Reading Of The Lonely Londoners

In Joan Didion's essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", she writes her observations of the people in the Haight-Ashbury district as she interviews people there. She demonstrates sound critical reasoning by using the personalizing lens, distancing lens, ethos and pathos and does a decent job of doing so.

Joyce uses diction to support the overall tone of “Araby,” through his use of words and phrases such as “had grown somber. . .” (Joyce 400) and “musty. . .” (Joyce 400). The verbiage he uses constructs a dull and increasingly gloomy image as if darkness is enclosing the town being depicted. Word choices like “waste. . .” (Joyce 400) and “useless. . .” (Joyce 400) convey the stagnant environment that encases the lifeless neighborhood the boy lives in. Joyce communicates the dreariness that cloaks Dublin by using dreadful adjectives to describe the setting. The young boy’s short lived “confused adoration” (Joyce 401) for his friend’s sister, is depicted using feminine words in association with her, such as “petticoat. . .” (Joyce 401) and “soft. . .” (Joyce 400). When the speaker is professing Mangan’s sister’s control over him, he proclaims, “[m]y body [is] like a harp and her words and gestures [are] like fingers running upon the wires” (Joyce 401). The boy reveals his ignorance by incorrectly calling harp strings, “wires. . .” (Joyce 401). This simple error portrays his confusion about his own feelings and the reasoning behind them. The author uses diction to support the tone of the short story, “Araby,” through his choice of words that reveal both the glum atmosphere of the setting and the naive affection being displayed by the speaker.

Roberts organizes his book based on certain themes, such as culture and day-to-day life, paying special attention to the pre- and post-War periods so as to emphasize the evolution of the slum throughout the period of time covered. He divides it into chapters that cover specific aspects of society and day-to-day life in order to accentuate certain points. His writing style is a unique and well-chosen blend of personal reminiscences and historical research. Much of his writing, including his own experiences, is presented in a very matter-of-fact way. The impact this style has on the reader is great because he is able to state such horrors so bluntly, as only someone who was truly there can. Occasionally, however, his emotions break through, as is evident in his explanation of his parents' separation and subsequent death on page 238. Lastly, the work is scholarly and concise, as Roberts chooses to get straight to the point and elaborate on it rather than saying the same thing in many different ways.

Although they seem scattered, they all draw up the same conclusion and have a deeper meaning within the authors life. It is clear that the author was born into one of the New York’s that he’s lived through, which is the poverty of New York. The author never lived a life of luxury and was of lower class. His parents were poets, freelancers, that only did work that was poetry related that did not last very long. Moreover, in results of his parents being poets, he was exposed to the arts of New York.

From 1801 to 1851, the population of London grew from under 1 million inhabitants to 2.25 million. This was due in large part to immigration, both from other countries and from the countryside of England. Hundreds of thousands of people were moving to the newly industrialized cities and towns to find work, having been squeezed off the land because of the enclosure of farms. There was also displacement of the working-class within the city of London because of a number of construction projects. There were street improvement schemes in which tenements were razed in order to widen the passages. The transformation of part of the city into a non-residential district devoted to finance

Aspects of both Kincaid’s and Walcott’s literature pieces show great comparison with each other along with a few contrasting ideas. “A Far Cry from Africa” and A Small Place both demonstrate the movement from colonialism to post-colonialism and describe how the characters feel and are reacting to the major change. Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” compares to A Small Place in the way that both pieces of literature deal with history being bias towards the person who is reflecting on it. Colonial corruption and oppression become significant throughout Kincaid’s A Small Place and Walcott’s poem “Ruins of a Great House”. Kincaid’s A Small Place and Walcott’s poems “A Far Cry from Africa”, “The Sea is History” and “Ruins of a Great House” all are centered around the main idea of colonialism and allows the reader to compare the similarity and differences of each author’s views.

I hadn't really considered the importance of the narrative voice on the way the story is told until now. In "Araby", "Livvie" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" the distinctive narrative voices and their influences shed light on hidden meanings and the narrator's credibility.

There are no views represented that call for agreement or disagreement in this short story. I did find this to be a very deep and moving story and it did hold my interest throughout the reading

The concept of the malign nature of the tenement is developed throughout the first stanza with Crichton Smith exploring his own role in his mother 's confinement. He tells the reader that whilst he drove away, his mother would 'wave from the window. ' Again the poet successfully employs alliterative words to draw our attention - this time to the image of his frail mother still lovingly 'waving ' from her prison 'window '. This notion is supported by Crichton Smith comparing himself to

Therefore, a theme in both stories is interpretation; not only for the reader but the narrator’s interpretation of their love-intrests’ feelings. In “Araby” readers are meant to interpret moments such as when the narrator is describing his neighborhood, “the other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (14 & 17).

There is a deliberate juxtaposition in the opening pages of Graceland between the garbage-ridden streets of Lagos teeming with naked children and Elvis—melancholy, retrospective and, (not without a deliberate irony on the part of Albani) reading a copy of Ellison’s American classic Invisible Man. The monstrous slum of Lagos is crushing in its poverty; Elvis, despite the squander of his personal circumstance, somehow doesn’t fit the image of his city. Why, in a novel based in its exploration of a poverty-stricken African slum, would the protagonist live entirely outside of the normality of his setting? Elvis is an aspiring dancer; frequently ambiguous in both his gender and sexuality, the unprecedentedly moralistic teenager constantly contradicts

They go beyond the traditional “negative stereotypes” so typical of the time period, for they recognize that the individuals in their stories cannot be reduced to pawns in a political conflict. The Arab and the Jew in both A Trumpet in the Wadi and Dancing Arabs are depicted as whole people with equally deep, human emotions. This clearly sets their works into a different category than that of their predecessors—for example, Amos Oz’s Nomad and Viper, also considered to be groundbreaking when it was published, still offers an image of the Arab as animalistic rather than humanistic. Indeed, in Nomad and Viper, the Arab, who is described as shadow-like, is much more a mirror of the Jew’s tormented psyche than an actual person: “The nomad stopped behind Geula’s back, as silent as a phantom […] His obedient shadow moved in the dust.” Not only does this create an image of the Arab as non-human, but it also represents him in a negative, menacing light. While the Jew is attracted to him in a repulsive sense, she experiences more of a passionate urge than any kind of true, deep emotion like what the reader sees in A Trumpet in the Wadi and Dancing Arabs. The Arab, or the “other,” in this instance is seem as dangerous—it is that which draws the Jew in more than anything. Passion of this sort is in fact a relatively uncomplicated emotion; it is fleeting, unlike love.

The speaker’s apparent age suggests that London is a poem of experience rather than innocence. This is an important distinction because the experience of the speaker means that he is old enough to envision an ideal world and to ask questions and make judgment towards the people in power. It is from the format of the speaker’s judgments and questions that the poem is able to evoke the two emotions of sympathy and bitterness in the readers. The delivery of the speaker’s comments about London’s inhabitants creates a separation between him and the events of the poem. The speaker makes mention of people but it is always of what they have left behind or what he can hear from them. For example the speaker says “In the cry of every Man” ( Blake 5) instead of saying he sees the men crying. The wording of the statements implies that the speaker is not talking to the lower class of London but rather using them as examples to address and chastise the upper class for ignoring the hardships that continue to endure around them. However, because he is not directly interacting with the people who need his help, it feels like he is doing this for his own gain and that he is just using the people to prove a point about the running of the government. He could have chosen any negative aspect of life in London but settled on the lower class because their suffering is the most noticeable. This evokes a stronger sense of sympathy form the readers towards the

James Joyce uses several strategies in the first paragraph of “Araby” that help illustrate and reflect the dark and gloomy mood that carries the theme of the short story. The passage begins with the description of the quiet North Richmond Street. By phrasing the end of school for the Christian boys as “(setting) the boys free” the author creates an image of rowdy boys being released into the street, therefore shaping the “quiet” image of the setting when the boys are in school. This illustrates the mood because quietness is often associated with darkness. Another way this reflects the mood of the passage is because the use of the word “free” implies that the boys are being held in some way therefore instilling another dark feeling in the reader.

This critical commentary is developed on the book Ravensong by Lee Maracle. This critical commentary will also incorporate pieces of Adrienne Rich’s “Notes Toward a Politics of Location” and Simone de Beauvoir’s “Introduction” from the coursepack. The similarity among the pieces is the creation of an ‘other’. A group that is different than one’s own and, therefore, is looked upon as lesser. In the critical commentary, I will compare the readings and analyze each. If I have a thought that is not pertaining to paper, I will add it as a footnote. In Ravensong, the Coastal Salish are the norm. “[They are] the subject; [They are] the absolute. [Mallardvillians are] the other” (de Beauvoir, 1952[2011], p. 6).