Chopin Support for Thesis Activity

  Example of Thesis #2:

Chopin uses a variety of contrasting words of life and death in order to show us not what is physically happening to the main character, but what is emotionally happening to her. Chopin makes it clear to us that Mrs. Mallard was not fully alive while her husband was around, detailing to us that she was noticing the outside world and the beauty that it held for what must have been the first time in a long time. Irony becomes very present at the end of the story when Mrs. Mallard physically dies, but she is also now emotionally alive and free.

Example of Thesis #3:

Chopin makes a clear point to us about her feelings of society and marriage. Her descriptions of how Mrs. Mallard feels when she learns about her husbands death are at first what we would typically imagine, with intense grief and mourning. Her feelings soon change to realizing what she now has to look forward to with her life and her new freedom. She is implying that marriage is a sort of jail, keeping people back from experiencing the true freedoms and pleasures that life has to offer. Chopin also hints to us that the marriage may have been an abusive one due to the relief that Mrs. Mallard feels after her husbands death, which hints at a larger problem seen in marriages back then and today.

Walker Extra Credit

his peace.

He kisses her and that was that. She was his for now on. They would ride away from this swamp land over night and be back to the civilization of Chicago. He hears the horns of cars passing by and the barks of neighborhood dogs and he returns to the present. He looks at his new wife and feels an immense relief pass over him. He had missed his own wedding by hiding in a place deep in his mind. He was relieved about this though. He was too nervous to pay attention to what was happening. But she was his now. And her child was his now. And he would support them both. All three living in Chicago, as a family.

Hemingway Extra Credit

Being alienated from the people that you love and have grown up with would be a terrible experience. You would feel like you have no where to turn for support. Being supported and having people listen and care about your thoughts and feelings is important for any human being to have. If I was being ignored by my family and friends I would have a tough time coping with even the slightest of problems. Small problems piled upon small problems can very quickly lead into big problems. The change in the relationship between me and my family and friends could have been caused by an extended period of time spent away from home as well as a disagreement in why I was gone, such as going away to a war that is not publicly supported (such as the Vietnam War). If I was ever alienated like this I would feel a great amount of depression. Also, I would have the feeling that nobody wants you around, which is very tough to deal with. I would probably turn to a counselor or someone who understood the situation I was in from a similar experience that they had.

SSRJ#4: Carver

My initial reaction to this piece was one of confusion. I realized that there was a ton of symbolism in the story but it was not apparent to me in my first read through. I had to read this story again to start picking up on a lot of the minor details that really mean more then we are lead to believe. I liked how Carver packs a lot of details and meaning in this story, despite how short it is. My parents are divorced so I understand the unfortunate nature of a couple breaking up and getting into fights.

I felt that the use of symbolism was very extent in this story. Everything from the weather to the words used by the couple can easily be interpreted as meaning something else. The gloomy weather stands for the unfortunate scene we are about to read about. It can also stand for how Carver feels about the entire subject of divorce, hence he is setting a tone for the story. The action of the mother putting down the picture stands for her letting go of the relationship. She is describes as picking up the picture and examining it, maybe having second thoughts about the separation between the two. She then puts down the picture frame, face down, as a way of representing the end of the relationship and the family as a whole. The fight between the couple over the baby can be interpreted as the unfortunate act of violence that commonly goes hand-in-hand with divorce and the break up of families. This may be a way for Carver to express what happened in his family during his childhood.

Being that this short story was full of symbolism, the interpretations of the events can vary dramatically. My question is what did other people interpret the baby as being in the story? Did the baby stand for something more then just a part of the plot or was it Carver's way of expressing something much deeper?

SSRJ#3 D. Walker

This story reminded me a lot of Hemingway's story that we read previously. The basic premise was the same, a war-torn veteran coming home and having to deal with what he had done during the war. What I found more interesting about this story compared to Hemingway's was the fact that he returns to the place where his bad memories originated from many years later. I found the use of symbolism to be very extensive in this piece and helps to make the piece much deeper then it appears to be.

The entire trip for the narrator is basically symbolism for the Vietnam war. He goes to the country in order to help the people there, just like what the United States initially attempted to do. The narrator attempts to repair Dinh's thumb, which can be easily associated with a number of things. I personally believed the thumb to stand for democracy. The narrator eventually realizes that he has failed to fix Dihn's thumb, similar to how we realized we failed to uphold democracy in the country. And just like how the United States abruptly pulled out of Vietnam, the narrator leaves as well without ever confronting Dihn about the failed procedure or even saying goodbye.

I personally interpreted this story as being a parallel to the Vietnam war. My question is how other people interpreted the events and characters in the story, including what the thumb stands for.

SSRJ#2 : Hemingway

This story made me truly appreciate what soldiers in war have to face everyday. We are fortunate enough now to have an abundance of services offered to these veterans to help them deal with their experiences but soldiers back during the turn of the century were not as fortunate. I really thought that Hemingway's use of vague details was a great strategy for pulling the reader in. It forces the reader to become more involved in what is happening in the story and for them to have to create detailed events in their own mind rather then being told what is happening.

I felt that Hemingway used setting very well in this story. Much like how he describes details of Krebs past, he uses vague details to describe Krebs home and neighborhood. I feel that this can be both a positive and a negative for a story like this. By giving us vague details on the setting it forces the reader to take a more active approach in reading the story. While this can help keep a reader interested and focused, it can also give us a false idea of the setting, subject to however the reader interprets what little details we are given from Hemingway. This means that the setting of this story can vary wildly from one reader to the next. This makes discussing the setting between people difficult but also interesting due to different interpretations.

I would like to know what other people thought the setting of Krebs home was like. Did he live in a small town or was his house in the city? Was his house big or small? These are just some of the questions that are not completely answered in the text and are left to us to figure out.