find truth such as love, to achieve pride, have compassion for others and sacrifice things for a greater goal. 

Eccentric or Crazy

In “A Rose for Emily,” Ms. Emily seems to be out of situation and still is living in the past for a long time. She seems not to understand the way things work such as the fact that she needs to pay tax or just in fact that she pretends not understand in order to avoid dealing with things she finds unpleasant and probably annoying. When rich people act this way, we often called them as eccentric. However if a person with a lower rank, we will often refer to their action as crazy. In my opinion, I found Miss Emily to be a bit crazy with some sort of psychological diseases. In the story, she keeps on repeating the phase “I don’t pay no taxes in Jefferson” She refuses to get help from the community and refuses to understand the fact that she is no longer rich with a high social status. Although people respect her, people pity her as fallen nobility who is still delusional that she is still the once respected woman. I think it is unfair when people from different social castes to receive different treatment. Everyone should be equal that no one should have any more privilege than any other. 

N word

Some of the greatest literature that America has produced should as To Kill a Mockingbird contains some of words that are considered as offensive racial words. Today these books are often banned due to the racist language in them or the offensive language is simply been changed into other word that is acceptable by today’s standard. For example, the N-word in Mark Twain’s books is now change to the word slave. As in my point of view, I found changing the original text of the book to be insulting to the writer that the language is not been used for discriminating against racial group, instead it is just been used to describe how people act in the past. People can’t just deny the fact the African American were once discriminated badly against in the past that the word can never be erased from history. Although people claim that these book should be banned so that children won’t learn to use these kind of offensive terms, with teacher or parent’s guidance, students should know the meaning behind these word and let them understand why these words were bad and discriminating instead of just trying to cover it up. These words are just used to portray the reality in the past. 

Retreat

In the story “a Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main character retreats from society in order to hid from a reality that she finds unbearable. This is what many of us have a tendency or urge to do under some circumstances. Why would people want to retreat from society? Is it something that is healthy to do? In my opinion, I found retreating society sometimes perhaps it’s a healthy things to do after an extreme traumatic experience. For example after the loss of a love one or a dear friend, one may need some time along to settle down one’s emotion by being alone for a while in order for someone to overcome the pain and move on to live. It’s necessary for one to be alone when one tries to grief for someone’s death and something unsuccessful in life. This only becomes a problem when this type of grief slowly turns into a negative virtuous cycle where one begin to trap oneself into a cycle of negative self-talk and eventually led to depression. When it reaches depression which may cause people to eventually become a recluse who hides away from society, this is when retreating from reality becomes a bad thing. 

Free Write

Mother’s day is coming up. The end of this semester and school year is also coming up. Lots of things have happen in the past few weeks. Things seem to have kind of slow down since I have finished all my AP exams. Before the AP exams, everything night and day I’m constantly worried and tried to cram AP materials in my head for AP Chemistry and Psychology. One may say that cramming isn’t a good way to learn things and it’s useless. I find that without cramming, I will probably fail my AP exams and spend the rest of my life depressed and guilty thinking why didn’t I tried to study for the test and hoping I have a time machine which can send me back and fix the mistakes. After getting the AP stuff all finished, I feel like I’m getting a bit slacking off and needed to get my focus back to catch up with the rest of my non-AP class which I usually spend less time on studying. Everyday seems as if there are challenges and works that I needed to catch up on. Never one day can I fully be relaxed and not to think about homework and studying. I guess this is the life to be a student.

I Hate Poetry

Without knowing why, many people complain, “I hate poetry! I never understand it.” I will say I was once that type of person when I’m ignorant and lack appreciation literature and artistic value behinds it. I know poetry can sometimes be so intricate and complex that people may be annoyed by the fact that it is too difficult for them to understand. They may find poetry to be retarded that none of the things make any sense and poets are just crazy to love creating this kind of literature where no one understands it. However as I grow up and come in contact with more poetry, I find poetry can actually be fun and inspiring to read. For example, Emily Dickenson poems include and inspire new aspects of life and death through the flows and intricate designs of diction. After reading the poems, it’s as if one is learning a new lesson in life that sometimes our thought correspond to the theme of the poems and it helps us express some of our inner thoughts too. Reading poem can really open one’s literature knowledge and skill. Poems may be frustrating to understand at first. However after through some deep analysis and understanding, one can find that poetry can have some curative effect like listening to a song. 

Horror

What makes a story scary? What elements contribute to a tone of horror? There are many ingredients that make a story scary. The most classic type of method is the used of suspension and then an unexpected horrific scene that creates fear within people. Usually the story will be set in a dark and quiet night, with squeaky doors and weird sounds that follow through the plot line as the protagonist walk through the hunted house. Usually the author will use descriptive adjective to make the setting vivid as if the audience is looks at in a moving picture. To create fear in people, author usually describe unusual event such as people never came out of the hunted house once they entered to give the audience a hint that things are not normal and it can go wrong any second. Also as the protagonist goes through the event, he or she will usually make some stupid mistakes that if the characters are travel in groups, one by one the character will be attacked by monster or disappear until in the end only the protagonist survive and witness the biggest scary event. The use of foreshadowing creates a sense of insecurity in our mind that we know for sure that nothing is going to work out right and it can happen anytime before we know it.  

A Journey

I don’t think Prufrock from the poem “The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock” experience a journey or quest that the hero starts in a happy state, is somehow forced to go through a difficult quest, experience some loss and gain and eventually returns back into happy state again. Prufrock seems to be stuck in the middle of the quest that he is undergoing a difficult quest of whether or not he should ask the question, which is probably asking a woman out. I can imagine that Prufrock is once a confident with high self-esteem that he from a relatively wealthy family who has afternoon tea session which other high social class member. Due to age, Prufrock seems to be extremely worried on how people will view his physical appearance and examine him like a bug specimen and nail him on the board. This aging process is seemly a quest for Prufrock that as a middle age man, he isn’t married yet. He is afraid to ask people out as he used to do when he is younger. He seems himself as relatively useless and is said that he is just like an observer in the story of Hamlet that he is not the hero.

Prufrock Revisited

In the poem “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock”, Prufrock’s stream of thought seems to demonstrate that people are spiritually empty and contemporary life is unromantic and unheroic. However in my point of view, the poem seems to only demonstrate that Prufrock only think of himself as spiritually empty that he rather be a paired of lobster claws than a human being. As the poem shows, Prufrock seems to be worried about how people view him physically that he has thin arms and white hair. Although in the poem Prufrock didn’t explicitly tell us that he didn’t dare to do and want to do, through inference we can kind of tell that Prufrock seems to be in love with a woman and he is afraid to ask her out, which is the question he kept worry about in the poem. Prufrock worried to further move his relationship with the woman to a romance type of relationship because he is afraid that the woman might say that is not what she meant. In a way, I don’t think Prufrock thinks of contemporary life as unromantic and unheroic. He is just one low self-esteem man who is afraid to take action and can’t take rejections of the world. 

Anti-hero

As a noted scholar Joseph Campbell once said, “The hero is today running up against a hard world that is in no way responsive to the spiritual need. Modern society has become a stagnation of inauthentic lives and living that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities or even our physical courage.” The world we live in today is basically hostile to heroism that makes many people observers rather than participants in exciting adventures. I certainly agree that J Alfred Prufrock from The love song is an antihero, who is extremely egocentric and disillusioned. In the poem, Prufrock is a man of passivity. “Do I dare? Do I dare?” Unlike a hero, Prufrock is unwilling to take any physical action to pursue his goal. Instead he only overly worries himself over it which makes him depressed and lack of self confident. With such negative self talk, Prufrock wants to be a paired of ragged claws, scuttling across the silent sea as if he willing to become thin air and disappear from society. This kind of talk makes Prufrock an observer instead of an active participant who wants to contribute some action to the world. As the violence of war raged the earth, people no longer believe in heroes and believe the best thing to do in life is to sit around and do nothing.