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DJP #12

Toni Morrison’s “Nobel Lecture” offers us a lesson about the power of language. She uses the image of children holding a bird and a blind woman to get this message across. She states, “So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer.” Words and language are very powerful, she claims. Language can help control, explain, and evoke different emotions which affect the way we live our lives. We are taught through language; we connect with others through language.

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DJP #11

The minimalist style of the Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” offers us very little information about the characters. It offers the decent information about the café, but none about the time setting and what else is going on in the world. There also seems to be two different tones within the book. One from the waiter who is hurried and wants to go home and go to bed. He even says “I want to go home and into bed” (3). This man also set a tone of indifference towards the deaf man in the café.

The tone of the other bartender is more solemn and numb. He has nowhere else to be, and possibly not a wife, though we are not told one way or the other. The older waiter does say, “I am of those who like to stay late at the café, with all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night” (3). He then goes on the mumble different prayers substituting nada and nothing for various words in the prayer, showing his indifference to his situation.

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DJP #10

Marjorie’s section offered a new perspective to me. I’ve grown up in a very conservative protective family all my life. Here in town I’ve gone to different private Catholic schools all of which made up of students and teachers who looked like me. I’ve only met a handful of African Americans who were recent immigrants or children of recent immigrants in my life. Seeing how Marjorie and her family immigrated to America after the time of slavery and her different perspectives on race and relationships to others offered me a new perspective on viewing races.

Marjorie exclaimed to her teacher, Mrs. Pinkston, “But I’m not African American” (273). Marjorie explained how she did not feel like she belonged in either America or Ghana because of the color of her skin and her own life experiences. In Ghana, she felt too Americanized compared to everyone else there. She feels this way especially when her grandmother reminds her to speak in Twi. She does not feel like she belongs in America because of the color of her skin and how she does not act like other African Americans in her school.

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DJP #8

In “The Pond” by Patricia Highsmith there are a couple of important turns. Both of these turns revolve around the pond in the backyard of the house that Elinor Sievert and her son Chris have just moved into. The pond is overcome by weeds and vines. After having tried draining the pond and cutting away the vines and weeds, Elinor decides to get a fish, more specifically a carp, to eat away at the vines and weeds and keep the pond clean and clear. The first major turn comes when Elinor finds the carp dead. During this turn the readers also find out that after telling him not to go to the pond, Elinor finds Chris to have drowned in it: “he was face down, feet out of sight, blond head nearly submerged” (252). The neighbors all help Elinor during her time of grief.

The next turn comes when Elinor comes to find that after killing the weeds and vines, they have grown back by the next day. She decides then to try and dig out the roots. While this is happening, she slips and falls and then becomes entangled in the ever-growing weeds and vines: “A tentacle thicker than most moved towards her and circled her right ankle. She kicked, and the vines tightened, and she fell forward. She went face down into the water, but the water seemed soft” (258). After grieving the loss of her husband for three months, then losing her son, Elinor succumbs to the weeds and vines in the pond. She has given up after knowing she will be with her husband and son again. The readers are led to believe that she has been able to move on with her life by wanting to help others, but in all actuality, her grief has overcome her will to survive.

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DJP#6

Satire uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize politics, certain societies, or just society at large. This passage from Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” uses satire: “When I finished the Creamsicle that the 7-11 clerk gave me, I held the wooden stick up into the air and shouted out very loudly. A couple lights flashed on in windows and a police car cruised by me a few minutes later. I waved to the men in blue and they waved back accidentally. When I got home it was still to hot to sleep so I picked up a week-old newspaper from the floor and read. There was another civil war, another terrorist bomb exploded, and one more plane crashed and all aboard were presumed dead. The crime rate was rising in every city with populations larger than 100,000, and a farmer in Iowa shot his banker after foreclosure on his 1,000 acres. A kid form Spokane won the local spelling bee by spelling the word rhinoceros” (Alexie 187). This passage uses satire in many different ways. One way includes the fact that the newspaper contains mainly tragic stories and one random story about a kid winning a spelling bee.

Additionally, the fact that the police wave back accidentally is another example of satire being used. We find out throughout the story that the narrator is a Native American and most Native Americans are distrusted in society because of how they look. Thus, when the police wave back accidentally it is satiric.

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DJP #5

Tayo describes living between two worlds as almost impossible to go on living: “He was standing with the wind at his back, like that mule, and he felt like he could stand there indefinitely, maybe forever, like a fence post or a tree. It took a great deal of energy to be a human being, and the more the wind blew and the sun moved southwest, the less energy Tayo had” (23). Tayo is suffering from PTSD in the war, mainly from losing his cousin. He is also trying to find his place in the post war world on the reservation. Tayo constantly has flashbacks into the days before the war when his uncle and cousin were still alive. Tayo struggles to come to terms with his losses as well as to figure out how to live as a mixed Native American-White man. This post war search for himself exemplifies his liminality in the story of Ceremony.

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DJP #4

“‘These dry years you hear some people complaining, you know, about the dust and the wind, and how dry it is. But the wind and the dust, they are part of life too, like the sun and the sky. You don’t swear at them. It’s people, see. They’re the ones. the old people used to say that droughts happen when people forget, when people misbehave.’ (42) . . . One time Old Woman K’yo’s son came in from Reedleaf town up north. His name was Pa’caya’nyi and he didn’t know who his father was.

He asked the people ‘You want to learn some magic?’ and the people said ‘Yes, we can always use some.’ (42) . . . Our mother Nau’ts’ity’i was very angry over this over the way all of them even Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi fooled around with this magic.

‘I’ve had enough of that,’ she said, ‘If they like that magic so much let them live off it.’

So she took the plants and grass from them. No baby animals were born. She took the rainclouds with her.” (44-45)

Tayo’s story and the story of the “Hummingbird and Green Fly” are interwoven together throughout the novel. In these passages it is clear that both stories include a drought. The story of the “Hummingbird and Green Fly” has a drought because of the magic that makes the young people forget about their old ways and altars. The hummingbird lets them know that there is not a drought three worlds down. They also learn the hard way that magic is wrong. Only the old ways and prayers can make the drought go away.

Literally and figuratively there is a drought in Tayo’s life. There is literally a drought when Josiah buys the cattle as well as when he comes back from the war. This drought makes life in the desert very difficult. Figuratively, Tayo’s PTSD is a form of a drought in his life. He is missing his loved ones, especially Rocky. He struggles to do anything and was in the hospital for a while when he first gets out of the war. Tayo is finally cured from his evil ways and illnesses after he performs and old ceremony and the old men of the town perform a ceremony on him.

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DJP #3

An example of a flat character would be Shukumar’s advisor in Jumpha Lahiri’s A Temporary Matter. After the baby was stillborn, Shukumar’s advisor is mentioned since he allowed Shukumar to take the spring semester off from teaching. The advisor is quoted saying, “That and the summer should give you a good push. You should be able to wrap things up by next September” (Lahiri 323). This quote serves to show the amount of free time that Shukumar was allowed to have after his baby was born dead. The only role of the advisor is to move the plot along.

An example of a round character would be Red Death in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. The story starts out by describing how devastating it was to the whole country, leaving in its path “redness and the horror of blood” (Poe 1). After the description of the party scene, Red Death appears and disrupts the fun times and pleasure that Prince Prospero and his guests are having. The surprising thing about Red Death is that he shows up during the prince’s party. However, from its name and previous descriptions it is rather predictable that Red Death would first kill Prince Prospero and the rest of his guests. Red Death is more of a round character in that it is hard to describe it in a tangible, realistic way since it is not human.

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DJP#2

My name is Katelyn Wilson, and I am a senior Natural Science major with a minor in Psychology. I came into college thinking I would go to medical school and become a trauma surgeon in the military. That all changed when I found CrossFit. CrossFit is defined as constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. After working out for about a year with the community at my gym, I decided that I wanted to become a coach so that I could help others along their fitness journeys.

I started coaching back in May 2016, and have loved it more ever since. I am always learning new things. Coaching has helped develop and shape me as a person. I have now decided that I want to go to graduate school for Exercise Science to further my knowledge of fitness, health, nutrition, and exercise.

Any time I am not in class, at the library or coffee shop studying or reading, eating, or sleeping, I spend my time in the gym. We have a great community of fitness-loving people that have become some of my closest friends. Working out is so much fun, too. I also love anything outdoors: hiking, biking, backpacking, swimming, kayaking, and many others. My dream would be to get into a graduate school in North Carolina where I can spend my free weekends split between the beach and the mountains. Then I would like to get a job in an athletic department’s Strength and Conditioning program,