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In this weeks readings we have three stories about three totally different women written by women. The first one in Doves, Francine, seems to be a secluded person. extremely reserved tp the point that she becomes shy when the elevator man greets her. It's telling how she regards shyness with sadness as if she wants that part of her character to change. She ends up buying two doves in a pet store due to their quiet and shy nature leaving the parrot behind. The doves seem to be teaching her how to come out of her shell. Francine wants to be like that woman singing a country song about winning back a lover who wronged her. At the end of the story she turns into the type of woman in the song. Flirtatious. Bold with how she presents herself at a western bar becoming the woman she's always desired to be. Then in "Symphony" we have a woman who finds it easy to go from man to man. The men are different in the way they treat her. Mostly bold and primitive acting like Jonathan who spent the last three years in the bush of Botswana. He is more like an animal then a human. Her other man is Phillip. An adventurer. A writer who is extremely intelligent. He is proud that he knows what a woman wants and that he is able to fulfill their needs, but then we have innocent Christopher. She only has sex with him once. She had her heart broken from her first love. Then she became a sex addict mentioning AA classes saying that she is not addicted on any narcotic. Christopher exemplifies that first love, and she does not want to ruin that by turning him into one of her trophies. In the last story "Girl" we have a young woman being taught by another person how to act respectfully so as to not be seen as a slut. The connotation here is that through all the lessons being taught the teacher mentions on three different occasions about the girl's desire to be a slut. Maybe she is already one. She is even taught how to make a medicine to abort children. It is a story written with small, precise sentences that get to the point. there is no wasted grammar. It almost seems like an instruction manual for girls.
ReplyDeleteSpiro Zagouris
These three short stories are related because they all tell a story of women, but with different personalities, and each of those characters mentioned are three-dimensional. The first story, Doves, is narrated by the third person point of view describing Francine, a shy woman. Francine goes to a pet store and passes through all the animals, but she goes up to the doves. We realize how shy she is when we come across a line that says, “with doves like that you don’t have to worry about being too quiet.” (159). This line conveys that she does not like talking too much to people because she is very introverted, but she does not also want to be alone and she seeks for the doves’ company. At the end of the story, Francine decides to let go for a moment and “she becomes the woman in all the songs the men of the platform sing about.” (160). The second story, “Symphony”, is narrated in first person point of view by a very open-minded woman who takes pleasure of her body and of different men. These men are very different regarding both their physique and their character, and she likes different things about each of them. The third story, “Girl”, revolves around two characters, one person who is giving advice to another character on how to behave. I assume that the person who is giving guidance is the mother, and the person receiving guidance is a little girl, or a teenager. I actually felt connected to this story, I did not like it due to the fact that I have heard advice like this from my mother, father, grandparents, aunts… Basically all my family, mostly females from my family, who have told me how a good girl behaves. And the most remarkable thing they would say was something like in the story says “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” (163). I am not sure if this girl is a slut, or really wants to be a slut, and she even could not even be thinking of becoming a “slut” or trying to act like it, but still people tell her to take care of her image because she has to act like a good girl. I enjoyed these three stories because they involve different types of women with their own beliefs and morals.
ReplyDelete-Paulina Longoria
All three stories seem to be from a woman’s perspective. The first story, “Doves” by Ursula Hegi, has a tone of loneliness. It was overall confusing for me. I didn’t understand the connection the story had with the doves, even after I read it over once again. I also didn’t understand why she had to mention the shoes that people were abandoning in K-Mart. The ending was interesting though. In page 160, it states that Francine “becomes the woman in all the songs that the men on the platform sing about, the woman who leaves them, the woman who keeps breaking their hearts.” Maybe the reason why she was so lonely was that she kept leaving the men she loves?
ReplyDelete“Symphony” by Pam Houston reminded me of the musical “Mamma Mia.” It talks about her past relationships, and how each one was completely different. It made me feel as if I was reading her diary. It was very invasive, but I enjoyed it. The narrator can make a distinction between sex and love, and she chooses to not get attached to any of her past or present lovers.
“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid was something I believe most girls can relate to. Society expect so much from women even at such a young age that it can sometimes be too much for them. I noticed that the author never used a period. She kept the story going with many semi-colons and question marks. Which I believed helped the reader understand how overwhelming the narrator feels.
Angela Milan
This weeks reading were definitely my favorite. I loved that they all came from a female’s perspective. Dove’s being my favorite out of all three. Doves is about a woman named Francine who buys a pair of doves and lets them listen to country music because that’s what they seem to enjoy. She finds herself singing and listening to the songs that talk about broken hearts and lost love. Eventually she realizes that she is the woman that country singers sing about; a heart breaker and lonely.
ReplyDeleteGirl is a mother giving her daughter advice about how to handle herself as a woman, maintain a home and how to behave. The ending of girl really stuck to me though. The mother tells her daughter that she needs to feel the bread before she leaves the bakery with it and her daughter asks her what if the baker doesn’t let her and her mothers responds by asking her if she’s really going to allow herself to be the TYPE of girl that isn’t allowed to touch the bread after all the guidance her mother has given her on not being a “slut” and how to be a proper woman.
-Arianna Martinez
So, what is “Doves” about? I’m not quite sure really. I liked how short the story was. It was basically about a single woman who dresses up as a dove only to fly away from the arms of the lovers she encapsulates. I enjoyed how there was essentially two stories on this short, or at least that’s what it felt like to me. Did the spontaneous compulsion to buy two doves come about from the monotony of her life? I thought we were going to be in for a drag when “the kind of day that makes you feel sad when the elevator man says good afternoon” was written by the author. What about a greeting makes it sad? “Symphony” was just another story like Doves. They’re not bad as I enjoy what the author has to write. I felt like she was accusing me when she writes “and that you are the kind of person that knows more about me.” I can see why she accuses as the story does involve a promiscuous woman but I’m not sure I liked being attacked like that. Ok so society expects so much out of “Girl”. I immediately found it boring when I noticed I was reading a list of complaints. Just be born a male? I like the importance of what she conveys but not the story itself.
ReplyDelete-Leonardo Torres
I found the story of doves to be a little boring. The woman is shy buys doves then feels like she needs to break hearts. I did not think it was interesting or anything the story does suggest like her hear has been broken or that she wants to break hearts. I just did not think that the story was interesting at all and it would have been more interesting if there was more of a reason for the doves but there wasn’t, there was no element of surprise or a want for more it was just a blah story for me. In the Symphony by Pam Houston there are issues with this woman that just wants to sleep around and doesn’t want to commit. I think it is sad that her issues prevent her from falling in love and that maybe those issues have to do with her dad as she mentions him. There is the clue that she keeps away from the one man she could truly fall for because she mentions she only slept with him once. Jamaica Kincaid’s story Girl was I think about becoming a woman or lessons learned by a mother to become a woman I did not really get it.
ReplyDelete-Maria Ramirez Montoya
These three readings were very interesting. I love how they are all so similar in the way that they're about women but each has its own story to tell because not all women are the same.
ReplyDeleteI found "Doves" to be quite beautiful. I'm not sure if I got the correct point of the selection but what I interpreted was that Francine is a shy, lonely girl who by getting the doves gets out of her shell and in the end becomes the girl from the songs. I see it as the growth of a women, it's hard to feel bold and open when society is telling you to keep your head down.
Reading "Symphony" made me smile the whole time. It's selections like this that hopefully open men's, and some women's, eyes. It's okay to have different partners, it's not only something men should have, but women are also capable of having it too. The author goes on to explain the different types of man and it kind of took me off guard of how different each man was, it just showed just how powerful a woman can really be. I also enjoyed the part where she didn't want to mention one man so as to not be seen as just a prize.
The final selection "Girl" broke my heart just a bit. Throughout reading it I had to stop multiple times just cause I would get flashbacks of my mother telling me the same things. Other times I would just read through it fast cause I didn't want to linger and have memories arise. It's so sad how girls are given so much pressure in being who they are. It's like we are puppets in this world and even though its mostly older women who tell younger girls everything from this selection I believe it's because man said it first. It's heartbreaking growing up hearing things like that constantly. I also kind of get why being a slut was brought up so many times, I feel like if someone tells you tp do something, you want to do the opposite, which is the case here. I remember that's how I used to rebel, I would dress the way a "girl is supposed to dress" just to show that I'm not following the rules this time.
Overall all three selections were inspiring and showed me its okay to be yourself and its okay to feel overwhelmed, as long as you stay true to yourself.
-Rebecca Muniz
One of the things that I found was really interesting was the fact that the three distinct stories were told through the perspectives of women. In the first story Ursula Hegi’s “Doves” we are introduced to a woman who seems to be very alone and her story is about her buying a pair of doves and she seems to perk up after having bought them. I liked how this story does a good job of touching on prevalent issues that make us feel much more comfortable being alone. The second story I thought was a bit more endearing, “Symphony” seemed to focus on a woman who has a lot of lovers and was written in a way that made it very easy to follow, it almost felt like I was peering into someone’s thoughts. The last one, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid was a little more interesting. It talks about a mother who expects too much of a little girl, she is already listing off the things that she needs to learn to do by a certain age but the fact still remains that she is a little girl. In the end they all seemed to be really good reads, I just have a hard time thinking this to be fiction, it reminds me more of those essays we were reading a couple of weeks ago. - Jesús Iván González
ReplyDeleteI personally enjoyed this weeks essays. With all of them being about women, I was thrilled. The essay Symphony is alluring and different in a sense because it discusses a woman and her thoughts about her lovers. The lady narrating the story, is clearly promiscuous and goes into detail in this story about a few of the men she has slept with. Throughout the piece, she describes four of the men which she has been with. The way Houston describes the men lets the reader see how much attention she pays to them, not only their appearance but their behaviors as well. I think this story is quite detailed and very intimate. It has good descriptions and it keeps the reader’s attention throughout the whole thing. In essay Girl, the author seems to be telling someone to do a whole bunch of chores such as laundry, sew, iron, cook, etc. While at first it looks like a list of chores, the author then also mentions things that women are expected to do such as how to smile at people they don’t like and even how to act in front of men. Throughout the story, the narrator warns whoever it is she is speaking to, not to become a “slut”. Doves, was interesting story about a lady who buys two doves and they expose her to old country music. The reader can assume that the Doves bring her happiness, and the country music they like to listen to triggers her nostalgia. The emotion in this story is quite prevalent. She begins to love again and, at the end, instead of longing of her lover to come back, she loves unapologetically.
ReplyDelete-cassandra ramos
i am ERIC BRUNT by name. Greetings to every one that is reading this testimony. I have been rejected by my wife after three(3) years of marriage just because another Man had a spell on her and she left me and the kid to suffer. one day when i was reading through the web, i saw a post on how this spell caster on this address AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com have help a woman to get back her husband and i gave him a reply to his address and he told me that a man had a spell on my wife and he told me that he will help me and after 3 days that i will have my wife back. i believed him and today i am glad to let you all know that this spell caster have the power to bring lovers back. because i am now happy with my wife. Thanks for helping me Dr Akhere contact him on email: AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteor
call/whatsapp:+2349057261346
i am ERIC BRUNT by name. Greetings to every one that is reading this testimony. I have been rejected by my wife after three(3) years of marriage just because another Man had a spell on her and she left me and the kid to suffer. one day when i was reading through the web, i saw a post on how this spell caster on this address AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com have help a woman to get back her husband and i gave him a reply to his address and he told me that a man had a spell on my wife and he told me that he will help me and after 3 days that i will have my wife back. i believed him and today i am glad to let you all know that this spell caster have the power to bring lovers back. because i am now happy with my wife. Thanks for helping me Dr Akhere contact him on email: AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
or
call/whatsapp:+2349057261346