The Good Earth Write up

Wang Lung's uncle gives me a horrible impression of what he is like. He is portrayed as sneaky man who will do anything to collect a little bit of money here and there. He will even go as far as robbing to get his money. Also he is seen as a greedy, self-centered fool who gambles all his money away only to go to his prosperous nephew Wang Lung looking for a large sum of money as soon as he has lost everything to the gambling tables. As he arives he knows that he will have to get the money because of the values that the families share. This is quite an example of how Wang worked so hard while his uncle sat at the gambling tables and yet he must give what he has earned to his non-deserving uncle. Eventually though the good times pass and Wang along eith everyone else from his village are left in complete poverty as the rain ceases to exist and the sun is relentless upon the earth they rely on. This forces most of them to travel to the south. There they find people so rich that they act as though they are royalty. This proves to be quite an experience for Wang and his family as they discover that there is food and work for them there and they will survive. Though it is as hard of a life as life could possibly be they have eachother which will lead them through to the end when they mught once again go back to their fields and prosper once more.

Journal

Stream of Consciousness-River

The great blue expanse of water stretching for miles, it travels to its new home rushing with new life the river flows teeming with life,life that lives upon these waters swimming and crawling the the wondrouse crystal water the creatures go. Possibly to a new home or in search of food the great journey never ends. Some will survive these great journeys whiloe others won't, by the end they will all have experienced the great power of the river as they were swept upon it without any way out it flows to the destination always moving never stopping the river flows.

Ch. 1 of The Good Earth

The first chapter of this book really shows the way of life that Wang Lung lives and how its so much different from ours in many ways. They have different values, different ways of looking at life and also the religion that they practice. Women are treated much differently in this book than they would be today. If they aren't filthy rich they are shunned to being slaves and eventually given away to be wives to men that they have never even met before and to mostly be that mans slave. They also see that there lives are going to be led by fate and that nature controls everything. The quote that proves this is "Now it was as if Heaven had chosen this day to wish him well. Earth would bear fruit."(p. 2) This shows that they live of and with the land, that the earth will provide them with what they need and everything is of the Earth.

Another way of life in this book that isn't nearly the same as now is how much the people must respect there elders and how they must provide for them and follow their every order as Wang had to with his father. Everthing the father says goes without question. For the mode of this book there are lots of symbols in the first chapter that point to this book being comedy but i think that it's irony because of the things that happen that aren't normal at all like things that are normally happy times turn into dark sad ones such as when he got married. His wife had never even met him before and just did what he said without question and without expression. Just the same old straight sad face that she had always and and always will. Another thing that i noticed was that ever since he went into the house of Hwang he did everything gruffly. I think thats a symbol of how this marriage won't be a very happy one and things will be done because that's how it has been for years. In the end this book is very interesting on how it implements different aspects of life in a different time period and culture.

"Dreams" by Langston Hughes

A poem that i found by the poet that im researching (Langston Hughes) is called "Dreams"

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bired
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow

“A Jury of her Peers”

The short story "A Jury of her Peers" by Susan Glaspell is a very interseting piece of literature filled with many symbols and shows a direct portrayal of what life was like in the time period that the story takes place. The main point of the story is to show how something so cheerful and wonderful can turn to something so ugly and crazy when it is caged up with nowhere to go, no one to see, and nothing to do. When all those freedoms get taken away from you as they did from Minnie Foster people get very unhappy as those people need to get out of the mental and physical cage that they have been put in. The last straw in this story for Minnie Foster was when her canary was strangled to death. That canary was a symbol of her little bit of freedom that she had left and when that was gone with it went all hope, as well as her last glimmer of freedom in that cage of a home that she was living in. So with that she went and strangled the life out of that person who had strangled everything out of her. That person was her husband Mr. Wright. In the end this story shows how people need to be let out to have their own life, one not controlled by another person and not to be stuck in their house sitting in misery.