The Handmaid's tale: The Last 50 pages

I'm not very happy with the ending of this book. While reading most of the book I kept thinking I will find out the answer at the end. But now that I have read the end we don't find out. The ending doesn't tie up the answers in the end. I still want to know what happened to Luke and her daughter. Where are they now? We never find out. The story has too many cliffhangers.

the handmaids tale- the next 50 pages

I think it is ironic that the commander's wife told Offred to have sex with Nick because she wants a baby so bad. It will be interesting to see what happens with their relationship later on. Also, I still have my lingering question of where are Luke and her daughter. After the commander's wife shows her a picture of her daughter it only makes me wonder more. Also, I think it is interesting that Moria was turned into a prostitute after she got caught rumming away..if they women are turned to prostitutes then what happens to the men? And is this what happend to luke? So the daughter was given to a new family?

the next 50 pages

I can't say the story is interesting to read, but it is deffinately weird. It makes you want to know what is going to happen next because it is so weird. I want to know what has happened what has happened to Luke and her daughter. And why is the commander being so weird towards her?? I guess as I keep reading I will find out all the answers.

The Handmaid's Tale

The story is starting to pick up. I am still a little confused about some things shes talked about so far. For example what happened to her daughter and Luke and where are they now? I'm interested to see what happens later on about the passage she found in her closet..do we ever find out what it means? Also, it will be interesting to see if she ever finds out anything about the Handmaids who lived in the room before her.

Than Handmaid's Tale: Pages 1-49

I am confused by this story. At first it seems like she is in prison or an army boot camp, but then later we find out it's not prison. So where are they? It seems like this is sometime in the future but I cant figure out where. But from what I do understand I think the women no longer have rights. I think the only thing they are there for (if they are the right age and everything) is to have children. It seems like they are in this prison type place until a family has selected them to have a baby for their family. But I'm not really sure about all this. Hopefully I will understand it better after we go over it in class.

Perfomance Reflection

Overall, I thought out performance went well. We followed our stage directions pretty well for the most part and we remember to have people from the hallway do the kocking sounds and the owl sound. If we were to do this again I think next time we would get more creative and use props in our scenes.

My Lines

In Act II, Scene I play the role of Fleance.

 I basically say the moon hasn't set yet, and I think it is later than 12.

In Act II, Scene II I play the role of Macbeth.  In this scene Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are talking about the murder of the king.

Basically in this scene Macbeth is feeling guilty about the murder and he feels bad about the murder and he feels guilty for framing the guards.

Possible Paper Topics:

My topics for the Macbeth paper are:

1.comparing two different versions of the movie to the book.
 2. The irony of the play. Including lady Macbeth and Macbeth's close relationship but then he doesn't care after she dies. And Banquo is supposedly so loyal and noble but then betrays Macbeth.

I got some good feedback about of if he doesn't care or just wants to stay king. Or if Macbeth is still sane after that.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I was very confused by this poem. I don't think it is really about the love life of J. Alfred Prufrock or love at all, I think it is about his life. He is thinking about all the wrong things that he has done in his life and regretting most of them. At first I wasn't sure if he was already dead or he was about to die, but after reading it a couple of times, especially the ending, I think he is going to kill himself at the beach. When he talks about how the mermaids won't sing to him and at the end he says "and we drown" it gave me the impression that he was just depressed and wanted to die.

Daddy

Once again I was confused by this poem. It was obvious to me that the narrator was a girl and she was talking about her daddy. But I was still confused because at first I thought she hated her dad and was glad he was dead because she seems to have a lot of anger towards him, but then later on in the poem it says, "At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you". After reading the poem a couple more times I think the narrator is just mourning through the pain of her lost father. It's not that she hated him, she hated his job as a Nazi, which is why he was killed. So now that he is gone, she misses him.

Leda and the Swan

I was very confused by this poem. I think what is going is the author is talking about shooting a swan but i'm not really sure. I have read it multiple times and i'm still confused. I think it will be very interesting to talk about in class today.

London

I walked through each street
Near the river
And remember every face I saw
Everybody is weak and sad

Each man is crying
Each baby is cryin
Everybody is cursing
In his head he hears handcuffs

The chimney sweepers are crying
All the churches are upset
The unlucky soldiers sigh
People are dying because of the people in the palace

At night I mostly hear
The young prostitutes cursing
The babies are crying
People are dying because of a disease

The Chimney Sweeper

The boy's mother dies
His father sends him to work
He wasn't allowed to complain about the work
He is a chimney sweeper.

Tom cries when his head gets shaved
His hair was curly but now he is bald
Narrator tells Tom not to worry about his hair being shaved
Without hair the soot can't get in it

That night he was quiet
While he was sleeping he had a weird dream
He sees a lot of chimney sweepers, some of them he knows
They were all killed by the soot

An angel set them free
He opened the cuffins to let them out.
Then they ran through the field, laughing, and playing
They played in the river

They were naked and had none of their belongings
They go above the clouds to play in the wind
The angel told Tom if he is good
The angel would have God talk to his dad

Tom woke up in the middle of the night
And got his cleaning supplies and went to work
Even thought the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm
So if they all do their job they dont need to be afraid of getting hurt.

Harrison Bergeron

I liked reading Harrison Bergeron. I thought it was an interesting method to minimize the gap of inequality that we have in our societ today. I do not think it would ever work, but it was interesting to read. My favorite part was when the wife wanted to cheat her husband's handcap to help him feel better after a long day, but he explains to her that would be cheating. If he cheated then everybody would cheat, making the handicaps useless.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

After reading this story I was very confused. I dont understand why the society is portayed as simple and happy, but yet the community abuses the boy and keep him locked up. It seems to be simple because the members of society don't ever smile or show any emotion at all and I think if they had they would have realized abusing the boy and keeping him locked up is wrong.

Possible Paper Topics

As of now, my paper topics are:

•  Discussing the narrators of a rose for emily, and a tell tale heart
• Giving a different spin on a tell tale heart and why he kills the old man

Young Goodman Brown and The Lottery

Young Goodman Brown:
I was very confused by this story. At the begining of the story I thought he was going to the woods to go to war, but as I kept reading I thought maybe it was just a gathering of some sort, possibly religous. I thought maybe it was a religous gathering because he seems to have faith, which is also his wife's name, very ironic, but he also seems to be trying to keep his faith and not get pulled in by the devil. The woods seems to have a dark atmosphere that reminds me of the devil. But overall I was very confused by this story.

The Lottery:
I enjoyed this story more than Young Goodman brown. It was much easier to follow and understand. This wasn't your average lottery that we have today. This lottery was a negative thing, not a reward. They basically have a lottery to see who will get killed, which I don't fully understand. Why do they want to kill of people from their community?

The Yellow Wallpaper

I thought this story was one of the better stories we have read so far. I think the woman is in a mental facility because it says the windows are close and have bars on them, and the door has a gate in the hall. Because she is in a mental facility I think she feels excluded with nobody to talk to or that nobody will believe anything she says because they think she is insane. I believe this leads to her obsession about the yellow wallpaper in the room. I think she began to relate to the girl in the wallpaper. The woman in the wallpaper was trapped in the room, just she was so she felt she could relate. She wanted so bad to have a normal life with people to talk to so she began to go insane from the isolation. At this point she was just so deseperate that she started relating with the girl in the yellow wallpaper.

A Tell-Tale Heart

I enjoyed reading this story more than "A Rose for Emily". I found that it was easier to follow and had a lot more detail. The narrator of this story is the murderer, and it was always clear what he was thinking or planning to do.  He kills the old man, who had never harmed him or been mean to him in any way, but simply to get rid of the old man's "evil" eye. He confesses to killing the old man because he can't take it anymore. He is consumed with guilt about what he did. Throughout the story he tries to convince us that he is not a mad man and that he isn't insane, but throughout doing so, he only proves to us that he is. I think by him hearing the unbearable noise that nobody else in the room heard proves to us that he really is insane, and the only person that he is trying to convince otherwise is himself.

A Rose for Emily

I was confused by the ending of this story. Based on how upset she was when her father died and the denial she felt then, I'm guessing she was too upset to go outside again or to tell anyone. I also think this leads to the final detail about the "long strand of iron-gray hair". I believe she wanted to still be close with him so she laid in bed with the man in denial that he was really gone. Miss Emily went through such a tradgedy of death not once but twice that she didn't know what else to do. She probably didn't want her own life to continue and that is why she never left her house. I think she stayed inside to die alone without because she couldn't bare to lose anybody else she became close with.