What I would recommend
I really enjoyed reading “A Rose for Emily” because of the twisted ending that William Faulkner laid out for us. The first person narration allowed us readers to obtain the insights of how Emily’s neighbors viewed her as. Instead of feeling sympathy for her, we pitied her and her pathetic attempts to keep her loved ones near, literally.
Although “A Rose for Emily” makes the top three of my favorite short stories, I would have to say that my friends would most likely enjoy reading “21 steps”. Today’s world is so advanced that it’s not even funny. Written texts and books are all old school. My first reaction towards the short story was that it worked hand in hand with google earth. It automatically draws you into the reading itself. The movement of the character Rick from place to place keeps you active on the screen. It allows you to be aware of where the character is and where he is heading towards. It is in first person form; you follow each and every step that Rick takes along with the confusion that troubles him throughout the story. Since our view is limited to Rick’s own thoughts we too are always one step behind in the plot. What Rick goes through is also very random. One minute he is riding a taxi and then the next minute he is in Edinburgh with some people who he has never seen before.
In addition, the narrator is careful not to reveal too much about each character. For example, Rick constantly reminds himself of the record he have; what cops wouldn’t want to catch him? Very little details are given about other characters which make it hard to differentiate between minor characters and major characters. “21 Steps” keeps you guessing on what is going to happen next. It’s something that my friends would enjoy reading.

“My Accidental Finding”
Yesterday night I was messing with my facebook (acting like I had something important to do just so I would not look like a loser in front of my roommate). I pretended to be focused on trying to find the right printed back-round to fit my personality. After awhile, I quit my charade and started looking up friends’ names that I haven’t talked to for awhile. I accidentally typed in “Sarah Nippers” instead of “Sarah Lippers”. I was about to exit out when I stumbled upon “Nippers, your solution to indigestion”. As I clicked on his page, I realized that this Nippers was exactly like the Nippers in “Bartleby, the Scrivener”!
The back-ground for his page showed stomachs and people who I thought were in pain. I laughed to myself wondering what a big dork he was, showing pictures of stomachs on his facebook page (kind of creepy). Then, I read a caption that he himself wrote. It says: “Welcome to my page, both young and old. You are not alone, for I have struggled with indigestion for the last decade of my life. I too was once a victim of the queasy and uncomfortable feelings of indigestion. At the age of 25 I was inclined to quit my job as a scrivener at the office for I could not live like this! A friend of mine, Ginger-Nut, introduced me to a traditional Chinese medicine. It was substances that were extracted from ginger! Since then, I have been healthy as an ox.” I then realized that his whole page was devoted to selling this ginger medicine. All his friends were of doctors, patients, and random people that sought for his aid. It was then that I noticed the song “Pocket full of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield was playing in the background. His mood was set to “content”. As I was about to exit, I added him as a friend just in case I ever get caught in an indigestion problem.
I chose to write about Nippers and his indigestion problem because that was a big part in the book. I thought it would be nice to write how he tries to help other people overcome something that he himself once struggled with. Now that he is cured, he’s just full of joy!

The Cask of Amontillado
It is hard to judge, from a reader’s point of view, if the narrator is telling the truth or not. If a story is narrated, we have no other perspectives but of the narrator. Although it is difficult to weigh one side heavier than the other, there are context clues that could lead us to decide the level of the narrator’s trustworthiness. In “The Cask of Amontillado” the narrator Montresor exposes bits and pieces of his personality and traits that lead us to discover his level of trust.
To begin with, it was never revealed to us what Fortunato did in the first place to offend him. We as the readers do not know what drove Montresor’s motives: to satisfy his nature by getting revenge of killing Fortunato. This allows us to conlude that Montresor is a mysterious man, for all we know he might have been offended by a small comment that Fortunato made. Throughout the story, Montresor continues to mock Fortunato by insisting that he fetch Luchresi to distinguish the difference between Amontillado and Sherry. This only urges Fortunato to tag along even more because of his pride of expertise with wines; this was exactly what Montresor wanted. The text “my smile now was at the thought of his immolation” reveals to us that he is not afraid of showing the real reason behind his smile. He has no reason to lie to his readers, for we can do nothing about it. Montresor maps out his plan well with the luring of Fortunato with wine, the taunting of Fortunato’s talent, the orders for the attendants to stay home because of his absence, and the setting where he will suffocate his victim. Towards the end, Montresor confessed that Fortunato’s low laugh erected the hairs upon his head. He admitted that it was a little bit creepy when his friend was able to let out a laugh even at his own death.
Montresor in some ways are trustworthy. He may not be a trustworthy friend or master because of the brilliant bribes that he was able to come up with, but he was certain of the feelings he had toward Fortunato and the actions that he made. He wasn’t embarrassed to show his Achilles’ heel to us: he gets offended easily. He showed us his true colors by letting us in on his account to kill Fortunato. Therefore, I find Fortunato trustworthy at some levels as a narrator.
Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Cask of Amontillado”

Introduction to “The other Universe of Bruce Wayne”
Superheroes are great, aren’t they? They always manage to be at the right place at the right time. Saving innocent people from super villains, protecting the city against crimes, serving justice to those who deserves it…they accomplish all of this while hiding their true identity. Their influence towards children creates this image of “good guys” that allows children and even some adults to look up to them. Bruce Wayne is a great example of this; streets of Gotham are safe because of this mysterious yet admired man in a bat suit. He has it all. He has had countless romantic relationships with different types of woman, he has a job that endlessly provides him financial balance, he has his other occupation that allows him to save innocent faces, he has a best friend slash a butler who does all his work for him, and on top of that he’s good looking. There is, in fact, one little flaw. He’s not like most superheroes. What he doesn’t have are powers that allows him to fly, he absolutely doesn’t have super strength that makes him different from any ordinary man, he doesn’t have spider webs shooting out his wrist, his body isn’t mutated like an animal’s to let him have extraordinary senses. He has money, and lots of it. Will Bruce Wayne still be able to keep his title if we take money out of the picture?
In “The other Universe of Bruce Wayne” Mr. Wayne is portrayed differently. The author, Bucky Sinister, clearly wanted to show how Mr. Wayne’s life was like in an alternate universe. In an alternate universe he’s like any other man, actually, a little less because of the world he allowed himself to fall into. In the poem, he lives in a trailer in Arkansas. He just got dumped by his girlfriend and longs for alcohol to comfort him. Clearly, Bruce Wayne wasn’t “Bruce Wayne” in that other universe. Sinister commented that in another universe Mr. Wayne is loved. Everything in life has its opposition. The ability to recognize opposition and appreciate what we have is priceless. Life doesn’t promise happiness forever, but it does offer us opportunities to make the best out of it. Batman has got it right in this universe. He’s taking what he does have and using it to the best of his abilities, to serve justice. Sometimes we just have to work with what we have, for there might be another world where we have nothing.

Where’s my Godmother?

You sit by your wand with magic abounding,
Cinderella’s Godmother did here a good deed.
It’s not fair that she ended up with Prince Charming

Now I am left with nothing much pleasing
A big white gown, a magical carriage, all in the doing of one small plea
You sit by your wand with magic abounding.

Patiently I waited my turn for the royal dancing,
But instead he glided to her and took the lead
It’s not fair that she ended up with Prince Charming.

I looked like a fool by myself standing,
The clock stroke twelve as she struggled to flee,
You sit by your wand with magic abounding.

I thought to myself that this can’t be happening
The glass slipper fit exactly with no gaps in between.
It’s not fair that she ended up with Prince Charming.

You could have done your bibby-do-bopping,
And I could have been the bride-to-be.
You sit by your wand with magic abounding
It’s not fair that she ended up with Prince Charming.

I chose to do villanelle because it was a structure that I thought would be fun toying around with. It repeats a lot of lines which I thought really emphasize points that are important to note in the poem. I have a lot of slant rhymes in my poem. Cinderella is a fairytale story that is favored among the young people, it’s magical. I thought it would be fun to twist things up and change angles to other young women who was also invited to the royal ball for a chance to marry Prince Charming. It wasn’t fair to them how Cinderella stole his heart by just dancing with him once. Plus, I’ve always wondered if other characters in “Cinderella” had fairy Godmothers also or if it was only her who was lucky.
Image from: http://onplantjen.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/fairy-godmother.jpg

The Tyger: William Blake
William Blake’s Poem “The Tyger” informs his readers with his own thoughts about industrialization and how he feels about the changing world that he lived in. His poem doesn’t necessarily point out what it means at a first glance, but it contains multiple paradoxes and contradictions.
One particular contradiction that was addressed is found in stanza 3 and 4. Stanza 3 delivers to us a tiger that is full of life. The whole stanza described of a typical tiger: fearsome yet full of awe and wonder because of the dominance that it naturally claims. The tiger has shoulders, sinews in his heart, heart beats, dreadful hands and feet. It seems very much alive. Beauty is found within the creation of this tiger and glory to whoever was responsible for the creation of this magnificent creature. But, the questions that Blake asks in stanza 4 suddenly shifts to a tiger that is somewhat robotic. It almost seems as though Blake is questioning where the tiger came from, suddenly confused at how a tiger is really created, believing that the tiger is manmade. Blake questions the tiger as though he knows with no doubt that the tiger was assembled together by a blacksmith in his little shop. The hammer pounded out dents and little flaws, the chain kept him from getting out of control, the heat of the anvil burns and create the brain, and the anvil used to screw in nuts and bolts to hold the tiger’s dreadful hands and feet together. The poem described the tiger as created by industrial processes because he wants his audience to see the unnatural world in his view.
He uses the robotic figure to mock mankind. Mankind has taken a beautiful creature such as a tiger and turned it into something that has no flesh, no heart beat; there is no life within it at all. Everything that lived or had life was holy to Blake. Even a ferocious being as a tiger was seen holy to Blake. Thus, everything else that fell under him is holy too. If the tiger’s natural ways are taken away from him, everything else must have lost their beauty also.
The poem was more impressed with the lamb than the tiger. If God made the tiger, why in the world would God make an animal so pure and innocent to be hunted down by beasts? The presence of the tiger and the lamb on the same earth doesn’t seem right to Blake. It’s like God made a mistake putting these two creatures together. His childish tone throughout the poem concluded in a refrain. He again asks who exactly created the tiger. His questions again are left unanswered for his readers to think about because he himself is confused.

In a Station of the Metro: Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” only contains 2 lines, but it symbolically represents the pros and cons of modernity. Urbanization is usually seen as a good notion. It allows us people to strive to better ourselves and tone down the complexity of life to a degree that we would find more convenient. “The apparition of these faces” is referring to an unusual or unexpected sight, almost ghostly figures. These faces see the advantage that they have in using the metro. It might be a bit uncomfortable squeezing in with a crowd of people but the metro has proved itself to be valid.
On the other hand, Pound’s poem can also be seen as anti-modernity. Urbanization can, to a degree, be of great help and importance to people. But, when it is over-used and fought over, it becomes unsatisfactory. The first line shows us the apparition of faces in the crowd, illuminating that these faces merely contain emotions or feelings. They are expressionless. They are thronged and pressed against each other to probably fill every single scope that is possible, that everyone who is on the metro may benefit from this modern world that they live in. Technology is made to simplify people’s lives. Ironically, at the end it is because of technology that makes this world so complicated. The metro is the cause of contentment and complication that is found within people in these tight crowds. It is useful in transporting people from one place to another, but the overpopulated little station can cause uneasiness and complications. Petals on a wet, black bough draw out the real simplicity of life. It is peaceful, a petal naturally budding on a bough that is wet from the rain. Nature often allows us to see the beauty in life and how effortless it is at times. We on the other hand choose technology to empower us and cloud our lives with perplexity. Sometimes the easiest way to go is avoiding those things that try to make our lives easier.
The words crowd and bough contrasts each other. In a crowd, it is compacted. A crowd is often given very little space to move freely. In a way, it traps the individual and everyone that surrounds him. Although it seems like that individual is the only one that is bounded it is the whole group as one that is webbed together. In contrast, a bough grows from a tree. All the branches emerge from one trunk, but they grow freely in which ever direction that it takes them.

images: www.robbarron.co.uk/macro.htm

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