Hadiyah's Blog

In chapter 1 of  Invisible Man , the narrator takes part in a battle royal where he fights his classmates while blindfolded. Afterwards, they try to grab money off of an electrified rug. This entire scene felt very nightmarish and the oddest part about it was how the narrator seemed to accept all that was happening and only cared about the speech he had to give. We found it so odd that his only concern was his speech instead of the fact that he had to suffer through this nightmare of an event. Even while giving his speech, he’s so focused on making it perfect that he just casually swallows his blood. When discussing this chapter in class, I remembered a book that I read last year for 20 th Century Novel,  The Metamorphosis . The book opens with the main character, Gregor, waking up as a huge monstrous insect. The odd thing is that his main priority isn’t how to become human again, but instead how is he going to get to work? This book had a very nightmarish aspect to it be...

all posts from now on will be for african-american lit

           Song of Solomon puts a lot of focus on the past. Most of Milkman’s story is about his parents and Pilate’s past. Most of part one is learning about his family’s history and it sets the stage for part two where Milkman goes on a “quest for gold”. One theme in the book is how Milkman doesn’t really look to the future and how he is really passive. He doesn’t really plan for the future and only can see the past, as shown by the car ride in chapter 2, “But riding backward made him uneasy. It was like flying blind, and not knowing where he was going – just where he had been – troubled him” (32). This shows how he can’t really see the whole picture, only the past. Milkman’s “quest for gold” is him trying to look to the future and start being more active. He wants to be able to get away from his family but to get to his future he needs to learn more about his family’s past. Milkman’s future is very much influenced by his family’s past and heritage....

In  Wide Sargasso Sea , Antoinette marries Rochester. Rochester doesn’t love her and only married her for money. Rochester takes everything away from Antoinette, driving her mad. Her madness isn’t inherited from her mother, she’s “mad” because of her situation in this terrible marriage. Rochester, even though he doesn’t love Antoinette, needs to be in control of everything. He “owns” her, and unfortunately, at the time, the law agrees. Rochester “breaks” Antoinette. In the beginning of their marriage, he shows her some “love” and because of her past, Antoinette really wants to hold onto this feeling. But Rochester takes that away from her, he won’t give her “love”. This starts to break her because she wants this feeling so much that she would do anything. She goes to Christophine to ask for help and puts the white powder in Rochester’s drink. She basically drugs him, and you have to feel sorry for Rochester in this case. But the point is that Antoinette starts breaking when Ro...

In the first part of  The Stranger , I think that you can see many parallels to France during World War II. Specifically, I think Meursault represents The Collaboration in France, and Raymond would be like the Nazi Germans. The Collaboration in France was the group that decided to help the Germans in efforts to help themselves. They were officially neutral, but they did a lot to help the Germans. Meursault seemed like he always tried to act neutral, but he ended up helping Raymond. As time went on, the collaboration became more involved like Meursault who went from writing a letter for Raymond, to testifying as a witness for Raymond, to agreeing to help Raymond in fights, and he ends will killing the Arab. The Collaboration, similarly, wanted at first to be neutral, then they started helping the Germans round up Jews and put them in camps. They, at first, tried to only put foreign Jews into camps (because they wanted to protect French Jews), but that changed over time.  ...

Gregor wakes up as an insect and his main priority isn’t “oh no I’m a bug how do I become human again?”, it’s “oh no how am I going to get to work?” and I think that on some level this is really relatable. I think I would freak out about being an insect, but once I’ve calmed down I would have gotten stressed again about not knowing how to live my life. And it makes sense that I would care about getting to school or that Gregor cared about getting to work because those are very important things. For us, school is a must and it’s hard to miss a day because the work builds up and it just adds to the stress. For Gregor, he has to get to work because he needs this job to sustain his family. So being an insect is a lot less important than work, especially since he’s the only one working and he has to work not only to pay off his dad’s debts but also to pay for their lifestyle of lavish breakfast and having a cook and a maid. For us, school is the most important thing right now and we also h...

In  The Sun Also Rises , Jake Barnes isn’t really the most loveable character because he seems to be racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. Also, his views on masculinity are kind of annoying. Aside from all of this, there are a few times where we can relate to him.  “It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.” (42) Jake says that it is easy for him to act all manly during the day when he’s around others. Later at night when he is all alone, he lets himself go. You can see this when he’s around his friends he acts all superior. He thinks he’s better than Cohn and he seems to decide who is good enough to hang around with Brett. But later when he’s home alone, he starts thinking about Brett and starts to cry. Around others, he tries to act as if nothing really bothers him but alone he lets himself be sad.  He puts up a front with others. He has an act to show to the world. Doesn’t everybody? We act dif...