The End.

Well, it is way too late the night before this portfolio is due and I am finally finishing up all the loose odds and ends that I had in this project. After looking back on the months of work we have put into our blogs, I’ve decided that this is definitely an interesting and benficial approach to a class. While I think that we can all agree that it was a little annoying to remember to blog and comment every week, ok so I forgot a few posts/comments, and that is why I am up until four the night before this is due, I think it is a good idea for a class. It gives us the ability to see what our classmates are thinking, which can inspire out own thoughts on the novels we are reading. Also it is really interesting to look back on all the work we have done starting in January, and how our writing style and ways have changed and developed.

The Native Speaker

The Native Speaker, written by Chang-Rae Lee is a very interesting book that we read this semester. The main character, Henry Park, provides a certain amount of mystery and curiosity to the novel. His profession, which we don’t know from the start, we learn later on in the book, being a spy, is an incredibly mysterious thing, even so he had to hide it from his wife for a while. I thought that this type of character really added to what we were reading. While I have definitely come to enjoy other books and characters that we have read, I am having a hard time in comparing him to any other character that we have been introduced to. I find there to be a really interesting connection between Henry and Gatsby. Gatsby was considered to be very mysterious to everyone in town because they didn’t know him. But once Nick gets to know Gatsby, all the mysterious and questions, in a sense, went away. With Henry, it’s the opposite. At first he seems like an average, normal man. But to those closest to him, like his wife Lelia, he is more secretive than to a random person. Lelia didn’t know that he was a spy from the beginning, she had to find out later. I think it’s really interesting how opposite Gatsby and Henry are. Also, Henry kind of reminded me of the narrator from The Invisible Man. It’s hard to even provide a certain situation or anything that specifically happened to make me link these two men, but the mystery factor definitely plays a big part in comparing these two men.

Post on the End of Sula

As we have finished this book, a few things come to mind when I consider about what I want to write about in my post. First of all, I have thought a lot about Sula’s funeral, and Nel’s feelings on this subject. Actually, backing up first I’ll talk about the situation between Nel’s husband and Sula. While Sula does have very loose and casual feelings about the topic of sex, I don’t think that there is any question that she was completely in the wrong in sleeping with her best friends husband. While she doesn’t see it as a big deal because that is how she was raised, she should know enough that it is definitely an incredibly inappropriate thing to do with not just anyone’s husband, but her best friend’s husband. It does need to be taken into consideration that Sula was raised by a woman who had immensely casual feelings on sex, but there truly is no excuse that she slept with Nel’s husband. However, he too definitely deserves some blame in this situation. He knows that it is wrong to do, and he not only cheated on his wife with some random woman, but the woman was his wife’s best friend. This is why I am a little confused that Nel truly misses Sula after her death. I mean, this is definitely understandable, her best friend for her whole life has passed away, but I personally would still have a lot of bitter and unforgiving feelings towards Sula. Sula, even though she didnt mean to, caused Nel so much pain. In addition to the pain of knowing that her best friend and husband shared that intimate moment together, that moment pushed Nel’s husband to leave her. I am kind of torn in the end, part of me sees why Nel is so upset, but part of me is left confused that she is THAT upset at a person who has probably caused her the most pain she has ever experienced.

Post on the Beginning of Sula

Toni Morrison’s novel entitled Sula, is a very interesting book that tells the tale of two women, at the same time very different as well as very similar. That seems to be an odd thing to grasp, but once one reads about the two girls Nel and Sula, they will be able to see how two people can be both very similar and total opposites at the same time, depending on how you look at them. A perfect example of a difference and a similarity at the same time is their upbringing. Sula’s mom is one who views sex has a very casual and simple thing, which has a huge impact on Sula, making her view sex as the same. Nel’s grandmother had also been a prostitute, viewing sex as very casual. Now if Nel’s mother had taken the same route as Sula, she would have followed in her mom’s footsteps and also viewed it as casual. But Nel’s mom took the opposite route, she was very proper and reserved, which had an affect on Nel. I found this to be very interesting, that they were so different, but got along so well and looked out for each other in such a great way. One of my favorite parts of the book was when Sula cut her finger off to show the boys that they should not be messing around with Nel, because Sula just will not have that.