Kyle's Thoughts

This week in class we continued to read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. We talked about how there are many emotions attached to love and all the different types of loves showed in Song of Solomon . A specific relationship that has many emotions connected to the "love" in their bond is Milkman and Ruth. Ruth Loves Milkman so much because he gives her meaning and a sense of worth. Since, Ruth showers Milkman with love and affection he should love her back, right? Wrong. Ruth's love is overbearing to the point where it becomes burdensome. An example of this overbearing love is Ruth breastfeeding Milkman way past the normal age. At first glance, it would seem, although weird, just that a mother loves her kid a lot. Milkman is affected by this "love" in a negative way. His name is now Milkman instead of Macon III because of his mother. At this point is Ruth actually showing Milkman love or is it something else. If Ruth truly loved Milkman she would be doing things ...

This week in class we started reading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. In this book Toni Morrison's attention to detail is mind-boggling. We analyzed a couple examples of this in class by diving deeper into the text. The first example of this attention to detail is when she talks about the symbol of flowers. When Ruth goes into labor when she's pregnant with Milkman, she drops flower petals. These petals are fake rose petals that are sewn together. When first reading this, I didn't pay much attention to Ruth dropping these flower petals. After digging deeper during class, we realized that the petals are representative of fake love in this case because they are fake rose petals. They represent the fake love that Milkman will encounter throughout his lifetime, whether between him and his mother, him and his dad, him and Hagar, etc. Flowers are used throughout the book with the vase flowers and the tulips too, but we didn't talk much about those. Another really interestin...

This week in class we talked a lot about the use of violent images in literature and in news. In literature it can be used as a tool to show the extent of an event. An example of this is in Maus  when Spiegelman draws the pile of dead bodies. This shows how horrific the Holocaust was and although they were bodies of rats to represent humans it still had a great effect on the reader. Although we talked about violent images in literature, I took away the most from the conversations about the use of violent images in the news. The role of the news is to inform the public on current events, such as war and tragic incidents. The public will take these horrific events and learn from them and try to prevent them from happening again because they see how terrible the events are. "We live in a graphic society, whether we choose to or not," (Mendoza). If this is true, then there has to be some sort of change to prevent tragic events from happening as often. This is why news needs to sh...

This week in class we read and talked about Maus  by Art Spiegelman. Since it is a comic book, we were not only able to closely read the panels, but we were also able to examine each image in the panels. A specific example of this is on page 69 of volume 2, "And Here My Troubles Began". This example is the last 3 panels on the page. Vladek is talking to Art about the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Vladek says, "You heard about the gas, but I'm telling not rumors, but only what really I saw ," (Spiegelman 69). There's a lot of speculation on what happened during the Holocaust and the extent of this atrocity. People say their theories and what they believed happened. Vladek on the other hand, he is the opposite of these people. He is telling Art not what he thinks happened, but what he knows happened because he saw it firsthand. Speigelman decides to bold the words "heard" and "saw" to put an emphasis on these terms. Anyone can hear things abo...