Blog #4

“The Lady with the Pet Dog” written by Anton Chekov, is a story about true love that a person didn’t expect to find. The story shows how if you meet that one special person in your life, your true love, nothing else seems to matter and nothing will get in the way. The story’s main character Dmitritch Gurov was a man who was unfaithful to his wife and felt that he could get any women he wanted, “In his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed them in his favour…” (Chekov 467), until he met his one true love Anna Sergeyevna.  Everything changed after that. They fell in love with one another, even thou they were both married, they did not let that stop them from seeing each other. The story portrays the change brought about in Gurov's heart as he gets to know the amazing Lady with the dog and begins and an affair that he describes in the end as "only just beginning." (Chekov 476) For Gurov, Anna brings him a feeling he’s never felt before. “He felt profound, compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender…” (Chekov 476).

            “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” written by D.H. Lawerence. Lawerence’s writing was much difference then Chekov, there was no indications or clues of love going on until later in the story. No one expected her to fall in love with doctor that was a surprising twist to the story. The  main character Mabel seemed to be alone in the world. The one place Mabel felt secure, comfortable and away from the world was at her mother’s grave site and that is where she saw the doctor Jack Fergusson and her feelings for him changed after that. They fell in love with each other “He had never thought of loving her. He had never wanted to love her” (Lawerence 484). Jack came in at the right time and saved her and made her feel loved and wanted. “I love you! I love you! He said in a soft, low vibrating voice, unlike himself… Kiss me she said” (Lawerence 485). Mabel was ready to start her new life with Jack, and wanted to move on with her life and start fresh.

Blog #3

“The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin has a lot of irony throughout the story. One of the examples that I noticed was “Her husband’s friend Richard was there too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when the intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallards name leading the list of ‘killed’ ” (Chopin 337). Reading that sentence in the beginning made me believe and think he was dead but in fact he never died, he was far from the scene of the crash and had no idea of a crash ever happening. Another example of irony in the story is in the beginning of the story we are informed that Louise Mallard has a heart condition, and what was ironic about that is she did not die when she found out that her husband had been killed, but she died when she saw him walk through the door and realized he was actually alive. I believe Louise was in a way happy about her husbands supposed “death”. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself…and yet she loved him-sometimes. Often she had not” (338). It’s ironic knowing that her enjoyments of her husband’s death lead to the fatal reaction to him being alive.

There is also Irony in the story “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe, one of the first examples I noticed of irony is Fortunado’s name which in Italian it means good fortune and good luck, it’s ironic because as I kept reading the story I realized Fortunato does not have any good luck or fortune. One example of irony is that us the readers know about Fortunato’s death, but Fortunato has no idea why the narrator is leading him down to the vault. Another example is when the narrator becomes so concerned about Fortunado’s health, “Come,” I said with decision, ‘we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible” (Poe 526). Its ironic that the narrator cares so much about Fortunado’s health when the narrator knows he is going to be the one to kill him later.

Blog 2

“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman Perkins was about a woman who suffered from a mental illness. The narrator and her husband John rented a colonial mansion, a secluded estate for the summer hoping that it would do well for the narrator and to help her with her recovery. The narrator suffers from what her husband who is a physician, believes is a "temporary nervous depression." The narrator is living in a house in which she does not feel comfortable, in a room she hasn’t picked out, she is not allowed to leave the house, she must stay in the room up-stairs, where the bed is nailed to the floor and the room is decorated with yellow wallpaper. Her husband John said she must get bed rest and not to engage in any activity. So as the narrator spends all day in that room, the narrator begins to become obsessed with the wallpaper. “The paint and paper look as if boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off –the paper-in great patches all around the head of my bed… I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant, patterns committing every artistic sin”. (566) The narrator has nothing to do all day so she starts to follow the pattern of the wallpaper and she becomes so obsessed, all she does is think about it, and where the pattern leads to and where it stops “I lie here on this great immovable bed- it is nailed down, I believe- and follow that pattern about by the hour… I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over where is has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of conclusion”. (568). Being in that room with the wallpaper, does not help the narrator at all, I believe it made her worse. Her husband John believes that would help her recover but, it made her mental illness worse as the time went on and progressed. When the narrator finally came to her breaking point with the room, the wallpaper, and everything going on around her, when she had enough of it all she ripped all the wallpaper off, “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook. I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had pulled off yards of that paper”. (573) Once the narrator pulled off the wallpaper she felt like she was freeing herself, she felt like she was the women trapped in the wallpaper and that was the only way she could release and free herself was by tearing it down and off the walls to a clean slate.