Author Archives: EVANTHIA PEIKIDOU

1. I think a moment where I saw an issue of race is when they met at the supermarket (page 1180). I think that their status gives me an idea of which of the girls is which. Twyla tells that she is married with one kid and Roberta is married with widower and has his four kids, she didn’t have any, and also she had a driver. I think that this status made me think that Twyla might be a black girl and Robert a white girl.
   
2. When I first came to New York, before I got to my first semester in college, my mom thought it would be better for me if I work somewhere to practice my English and meet new people. I remember feeling so anxious that I wouldn’t make any friends there because everybody was from here and I had just come from Greece. The first weeks were little hard for me cause I couldn’t speak the language so well, they had different interest than me, for instance , in Greece with friends you usually would go for a 2 hour coffee, drink or even food, but here they wanted to go bowling or to go watch a movie, but at the end it was fun and we still go out from times to times.

  One of my favorite readings so far is  “This Way For The Gas, Ladies And Gentlemen”,by Tadeusz Borowski. It is an easy to read text that is about events that happened, not this specific story but the history around it. It gives us plenty of details, about how those people lived in the camps by just mentioning one task that they had to go through. That task is to unload the trains that moved people into the camps, separate them into which will go to the camps (women and men separately) and which will go straight to get killed and also  how they had to take the dead bodies off the trains, and take the peoples belongings.The task in addition with the protagonist’s thoughts it made me feel very emotional. That is a reason why I think this is a Great Work,not just because you learn something about this historical event but also because with just words you feel all these emotions and you have pictures of what it might be like for them,

 I liked the  scene in this story where there is a “tall, grey-haired woman” (702), where she sees the protagonist struggling to complete his task, and she kindly helps him and tells him “my poor boy”. I think that this is a very strong scene with just a few lines, that made me realize how those people even in those very difficult and inhumane times they would try to help each other and try to make them understand that this is not their fault. This also reminds me of our current situation with the pandemic, where people will try to help each other even if they wouldn’t do it before the pandemic, and it gives me a positive vibe which is opposite of the theme of the text which is a sad story. 

 I have heard many times the phrase “history repeats itself”,and I think that texts like this one, that not just states the facts but triggers emotions are important because we certainly would want to avoid something like that happening again.

Question #1:

There are a lot of things I don’t know about the concentration camps. One thing that I found out in this text and shocked me was the details about how they “received” new people in the train stations. All those details about how people that were already in the camps were there and they moved dead bodies from the trains, how they had thousands of people and they were separating them at the station and didn’t tell them that some of them were going to die later.  I had an idea of how all this was happening but didn’t know all these details. 

Question #3:

I think that a moment that is very dehumanizing is on page 704 where we see a mother deny her own child even when the child is crying and call her. I feel like as we know the bond of a mother with her child is very strong and I can only imagine what she had been through and decided to leave it behind. Probably she thought she was doing the best but still I think the separation of a mother and her child is very difficult and that when she decides to do it is even worse for her

Question #4:

I think this woman, being probably old, is trying to help our narrator go on with his task. I think she can recognize that he is painfully trying to do what they told him to do, and she wanted to help him by taking the little dead babies off his hand and maybe tried to comfort and make him understand that this is not his fault.

Question #5:

I think that this scene is significant because I feel like he wants to hear his sister play the violin even if they don’t want to see him. “…because no one rewarded music here as much as he wanted to reward it.”(236) I think in this line we see Gregor wanting to encourage his sister and help her with her music as she did help him at the first stage of his metamorphosis when she brought him food or cleaned his room carefully. I also think that as the writer mentions “ Could he be an animal, to be so moved by music?”(236). This scene is also important because we can see the distinction between human and animal. Maybe in his mind he realizes that despite his looks he is a human and that’s why he decided to go out with his family and the three tenants.

Question 4:

I think that Gregor’s father was maybe because he did not want to kill him by himself, and by throwing apples would somehow be the apple that killed him. He probably knows that this is his son and even if they had their differences he can’t be the one that killed him. It might also be a contrast between his sister trying to feed him and keep him alive and his father trying to kill him with the food that is supposed to keep you alive.

6. What aspects of this short story seem to you to be particularly modernist?

   Two are the most obvious aspects of this story that seem to be modernist. One of them is the lack of a plot that is a characteristic of modernist. In the story of “In The Wine shop” we only see two men meeting in a wine shop and having a conversation, and nothing particular is happening besides that. The second characteristic is how we see our protagonist Lu Wei-fu being an anti-hero. In both the stories he mentioned in their conversation we see that he couldn’t do them because he was late so he “missed the opportunity” to be the hero. I also think that as we saw on our previous reading from T.S Eliot, “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock” in modernist literature there is an emphasis on the thoughts and the character himself rather than what is around him. We see Lu Wei-fu towards the end telling to the other man “ Because I know very well how unwelcome I am, I have even come to dislike myself and, knowing this, why should I inflict myself on others? “ As Prufrock did, he criticizes himself and what others might think about him.

5.Describe an instance of filial piety in the story. What is the significance? 

  An instance of filial piety in the story is where Lu Wei-fu is doing what his mother told him even if he didn’t believe it is going to make a difference. When he went to move his brother’s grave and he finds that there is nothing there he still buries an empty coffin just because his mother told him to in order for her to be calm. I think that has a connection with him being a rebel back in the days when he was trying to revolutionize China as he said to his friend and it shows a contrast on what he is now. Also this particular story emphasizes the anti-hero characteristic of modernist, to connect it to my previous answer. A hero would not have acted that way, he would stick on his beliefs of his rebel past.

“ Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse” (45-48)

As we said Prufrock is very insecure about himself because of him being bold and thin, and we see how he struggles to go and talk to the women in the room. I think these lines are important because it is the center of his emotions and how he feels emasculated and has fear of the unknown (poemanalysis.com). If he dares to disturb the universe. The universe might be the educated women that are talking inside and the question is if he dares to disturb them with his appearance. We see that he immediately procrastinates by saying in a minute.

The line that I had a challenge with is line 48 where he says : “For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse” . The literal meaning I think is that the decision and revision of him finally going in the room and talking to these women will change in a minute, but I don’t think he ever made the decision to actually go in so that the next minute will reverse this decision. I think he keeps asking himself If he dares to do it, not that he decided to go in and then changes his mind.

https://poemanalysis.com/t-s-eliot/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock/

 One text that we have read so far that reminded me of “Punishment” from Tagore is “Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger” by Feng Menglong. Betrayal is a big issue in both stories. In Punishment we see Chidam blame his wife Chandara for killing his brother’s wife, in order to save his brother who is the actual murderer. In the other text we see a very similar situation in which Master Li “sold” his beloved wife to another man for money and with a chance to make up with his father.  Another similarity is that both men tried to make those women believe that it was for the best to betray them. Li said “ With that thousand taels I will have a pretex on which to call on my parents, and you, you my dear benefactress, will also have someone to rely on”.(514) He is making excuses to easy her pain. Same thing happened in ‘’Punishment” where he was trying to convince her that he was going to save her and instructed her what to say in court, like he is gonna be the good husband and save her. But both of the women chose not to do what their husbands decided is best for them. Du Tenth show Li that she had even more money and threw them in the ocean and after that she killed herself.Her last words were “Today every person who has ears and eyes can witness that it is not I who have betrayed you, but rather you who have betrayed me! “(516) Where as Chandara did not try to escape but instead she took the blame and at the very end she said “to hell with him” (899). I think that both of them wanted to keep their dignity instead of being the woman that were betrayed by their husbands. In context, in both texts the writer uses  a third person omniscient to describe the story.

Reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy opened my mind in so many thoughts and feelings. Spending most of our time in our homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I think some of us have lots of free time and either we want it or not, we spend some of it thinking about what is important to us and how we value things. In the text, Ivan is trying to live his life as he was supposed to by other people in the upper class, but this is not the point of life and he realizes this at the end of his life. Reading this and in coordination with the situation that we are going through, is a good opportunity to reevaluate yourself and understand better what makes us happy and most importantly healthy, physically and mentally.  One thing that this reading made me realize is how important relationships are. And I don’t mean just the romantic ones, I also mean friendships and family as well. Ivan clearly didn’t have any deep connection with the character in the text. His colleagues at the day of his death were thinking about the position that opened for them and how he is dead and not them. His wife also was interested in the money that she can get from his death. The only time we see some connection between Ivan and another character is with Gerasim and how being around him can make his suffering a little better and at his last moment with his son. I think it is very important to have healthy relationships with your family, with your friends and your significant other, especially now because with this pandemic, we all need to talk with someone that we feel close to and also listen to them.But also after all this is over and hopefully soon, having people in your life that you trust and that you can be yourself without showing off is a great accomplishment.

I think that after finishing the text the idea that immediately came to mind is that Ivan realized that he did not live his life to the fullest and did not do things that made him happy, but he did not have the opportunity to change that. It was too late. I found the lesson that I got from this text, and I believe it would be the same with or without the pandemic we are going through, is that we have the opportunity to figure out if we are living our lives as we want and if we  chase our own dreams and make steps in order to follow them.

  Watching the film version of Hedda Gabler, the characters were as I imagined them to be. From the opening scene, I could immediately notice how unhappy Hedda was. The moment she is going to enter the room and sees Miss Tessman, she is making a turn to leave but didn’t make it because they saw her. That was the very first clue that I have that she is does not want to see either her husband or Miss Tessman. I think in the movie, Hedda’s personality is more obvious than in the text, because you can also watch her facial expressions, for example, the incident with Miss Tessman’s hat, you could tell that Hedda was joking rather than in the text where you learn it later. On the other hand, in the film, Miss Tessmant and George Tessman didn’t mention anything about Eilert Lovborg, whereas in the text, we have a small introduction about him. Another part that I think that is not as well introduced in the film as in the book is their economical situation. I think in the book they express more that they can’t afford all that rather  than in the film there is only a short talk about the house.

In Hedda Gabler by Ibsen, I find the main story is about a married woman who is very unhappy with her marriage, not interested at all with her husband and with her life. You can notice how bored she is and how she does not care about her husband and his work. And then we have Eilert Lovborg. He is an adventurous man, who she is interested in. It is like he is her escape from her miserable life. I was thinking where I have seen this triangle before and it is a very well known one. From a 1997, James Cameron romantic/drama movie. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the ‘Titanic’. I am guessing if not all, many of us have seen this movie, and I find that it is almost the same story with a few changes. In Titanic, we have our protagonist, Rose, who is also not happy with her upcoming marriage with Cal, and falls in love with the adventurous Jack. Of course there are differences, for example Hedda knew Lovborg from before, but Jack met Rose on the ship for the first time.Another similarity, a small one although, is that both Rose and Hedda wanted to find liberation through suicide. When Jack met Rose, she was trying to jump off the ship in order to get away from her life. Hedda thought that suisideice is the most romantic way to say goodbye to her life, but she actually did it at the end.Cal and Tessmant are very different characters. Tessman is a very ordinary, quiet type of guy, focused on his work. There was nothing bad about him, he wanted for Hedda to have whatever she wanted, and I don’t think that it is particularly his fault that Hedda is so bored with him. On the other hand, Cal is a very arrogant and spoiled man, he is the  bad guy of the story. He didn’t really love Rose and of course it was his fault that she was miserable with their marriage. Another similarity I found in these two stories is that both Lovborg and Jack died in the end. I think Titanic is a little more modern version of Hedda Gabler.