Thursday, April 24, 2008

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.