Harman Nahal – Eng 2850 Responses

Lu Xun “new year’s sacrifice” is an emotional rollercoaster of a story. The story of the oppression of a Chinese woman. The selling of that very same women after her husband’s passing.  Her mother in law services her to remarry in order to arrange the wedding of her brother in law. She handles all the sacrifice activities and far-reaching work all by herself. She suffers judgments due to her label as a widow. She suffers from a great shock because she loses everything she could trust in her life. Instead of trying to comprehend her depression, people comprehend it as an appearance of her displeasure. Also, people take her story of her son’s demise as a witticism, makes fun of her for her sad experiences, and takes an unkinder style towards her. She is regarded as disloyalty and bad luck, which is against all the ethical standards for a traditional Chinese woman. I feel that story is a sad story and all I see is despair. This just doesn’t happen with just Chinese women but I feel is still a common issue on a global slandered. We can see scenarios like this in the Middle East to Europe and America’s. I felt that the oppression of women is one of man’s worst atrocities. These types of transactions occur on a daily basis of selling women to men. Also we humans like to shame each other to create subgroups and use fear as an entry to these groups. The fear of her being a widow. Mocking her, giving her title that she doesn’t want. Haunting her while she sleeps. Her life becomes a living nightmare. But all in all the story was great. It showed the struggle so lifelike. That I felt I was living through those experiences.

 

 

Aprils review was an interesting video. At its basic core, it’s a girl giving her reviews on the books she read in the month of April. She actually gave one book a one star. She seemed confident throughout the video of her critique. She has done multiple other review videos so that could be the root to the stem of her confidence. She also considers audiobooks as well as a part of her review. She mentions that one of the books she read, she read half and the other half was her listening through audiobook version of that book. So she has a mix and match approach towards her reading and reviewing skills. The advancement of technology is at its vital peak. Audiobooks are one of the reasons that bookstores like Barnes and Nobles are less appealing. Companies like Amazon have diminished the need to go to stores likes Barnes and Nobles. These advancements are creating more click of button shopping approach as opposed to going out and buying commodities. Her book reviews I personally feel can be better. She goes off on side topic rants and can potentially confuse a viewer or two. But the flow of the review is well organized and her transitions are well placed. There is definitely an art to recording review videos. To give once input and receive output from a creation of yourself and potentially maximize your capability and take in criticism is a scary thought. Her average rating, I found to be was a like a four out of five there were some ones and threes. She generally received good feedback from viewers. The platform YouTube is great to give and receive feedback from one artist to another artist.

 

 

 

 

Video Link

The story of Frankenstein, summarized by Shmoop is a tale that has its own dystopia of the original Frankenstein book written by Mary Shelley. The summarized version felt like it had a more modernized approach (Shmoop). The story was way off compared to the original story. Mary had a way of bringing out the reader’s expression and show emotions such as fear, excitement, and remorse. This summarized review of the video starts off with Norse mythology and shows references of Norse demigod Thor. The topics of the review were way off from the original, so much that it was actually quite comical. The connections from each point to point was an interesting placement of ideas. One that could not be anticipated. The idea flow was a very eccentric and the concept of death has always fascinated me. The summary mentioned the reanimation of the dead. The fascinating concept of future possibility is astonishing, even in our time we have developed cryogenic freezing, which can hold the key to human immortality. Cryogenics freezes the bodies at a point were if future medical technological advancement arises they can live again. I think the concept is a cry for help for people who have fear of death syndrome. The next concept in the story was regarding the materials needed for the creation of Frankenstein. Which were play-doh and toothpicks. The story definitely was created to appease a younger crowd. The story also has a concept of deception whereas Frankenstein felt of abandonment from has the creator. That leads to the concept of Man Vs God. A comment on the video states that “That’s What Happens When Man Plays God.” The destruction of man is another grueling topic depicted in this summary. In an essence the story/ review was interesting. I do recommend the video as well; it was a good watch.   

 

Video Link

The Metamorphosis

Bartleby the Scrivener

Song of Myself

King Lear

Don Quixote