Ali Wally

Professor Perez

Literature 221

25 September 2013

Connection’s

Throughout this eight-week Literature class we have read many short stories and poems. When I started the class I didn’t know what to expect and as the class went on I continuously learned more about different types of writing and most importantly myself. Even the pieces of writing that I didn’t like I could connect with, there was always an underlining symbolism or metaphor that made it possible. But like any person I had favorites and least favorites. Walt Whitman’s ‘I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing’ all the way from week one was one of my favorite pieces of writing we have read all semester. The writing speaks, telling the reader to reach out for friendship and companionship. The last two lines ‘uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not,’ (Whitman pg. 7). Whitman is telling the reader that life would mean very little without the company we keep. I can relate to what he is saying because it couldn’t be more true. There is not a single person in this world, no matter how strong or independent that would make it without at least one other person in their life. This piece makes me think of my family, which is so important to me. Another of my favorite reads was one of the shortest of the semester in week three, Carl Sandburg’s ‘A Fence’. There was a big emotional pull in this story for me. The emotional fence is the one that people put up to keep away the bad but also turns out to keep away the good. The poem mentions ‘As a fence, it is a masterpiece and will shut off the rabble and all the vagabonds and hungry men and all the wondering children looking for a place to play.’ This speaks to the reader about how even if your keeping out the bad the good, (the children is an example of the positive) is also kept out. I have made the mistake of putting up a wall to guard myself from getting hut but when I did that also shut out the possibilities of all the good in my life. Of course at the time you wont realize that you are keeping everything out. This poem had a very positive life lesson for me, one that I believe everyone should learn. My third and final favorite piece was Robert Frosts ‘A Road Not Taken.’ I think that I like this piece so much because it’s about life decisions and it’s so misunderstood. The part of the poem that causes so much debate is the line, ‘when you came to a fork in the road, study the footprints and take the road less traveled by.’ But the trick is there is no road that is less traveled. Both paths are so much the same, “the passing there, Had worn them really about the same.” This is a dilemma that I know many face, Frost is using the paths as a metaphor for the choices in life, the lifelines, trials and decisions that a person must face. The identical forks represent the unknown future and the fate that plays into the molding it. The biggest part of the poem that speaks to me is the free will that the character posses. On a day-to-day basis we make choices without being able to see the end result but we have free will to make whatever choice we want, just as the author did. I also connected with the poem because the author is thinking of the future and is betting that he will regret this choice, he shows remorse by saying “I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence.” The author perceives the other path as a loss. I can connect with this because like most, you always wonder where you would be if you had just made a different choice. I believe this is human nature. Choosing literature that I didn’t like was difficult, but the ‘The Hairy Ape’ written by Eugene O’Neill was one of the most difficult reads of the semester. The biggest reason I disliked this story was because it was written like so, ‘I’m a busted Ingersoll, dat’s what. Steel was me, and I owned de woild. Now I aint steel and de woild owns me. Aw hell! I can’t see its all dark, get me? Its all wrong!’ (Pg. 209). I could only assume an illiterate person wrote this. It’s so difficult to make sense of, but I believe Yank was trying to express his break down in society and how he was strong but no longer is. Not only the fact that this was not a well-written story there is also much confusion in the meaning behind the story. When I read it I concluded that Yank was on the path of de-evolution to his animalistic state. He fits nowhere so as a last resort he accepts his ‘ape’ self and he was even was rejected by that and that is how he actually dies, rather than just getting killed by an actual Ape. There was a lot of debate about that. I’m not surprised in the end because this piece is so hard to follow. My second least favorite story was Tim O’Brien’s ‘Going After Cacciato’ from week seven. I very much disliked this story because it was so sporadic, so all over the place. This was a story about a soldier but the way it was written was through flashbacks, he drifted in and out of the present. I believe that he is suffering from PTSD. There is a confusing mixture of reality and fantasy in the form of day dreams which makes it difficult to follow the train of thought and also shows that he has strong mental anguish. I will give O’Brien that his story is touching in the sense that Paul is extremely tortured by the death of Billy. He tries to fight through his torture with humor, relieving stress and making it possible for him to survive. I think that anyone who has seen a friend die knows how hard it is to get over and can somewhat relate to what Paul is going through. One of the harder stories for me to read was ‘Open Boat’ by Stephen Crane. The reason I had such a hard time reading this one was more for personal reasons rather than literary ones. These men went through physical and philological torture on in the ocean. These men never could catch a break. After two days of no sleep, trying to keep the boat afloat the men were mocked by all the things that happened to them. The seagulls land on the water looking at ease on the rocky plain that they are fighting to survive on. I can only imagine the torture that these man went through with everything around them so calm yet they are facing certain death. Then later in the story they see a lighthouse that they can never reach. This is literarily a light at the end of the tunnel that they will never see. It was all just very hopeless for these men making it so difficult to imagine. In conclusion I think that this class was very well rounded and I enjoyed the literature very much. There were stories that caught my attention more so than others. I feel as though for the most part the stories all had something that you could connect with your lives, even the stories I didn’t enjoy as much. I have made many connections with the course material and shockingly enough they have helped me get through some emotional problems that I have been sorting though. Everyone has different writing styles and it was neat to go learn more about style, symbolism and the authors. Thank you for all our hard work and lesson plans.

Works Cited
Crane, Stephen. “Open Boat.” The American Traditional in Literature. Vol 2. 12th Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Textbook.
Frost, Robert. “A Road Not Taken.” The American Traditional in Literature. Vol 2. 12th Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Textbook.
O’Brien, Tim. “Going After Cacciato.” The American Traditional in Literature. Vol 2. 12th Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Textbook.
O’Neill, Eugene. “The Hairy Ape.” The American Traditional in Literature. Vol 2. 12th Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Textbook.
Sanburg, Carl. “A Fence.” The American Traditional in Literature. Vol 2. 12th Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Textbook.
Whitman, Walt. “I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing.” The American Traditional in Literature. Vol 2. 12th Ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Textbook.