English Blog

The New Year’s Sacrifice by Lu Xun is a short story about old Chinese traditions and beliefs. As a Chinese person I can see that his beliefs and traditions have been way before I was born. All though I am Chinese, my family and I do not take part of this hardcore marriage tradition as XiangLin does. I didn’t like how the women of the story is named and acknowledges only as the wife. She clearly was very uncomfortable as she even said, “However, I continued to feel uncomfortable, and even after a night’s rest my mind kept running on this…” I found this very unfair and was very demeaning to women.

Although she was forced to remarry she was also ridiculed for doing something she didn’t even want to do. Her presence was always made fun of by the Chinese society and was said even her ancestors wouldn’t accept her. That is very wrong because you can’t bring a women down for doing something they didn’t even want to do in the first place.

Someone shouldn’t be called unlucky because they are still alive while their husband and family is not. She is not the reason why they died and is not fair. Chinese cultures always have some negative correlations with things which I respectfully disagree with. This is very traditional and I am glad to not be apart of this society. I don’t think I would be able to tolerate all the hate.

The video I chose was “The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)- Thug Notes Summary and Analysis. This is part of the series Thug Notes: Classic Literature, Original Gangster Season 3 Episode 13. This is about the story of a “lazy” salesman. The video should be watched from 2:33-to the end. This is the analysis of the story.

The quote I chose was, “The only thing everybody wants you to do is put your head down, grind and stack your cheddar,” I really like this quote because all though the narrator may have a negative view on this I believe this is very true. I believe in this method and I feel like this will make people very successful and it has happened. This is a very entrepreneurial method because of all the entrepreneurial individuals I follow this is what they did.

All though this is a story of a salesman this is also about the people around him. the people around him are toxic in my opinion and puts even more pressure on a single fellow.

This video was a visual commentary on the story of Frankenstein. It first opens up with sad music and the theme of rejection. The creature has been living in the woods due to his lack of interaction with people. The creator of this creature rejected his existence and even in the story you can tell no-one really accepts who he is. The quote in page 125, chapter 15 “I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever”. This is a prime example of the rejection with the word deserted. To be left alone. this then leads to the other theme of the story of loneliness. You can tell that by this same quote as he says I am an outcast in the world forever.” I found that very sad because this whole line was very negative towards his view of his own existence. In the video they also explain how when he interacts with people they are too scared too which means that no-one can be near him. This video just backed up my thoughts on the story as I though these were the main themes of the story as well and the narrator just provided more evidence.

In this scene of Bartelby, a story of Wall Street is about Bartleby casually refusing to do work from the lawyer. Which means he was refusing to do his own job that he was hired to do. This is one example of the conflict that arises in the film. This then leads to another request from his boss to do more verification work. Which then leads to him refusing again. This angers his boss even more which leads to even more conflict. His boss then takes more initiative and becomes a more authoritative figure. He asks Bartelby’s fellow coworkers what they think of him refusing to do the work he was hired to do. One of the coworkers said “Boss, signs the paychecks, you say dance, I RUMBA!!” This meant that if the boss continues to pay you, you are required to do whatever tasks he assigns you. The boss then asks all the other coworkers what they think about the refusal and they all come to the conclusion that he is crazy. The boss then gets in Bartelby’s face and stick the box to his chest. He then gets annoyed and drops the box at his feet displaying his anger. I felt like this was a very tense situation due to the fact the boss was showing passive aggressive signs towards Bartelby. Although he dropped the box in front of his instead of on him he still got his message across that he was very angry. I then notice how Bartelby is not scared and is risking his job by saying one simple line, “I prefer not.” I thought this video was able to get the message across of being angry through the use of facial expressions and aggressive actions.

The video I chose was “Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman (Analysis & Interpretation) by Nick Courtright, the Executive Editor of Atmosphere Press. He talks about the most popular section which is Section 6 about the grass. He talks about the Bible for dust to dust and compares it to the poem as grass to grass. He talks about how we cannot answer questions that only God can answer such as what is grass? Section 15 was very confusing to me because it was just a list of people but he explains to us viewers why he named different kinds of people. It was meant to mean that no matter who you are that we are all equal from top to bottom as humans. I was very interested when the narrator talks about the animal section and calls humans more materialistic and animals are not which I thought was very funny because of course animals cannot own material items.

My favorite section:

The video I chose was a presentation on “Reading Oroonoko” from another student. It was an overview of the book giving the historical background and importance of the novel Oroonoko. What I liked about this video was that there were always reasons of why this book was so important and to give a few examples it had themes of rebellion. betrayal, slavery, and etc. There was always a “reading process” of how the creator of the video read the book and it was very similar to how I would read. The video creator knew this book was very difficult and cut it up and highlighted everything that she thought was important till she understood.  Oroonoko was about slavery and the European Slave Trade. While this video didn’t talk too much about the book she gave me a understanding of how she read the book and how readers like us can interpret it. She gave examples of what good annotations and what bad annotations were. There were also different reading lenses for this book such as psychological lenses which focuses on the lifestyle, upbringing, and reactions of the characters during this time period. Because this was during the slavery period there were many different points of views and experiences due to the fact of the hierarchy of the king and slaves.

The video I chose was “Don Quixote – Thug Notes Summary & Analysis” by Wisecrack. This is part of the series Thug Notes: Classic Literature, Original Gangster Season 5, Episode 5. This video was narrated by the same person who went over the King Lear summary. Even watching a new episode of the series I still found the narrator’s voice annoying. Don Quixote is one of the most popular pieces of literature than I never heard of. Don Quixote is a man who loved to read books that according to the narrator had “no value” and doesn’t require intellect. Reading these books led to him taking many “adventures” and the narrator agrees that the journey Don Quixote has been on is a load of craziness. One thing that I liked about this video is about the analysis of deception in the book. The narrator brings up that “all fiction=appearance and reality” to Don Quixote. According to the wacky stories he does have a problem  with telling what is reality and what’s not. To me the scene about the windmills is more about imagination and not a lesson on deception. I believe that reading more books allowed for Don Quixote to have a more open and creative mindset which may seem crazy to people who read it. To think windmills are giants are a sense of a child’s imagination that he never grew out of. It is possible to call him delusional but to me Don Quixote was more of a story about creativity and the power of imagination. During these “adventures” he sure seemed to enjoy it as he met new people and did new things.

The video I chose was “King Lear (Shakespeare) – Thug Notes Summary and Analysis”. The video was created by Wisecrack. This video was part of the Thug Notes: Classic Literature, Original Gangster series and was up to Episode 14 of Season 4. The narrator made the play a little earlier to understand even though his voice and slang was annoying. The visuals the video had were better than the audio and I would watch the video without sound and still understand. The visuals depicted every scene and even had some speech bubbles and animations. The narrator found that King Lear was about the lesson of “keeping it real”. King Lear wants to be loved by everyone and didn’t take no for an answer. He was getting fake love and still expected everyone to give it back. It fired back on him and messed with his head. There was a part where the narrator mentioned that he was able to see once he lost his eyes. He may not have physical sight but now has been enlightened. There was also a loss of many things. The narrator mentioned a lost of love, power, sight, and life. King Lear lost the love from one of his daughters since he didn’t care for her once he heard that she didn’t love him as much as the other two sisters. There was a lost of power from King Lear as he doesn’t have his kingdom anymore and becomes a low status individual. There was a lost of sight when the eyes were gouged out. There was a lost of life when daughter Cordelia got hung and then he lost his own life. King Lear to the commentator is seen as a fool that learns his lesson at the end even though he doesn’t live to use the knowledge he has gotten.