NO by Mark Doty

Doty’s works have been awarded many honors, and is the only American poet who received the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K. I think that Doty’s them for “NO” is simply that we control our own world we live in, because like the turtle we have a world of ourselves and we decide what best for us. It seems that Doty uses tercets  to kinda give out the details of the poem and get straight to the point, because maybe he want the readers to feel lke the turtle. Like maybe he does the quick pace so that readers could say no to having to read it quick and take control of their own decisions just like the turtle did for itself.

because they want us to feel /

the power they have

when they hold a house

in their own hands, want us to feel

Doty in this passage is saying that at some point in our life’s we want to feel that power of being able to hold our own house on our hands, but sometimes we are to afraid of holding that power that we decide to stay back and say no.

No.

 

“No” written by Mark Doty is a story about children who want power. In the poem it says he can make night, he has “this perfect building anywhere”. These children envy this turtle for being able to do those things while they can not. According to poets.org, Mark is a poet and memoirist. He has received  the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. He attended Drake University. The theme of this poem is to be in control. These children are saying that they are waiting for the turtle to come out so they can see him, they can’t force him to come out and that is what they want. This poem has two columns of tercet lines. Most of the times are the same length with a few shorter ones here and there. In this poem Doty writes:

“because they want to feel

the power they have

when they hold a house

in their hands”

I think this means that the children want to feel what it is like to have the power to hold something and be able to control it. They want to control their lives.

A time in my life where I relate to this poem is when they children are waiting for the turtle to poke his head out. When I was young i would stay at my grandmothers house. Now she lived next to a farm and I would wait for the goats to get out of the fence. They didn’t always get out but when they did I would always rush outside to the edge of the yard to touch the goats walking by. Now back then I didn’t know how dangerous it could be for the goats to get out of the gates but I always hoped that they did. I understand why they wanted the turtle to poke his head out but I also understand why he doesn’t, because he is scared that they may hurt him.

Afternoon’s Wide Horizon

Kathleen Flenniken wrote a poem called Afternoon’s Wide Horizon. She grew up in Richland, Washington and worked as a civil engineer

Nuke!

until she discovered her love for poems when she was around 30. This poem is about her childhood reaction to the Hanford Nuclear site that was nearby. She is showing that those nuclear sites had something to do with how she grew up. Flenniken makes the poem look like an atomic bomb and she mirrors the two paragraphs off of each other, even using the same words only in reverse. This really intrigued me and i enjoyed seeing a poem like that it was very fresh and cool.

In the poem Flenniken writes:

             The atomic age had been a fond friend

where I lived in Atomic City. The atom

had something to do with

                                                                                      Who i was. Now

These lines make a reference to Richland. Since it is nearby to Hanford Nuclear site she is saying that it affected her. Everything in her city was about the Nuclear site and she could never really get away from it. The Richland High Schools mascot name is bombers. So she is really just saying that these atoms were everywhere in her life.

This poem really reminded me of my uncle is an engineer who works at Hanford at times to make sure everything is how it should be and find ways to fix the leaks and what not. Also, this poem reminded me of a video game called Fallout 3. Its about a post-nuclear war that occurs in the future and I spent way to much of my freshman year playing that game. The reason this was my favorite was because bombs are cool and Flenniken’s form of creating a nuke out of her words were really interesting.

The Race by Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds was born a day after mine, on November 19 of 1942. She has won many important awards like the Pulitzer Prize and is known for her very emotional and personal writings. Family and Politics are her main topics in her poetry. She currently teaches at New York University and still writes poems and other writings today.

I feel like Olds line breaks in this poem are crucial in how you read the poem. It where they break keeps the flow of the poem and kept me engaged. For example: line 5-12: with a dark brown mustache told me

another airline had a nonstop

leaving in seven minutes. See that

elevator over there, well go

down to the f first floor, make a right, you’ll

see a yellow bus, get off at the

second Pan AM terminal, I

As you can see, you can’t end on any of these lines.. the breaks practically force you to go on to the next line to find out what happens next. I think another thing she does through out this poem is tell a story. From the beginning we find out that her father has hours to live and her urgency to get home. Once the reader finds out her flight was cancelled, her or she feels great empathy for her and that moment your automatically hooked to seeing if she can find a way to her father. When she reaches his room, relief fills the heart and she is able to watch him breath through the night.

 

I think this must be a true story of her life because she’s from California, and she must have been on the other side of the United States because of these few lines:

…We lifted up

gently from one tip of the continent

and did not stop until we set down lightly on the

other edge,…

California is the other edge of the United States. I thought this was a pretty good allusion.

Recently I just flew home to see my family.When I got to the spokane airport i realized i was a lot later than I thought and that i might miss my plan. The events that took place so i could make it to my flight with only seconds to spare allowed me to really relate to this Poem. I needed to get home and i would do anything to make it there. This poem was great and makes me want to read more of here work. Its crazy how sometimes in life it really is a “Race”.

Here is a link to another poem she has written called Armor.

 

Afternoon’s Wide Horizon by Kathleen Flenniken

 

Kathleen Flenniken was born inRichland Washington. She was a civil engineer and it wasn’t until her mid thirty’s that she started writing poetry. Two of her very famous books were, Plume and Famous, and both of her book received prizes including the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in poetry, Pushcart Art Prize and fellowship from the National Endowment for the arts and artist trust. She also won the 2012-2014 Washington State Poet Laureate. Her poem, Afternoon’s Horizon, talks about the nuclear explosions that she would see and that that’s what turned into their horizon for quite a while and that slowly it started to become a part of them. The form of the poem is sort of written in an innocent tone, because she is repeating, “what is that?” and that’s something a child would ask. There is repetition as I said and figurative language, where she is comparing the smoke or explosion to a mushroom. Flenniken wrote, “…the atomic age, had been a fond friend. What remained black and white at home? My cousins colored TV stained orange.” The meaning of this quote is what was going on while she was seeing this happen on her television, that they had to get used to it and it became part of their lives. That thing have to happen in order to become who you are now and that’s what happened to her. I think the black and white that was left at home were ashes from the fire. My personal connection to the poem is that when I was in first grade I went home one day and found my sister and mom watching the news about the war that had just broken out between the U.S. and Afghanistan. It was everywhere they would even play it on the radio and I remember my sister would record it and even leave the radio on while we went to sleep. I would ask them, “what is that? why is that happening?”. I was only six years old and all of that was going on and stilled lived in Mexico, now I live here and its a part of me and a part of my life.

Here is a picture of Kathleen that I found, I think its pretty cool because you can see smoke on the background.

Here is a picture of the war in Afghanistan.

What is Intimacy?

Do you think instant messaging promotes or hinders intimacy?

I think that instant messaging does both (promotes and hinders) intimacy. I think that instant messaging can give you the verbal or emotional/mental intimacy as you get to know someone through conversation but I feel like that is kind of a scary way to start and base a relationship. I watch the show “Catfish” which shows online relationships that are based on IM, text, and phone calls, and how one of the people in the relationship aren’t who they say they are. I would hate to be totally honest and vulnerable with someone I’ve never met and who may not be who they say they are!

My IM habits

I guess I’m not much like the statistic. I don’t IM much but when I do its just to get a short quick amount of info or to check on a friend who lives far away. I don’t talk to people I don’t know. I text a lot though, so guess that falls into IMing but for the most part I would rather talk on the phone or in person.

 “Intimacy”

Intimacy to me is showing you truly care by being honest and kind in words you say and things you do. I agree with the three categories of physical, emotional, affective. Intimacy is very personal and I think is based on ones feelings on the inside and then expressed on the outside. (hopefully that makes sense)

Classify

I would say I’m both in the lost age and liberated age. I think I’m more towards the lost because I like the old fashioned way of showing intimacy and you don’t have to rely on IM messages to know it.

Analyze the relationship between two of the characters

I think that chutesandladders and orangutan have a close friendship through IM. They tell each other personal things, they joke with each other, and seem to care for each others well being. Sometimes they can be unsure with each others meaning behind what they write to each other and sometimes are really brutally honest. I wonder if they would be the same  in person. If they would be able to blurt out foul language and tell each other what they truly think even if they have to see the expression on the other’s face. I think that their real life relationship would be much different in person.

Instant Messaging and Social Media

I used to be on MSN messanger a lot when I was younger. That was just the thing to do back in 5th and 6th grade. I never really made friends on there but just chatted with my friends from school and flirted with the girls to see who they liked haha. MSN faded away and Myspace and Facebook came into the picture. I was on both of these alot. I only ever talk to people on Facebook if I havent seen them in a while and dont have there number. Just to catch up and see how their life has been. Also, its only ever with people that I have already met in person. Really it is a great way to see how others are doing and stay connected with them even though life is always busy.

I think that intimacy means getting so deep with each other, like telling everything to each other and deepest secrets: not hiding anything, that you forget what it feels like to be without that person in your life. Everything that you thought was true is gone because that person who you were so intimate with is gone.

I think I would describe myself as a “liberated” person in IM and social media. People can connect so much easier online and they can pick up on how each other is feeling by using emoticons or emojis and other things in that nature. It drives the people who are connecting online to see each other in person to show that their friendship can blossom.

Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders have a very peculiar relationship online. Orangutan is trying to reach out to Chutes&Ladders to be her friend in real life instead of just behind the screen and to meet in person. Orangutan is liberated through the IM but Chutes&Ladders is a little hesitant about it. He doesnt want Orangutan to see the real him; old guy with a dead end job. He doesnt see the point in becoming friends online and just wants people to talk so he does not smoke crack again. Which makes him more of a lost person through IM.

Instant Messaging

I do not use IM very much. Yes, I use it from time to time but I am not on it every day or every week even. I know it sounds weird, but if I want or need to talk to someone i would rather call them instead of waiting for them to be online or in a chat room. It seems more practical for me, although I understand that IM works for other people. When I do IM it is usually with friends that I have already made in person, just to stay connected  and have a conversation once in a while after they moved away, I do not try to make new friends over the internet.

Intimacy to me is being able to be connected to someone. To truly understand how they are feeling at times and able to talk about it to them comfortably. It is when you are so close and vulnerable to someone you trust they will do what’s best for you.

I feel like I’m more of a “lost” person. I do not think that people can have true personal relationships or real friendships through IM. I do not think people will tell the truth a lot of the time, especially if it is something that they are ashamed about. Some examples may be height, weight, mental instability, or even just the fact that they have a good or crappy job. You do not get to know the real person over IM, it is not likely that every person in every chat room is honest and open to complete strangers.  http://www.mtv.com/shows/catfish/ I have only once seen this show and a lot of what I just said is true, people are not honest.

FOUNTAINHEAD and HAIKUMOM’s relationship is much different from Odessa and John’s relationship. They are the same people, however one is online and the other is in person. Odessa acts completely different in person than online to John. She is mean and gets straight to the point when in person, online she is a kind and trusting person. Online she is a friend but in the real world she is a mean and straightforward person.

IMing

Gabriel Marcel

To begin with I rarely use IM, and the days I do use it, it’s to get caught up friends I have not seen for a while. The people I usually IM are a mix between face-to-face friends and friends that i have gained through online, but mostly IM friends that I know face-to-face. I would have to disagree with Gabriel Marcel’s definition because I think that’s not true, I think that in order to feel intimacy you have to see the person physically be able to touch, feel them, so that u know that what you feel for that person is real. I see myself more of a “Lost perspective” because I think that online relationships don’t last as long because they’re not as intimate as real life relationships. I feel that face-to-face relationships as longer because they’re more intimate more personal and you actually know the person for what they are and people on IM most of the time tend to lie about themselves so I feel that IM relationship are fake because you might think that you know that person every well but in reality you don’t. In Water By The Spoonful  I see orangutan as a “Lost perspective” because she is trying to get out of that IM friendship and want a real face-to-face friendship. she wants to get out and live life outside that IM chat room, get to know people, and just experience something new. 

Instant Messaging

I use IM messaging a lot, when I wake up I check my Facebook and I’m on there for like an hour, when I get home I check it again and stay there for a pretty long time. I talk to friends and family from Mexico a lot more than I talk to the friends I have here. For me intimacy is spending time with a certain person and opening up to them. To have a lot of trust in that one person and be able to tell them things you cant tell someone else. I don’t agree with Gabriel Marcel’s definition. I don’t see how you can have intimacy with a person who’s sitting behind a screen or a person you cant even touch or look into their eyes when your talking to them. I align more with lost approach, because it has happened to me. For example I still talk to my best friend from Mexico but its not the same like when we were face to face then to be talking on Facebook. Sometimes when I log on his not logged in, when he has a problem I cant comfort him like I would want to, and we’ve grown apart since I moved here. I don’t think a person can a have a relationship with someone online either, because they don’t know how they really are. Most of the time they just end up getting mad at each other over something they read that was taken wrong by the other person, but you cant explain to them because they are not in front of you and they wont understand. For example in the novel when Fountainhead and Haikumom are having a conversation she seems really nice and it seems like she wants to help him, and when they go and have lunch she is a completely different person. She acts nothing like she does online while sitting behind a computer screen.

 This picture is sort of what a lot of us go through when we get a message that we don’t like or makes us unhappy and we cant do anything but get mad at the computer.

 And I’ve always found this really funny and its really true.

My Concept of Beauty (Shania Twain, and Benny the Jet)

As a young girl the concept of beauty to me was based on two women; my Mother and Shania Twain. People around me loved my mom and my childhood ears always heard how beautiful she was and is. Not only was she beautiful because of her looks but because of how nice she was to everyone. Also how my dad looked at her with smiles, hugs, and kisses distilled in me that she was beautiful. All these attributes made me want to be just like her. But as I got older and I started listening to country music with my family and watching the videos, my idol of beauty became Shania Twain.

Shania Twain

 “the HOTTEST chick around” is what my uncle use to call her. He also said she was his girl friend and had posters all over his walls of her. He was 19 at the time and I was 5 years old when I heard all this talk about how great Shania was. She quickly became an ultimate beauty in my eyes. Shania Twain was at the time, a small town girl from Canada. She had a beautiful voice, brown hair, brown eyes, and fair skin with a straight smile. She was also really skinny with womanly curves. In her videos she was with horses and dogs, which were my favorite animals. I thought that maybe because I had brown hair and brown eyes, maybe someday I would look like her.When I think of critiques I could give on my idea on feminine beauty, I would say that I chose a good person to have an idol for. From all  I’ve read about Shania was that she was a nice girl who took care of her siblings when her parents died. She was naturally beautiful and had a great personality with high values and standards. But as her fame became greater, she fell away from what she believed a good girl should be. So maybe a negative critique I could give is you can’t base who someone else is by their looks. Shania’s real name isn’t even Shania, it’s Eilleen. Which is another example why you can’t tell who someone truly is by their outside appearance. I’ve learned that beauty is something that is from within someone and that will reflect who you really are in the end.

Benny Rodriquez from the movie “Sandlot”

Benny  was the cutest boy ever when I was 7 years old. From the moment I saw him I knew I was going to marry him. He was the ideal tall, dark, and handsome boy. He played sports and showed compassion to the boy that didn’t fit in. He is also the hero of the movie which makes him that much more attractive. His courage to take on the beast, made him a babe to a young girls’ eyes.

My ideas of a handsome/beautiful boy were very juvenile. I’ve learned that most of the guys I’ve dated that look like this, don’t treat me very good. Yeah he might be great looking on the outside but a jerk on the inside.

So to me Beauty is how your are on the inside and your ability to show love, to be kind, and sincerely be yourself. But I still ask myself, “What is Beauty really?” and I don’t think anybody will ever really know.

Mulan and Quatre R. Winner from Gundam Wing Zero

  As a little kid i watched a lot of movies and still do, but when I saw Mulan for the first time I thought she was absolutely beautiful. I loved how by disobeying her father she showed that she did what she did because she thought it was the right thing to do. What i really loved about Mulan, physical wise, was her eyes and hair. I thought her hair was perfect because no matter how she fixed it or arranged it made her look good. The eyes are what caught my attention the most because that’s always the first thing I notice in a girl to determine if I consider her beautiful or not. So Mulan passed that test the moment I laid eyes on her.

Growing up one of my favorite Cartoon was Gundam Wing Zero. This was my favorite cartoon because Quatre Raberba Winner was the character I look to as good looking out of the 5 main characters of the series. I liked his personality the most respectful, kind, and caring. I also liked the fact that he played violin because I have always liked the sound of the violin and that was his best feature in my opinion. I absolutely loved the way he dressed all sharp and clean looking. 

But unfortunately, both these characters are a danger for children now a days in my opinion because Mulan even though she did the things she did because she thought it was the right thing to do, she still disobeyed her farther and that’s never a good message to pass on to a little kid.  Although, Quatre has a good personality, he is an assassin killing people to protect his loved ones. I think that if kids look up to Quatre they might focus to much on what he does and not the good side of him.

What is Real Beauty?

Fred from “Scooby Doo”

This was the most handsome man when I was younger. I thought he was the perfect guy not only because of the way he looked but also because of his bravery. I thought he was handsome because he was tall and had his hair cut nice and short all of the time. The hair being cut and not all rag like was a big deal for me. I would see Shaggy and not like him because he needed a haircut. He had blonde hair and brown eyes and I thought that was handsome at the time.  He has muscles and dressed nice, never in ragged clothes, unless of course he was dirty from chasing a bad guy. He always stood up with good posture. He was a proud guy and held himself high. Everyone in the T.V show liked him and the way he looked so that is probably why I also thought that he was handsome. He was always so brave like a man should be. He always went with the girls to protect them in case something came up. His bravery added to the qualities that a man should have.

I now know that this is wrong. Everyone has their own opinion of what handsome is.Now that I am older I see that he was not always handsome like I had thought. He was not perfect and didn’t have perfect hair. My views changed and I’m sure others have too. When it comes to the bravery I was all wrong.  He always left two of the group, even though one was a dog, when they were afraid to be alone. That is not right. He didn’t protect all of his friends, just the girls which is not right.  Kids should not learn that it is okay to leave a friend if he or she will be scared. Also now I know that they were just a bunch of kids on drugs running around and messing things up. I don’t know if kids now will see that, I never did.

 

Ariel from “The Little Mermaid”

From the first time I ever watched this movie Ariel was the most beautiful girl I had seen. She was perfect in every way. Her hair and skin and lips and attitude and her will to get what she wanted amazed me. First I thought her physical appearance was beautiful because she had great hair. It was different than anything I had seen. It was red and very long and flowed perfect no matter what she was doing, she could be floating upside down, swimming really fast, or just laying on the sand it was always perfect never messy. Next was her pale skin and bright lips. She never had any blemishes like other characters sometimes would have. Her eyes were so pretty I had always wanted blue eyes. I thought she was the ultimate icon of beauty I thought she should be everyone’s icon. Next is her attitude, she was always nice to flounder who didn’t have any other friends which is what I wanted. I wanted to be nice to the people that no one else liked so they would have a friend too. Her will to get what she wanted was absolutely amazing. She went off to find things even when it put her in danger. She hid things from others because she was not suppose to be doing things. She was my icon of a beautiful girl.

This could be dangerous to kids because they might want to dye their hair to have this color like she has. It is not good for young kids to dye their hair. They may want to keep doing it and it will fry their hair until they have to cut it all off and start new. Also her attitude is not a good thing for kids to watch. Parents will greatly dislike their children’s behavior if they act as defiantly  as she does in the movie. They should never put their lives in danger for something they like at the time, it may change in the future and then they have the consequences of getting hurt or being emotionally scarred from doing such things.

Brittney Spears & Freddy from Scooby Doo

When I was a kid I loved these two people. First off, Britney Spears was shown as a girl with beautiful blonde hair and a smile that lit up a room.

Britney Spears

Society and the media loved her and made her into this symbol of beauty. So, as a young kid I grabbed onto it and view her as the most beautiful girl on the planet. If any girl did not look close to Britney then she was not beautiful in my eyes.

 

When speaking of a good looking man, I looked no further than Fred from Scooby Doo. That guy was always looking sharp and he always took down the bad guy. He was always dressed up nice in a polo and his hair was parted to the side. Everyone loved him. I also thought that all the ladies loved him and always wanted to be with him when they split up to find the bad guy.

Fred from Scooby Doo

Looking back on my perception of beauty I realized that these two were not great icons for beauty. My two child icons were both concerned about themselves and making sure that they always looked good. When it really just matters on how they really are on the inside. These two figures could be dangerous to kids because it could show them in order to fit in with society you must look this way. It could also show that people only like what is on the outside when in reality people like whats on the inside. Like they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Early Concepts of Beauty

Maria Felix                                                               Goku

 

As a child growing up and watching Dragon Ball Z every single afternoon, this is the first “guy” I saw as beautiful. I consider him to be beautiful because of his looks, he was also friendly with the rest of characters and that always makes a character look good and be loved by the viewers. He was also the main one and the superhero of the cartoon, which made me love him even more. He was really serious when he needed to be and always acted the way I expected him to act. The physical features I admired in Goku were his long hair and the way that he would change from dark to blonde. He also had a great muscular body. Now, the women I saw as beautiful was Maria Felix, she was a Mexican actor. She is like the Mexican Marilyn Monroe. My mom would watch a lot of her movies and I always thought she was the most beautiful women alive. I consider her beautiful because of the way she would act in the movies, she was always so proper and so lady like and all the men were after her. I admire all of her physical features, her eyes were my favorite. I think that now that I am an adult my concepts of beauty haven’t changed in the physical form, but I guess that the way the characters acted sometimes weren’t too good. These two characters might be dangerous icons for children to categorize as beautiful, because Goku was really aggressive and violent and kids might want to imitate them. Maria Felix was very sensual and she would always be smoking in the films. I remember I took a cigarette from my grandpa once and went into the bathroom to smoke it because I wanted to be like Maria Felix. I was only seven at the time and my mom caught me doing it, that never happened again.

Jo Ann Beard

I decided to relate experiences I have had with my cousins with those in the essay “Cousins”. In the essay Beard shares a lot of childhood memories of her cousin and her getting into trouble and their fun, creative, and young ideas. This helped me remember of times I have had with my cousins and the memories we have.

Growing up I never had any cousins that were exactly my age so I would spend most of my time with the older ones. (I thought I would be so much cooler hanging out with them at all our family get togethers) But my funnest and most memorable times were always spent with my cousins that were a year younger than me.

Me and Maura

One of my most memorable stories is of my cousin Maura and I. One day my sister Ashley, Maura and I were all playing outside in Maura’s back yard. We were between the ages of 5 and 8. Maura’s family owned a small group of chickens that just roamed around the yard, so we had the idea to chase them because there was nothing better to do. So we started to chase them but within 5 minutes her mom came running out the back door yelling at us and telling us to come inside. Once inside we were told we couldn’t play outside anymore. Ashley was ok. While Maura and me were having a blast chasing, the chickens switched rolls when it came to ashley and she was running for her life. Anyway, Maura and I were ticked with this punishment. So we waited for her mom to go back to what she was doing and for ashley to fall asleep, and we snuck out the back door to do what we thought was the coolest idea ever. We decided to go on an adventure. This adventure consisted of following an old dried up river bed up a hill into more hills. We followed it for a long time actually, we found some awesome rocks, used the bathroom outside ( we thought that was pretty cool), and saw some birds and squirrels. But then it started to get dark and we were really hungry so we headed back the way we started. When we got back to her house, my aunt was waiting and we weren’t greeted with a smile! We both were grounded, but to us it was way worth it. Now we look back on this experience and are happy we have such good memories. The funny part is that we have retraced our footsteps since that day and found out we only traveled a little more than a football fields length away from home. Back then it felt like miles. It’s crazy the imaginations we have when we are little. And like Beard, I’m grateful for my cousin memories and am excited for my children and their cousins to make memories like this one someday!

Lol.. Random video of a dried up river bed! It relates!!

Cousins by Jo Ann Beard

Jo Ann Beard’s essay Cousins is built on family and the relationships that come with them. When I was kid every summer I would go to my cousin’s house and stay there all summer long. This lead to very great relationships,  inside jokes, some blackmail, occasional fights, and great memories. We would stay up late and play video games, play basketball, and catch. The days seemed to just blend into each other and it was the greatest of times. We would go bowling every other week and have a competition of who could have the highest score, because we were so young it barely ever broke 100, and I always lost. Every year we would go to Silverwood and made a tradition of going to the candy shop right before it closed then buying a lot of candy, enough to last a good couple of weeks and being hyper on the ride home.

Silverwood, every year trip.

 

Cousins also made me think of all the family that I have in my life. Whenever there is a birthday or graduation, all of the family came to support and see everyone else. Beard wrote the essay in a way that goes back and forth between her timelines showing her maturity and at times her immaturity. Looking back on my childhood I can see how I would act different in certain situations. Beard’s essay really brought back all those memories of my childhood and it was good to remember and take a laugh at all the things that happened.

A Boy’s Work By Mark Spragg

A Boy’s Work is the essay I have found  most interesting out of the four essays we have read. I think that Spragg does a great work on letting his readers know that change is a hard thing to accept. In the story he tells you that he was having a hard time accepting that fact that he was entering manhood, he also describes how he felt about certain tasks he wasn’t ready for to prove to his father that he was ready to become a responsible man. I liked the way that Spragg build up the story of he went to start to finish explaining the steps he had to take. I loved this essay because well when I was entering elementary I was afraid, do to the fact that Spanish was my only language at the time. So I was unable to communicate with my teacher nor my classmates.

This picture made me think of how i felt entering that elementary classroom knowing nothing, and feeling alone.

The worst part was accepting to learn a new language, it was horrible trying to learn a new language and at the same time learning the ABC’s, how to count to one hundred, how to tie your shoes,etc. now that’s what I call dangerous multitasking for a little 6 year old. That’s why I say I relate with Spragg because I think i felt that same way he felt when he had to shot Socks, because by shooting Socks he is accepting to enter manhood to a world he is unrecognized with, and me in the other had I was entering a world were everything was different from what I had learned for the past 5 years and that’s hard to accept.

Mark Spragg

I liked this essay more than the others because it is the only one I can really relate to even remotely. I have never been in or around a family who had a father or any member of the family be like the father in Nicole Lea Helget’s story. I have never been close to my cousins.  So I chose Spragg. In his essay he explains the pressure he felt to be a man. Of course I am not a man, but I always felt the pressure to grow up, to be more mature than my actual age. I, as well as the author, didn’t necessarily know what it meant to grow up or to be a “man” as the story says. Although my parents didn’t put the pressure on me I feel that I relate because I did feel that pressure the same or close to the same as he did. He had to grow up before his time and so did I. My sister had a child when she was fifteen. She was not ready for that. None of us were. She wasn’t going to give up her life style. I knew that. For that baby I grew up and became the responsible one. I had to make sure everything was okay and good for my new niece. I liked that the story is non fiction because it says that people really go through this not knowing what is being a “man”. He really did a great job at relaying the emotions he had as a boy into the story. It felt like he was still going through it and I connected to his not wanting to grow up, but doing it for someone other than himself.

Quotes

 

Stain You Red by Nicole Lea Helget

I really enjoyed reading this essay, I can say it has been my favorite so far. I believe that Helget did a really good job with catching the readers attention. The essay itself was mostly about her dad and the kind of person he was. I think we can all relate to a person like this or have a friend who’s parent are like Helgets parents. Since a lot of us can relate to people like this we wanted to read it and see how they acted, because we want to see if they act like the person that we know. Everything in the essay was really credible and some things were just over the top with some of the things that her dad would do, and I really enjoyed that, because they were unexpected things that occurred. She was also really good with painting a picture of what was going on. For example  when they start out playing catch I can picture that, and when the window shatters I can also picture that. When her mom burns her arm, she really explains the scene and how her burn looks like. She does add a lot od dialogue to the essay which is really good, because it is a lot easier to understand. Even though it is a braided essay its really good with keeping us up and helping us to not get lost. I think that how she starts the beginning of the essay and the end of it is really meaningful and leaves us with something to think about. The story made me remember when I was in high school wanting to play soccer but my dad wanted me to do softball instead, because he was a baseball player in Mexico. He would go watch me but I knew that if I did something wrong he wasn’t going to be proud, he was obviously nothing close to Helgets dad but it was just something that came to mind while reading the essay.

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