"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

This is a short story that tells the story about a mother and her two daughters. One is very humble, nice and shy. The other one is proud, vain and at least, physically nicer. One day, Dee, the vain daughter goes to visit her mother and sister. She had changed her name to Wangero. She asked to have the old quilts that Maggie owned, to exhibit them. The sister would say yes, but the mother would feel it was Maggie's right to keep them. In the end, Wangero (Dee) did not keep them and said good-bye to them. 

I came to know today that the reason African-Americans changed their names from the "European" ones they had, was to recover their roots and feel more proud about them. I believe Wangero, even though she seems to be the evil one in the story, has arrived to the new world of freedom for this people. The African-americans now had rights, she would be receiving College education and the freedom to travel. Besides that, she was a woman, and women rights were also beginnig. So at the new freedom that she found in front of her eyes, she could not feel anything but pride of her roots and the success they had achieved. "She would look anyone in the eye", she would not feel less in front of white people, she would stand and be proud of who she was. 

On the other side, yes, she had a problem with leaving simple stuff as it was, and not stopping herself from wanting to own everything. She was already free, but she did not realise she had some responsibilities, for example, to make her shy sister proud of who she was. Maybe Wangero just wanted her to realise it, or maybe she just found her stupid for acting like that and expected her to already be proud. But that would not happen. I think Wangero has a point where she says "It's a new day for us. But from the way you and mamma still live, you'd never know it." Of course I believe that was a good advice, in the sense of being free as African-americans. But then again, she could not difference between social comfort and family and personal comfort. Maggie and her mom already had the family comfort. Maggie may have needed more self-esteem, but she had a simple, happy life beside her mother. She was happy, she was going to get married, and she did not complain about things. She was comfortable with life and really did not expect to have a life like her sister's. Maybe she envied her body, as she was burnt, but in soul, she was simple. And this we can see with the quilts she makes. She thinks family is important, and personal heritage is too. Wangero thought it had to be for the world, to show the traditions of the people. 

So I do not think that Wangero was a diva or a mean girl, she just saw things from another point of view, and both sisters and her mother, just for being human beings, were not perfect.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?


This is a very clear poem that gives us a very good idea of what the life of this boy was, specially during Winter. He was poor, living with his family and living in the routine. His father would take care of him, but the fact of beeing poor made him be cold in his treat, not meaning he was in his heart. No, he would polish this boy's shoes and made the fire burn to warm the house. But this was taken for granted by the boy and the family. "No one ever thanked him." And because of the coldness of his dad and the hard work he had to do, there would be argues in the house, and the boy would be indifferent to his dad, to avoid a possible anger from him.

It is a sad passage. It tells us about this poor family who do not have a comfortable life and have to face it every day, trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible, but with the fact that they have to work and take care of each other. A unite family for keeping each other safe, but not very united in the meaning of heart. The kid would not run to neither of his parents to talk or laugh. They had a serious reletionship between them. Maybe the Winter Sundays did not only refer to the season...

What is Poetry?

After seeing all that poetry could be, I can honestly say I still do not know what it is. It sounds ilogical, but this art, usually in the form of words, I cannot describe with them. It would be defining it with itself. I could say poetry is the art of putting words together and creating images, feelings and experiences... but that is Literature in general. Maybe a definition to me would be "Poetry is how we put words together to form everything but them". Quite unclear, but maybe I could make something out of there. I also liked the definition seen in class about the third level of how to say things. 

It is said that poetry in life does not have to be exactly what poetry as a literary genre is. And then I say, why not? Somehow they have to relate from each other, otherwise, they would not be called the same. A poetic life, is it a life full of exaggerations? (And I am not meaning only the bad exaggerations) Maybe. But can it also be the way a person feels and tells their life? Yes, but that anyone can do. So poetry is nothing? Nothing but a mere nice arrangement of words put together so that a situation, an image, or whatever it describes sounds nicer, more powerful, and so on? Yes, maybe. So what I can say is that poetry is not staying in the middle, it is not being in where the water is liquid. It is choosing a side, a side in which either the water will boil or will freeze. It means not to be in the steady part of whatever situation, but going deeper into it, telling it, giving meaning to it, put the situation in the right place so that it can fit many others in its meaning. It means not only to describe, but to put a layer of words that can tell better and at the same time worse what we want to say.

 I believe it has to be that unclear, that it comes out together completely clear. Maybe I am not making myself clear trying to define poetry, but I guess that is the trick. And as I said, I just cannot describe precisely what poetry is. Dictionaries, who wants a static thing to define another thing that is not at all static? They do not understand each other. 

Maybe with another example. What happens when you mix dirt, water and a seed? Many things, but then the perspective in which a poet sees it, can change the whole context and not only make a plant grow. 

As in cooking, poetry can have many recipies. And I have my favorite poetry dish. It can be baked in endless combinations, but still, the ingredients are what make the dish special to me. I rather prefer poetry that has a lot of figurative language, metaphors, similes... I like it to be like a code, a code that can be desciphered, not only by imagining it, but also by living it as you read it. "To read between lines", I do not like it. I prefer to read under lines in poetry, because there is a hidden meaning, and then when you can feel the meaning and know the feeling, that is when you get a poem and say "Wow". That is what I like. 


And form. I believe poetry can be found in so many ways, that a line in the middle of a novel can be poetry. It can also have the traditional form of lines, but then again, we have examples of poems making shapes or drawings. Everything but steadiness. So as a conclusion, I do not know what poetry is. 

"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe could be the least optimistic writer ever. His stories contain decay, sadness, death... never a happy ending or an optimistic point of view. The Masque of the Red Death is definitely not the exception. 

In this story, Poe tells us about a plague, "The Red Death", which made people bleed from every part of their bodies. Disgusting, horrible, but that was the story's reality. And so the prince, Prince Prospero, along with his close friends and maybe family, hid in his abbey to prevent the Red Death to take them to its hell. 

And so, everybody was there in the seven room abbey. Everybody wearing their respective masks, as it was a mascarade. Six rooms were full of color, full of life; and the left one was black and red. Terrifying. No one dared to enter into that room, and when the clock inside it hit the hour, everybody would stop doing whatever they were doing but breathing. After the clock stopped sounding, everybody would return to their activities. 

An unexpected guest, a man bleeding, with a mask that was actually not a mask, arrived, causing Prince Prospero to get angry at the joke of disguising as the "Red Death". Only that it was not a custom. It was the Red Death which walked passing every single room until it reached the black one, giving death to everyone. 

The message in this story is very clear. Death. Hiding from it. Colorful and cheerful life in the different stages of life. The last room of our lives: darkness, death, and a clock which tells the time you have left. And when you notice that time is ticking by, you get paralyzed, but then continue with your life. And finally, the most representative: Life will always end in Death, and if Death is near you, you will not be able to avoid it. Having the most powerful fortress will not make Death turn away. 

So that was a story full of allegories, full of hidden messages within its different elements, such as de Red Death itself, the rooms, the prince, the abbey, the clock... everything represented more than in their main escence. I believe it is a very enjoyable story if you can read the allegories. 

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal." Fiction, Science Fiction. The intelligence model was Hazel, Harrison's mother, who we can say has an intelligence below average. Everybody was handicapped so that they would look the same, do the same. No one better than anyone in anything. But all of this cannot be possible if there is not a mastermind behind: Diana Moon, the handicapping program directress.

Everybody is fine, nothing happens; they are used to getting punished for trying to think and do "unusual" stuff. They even agree on having handicaps. They support the equality. Specifically, George and Hazel, the main characters of our story.

Suddenly, Harrison, their son, who was taken away for having removed his handicaps, is announced on TV as a great danger for anyone who dares to cross his path. Harrison appears. He proclaims himself the emperor and frees the ballerina who was appearing in the previous show his parents were watching. She was the best ballerina for the number and kind of handicaps she was wearing. So he frees her and the music men, making them give their best, not their limited best. And so they do. Harrison and the ballerina dance and float in the air, kissing. In that moment, Diana Moon shoots them. They die. Hazel cries, but she cannot remember why. George misses the moment. Life continues.

Clear example of how excesses are not good. Even good things over their limits are not at all good. Equality made the world gray, without variety of people... it made the world a zoo, animals in their cages. Everything ruled by an absolutist and her fellow tyrants: Diana Moon. What is the purpose of having everybody limited from their capacities, from their dreams? It is a matter of control, of power, and that is what Diana Moon was. Harrison rebelled against that kind of world, wanting to break free. Revolution. He got death in exchange, and not a place in someone's memory at least, not even his parents'.

That is sad, wanting to make a world where everybody could develop a personality, develop themselves, and getting killed by a tyrant. Even though it talks about the future and an extreme situation, which obviously looks impossible to us, this story's elements show us not a very far away situation. Wanting control over all, rebellion, love, conformism, and just taking everything for granted... they are not very far away from us, and if we just look around, we will find all these.

I liked the story, and it is very interesting to read it and to think about it.

"Night" by Elie Weisel

There is so much to say about this story. Powerful, touching. The story of a teenage jew, Eliezer, during the darkest times for the world in the twentieth century: the second world war. He, as many others, was deported to the concentration camps, and lived his own terrifying story in there. He started thinking about understanding the Kabbalah, but ends up worrying about what to eat, what to do to help his father... how to survive. 

To start with, himself. How powerful it was to be wanting to devote his life to something and then having his plans changed for something he would suffer and could not complain about. Being so young, with so many plans in mind, with a wonderful family... it was just not fair, not only for him, but for every deportee and people who suffered.

The experience he had made him go even against his values. Everything he knew to be good and the faith he had in human beings was lost form the very first moment he arrived at a concentration camp. He tried to keep up the faith in something, but in the end his only wish was to survive for his father, as they loved each other. But he would end up looking at him as an obstacle rather than a reason to live. It is impressive how a mind that aims towards kindness and values ends up just worrying about its personal fate. The situations were strong, definitely.

And his dad, being almost everyone's councelor and adviser, ends up not knowing how to keep up the hope for light, for day. He almost lets himself die, instead of having the courage to continue living. Someone so admired and respected for his inner strength...

But of course I cannot know about that. It sounds so easy to tell about what one thinks should have happened, but just to imagine the situation, the people, the atmosphere... It makes me drop a tear. Those dark times are only within my mind, within what I can know it was, but I cannot think of myself in those situations. I just cannot, it is difficult to put yourself in a situation you cannot even imagine, just barely. 

Four moments in the story stay in me more than the others:

• The first one was when he sees the babies being burnt. I can just say it made me cry. My imagination flies very high. I had to stop reading for a minute. 
• Then, when some guy says that because he was strong, he was made to put his father in the furnace. Wow! That truly shocked me. I stopped reading again. I could not imagine how it would be to be in his place, having to see your dad's face craying, maybe begging, and still having to do it, to burn alive the one that gave you life and loves you. Despite being a very little part in the book, it stuck inside me. 
• When the boy plays the violin in front of the mountain of dead and nearly dead bodies. It is just amazing, a "just in movies" moment. I cannot say anything else, but that I cannot describe how wonderful it felt when reading that. Sadness, Relief, Hope, everything put together. It was truly a little heaven in the middle of hell.
• And the fourth one, when Elie looks at a mirror for the first time since he was deported and sees "a corpse looking at him". That much he had changed! He was no longer himslef and maybe it was the same terror that fills you when watching a ghost movie, or a disgusting image, that despite being tolerable in the sense that it does not blind you, it makes you not wanting to see it. Poor boy.

After reading Night, I had breakfast. I did not want to eat. There was fruit, milk, bread and eggs on my place. I was very touched by the book. And the same as the other WWII stories, it is unbelievable how they are actually true. It is a book that should be read. You feel the story and understand many things about how the concentration camps worked. 


(Sorry! I swear I tried to be breve!)

Allegories

What is an allegory? I had never thought about it, because I had never heard that word, or at least in the context we are in: Literature. What I now know by definition is that it is the meaning behind the elements in a piece of art that the author uses in order to convey a meaning, so that it can be interpreted, rather than be stated directly in the piece.

But of course everyone has dealt before with allegories, maybe not with art and neither conscious of what it was. But hidden messages... who has not done that before? Everyone has created a drawing with a meaning that nobody understands but them, or them and their close friends, family, etc. The point here is that the different elements within something that contain a meaning are allegories. 

It is important, in art for example, to have a background, to know who the author was, or maybe just the context he or she lived in. Many elements in a piece of art we can understand very easy, but it is because we have a background on it. Modern/ Contemporary art can be read easier by someone who does not have a lot of background in history, for example. This is because that person shares the same world and society with the author, so they can connect better and have communication, which is the objective of art: to tell something. 

That is why Greek or ancient art in general can be very hard to understand if there is not a proper background. The same can happen when dealing with abstract art, as its elements are very simple but convey a strong meaning. 

To my point of view, which I think many share, it is wonderful to be able to discover the message behind something and to be able to exploit that. Allegories are hidden messages waiting to be discovered.