Conversation Partners

Since my conversation partner decided to stop responding to my text messages after spring break, I thought it would be a good idea to write about the conversation partner program in general.  When I found out at the beginning of the semester that we were going to meet with the ESL students to help them learn English and gain experience with other cultures, I was excited.  I think the program is a great idea, and when the pairs work out, like a lot of them did for the class, it is a fun learning experience.  At first I thought Pamela and I would become friends, because we got along well at our first meeting with few language problems.  She offered to bring me pictures of her home in Brazil and we talked about going out to dinner in some restaurants around Fort Worth.  But with Pamela's busy schedule of classes, her job, and the fact that she lives about twenty minutes from TCU, several of our next planned meetings had to be canceled.

It wasn't until right before spring break when we met again, and Pamela told me she was probably going to transfer to TCC next semester since it is closer to her house and cheaper. Maybe she meant she was leaving TCU right after spring break, because I didn't hear from her again after that.

I wish I had gotten a chance to know Pamela better.  I loved hearing stories in class and reading other people's blogs about their conversation partner experiences.  I would have enjoyed meeting Pamela for lunch every week at the same time, or taking her to play pool in the Rec center.  Even though it didn't work out as well for me, I had a good time getting to know Pamela as best I could and learning a little bit about another culture.  The conversation partners program is an interesting way to approach TCU's global awareness credit.  It may have gotten off to a rocky start for some people this semester, especially with the "unintentional winter break," but I hope it continues to be part of the curriculum for this course.

The Tunnel of Oppression

When I went through the tunnel of oppression last week, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  Only I and one other girl went through in my group, and at the beginning a volunteer handed us nametags to give to each other.  Mine said “failure” and hers said “zero.”  It was awkward having to put such a mean label on a total stranger, but it made me realize that even though we don’t go around sticking tags on people, we all mentally do this every day.  Just seeing the word “failure,” and thinking about being labeled that way made me uncomfortable, which I think was the point.  

The first room we went into was about Hindus in Bhutan, who are being oppressed by their Buddhist government.  There were pictures of starving people and piles of people’s belongings thrown into the streets.  I learned that there are quite a few Bhutanese refugees living in Fort Worth.  It made me want to get involved, since there are people living right here in Fort Worth that I could help.  I am not always able to donate money to charities overseas, and it is also hard to know if the charities are actually legitimate.  I will probably try to find some more information about these people to see if I can get involved and help them.

The next room was dedicated to the child soldiers and suffering in the Congo.  We watched a video that showed many horrible images.  There were pictures of children sleeping on the ground outside juxtaposed next to pictures of American mothers kissing their children goodnight in bed.  In another set of pictures, American boys chased a soccer ball, while children from the Congo wielded guns almost as big as they were.  Even though I’ve seen images from the Congo before, it is hard to relate to them because nothing we experience in America is anywhere close to that bad.  Seeing images of happy families right next to the suffering children really put everything into perspective for me. 

After that, the third room’s topic was gay marriage.  It showed some pictures of gay and lesbian celebrities, and we watched a short video about Prop 8 and protests advocating gay marriage.  I liked this room, because since we live in a free country, it isn’t right to tell people who they can and can’t marry.  With all of the other freedoms people have in the US, I don’t see how letting gay people marry each other would change anything. 

The next room was the most shocking and disturbing to me.  It talked about female circumcision, which apparently happens in a lot of less developed countries and villages.  The walls were covered in stories of women who were forced to go through this torture by their own relatives who thought it was a good idea.  It was hard for me to read about this, and it seemed like the ultimate form of oppressing women.  All of the women whose testimonies were up on the walls said they felt humiliated by the “surgery,” and it even said men preferred wives who hadn’t been through this. 

The last room was about the number of gay or lesbian young adults who are homeless.  It is sad that people are kicked out of their homes because of their sexuality, but I didn’t understand some aspects of this room.  The statistics said things like “36 percent of all homeless adolescents are homosexual.” To me, that doesn’t seem like a terribly high percent.  I would have liked to have other statistics to compare this one to, so I could think about it in perspective...Maybe it is a lot compared to the overall number of homosexual people in the US.  I think this room could have focused on just the number of homeless children.  That seems like a big enough problem without the sexual orientation aspect.  That room was the last room in the Tunnel.  I would have liked it if there were more rooms in the tunnel; I expected at least ten or fifteen topics.

The Tunnel of Oppression was a great experience for me.  Not because I enjoyed learning about other people’s suffering, but because everyone needs to know that these things happen in the world.  I am glad TCU does the tunnel, and I’m glad I was able to go through it.  It college, it is easy to get wrapped up in the “bubble” of campus life.  Even though it is often painful, it’s good for us to be reminded that, as the more privileged individuals on this planet, it is our duty to help those who are less fortunate.

Disappointment

A few weeks ago, I turned the TV on in my room just for some noise while I worked on homework.  There was really nothing on that I wanted to watch, but I ended up leaving it on TLC’s relatively new show “Extreme Couponing.”  I didn’t have any interest in watching this show at first, but as it continued I began to ignore my homework and watch in disgust.  This show is absolutely ridiculous.  It follows several women around each episode as they go through their grocery shopping, trying to save as much money as possible with coupons. In my opinion, coupons are really only helpful if they save you money on something you were planning on buying anyway.   

On this show the families spend hours, even days, cutting out every coupon they can find before doing their grocery shopping.  When they shop, the people on the episode I watched buy enormous amounts of food: one woman bought something like 60 packages of cold cuts, and another bought around 30 containers of cream cheese.  These people have normal sized families.  They don’t feed entire communities or give to the homeless.  Each family filled several shopping carts to the brim, and one couple even checked out separately, with at least two carts each.  These people spent over 1,000 dollars on their purchase, and after putting the cashiers through the torture of scanning thousands of coupons, they walked out with their masses of food for less than 100 dollars.  The part of the show that disgusted me the most was when they got home to put away the food.  These people have entire rooms that are already filled with food from previous shopping trips.  One family had so much that they kept cereal in their own closets, and stuffed hundreds of packages of toilet paper under their children’s beds.  This is just crazy.  One family had enough food, BEFORE their televised shopping trip, to feed their whole family for nine years.  And they still go grocery shopping. Regularly.  I have no idea what is wrong with these people, but I think this is sick.  Our consumer culture has become so obsessed with buying things and getting the best deal that people go to extremes like this.  Most of the food they buy will be stale or expired before they even get close to consuming it.  No one in the world needs nine years’ worth of food stored in their home just because they like to see how much money they can save at the grocery store.  Especially when there are people, even in the United States, who worry about where their next meal will come from.  How can people be so selfish?  TLC promotes this show like it is a great thing that people can save this much money.  I think they should show it as a group of people who need serious therapy.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good sale as much as the next person.  But come on, how much does one person really need to buy?  There is a point where saving money just turns into plain greed, and these people are way past it.  I obviously have a strong opinion about this, but anyone who hasn’t seen the show should watch it and see what they think.  I think it would be hard not to be absolutely disgusted. This show made me disappointed, both in society for allowing something like this to happen and be considered a good thing, and in TLC for making a show that promotes this.  I haven't been as disappointed as I was watching this show in quite a long time.

Poor Francis Macomber

I don’t know why, but I felt like Margot was going to kill her husband from the beginning.  The title made it obvious that he would die, and as soon as she was introduced I just got a feeling.  Everything she says to her husband is designed to undermine him in some way.  She is very aggressive. I know you hate that word, Dr. Williams, but I think it’s necessary here.  She keeps reminding Francis of his failure with the lion.  When she asks at dinner if Francis shot the eland, she immediately asks if they are dangerous when Francis says he did shoot them.  If he is happy about something or having a good time, she has to shoot him down.  I did think some of Margot and Francis’ conversations were funny though, because she is so mean to him in such a sweet tone.  I can just picture the scene in my head.  It seems like something that would be on a sitcom.  I liked the way Wilson analyzes Margot.  He says that American women are the cruelest in the world, and this section where he describes her sounds like he is describing an animal that he is hunting.  He clearly labels her as a predator, which is completely accurate. 

Wilson to me is a funny character.  He is so manly that he is almost ridiculous.  I feel like Wilson is Hemingway’s alter ego, which I thought was funny.  The whole time I was reading the story I just pictured Hemingway writing this and wanting to be Wilson.  He is the epitome of Hemingway’s idea of manliness: he hunts, he drinks, he sleeps with women but isn’t married to any of them, he breaks the rules, and other men are jealous of him.  He is also a fairly level-headed character who provides a contrast to Margot and Francis’ violent relationship. 

I hated reading about the hunting parts of the story, because I don’t understand the desire to hunt things.  Reading about it just makes me sad for the animals.  I did like the way Hemingway described the way the lion felt when he was shot though.  It was heartbreaking to read, but it gave me a real sense of the scene.  It set the ending up nicely too.  When it said “he felt a sudden, white-hot, blinding flash explode inside his head and that was all he ever felt,” I wasn’t sure if it was the buffalo’s feeling or Francis’.  I figured it was Francis, but I still wasn’t sure that he was shot.  I thought maybe he had a heart attack or something because of his excitement. 

I think Margot killed her husband on purpose.  She couldn’t stand not having control over him, so she did the only thing left that she could do to control him.  Shooting Francis was so desperate and cowardly that it shows she was really powerless to him once he found his confidence.  Like Taylor said in her blog, Margot is now afraid of her husband and she loses control.  I don’t think this is really intended in the story at all, but something was weird to me about how Wilson suggested leaving the gun in the car with Margot.  I felt like maybe they planned to kill Francis together.  When Wilson kept mocking her at the end it made me feel like he had talked her into doing something that she didn’t really think through.  The last thing he says to her is really creepy to me.  He will only stop when she says please, showing that he has power over her and he is in charge of the situation.  That is the line that made me think he might have set her up to kill Francis, because it seemed manipulative and controlling.  Like I said, I don’t think this is what Hemingway intended, I just thought it was interesting to read it that way. 

I felt bad for Francis.  I think he went on this hunt in the first place to prove himself.  He seemed like an okay guy, and both society and his cruel wife had him trapped and emasculated.  Instead of finding his masculinity and courage like he expected on the trip, he is further mocked by Wilson's manliness and the incident with the lion.  When he finally does take control and find himself, he only gets to enjoy it for a few minutes before it gets taken away with a cowardly shot.  His wife shoots him in the back of the head, while he is turned around and defenseless like an animal. 

My Most Embarrassing Moment

Whenever anyone asks the embarrassing moment question, I always know exactly which one I’m going to talk about.  Of course, I’ve had more than one embarrassing moment...I’ve had a lot of them, actually.  But I think this one stands out above the rest. 

 

It was quite a while ago, when I was in eighth grade.  At my middle school it was a school tradition for the eighth grade class to take a class trip to Washington D.C. for a week every February.  (I never really understood why they took a bunch of kids to D.C. in the middle of the winter.)  Our flight was scheduled to leave early in the morning- really early.  We had to be at the airport by about 4:30 am, so that meant getting up around 3:30.  I’ve never really been a breakfast person, but my parents insisted that I eat something (waffles.)  Once we made it to the airport, I thought a Dr. Pepper would help wake me up before the flight, so I got one....from McDonalds.  Never a good idea.  About halfway through the flight, I started feeling sick.  The breakfast, nervousness, and McDonalds together were a bad combination.  Instead of being smart and reaching for one of the little paper bags in the back of the seat, I decided to try to climb over the person in the seat next to me and run to the bathroom.  It didn’t work.  I threw up all over the middle of the aisle.  To make matters worse, that whole section of the plane was filled with my classmates.  I spent the rest of the flight sitting next to one of my teachers in the back (by the bathroom) dying of embarrassment while the stewardesses cleaned up and my peers turned around to stare at me.  We were required to wear our school uniforms on the plane, so we would have them to wear to a couple of other places during the trip.  Unfortunately, I had to wear that same uniform skirt, cleaned as best as it could be, to the White House.  Great. 

Somehow, I managed to survive the rest of the trip, and I actually had a good time.  I had to endure a lot of jokes about how I was feeling, but I made it.  After starting off a trip like that, I think I’m ready for just about anything. 

A Rose for Emily

I knew of Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” for a long time, but I never actually read it until this class.  When I realized Faulkner wrote this story, I wasn’t sure if I would like it.  My senior English class read The Sound and the Fury last year, and it was an extremely frustrating book to try to read.  I’m glad “A Rose for Emily” wasn’t written in the same stream-of-consciousness style; this style may be interesting or genius to literary scholars, but it is almost impossible to read it without getting a headache.  I liked the way Faulkner wrote this short story.  The point of view is from a third person perspective, but the person telling the story is a member of the community where Emily lived.  As a reader, I felt closer to the story because of this.  It made me feel like part of the town.  It also made the story seem more real, which is important for the shocking ending.  All of the strange little scenes that make up the story let the readers know that Emily is a very different person.  Even though I knew how the story ended before actually reading it, I was still shocked when the neighbors opened the door and found Homer in the bed.  The subtle way that Faulkner suggests that Emily has been sleeping in the bed with Homer’s body with the lines about the indentation on the pillow and the single grey hair is part of what makes it so shocking.  He doesn’t just tell us what has been happening; he makes us figure it out for ourselves.  Another disturbing part of the story that I didn’t see until we discussed it in class was the reaction of the neighbors.  When Emily died, they immediately knew that there was a room in her house that no one had seen in years.  They also noticed when Homer disappeared, and they complained about the smell that came several weeks after that disappearance.  Through all of this, no one bothered to investigate or call the police.  The neighbors all just watched Emily go crazy little by little, gossiping about her the whole time.  “A Rose for Emily” is definitely a creepy story, but I also feel like it is very sad.  Poor Emily went crazy because she was always the gossip of the town.  Her father chased away any of her possible suitors, and when he died she was left all alone.  If any of Miss Emily’s neighbors had taken the time to get to know her as a person, or include her in any events in the town, the story could have ended differently. 

The Yellow Wallpaper

At the beginning of the semester when I found out that we had to blog about a few of the short stories we read, I decided I wouldn’t blog until close to the end.  I wanted to give myself time to think about what we read, and then go back and write about several stories that stuck out to me.  There are some stories that I have kept thinking about.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of those. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about this story for a long time because of its step by step narrative of the woman going crazy and also one of its themes that it prominent in a lot of the stories we’ve read this semester. 

The main theme I saw in the story was the early 20^th century relationship between men and women.  It is similar to many of Hemingway’s depictions of men and women, like “Hills like White Elephants,” because the man is the authority figure for no reason besides that he is a man.  He is the one who decides the “rest cure” will be good for his wife, and he basically forces her to come to the country house and stay in the upper bedroom.  At first, she believes that he is only doing this because he cares about her, but as the story progresses, she realizes that he is manipulating her and disregarding her opinion, even though she knows more about her own condition.  She is suffering from post-partum depression, a feminine problem that male doctors didn’t recognize as a real condition until much later.  I think it is a sad commentary on the attitudes toward women in this society that Jane has to go crazy to be able to escape from her husband.  She isn’t able to assert herself until she completely loses her mind, and then she is able to (literally) walk all over him like he did to her.  Since the author is a woman, I think this story is an accurate portrayal of her frustration with the male-centered society. 

Aside from this theme, I also found the vivid descriptions of the setting and the narrator’s downward spiral into insanity interesting.  When the narrator describes her room in a journal entry (a form of writing that I enjoyed reading), she says it must have been a playroom or a gymnasium.  However, her description of the room- with rings on the walls, bars on the windows, and a bed nailed to the floor- leads readers to see that the room has really been used as an insane asylum.  The fact that Jane thought these details belonged to a playroom or a gym is a sign that she was probably a little crazy the whole time.  Her fixation with the wallpaper paints us a great picture of what it looks like.  The pictures we found on the internet in class show that everyone who reads the story has a clear vision of what that wallpaper looks like to them.  The way the narrator employs all the senses in her description of the setting made me feel like I was going crazy with her.  The way she describes the curling of the wallpaper, the “yellow smell,” the hideous patterns, and damp, musty air gave me a sense of the anxiety she felt there, and it made me want to get away from the room.  Jane’s journal entries seem a bit more desperate and disjointed every time.  They become much more focused on the wallpaper and the woman who creeps in the garden and less about her husband and how she hopes they can leave soon.  In the end, Gilman leaves no question as to whether the narrator has gone completely crazy.  Her use of her name in third person when she says “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane,” shows that she no longer considers herself the same person; she separates into a whole other being.  The overall effect of the story for me was unsettling.  It left me with a very clear image of Jane creeping around the room, crawling over her husband as if he wasn’t there at all.  It is a disturbing image that I have thought about again several times since reading the story, and it makes me glad that I live today instead of in the early 1900s, where I might have been a victim of the “rest cure.”