Author: RyanZ

“The Lady or the Tiger” by Frank Stockton takes place in a land where a king presides over court using chance to determine people’s innocence or guilt. Inside of a public arena are two doors. Behind one is a woman whom the accused must marry if he opens that door. Behind the other is a hungry tiger. If that door is chosen by the accused, the accused is considered guilty and will be eaten by the tiger. The king’s daughter falls in love with a man of lower status, and he is brought into the arena to choose a door. The princess learns which door has the tiger and which one has the lady, and she discreetly tells her lover to open the door on the right. However, it is never revealed what was behind that door, so we don’t know if she led him into death or into marriage with another woman.

You can’t really say there is a theme for this short story, but the moral value of “The Lady, or the Tiger?” story is we have to be careful in making decisions. Every decision must be well considered before it becomes a final. The consideration should be reviewing the effects for us in our next steps of life. The king made the accused make a life-deciding decision, and it was all chance if they lived or died. This was a pretty interesting story as it was ended with a cliffhanger, since we don’t know what happened to the prince, and what was behind the door he chose.

In the short story “Hearts an Hands” by O. Henry,

In ”Hearts and Hands,” a woman, Miss Fairchild, spots an old friend named Mr. Easton on a train handcuffed to another man. That man calls her friend Mr. Marshal when she sees the cuffs. Turns out, the man is actually the marshal, and Mr. Easton is the prisoner. But the marshal is a kind man, and lies to her that he is the prisoner. He helps save Mr. Easton from the embarrassment of being a prisoner to a friend. He sees the horror on Miss Fairchild’s face when she first sees the handcuffs on Mr. Easton and speaks up. He calls Easton ”Marshal” to detour her thoughts. Later, after he sees that she seems interested in Mr. Easton, he cuts the conversation short without revealing the truth to save her from embarrassment. After that, he helps Mr. Easton get out of the conversation by asking to go and smoke, leaving Miss Fairchild oblivious to the fact that he was the prisoner, although people who were listening knew that Mr. Easton wasn’t the real marshal.

The theme of the story is kindness. He sees that Mr. Easton doesn’t want to be embarrassed in front of his old friend, and decides to play along with the fact that he was the prisoner, although he doesn’t gain anything from it, and is just being helpful and kind. This is an important lesson, and a pretty interesting story to go with it.

The short story “The Secret of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber is about Walter Mitty daydreaming. He and his wife are on their way to do some errands, he indulges in a daydream in which he is a brave military commander piloting a hydroplane, but his wife interrupts by exclaiming that he is driving too fast. This pattern is repeated several times. He starts daydreaming, and then his wife brings him back to reality. In reality, Mitty does not do anything very well. Although Walter Mitty’s daydream life has much exciting action, his waking life, as recounted in the story, is routine and uneventful. In his waking life, Mitty drives with his wife into Waterbury for the regular weekly trip to shop and for Mrs. Mitty’s visit to the beauty parlor. After dropping his wife off at the salon, Mitty drives around for a brief time, then parks the car in a parking lot, purchases some overshoes at a shoe store, with some difficulty remembers to buy puppy biscuit, and goes to the hotel lobby where he always meets his wife. After a short time Mrs. Mitty appears, complaining to Mitty about the difficulty of finding him in the large chair where he has “hidden” himself, and then for a “minute” (actually much longer) leaves Mitty standing in front of a nearby drugstore while she goes to accomplish something she forgot. During these events, he goes into five daydreams or fantasies, which not only are induced by the events of his waking life but also affect them. This was a confusing story as the daydreams were being cut by reality, and it was hard to know what was happening. The story was very interesting.

The story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a pretty interesting story. It begins with Mama, waiting for the arrival of Dee, her eldest of the daughters. She stands next to Maggie, who is shy and has burn marks on her body. As they await the arrival, the reader is given a background to the life of Mama and how she and Dee grew distant. Dee was smart and driven and wanted to get more out of life than Mama, and her ancestry had to offer. All of it came at the expense of Maggie and Mama. Dee arrives with Hakim, a barber, who turns out to be her boyfriend. Dee also goes by a new name, “Wangero” and wants her family to use it. Dee is more interested in gathering artifacts from her family than connecting with them. They go through the possessions of Mama in their search for some authentic items of her African American descent, which she wants to display in her house. Dee is somewhat rude when talking to Mama and Maggie. She gets to some quilts that were meant for her younger sister, and Dee wants them for herself. This results in Dee lashing out at Mama, claiming that she deserves the quilts more. Mama gives the quilts to Maggie, in which she asks Dee to leave, and she does.

The basic theme of the story is to respect your heritage and everything your ancestors went through. Dee has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage. However, the new name, like the “African” clothes and jewelry she wears to make a statement, is meaningless. She has little true understanding of Africa, so what she considers her true heritage is actually empty and false. This was a story that was kind of hard to understand, but it was a good one.

I honestly feel like “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift was really interesting and funny, because the whole idea was absurd. Just thinking of selling children is basically like slavery, forcing them to do something when they can’t protect themselves. The idea for trying to relieve the poor and pleasure the rich is a good one, but there are a lot of other ways that can help the poor. Using 20,000 kids for breeding, and then selling the other 100,000 children for meat? I didn’t know people were that desperate that they thought of cannibalism. Even though there are a lot of poor people in the United States, there are still some ways to solve the problem. There are a lot of organizations set up to help the poor, and a lot of shelters for the homeless. I also wonder why Catholics are the enemy, because how would the idea lessen the number of a Catholics. Also, the children wouldn’t have been useless. They could grow to become a person that could revolutionize their country, since 120,000 children is a lot, so at least a few of them would be able to help improvise ways to bring Ireland out of its slump. And not everyone would benefit from this, since eating children would probably decrease the survival rate, because cannibalizing would make you sick. I would compare this idea to slavery, as people were forced to do work for their masters, and then were sold in the market, and separated from this families. These children would be in the same boat as they would also be used for something they couldn’t do anything about, and probably wouldn’t even understand what was happening. This is what I think about “A Modest Proposal”.

“Seventh Grade,” by Gary Soto tells a story about how Victor, a young boy who wishes to make Teresa his girl, tries to impress her. He is encouraged when he finds that he and Teresa share several classes including English and French.  In French class, he decides to pretend that he knows how to speak the language, trying to impress Teresa.  While he does not fool the teacher, Teresa was impressed and approaches him after class asking that he tutor her.  The teacher, Mr. Bueller, wisely remembers his own youthful foolishness and does not give away Victor’s secret.  Because of the teacher’s kindness, Victor decides to go to the library and check out extra books on learning to speak French. 

One possible reason the author wrote this story was to bring adults nostalgia. As everyone these days are stressed about work and taxes, this story helps show them what their school lives were like, and compare it to their own. Victor always made a fool of himself trying to impress Teresa, probably what a lot of people have also done. If they had put themselves in Victor’s shoes, would they have done the same thing? Mr. Bueller also had a moment of nostalgia when thinking about his old girlfriend, and how he had impressed her by pretending to be rich. Overall, the story was a pretty interesting one.

The news article was a pretty interesting one. I always usually try getting 8 hours of sleep, because I heard it was the usual amount that you should try and achieve. But that is only for school days, as I usually want to sleep in on days where I don’t have school. But now I know there is no specific amount of time you should try to sleep, but a range of different hours depending on the person. I never thought of comparing sleep to drink glasses of water, but not it makes sense. The people who are more athletic drink more water, while the couch potatoes drink less. I guess that relates to sleep, because the people who work longer sleep later, while other people who don’t have to work as hard try and sleep earlier to get more rest.

When I am always pretty tired, and I would think that it would because I didn’t get enough sleep, but it turns it might be because I slept for too long. It is probably because I usually wake up early, but now, I tend to sleep in because I can. I should probably try and have a set time to sleep and wake up so I won’t be as tired. it was a good article, and I learned from it too.

I felt the lottery was a weird story. I didn’t really get the reason why they had to kill someone. I get that it was a tradition, but I don’t understand why it was a tradition. They were all greeting each other normally too, but they didn’t show any emotion when everyone was throwing rocks at Mrs. Hutchinson. Even her children joined in, which I didn’t get because I would think they would feel sad that their mom was gonna die, but everyone was just happy it wasn’t them that died. In modern times, there would be a lot of riots if someone was killed, but in the story, everyone would just move on to their normal life and not care. The ending was kind of random, and hard to understand. I felt the story was okay.