Benny rushed out of his house then went right back in. He hadn’t realized that it was raining so he frantically searched for an umbrella. Afterward, he rushed out again making a sharp right turn towards the end of the street. The smell of cigarettes and wet garbage filled the air. He ran across the street with the blinking red stop sign and accidently stepped on a huge puddle that had accumulated from the rain. However, he wasn’t too troubled by this little accident. The only thing that was on his mind was getting to school on time for his Philosophy quiz. As he approached the 8th Avenue train station, he saw the Manhattan Bound N Train had arrived. He swiped his MetroCard and quickly rushed down the slippery steps all while holding the handle. He jumped into the train and took a seat next to a middle-aged lady.

Anna stared at Benny as he sat down. She wondered why this young man seemed out of breath and why his shoes were soaking wet. She saw him rummaging through his backpack, his face growing increasingly distressed with each passing moment. What was he searching for, she thought. Could it be his headphones or perhaps he forgot something at home? What a strange fellow she thought to herself. This question was answered when he pulled out his Philosophy notes. Benny seemed immersed by these notes and before he knew it, the train had arrived at 14th Street Union Square. From there, he transferred to the 6th Train and got off at 23rd Street. He then made a right turn which led him to Baruch College.

-Benny Chan

Vivian woke up and dreaded the thought of having to leave her comfortable bed. She looked at the clock to see that is was already twelve. Shocked, she quickly got dressed and ran to her bus stop-n20G. Why is it that every time she is running late, the bus is never on time? Thankfully, the rain had stopped but the ground was still wet. After thirty minutes has passed, the n20G finally arrives and drives to the train station. She dips her card into the slot and is annoyed that her balance is low and needs a refill. Thankfully, the bus is relatively empty and finds a comfortable seat. Praying that there are no train delays, Vivian double checks the mta 7 train just to make sure her commute will go smoothly. Not surprised, there are delays due to signal problems. As she rolls her eyes, she hesitates whether it would be better to just head back home. Finally heading to the train station, she races down the moving escalator and swipes at the turnstile. The train, slower than a turtle, finally enters the station and Vivian was able to secure herself a seat by the door. It was already one thirty, and she knew that the local train will not get her to school on time. Every stop seemed forever. More and more people started entering the train. As the train grew louder, Vivian began to raise the volume of her music. Even with her earphones, she could still hear a baby crying, and a man speaking very loud on the phone. Just as she was getting comfortable in her seat, a woman most likely in her sixties, was staring straight at Vivian. Without batting an eye, Margaret continues to stare at Vivian. Confused and not sure what to do, she pretends to act busy playing word hunt on her phone. Oh my, oh my, why is this young child out her when she should be in school? She must be up to no good, look at the time! Young kids these days, tsk tsk. She should be receiving proper education, why are her teachers not concerned? High school kids these days. Ugh, back in the day..

“The next stop is Grand Central” Vivian gets ready to transfer to the uptown 6 train. As the doors open, a flood of people attempt to exit with no awareness of her presence. If only she was taller..Before she can walk to the 6 train platform, she is met with her worst enemy-the stairs. Why did she not take the escalator? Who knows. She waits to get off at 23rd street. As the train doors open, she is met with a pungent smell of urine and rats crawling on the side of the platform. Feeling nauseous, she walks to the nearest exit. Intimidated by a giant dog, Vivian takes a detour and eventually exits the station. Vivian then walks toward Lexington Ave and makes a turn then heads right onto 25th street and into school.

The movie “To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters” is a story about the Bronte sisters insist on writing novels and poets even the women would be judged when women wrote novels or poets, then they decided to use another name for their poets and novels to submit for publication. I admire the Bronte sisters. In this movie, Charlotte Bronte said, “Why is it that a woman’s lot is so very different to a man’s? I’ve never felt inferior. Have you? Intellectually. Why is it that we have so very few opportunities?” Charlotte pursues the equality between men and women. She persuaded Emily and Anne to publish their own work. She is very ambitious with publication. I think Emily Bronte is very talented. The work that Emily wrote (Emily also recited in this movie) make me feel that this is a very magnificent work! The word that Emily used in her works make a very wide world. For example, “High waving heather neath stormy blasts bending, midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars; darkness and glory rejoicingly blending, Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending, man’s spirit away from its drear dungeon sending, bursting the fetters and breaking the bars”. In my view, Emily’s writing style is bold and unconstrained. For Anne Bronte, I think she is good at listening to others and communication. She is gentle and soft. In my view, The Bronte sisters were very brave to challenge the views to women’s writing at that time. They are great writers.

–Yu Qing Wu

Shoaib made it back home from work and was able to fill his stomach with his moms cooking before starting his commute to class. Standing in front of the door, he padded his pockets and checked his bag to make sure he got everything he needed before heading off. His phone vibrated from a text message. Shoaib checked the message, “Hurry up! Why your ass always take so long, I’ve been waiting outside”. His girlfriend seemed annoyed, but after leaving his house Shoaib was more concerned about checking if his car was locked and safe being parked on Utopia Pkwy. He eventually got in his girlfriends car and was finally on his way to the Kew Gardens train station. Shoaibs girlfriend, Monisha, probably thought to herself “Who is he taking so long to get ready for?” About 15 minutes later they arrived and Shoaib left the car and hurried down to the subway to catch the E train. The subway was carrying its usual pungent smell of pee and old wet rags. Its nice to see how our city can be so pleasant, no wonder everyone is always so happy around here. The E train arrived as Shoaib was running down the stairs and the carts were fairly empty making it easy for him to find a seat. Shoaib took off his bag after sitting down and pulled out his book, Mrs. Dalloway, and began to read from where he last left off. It was common for him to re-read some sentences because he was still trying to get used to the way the author wrote her novel. He soon arrived at Lexington and 53rd street and got out the E train to transfer to the 6 train going towards Brooklyn Bridge. The 6 train came by quick as usual and boarded on to eventually get off at 23rd street. Shoaib then walked up 23rd street towards Lexington Avenue and took a left to then reach 24th street where he ended his journey to Baruch college.

My commute to Baruch starts with me leaving my room and walking to the elevator and pressing “L” to go down to the lobby.  As I leave the lobby, I make a right when I get outside and walk to 96th street.  I make another right when I get to 96th and walk towards Lexington Avenue.  I swipe my metro card when I get into the station and then I make a right to the downtown side and go down the staircase on my right.  I get on the train and get off at 23rd street.  When I exit the subway station I am on Park Ave S. so I walk straight down towards 23rd and Lex until I get into the Lawrence Building.  As I was walking to the subway there was a misty rain fogging up my glasses.  I noticed a man running to the 6 train and then I noticed a woman wearing a skirt and rain boots and first thought, “wow she must be freezing” and then thought, “wow what was she thinking?”  As I was walking I smelt the coffee carts and their various pastries and I smelt laundry from the apartment buildings along 96th street and I absolutely love the smell of laundry, it puts me in a good mood.  Besides when I was questioning the woman’s outfit choice, I was thinking about my day and how to go about it because I have to study for my BIO lecture midterm so I decided to stay after English and then go to the library, read half of my notes (which is when I realized the highlighter I had with me is dead and has been dead for like 5 days) and then I’ll come back and shower.  But as I was in English I began to get hungry so I had to factor that into my plan.  By the time I got to the station, the 6 train was pulling in and that’s always the best feeling when you get to the train in perfect timing because one time, on a day like this, I was rushing down the stairs to catch the train but the stairs were wet and therefore slippery and I literally slid down every step and pulled out like 80 hairs while doing so.  Across from me was a girl that looked like she was a little younger than me, her name was Selena.

The 6 train is almost ALWAYS delayed/slow/being held by the train dispatchers and will be moving momentarily.  What is that about?  Why is the most irritating subway one of the only two subways on the East side?  The girl across from me looks very tired, very glossy eyed, it is 8 am so it’s perfectly understandable.  She probably should do something about those bags under her eyes though.  She probably is a student considering the time she is up but she doesn’t look old enough to be an adult who has a career and responsibilities and she has a bag that can fit easily up to 6 notebooks.  It’s interesting you never know the story behind a person especially just by looking at them.

After watching To walk invisible, written and directed by Sally Wainwright, I thought it was a really motivational piece for everyone especially women. From the creative introduction scene of the siblings running around with burning halos, I saw it as a metaphor of creativity within all four siblings. Despite their gender, they were all equally capable of creating their own fantasy or imaginations. The drama takes place in Yorkshire, the Bronte siblings were not rich but lived in a greater size home than many. The scene where the sisters go out to the wild landscape was a beautifully captured scene almost like the director wanted to show how much they have out there but also showing how they’re in the middle of nowhere. The film not only displayed the hardships of women who wanted their work to be simply accepted or respected but also the parallels between the two genders under the same family and environment. Branwell was a perfect contrast and his denial to the many offered chances, was what Charlotte needed, a chance or opportunity to be evaluated without specific titles. While Branwell threw his advantages aside, it was also what eventually crushed him mentally to a tragic ending. On the other hand, the Bronte sisters worked hard to achieve an offer under the terms of being reviewed as male writers. In a sense, they had to take an invisible path to achieve their ambitions. While Branwell had so much attention even under the circumstances of him being an addict with the predictable outcomes. This drama greatly demonstrated the obstacles the Bronte sisters overcame while voicing themselves as an women in the 19th century. The drama ends as we see that the sisters published works are still getting great feedback in modern society.

• Shan Shan Chen

To Walk Invisible depicts the life of the Bronte sisters and how their literature creations came about. Aside from writing literature, the Bronte sisters resided in Yorkshire with their father and brother, Branwell. Branwell did not seem to care about his future. He had an affair with his employer’s wife and slowly becomes an alcoholic and is bedridden under the care of his sisters. “When a man writes something, it’s what he’s written that’s judged. When a woman writes something, it’s her that’s judged.” (PBS) Charlotte told Anne the reply she had received after sending out her works to be published. She was denied and given negative feedback not because her literature was bad, but because she was a woman. They told her that literature was not a place for woman. Although it appears that writing gave Charlotte life, she also feared it. The reality was that in the nineteenth century, a woman could not publish any of her works, thus made Charlotte feel hopeless. While it is understandable that in the era, there were many gender discriminations taking place, that scene aggravated me the most.

Under a gender-neutral pseudonyms, the sisters were able to finally have their works published. My favorite scene would most definitely have to be when Charlotte and Anne meet with George Smith and reveals that she is Currer Bell. When he scoffs and is surprised by the reveal that Currer Bell is actually a woman, Charlotte questions him back furiously “What makes you doubt it Mr. Smith? My accent? My gender? My size?” (PBS) Her response was so charismatic. I felt so happy for the sisters now that they were able to reveal their true self.

To Walk Invisible tells the tale of the life of the Bronte sisters. This wonderful film shows the thoughts and the ideas behind their literary works. The Bronte sisters were brought up in the town of Yorkshire where they lived with their father and their brother. The sisters wrote novels that were beyond their times and revolved around feminist ideals. The Bronte sister broke many barriers in their time which included fighting for women’s equal rights. In the Bronte sisters’ time being a woman and author was basically forbidden because rather being judged by their writing as would be done to man, women are judged by who they are and/or who they make themselves out to be. Although the film does focus a lot on the Bronte sisters’ literary works, it also centers on the hardships that the Bronte’s had to face. Charlotte, Emily and Anne were unmarried and expected to do the housework and care for their brother and father. The Bronte sisters’ have to care for their alcoholic brother and they start publishing as a means to make money. They also had to care for their father who was very big on what the public thought of this family. They had to publish under pseudonyms where no one could depict their gender and then people would judge their writing rather than their gender. Overall it was a great movie and it was nice to see the actual life of the Bronte sisters and what they had to overcome to be successful.

This movie depicts the life of three women that came from a rural area who wrote the most beautiful, passionate and feminist novels. The Bronte sisters had a strong bond with each other and together they broke the many taboos of the 19th Century. One of which was demanding equal rights for men and women.

The movie takes place in Yorkshire which is the rural area where the Bronte Sisters lived. It being rural makes it very conservative as well. But the movie focuses more on the hardships of the Bronte’s family life. Starting with their brother’s drug and alcohol addiction which seemed to affect the success of the Bronte sister’s because they were worried about him. Not to talk about his affair with one of the employer’s wife where he worked. Also, their father was another reason they were worried because he was a fragile man who cared a lot about morals and the public opinion.

My favorite scene in the movie is the opening scene where the Bronte siblings are represented with flaming halos in their heads which I believe it is to portray their creativity. They are playing with some small living toys found in a box in a table in the middle of their house. Charlotte was the first one who found Emily’s poems and thought they need to be published. They found their bond and complex characters would bring them great success and finally no more hardships for their family. They published their work by nicknames and did not use their real name because they knew that they would be judged because of the things that they wrote about.

While reading Freud’s thoughts, I had a few flashbacks to when I was younger asking my mother if I could have something, and if she said no I would run to my dad and he would say yes. But after thoroughly reading and not trying to take any preconceived notions, I realized that this is a very old fashioned way of thinking. I did definitely agree with the thought that when you are young all you want to do is be exactly like your parents, you want to learn from them, you want to look like them you want to do what they do. But then the thought of when you get a bit older, seeing other parents and comparing them/their families to your own, “He gets to know other parents and compares them with his own, and so acquires the right to doubt the incomparable and unique quality which he had attributed to them” This happens when they are entering their teenage years and they are questioning life, how it works and how to succeed. When you are at that age, you pretty much think you are an adult, you think that anything you believe is right and you wont take any other answer. I was without a doubt like this when I was a child, and totally understand, and am a firm believer that the way parents bring up their child, act and speak around them is a huge factor on how they are when they grow up.

-OO