World Lit Reading Journal - Magic Realism and Stories by Gabriel Marquez

    In the magic realism genre, unrealistic elements appear in a seemingly realistic story. People respond to these unexpected elements in various ways. Readers may feel startled, uncomfortable or may find these elements fascinating. The characters of the story go through the similar process as the readers do. As the authors of the magic realism genre aim to make the story seem real, the characters inside the story encounter unbelievable, magical events during their realistic lives. Thus, by examining how the characters in the story react to unreality, we can learn about ourselves in our practical lives. The characters in the two stories by Gabriel Marquez, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, show very different reactions to magical incidences in their ordinary lives. This distinction displays two opposite attitudes people could have toward magical elements and imaginations.

    Unexpectedly, a large body appears on the small village in the story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” The villagers soon realize that the body weighed more than any dead man they had ever known, and he’d been taller than all other men. The stature and the appearance of the body simply amaze the villagers. The magical element is now introduced to their lives. Soon the body makes them think that their lives are little and insignificant. They think that they are incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they end up dismissing them deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest and most useless creatures on earth. They also become aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man. However, as the story draws to the end, this sense of deficiency serves as vitality that changes and renovates the stagnant village. The body brought change to the ordinary village and the attitude of the people. The villagers “knew that everything would be different from then on”, and they would plant flowers and make their village more beautiful and lively.

    The characters in this story could be seen and understood as people who value fantasies and imaginations. And when they let the body go, the magical element, they let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished. This course of action resembles our own experience of reading magical stories. After we encounter stories with magical, unrealistic elements through books, films, and plays, our life may seem dull and normal. For instance, after watching “Avatar”, many people fell into depression and suicidal thoughts failing to cope with the dream of Pandora (beautiful alien world where the movie is set) being intangible (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html)

But eventually, we transform these discrepancy and yearning into a motivation and try to make our lives better and more fantastic. That may be the reason people love stories with magical features.

    In contrast, the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” presents quite different reaction. Although the old man possesses the magical quality, he is not treated special in the story. The story also incorporates very dark mood, in which the characters don’t appreciate the magical qualities. It seems as if the life is too bleak, and people are not accepting the fantasy and consider it as a luxury to them. They use and exploit heavenly creature, an angel for very earthly and realistic purpose which is money. The old man eventually becomes the burden, the uselessness that brings no real interest or profit to them. And when the old man with enormous wings leaves the town Elisenda, the female protagonist, seems to be freed from something annoying and unnecessary. 

      People show contrasting reactions to magical elements in a story. Sometimes these elements serve as stimulation to change people’s lives and sometimes they seem like mere luxury with no practical worth. To every people, reality is unsatisfactory to a certain degree. Fantasies and magical stories offer us alternative, more interesting reality to this unsatisfactory and mundane reality. To accept and appreciate these magical qualities in the story or to deny it and consider it unrealistic and unnecessary is entire up to the reader’s choice. 

1 article reference used - as a hyperlink

Reading Journal : The Dead

    At first glance, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ might appear as a story that mainly portrays a conflicted individual and his epiphany that comes along with the climax. Of course, the ordeal of the protagonist itself is so vividly depicted inside the story that it is not strange at all to presume that it is a typical story dealing with an individual. However, this story also has some unique elements that it shares with other stories in Dubliners. Throughout the story, the author tries to connect a struggle of the protagonist, Gabriel, with his surrounding, the Irish society and Dublin. As the final story of Dubliners, The Dead shares its theme with the other stories in Dubliners. The author shows the paralysis and epiphany of Gabriel and draws the parallel with situation of Ireland.
    Gabriel’s life is full of contradictions. He hates his own homeland and senselessly admires the culture of the continent. Gabriel exposes his admiration of the continent during the conversation with Aunt Julia, saying “everyone wears them on the continent.” He rejects the offer of Miss Ivors to visit Aran Isles by saying that Irish is not his language and he is sick of his own country. Although it seems clear that he prefers British culture to Irish culture, he hates to be called as the “West Briton.” Accordingly, what he believed to be a true love was in fact not sincere. 
     At the moment of his epiphany, snow falls down and covers the entire Ireland. Snow could be seen as a symbol that indicates old traditions and contradictions that is covering Ireland. So perhaps it is more accurate dissect “The Dead” with the connection to Ireland. 
    I personally enjoyed the story, especially the final part with the epiphany in which Gabriel finds out that he and his wife were actually not sharing feelings. After the party, he feels desire for a physical relationship, and he assumes that Gretta is feeling the same. However, he faces the unexpected reaction from his wife and the story about her true love. He finally realizes that he and his wife were not actually very different and distant.
     Readers can easily identify with the internal conflict and the epiphany of Gabriel. The Dead depicts the emotion that arises when we are betrayed by things that we so firmly believed to be true. However, these experiences also give us new motivation and serves as a driving force that helps us renew ourselves. For instance, after the epiphany, that his belief that his wife and he shared feelings and were in true live was false, he resolves to set out on his journey westward. Although there is a contention to the interpretation of this phrase, it is very likely that he would change his attitude in a more positive and mature way. Throughout the entire party, he acted like a hysterical and insecure person. At the end of the story, Joyce writes “Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love.” We can see that Gabriel is being repentant and began realizing what a true love is.

Araby - Paragraph Exercise

From a distance, James Joyce’s "Araby" might appear as a short story that focuses on how an individual changes through his love and grasp of reality. After all, when the nameless narrator endeavors to win the love of the girl, he starts to learn how small and negligible he is, and that the world is not as idealistic as he thought. However, on the other hand, the experiences which serve as a momentum of change inside the boy’s mind are so closely related to the society of Dublin, that the interpretation seems incomplete without considering the surrounding. The depiction of the street through which the boy carries the parcels shows the role of Irish society most explicitly. Walking through the flaring streets, the boy is jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, and surrounded by the curses of laborers and the litanies of shop boys. He imagines that he is carrying a chalice through a throng of “foes”. The surrounding seemed hostile to the boy who is carrying a chalice, which represents his purity and ideal. The internal conflict of the narrator is culminated inside Araby, the market. The place is immersed in darkness, and the young lady at the stall is totally apathetic towards him. His fantasy about the market is shattered and the experience makes him feel that what he believed to be sincere and pure was in fact an empty vanity. The values such as purity and beauty are disregarded in the street and the market. Through the experience of the narrator, the author is emphasizing a degraded and vulgar Irish society.

Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that "Araby" is a criticism against Dublin, the society that has lost its important values. In this sense, “Araby” should be understood in a broader social context, rather than as a story that concentrates on the struggle of an individual.

Reading Journal #2 - The Lady with the Dog

Male Chauvinism was really common when the short story “The Lady with the Dog” was written.  The short story raises the fundamental question, whether an ardent chauvinist could forsake their view and find a true love, and shows how a hypocritical misogynist can change through true love by portraying the love affair between Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna.

Dmitri’s duality is strikingly exposed throughout the story. He considers women as a lower race, but he couldn’t get on for two days without women. After his first encounter with Anna, he only worships her slender neck and lovely eyes, and disregards her character by saying “There’s something pathetic about her anyway.” Furthermore, Dmitri reveals his cold and apathetic nature after he sleeps with Anna. While Anna feels guilty and disconsolate, Dmitri cuts a piece of watermelon and eats it without haste. He doesn’t really care about Anna’s inner conflict and only pursues his own pleasures. He even feels bored and irritated by Anna’s naïve tone, which is quite cold-blooded and selfish.

However, Dmitri gradually changes as he sincerely falls in love with pure and innocent Anna. Throughout the story, Anna is portrayed as a young and callow lady who still possesses innocence and purity. When the couple dates at the harbor, Chekhov writes “She talked a great deal and asked disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked,” which can be interpreted as the typical caprice of a young and immature lady. Her immaturity can also be seen when she mentions that she doesn’t exactly know what her husband does. Her purity is shown most explicitly when she says that she loves a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to her.

At first, Dmitri seduces Anna for impure purpose. However, Anna’s purity eventually makes Dmitri feel genuine love and begins to look back on his life in an objective way. He shows series of change in his behavior and thought. While indulging in the natural beauty of Yalta, he thinks that everything is beautiful except the things that we do when we forget our human dignity and higher aims. He is regretting the life he had before he met Anna. Other evidence is shown when Anna leaves Yalta. He was “moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse.” He feels guilty that he unwittingly deceived her with his false image.

As the story draws to the end, their secret love affair becomes more plaintive. When Dmitri returns to Moscow, he was not an unfettered philanderer anymore. He is bound to his family, and he needs to endure his wife’s neglect. He tries to brag his secret affair to his friend, but he is neglected again. The more and more he feels sick about his surrounding, the more precious his memory of times spent in Yalta, with Anna. Now, Dmitri sincerely loves Anna. Dmitri make surprise visit to Anna, and confirms Anna’s affection towards him.

The story ends with an open ended conclusion. Chekhov allows readers to expect how the story would end, and provokes the curiosity. We don’t know what hardships and difficulties this secret couple would face. However, we can know for sure that Dmitri is not the same as before, and he would do his best to keep his true love.

Report on "The Student"

Anton Chekhov’s “The Student” is a representative realistic short story. However, in this journal, I will focus on the story’s theme, rather than its literary form. I want to discuss the main theme and explore reasons why the author chose and intended to write about that the idea and conclusion. Also, I will state my own opinion on the controversy over the conclusion of the story.

     The protagonist in “The Student”, Ivan Velikopolsky, is dissatisfied with the situation around him. It seems to him that poverty, hunger and misery have always existed, and would exist in the future. However, after the experience in the widows’, where he tells the story of Apostle Peter to the widows and observes their emotional response to the story, he shows sharp change in his emotion. Suddenly, “inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvelous, and full of lofty meaning.”

 When I read the story for the first time, I really couldn’t understand why Ivan feels “happiness” after he realizes that the past is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another. He finds out that the tragedy, in this case inability to protect the person they care is repeated over time, and he feels happy. I felt that the reaction is ironic. I thought he should feel depressed. On the contrary, when I reached the conclusion I felt like I’m locked inside a tragic destiny. History is repeated and we are bound to it, and unhappiness and tragedy will occur again and again. 

After reading the story many times, I could slightly understand what the story meant. Then I thought that it is probably the feeling of resignation and acceptance. The author wanted to say that we don’t need to get depressed about tragedy or unsatisfied with the situation because it is always with us. For instance, when something bad happens to us we tend to think “why does this always happen to me, life is unfair!” But we really don’t need to feel that way since it is our destiny to face certain difficulties. We can overcome our anguish by thinking that people, our ancestors, faced similar situations before.

The other possibility is that his happiness merely comes from realizing the fact that the destinies of distinct lives are linked.

As I was reading a commentary on “The Student”, I found that there are two antithetical interpretations about the realization of Ivan Velikopolsky. According to Andrey Shcherbenok, there are two opposite views about the realization of Ivan at the end. One view is that Ivan’s realization agrees with the author’s point of view, and another view is that the Ivan’s idea is different from the author’s.

I think the first explanation makes more sense than the second explanation, considering the life of author himself. I think that the author is expressing his enlightenment through Ivan’s mouth. The author’s personal situation resembles that of Vasilisa. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, was an abusive father. Also, Chekhov attended Gymnasium, and he was kept down a year for failing his Greek exam. Because of those circumstances, he had a very tough childhood. He described his youth as a “suffering” later in his letter. Also, when the author wrote the story, the situation surrounding him was not very favorable. The story was written in 1894, and in 1892, there were outbreaks of famine and cholera. In my opinion, through his suffering, Chekhov realized that the destinies are connected, and expressed his feelings through the experience of Ivan Velikopolsky.

The Student and Realism

 Elements of Realism inside "The Student". 

1. First characteristic is Straightforward and realistic depiction of the setting. The author does not use beautiful expressions and flowery language. The imagery that the author uses is bleak and down to earth. For instance, the author depicts the mood of the landscape as deserted and peculiarly gloomy. 

2. Secondly, the author tries to relate the story with the situation of Russia. The student, Ivan Velikopolsky, is hungry because it is Good Friday. The author relates the presence of hunger with the poverty, hunger and oppression in the time of Ivan the Terrible and Peter. 

Theme

    The student tells Biblical stories to the widow and the daughter, and he realizes that the lives of thousand years difference are somehow connected(The life of Apostle Peter and Vasilisa). After the enlightenment, he feels that life is full of lofty meaning. 

Characters

Ivan Velikopolsky : The protagonist, and enlightened by the experience in the widow's garde. 

Vasilisa : After hearing the story of Apostle Peter, she shed tears and empathizes with Peter.

Take Home Essay - Should Students Wear School Uniforms?

Should Students Wear School Uniforms?
(I personally agree)

     Most private schools force students to wear school uniforms, because they give students sense of belonging to the school. However, School uniforms are useless and outdated tradition.

21st century is characterized by freedom and individuality. However, by making students wear unified clothes, schools ignore the individuality of students. Students not only express themselves through their words and behaviors but also by what they wear to school.

The typical groups that require their members to wear school uniform include military, and bureaucracy. All of which are cold, hierarchical, and authoritarian groups. Schools unintentionally create authoritarian atmosphere just by adopting school uniforms.

    Forcing students to wear school uniforms is more than just ruining of the fashion. Students shouldn’t be forced to wear what they don’t want to wear, and should have the right to wear what they want to. School uniform clearly restricts the freedom of students