Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Glass Menagerie


"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams is the longest story we have been assigned to read so far. I just finished reading the play and it pretty much followed the movie very accurately. It contains 7 scenes. There are a few differences in the movie and the play so far, mainly in just some of the things said such as wording and also being able to pay attention to detail as through reading the play itself. Because the movie hasn't ended yet in class I was surprised to see how the play ended. The gentleman caller named Jim ended up coming over for dinner and of course Amanda dressed herself and Laura all pretty for him. Amanda ended up telling him to join Laura who was alone in the other room. He made her feel more comfortable talking about remembrance of high school. He ends up getting her to dance and then kisses her. Immediately after he apologizes, claiming he is going steady with a girl named Betty and says he needs to leave. Amanda enters the room around this time and he proceeds to give the information that astounds her also informing them that they are engaged to be married. He leaves to get Betty so she doesn't have to wait. After he leaves Amanda is infuriated with Tom for allowing this to happen and he just leaves. She told him to go and he did. The last paragraph is something Tom says, I’m not quite sure what it fully means but he says he is gone, just like his father, and sees Laura at a glass place and tells her to blow out the candles. I don’t know how to interpret that yet.

Monday, February 18, 2013

The Glass Menagerie

"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams is s play assigned to read for a quiz on Friday while we have been watching the movie in class. So far I have read Scene 1 of the story and I am glad that we have been watching the movie because now I can put a name with a face. Scene 1 begins involving dinner and Amanda(the mother) nagging already and talking about eating, and chewing and mastication and so on, annoying Tom. Tom eagerly expresses his annoyance and it merely causes a set of arguements among them. Amanda continuously tells Laura to stay fresh and pretty for gentlemen callers as if she has any. Laura tells her that she has none and of ocurse Amanda says that is impossible to have no callers at all. Tom is still there moaning and groaning in annoyance from his mother. The nagging Amanda tells a repeated story about her having 17 gentlemen callers. Scene 1 ends when Laura says "Mother's afraid I'm going to become an old maid." I think that the mother, Amanda is really annoying and Tom is respectively losing it because of her constant nagging and annoyance. Laura seems to have something mentally wrong with her because she is just so passive and seems to really do nothing but be there.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Hills Like White Ellephants

Hills Like White Ellephants is a short story about 4-5 pages and is written by Ernest Hemingway. In the story there is a girl named Jigs and an American Man. They sit on a bench drinkng alcohol while waiting for a train. After discussions about the story a conclusion was made that the girl, Jigs was having a mysterious operation, otherwise known as the abortion. The American man is thought to be much older hence being called a man while Jigs is simply named the girl. It doesn't say in the story whether or not the abortion took place but while they are sitting on the bench drinking the alcohol they do pay close attention to the left and right sides of their views; one being life and the other being death. They also see the clouds and Jigs thinks they look like white elephants, which can be portrayed as something for a babys room. It is obvious that the man wants the abortion to take place because after the operation there lives will be happy again and tells her that it is really a simple operation, although he continues to tell her that if she doesn't want to then she doesn't have to.