Zora Hurston

Life for Zora Hurston growing up had to be very difficult to overcome.  It’s hard for me to imagine not having loving parents growing up but many kids still to this day don’t have.  She overcame her mom passing away when she was only thirteen years old.  She had to be a very strong willed person because her dad basically gave her away soon after.  With all her hardship as a young girl she overcame and became a great writer says a lot about her strong will to make something of her tangled life.  The story about John Redding is somewhat interesting to be because he is looking to explore and find an adventure.  With so many situations holding John back from exploring I almost feel like he had nothing to live for after that.  I almost feel like John’s mom didn’t want him to be successful because she didn’t want him to do anything and if he did she would disown him.  I think Zora wrote this with her own knowledge of people and family somewhat like her own in Florida in the early nigh teen hundreds.  I feel like everyone controls their own destiny but for John he is not able to.  Moms are supposed to help their kids with knowledge growing up but not hold them back from living there own life.  It is very ironic how John is killed and his father finally lets his son be free and explore by letting him float into the sea.  I think the reason for writing this story is to show how important it is for a person to learn to develop and pursue what they want in their life.  Without having the chance to pursue a dream you lose self determination and end up with nothing at all.  

Edith Wharton

It sounds to me like Edith was a very fortunate girl growing up and also even well into her life after she was married in eighteen eighty five.  It’s hard to imagine marrying someone more than a decade older than you are, but here is a good example of money doesn’t always buy happiness.  The story the other two is somewhat confusing to me because it talks about so many people back and forth so many times.  I guess since Alice has been married it would be hard for it not to be confusing or have some meaning behind it.  It would be difficult losing a child to a disease but back then it was much more common than it is today.  Also since Alice had the child with a previous husband the visitation would be rather difficult to deal with as well.  When Alice’s third husband walks in his own house and saw his wife’s two previous husbands there I think he put his own marriage to perspective.  It would have to make you wonder why the first two didn’t work out and if there would as well.  After the realization of situation set in it would be very awkward to carry on. When Alice walked into the room and saw all three of her husband’s standing there that had to be a very uncomfortable and overwhelming feeling.  It was just a coincidence that they were all there at the same time but very unpleasant to say the least.  I think Edith some what makes this story idea from her personal life.      

The Open Boat

This story is very unique because it is something he actually endured in his short life.  This is one of the best short stories I have ever read simply because of their fight to live and get to shore.  Since it was a near death experience it had to be hard to deal with.  The feeling he felt being stranded in the ocean for more than a day must have been incredible.  Just the feeling of knowing the tug he was on was going down had to been the scariest part.  It had to be hard to write this story soon after he survived the encounter off the coast of Florida.  The journey from the wreck to the coast had to been one that he never would forget.  A hard part must have been getting where they could see the shoreline and getting so close and one of them drown.  That had to be the most difficult part to overcome when trying to relive the moment to moment actions they overcame and then put it in a short story.  With an experience like that happening to Crane I’m sure his look on life totally changed from then on.         

Stephen Crane

I think it is very ironic that I also was planning on joining the military but changed my mind to start engineering school as did Stephen Crane.  I’m not much of a reader but I did enjoy Cranes poems and like his style of writing.  His poems are very deep thoughts and I had to read some of them over and over to start to try to understand them.  It is crazy to think back when the life expectancy in the late eighteen hundreds was much less than today.  He was a very talented person and writer to achieve all that he did in just the twenty eight years he lived.   Two of his poems talked about the horizon either overlooking the ocean or in a mountain setting.  I think those are the two best places to enjoy a sunrise or sunset. In the desert is by far the most intriguing one to try to read and understand.  Not really sure what to even think about it.  Since he came from a Christian background I’m sort of surprised that he didn’t write about God more.  I guess my favorite would be a man feared that he might find an assassin.  What I got from that is no matter who you are fear will always be there in some way.  People fear the unknown and the older I get the more I want to try to overcome many fears I have.  It is the shortest of the poems but it is well spoken in just three lines.  Having a fear is an incredible feeling to overcome or just to have inside you.  It’s crazy that some people have problems overcoming many different fears.  However some others like me live for the adrenaline rush that comes from conquering the fear that you might have.            

Charlotte Gilman

I think the problems or hardships Gilman went through; a lot of people today have the same vive as she did growing up.  Growing up without a dad would be is hard thing to overcome and I couldn’t imagine doing that.   Having a rough or hard beginning of life should make the person want to strive for a better future and want to make the best out of what is left.  I think that is what she did after growing up with such trouble, she was determined   I think Gilman wants the story to relate to her problems she had maybe to release some bad feeling that she had in her life.  How can her own husband who is obviously a smart man tell her to do such wrong things to try to help her cope with her problem?  This is an odd story but maybe that was her intent because I don’t understand how a doctor not only just husband came drive their soul mate insane.  He told her to basically do nothing and that’s what I think drove her insane along with the creepiness of the house which they lived.  Her mind wondered way too much to be stuck in the house she lived in.  I like how the story ends where her husband realizes what he has done and fainted.         

Kate Chopin

I think it is awesome for Kate Chopin became famous because of her southern dialect stories even though she didn’t grow up in the Deep South. Southern dialect is a common thing living in the south today to me.  Since she moved to Louisiana when she was nineteen I can see where she came to love the southern accent.  I think her unique experience living in Louisiana before her husband died is what persuaded her to start writing after moving back to where she grew up in St Louis.  The story The Awakening is weird to say the least.  I guess in the 1800’s parents picked who their daughter married so that’s why Edna had feelings for someone else other than her husband.  Also it might have been the age gap that she and Leonce had.  Edna came to have feeling for Robert and when he left for Mexico she was devastated.  I think it is weird that she tried to go on without him, but when he returns she never forgot him and only wanted to be with him.  When she figures out that he has love for her but left again she, I guess she has nothing to live for and decides to let the ocean take her worries away.     

Ambrose Bierse

Ambrose Bierce was born in Ohio but moved to Indiana when he was four.  With conflicts from his family when he was younger about religion I think that what eventually drove him to enlisting in the Union Army and fighting in the Civil War in eighteen sixty one.  It is incredibly remarkable that he was in some of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War and lived to tell about it.  I think his parents made him hate faith as a young boy so that’s why he wanted to write about death and be in the Army during the civil war which was a very deadly time.  He seems a little weird wanting to write and be around so much death his whole life, but I think everything happens for a reason.  Parents should not push anything on their children because they will in up turning out the total opposite of what the parents wanted them to.  The story An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge almost seems real to me because I could imagine this taking place because of the enormous conflict between the union and the confederate Army’s.  The detailing and description of Fahrquhar’s dream when he is about to get hung is very elaborate.  This story is very interesting to me and every word I read just made me want to read more.  My favorite part of the story is when he falls in the water and seems to become superhuman while they are shooting at him.  I’m sure things like this took place every day during the civil war.  Even though this is fiction I believe that Fahrquhar could have imagined every bit of what he did between the noose being cut and falling through the bridge.  This is by far my favorite one out of the four stories for week four.      

Henry James

Living so many different towns growing up would be an adventure to say the least.  There would be both positive and negative about moving around so much as a young kid but it seems that it helped James out in starting his career.  James must have been a smart guy to be able to get into Harvard Law School at the age of nineteen.  With all the travel he made during his upbringing I think that set the stage for his somewhat experience when he started publishing short stories in eighteen sixty four when he was only twenty one.  Living in different countries in Europe as a young kid must have had a big influence on him since he decided to settle in England.  I think the short story Daisy Miller is James way to explain how different Europe and America really are in his eyes.  Daisy the American is in a totally different society and meets a boy named Winterbourne who is from Switzerland. He does not fall for her or realize his love for her until she dies.  I think the boy’s culture had a big influence on how he perceived Daisy at first.  I believe their names sort of represent who and how they are in the story.  

William Howells

William Howells seemed to grow up with the perfect situation for becoming an editor and writer for many different journals in his career.  With his father being a printer William must have seen many different types of information coming through his dads shop in his teenage years.  I think that’s what started his editing in eighteen fifty eight when he was just twenty one.  I think it is neat how he helped Lincoln in his campaign and was rewarded greatly for doing that.  Howells was a big influence on other writers in his time and brought the age of realism to America.  I enjoyed reading Editha because of the different views that her husband and she had about the conflict of war.  I feel like Editha wants her husband to go to war which would make him a hero in her eyes.  In the time of this story only men fought in war, but today women are able to fight alongside men on the battle field.  Today I think it would be the total opposite as far as a women wanting her husband to go to war, this story just shows how times have changed so much.  I think if the standards were like that then Editha would have a total different opinion on wanting her husband to go to battle because he could ask her to join him in the Spanish American war.  I never have supported war and never will because it does not settle anything for the good in the end.  Too many lives are lost in war but we still are fighting to this day.  War is a subject that really bothers me because nothing ever is solved from it.  For example the United States has been fighting terrorism since September 11, 2001 and what have we accomplished since then.   

Joel Harris

Growing up in Eatonton Georgia which is in the dirty south in the late eighteen hundreds would be a very interesting place to be in.  Joel Harris had a great deal of slavery all around him.  I think these are revised ideas that were told to Harris while he was an apprentice on a plantation in his teenage years.  Some of his stories are difficult and slow to read and understand at times, but I think fiction stories are much more interesting as a whole.  I think his time on the plantation is where he got much of his ideas for writing from.  One reason the first story is so hard to understand is because the lack of education at the time it was written.  I think the main point of the story is the fox wanted to hurt the rabbit as much as he could because it would be funny.  The rabbit out smarted the fox because the fox didn’t know that rabbits home is in the briar patch for security and protection.  The story about Joe is much easier to read and understand than the first one.  Joe might have been free, but because his wife whose name is Lucinda wasn’t I think he was worse than when he was enslaved.  Not able to see your wife because of slavery would be a difficult thing to deal with.  When Lucinda owner found out about Joe secretly visiting her he sent her to another plantation many miles away.  I think by doing that Joe’s life was basically over at that point because he just went to their meeting place to wait for her.  Even though he was considered “free”, I think he was actually enslaved more by not being able to visit his wife.  It’s hard to imagine these situations took place in our country such a short time ago.