Welcome to My Blog!

 Hey everyone, this is my new blog.  I connected this blog to Adsense, so feel free to refresh the page and send me money!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jes Grew IRL???

Both Mumbo Jumbo and Ragtime  use history to add to the realness of their texts. In Ragtime, Doctorow uses "false documents" that likely aren't true but for the most part can't be disproven to fill in the gaps of real history used in his book. For instance, he depicts J. P. Morgan talking to a seagull in a bout of loneliness, something that cannot be proven nor disproven. Moments like this make Ragtime  feel real.  Mumbo Jumbo takes place around the ragtime period as well, and during the Harlem Renaissance. Jes Grew is an anti-plague that spreads dancing and liveliness, a metaphor for the spread of black culture. The novel identifies things like ragtime and jazz as elements of Jes Grew, but Jes Grew's origins go back thousands of years. Reed uses what I presume to be (mostly) real Egyptian mythology and mumbo jumbo lore as actual history in  Mumbo Jumbo.  By using African history/mythology to set the novel, Reed accomplishes multiple things: he creates an Afroce...
Read more

Esther's Healing Process and Escape From Societal Roles

    Buddy Willard emotionally injures Esther when he tells her he is not a virgin, shattering Esther's image of him and her feelings for him. Esther claims she isn't bothered by that; it's the fact that he had pretended otherwise that bothered her. However at the time, it was expected that men would sleep around, and other girls at Esther's college told her that was perfectly normal. Perhaps Buddy didn't feel the need to tell her because of this. But Esther felt cheated, like Buddy had one-upped her, and she couldn't continue to be with him knowing that he wasn't a virgin. She couldn't "get even" because of the threat of pregnancy and worries about having to marry the wrong man. Also, the double standard that men could sleep around while women were expected to remain chaste greatly upset her.      Later in the novel Dr. Nolan prescribed birth control to Esther, which greatly helped Esther on her healing journey.  Esther tells Doctor Nolan that ...
Read more

Don't trust Holden Caulfield

     Holden is obsessed with not being "phony". He gets ticked off anytime he catches a whiff of phoniness, but he takes it so far that he feels surrounded by phonies. To not be a phony in Holden's eye leaves almost no room for being part of the adult world.      One thing that annoyed me is when Holden criticized Ernie for being too good at the piano. The way he described it, Ernie really did sound like a prick, but the idea that I didn't like was when he said "If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet" (84). He rejects the idea of being good at something to get attention from other people. As a pianist, I enjoy playing for myself as well, but I also like sharing what I've learned with my friends, and I don't like his view on that. It isn't wrong to want others to see what you've accomplished. Holden also dislikes the actors in the Lunts for being show-offy, saying, "If you do something too good, then, after a while...
Read more