Bartleby Bumblebee

I can't help but envisioning Bartleby as a bug. He doesn't do anything.. Maybe he just reminds me of Gregor. But I can't picture him as a human.. no one acts like that.

I think my reaction to Bartleby's behavior was the same as the guy who never gave us his name.. the narrator. At first I was confused.. "I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties".. that wasn't exactly my thought process, but I get it. I was just kinda like, well.. too bad.

The next time Bartleby "prefer[ed] not to", mystery man just got angry. It's understandable.. Mystery is paying him money to work; it isn't really an option.

Each time he gets frustrated.. but there is something weird happening.. "...there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me" He is so nonchalantly bold, which makes him interesting.

Mystery man makes a lot of allusions to the Bible. John 15:12 talks about loving everyone as Jesus loves us.. unconditionally. Mystery man tries so hard to do this.. He is stuck between business thinking and moral thinking. He needed to get rid of him, because he was only costing him money. He didn't do anything to help. But on the other hand, something seemed really wrong with him, so who else was going to take him in? To love like Jesus mystery man would have had to take him in.. and he tried! "will you go home with me now-not to my office, but my dwelling..." But Bartleby refused.

Maybe Melville is secretly saying that it is impossible to live like Jesus did... or just really really hard.

Different turn.. oops.

2. How do Frank's dialogue and actions help to characterize him?

So Frank reminds of that one guy from The Sun Also Rises.. I think his name was Bill. He always conformed to whoever he was with at the time. He was Robert's best pal when Robert and Jake were friends, but in a fight, he always sided with Jake. And when he was with Mike, Bill hated Robert. His feelings were always just based on how to impress others.

Frank made fun of Tub (that's a really mean name) when he was with Kenny, but when Kenny was in the back of the truck and he was alone with Tub, he acted like his best friend.

I think Frank is the dynamic character.. he is the one who made the change. He only actually said a few things to hurt Tub.. "You fat moron.. You aren't good for diddly." It really is his actions and his demeanor that make me feel like he is a jerk to Tub around Kenny.

Kenny always pulls it out of him. Kenny looks at Frank all the time.. I just imagine his eyes in disgust and Frank agreeing with him to maintain his reputation. So when Kenny is shot and in the back.. He gains his relationship back with Tub. He doesn't have anyone to impress, so he confides in Tub and they are cool again. I get this feeling that Kenny is dead now.. so maybe they can keep their friendship.

The Magic Barber

1. Characterize the speaker and evaluate her reliability as a reporter and interpreter of events?

I think anytime the mom is the narrator, she'll be unreliable.. Moms are always bias.

From the mom's point of view Maggie is seen as the good daughter.. she is following in the footsteps of the women in the family. But Dee.. or Wangero.. has gone crazy. She's completely lost touch in what the family is about.

But from an outsider's view, Maggie and the mom probably look ignorant.. maybe. I think their lifestyle is perfectly fine- it's whatever they want to do. They are African Americans.. not Africans. Wangero wants to be African.. she has lost her roots in her American family, but has found them in her African family.

Her mom doesn't get it, so Dee/Wangero comes across as stuck-up.. and annoying.

The speaker in this story is unreliable.

I don't really understand what being reliable means.. It's her story, so it would make sense that her opinion would dominate. It's not like this was written for a court case.. It is a work of fiction, so why does it matter if the narrator has a bias viewpoint?

Thinking

I guess a theme of this story is that everything in life is connected and the small decisions you make at any moment can affect future parts of your life.
The entire story is built up to believe that Chris will be Edie's husband.. So an entire story unrelated to Carmichael actually explains his marriage.
There is actually an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Ted explains how every choice he made in a single morning brought him closer to his kid's mom.. And if he hadn't of made those choices, they wouldn't be alive.

Have you ever thought about that? I always wonder how my life would be different if on the first day of school I had chosen Southport over Roncalli. Or what would my life be like if my sister and I hadn't decided to shopping the day we got in a wreck.. We would have had our own car and probably been able to do more things, but what?

If Edie's cow hadn't have had that baby, Mr. Peebles' wouldn't have hired her. And if Edie hadn't of decided to bring Chris a cake, then she probably wouldn't have stayed in the tent as long as she did and he wouldn't have promised to write to her. If she wasn't expecting that letter then the mailman wouldn't have asked her out and she probably would be married to somone else.

I always thought it was Meana.

I thought it was interesting to see the contrasts between an American and Indian family..
In the beginning the Das' were disconnected.. Mr. and Mrs. Dad really did behave just like like older siblings. They didn't act like parents or husband and wife.
And when Mr. Kapasi's relationship is revealed, we find out that they don't act like their married either. However, they did act like real parents. They did everything in their means to save their son's life. Mr. and Mrs. Das dreaded doing anything for their kids.. like taking their daughter to the bathroom or painting her nails.

So Mr. Kapasi is longing for companionship, Mrs. Das is looking for someone to confide in, and Mr. Das.. well, he's oblivious? Mr. Kapasi and Mina find their answers in each other, but only Mina really benefits.
After she tells Mr. Kapasi her story (because he was a translator..), she meets back up with her family and we finally see her in a motherly role (helping her son after the monkey incident).
I don't understand how Mr. Kapasis's problems came to a resolution... other than his fantasy world came to and end after the address blew out of Mina's purse.

Nasty Iron-Gray Hair

How is the point of view related to the plot structure?

A Rose for Emily is written in an omniscient point of view. I don't know who exactly is talking, but I know it is someone from the neighborhood, probably someone old who has seen everything happen..
The structure is broken.. there are lots of flashbacks. Whoever is telling the story knows everything from the past to the present, so that's how the point of view is related to the plot structure.

Each section is a different part of time and progresses through her craziness..
First she does no t think she needs to pay taxs.. then she won't admit that her dad is dead for like three days, she buys arsenic "for rats", and finally she died without being seen. And in the fifth section you find out she is a freak..

Male Plane

Chris was a plane driver, or pilot, whatever. And Carmichael was a mail man. This made me think of this joke from The 3 Amigos.. it has nothing to do with the story.

How I Met My Husband

Anyways, I am answering number five.. "Evaluate Chris Watters as a potential husband for Edie. Does her evaluation of him differ from the reader's?"

In my second reading I made this list of reasons why I should have seen it coming.. or reasons why Chris would make a terrible husband.

When he is introduced in paragraph 33, I automatically assumed.. Wow, what a dumb story. We all know this is who she ends up marrying.

But he is such a creep! Paragraph 55: "...good thing I'm used to shy ladies" or "...ladies dropping in on me".

In paragraph 86, he admits to Mrs. Peebles that "he couldn't settle down to ordinary life"- that should have caught my attention the first run-through. If he can't live ordinarily, then he isn't going to get married.

And the final card-paragraphs 140-145.. he basically molests her, which isn't a good sign of forming a long-term relationship. That's so disgusting.

Chris is not a good potential husband for Edie.

But she looks past it all. She always references her old friend Muriel Lowe.. and how they used to dream of love and romance. She was blind to that in Chris.. that's all she wanted, so that's all she could see. Thank God he didn't write her a letter.

But that got me thinking about Chris' real role. I think he was the same as Gregor in Metamorphosis. He didn't make any big change. He caused the big change. If he hadn't promised Edie that he'd write her, then she would have never sat out and waited by the mailbox.. so she wouldn't have married the mailman.