Boswell

 I find journals to be the most boring pieces we cover in class. It is very unnecessary for an author to include every minuscule detail that has happened in his life for over a year. The book moved so slow and I felt as though after I read six pages, Boswell was still talking about the same conversation he had with one of his friends over dinner. One of the few things I actually did find interesting was the fact that Boswell and his friend, Mr. Johnson, often talked about other poets and authors during this time such as Swift, whom Mr. Johnson referred to as overrated at one point in the journal. The small parts where Boswell explained his father being upset with him for not pursuing a job as a lawyer was also intriguing to me because it was somewhat of a story and kept me engaged for a slight period of time. It was very difficult to focus on this book. Nothing personal toward Boswell, I just really struggle in following journals. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We THINK "We Real Cool"

Recently, I had read the poem "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks. At first read of the tired I was unsure of what to expect, and after reading the first stanza, I was even more unsure. After reading the entire poem as a whole I had a far better understanding, but the first stanza still left me confused an unsure of how to interpret it. I viewed the remainder of the poem as essentially the "cool" kids were the ones who skipped class, stay out late, and drink gin. In High School that most often is the case. The "rebels" were always the gossip of the school that kids wanted to be, but were never "brave" enough to do so. Something that caught my attention was the final line of the poem; "Die soon." This could mean several things, such as everyone dies eventually, or the fact that people who live fast and dangerously die sooner. I enjoyed this line because it left the readers to interpret the poem themselves. After rereading the poem I was a
Read more

John is the Yellow Wallpaper

Image
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is dark, but what is more haunting is the story is based off Gilman's life. Of course there was no magic wallpaper and women "creeping" around her yard, but there was mental abuse by her husband in both real life and the book. Gilman was married to a man that condemned her to her bedroom, convincing her she was mentally ill, leading her to later on experience hallucinations. During her episodes, Gilman wrote her short-story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Throughout the story she described a figure of a woman "trapped" behind the vines in the yellow wallpaper in her room that only tried to escape at night.  I then put together that John, her husband, was metaphorically the vines in the yellow wallpaper, trapping the woman in one place and the narrator saw herself as the woman trapped behind the vines, also known as John. At the end of the story the narrator tore down the wallpaper and freed the wom
Read more

Jeff's Fear of Marriage

Throughout the past week in class, we watched a 1954 Aflred Hitchcock filmed called Rear Window. For such a simple plot, the film was very engaging. It began with L.B. Jeffries, a photographer who is wheelchair bound due to a broken leg. Throughout his recovery, he sat himself facing a window and observed his neighborhood, nicknaming each neighbor and learning their routines. One night he heard a woman scream "Don't!" and noticed that Mrs. Thorwald seemed to have disappeared. Her husband, Mr. Thorwald was acting extremely suspicious after the event, and Jeff could not keep his eyes off of his window, especially at night. His caretaker and mistress, Lisa, initially deemed Jeff so be obsessive, and told him to stay away from the window because he was looking far too much into the situation. However, as the film went on, the two women grew extremely involved in Jeff's self-produced investigation. Lisa became extremely brave throughout this film, and began to break the vi
Read more