The Lottery - foreshadowing

I think it is safe to say that The Lottery had a surprising ending. I got the feeling that the lottery was not a good thing when it says that the men smiled rather than laughed, but I did not know what was bad about it. I thought about the theme of this unit being death, but I thought  that surely they would not kill someone simply because they had an unlucky drawing. I was wrong. However, foreshadowing of the stoning is present in the story. At the beginning, the boys are collecting stones and protecting them from others, and these piles of stones are mentioned again saying that the men stood away from the piles. Old man Warner is adamant about keeping the lottery because he believe it will take them back to prehistoric times if they get rid of it. This is a little ironic because it is barbaric to kill someone like this. Old man Warner says, "Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.'" The true meaning of this saying is unknown to me. I believe there is a symbolic meaning to this saying. Maybe it means that the lottery was used as a pre-harvest ceremony. In any instance, the lottery was a big event that just became a tradition with little meaning to the current citizens.

A Rose for Emily - Point of View

The events of A Rose for Emily are a little hard to piece together because everything happens out of chronological order. This is probably due to the fact that the story is told in first person plural point of view. This point of view creates the effect that the story is told by the entire town. The events of the story happens in the order of the sporadic thoughts of the townspeople as the think of Miss Emily. From what I understand, Miss Emily has a family history of some sort of mental illness (old lady Wyatt). Miss Emily probably has some sort of mental illness as well because she denied her father even died, and she withdrew to her house when Homer disappeared. Additionally, Miss Emily most likely killed Homer with the arsenic then kept his dead body in her house in a locked room with the embroidered silverware and suit she bought for him. The room is described as: "A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal..." The word tomb gives away that there is a dead body in the room. One of the questions at the end says that Faulkner said that A Rose for Emily was a kind of "ghost story." This substantiated a thought I already had going. In the last sentence it says that they found an iron-gray hair on the pillow. The story says that her hair did not start turning that iron-gray color until sometime after Homer disappeared, and it says that the room where they found the body had not been opened in forty years. This makes me wonder: how could Miss Emily's iron-gray hair have gotten there if the room had not been opened in forty years and her hair was not the iron-gray color at the time she killed him?

The Glass Menagerie the end

I have rather mixed emotions about the ending of The Glass Menagerie. 

In the first half of scene seven, Laura and Jim converse pretty easily, just like how it was pretty easy to read this part of the scene. I am surprised Laura is able to step out of her own little world. Then Jim says the perfect thing that disrupts the secluded world of the apartment: "And everybody has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems. You think of yourself as having the only problems..." Jim spends a majority of his time giving Laura a little pep talk. Amazingly, he seems to be making rapid progress with her. He even gets her to dance. One quick thought I had was whether or not this story is actually Tom's memory. How would Tom have any memory of Laura and Jim's conversation when he was not present? This makes me wonder whether this play may actually be Laura's memory since Laura is present in every scene although she is not a part of every dialogue. This is also a sense of mystery behind what Tom does throughout the story. Maybe, Laura's memory is just being narrated by Tom because he left for the realistic world.

I would have been happy if the play just ended with Laura and Jim kissing. But no, I guess that is too happy of an ending. Williams just had to make everything sad happen all at once. Jim is engaged and Tom abandons his  family to have his adventure. I am glad Tom is at least haunted by his memories of Laura. That's what he deserves. To add to my idea of the play being Laura's memory, the last thing we see of the play is Laura's blowing out the candles.

The Glass Menagerie scene 6 - dramatic irony

Scene six of The Glass Menagerie begins the second part of the play when the gentleman caller arrives. Oh the illusions continue! Amanda makes Laura wear "gay deceivers" because her chest is flat. Amanda just wants to create this illusion of Laura. Dramatic irony is created when Laura learns the gentleman caller's name. Tom had said before the scene started that he went to high school with Jim, and Laura asks Amanda whether Tom went to school with Jim. This is dramatic irony because the reader knows that this is the same Jim, but Amanda and Laura are unsure. Being the reclusive girl that Laura is, she refuses to go to dinner in fear of her world of illusion clashing with the realistic world. Jim immediately brings a realistic feel to the play. Jim dreams of becoming an executive and studying radio engineering. Jim wants to be successful like most everybody else. However, Tom dreams of leaving his family like their father did saying, "I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard!" Pardon my french, well actually Williams' french. I'm pretty sure no one dreams of becoming the bastard son of a bastard, so I think its fair to say Tom's dream is unrealistic.

The Glass Menagerie scene 5

During scene five of The Glass Menagerie,  the illusion of the play is made evident. Amanda's illusion of Laura is reinforced when Amanda yells at Tom, "Don't say crippled! You know that I never allow that word to be used!" Amanda clearly does not know her daughter's actual situation. I feel like if Laura had to wear a brace that Amanda may need to accept that Laura is at least a little crippled. Amanda even has illusions of Tom. She continues to say that she doesn't believe that Tom goes to the movies every night. Aside from getting drunk, Tom probably goes to the movies too since there is a part where Tom stumbles to get his key out and a bunch of movie ticket stubs fall out. Aside from illusions, when Tom loses his key, Tom loses his connection to the his mother and sister. As the story progresses from that moment, Tom becomes increasingly restless. Surprisingly, Amanda has no illusions of Tom's planning to leave them behind. To my disappointment, Tom follows through on that plan, but let's get back to illusions. Laura lives in her own world of illusion with her glass ornaments. Laura just withdraws to her glass menagerie when she fails to fit into the real world.

The Glass Menagerie scenes 3 and 4 - soliloquy

The middle portion of part 1 of The Glass Menagerie contains a soliloquy in which Tom speaks from the fire-escape landing. Tom's speaking from the fire escape creates this feel that Tom is, in a sense, detached from the what is occurring in the play. This soliloquy verifies that the play is of Tom's memory. However, the character of Tom as the narrator is different from the character of Tom in the play. The narrator Tom seems  more calm and slightly removed from what is occurring. For example, Tom says during the soliloquy: "Mother was a woman of action as well as words. She began to take logical steps in the planned direction." In contrast, the character Tom cannot stand his mother, and anytime Amanda scathingly criticizes him Tom heads for the fire escape which acts as his escape in more than one sense throughout the story. At some times, the fire escape is where Tom goes for a smoke in order to relieve himself of Amanda's worrying. It seems that most nights the fire escape also acts as his escape to the outside world where he can go to the movies. Strangely, he escapes from this illusionary world of the apartment to the fantasy of movies which are a part of the external realistic world of the story (just a weird thought I had).

The Glass Menagerie scenes 1 and 2 - Foreshadowing

In the introduction to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, the author gives an insight into each of the characters. Williams reveals that Amanda's live is paranoia...boy is that true(!) but more on that later. I found it interesting that Williams described the other characters in relation to Amanda even though Tom narrates the story. Perhaps, this suggests that the story is truly about Amanda and not Tom. In the opening of the play, it is fairly evident that Amanda puts plenty of pressure on her children. For example, Tom feels the need to escape for a smoke frequently. Also, Laura was pressured to go to business college which obviously did not work out very well. I am going to be completely honest: before I read the play, I thought Laura's crippled leg was rather severe, so when a stage direction said, "She flounces girlishly toward the kitchenette" I was fairly confused. Once I overcame my initial impression of her handicap, the rest of the play had much less confusion. Although I have read further into the play, I did make an initial note of potential foreshadowing in scene two. When Amanda asked if Laura ever liked a boy, I thought that Laura's response of the boy that called her Blue Roses could be a potential gentleman caller. To my enjoyment, I was correct, well sorta, that this man was a caller for Laura.