Gatsby

     My friend Brandon had always recommended "The Great Gatsby" to me but I never bothered to read the book until it was assigned in this class. I had watched the movie long before reading and in a way it spoiled the book for me. Never the less, I finally understood why my friend liked it so much.

I said that the movie had spoiled the book for me, not just that I had known most of the content before reading and know what was coming next, but when I started reading I couldn't come up with an idea of the characters for myself. I would always picture the actors in the roles while I was reading. It took away from the imagery and my own imagination of the story. I would recommend reading before watching. Despite it all, I couldn't help but to still like the novel. Their were parts and details that I had never known about, such as Gatsby's funeral and Nick's conversation with Wolfsheim towards the end. I remember seeing Owl Eyes in the movie but other than the library scene he had no more importance to the film.

I liked it better than Fitzgerald's short story "Winter Dreams", which to me is a little weird because to me both stories were very similar, almost the same. "The Great Gatsby" and "Winter Dreams" share a few key topics. They discuss social class, love, what was and what might have been. Both stories are centered around a man who has made a name for himself, starting from the ground up. They both have dreams and goals to improve themselves and work to earn their place in the upper class. Both men find the woman of their dreams which they are with for a short period of time, but after they "leave" her they are never able to get her back. The characters "live in the past" and always wonder what might have been.

They say that the book is better than the movie and I've found that in most cases that is true. Sometimes the movie surpasses the book and other times the movie doesn't due it justice. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck is one in which I thought the movie did a little better than the book, not to say that the book wasn't fantastic. Stephen King's book "The Dreamcatcher" however was way better than the movie which was just awful. I can't say if the movie for "The Shawshank Redemption" is better than the book because I haven't read it; although I'd have to say that it's going to be pretty tough to beat the movie.

In the case of "The Great Gatsby", I think that the book and movie did about the same. The character development in both were amazing. Toby McGuire did a phenomenal job playing Nick Caraway, and Leonardo DiCaprio always does great in whatever role he plays. The movie lines up almost exactly with the book, which I really didn't expect it to do. The largest change that they had made was cutting out Gatsby's funeral. Of course lines are omitted and you don't get all the details from the book but the movie holds up, and then some.

A Play Named A Streetcar Named Desire

     I wasn't expecting to read a play in this class but I guess I should have. I had never heard of "A Streetcar Named Desire" before but I really enjoyed the play and overall thought it was, for lack of a better word, pretty good. The movie wasn't half bad either. It had ended on a darker note than I was expecting though. Based on the title, the play doesn't foreshadow just how violent the conflict is. The arguing between Stanley and Blanche increasing was one thing but I never thought that it would end in sexual abuse.

    One of the things that I found really interesting about "A Streetcar Named Desire" was that the play was based around a game of poker. The two player were Blanche and Stanley, and Stella was the dealer. Stella wasn't just the dealer though, she was also the prize. Blanche wanted to take Stella away and Stanley wanted to keep her. Poker is a game of luck with a bit of strategy involved; having to know when to hold or play your cards and also knowing how to bluff. Blanche was the best at bluffing, but it was by a stroke of luck that Stanley knew a guy who had known Blanche, which lead to her downfall.

    I didn't have a favorite character from the play, none of them really stuck out to me, but if I had to pick my least favorite it would have to be Blanche. It wasn't so much of what she did or tried to do that bothered me, but I just didn't like her personality.

    Overall, I enjoyed the play, but it wasn't one of my favorites. Then again, drama isn't my genre of choice. It was better than some of the other plays that I have read. I never did get into Shakespeare and didn't enjoy Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". It was a play symbolizing McCarthyism and its flaws and irrationality involving the Salem Witch Trials but I just didn't really care much for it. Some of the character developments were fantastic but altogether... meh. Getting back to "A Streetcar Named Desire", if "The Crucible" were a zero and "Noises Off" were a ten, I'd rate it at a six, maybe seven.   

Poetry

I never was into poetry much, I prefer music. "Where words fail, music speaks", that was a quote from the poet Hans Christian Andersen. I guess that, in a sense, they are the same thing if you think about it. Poetry is alright though, it makes you think, come up with motives; reflect on similar situations you've experienced.

I've probably read more poetry this past week than I have in my whole life. Honestly the only poet I knew from this section was Robert Frost, but I discovered many other poets like Carl Sandburg, T. S. Elliot, and Sylvia Plath from the reading. Out of the new authors I've read, Edwin Robinson would be my favorite. Why? I don't know exactly. I could relate to his character Miniver Cheevy but not so much as wanting to be born in the middle ages or drinking my problems away.

I didn't care very much for Sandburg's poems, the only one I liked was "Grass". There is much personification used in his writing and I liked that he made the grass as a sort of undertaker. "Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work- I am the grass; I cover all".

While Sandburg's poetry is rather simple, I had a hard time trying to wrap my head around the works of Sylvia and Anne Sexton. From what I had read about them in the Anthology, they liked to use imagination; a lot of imagination. It was difficult to understand the messages that they were trying to convey. From what I've gathered their poems mainly focus around death, pain, and hatred. Of course not all of their poems are absorbed by those three things, like the poem Anne had wrote for her daughter "Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman". "Lady Lazarus was probably my favorite of Plath's. Their styles of writing are... interesting to say the least.

T. S. Elliot. I had to think about this one. I didn't hate his work but I didn't like it either. "The Waste Land" seemed to drag on and I just couldn't finish the poem. I thought "The Hollow Men" was alright. I remember hearing the quote from the end of the poem somewhere before. "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper". I can't remember where I heard it but it was interesting to find where it comes from.   

No Cigar Left Behind

While I was reading "The Red Badge of Courage" I noticed something peculiar in the second chapter of the novel. There is a part in the chapter where Crane mentions a horseman that has a "short, sharp-worded conversation" with the colonel of Henry's regiment. Afterwards the horseman rides off and turns to shout back at the colonel, "Don't forget that box of cigars!" after which, the colonel mumbles something . Henry wonders what cigars had to do with anything in the war. After reading this, it reminded me of a story my high school history teacher told my class. During the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee had written down very detailed strategies for troop movements for several months to come, and made copies that he gave to his officers. At some point in the war a Union officer came across a cigar box that had a copy of General Lee's plans inside. A careless Rebel officer had used the copy to wrap his cigars with and then left them in the box and forgot about them. Seeing that they looked important he sent them off to his superior officers for further analysis. Finding the cigar box with the plans inside of it gave the north a huge advantage and helped to turn the war in their favor. When I first thought of it I wasn't sure if it was a cigar box that had the plans, but after double checking with Google I confirmed that it was. I can't say for sure if that was what Stephen Crane was referring to. He might have added that in to show that the officers were confident that they would win the battle and smoke cigars to celebrate. Though most of the fights Henry's regiment is involved in end in them retreating, they do win a few battles. It also mentions at one point that his officers say they have the rebs right where they want them. This could mean that they had found Lee's plans or it could have just been luck. The soldiers often complain about how badly they were getting "licked". Still, it's very interesting that Crane mentioned the box of cigars in the story.

One of My Favorites

Out of the short stories I have read in this class so far, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is my favorite.

It's not that I didn't like the other stories. I enjoyed "The Outcasts of Poker Flat", "The 'Cadian Ball" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek". I reread Huck Finn and I liked reading "The Red Badge of Courage", but "The Yellow Wallpaper" was my favorite out of all of those.

The idea of the story is what I liked the most about it. I never did get into reading about adventure or stories about love and adultery. I like suspense. I like it when a story turns out to be darker than it appears. Something with a twisted, or sinister intention in the tale really makes me want to read more. Suspense and horror being my genre of choice, I've read books by Stephen King and also some of Edgar Allen Poe's work ("The Masque of the Red Death" is my favorite of his) and reading "Goosebumps" when I was a kid was great too.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" was the short story for me. It left me wondering at the end of the story: Was the house haunted? Was she really sick or did something in the house possess her? Was it all just in her head? What happened after she left the room at the end? (cliffhangers). As the story progressed, it just got creepier and creepier. I definitely didn't expect that from the title. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is my favorite so far because it appealed to me more than the other stories did.