Journal 18 -“In Another Country”

1. What is the significance of the story’s title?

The title shows isolation. He tries to learn the Italian language, but once he tries to learn grammar it seems hard. It shows how things seem easy on the outside but as a whole they can be very difficult. He is from America, in Italy. There injuries also set them apart from the rest of the troops, which is another example of isolation.

2. Which character do you think best represents the “Hemingway hero”? Why?

The fencer or major best represents the Hemingway Hero. He deals with the most suffering. His wife has just passed away, and his anger and anxiety shows. He also suffers a hand injury that won’t heal. He still perseveres, and keeps fighting. His injury greatly affects his future.

3. What can you infer about the photographs the doctor hangs up? What is the significance of the major’s reaction?

The photos are encouraging, but could be fake. They are meant of a motivational tool. The major doesn’t acknowledge the photos, and is not very hopeful. He is distracted and focused elsewhere, isolating himself into his own world of suffering and loss. The is the embodiment of the Hemingway Hero.

Journal 16

Name: erin munchel

Journal 16 – Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” and London’s “To Build A Fire”

Read the following quote and discuss how it applies to the main characters in both stories. In the course of this discussion, address how each of the characters is both similar and different:

“Determinisim governs everything … The writer must study the inherited traits of individual character and the social condition of the time. Together, these elements determine the course of any action, the outcome of any life. Free will or self-determination is mostly an illusion, although chance is granted a role in human affairs. Still, even the effects of chance are obliterated in the inevitable course determined by the interaction of inherited character traits and the social environment.“

What happened to the main characters in each of the stories ws inevitable. In ‘The Blue Hotel’ the Suede’d actions led to his death. It was forshadowed in the beginning. The Suede is the outsider, and isn't fit to survive. He is violent, annoying, and has bad social anxiety. He has to drink in order to interact. He was very strange. He had a weakness for alcohol. His inability to handle alcohol plays a huge impact- although its beyond his control. He played a large part in his own death. The source of the Suede's fear is that he is in a place like the wild west, from things he has read or heard about. (real vs. ideal) He is timid the whole night, but after he drinks gin and becomes drunk, he gets very aggressive. Mr. Scully gave him the alcohol. He let the suede fight his son, Johnny Scully. (saying he was a cheater, which was foreshadowed). Mr. Blanc saw Johnny cheating and didn’t say anything, so he feels responsible because it may have stopped the fight. The cowboy says to Mr. Blanc that he didn’t do anything wrong. But at the fight, he was saying to John Scully to kill him. The Suede was afraid they were going to ganging up on him and was paranoid. But it was clear everyone was routing for Johnny. The cowboy thought the Suede was weird. At the end, the Suede wouldn't leave and still tried to start trouble. The person who comes in the hotel at the end stabs and kills him. In ‘To Build A Fire’ the protagonist fights against nature, which is completely out of control. He does not listen to anyone, and takes on nature himself. He could not have control over the weather conditions and his death was inevitable.

Journal 13

Name: erin

Journal #13 – Edgar Lee Masters Epitaphs (p. 502)

Read “George Gray” and “Lucinda Matlock” and answer the following questions.

1. What object symbolizes George Gray’s life? How is this object representative of him?

His sailboat represents how he lived his life in fear. He never just let go, and let life happen, like wind can push a sailboat. He was always hesitant. He did not live his life to the fullest. Instead, he lived with meaning.

2. How was Lucinda Matlock’s life different than George Gray’s? How do you interepret the last line of the poem?

Lucinda’s life is different from Gray’s because Gray feels regretful that he did not live his life to the fullest. Lucinda’s epitaph shows her dancing. Dancing is a happy thing. She had lived a full life. While Gray’s life seems to lack emotion, Matlock’s life is full of excitement, eagerness, and blessings. Matlock’s life had the aspects of adventure. Life in general is rewarding when the time is well spent and reflected on, without holding back.

3. How are “George Gray” and “Lucinda Matlock” examples of realism?

Gray never took a chance, and failed to live his life to the fullest. This is the reality of many people. Everyone is too scared what people think, or fear the outcome of certain actions. Living like this takes the excitement out of life, which many people regret. On the other hand, Lucinda lives her life on edge, and embraces every aspect of it. Many people live like this, searching for fullfillment, adventure, and excitement. Overall, both of there lived were live realisticly, but were on contrasting margins.

journal 14

Name: Erin

Journal #14 - E. A. Robinson Poems

Realism – The theory or practice in art and literature of fidelity to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization of the most typical views, details, and surroundings of the subject.

Read the following poems and write a detailed description for each of the title characters and explain how each is an example of the “real” instead of the “ideal.”

“Richard Cory“ (497)

Richard Cory was a wealthy man, seemingly blessed in everything the people who admired him thought most important. They respected him, perhaps too much, because to them he was an idealization rather than a living, breathing person. As a result, he was never truly befriended by any of them, but simply held at arms length and admired. Consequently, he became isolated and incurably lonely. He was thought to 'have it all,' yet the one thing he needed most, the friendship of his fellow man, was withheld from him; it never occurred to his admirers that he had the same needs as they did. Eventually, when the loneliness and alienation became unbearable, he took his life. “Richard Cory” describes how he is such a great man and there are others that are envious of his life, yet at the end of the poem he commits suicide without any specific reason given. This could very well be a statement about how some people live their lives, while they are truly tortured by some sort of trouble.

“Miniver Cheevy” (497)

“Miniver Cheevy” has a similar principle, but the character is not happy with his life and in the end only ends up drinking. Cheevy is a common kind of character, one who never does much, but
has excuses for his lack of achievement. It isn't really his fault. In
Cheevy's case, he was just born at the wrong time. There is nothing
exciting or challenging in his own time and place, nothing to stir him up
and cause him to exert his latent talents. Nhow if he could only have lived back in the romantic past, then he would
have amounted to something.

“Mr. Flood’s Party” (498)

Eben feels that he has lived too long. The harvest moon he sees underscores his situation. Harvested crops have a use at the end of their cycle, whereas Eben has outlived the late-autumn stage of his life and is of no use to anyone, not even to himself. The townspeople do not welcome him, probably because they think he is a mere drunk. He is so lonely that, tipsy with drink on the way to his empty hilltop house, he talks to himself as if he were two people celebrating together.

There is, however, more to Eben Flood than meets the townspeople's eye. Despite his name's close sound to “ebb and flow,” they do not think about what ups and downs he may have experienced in his life. Unlike the townsfolk, readers overhear Eben and learn that he believes everyone leads “uncertain lives” in a hard world where precious “things break” all too easily. When he says this, he is remembering the loss of his family and his many long-gone friends.

JOurnal 15

Name: Erin

Journal 15 – William Dean Howell’s “Editha”

Write a sentence that summarizes the story’s overall message, and provide three direct quotes from the story that best illustrate this message.

The overall message if that romanticism and love are dangerous.

“All the while, in her duplex emotioning, she was aware that now at the very beginning she must put a guard upon herself against urging him, by any word or act, to take the part that her whole soul willed him to take, for the completion of her ideal of him”

“She had always supposed that the man who won her would have done something to win her; she did not know what, but something. George Gearson had simply asked her for her love, on the way home from a concert, and she gave her love to him, without, as it were, thinking. But now, it flashed upon her, if he could do something worthy to have won her—be a hero, her hero—it would be even better than if he had done it before asking her; it would be grander. Besides, she had believed in the war from the beginning.”

“Editha determined not to be hurt, but to write again quite as if the answer had been all she expected. But before it seemed as if she could have written, there came news of the first skirmish, and in the list of the killed which was telegraphed as a trifling loss on our side, was Gearson's name. There was a frantic time of trying to make out that it might be, must be, some other Gearson; but the name, and the company and the regiment, and the State were too definitely given.”

2. What tactics does Editha use to make George believe as she does about the war?

George does not want to fight in the war, but he realizes that he must do so if he wants to win Editha's love. Editha feels as if she needs to justify her love for George; she tells herself that she can only love a war hero. When he signs up and gets his orders stating that he will be shipped out, Editah gives him a letter and tells him to read it if he ever doubts his purpose.

3. Is there ever a time in which Editha truly understands what she has done? Does she ever experience an epiphany?

At the end of the story, Editha is telling her story to anyone who will listen. She has not learned that her romanticizing of war is a dangerous thing. Howells uses the story to demonstrate that romanticism can be a dangerous thing, and that a romantic ideal of war causes people to get killed.