The piece of art that I chose is The City Rises created by the Italian painter Umberto Boccioni it was created in 1910 and caught my eye instantly. It took a second for me to comprehend what was going on with all the wonderful colors, to me it looked like horses and chaos in a city. The main object that catches your eye is this a huge red object that looks like it is lunging into a crowd, that object is a horse.  After further inspection there are a few other horses in the painting, and bodies seem to be falling. At first this painting looks beautiful with fluid, the colors are really what caught my eye. The rustic reds and blues and whites blend together so nicely. But this painting isn’t really depicting a beautiful image, it looks so be some sort of uprising within a city, this painting definitely has a Spanish/Italian feel to it and is something that I personally love. The more I looked at it the more details I noticed, like the chimneys in the back and all the other people in the city. I was never really into art work but going to the Moma really changed my outlook and I feel like I grew a great appreciation for all different types of art there is through out the world, new and old you can find a meaning behind it all and learn to appreciate it.

Birth of a Nation:

In Douglass’ autobiography it mentions a few instances of women being silenced and not having a voice. An event that really sticks with Douglas is watching the beating of his dear Aunt. It is described as her being stripped naked and beat hard being told she cant scream. This really disgusted Douglas and is something that he will never forget, all the blood and tears. In the New York Times article it goes more into depth with women in slavery. They had absolutely no voice, they would get raped and not be able to do anything about it. These women would be forced to carry their rapists (typically the slave owner) baby and after the birth be ripped apart from each other before a few months. In the film A Birth of A Nation a woman named Esther had to leave her husband and go inside the slave owners house, knowing what was going to happen.  She walks out and doesn’t say a word you can just see it in her face of what is described as the final blow to her dignity.

The Metamorphosis:

In the novel The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Gregor a traveling salesman wakes up one morning to find himself turned into an insect. I found the whole story pretty confusing and was unclear of the message. In the beginning you see Gregor waking up unclear about what was going on with his body and going into great detail about trying to get out of bed. He also talks a lot about where he works and how much worse his boss is than everyone else’s. When he is able to open the door, to greet his mother father and manager. They are all terrified his mom starts crying and his dad covers his eyes, his manager is utterly confused. Eventually Gregor and his family realize this is their new life, and Gregor can no longer leave his room, scared that he will terrify his family. His sister begins to bring him his food. You can tell that his father is done with him when one day he throws apples at him and one permanently gets stuck in his back. The ending of the story comes with Gregor leaving his room while wanting to hear his sister play the violin. The family has boarders staying with them and they get a sight of Gregor, and leave without paying. Gregors family eventually decides that they can no longer handle this “creature” living with them and realize they have to get rid of him, Gregor over hears this and becomes severely depressed which eventually leads to his death.

I believe that the creature is much more like Blakes “The Tyger”, I believe this because of the use of words that were in the poem, they were much more angry and it came across as scary to me. It fits perfectly with Frankensteins creature because when he became alive, Frankenstein loathed him and was scared of him. The poem uses words more eery like “fearful” and “burnt fire”. In the book Frankenstein is so excited to see this creature he creates, after year and years of research and studies he put is life into wanted to create the impossible. After it gets down to it, he soon becomes completely terrified by this monster and disgusted by him, the monster is a massive and ugly. This monster becomes Frankensteins absolute worst nightmare. In the poem it says “What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp!” This quote reminds me of when he sees the creature come alive, dread comes over him and he becomes terrified. The poem “The Lamb” is the exact opposite of Frankensteins reaction and the creature himself, he is not soft or gentle in any way. In the Tyger the line “Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” stands out to me, to me the ‘fire’ sounds like evil. Frankenstein saw pure evil in this monsters eyes. When he found out his brother was killed he knew that this monster did it and chose not to tell anyone about this creature, that since he created has now ruined his life. “The Tyger” seems to me a much darker poem which is why I felt that it fit with the creature and his becoming into a killer and Frankensteins fear of him.

I took this photo on Tuesday night while sitting on my porch drinking coffee with my parents. Knowing our assignment I thought this was the perfect picture to capture my “sublime”. At this moment I realized that everyone else could see this sunset while ew were all going on with our lives, I happened to be sitting on my porch on long island while others were doing other things.

Sitting on the porch with my family is the favorite end to my day it’s where we relax and talk about our days after dinner. There isn’t always an amazing sunset like this but when there is it is very calming to me and always seems to cheer me up. Who knew something as basic as a sunset could have so much meaning to one person..

I do not believe fiction creates knowledge, more that it helps people understand and come to terms with the unknown. Sometimes the unknown can be terrifying, fiction can put those fear to rest. For example in Hasif Aminis Words Without Borders it talks about many years ago when people looked up into the night sky they would see points of light and over time people drew imaginary lines to connect them. Creating things like the rap, goat, fish and twins which to this day we use in astronomy. I believe if I were living at that time it would almost put me at ease seeing a “crab and goat” instead of a mysterious night sky that is filled with unknowns. Stories have been told for many, many years and past down through generations, most are filled with imagery and descriptive words to help give a better understand and visual of things. I believe that imagination and fiction play hand and hand, to understand most of these tales and stories you have to allow your imagination to get you there. Using the descriptive language you can picture a visual of what is being written about.

Enlightenment thinkers had the same sort of imagination, by stepping away from the facts of the church and stepping out of the box. They questioned things and gave an understanding or what they believed was an understanding to the unexplainable. They thought of new ways to explain things other than just accepting them and not knowing they questioned and came to conclusions.

The Enlightenment was a time to question and understand new meanings and values of life.  People who supported the Enlightenment period were thought to be vivid thinkers, questioning “why” things happen and the science behind them instead of relying on the church to give you these understandings. This period of thinking led to all different changes amongst society and classes. Literacy rates improved, health improved, even some women were writing instead of childbearing and house work, which is what they had done for years and years. The Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas states “If God had given all human beings reason, then women were just as entailed to develop and exercise their minds as their male counterparts” which proves a very good point, if God had given this “reason” to all men, he must have given it to women as well. The questioning of things also lead to children being involved within literature and other things of that nature, something that was unheard of doing until you became an adult. Enlightenment thinkers had many people who did not believe in their ways, these people preferred the more traditional way, the way that it had always been.

Rene Descartes was a famous philosopher of this time, and his quote “Cogito ergo sum” meaning I think, therefore I am became very famous. I believe what he means by this is, people exist because we think and reason everything going on around us. Descartes way of thinking may be different from other philosophers, Descartes believes that God has his plan for you and there is no changing that, while other philosophers say you don’t really know anything. Although they may have thought