Journal 20

The differences in the two women posed in this drama are very obvious at the beginning of the play.  Mrs. Peters is the wife of the sheriff and she feels it is her duty to uphold the male definition of the duty of law.  On the other hand Mrs. Hale is much more sympathetic towards Mrs. Wright's situation and takes part of the blame because she did not visit or contribute to Mrs. Wright's lonely life.  Towards the end of the play Mrs. Peters overcomes her suspicion and decides to empathize with Mrs. Wright who values her own needs rather than be consumed in the identity of her marriage.

The most important character in this play is undoubtedly Mrs. Peters.  I believe that the author places her in there because women need to evolve in terms of being more independent (at the time she wrote this play) and thinking on their own rather than basing their identity off of who their husband is.  I think that ultimately, she noticed that Mrs. Hale was being independent and she decided that she needed to as well.  I assume that this play, if delved into, made strides in the feminism movement of this time period.

Journal 19

For this journal entry I dug into the egregious amount of pop music I listened to in high school and came up with a very good song that uses multiple similes throughout it.  The song I have chosen is "Diamonds," by  Rhianna.  As I said it uses two simile in the song that and I will discuss both of them. The first simile that appears multiple times throughout the song is "You and I are like  Diamonds." This seemingly is comparing herself and another companion (friend, boyfriend, etc.) to diamonds meaning they are worth a lot to her and are something to be proud of. This simile is played many times throughout the song so it reiterated over and over again.  The second simile that is played frequently is "Shine bright like a Diamond." It is repeated more than the other one and it is saying that you as a person need to shine; however you shine best.  Be unique, be yourself, be who you are.  It is a very powerful song, by a very powerful artist.

Journal 18

The poem I have decided to analyze for this post is entitled," This Is Just to Say." The author is not listed in the book. This poem is very short, but the short length of this poem leaves the door open for it to have many different meanings.  The most peculiar part of the poem is the word this is in the title  I believe that the meaning of the word could be the poem itself.  The person who ate the plums in the ice box is using poetry to tell people she ate them.  I enjoyed this poem because it was a nice easy poem that was not too difficult to understand.  The author stole someones breakfast and used poetry to take some tension off of the situation.  Overall, it was a nice piece of poetry!

Journal 17

I chose the poem "Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane" by Etheridge Knight.  The speaker appears to be a male that is in prison judging by the title because they are returning "Hard Rock" back to jail from the hospital.  The speaker is telling a story about how he how crazy Hard Rock is he is not addressing anyone in particular.  The speakers attitude, as well as their tone is rather intense.   In the second stanza he capitalizes WORD to emphasize that what he had had heard was that the Hard Rock didn't take any guff from anyone.  The setting of this poem is obviously in prison and I believe that the time is in the 1950s or so.  The two clues I discovered that point to this are the use of the N word multiple times in the poem it was extremely prevalent at that time period.  The second clue was the Hospital for the criminally insane places like that are not titled that anymore, but they were in that time period.  The tone changes throughout this poem at first the author is very intense and excited about the prospect of seeing this so called psycho path in action.  You can tell he is intense by the capitalization of "WORD" twice in the second stanza.  After realizing that he had changed and mellowed out they become disappointed. "And we turned away, our eyes to the ground. Crushed." The theme of this poem, in me opinion, is that people are capable of change no matter who they are.  It is said at the beginning of this poem that Hard Rock had a record for days in the hole because he was so mean and hot tempered, but at the end of the poem he had mellowed out and seemingly learned to control his anger.