Hello All,
Our final essay is going to be a work of creative nonfiction; it will be based on your memories, experiences, and ruminations. The theme of this assignment is "Anger and/or Revenge," so you might access your memories of times you became angry or witnessed others become angry. What causes this anger? Was it warranted? Was it proportional? What effects did it have?
For this blog, read the following essays, and choose one that you think is effective; briefly explain what about it worked for you.
"Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother"
"A June Journal"
"Red, White, and Silver"
"Shunned"
"Unwired"
I read "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother." I thought it was very interesting that Priscilla Hodgkins used her mother and her age as the subject of relevant universes. The mother's sudden mood swings are related to you short term memory. Hodgkins' insert of memory and how we tend to recollect or form the good is quite agreeable. The mother's non-recollection of her near-death experience and the fabricated father in her dreams support the proceeding idea. Hodgkins' paper has an overall dismal, in-depth aura that surrounds the time and death relative to oneself, but was able to lighten the mood with her last comment of having "all our socks," which I thought was a pleasant ending note.
ReplyDeleteKimberley said...
ReplyDeleteI read "Shunned" by Meredith Hall. This story made me feel very angry for her. Throughout the story, she talks about people turning against her and shunning her all just because she got pregnant. Even the father and mother shun her. Her family doesn't want her to be seen in public because they are afraid of being embarrassed,"my mother told me to get down on the floor of the car. I didn't move. "We might see someone," she explained. I understand that it is hard to have your 16 year old daughter pregnant but that does not give anyone permission to treat her like she is not human. The descriptions that she uses about what the people do really helps to bring out the readers emotions, "nevitably they stared and then turned away abruptly. If two were together, they bent together in whispers and walked away from me." Hall's paper has a huge impact on the readers emotions.
I read "Einestein Didn't Dream of My Mother", while reading it, I had the title in mind which didn't make sense until the very end. The irony then was obvious because the writer had extensively written about her mother's decline in health, but at the end of the day in the writer's point of view - it is the people that make the universe, and that not even Einstein could explain her mother through science. The story had an impact because the perspective of the auther and the mother are very clear through the "mini" stories of her mother.
ReplyDeleteI read "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother" by
ReplyDeletePriscilla Hodgkins. I found this reading quite sad but I enjoyed it. The author speaks of her aging mother and how she is dealing with old memories and trying to hold on to the good ones. The mother also only wants to remember the good memories of her deceased husband because she misses him so. I found the title ironic until the end when the author explains how the universe is full of life and chance. One cannot really explain why or how things are the way they are, but they are real. I enjoyed how the author would go back and forth on her mother's health, her memories, and the pure existence.
Sasha Velasquez
ReplyDeleteI read "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother" by Priscilla Hodgkins. I could relate to the author because like her, I am watching my gradmother's health decrease as the days go on. She tries her very best to be strong for her mother, she helps her mom hold onto the good memories of their family and life. The author expresses how people repress bad memories and hold on to the good memories while they are going through hardship. She did a good job using her mothers illness as a way to represent how the universe is not in control of us and that we are in control. By the end she said it does not matter what our universe is made of, that "her clocks are ticking, their memories are always true, and they have all their socks."
I read “Einstein Didn’t Dream of My Mother”, by Priscilla Hodgkins. I found the reading very sad, but funny and entertaining at the same time. The reading kept me wanting to read the next sentence to learn more about the poor grandmother and what she had to say about her past, present and future. The author spoke about her grandmother and how time had affected many parts of her life, especially her memory, but it had also allowed for her to keep many memories, which were important to her. The author did a good job of describing her grandmothers memories with figurative language. The grandmother was used to represent and show readers that the universe is controlled by one and not vice-versa. I thoroughly enjoyed the authors perspective and also the way the author would always return to the grandmother and her
ReplyDeletememories and the ending was great and left me satisfied.
Thu Wrties....
ReplyDeleteI read "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother", by Priscilla Hodgkins. I thought this story was very interesting and touching. I enjoyed reading it also, especially when her mother talked about seeing her husband in her dreams and they would meet on the street. I thought it was really sweet, because she would dream that she was on a bus and then she would meet her husband but he would be really young and she was the same age as she is now. It shows that she really misses him a lot. I also thought it was interesting how she wrote that her mother would only remember the good memories, and supress the bad ones because that is what we usually do in life. Overall, this story was really good.
Thu Writes....
ReplyDeleteI read "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother", by Priscilla Hodgkins. I thought this story was very interesting and touching. I enjoyed reading it also, especially when her mother talked about seeing her husband in her dreams and they would meet on the street. I thought it was really sweet, because she would dream that she was on a bus and then she would meet her husband but he would be really young and she was the same age as she is now. It shows that she really misses him a lot. I also thought it was interesting how she wrote that her mother would only remember the good memories, and suppress the bad ones because that is what we usually do in life. Overall, this story was really good.
Chelsey Brown
ReplyDeleteI read "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother," by Priscilla Hodgkins, I like the way she included dialog and personal thoughts into her piece. She transitions from each occurrence and experience smoothly but in such a melancholy way that gives actual feeling to the reader of the writers pain. I especially liked the ending where Hodgkins wraps up the entire piece, " What determines the universe: a chance of elements meeting, reacting at just the right temperature and density? How many chances are there? How many were taken? How many universes? If time is relative and quantum mechanics are absolute, what makes up human choice? Do we have free will, or are all things determined?I don't think it matters. In my house, clocks tick, memories are always true and we have all our socks." It really wraps up the piece with an impact-full way of doing it.
Alberto Panchi
ReplyDeleteI read the article named, "Einstein Didn't Dream of my Mother" by Priscilla Hodgkins. I like how the narrator told the story. She described the characters, the setting, and the problem. I also liked how she used description, I could easily notice when she used the senses of hearing, feeling, and seeing, that helped me see a clear picture of what was going on allowing me to experience what she was experiencing at the moment. One last thing that I liked about the essay is how the writer used exposition to explain and inform the reader about her thought and ideas.
I think the author made a great job using visual imagery. When I was reading the article I felt as if I was there experiencing the whole thing with the family, as if I was part of the story. At the beginning of the story I was wondering why the author used the word "socks" in the first and the last sentence, but later on at the end of the story I realized that she might have used it to refer to her family members. The author seems to be writing her story as she remembers it, from her own point of view, describing all the things that she did and saw, things that happened to her in a certain point in her life. She talked abundantly about her mother and her illness. She described in detail how her mother began to lose her memory little by little, how her mother was caught in the illusions of her dreams and how most of the times she used to repeat everything that was in her mind.
The narrator uses wise quotes from people like Descartes, as when she says that thinking is the proof of existence. She describes very well the dreams that her mother experienced, how her mother met her father at the bus station, how she lost her wallet, and because of the age; how her father didn’t recognize her and how her mother woke up like crazy searching for her expired driver license to prove to her husband that it was really her. I liked how the narrator describes how as time goes by her mother keeps becoming older, and how her mother only remembers all the good times and not the bad times she spent with her husband. She also demonstrates how her mother is so obsessed with her husband that wishes him back so badly. The narrator remembers the conversations she had going on with her mother, how they talked about the will, and how all her mothers’ possessions were going to be distributed within the family. She also remembers about the promise she made to her mother; without actually saying what the promise was. Many times she describes how she got afraid whenever her mother didn’t react to her senses; and some other times she was afraid of her mother suddenly dying. She was so afraid that she didn’t want to see her mother as a vegetable but the thing that scared her most was that she was the one who had to make the decision of either disconnecting the cables that maintain her mother alive; she didn’t want to feel directly responsible of her mother’s death. I like how the author describes the universe as a life, and how she says that nothing matters because in her life time is running, things happen as they’re supposed to do, it’s like destiny, but at the end they remember about all their family members and all the things that happened to them in their life.
"Shunned" by Meredith Hall.
ReplyDelete"Shunned" made me feel angry, people were against her and shunned her. The only reason people would do this to her was due to the fact that she was pregnant. Her parents didn't want the public to see her pregnant, so she was told to different things to be hidden from the public. The reason that I felt anger towards it is because they weren't treating her like a human. The transitioning from paragraph to paragraph were very clear. The description throughout the paper was well presented. The description bring out the emotions with the words the writer uses. This essay has a huge impact on whoever reads this essay.
I read “A June Journal,” by David Gessner. The story impacted me greatly due to its presentation in the form of journal entries. I was able to read inside of Gessner’s mind and learn his feelings and emotions. Each journal entry drew me closer to the pain and frustration that he was experiencing when witnessing his beloved father’s “sharp and discerning machine,” fail him in the battle of combating lung cancer. As a daughter I could only imagine the horrific fear and pain of watching my father die right before my eyes. Gessner was exquisite in captivating my interest and emotions. He ended with a powerful conclusion in which is a good philosophy to live by; in that be yourself, for you are your own hero.
ReplyDeleteI read the story "Shunned". Meredith did a great job describing her most difficult moments in life. In the year 1966, during that time it was a disgrace to the family for an unmarried teenager to become pregnant. I understand their point, but having to give her child away and unfairly treat her was a greater sin. Her story inspires anger as one reads her paragraphs. I can actually feel her pain and turmoil.
ReplyDeleteIn “Shunned”, the author reflected back to a traumatizing time in her life and described it with significant detail. The feelings she described as she suffered through many losses in her life were vivid in her writing. This essay was probably significantly therapeutic for the author herself, in addition to the reader.
ReplyDeleteAraceli Ramirez
A June Journal, by David Gessner was written in journal form which captures the irony of daily living with family. Gessner writes amazing prose of descriptive text that helps to create a true picture of family life. Family life is explained with written layers upon layers of emotion, while Gessener describes his father dying of cancer. Gessner gives the reader the deep understanding of anger and frustration. He doesn't speak of it directly, but encompasses it through experience and the shear pulling apart of his own deep human emotion. The daily content of writing helped the writer create a sense of "routine," which gave him some strength to deal with his father dying. A June Journal is an excellent read and insightful writer. Val Lewis
ReplyDeleteI read Red, White, and Silver. I really how the writer incorporates many different styles into her writing. I found it a bit confusing at some parts of the essay, but after sitting through it and thinking about it, I realized that she was just constructing many different experiences to write an astounding conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThe essay that I thought was the most effective was "A June Journal" by David Gessner. Gessner was able to convey his annoyance with his fathers constant need for control and organization. He also conveyed a permission for allowing and tolerating it, an excuse per se, in his recognition that his father couldn't control everything, namely his cancer, and therefore deserved to control what he could. The story had a nice balance of anger, humor, reflection, and sadness. There were several passages that stood out for me. The letter from the ex-mayor was hilarious and it could have been written to my own father!
ReplyDeleteI read "Shunned" by Meredith Hall. Reading this story made me feel very sad for her. No one deserves to be treated like she was, especially just for the act of being pregnant. I understand that times were different back then, and teenage pregnancy was a much bigger deal then than it is now. I enjoyed the way she wrote. I liked how she gave a sort of background to her story; how she talked of all of the other "sinners" that she and her family knew of, and then she became one of them. I also enjoyed that she has a very informal style of writing, but that you can tell that it comes from her heart. You could feel her sadness, her anger, her disappointment, her frustration throughout essay.
ReplyDelete-Berkley Mercer
I read A June Journal and I loved it. It didn't really make me feel angry in anyway. I actually could empathise with David Gessner. Being that my mother had cancer, I could completely relate to the thoughts of seeing your parent suffer and not being able to do anything but watch and be supportive. His style of writing has been one of my new favorites so far. The way he used short sentences and was precise about how he felt was excellent. He was not wordy and I as the reader was able to connect to him through even the his short quick thoughts. I felt the sadness of seeing his dad suffer, but it was almost as if there was a happy ending because in the end he learned from his father the priceless lesson on how to "insistenly be himself." It was a great essay.
ReplyDeleteI read "Red, White, and Silver". I really like descriptive techniques that the author used in writing this essay. I felt like I was actually there to see the native American Indians and the elders and the horses. I was moved by the way the author described the events that were taking place within the school. The author really made the story come to life for me.
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