“The morbid procession streams on and on – trucks growl like mad dogs. I shut my eyes tight, but I can still see corpses dragged from the train, trampled infants, cripples piled on top of the dead, wave after wave… freight cars roll in, the heaps of clothing, suitcases and bundles grow, people climb out, look at the sun, take a few breaths, beg for water, get into the trucks, drive away. And again freight cars roll in, again people…” (702).

In this example, the unnamed narrator is a political prisoner who works in “Canada.” He and other prisoners are forced to work for their captors which include carrying dead bodies to the crematorium. It describes the details of what the narrator sees as he works. The continuous trains of Jews coming to the concentration camp leads to the unceasing work and sight of dehumanization of others. As the narrator said, even when he has his eyes close, he still feels as if he is still seeing the Jews grasping for air and water, and dead corpses piling up.

This example made a particularly strong impression on me because it does not only depict the conditions in which the Jews are brought into, but also the aspects of the political prisoners’ duties in which they have no control over but to obey. Also, I feel as if the duties of the political prisoners’ are also dehumanization. Having to see other humans going to such sickening and despicable acts which can cause mental distraught to these political prisoners.

Its significant within the context of the story that shows not only are the Jews suffer from dehumanization, but also the political prisoners experience a different form of dehumanization. As the S.S. (the Nazi police system) would whip or even shoot the political prisoner’s if they were to do anything out of demand. It also raises the question that they are already being dehumanized, why would they be willing to dehumanize the Jews if it was not an order? An example of that is when the narrator called them “Pigs!” (702).

1) In T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the speaker of the poem, Alfred Prufrock, is a balding, lean-armed, and insecure middle-aged man. As the poem progresses, the reader can almost categorize Prufrock as a coward. He lists some of the things that he knows well, such as living through mornings with coffee, women. However, his lack of self-esteem and confidence discourages him from approaching women and others in the society throughout his life. As a result, Prufrock has lived a life without ever trying to go outside of his comfort zone, and is isolated from the rest of the society.

2) “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me” (line 124-125).

Lack of self-esteem and confidence is a big part of this poem, and I believe this quote here depicts clearly of how Prufrock is discouraged with his own thoughts. This quote depicts mermaids, mythical creatures that are known to seduction of men with their good appearances and amazing voices. But in Prufrock’s mind, he thinks that even the mermaids would not like to seduce him because he is not good enough and will even be rejected by the mermaids. As readers, we can get a glimpse of how Prufrock’s lack of confidence plays a role here, if mermaids, mythical creatures that are known for seducing men are not even interested in him, then why would humans even be consider him?

Three questions:

1) Why does T. S. Eliot say that life is measured in teaspoons?

2) Where is Prufrock?

3) In line 26-27, what does Prufrock mean when he says that there will be time “to prepare a face meet the faces that you meet?”

After reading Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment”, I immediately made a connection to Feng Menglong’s “Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger”. Both pieces of work show a similar issue of utilizing the protagonist’s wife as a mean of resolution of an obstacle. Not only are the wives willingly to aid their husbands in overcoming of the hardship, but they go further into choosing death with the feeling of betrayal from their husbands.

In “Punishment”, in trying to protect Chidam’s brother, Dukhiram’s incident of killing his wife out of rage, “Chidam asked Chandara to take the blame on herself. She was dumbfounded. He reassured her: “Don’t worry – if you do what I tell you, you’ll be quite safe” (895). On the other hand, in Feng’s piece, the young master named Li Jia listens to a stranger’s advice and asks his wife Du Tenth to go with another man. “He has it in mind to take you in for one thousand taels. With that thousand taels I will have a pretext on which to call on my parents, and you, my dear benefactress, will also have someone to rely on, but I cannot bear to give up the affection I feel for you” (514). Both Chidam and Li Jia chose to capitulate their wives in order to prevail over obstacles.

The wives of each work also show similarities. Although both the wives are being used as a mean to attain a goal, the wives did not complain and did what has been asked. As Du Tenth said to Li Jia, “The man who devised this plan for you is truly a great hero. The fortune of the thousand taels will enable you to restore your position in your family, and I will go to another man so as not to be a burden to you” (514). With the exceptions of them after helping their husbands out of the hardships, they choose to die as they feel betrayed by their husbands.

The film version of Hedda Gabler filmed in 1963 followed closely to the original text by Henrik Ibsen in 1890. By closely following to the original text, as viewers, we can receive a better sense of how the scenery may look like in life. Although there are some subtle change made by the director of the film,  Alex Segal. In the text, the drawing-room is described sounded very spacious, but in the film, the setting was very compacted together, and it did not give the feel of a large drawing-room as written in the text. Also with the settings, there was no sight of the piano where Mrs. Hedda Tesman made complaints about, and later even removed out of the drawing-room as it is in the text.

Other than the setting, the characters in the film acted closely to the text, and if not, it gave the audience a better sense of the relationships between characters that the text cannot give. Especially the relationship between Tesman and Miss Tesman. Miss Tesman’s worries over Tesman on his six months honeymoon, and his payment for the house that him and his wife are to live in, with some of these actions of her’s, it really displays the deep bond between an aunt and nephew. Although the chronology part followed closely along with the text, there are some parts that were left out. The noticeable one was the conversation between Tesman and Miss Tesman where Tesman asked Miss Tesman “Have you heard anything about Eilert – since I went away, I mean?” (786). It is interesting that director Segal has chosen to remove that part of the conversation out because Eilert Løvborg is in some way significant character in the play as he and Hedda Tesman has had a relationship in the past. The movie really helped the viewers to see how frustrated Hedda was with her new family, and although its written in the play, I believe it creates a better image in our heads of how she may feel at that very moment with the visuals.

Part 1

From Harriet Jacobs’ slave narrative, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” depicts some aspects of what a black woman had to deal with back in slavery. Although it is well known that the slaves were treated inhumanely, but to read through what life was like at that time makes the readers feel unease about what occurred during that time. The excerpt does not only show a glimpse of what slavery was like, but it also demonstrates a successful example of an escaped slave. Men in slavery, as Frederick Douglas showed, are treated heartlessly and inhumanely. But born as a woman in slavery, Jacobs shows that sexual oppression exercised by white slave master over their women slaves. This narrative differs from Douglass’ from the way it shows perspectives from different gender roles they played back in slavery. A black male was usually used to be on the farm, and did all the labor, while the women, did their own jobs and were treated as sexual items by the white slave masters. One of the differences between the two slavery narrative is that Douglass chose to use non-fiction, and Jacobs chose to replace actual names of people on her journey to escape in order to not get them discovered and get punished. These two narratives depict a clear first-person resource to communicate to the audience what it was like for the slaves back in the day in age.

Part 2

Although slavery is illegal anywhere, yet, there are still various forms of slavery everywhere in the world today. It is estimated around 27 million people are still enslaved till this day. The slaves are forced to work without pay and are under the threat of violence both mentally and physically. Contemporary slavery does not consist only adults, but also children. Children take a very large part in contemporary slavery, especially in prostitution. It is said that the average age a teen enters the American sex trade is around twelve to fourteen years of age. With some of the leaders in the world who are taking initiative fighting against human trafficking, and there has been researched estimated that there is a possibility of ending slavery within twenty-five years.

The passage I chose is from Chapter III, “He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions” (244).

This passage enhanced my knowledge by giving more insights of slavery in America from a first-hand resource. This passage depicts how the rich slave owners and the slaves have a blinded relationship. The owner does not know who he owns, and the slave does not know who he is working for. But what matters the most, is that the slaves should flatter the master. Slaves usually have no warnings and no cautions  of when his punishment would arrive upon. It plainly depends on the mood of the slave owner, so to say, a slave is just an object. Being a slave, there is something more fearful than death, which is separation from family and friends. As they are the only resource of strength that can help one slave to carry through the hardships of slavery.

Although the slave himself does not know why he is being sent away, Douglass seems to know exactly why, just as if he has been there watching the scene where the slave meets the master. Douglass appears to know vividly the correct things that the slave master wants from the slaves, simply learning from observing his surroundings and his peers who are punished since he was young. This does not only show that he is a smart child, but his ability to act based on judgement from the environment his surrounded in and behave in a certain manner in that environment proves that he is a smart child.

While reading William Blake’s The Lamb from “Songs of Innocence”. Blake is using an apostrophe and talk to the lamb as if the lamb could understand the speaker. “Little Lamb who made thee Dost thou know who made thee” (Blake).  refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God in the Bible where the speaker asks the lamb who has made him. This image portrays closely with the poem which symbolizes a child, where a child is usually acknowledged as innocent. Having its feet tied together, the lamb is clearly shown that it is going to be slaughtered or sacrificed, just as how Jesus Christ was sacrificed on behalf of the humanity and was compared to as the Lamb. In the first stanza, Blake asks a rhetorical question the lamb who had made him. In the second stanza, Blake answered his own question by telling him who had made him. “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee! He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb” (Blake). This poem shows the positive aspects of Christianity. But it does not only cover the optimistic, it also shows that there are sufferings and evil. This also brings in other aspects to question Christianity. The question of suffering and the goodness of God has always been brought up throughout history. If there is God, and He is all loving and powerful, why would He let there be suffering in the world?

The idea of fate was the central belief in Greek philosophy. In which one’s life is pre-determined by the gods and no matter how hard one tries to avoid it, it cannot be evaded. This theme is vividly shown in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. Tiresias, the blind soothsayer had told a prophecy told Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother, and wife that her son would kill his father.

“To a strange land he soon shall grope his way. And of the children, inmates of his home, He shall be proved the brother and the sire, Of her who bare him son and husband both, Co-partner, and assassin of his sire. Go in and ponder this, and if thou find That I have missed the mark, henceforth declare I have no wit nor skill in prophecy” (Oedipus).

The play was written with two stories, one was what had already happened in the past, and the one was the present time. Sophocles uses the current time to disclose what had happened in the past. In the present time, Oedipus is seen as the wise man. His astonishment of killing Sphinx had made him the King of Thebes. Oedipus’ willingness to find out the truth who had killed his father, Laius, has only carried him to realizing that he had fulfilled the prophecy of killing his own father.

Oedipus can be considered a man who went through all tragedies. As an audience, I could only feel pity for Oedipus in this tragedy play. Pity because of his limit of free will to avoid his fate that was pre-determined by the gods.

I thought the staged reading had done a good job with the acting portion. Although it was a staged reading, the actors and actresses were still able to put emotion and physical into the play which gave a little more sense to the audience of how it may be portrayed in the actual play. The unfortunate part is that because the actors and actresses focused on their readings, there were not much eye contacts between the actors.

This painting below shows two women walking under the umbrella. This scene caught me right away as it was one of the scenes in Ueda Akinari’s “Bewitched” where Toyo-o forcefully offered his umbrella to Manago and her maid Maroya as the rain was raining lighter. “And so Toyo-o saw her off as she spread the umbrella and left, watching until she vanished from his sight” (634). The women in this painting are wearing extravagant clothing which makes them stand out from the man behind them and their surroundings. “Her features, the way she wore her hair, her colorful robe, the perfume she exuded – all this. Toyo-o noted, made her bewitchingly voluptuous. With her was a pretty little maid of fourteen or fifteen carrying a bundle” (633). With the color choice which the painter has set, it is apparent that if Toyo-o was watching would immediately catch his attention. This painting somewhat gives an insight of Toyo-o sight of how he’s viewing Manago and Maroya. One of the detail that captured me was that the elderly man in the background seems not to notice the two women beside him, and so, one assumption which I came up with is that the elderly man cannot see them, just as in “Bewitched”, no one in the town knew these two women and have never heard of them. It is in a way ironic how they stand out amongst the crowd but yet, when others ask the people in the neighborhood, the people do not know about them.

The author of Tartuffe, Jean-Baptiste Moliere positioned what he believed about religious devotion as hypocrisy as a theme into “Tartuffe.” Moliere sets Tartuffe as a religious hypocrite whom Orgon has fallen head over heels for, and as Dorine puts it “he is intoxicated with Tartuffe.”

Before Orgon met Tartuffe, he was a man “once rules this house in his right mind. In the troubled times, he backed the price, and that took courage” (1.2 line 10-12). In Act 1.5, Orgon tells Cléante how he encountered Tartuffe and how Tartuffe’s actions greatly affected him, and he believes that Tartuffe was sent from God to save him. Therefore, Orgon cares for him, gave him wealth and home. But his affection toward Tartuffe has gone beyond expectation. In Act 1.4, when Dorine was reporting how Marine has been while Orgon was away, Orgon paid more attention to how Tartuffe had been than his wife’s health. Tartuffe knows accurately how to get Orgon provides whatever he needs with his words and actions.

How has Orgon relied so much on Tartuffe? One assumption is that because Orgon has done something that is sinful, and he needs to be redeemed, and looking at Tartuffe’s “religious practices” makes him feel as if God redeemed him by taking care of Tartuffe. Why is Tartuffe accepting all the offers that Orgon has given? The obvious answer is because he comes from poverty and desires to have wealth and home. As a reader, one can see that these two characters are interested into benefiting themselves off in their lives, and can also be called as self-interests.