Catalina Gargollo Literary Engagements Blog

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It was easy to locate connections across the texts we read, but it’s not like I just magically thought of them. Finding connections required me to sit down and reflect, and think about specific moments and events throughout the plots we read to find these connections. So actually I wouldn’t say it was a piece of cake, but then again, it wasn’t absolutely impossible. It just required deep stages of critical thinking to identify these specific moments. I wasn’t sure if connections meant similarities. I just took it to mean similarities. And these similarities are what I based the cohesiveness of my essay on, sticking to one theme of coming of age throughout all the selected texts I chose and how I would elaborate on my personal connection. I feel well about Essay 4. This is because I started the writing process on time. Procrastinating can be   a huge barrier when it comes to assignments. When I wait to complete an assignment and it’s near the due date, I tend not to produce as hig...

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pnraONsgCF_HyFFid7y02vLvCrOHghlvF9ZIqj-ut_o/edit?usp=sharing

Connections Across the Literature: Death, Near Dying, Death is a Universal Human Experience Poe - The Pit and the Pendulum (The Narrator's Death Sentence) Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Beli's Near Death in the Fields, Oscar's Death Being Beat Up) Dickinson - "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" Hansberry -  A Raisin in the Sun - (Mr. Walter's Death) Death is an inevitable, inescapable, universal experience that happens to every human being. Connections Across the Literature: Fear Poe - The Pit and the Pendulum (Narrator's Fear of Death) Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Beli's and Oscar's Fear of Death) Hurston - Sweat (Fear of Snake) Hughes - Let America Be America Again (Fear of Country Failing) Fear is apart of the universal human experience that can especially be subjective. Though it is bad to live in fear, sometimes, things just haunt us because that's the way the human brain works. Connections...

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe is a suspenseful short story in which an unnamed narrator is facing a death sentence during the Inquistion, wherein the Catholic Church would execute people accused of heresy. During the narrator's sentence, he arrives at his near death experience and realizes he will die by falling into a pit and by the blade of a swinging pendulum, hence the title. Luckily, he uses rats to free him from the wooden board he is attached to and General Lasalle rescues him from his fall. The moral of this short story is to have hope in situations in despair because it could turn you around and save you. For example, the narrator used his active mind to rub food around himself so that the rats would free him; he was remaining hopeful. Instead of full on giving up, he kept hopeful, and he was saved from death. The Young King by Oscar Wilde is about a sixteen-year-old inexperienced boy who is about to become a prince because he is heir to the throne. He has...

I would say my research went well. My issue was residential racism. Examples of my issue came along quite well because events from the story were clear, in particular the racist ones. What was successful about this assignment is that it was clear. I knew what the steps were and what I had to do to make sure I addressed the prompt. What was challenging was crafting a thesis and argument. I’m not used to putting both literary analysis and research into one essay, as these would be essays that could stand on their own. Therefore, it was difficult to know how to write my thesis. But I felt that this was a good prompt because it taught us how to seek relevance in literature even if it’s old. The prompt brought some purpose into an English class that is sometimes hard to find when we are reading older literature in a progressive society.

I found the language in Hurston's Sweat to be very violent and aggressive, yet very honest and realistic of the time period. For example, when Sykes says, "'You sho is one aggravatin' nigger woman!," it is a very brutal choice of language that Hurston uses, but it is most likely reflective of the twentieth century racism, pre-civil rights movement era. Clearly the language is not the normal, standard form of English, as it has been made distinct and personalized with an accent. This rough language also relates to the identity and background of Hurston, as she claims that it was her "race" that got her into trouble with the law, specifically the incident where she was accused of committing "immoral" acts with a ten-year-old boy. Hurston also took many cleaning positions throughout her life, so the dialogue that takes place between Delia and Sykes is most likely reflective of some of Hurston's personal experiences through the odd jobs she to...