Incident

This poem relates to both the Harlem Renaissance and Disillusionment. This eight year old African American boy goes to Boston for some excitement."Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee" This boy keeps staring him down and calls him a nigger, "And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger." This shows their culture, they want people to realize it hurts more then most people think. Especially for a eight year old boy just minding his own business to be called such a name and ruin his whole day. He was also disillusioned by thinking people wouldn't say anything. He didn't realize how harsh the world was.

"I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December;Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember. "

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

"I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins."

Langston Hughes express the Harlem Renaissance by expressing African Americans culture. They've seen many things, and have been here along time.They know ancient rivers and pyramids before any one discovered them. "I've known rivers:Ancient, dusky rivers." I feel sad when I read this poem, because the author expresses his feeling with the line, "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." I feel like they had everything, they were happy with themselves where they were, until they became slaves.

A Dream Deferred

I feel that this relates to the Harlem Renaissance. It describes the way African Americans feel about their dreams and their lifestyle. That the white people are holding them back from everything they have, until its gone. "Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?" This meaning their dream is like a sweet, something they can't wait to taste. As time goes by though the sweet soon becomes old and crust over, like their dream, dying because it's been too long, and they have finally lost hope.

Mending Wall

“Good fences make good neighbours.”

This is a disillusionment to both of the characters in the poem. The two neighbors have built a fence, and one feels it's pointless because they have no cows to get mixed up, all they have is trees. The other neighbor on the other hand keeps saying the phrase his father once told him, "good fences make good neighbours." thinking the idea of separation. I feel the fence is pointless, if they have a big farm and lots of land why do they need a fence? Their pretty separated all ready. I feel though that the neighbour who wants the fence is white, and the other man is black. The white man his whole life has grown up with his father saying stay separated from the blacks, but he doesn't want to tell the man in a mean way. "He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.” I feel that the white man is disillusioned to think that he needs to have a fence to separate them just because of their race. I also think that the black man is disillusion by trying to persuade him in not having the fence, because in that time of day he should know their "suppose" to be separated.
"There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence."

Richard Corey

"WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,"

These people on the pavement are poor, and Richard is drenched in glory to them. He has money, education, and grace as they see. "And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,And admirably schooled in every grace:"This is only on the outside though. I feel that they wanted to be him so bad, they expressed this as "And went without the meat, and cursed the bread" meaning they were starving for a while just so they could try and build up to what Mr.Corey was. That's only what they interpreted him to be, happy as can be, he had everything in the world to them. Richard didn't think so though, something besides being poor, or uneducated was eating him inside, something enough to take away all his glory and money. "And Richard Corey, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head."

Modernism

I have chosen the Harlem Renaissance to studied more about solely because I am interested. I want to see and read the works of the African Americans, some coming straight out of war. I am intrigued to learn and see what their ideas were and the way they felt and saw life.



The story "Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston, was a sad story with a good moral to it. The story was about a women who helped out the "white" people for some money, and her husband hated that, and hated her all around. She would work and clean for him and her both while all the day he would be gone cheating on her. When he would return home he would yell and often beat her. "Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white folks clothes outa dis house." "He picked up the whip and glared at her." It bothered me the way he treated her, because even though that was back in the old days and that is how the majority of marriages were, it still happens today. It is not acceptable and there needs to be something done. This story ended good, because Delia was terrified of snakes, or basically anything that moved. Well one day as a mean thing to do her husband went and put a rattle snake in her clothes basket. The snake slithered out shaking his tail, but she ran off. The next morning her husband came home and got attacked by his own set up. "Outside Delia herd a cry that might have come from a maddened chimpanzee, a tricken gorilla. All terror, all the horror, all the rage that man possibly could express, without a recognizable human sound."

In "Sweat", Zora relates this story to the Harlem Renaissance by showing the dialect of the African Americans to show a piece of their lifestyle. "You ain't got no business doing it, Gawd knows it's a sin. Some day Ah'm gointuh drop dead from some of yo' foolishness. 'Nother thing, where you been wid mah rig? Ah feeds dat pony. He ain't fuh you to be drivin wid no bull whip." Another example of the African American culture she describes is the way the women lives day to day. She shows how Delia doesn't have all the rights that the white people have, but she has to do what she can to survive.

Realism

In the story "The Story of an Hour", there is a character named Louise Mallard. Louise is an old lady with heart trouble, and has just lost her husband but has no idea. Someone has to tell her and the person that takes responsibility to do so is her sister. When her sister tells her the news, she goes to her room and asks to be alone. When she goes to her room it describes the room as her looking out her open window. She says "Free! Body and soul free!", this here is when she expresses her feeling of her love and hate for her husband. Even though she loved him sometimes, now she was free to live by herself, for herself with no one to tell her what to do. As she became one with her soul, she walked out and stubble down her stairs and her husband was there at the door, but as he walked in, she died at the sight of him.

The social issue in this short story is marriage. Back in the day marriage wasn't fair for women. They had to do what their husband said whether they wanted to or not. They weren't able to be their own person. The way "The Story of an Hour" writes this is in the line, "There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in the blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature."

This is an example of realism for the fact that it is actually expressing how some women felt back then. It's proving to you that is was bad enough to where if their husband died they would find joy in it, and become their self once again.

In the story "The Battle with Mr.Covey" by Frederick Douglass, Frederick is talking about himself. He is a slave who has been working hard for Mr. Covey for a long time. One day out in the field he started to become tired and sick, "I broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb." Mr. Covey then comes out and starts kicking and yelling at him to get up and work, but Frederick can't with all his strength, "I tried to do so, but fell back in the attempt." After all this, Frederick runs off with his head bleeding, and through the woods his feet get torn up by the thorns, "My hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff with blood. My legs and feet were torn in sundry places with briers and thorns."

I think the social issue of this story is that having slaves is wrong, especially the way they treated them back in the day. They treated slaves as if they weren't real people, as if they had no say in what they wanted to do with their day let alone their own life. This was a big problem back then that no one realized until now.

Frederick wrote this as a personal experience. Something he had to go through, which was terribly wrong, but made him tremendously strong. I think he wrote this for all the people who really do care, and for the ones who don't. To open up the eyes of those who felt that there was nothing wrong, to show them his point of view and his life day to day. For those to jump in his shoes and maybe feel sympathy for what he had to go through.

In todays society, if you turn on the television there are many examples of realism. My example would have to be the movie, American Gangster. This movie stars Denzel Washington, and is based on a true story. The social issue would have to be drugs and crooked cops. The movie is about a man who is a drug lord and smuggled herion into Harlem. He would do so by hiding the stash inside the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam.

Of Mice and Men- 107

This book that I have just completed reading really caught my interest. The two main characters in this book are George and Lennie. Two men trying to look for work. After meeting each other George finds out that Lennie has some kind of mental disorder. They become friends, and Lennie relys on George to take care of him. A obsession of Lennie is touching "soft" things, such as mice, but hes so strong that he kills them and doesn't relize it. With Lennies mental disorder and strong hands, it tends to cause him a tremendous amount of trouble.While they were working a farm, thier goal was to save money and buy thier own farm and tend the rabbits and have cows. Lennie was so excited because George promised him he would be able to tend the rabbits. Near the end of the book Lennie gets in some trouble. He accidentally breaks one of the owners wifes neck, and runs up to the spot where George told him to go if anything was to happen. As Lennie sat thier worried as can be, George shows up and he feels comfort. He asks George to tell him about the land they will one day share so he can imagine that happy day. As George is telling him of the beautiful land he takes a gun and shoots him in the head. That really made me sad, because Lennie was such a good guy but hurt everything he touched on accident. I guess as a friend he wanted to but him out of misery, but I wouldn't be able to that to someone who is inside so innocent.