Two Views of the River

Two Views of the River, an excerpt of Life on the Mississippi written by Mark Twain, is a story written about the after effect.  What I mean by this is that when you are in the moment things, beauties and much more can seem so sureal and exciting.  Getting that new game that you wanted so bad is a perfect example.  You have been dying to play the game and you finally get the opportunity to play it and after a few days you beat the game.  The excitement is over.  You wish to have the feeling of the day that you received the game, but you can not go back to that time.  Mark Twain became a riverboat pilot.  Was it what he wanted, I do not know, but at first he loved the job.  He saw all the beauties that came with the job.  The beautiful sunset and the peaceful river made him fall in love with the job (Twain 504).  He had that experience that a little child does.  After a while things became dull for him.  He lost that feeling that he once had for the job.  He missed thinking of his job as the best thing and started seeing all the bad things that came with the job (Twain 505).  He started seeing the dangers that came along with it and could not think of what he had when he first started.  All he was now, was a pessimistic guy (Twain 505).

In Thoreau's Nature writing he expresses his feelings towards nature.  Just like in this one, where Mark Twain saw all of the good things about nature, as in the river and sunset.  Twain wanted us to learn from this by saying that you gain and lose something from every situation.  He gained and learned from the riverboating.  Thoreau expresses the same feeling in that he sees nature as a moral teacher (Grant).  Both Twain and Thoreau express the same ideas towards nature and both share many transcendentalist characteristics.

Grant, P. B. "Nature in

Walden." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of Themes in

Literature

. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=ETL1134&SingleRecord=True (accessed January

30, 2012).

Twain, Mark. "Two Views of the River." Web. 29 Feb. 2012.

The Red Badge of Courage

In a sense, naturalism is a lot like realism.  they both share many of the same characteristics, but have a few differences between the two.  For one, realism focuses mainly on the individual and that person's struggles throughout his or her time.  Naturalism's problems that people face are from an outside driven "thing" or "things" (Docarmo).  These outside "things" for example are war, natural disaster, and a few other things but it goes with this story very well.  In this The Red Badge of Courage, the outside problem is the war and the effect that it is having on this man.  He says that he is beginning to feel the wrath of the war (Crane 493).  He now feels all the stress that is now coming into his life due to the presence of war.  The part that I am having a hard time with is the fact that he wants to put an end to it.  All of the sudden he feels this rage that goes into his body and he is so angry (Crane 493).  I guess that it is most likely how some people feel about war, they get upset about it and they want it to end.  I just do not see that as a characteristic of the naturalism writing style.  Granted there are more than I know, but what I have seen I do not see anything like the hatred that I saw in this man.  I almost got the feeling that he was going to kill himself, when it says the thing about his rifle.  He can only use it for one life at a time (Crane 493).

Henry David Thoreau is definitely classified as a naturalist.  He had a story about nature and nature is apart of naturalism.  The part that I got from it was that Thoreau wanted to learn from nature (Thoreau).  He wanted to seek out nature.  He will not be influenced by it, but he will learn from it.  They both share their same views when it comes to nature.

Crane, Stephen. “from A Red Badge of Courage.” Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 492-493. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Walden - an Annotated Edition." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 21 Feb. 2012

Docarmo, Stephen N. "Realism and Naturalism." Dr. Stephen N. Docarmo. Bucks County Community College. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://faculty.bucks.edu/docarmos/RealismNaturalism.html>.

From The Awakening

From the Awakening, is a realism story and I now have a background of some of the characteristics of realism.  Realism is what is really happening in life.  It tries to present what it really is (Docarmo).  Realist do not write about some extraordinary situation that is occurring in life.  Realism writes more about simple people and the trials that are going on in their life (Docarmo). Realism tends to go along with an individual.  They usually take one individual and have them struggling with some moral thing.

The story is about a woman Mrs. Pontellier and she is going through a struggle in her life at the time (Chopin 491).  It does not say as to why she is going through this struggle, it just says that it is a mood.  Anyways it goes along with Docarmo because this story takes a lot of characteristics from Docarmo.  The story goes by saying that this woman is just crying for no apparent reason (Chopin 491).  There has to be a reason that we as the readers just do not know, but it goes with Docarmo because he said that it is about the struggle of an individual, the trials that go on in their life. When Emerson says to believe in your own thought, I think that it goes with this because it is the "you" and real part about it, which these two writers share.  I have a hard time finding out what the realism part of this is.  It is hard to sit down and ask yourself, what is real?  What is real about this story?  I do not know if I am right, but if I had to guess than I would say the real part of this story is the whole thing.  What is not real about it?  This woman wakes up to the world and their is the description of the environment and than she starts crying (Chopin).  It does not sound fake to me, but what I am trying to get at, is that none of the story is made up.  There are no fairy tales or anything that is made up about this story, which makes the story as real as it can get.

Docarmo, Stephen N. "Realism and Naturalism." Dr. Stephen N. Docarmo. Bucks County Community College. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://faculty.bucks.edu/docarmos/RealismNaturalism.html>.


Chopin, Kate. "from The Awakening." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 491. Print.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. 

A Wagner Matinee

I was a little confused on the sudden jump to realism.  I do not recall going over the realism style of writing.  I guess it is not that hard to figure out, hints the title of the style, but I am not for sure on what characteristics go into play under this style.

The story was about a man who got a letter in the mail saying that his aunt will be down to visit him (Cather 521).  The man seemed at shock for a second that his aunt was coming down to see him, but yet still very excited.  Anyways, I found it kind of funny how he reacted to the letter.  He was very excited but nervous in a way.  He seemed to have a great past with the aunt and wanted her to be impressed with how he lived and went around (Cather521-522).  I found it very weird because I guess you can grow close to just about anybody, but not many people fall close to their aunt, but he did.  I kind of related it to when someone is coming over ( I do not know who), but you want to make a good impression on them.  That is what he was doing when he found out that his aunt was coming.  To impress her he was going to go to the opera house with her (Cather 522).  The aunt, Aunt Georgiana, loved music growing up and was always doing something with music, so he decided to get tickets to the opera.

Emerson said “How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements” (Emerson).  In this story, Cather takes the element of music and brings a whole new meaning to it.  Emerson takes nature and shows the love toward that element. Aunt Georgian, (Cather), takes the element of music, which she loved in her childhood and creates the same affect in her adult life.  Two different elements, music and nature, but have the same meaning in both of these writers philosophies.


Willa, Cather. “A Wagner Matinée.” Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 521-526. Print.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 06 Feb. 2012.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

An occurrence at owl creek bridge was a very good but confusing story.  It looks ahead into the future and than comes back to the present.  It would have been way more confusing if you had not told us about this, but thankfully you did.  Anyways the story is broken up into different pieces.  The beginning part of the story is Far Car (that is how I pronounce his name) being held captive at the river and about to be hung (Bierce 390-391).  At this point you do not know as to why he is being hung but he is about to be.  The next part of the story is him being back with his wife and family (Bierce 392). You learn a little bit of background information as to what has happened.  He was not accepted into the Southern Army.  He than talks with a soldier and, Far car being the man who wants to help digs out info from the guy as to what he could do.  He learns this and plans to do it (Bierce 392-393).  It than jumps back to Far car eluding the people that were holding him captive.  He dodges all of the bullets and manages to get away from the Northern captors.  The story than goes and puts Far Car returning to his wife and home and just as that happens he dies (Bierce 396).  The reader knows that Far Car died by the rope and he dreamt the whole scenario (Bruccoli)  I was quite confused at this point and it was a very bad way to end a good story.  It is like one of those movies that is so good, but the ending absolutely sucks.

The first thing that I know is that this Far car guy would have been hated by Thoreau because Thoreau did not want slaves.  Far Car was for the South therefore, he must have had some sort of want for slaves.

Bierce, Ambrose. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 387-396. Print.

Bruccoli, Matthew J., and Judith S. Baugman. "Peyton Farquhar." Student's Encyclopedia of American Literary Characters. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 15 Feb. 12.

Letter to his Family

The Letter to his Family, in my view is a letter that is hoping and praying for the best.  They are praying that the states do not secede from the Union.  It is saying that the government that is in place right now, is not meant to make one state's rights different from another.  It is not trying to hurt anyone, it is only trying to help create a perfect union with a perfect government and sometimes you can not please every single person by doing that (Lee).  You have to do what is best for the majority and the majority is what is best for the Union.  Four states have already left and four more are most likely on their way (Lee).  They need to get everything back in order. Lee is saying that everybody needs to live by their principles, and go by their people.

A difference between Thoreaus beliefs and Lee's beliefs is that Thoreau does not like the government.  He is against every bit of it and believes that their should be no government (Thoreau).  Lee on the other hand is complementing the government in his letter because he is saying that the men worked so hard on the Constitution to try and make everything equal.  Another disagreement that Lee and Thoreau would have had was the fact of slavery.  Thoreau did not like slavery and wanted to abolish it (Harding).  He thought that the movement should be ended and that no man on earth should be a slave for another man.  Lee on the other hand was fighting for the south.  The south wanted slavery.  That is the reason they fought because they wanted slavery and the north did not.  Lee was fighting because he believed that slavery was needed for the south.  Therefore, the two sides would have gone back and forth on this for a long time.  Lee and Thoreau would have argued over this topic because Thoreau did not believe in slavery and Lee did.  In the end slavery did die so we could say that Thoreau won.

Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 13 Feb. 2012.


Lee, Robert E. “Letter to His Son.” Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 385. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.

And Ain't I A Woman?

The short story, And Ain't I A Woman is a completely sexist and racist story.  It is more sexist because the women of the story are being viewed as not important people who all they should do is bear children and cook the meals (Truth).  It is really unfortunate to hear this, because women are so important to the everyday life.  If you think about your family, how important is the wife to the family?  Where would you be without that person taking care of the children, the house, cooking the meals, and all the other things that women do (some do work as well which provide income for their respective houses).  Sojourner Truth recognizes the sexism that is being put her way.  All the guys are saying that women are not as equal  because God was a man, and men are better (Truth).  Fortunately nowadays women are respected much more than they were back than, but unfortunately some people still view them below where men are.

In Emerson's self-reliance, there is a little paragraph about what doing what you should do and not let those people who think they know everything bring you down (Emerson).  It relates to Sojourner truth's message because she argued this point.  She argued over the fact that she was not going to let men push her around and tell her what to do.  She was going to stand up because she knew that God had made her just as equal as every other man or woman on the earth. This message still goes today because people all the time are letting other people's voices get inside their head.  We should not let them and ignore them.  Emerson actually spoke at a women's rights conventions and voiced his opinion about the subject (Wayne).  Although Emerson would never speak on the matter again, he did believe that women had rights that men did as well.  Thoreau did not voice his opinion on the matter, unlike Emerson.

Truth, Sojourner. "And Ain‘t I a Woman?." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 368-370. Print.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "'Address at the Woman's Rights Convention'." Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 12 Feb. 2012.


Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. .

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Go Down, Moses", and "Keep Your Hands on the Plow"

First I will give my opinions on each of the three poems.  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is very repetitive in what it is saying.  I like the message because what I got out of it is that God is coming to carry this person into heaven. Go Down Moses is very important to me.  At my old school, we learned a lot about Moses and he was my favorite Biblical guy.  I loved watching Prince of Egypt and I will always love hearing the story of Moses and Pharaoh.  This story is again very repetitive, but it is about letting the people go.  Keep your hands on the Plow is also repetitive just like the other two.  All three stories have a religious background to them, and I believe that is very important.


To Emerson, a person's inner voice is God-given, and one only need look to the simplest of humankind, a baby, to see the truth: "Infancy conforms to no one: all conform to it, so that one baby commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it" (Brugman).  He believed that somebody's voice was given to him by God and it relates a lot with the Moses story.  In the poem, it said that the Lord told Moses what to do and he did it ("Go Down" 347).    It is also relevant in the Keep your hands on the plow story.  Paul and Silas shouted and the doors came down ("Keep" 348).  God was the background of the voice and he led them to that point. Thoreau was a very religious man.  He believed that an individual must be self sufficient, but he believed that a little help from God could keep us balanced and on track (Harding).  By the grace of God we can all be saved and that is what the hold on part comes from in the keep your hands on the plow poem.  They were holding on to the fact that someday they will be free.  To go along with what Thoreau believed, I agree totally in what he thought.  As an individual, you need to learn to do things for yourself, but at the same time, it is always alright to lean on God for help.



Brugman, Patricia. "Individual and Society in 'Self-Reliance'." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed.
Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts
On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=ETL0377&SingleRecord=True
(accessed January 30, 2012)



"Go Down, Moses." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 347. Print.

Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 10 Feb. 2012.


"Keep Your Hands on the Plow." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 348. Print.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 6. Print.

Calvary Crossing a Ford

I am not going to lie, when I saw this poem I thought that I had the wrong one because of the length of it.  I am not complaining at all.  I was actually quite thrilled to see a really short story instead of the very long ones that we have been using practically the whole year.  It did not take half of an hour to read the story, so thank you very much.

At first I did not really know what was going on.  I was reading soldiers, or what the book called cavalry, were crossing a river (Whitman).  It makes sense now because the story was written sometime in the 1860's and this was around the time of the civil war.  Therefore, it must be a persons perspective from the civil war, of men crossing the River.  In comparison to Thoreau, there were more differences than there were similarities.    Thoreau wrote in one of his stories about an Army, but he went in a different way than what Whitman went with.  Walt Whitman went with the more happy approach to his style of writing as where Thoreau went with the more real, but he was not as happy with how he portrayed his style (Thoreau).  He took more of the pessimistic trail than Whitman did.  "He is morally insane, and incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, virtue and crime" (Nordau).  It explains why he did not go into the detail of things. Whitman went with more of an Emerson view of things.  I believe that Whitman kind of looked up to Emerson.  He wanted to be like him in some of the ways that he wrote.  It is like the younger sibling kind of thing.  All they want to do is be around you and do whatever you are doing.  Whitman began to take things that Emerson said and went and did them.  He went out to the battlefield and began observing what was going on and he went and wrote about it.  He just wanted to be like Emerson and he did a very good job of it.  He was also a very good follower because Emerson was a good guy to follow in the footsteps.

Thoreau, Henry D. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Richard Lenat, 2009. Web. 24 Jan. 2012. .

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Philadelphia: David McKay, [c1900]; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/142/. [2/9/12


Nordau, Max. Degeneration, 1895: 230–32. Quoted as "On the Poetry of Walt Whitman" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCVWaW040&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 9, 2012).

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

This story has an immediate kind of emotional impact on me and I would guess to a lot of other people.  The story is about what the world is like for African Americans now that they are free.  Now that the Declaration of Independence is signed, they are set free.  It truly is impactful to this day because it carries a heavy load of the backbone of this country.  We are all free!  Before African Americans were slaves and under the rule of somebody else, now they are all together united with everybody.  It is a great thing that the Declaration of Independence was signed.

When Douglass gave this speech he gave it to a crowd of white people who I am sure that some of them were not too happy about what was going on.  The point that Douglass clearly illustrates is that he believes that not only he but everybody else believes that slavery is wrong (Douglass).  Both Emerson and Thoreau believed that slavery was wrong and they expressed themselves.  Emerson said that you must either get rid of slavery or get rid of freedom (Emerson).  Thoreau said that if one man had a slave withdrew from the government, and went to jail, than it would be the abolition of slavery.  I agree with all three points of the different writers.  They all agreed slavery was a bad thing and they expressed themselves.  "If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own” (Riley).  Again I agree with where he is coming from.


Slavery was a different topic for Douglass than it was say Emerson or Thoreau.  Although Thoreau helped fugitives (Riley) and Emerson talked about it, the topic was on the top of the to do list for Douglass, because he was an African American.  He was trying to help his brothers out, in putting an end to slavery.  Emerson and Thoreau cared but Douglass had to do something about it because the topic of slavery effected his life everyday and he had to do something to end it.


Douglass, Frederick. "Africans in America/Part 4/Frederick Douglass Speech." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. .

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. .

Riley, Shannon. "Ideas-Reform-Emerson." Virginia Commonwealth University. Web. 06 Feb. 2012. .

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.

The Gettysburg Adress

The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches of all time.  In junior high I had to memorize the speech and say it in front of my class.  Although I do not remember all of it, I remember what meaning that it took to the words.  Abe Lincoln did a great job in writing this and there are things that are different from Thoreaus beliefs as well as Emersons.

The first difference that comes out right away is that Thoreau did not want anything to do with the government.  He was totally against it, whereas Lincoln, was the "government".  He was the President which the two sides probably would have fought about.  Lincoln said that we must come together in order to honor the men that served us.  We must give thanks to what they have given us and to do that we must come together. "
The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches of all time.  In junior high I had to memorize the speech and say it in front of my class.  Although I do not remember all of it, I remember what meaning that it took to the words.  Abe Lincoln did a great job in writing this and there are things that are different from Thoreaus beliefs as well as Emersons.

The first difference that comes out right away is that Thoreau did not want anything to do with the government.  He was totally against it, whereas Lincoln, was the "government".  He was the President which the two sides probably would have fought about.  Lincoln said that we must come together in order to honor the men that served us.  We must give thanks to what they have given us and to do that we must come together" (Lincoln). In sense they are relying upon each other.  This is totally different from what Emerson is saying.  Emerson wrote a whole, very long essay or whatever about how we as individuals need to be self reliant and look out for ourselves.  With this, it is saying that the individual is one person who thinks for himself.  They should not go out and look for things beyond themselves.  Trust in yourself and believe that you can do things. (Brugman).  In both senses they are right to an extent.  You can not lean on others to do things for yourself, but if you do need help you should be able to come together, whereas Emerson would never have done that.

The main issues during Lincolns stay in office, and the 1900s was the issue of slavery.  Lincoln even enforced more government power and intervention, and, during the Civil War, he suspended the basic right of habeas corpus (Divine).   Lincoln definitely pushed people to become self reliant but with the help of the government.  He wanted the government to have a say in the things that were going on in the lives of the people.

rugman, Patricia. "Individual and Society in 'Self-Reliance'." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=ETL0377&SingleRecord=True(accessed January 30, 2012).

Divine, Robert A., T. H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, R. Hal Williams, H. W. Brands, and Ariela J. Gross. America Past and Present AP Edition. Boston: Longman, 2011. Print.

Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1989; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/124/.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.