How to talk to girls at parties response

In the story "How to talk to girls at parties", Enn is the main character as well as the narrator because it is first person because we are seeing everything through his eyes. Enn is a teenage boy attending a party with his friend Vic, however the girls they actually meet are "different". The girls seems to talk about weird subjects or act strange to Enn, but Enn doesn't really seem to notice because he is too busy trying to make a move on some of the girls. I think that the Narrator is very reliable because he has all the details about what the girls say to him and doesn't seem to miss any of what the girls say, however the he did say "This all happened thirty years ago. I have forgotten much, and I will forget more, and in the end I will forget everything ...... I cannot believe that i will ever forget that moment....". It seems as though hes saying that he is missing things but when reading the story I don't think he missed a single thing that happened at the party. The author's choice of narrator influenced how the story dealt with the main issue because he was a witness to everything and saw what was going on. For example: he was watching his friend Vic throughout the story and what he was like but in the end "He walked away from me then, shoulders heaving, and he hurried down the road so he was in front of me and I could no longer see his face.", he saw his friend that was cocky with the girls but in the end he was just a teenage boy again. I think that what we witnessed was the eagerness to be older because they brought alcohol and tried to do things kids their age wouldn't do.

Daedalus and Icarus

In the poem "The story of Daedalus and Icarus" by Ovid translated by Rolfe Humphries, there are a lot of advanced literary tropes and figures of speech. But the one is polysyndeton because it was easy to notice all the "and's", "or's" and some "but's"; i counted thirty four ands, buts, or ors. Ovid must have not known he was using polysyndeton because in the time this was written it was different than the translation. The polysyndeton contributes to the reading of the poem because it seems like it is trying to build up momentum or edge the reader to want to know what is next. For example "And the boy thought this is wonderful! and left his father, soared higher, higher, drawn to the vast heaven, near the sun and..." So as you can see the polysyndeton makes the reader want to get to the end and see's what happens to Icarus. The poem starts off with Daedalus bringing his son Icarus flying and this turns out to be a bad idea because with the polysyndeton we knew that Ovid is building up to something. In the end Icarus does not listen to his father and ends up melting off his "wings" and finally falling into the ocean where he drowned. The polysyndeton lead up to the death of Icarus which was the where the momentum was headed to.

Sonnet 116

In William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 he argues about love and how it should never be able to change or it isn’t real love. Shakespeare argues this by saying “O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark” saying that real love between two people can never be affect by anything else. He uses imagery to give us an image of a young girl by saying “those rosy lips and cheeks” and “sickle’s compass” which gave me an image in my head of an aging person from a young girl into an old lady; this also helped his argument because it meant that even when you age the love still stays the same between the two people. He continues to argue by saying “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks…”, this meant that love doesn’t change even after time but it goes all the way through until death. The turn for this poem is the last two lines, it does not shift the argument at all but backs it up because he says if he is wrong then he has never written before and no man has ever loved, which I consider a bit of a clever remark instead of an argument shift. Clever because it means he is not wrong about what he is arguing about and stands by his idea of true love.

"Difference" analysis

In the poem “Differences” by Mark Doty he wrote about the differences of jellyfish. Doty does not use many of the sounds of poetry. However, he used the consonance sound “S” in every stanza of his poem. He used at least two “s” sounds in every stanza. For example, in stanza seven line two saying “or a plastic purse swallowing itself,” you can see that the consonance sound sticks out and you pay closer attention to the details given by Doty. By having the consonance “s” sound it made the poem easier to read, more enjoyable to read, and allows the reader to gather the details. Doty also uses caesura to give the reader a place to stop and think about what he was trying to say, then starting a new idea or thought. For example, “...of metaphor. What can words do” we stop to think about what was said before and finish out thoughts.

However I feel that he actually uses comparative and associative tropes to get his message across to us, the reader better than the sounds of poetry. From the beginning he describes jellyfish as all the same and in the middle he uses similes to describe how they are different from one another if you pay closer attention to an individual. I think that this poem is a metaphor because Doty is actually talking about humans trying to change their “shapes” or “looks” to be individuals and so we, humans, are not all seen the same.

Improvement is a must

Reading, writing, and analyzing are skills we use daily and we take them for granted. I hope with taking introduction to literature I expect to learn more about writing and analyzing skills that will help me improve my writing that I will need later on in my writing career. Literature to me is something that you read that makes you think about what you’re reading and why it was written; a written piece that the author has put thought into and has meaning to the reader. I am not every enthusiastic about poetry because I always found poetry a bit boring because the authors are usually from a few generations ago or even longer than that. As for fiction and drama I enjoy reading them because they are usually entertaining, they tend to have a good story line and the author has put a lot of thought into their work to end up with a good story. Even authors like Shakespeare that wrote fictional/dramatic stories very long time ago, we (this generation) still enjoy reading their stories because it was well written and has meaning to the readers. I think that the critical thinking that we have to do for our blog posts will help us think of “why” we write things and think the way we do. Simply because we usually don’t think about things before we write it but with this assignment we have to think about why we think what we think and respond by writing it out into our blog. So far this assignment already has me thinking of what we’re going to be reading and how I would approach this course.