"The cure is to forget."

My self-reminder for the past 5 years. It works somehow, but I guess I'm just really good with memories.

Final Paper: Bullying in Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

            Thirteen Reasons Why is a novel about a girl named Hannah Baker who ended her own life after being bullied by her friends at school. She left 7 tape recordings with 13 different stories of why she killed herself. The side A of the first tape was for Justin Folley who apparently made up some nasty stories about their first kiss at the park. The second one was for Alex Standall who caused the snowball effect in this story. Had he not chosen her as the one who got ‘The Best Ass’ at school, the following occurences might have been prevented from happening. The next one was addressed to Jessica Davis who physically harmed her after she was placed in the “who’s not hot” column opposite to Hannah. The fourth one was for Tyler Down who violated Hannah’s personal space by stalking her at her own room at night to take candid pictures of her body. The next tape consists of 2 stories about Courtney Crimsen and Marcus Cooley. Courtney was being kind to her just to get people’s symphaty, whereas Hannah thought they were really friends, but it turned out Courtney was just using her. Meanwhile, Marcus was a douche who gives her hope by asking her number just to let her down. Not to mention that he sexually harrassed Hannah in public place. The next story was about Zach Dempsey who stole her paperbag of encouragement because he thought she didn’t deserve any praises. The opposite side of the tape was addressed to Ryan Shaver who shamelessly claimed Hannah’s poem as his and caused her to lose her interest in writing, whereas that was the only medium for her to express her feelings. The ninth story was about Clay Jensen, the narrator of the story. He was the only one whose story was told but didn’t belong to the “Reasons Why Hannah Killed Herself” category. Clay and Hannah developed some special feelings towards each other but they didn’t have a chance to confess their feelings so Hannah made a recording so Clay would understand her reasons. The last 4 stories were about Justin Folley, who witnessed a girl being raped by Bryce but didn’t do anything about it; Jenny Kurtz, who made her feel guilty after witnessing a car accident before her eyes because Jenny was too stubborn to listen to her; Bryce Walker, who raped her in a bathtub; and Mr. Porter, her counseling teacher, who could actually save her but chose to ignore her.

Final Paper: Culture Clash and Depersonalization of Style in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red

Abstract

            This essay will cover an analysis about the theory of depersonalization presented in the novel. I’m going to use Eliot’s theory of depersonalization in art to explain the issue regarding culture clash between the West and the East which then lead to the clash of the miniaturists who are currently working on a secret book commissioned by the Sultan using the new style called Frankish style. One side refused to use the new western style for they want to keep the tradition and avoid blasphemy. The other side tempted to selectively absorb some value from western style that is called Frankish or Venetian style. However, Eliot argued that as one cannot escape from the past everytime he creates art in the present, one has to appreciate the tradition and his predecessor whose influence will always appear in his art. Depersonalization means the creator of art understands his tradition and also aware of the past.

Response 3: Cixous' Castration or Decapitation?

            The story of the decapitation of wives of the king for being disobedient to the order of Sun Tse shows that men do have power to shut the women’s mouth. In the story,  the wives were beheaded after refusing to follow Sun Tse’s instruction They kept on laughing instead of doing what they are told to so Sun Tse decided to decapitate them to shut them up. This shows that the decapitation takes women’s ability to speak. Sun Tse cut their heads thus they don’t have any power to speak anymore. Being decapitated means women lose their head, power, and identity, all at once. Decapitation is used for women instead of castration for the lack of phallus in their bodies. Phallus itself is the symbol of men’s masculinity and somehow it gives them power to ‘decapitate’ women. So the question is, can it work the other way? Can women castrate men? Cixous then mention about men’s anxiety of being castrated.

Response 2: Foucault's What is an Author?

First of all, I’d like to express my confusion into a question that is exactly the same as the title of this text I’m going to make a response of, what is an author? Different from Barthes’ The Death of the Author which said that the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of Author (and I wonder why the word Author is always written with capital ‘A’, does it have something to do with God?), Foucault provides a different point of view which I understand as possible relationship between the author and his works. But honestly I am still confused of this idea. Foucault gives an example of the difference between proper name and author’s name. He conveyed the idea of author’s name being more significant than proper name. If author’s name is really that important, does it mean the author defines his works? Or vice versa?

Response 1: Culler's Presupposition and Intertextuality

There are times when you read a book, you feel like you have read the book before. There are also times when you read a book, you find some words or terms you are not familiar with. What do you do? Have you ever tried reading another book with more detailed explanation about such terms? If you haven’t, then you should. Basically, this is what intertextuality is. When you are reading certain book, your mind will direct you to certain texts you have read before, that’s why you might feel like you have read certain sentences in the text you’re currently reading or you are quite familiar with the topic. As for the need for a more detailed explanation of certain terms in a book, reading another book might help you understand the terms better. In fact, a text has infinite intertextuality, meaning that the text can be related to any other texts. However, it is not possible to find the origin of certain text. There is no such thing as originality in intertextuality because as Culler have stated, “The study of intertextuality is not the investigation of sources and influences.”. It rather allows us to decide which texts we should read next

Survey of American Literature Final Essay

This is my essay for Survey of American Literature final task. It's an analysis about 2 poems by Langston Hughes, "I, Too" and "Theme for English B". I know this writing lacks in many ways for my vocabulary is very limited and I'm sometimes lost in tenses, but at least I tried. So, this is my writing. Happy reading. 

Pursuing Equality through Being One True Self

                Langston Hughes’ “I, Too” and “Theme for English B” are two poems published on 1940s (I, Too was published on 1945 and Theme for English B was published on 1949) when the civil rights movement was happening in America. Civil rights movement is a social movement against racial segregation and discrimination towards African Americans.[1] The African Americans struggled to gain the equality in American society. Many African Americans were discriminated from society for their colored skin, they were treated unequally in education, economic, and even before law. They were not able to even give their votes whereas giving a vote means you’re contributing to your country’s development. There was a rule on 1945, stating that only white men could vote in the Democratic primary.[2] For the segregation and discrimination were getting more serious and unbearable, some people started to voice their protest and make a movement. Hughes is one of many African Americans who contributed to civil rights movement. He wrote several books, plays, short stories, essays, and poems as forms of his critics against racism issue.[3] These two poems I’m going to analyze in this essay also contained racism issue where African Americans were seen as the inferior to the whites. They were treated differently in society. In “I, Too”, the writer was sent to the kitchen when the owner of the house had visitors. It shows the different class between the white and the African American. At that time, people only ate at dining table, those who ate in the kitchen were considered lower. This means that the whites didn’t consider the African Americans as equal with them. Meanwhile, in “Theme for English B”, the narrator is a student who was assigned to write a page for English B by his white teacher. It was said that he was the only African American in the class he attended. He wrote a “confession” about how it felt to be the only colored student in class, how he wanted them to see him as a “normal” person, a part of them. However, both narrators of the poems conveyed the same message. They wanted the whites to see them as a part of the society (by society I mean the whites). They didn’t see themselves as the inferiors. They looked on themselves as equal to the white and I found the narrative of the poems quite interesting. Therefore I decided to bring up this topic as the main topic of my essay, that the narrators tried to gain the equality through showing their true selves to the society