Homeplace

1. He uses personal narrative as well as stories he has heard about people he knows. He also uses outside information from other people. He defines being settled as living in an idea, not necessarily living in one sole place. Being placed is living in one place for the time being, and being an inhabitant is being someone who has lived in one place for his or her entire lives. He says it is stubbornness or that they simply know the place they live well enough to not wish to move.

2. Sander’s tone is very matter of fact, but at times he is also very frustrated. Such as when he talks about the earth movers and chain saws. I would instruct the reader to use a questioning tone of voice, so as to wonder at the though of staying put. I find Sander’s tone of voice more engaging. It is less restricted and more open to the idea of many different things.

Little Store

1. She reminisces by telling the story of all the actions that took place before she made it to the grocery store and then tells us about all the things that would happen within the store. The moments she recounts express how important the store is to her childhood and how much it effected her life. The effect is showing us that there was more to the store then just the store, it was the adventure of going to the store and what it meant to her as a child. She appeals to sight and taste. She uses a chld-like diction. She describes thing in a child-like manner, such as “the Monkey Man” or “tiddly-winks”.

2. He reveals that he is tired and means business. His stance reveals that he seems to be impatient, you can imagine him tapping his fingers against the watermelon in an impatient manner. The muscles in his eyebrows are tightened as if he is concentrating on something. The harsh lighting gives him a harsh look, so it help influence the feeling of “business”.

Dispossessed

1. He defines working class as those that get paid by the hour. Middle class Americans portray the working class. These representations lack the truth of how these people live at home because someone in the middle class would not understand what it is like to live in the working class. The virtue of the working class is that race and sexuality are not important, the importance is in bettering yourself. The vice being in the working class is that you are instantly put into the same class as those that don’t have homes at all. He says that we should distinguish from working class, working poor, and working family because they all mean different things. For example, working family could mean a doctor working to get the money to get his kid to go to Harvard, but it also means the cashier who works hard to pay for medicine. It is wholly unfair to the working class.

2. The audience he is writing for is middle class America. He is trying to get those in the middle class to realize those that are invisible, aka the working class. A passage that proves this is the one talking about how the middle class is the class that shows the life of the working class, but it does not show the full story because they simply do not know what living in the working class is like. If this were changed or omitted, it would not be targeting those that are in the middle class to think more about the idea of the working class.

River Response

I really didn’t understand this piece of literature too well. For me it was a bit confusing when I tried to follow it, as though it was a page ripped out of a book. However, it does have signs of good writing in it. I found the relationship between the two sisters was very peculiar and a bit strange. I didn’t really know what to take out of it, but in many ways I can relate to it. There are times when I find myself in such dramatic situations with other members of my family and often times they scare me. I suppose the confused feeling that the piece gave off helps to amplify that. I can tell that the relationships between each family member are a little cut off, at least from the information given. Maybe cut off is a bit too harsh; perhaps distant is a better word. It sounds a lot like family gossip to begin with and it ends in a very heart-wrenching story about her sister. The way she went into this story was a bit abrupt for my taste, but in all it was a pleasant read.

Edward Hopper Seeing 1&2

1. Hopper directs my attention towards the sky, the ground, the roof of the house, the porch, the rails of the railroad, and the ground. The details I noticed about the house were how it’s so lonely and solemn. In the picture I noticed the windows, for some reason I was really drawn to them. I noticed it’s structure is very statute, it almost reminds me of a statue of a person, unmoving. It almost blends in with the sky and it heavily contrasts with the railroad. My eyes tend to linger on the windows, as I said before, when I look at the painting. Each aspect of the painting reinforces the idea of loneliness by giving off a very empty feeling.

2. Hirsch focuses on the rooftop and the porch. He creates the feeling that the house is lonely. His use of repetition helps speak through the idea of the house being lonely. It gives us a sense of the same. The house doesn’t see much change, so the poem doesn’t change in it’s structure and word use. Hirsch’s poem helps amplify the idea of loneliness I get from the painting. Before reading the poem, I simply saw the painting as bland and uninteresting but afterwards it turned it into a sense of loneliness.

Growing Up Lion

I found this essay to be interesting, but at the same time it was a bit of a cliché to me. It was about the same old story about falling into a stereotype without truly wanting to. But for whatever reason, it happens. If it wasn’t a story I have heard a dozen times before I am sure I would find it intriguing or sad, but I have heard it several times told several different ways. I will say, though, that this time it was told a little better then most of the other stories I have heard. As usual, there are some grammatical errors in it or it is simply worded strangely, but other then that it is written well.

Suicide Poets Response

“Suicide Poets” by Ryan Buell was a somewhat depressing read but intriguing all the same. I found myself very interested in the idea of how poets that have committed suicide throughout the years have become myths that are a part of history. Thinking on this, I have come to realize this is true. I found it to be a very well written essay that links a personal story to a worldly topic. Buell’s description of the poet Madeline Foster is a cryptic, dark read. But, it gets his point across rather strongly. However, I don’t feel that Buell truly does what he wants in this essay until the very last paragraph, which could have been much stronger if he went in to more detail about it. Other then that, it was a pleasant, interesting read that left me thinking a lot. So in the end, I would say this essay was very successful.