Reflection on Reading Lolita in Tehran

In "Reading Lolita in Tehran" we can sense the powerful impact has this story that makes it one of a kind and that everyone should get to know. It is based on a true story and it's told from women perspective during hard times. The author expresses rejection to take part in the impositions of the new goverment that closed every door to be free. Putting boundaries between what was right and wasn't. There was no longer any place to the individual huuman spirit. Leaders were more concerned and fearful of the winds of change, as they maintain ideals that have been passed for hundreds of years of generations. There is a lot of arrogance to allow young idealist minds to choose what they thought is right. But most of all, at a time that everything was run by men the most troublesome were and probably still is female liberal believes. These events are told by seven of the author's female students who come up with these controversial themes. What they propose is to step forward over that has chained them as it is parental authority, social imposed rules and the sacrifices they must made. There are issues related to age, sex and marriage based on the ideals this girls have been raise. Restricted and thrown to a second playground beneath men, as I can clearly see it and for the reasons the author leaved Tehran University in 1981.

Interaction with The Secret Life of Bees

As I have mentioned before "The Secret Life of Bees" connects with the previous themes we read. In each there is that fact of human struggle against other people's believes or against a system thru the sixty's till the present. Some of them are the struggle of color skin that almost determines who you are, the flaws of the goverment to provide every citizen equal rights and that which never misses of foolish people who think they are superior to others. Maybe it's me that as always can only focus on the bad side of things, but that doesn't make me forgive the strenght that all the characters in this stories must had to overcome all of this. What I really mean to say is that if you can't put in their place you can 't appreciate the few good things they could had. For more usual this situations may have been and even when they remain at least I haven't sense them.

Reflection on the Secret Life of Bees Part 2

As I thought! The end of the movie will be better and I was right. Of course, there were many things I didn't expect to happen. The one that shock me more was the unfortunate death of May. I had thought that since she began to get in touch with Rosaleen she will get better. It never cross my mind even for a second that she will kill herself. Then I never thought Lily begining to get in love with Zach. But then the rest didn't catch by surprise. One of those was that June let down her defenses and accepted Neil's marriage proposal. That Lily could state clear that her mother didn't abandoned her and that the day she died she had come back for her. I suspected that sooner or later T. Ray will end up giving with Lily's location and that he will demonstrate his true emotions that were insecurity of himself and fear to loosing Lily for she was a live image of her mother. So finally, I reach the end where Lily decides to stay and live with the Boatwright sisters. This movie presents everynone with his own inner battle and how thanks to Lily they could be in order with themselves. The author tries to send the same message so that the reader can be in order when you take a look from the point of view of each character which are most women.

Reflection on The Secret Life of Bees Part 1

After having seen only a part of the movie I see that it continues to expand more the material we have cove on this class. Most of the themes presented in the movie like the woman perspective, the civil rights of niggers and all other challenges that came acroos the sixty's. It also shows certain psychological aspects as it is Lily's perception on having killed her own mother on an accident. I began to like it once Lily and Rosaleen got to the home of the Boatwright sisters where they take them in. There she begans to explore her mothers past and becomes involve in the three sisters lifes. First, August who begins to teach her on the art of extracting honey, but most important it helps her understand who is mother really was and how is that she came to end with T. Ray. Then comes June who is to insecure and it's afraid of getting hurt, the reason her relationship with Neil is not working. And then comes May who is quite emotionally unstable since her twin sister death and so she is very fragile. I was interested to hear that she was the one who pick the the tropical pink color of the house. My point is that this movie as all the other stories are told from the eyes of woman. Now I am more interested than ever to see the rest of the movie to see how it ends.

Reflection on Maternal Instinct

When I read the title I thought I would enjoy this story for I had a different idea of what was it. It tells about a miscarried woman named Laura who has 8 children with 7 different men. From the moment I read this part it came to me of what kind of life this woman had. As I continue reading I began to see that the title is in someway the lacking element in the story. As I read I keep asking myself if this woman could really love her children without difference of who they are sons too. But she wasn't insensible when she thought on her daughter having the same harsh life she had and wanted to spare them from making their same mistakes. I uunderstood that we have not right to judge our parents regarding the decisions they took and their impact in our lives. I would like to think they always want the best for us, even when there are some exceptions. I believe the maternal instinct is the most powerful of all. This gives a mother the strenght and perdurance to overcome any obstacle so that we can develope until the moment it's already our turn and beyond.

Reflection on George and the Pink House

When I started reading this story I didn't imagine what it would be about. It starts with a boy talking about the man who lived in the house. He was a pathetic, little, aggressive, fat man who uses to beat his wife and daughter and no one did anything about it. After his wife died he started drinking and sold everything else he had and ended walking on the streets. George seem to be nothing more than a simple man with little power and control so he takes on his two children. He is the kind f man I hate the most and I'll wish he would try to do that on me so that I put him on his place. He focus his anger especially on his daughter Dolly who even when she stand up to him because of what he had done to their house there was no one else to defend her. She was married to a wimp and her brother was always too occupied on her studies. I don't have to comprehend nothing more about George, no matter will be the reasons a man should always provide to their families and never lift a hand to harm them. Even at the border of his geath I can't feel any pitty for him and what we do on this world we pay it in the next one.

Reflection on The Story of an Hour

This story is a demonstration of the thin line that separates marriage and freedom. When Mrs. Mallard heard the news that her husband Brently Mallard was apparently killed on a railroad disaster. It was then when she finally came to sense as a free woman. She stood lock in her room looking thru the window thinking on what was out there. I believe she was the kind of woman who got married since very young and she had never took important decisions of her own. By now she was already old and she was sick, but rather spend the rest of his days on grief for her husband she felt free for the first time in many decades. She will no longer have to live under her husband shadow and keep fulfilling her role as a common wife does. Unfortunately, the news about Brently's death were mistaken and when she hears her husband was still alive the shock of the news was too much for her and she died. No one will know the true reason, some will thought that she died of happiness because her status, but I believe the real reason were because she since how all her dreams and hopes came down to an end. Instead of keep living the role of a perfect wife she found hope in death.










It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.