SSRJ#2: Three Girls by Joyce Carol Oates

Although I felt as though I was shooting my grammar in the foot by reading this at first, I grew to really like the story as it progressed. Its nature of rambling when the author made the narrator go off on tangents was very interesting. It gave the whole story a very realistic feel, as though the speaker in the story was writing very quickly and excitedly. There were so many details shoved into her long sentences that it felt as though my head were going to explode from the commotion. When Marilyn Monroe showed up, however, the writing took a completely different turn. Though many of the sentences were still packed full of description and excitement, their nature had become more organized. The focus truly settled upon the actress cloaked in man’s clothing and why this must be the case.

I have heard a friend of mine speak about Monroe in a similar manner as the author many a time. It has been explained to me that she was not at all the symbolism of womanhood that she embodied and what she set out to be was not what she became in the eyes of so many adoring fans. There are many actors in today’s society that must feel like the author described Monroe as. In some ways, today’s society is much worse in the manner in which they treat the ‘stars’. Tabloids in newspapers and daily radio-shows are dedicated to fishing out the dirt and grunge in the lives of the rich and famous. The majority of these shows even find little ways to insult or twist an actual truth. Many a time I have heard these ‘reporters’ (for lack of a better name) offer their own rumors as an explanation. And, of course, the constant joking and belittling that comes with news about these peoples’ lives is all to prevalent.

It reminded me of a particularly immature individual that happened to let his ignorance slip during one of these ‘dirt revealing’ episodes. A star well-known in the media for having engaged in unhealthy drug habits had been quoted telling a fellow star to talk to her children about drugs very early. Her explanation for this was that getting involved in such an influence was detrimental to health and life and you never quite recover from it. The ‘reporter’, finding himself witty, decided to say something along the lines of, ‘Should she really be giving advice? I mean, with all the coke she’s been snorting, who would take her advice for raising kids?’ But would she not be an excellent one to speak in this case? Here her own life has obviously been made difficult by the action of getting involved in parties and overuse and she has the sense to advise someone to keep their own children from the same, ill fate. I should think that despite a lowered view of her character, that the reporter should have known she would have the most experience in how unhealthy activities ruin one’s life.

It ties in with the lines of what the author seemed to be trying to push across. The Marilyn Monroe that is seen in the book store is one far different from the TV screen or the likely biased newspapers that track her life’s progress. Becoming a famous actor signs one up for a lifetime of stalkers and public attention. As much as these famed individuals would like to escape, it is very hard for them to do so. The narrator mentioned being very proud of the fact they had not given Marilyn Monroe away and being amazed that their iconic star was really a much different person underneath. Indeed, she seemed quiet and had a wish to be undiscovered during the whole of their interactions. A strange bond seemed to form between the three girls over the mere matter of literature.

In fact, the entirety of a story focused very distinctly on this matter. The narrator goes into great detail over the sections that they wandered through and even the books which Marilyn picked up. Perhaps the author was trying to tell us that beneath every assumed exterior there is something someone loves that we might also relate to? There is a, I assume, fairly well known phrase “Do not judge a book by its cover”. Although this is never actually stated directly, there is a lot of hinting at such a concept everywhere in the story. The speaker spends much of her time contrasting “Marylin Monroe” to the woman in man’s clothing that shows such an interest in poetry and other literary works. It almost seems to me as though she viewed the famous actress as a book in herself. By protecting her from being discovered, the narrator was protecting these hidden pages of Monroe’s life from being torn and forgotten.

Do you think that had they discovered Monroe in a different location, which did not involve a shared interest of theirs, that they would be as inclined to help her and keep her appearance a secret?

SSRJ#1: A Sorrowful Woman by Gail Godwin

I spent the entirety of this short story wishing and hoping for the mother to come out of the state she was in and become a happy individual once more. Even as I was reading, I was fairly sure that there would be no pleasing resolution to the conflict, but I hoped the whole time that there would be. Despite the mother’s cruelty and distance from her family, I felt quite saddened by her assumed death at the end of the story. I felt rather cheated that she’d finally found some sort of happiness in the things she could do for the husband that had already done so much for her and then she wasn’t allowed to live further. The disappointment in that feeling reminded me a lot of visiting older, sick relatives at hospitals. When the problems first begin, I always hope that they’ll be able to leave soon and be alright again, but generally they progressively get worse. It seems like such a silly hope to hold onto, but, like the husband of the story, there is always a lot of visiting the sick and understanding when they’re too tired to talk. It makes me wonder if the man already knew that the woman was never going to recover the entirety of time the story progressed. The woman cooking dinner felt much like the one or two days a relative spends at home away from the hospital looking like everything is going to be alright, and then a very harsh relapse follows.

Godwin starts out her story with a fairytale-like line. The general consensus in fairytales is a happy ending, but this opening statement is not a very cheery prospect. Instead of talking about youth, princesses or a similar, it talks about what would be an aftermath of other fairytales. Society tends to look at marriage and motherhood with sparkly eyes, but the way the text is written it seems as though Godwin has rejected this idea as an absolute. She uses the term “one too many”, which gives off a feeling that this particular wife and mother was one that probably shouldn’t have been one. The story itself, however, does not go into grave detail on how she became the state she was in. The reader is left guessing as to what “being a wife and mother one too many times” means.

The initial text of the story itself seems to have a distance to it. The words that Godwin uses to describe the atmosphere are much like those you might expect to find in a fairy tale. Things like “receptive, gentle, warm” describe the way the husband treats his wife and her surroundings. Despite these seemingly comforting and happy words, the writer adds contrasting sentences to go with them that make their normal joy-inducing responses be cut short. “‘It’s all right, Mommy,’ but this made her scream.” The mother’s reaction to the boy’s comforts is utterly bizarre. It seems to heighten this idea that the woman has become mentally unstable. This pattern continues throughout the duration of the story.

When the child sitter comes, the author describes her as being perfect. Yet, it is read much later how much the mother cannot deal with this. It seems to me that she is projecting images that seemingly do not match to try and bring attention to the fact that things are not always what they appear or what we’d hope them to be. For a long time in history, marriage and children was the accepted value and even now, I even have a tendency to look a little bit higher and more enviously of a mother and father couple with one or two children trailing at their heels. The family aspect, however, is not portrayed as at all appealing in this case. It has cause the woman who the story focus’ on to do things that are generally not considered healthy. She locks herself away in her own sorrow, she has to take a sleeping draught to help her sleep every night. It becomes quite clear that the idea of the family drives her quite over the edge.

She seems to be doing alright a few times, until the child or the husband seems to become strangely happy. The sight of her own child’s drawings made the character creep back into the shadows still the further until she seemed to lack personality at all. Everything about the way she lived seemed a monotonous drone, but one without too much misery on her part. It makes me wonder if Godwin was trying to say that the misery of seeing something happy that you could not share the same emotion over is a much worse fate than never having to face those experiences at all. At the end, however, the mother seems to get some sort of happiness over the notes they scrawled for her. The difference between the affection of her husband and child this time is that she put out an effort for them instead of the other way around. She even finishes up her life by making them a great feast, perhaps to preserve that strange slice of happiness that she did not get from anywhere else? The last line is particularly powerful. The child shows his incomprehension of the situation entirely with his seemingly innocent wish to eat the Turkey that the mother made. I ended up thinking less of the child then, because it felt as though he did not appreciate the large gesture that the wife made by going about such a task. It strangely made me relate to what the wife seemed to be experiencing all along: I was guilty for thinking less of the child, but it somehow felt justified.

Question: Did you like the story where you could feel more sympathy and connection for the character better? What made you sympathize more with one than with another?

Brief Introduction for English 1B

Hi, as the delicious url site quite possibly already informed you, my name is Samantha. If you'd like, you can call me Sam or, really, anything else you desire. I've been called Lyn, Kea, and Bob before as well. Just so long as I know you're referring to me, there shouldn't be a problem.

I'm enrolled in English 1B to cover general education required to possibly transfer to a University with an AA/AS degree. I've never taken an online class before, but I'm excited to, as it doesn't require I come to class at a set time period and is a great setup for getting things done early. I'm hoping this course will ending up being mostly unstressful but remain challening. This class will be taking during my fourth semester at Sierra college. In previous semesters I was enrolled in mostly Calculus, Physics, and Art courses. In the future, I hope to have classes based more around my major of interest: Forensics.

As for English in general, I've always had a problem with writing for more than a few pages on a subject without rambling, and I hope to improve that this year in essay writing. When it comes to reading, I'm not very picky and I'm excited to do all the short story reading we're going to be doing in the beginning of this course. I tend to like historical fiction and psychologically oriented books a great deal along with short stories that delve into symbolism and description.

Formal and corny as it may sound, I'm pretty jazzed to take my first online course and have written discussions over material, and I hope to hear from anyone and everyone whether they leave critique (good or bad) or just a comment.