11-3 Richard Wright

 Richard had a very disturbing life growing up. His father abandoned the family and left him to be raised by his grandmother and mother in a harsh and unfair environment. He had a very limited education due to the black community and environment he was raised in during the 1920’s. He graduated from high school as valedictorian an already had a story published in high school before graduation. Still he had no recognition for any of his talents because of the segregated society, like many other blacks in his society at that time. He moved up north to Tennessee and then further up north to Chicago. He had many different small jobs trying to stay afloat during the depression. He became involved in the National Negro Theatre and other projects. Over all Richard had many struggles in his life starting in his early childhood into adulthood.

           

The story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” was a very good story about a boy named Dave that wanted a gun. I believe he related being a man to having a gun. Dave went to the store to get the Sears Roebuck catalog to find a gun to order. Dave’s mom didn’t want him to have a gun. He sweet talked his mother after supper about how Joe had a gun he would sell to Dave for two dollars. His mom gave him the money and told him to get back home with the gun she wanted it for her husband. Dave played around in the fields acting like he was shooting it. It was late when he returned home he waited till his mom was in the bed. He woke up the next morning with the gun under his pillow. He took some flannel and tied the gun around his thigh and went to work helping in the fields. Jim Hawkins wanted to know why he was there so early. He had left before his mom could get up. He didn’t want to hand over the gun. He took jenny to the fields to plow and while he was playing around he shot the gun and it hit Jenny. He saw her bleeding while she was jumping around. Dave tried to put dirt in the hole and stop the bleeding but there wasn’t nothing could be done. Several people heard the shot and came to see what was going on. As Dave was questioned the crowd had gathered and as Dave told his story they laughed. Mr. Hawkins told Dave he would have to work and pay for the dead mule. Dave went home went to bed and when everyone was asleep he got up and went to find the gun he told everybody he had threw in the creek. He found the gun and shot it several times. He felt like a man on his way home he hears a train. He gets on the train and runs away from his problems. Really he never became a man but a coward for not staying to face the punishment. 

11-2 Welty

        

Eudora Welty was born in 1909 and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin. She studied advertising at Columbia University before returning to Mississippi, where she had various writing jobs.

 “Powerhouse” is a story that really demonstrates the different idea's between black and white societies.  How each group cooperates with one another and the values that each community sees as important.  Powerhouse is a black band playing at an all-white dance hall. The story is during the time of segregation.  Although the band is playing their hearts out, the audience is not really dancing.  Music is everything to Powerhouse, and no matter where they are playing.  They have left their family at home to play in different places. The only communication they have is through the phone. This band wasn't exactly in their comfort zone.  The white community simply viewed them as entertainment for them even though it meant so much more to the band.  The people at the dance seemed like it was almost an embarrassment to have some black guy playing his heart out. The white people were so wrapped up in segregation they couldn't just see them as people and appreciate what they were doing.  People had their song request, but he only referred to them as numbers, which makes them feel like just another number.  They were being treated as "blacks" not humans.  The songs were announced by number and not their real names.  When they took a break and went to the all-black cafe, you could really see the difference in the two cultures and how they were treated. This story brought the concerns of segregation and how bad it really was especially to the black people. People are the same we are all human the only difference is the skin color, but we all are human’s with a heart. No one is better than any body else. As we see here people couldn’t see beyond the color if their skin.

10-1 Steinbeck

John Steinbeck grew up with a drive to be successful.  As a young boy he supported himself taking numerous jobs just to make it through.  When he finally began writing he showed deep empathy for migrate workers and those who struggle to survive.  He felt that they lost the enjoyment and the feeling of living with all the manual labor.  Steinbeck was able to write about these things because he fully understood them and experienced it first hand.

I enjoyed Steinbeck's story, "Flight" the story is about a young man who wants to become a man. He is the oldest child of the family and his father has deserted them.  He now feels like it is his job to be a man. His mother takes care of him and her other children.  She wants him to act more mature and grow up. Pepe’s dad had left a knife and Pepe had started carrying it. He loved that knife and he carried it around everywhere. He pulled it out a lot and threw it into the ground to keep it sharp and rust free. He cherished his father’s knife very much.  One day his mother sent him into town to get some medicine in case anyone got a stomach or tooth ache. He loaded up and went to town and was to stay the night and come back early in the morning. But something happen he was home earlier than normal. He had gotten into a fight killing a man with his knife. He told his mother the story and they packed his horse’s saddle bags so he can leave town. He tells his brother and sister by and they don’t understand why he is leaving. His journey takes him way into the woods where brush and thickets makes it hard to travel. The cliffs of rocks are hard for the horse to climb. Pepe being on guard at all times he hears animals and a person on a horse passing through. Pepe doesn’t have an easy travel into the mountains; he gets cut on a sliver of granite rock. His horse is shot and killed and he has to start walking to hide from whom ever may be after him for the killing. In the end Pepe was shot and killed, there he was the man he always wanted to be.  

10.3 Langston Hughs

Langston Hughs was born in 1902. He became the leader of the writers who created Harlem Renaissance. He lived and worked in Paris and Italy before he returned to the United States. He had always had an interest in writing poetry.  He attended Columbia University. His most popular works were news paper sketches written for the Chicago Defender. Throughout his life he worked as a cook’s helper, a busboy, and a seaman.  Hugh’s was a humorist and a historian on the lives of black Americans.  Hugh’s wrote everything from short stories to lyrics.  As a young man he was even elected class poet.  Hugh’s used his work to speak out for the black community and its culture.  In his poem, “The Weary Blues” Hugh’s puts rhythm and structure into wonderful jazz inspired lyrics.  A picture is painted of a man playing the blues. He uses the blues to deal with society.

The story “On The Road” was a very unusual story. A man named sergeant was walking in the snow cold, hungry, and sleepy he was trying to find a place to go. He had been to a lot of shelters seeking food and a place to stay they were all full. He sees a parsonage and the man turns him away. Then he sees a church and white mans church. He tries to open the door but it was locked .Then he tries to push the door open when the cops come and the church falls along with the cross. Sergeant walks down the road still looking for shelter. He looks beside him and Christ is there talking to him. He thanks sergeant for getting him off the cross; he had been there a long time. Christ tells him he is going to Kansas City. They part ways and sergeant goes to the jungle to sleep. When he wakes he walks to the train station to jump on a coal car. When he pulls himself up a cop starts beating him. He tries several times and can’t make it. The cop tells him he isn’t in the jungle anymore and this isn’t a train car it’s jail as he beats him across the knuckles. Then he realizes he is in jail and it must have been a dream. He wonders if Christ made it to Kansas. He sees the dried blood from the beating at the church the night before. Then he wonders if they had arrested him and was it a dream all along.

10.2 William Faulkner

William Faulkner received a noble prize for his literature in 1949. Faulkner began his career as a poet. As a young man he wanted to join the military but he was rejected.  Instead he went to Canada.  He published many works in his time and is now a topic in every American Literature classroom.

In the short story "That Evening Sun" we see the story from two different points of view.  Quentin tells his story from the view of a 24 year old and then he tells the story from how he remembers as a nine year old.  His mother and father have a maid by the name of Nancy.  She is very afraid of her husband Jesus.  She is convinced that he is going to kill her.  She begs night after night for people to walk her home so she does not have to be in the dark.  She thinks he is waiting with a razor blade ready to slice her throat open.  It gets so bad that she even wants to stay the night and begs the children to come and stay with her.  The children are young and they don’t really understand. They are not really concerned with her situation but more concerned with what they won’t have if she dies. They don’t understand death and the process of after someone dies they don’t return. 
Nancy and Jesus’ relationship was like a rollercoaster.  I am assuming there were many reasons.  It was mentioned how she was always around the white men and it was suggested that she was pregnant by one.  The "watermelon" under her dress was indeed a baby.  This story portrayed the severe inequalities between black and white people.  How the white people view the black people and their horrible perception of people of color. I enjoyed this story; I guess I see how prejudice people really were and how come it took so long to get through these eras. Even though I know some people are still prejudice, it’s hard for me to understand because people of color are still human and have feeling just like anybody else.

10-1 Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois.  His father was a physician and he taught him how to hunt and fish. Hemingway like many other writers worked for some time as a journalist.  Hemingway sought out to join the military, but was rejected due to poor vision.  He found a way on by volunteering as a driver and was later transferred over to work in the Italian front.  Unfortunately for him he was wounded in an explosion.  After his recovery he worked as a foreign correspondent.  Hemingway’s writing help create a revolution in literary style.  He used precise imagery, and an impersonal dramatic tone.  Hemingway became the spokesperson for a lost generation.

Ernest Hemingway's story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a great story. Mr. and Mrs. Macomber are on an African safari hunting trip.  At a glance Francis Macomber seems like a strong man, but it becomes apparent he is a coward in so many ways.  His wife Margot is very beautiful and takes full advantage of his inability to be assertive and stand up for himself.  Robert Wilson is their guide for the trip.  Robert was a very unconventional man; he defiantly did not follow the rules.  He did things his way rather it broke the law or not.  He even brought a double cot along when he thought he could sleep with women.  As he guided them on their hunting trip, Margot began showing interest in Wilson.  As the story progresses her interest becomes more open and she does not try to hide it from her husband. She kisses Robert in front of Macomber and eventually she sleeps with Wilson.  When they were hunting lions, Macomber became very scared and fled. This showed how much of a crowd. Throughout the story he began to transform from a boy to a man.  Another opportunity arises and they are hunting water buffalo.  Margot at first was enjoying the hunt, until she saw a change in Macomber.  He was gaining confidence and she was losing control.  When he does not run, she can’t handle it and shoots him.  Wilson is shocked and knows this was not an accident.  He is in a position where he can not say anything; she has too much information about him. Now they are even.  Even though Macomber dies and Margot gets away with it, the story ends on a happy note.  Macomber finally was a man that was a crowd and then he died.

9-1 Their Eyes Were Wathching God

 The novel begins as Janie the main character returns to her home town. The gossips watching her on the porch wonder why she’s back, and if “Tea Cake” has taken all her money, leaving her no option but to return home.  Her friend Pheoby Watson comes over to talk to Janie and find out what has happened. Pheoby doesn’t hold back telling, what happened on her search for happiness and how she had been abandoned by her parents and raised by her grandmother. She wanted Janie to choose a stable man to marry. Her grandmother wanted to know that she would be taken care of before she died. Her grandmother didn’t listen to what Janie wanted and found her an older man named Logan Killicks that she worked for instead of being his wife. She later married Joe Starks; a man that she thought was going to be what she had always wanted. After he was elected Mayor, he changed and became mean and abusive. The love that she wanted so bad he couldn’t give. His professional life as a Mayor was great where he had to solve the town’s problems but, he couldn’t love the way she wanted.  Don’t we all know someone like this? She was married to him for 20 years and after his death she was wealthy. Men seeing a rich women came from all over to see her.  After these men, Janie fell in love with a younger man known as “Tea Cake” he was a bean picker that didn’t have much money. She owned the store that her husband ran and one day “Tea Cake” walked in, his real name was Vergible Woods. He taught her how to play checkers and let her be herself by saying what she felt. Tea Cake may have had a gambling problem as he takes her money to gamble and gets in fight. But he returns with three hundred dollars instead of two that he had taken from her clothes where she had the money hidden. They decided to move to the Everglades’ where they could make money by day picking beans and by night by playing cards and gambling.  Later, after a good year of picking beans they decided to stay another year. As the year passed they saw Indians moving due to a hurricane. The hurricane came a few days later and just a bought killed both of them.  During their struggle to stay a live “Tea Cake” was bitten by a dog.  Which later he became ill and started having hallucinations that Janie was trying to kill him.  He wasn’t to drink water and when he did he would go mad and try and kill her.  He was so worried about her that he had a gun under his pillow.  But Janie found the gun and got her rifle ready.  After he returned from the outhouse he went for his gun.  Janie got hers and shot Tea Cake.  He died in her lap. Mean while she had been giving tea Cake medicine and they were waiting on a serum. However the serum didn’t come in time.  Janie went to jail and they decided she didn’t need to stay in jail long. The doctor testified that she had been in love with Tea Cake and had been giving him medicine. But there was nothing she could have done. That’s why Janie came back to town and without her husband that she had finally found love with.  This was a great story a little drawn out at times, but very sad for Janie at least she had her friend Phobey Watson to come home too.

Susan Glaspell

8.3                                              Susan Glaspell

 Susan Glaspell was a playwrighter who told stories about real women.   Glaspell portrayed women in a way that expressed their struggles.  Men often sterotyped women as they always have done.  Glaspell was borned in a middle class family.  Many of her earlier works were based on her upbringing in her hometown of Davenport, Iowa.  When Glaspell was older she became more aware of the world around her and of the inequalities that women had suffered.  Glaspell wrote many plays throughout her life and eleven of them were featured in the Provincetown Players.  Among the many plays that Glaspell wrote “Trifles” a play that gained the most recognition. This particular play starts in an abandoned kitchen in the home of John and Minnie Wright.  There in the house is Henry Peters (the sheriff), Mrs. Peters (his wife), George Henderson (County Attorney), Lewis Hale (County Attorney), and Mrs. Hale (his wife).  They are investigating the murder of John Wright.  Lewis Hale tells the sheriff and the county attorney what he saw when he came to the home the night before.  Mrs. Wright was sitting in her rocking chair very calm, when Mr. Hale came to visit.  He had intended on asking her husband about getting a phone.  Ay this time it was possible to get a group line where they could all talk to one another.   As he searched the house he found Mr. Wright dead, he had been strangled by a rope around his neck.

While the men searched the home the following day the women were left to look around the downstairs alone, the men told them they could take some of Mrs. Wright’s things to the jailhouse.  They all noticed how untidy the home was, but the men were more critical.  As the men criticized the home over and over you could feel the women becoming defensive.  As the story progressed the women began to take on a more sympathetic role for Mrs. Wright.  They began searching through the downstairs and found her quilt.  It was beautiful, but the last few stitches were done very poorly as if she was nervous.  Instead of turning this over to their husband as evidence, they decided to undo the stitching.  They also found an empty birdcage, and when they began searching found the bird in a box dead.  When they took a good look at the bird, they realized that the bird’s neck had been broken.   The women began putting the pieces together.  Mrs. Wright’s husband wasn't very nice.  As a young girl Minnie was lively and loved to sing, but after marrying Mr. Wright her light had fizzled out.  The women began feeling sorry for her, and decided to hide the evidence.  The men searched the house looking for some kind of evidence or motive, but they could not find any.  The women came to realize that Mrs. Wright did kill her husband and in the end they did not tell on her.

Willa Cather

8.2                                                 Willa Cather

Willa Cather was born in 1873 and at the age of nine her family migrated to Nebraska.  She grew up among European immigrants who were full of courage, sensitivity, and perseverance which she used in her novels.  She challenged gender roles by dressing unconventionally.  She wore her hair short and dressed in men's clothing.  In 1900 Cather began publishing poems and short stories. Among them were "A Wagner Matinee" and "Paul's Case."

The first short story "A Wagner Matinee" was the story of a women and how she became lost in life.  Her nephew received a letter in the mail informing him that he was to take care of her for a bit.  His Aunt Georgiana the woman who raised him was coming to town and he wanted to show her a wonderful time.  As a young woman his aunt was a music teacher and had a great passion for music.  She met her husband and he convinced her to run away and elope.  She went from having a wonderful life to having nothing.  I do not think she hated her life life or her husband by any means, but she did regret it to a point.  They got land and lived on a small farm.  She spent the rest of her days working on the farm and raising children.  He was very close with his aunt and she had shared her loved of music with him.  She spent a lot of time teaching him many different works and taught him to play the piano.  There was a time when she told him not love the music too much or it might be taken away.  There was a deep sadness created by that scene for me, the thing she loved the most had been taken from her.

When his aunt arrived he decided to take her to the Oprah house.  She was not at all now like she was before, she had aged considerably.  He was worried she would not enjoy the Symphony Orchestra.  At first it seemed like she did not want to go, but I am guessing because it had been so long since she had been she felt a little uneasy.  Once in the Oprah house they sat together as the show began and as the songs played his aunt was moved.  They shared moments of sadness and happiness.  He was reminded of many times as a child and their time spent together.  She was in bliss and enjoyed every moment of the Oprah.  It took her back to a time way before the farm and before she was taken away from her music.  When the Oprah was over she did not want to leave.  It was back to reality, and back to what her life had become.

Often times I think that happens to many people.  Life sweeps us away.  In the business of life we lose our passions, goals, and dreams and before you know it life is almost at an end. 

The second story was Paul's Case.  Paul was a misunderstood teenager that desperately wanted attention.  He was a teenager that was basically hated by all his teachers.  They had a right not to like him, because he was constantly causing trouble in his classes.  He would tell elaborate stories about being friends with the actors at the music hall and things he did that never happened.  He felt his life was plain and boring.  He sat dreaming of a life he didn't have, and resenting his family for being so plain.  His father was no help and certainly did not encourage any of his hopes and dreams.  His family was not poor by any means, but his father did not like to give him money.  He let him work at Carnegie Hall as an usher to make some extra money.  It was there he became obsessed with he lives of the musicians and actors that graced the stage night after night.  He felt at home during the performances and was swept away.  He was a very peculiar person though.  After he was off work he would often follow the performers to their hotel and imagine what it was like to be there. 

One day at school he decided to take his smart little comments too far with one of his teachers.  Normally he gets out of trouble and normally he can go back to his life without much consequence, but not today.  That comment was the last straw.  He was taken out of school and away from his job.  His father told the people he worked for not to let him in anymore.  Paul was pulled out of his fantasy world and into reality.  This did not set well with Paul, and soon he was headed to New York.  He had stolen deposit money from his dad’s business.  He wanted to venture into the hotels he dreamed about and live the life of the famous.  He wanted to escape reality and be someone else.  He rented a wonderful room and enjoyed all the amenities of being rich and famous.  This bliss could not last for too long of course and soon all the money he had stolen was spent.  His name was in the newspaper and his father was looking for him.  He soon realized that he number was up.  He began to run with the little money he had left, and when he realized there was nowhere to run he took his own life.

                                                 

Zora Neal Hurston

8.1                                                                     Zora Neal Hurston

Zora Neal Hurston Was born in a town of Notasulga Alabama.  It was thought that she was born in 1891, but it was uncertain and she states that she was born in 1901 or 1903.  She lived in an all black town until she was thirteen years old.  Her father was a carpenter and preacher and her mother was a school teacher. Her mother encouraged her lot. Her mother passed away and she was sent to live with relatives that her father sent money to take care of her.  She worked as a maid and went to college.  She wanted to be a writer and was awarded a Fellowship to collect Folklore.  Her work was often criticized; her intentions of writing were to write about people and not their skin color.

 In her story of “John Redding Goes to Sea’    John Redding as a young boy and an adult wanted to leave home to explore the world. He would throw sticks in the river and watch them float away. He always wanted to leave home and see where the sticks floated too. His mother tries to keep him from his dreams. First, John's mother is determined not to let John pursue his dreams she pleads illness and threatens to disown him if he leaves.  John's marriage to Stella seems to tie him down permanently to his home, as his new wife agrees with his mother to discourage John's desire to travel. Further, his mother's fits keep John from even joining the Navy.  Later, when John is killed while working with a crew to build a bridge on the St. John's River, his father forbids his body to be retrieved from the river as it floats toward the ocean. At last, John will get his wish to travel and see the world, but now he is dead.