Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare where the main character has to revenge the death of his father. Revenge is not good, however; Hamlet had to do it because he knew the murderer of his father, and because the murderer also had stolen the position of his father as well as his mother. To achieve his objective Hamlet make some plays in order to take off the mask of the usurper. Also, because the killer was a king Hamlet needed excuses to be close to him and elude king’s armed guard. At the end Hamlet gets his revenge however he has to pay a high price for it, he lose his own life which according to his honor, it worth.

Los Vendidos

I think that this play had a lot to do with acculturation. Because of the Mexican models and the lady that wanted to buy. Again a lot of these plays go back to when there were slaves and people were sold and bought. this is one of the plays that you can actually understand just buy reading it. the author mixed it with Spanish so it gave it a little twitch to it. I like the idea of the Spanish mix i also liked that it had an ending that no one was expecting. I really enjoyed reading this play.

The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

The story is about a mad person who, after killing a companion for no apparent reason, hears an interminable heartbeat and releases his overwhelming sense of guilt by shouting his confession to the police.The narrator of ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ recounts his murder of an old man. Since he tells the story in first-person, the reader cannot determine how much of what he says is true; thus, he is an unreliable narrator.
He tells the tale of how an old man who lives in his house has never wronged him. For an unknown reason, the old man’s cloudy, pale blue eye has incited madness in the narrator. Whenever the old man looks at him, his blood turns cold. Thus, he is determined to kill him to get rid of this curse.

Fiesta, 1980 by Junot Diaz

In Fiesta, the protagonist appears to be a pre-teen Dominican male, who I understood to be the same only, slightly more grown-up central character in The Sun, The Moon, The Stars.
In Fiesta, there is a moment when Yunior is watching his mother at tia Yrma's party that he is overwhelmed by his feelings for his mother and her predicament.
I found Yunior's examination of his mother's life to be truly moving, because so much was happening within him at this time. This moment points to the fact that Yunior was already preparing for the loss of his family life.I find it most interesting that after having experienced the discord caused by Papi's infidelity, Yunior would, in his early adulthood, be unfaithful to his girl, Magda. He felt so terrible lying next to Cassandra that he called Magda to tell her he missed her. He sees his relationship with Magda as one that hit a rocky patch of road and he sees himself as a true optimist who is sure that all can be worked out.
It is unfortunate that the adult Yunior can't see what the young Yunior did. He can't see that due to infidelity he is without Magda in much the same way he imagined Mami to be without Papi.

I Too Sing America by Julia Alvarez

This writing is an expression of Langstons hopes to not only be accepted into American society as an African American, but for the people who once condescended the black race to understand how they wronged him and his people, and to feel remorse. The important thing in this poem to me is that he realizes that he was worth more than the way he was being treated, and that he had hope that one day America would understand how this treatment was not right and would assimilate the black culture.

Immigrants by Pat Mora

My interpretation was that the parents did all of those things thinking those are what can make their child more American. As if the child ate black beans and rice or eggs, was named Maria or Marlena, and was given a soccer ball, the child would be less American than they are.

I thought that by not capitalizing American, the poet may be implying that regardless of it all, the children aren’t seen as all American.

Everyday Use by Alice Walker

Everyday Use by Alice Walker is a short story about the great effort for identity and the ability to translate that identity between a mother and daughter. Taking place in rural Georgia, the story is narrated by the mother as she awaits a visit by her daughter Dee, returning home after a long absence.When Dee finally shows up she is wearing a fancy dress down to the ground even in the sweltering summer, she is wearing gold earrings and bracelets dangle, she is with a man whose Islamic name her mother cannot pronounce, and she has changed her name.
While eating Dee/Wangero announces that she wants to take with her the milk churn top and dasher as well as two quilts, artifacts from her family’s past. She especially wants the quilts because they were stitched by hand by her grandmother from her grandmother’s dresses, but hDee/Wangero and boyfriend leave, explaining haughtily that they are too ignorant to understand their own heritage and telling Maggie that it’s not too late to try and make something of herself. Maggie and mother end the story by enjoying some snuff until bedtimers mother announces that she has promised to give Maggie the quilts when she gets married.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor.

Though the story begins innocently enough, O'Connor introduces the character of the Misfit, an escaped murderer who kills the entire family at the end of the story.
At the initial meeting of the Misfit and the Grandmother, it was easy to right away see the Misfit as the bad guy and the grandmother as the innocent party. But from the religious perspective, their positions can be equated. The grandmother is selfish, as the story illustrates from the beginning, and the misfit is a criminal who takes pleasure in killing, both of them are in some way serving their own causes, and portraying self-love. Both of them bring these selfish desires into the closing dialogue of the story. The misfit is out to kill and the grandmother is out to save herself.The misfit is out to kill and the grandmother is out to save herself. She begins to tell the misfit who she hasn?t met until that moment that he is good man, thereby attempting to save herself. And the misfit is determined to do what he came to do.

"The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World"

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" is a short story about the body of a dead man that washed ashore in a town that desperately needed something to believe in. Through the literary effect of magical realism, the drowned man comes to symbolize all the beauty of life.
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" begins when the children of a small coastal village see an unfamiliar bulge in the sea. When it washes up on the beach they realize it is a drowned man. For the rest of the afternoon they play with the corpse until another villager sees them and tells the rest of the villagers. The men of the village then carry the body to the nearest house, remarking that he weighs almost as much as a horse. He is also taller than other men and barely fits in the house.

Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood

At the beginning of "Happy Endings," John and Mary meet. Each of the six versions of the story that follow present a different scenario of what happens to the couple.
Version A is the "happy ending" story. In this version, John and Mary fall in love. They get married, enjoy their jobs, buy a nice home, and start a family. All in all, they live comfortable, fulfilling lives. Eventually they retire and then die.

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

Cathedral features three primary characters: the narrator, his wife, and the blind man Robert. For each character we can graph their traits, and motivations why they do and say the things they do and say. The wife she clearly has had a rocky past, a broken marriage, a suicide attempt, and what apparently is a less than ideal marriage to her current husband. She is a sensitive person, however, and has developed a close friendship with Robert, whom she has kept in touch with for a decade. She is generous, courteous and genuinely happy to get a visitor. Robert, although he is not the protagonist, is the hero of the story, I think -- a man who has not let his blindness impair his quality of life. He has forged close relationships, had a loving marriage, and is clearly an open-minded, easy going, trustworthy individual.

A & P by John Uplike

Sammy's encounter with a trio of swimsuited girls in the grocery store where he works encompasses many of the themes central to adolescence, including accepting the repercussions of one's choices. When Sammy quits in protest of how the girls are treated by the store's manager, he knows that from now on, the world will be a more difficult place.

Araby

A sensitive boy confuses a romantic crush and religious enthusiasm. He goes to Araby, a bazaar with an exotic, Oriental theme, in order to buy a souvenir for the object of his crush. The boy arrives late, however, and when he overhears a shallow conversation a female clerk is having with her male friends and sees the bazaar is closing down, he realizes that he has allowed his imagination to carry him away. He leaves without a souvenir, feeling foolish and angry with himself.

The story of an hour

"The Story of an Hour” at first reminded me of “A Very Short Story” in the way that it leaves out details that that the reader needs to fill in the gaps and easily understand the plot of the story. It’s this “Swiss cheese” effect that makes the story so interesting; by allowing the reader to “plug in” his/her own details the story takes on varied connotations. An example of this is the beginning paragraph where the reader gets the impression that this woman is going to be extremely upset that her husband has died in a train accident. The people closest to her have gone to great lengths to cushion the blow of her husband’s death; however, we are not given any details as to the relationship they had in the past or any relevant information. By doing this the author allows the reader to form his/her own false interpretation of how this woman is going to react. We see this technique used early into the story and we, as readers, are strung along until we hear the woman utter the words “free, free, free” which really throws the reader off the track he/she expected to follow. The rest of the narrative begins to twist the story to the exact opposite of what the reader was waiting to have happen. We find a woman who instead of being upset and heart-broken over her husband's death is experiencing complete joy over the death of another human being. Which, of course, now gives us the impression that she has been mistreated in this relationship and that, perhaps, this death is for the best. All this makes the reader justify the way the woman reacted, but in the end it's Mrs. Mallard who dies upon seeing her husband alive and well. This ending definitely conjures up some questions that are difficult to answer.