- “Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal’s real.” What does it mean in “The Story of the Stone” and what problems does it reveal for the story and for the society in that period?
- In the story “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Bartleby always said “I prefer not to”. Does the meaning of “prefer not to” real mean what the story show us or it have a deeper meaningful mean and what does it reveal to us?
Author Archives: Lihua Chen
“WHEN”, “He”s
This week there were five articles for the assignments and they were all talking in a similar way, about declaring for independence and liberty, claiming for equal rights and fair treatment. However, the language the authors used in the writing were really hard for me. The language styles were hard for me to understand the truth meaning of the articles. In this way, I took the article “Declaration of Sentiments” for discussing. Basically, the article was written by women for claiming about the equal rights and opportunities as men. They believed all humans were created equally and should be treated equally. They should get the equal rights and opportunities as men.
The article was written in a very special ways. In the beginning of the article, it started with all capital letter word “WHEN”, and then use a comma to separate the next part of the sentence. Usually, “when” refers a particular time or moment. As “WHEN” was capital in all letter, the author regarded it as a very important and serious time and moment. There should be some important events happened or some serious things to tell next in the article. Also, most of its paragraphs were written very short with only one to two sentences. For those paragraphs, they all started with “He”. All those paragraphs were listing about how men treated women in a very unequal and unfair way. Men prevented women from doing anything included in politics and in life. Men took everything from women and limited their activities. Women believed that if men did not do such things to women, if they could get the equal opportunities as men, women might be done as well as men or even better than men. Women believed men and women should be treated equally and nobody should take away the rights from them. Writing about these, women hoped all people included men could be enlightened.
After reading the article, I was someway loved the author’s writing style even though I might not understand the author wholly.
Desire led to Tragedy, be simple!!
For the whole story of “Candide”, I concluded that Desire led to tragedy. Candide wanted to be with Cunegonde and then was kicked out. People wanted more property and territory and then led to wars. Or others did not satisfied with their current situation and then led to fighting or stealing and so on. After Candide was kicked out castle, he suffered a lot as he was caught by others and escaped again and again. He met his tutor Pangloss and saw how he died and later got to know he was alive. He got to know the miserable experiences from Cunegonde and others later. He also experienced cheating, fighting and helpless. However, he still believed things would get better as time went on. As last, everyone got disappointed and gave up trying. As Candide met the ugly Cunegonde, as all of his money was cheated by a man, as they had nothing but a small farm, they gave up trying to do anything. However, as Candide heard the story from a man who lived very happy with his family who only owned a small farm, he got to know the truth. Everything will be better and be the best if you are satisfied with yourself and current situation, you will be very happy and satisfy. After that, all of them did farming on their farm and lived happily together.
I have learnt from this interesting story that the author was trying to tell people to not desire too much, if they did, lots of tragedies would happen. If you want to live happily, just be simply. Do not let yourself to be too much complicated. Everything would be happening very well and the world would finally be the best if you are simple. Sometimes people desire too much, and then try to think of many ways to get what they want and lead to miserable outcome. Author is trying to let people understand this simple and important truth through this story. However, how many people will understand it and can do it!!
Heartless of the Society and Helpless of the Poors
After reading the passage “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, I have found that the author is trying to satirize the policy in Ireland as well as the heartless and greedy of upper class people and the society. At that time, the population grew fast especially among the poor people. However, the poors couldn’t raise their children by themselves and the government did not care about this condition as well as the rich people. They only cared about the economic and money. Thus, it was very common to see lots of beggars including little children on the street begging. In order to help the development of the economic, the government and the riches suppressed the poors and exploited from them. Lots of poor children died every year. The author pointed at this situation and made a suggestion. In order to solve this problem and get a perfect result, the poor people could sell their children to the rich people for their meal. In doing this, population problem could be solved, poor people could solve their economic problem and the rich people could be satisfied and happy. The society’s heartless and greedy led to this tragedy.
As reading this passage, I felt like that the author’s mind was a little abnormal. It sounded strange and very cruel. At the same time, I could feel the helpless of the poor people and the heartless of the rich people from author’s writing. I think the world would be better if the government changed the policy and people could help each other. If the society and the rich people could be more concerned about the poor people and give hands to poor people and help them out, if people could help each other, all problems would not be problems. Selling children and made them be a meal was very cruel and could not be a way of solving problems. As to those little poor children, they did not know how they born and did not know how they died and became a meal on the table.