One of the main questions that I had at the end of the play was wether or not Hamlet's father was pleased with Hamlet's actions? Old Hamlet clearly stated that he did not want Hamlet's mother to get hurt in this process of getting revenge, however she ends up dead. Also, I'm not sure if this was clearly stated but I thought that Old Hamlet wanted Hamlet to kill Claudius and become King himself and this also does not end up happening.

When at Ophelia's grave I was supprised that Laertes was semi-accepting of Hamlet's apology for being crazy. If I was to have predicted how that encounter before the "fencing" fight would have gone I would not have thought that Hamlet would have apologized but rather told Laertes that he deserves whatever is about to happen. I aso got the vibe that Laertes was semi-accepting of Hamlet's apology for being crazy and killing his father but only fought him because of his pride and to carry on with the plan with Claudius. However, despite their different than expected encounter I knew that neither of them would have ended up backing out of the "fencing" fight.

When Polonius is trying to trap Hamlet with Ophelia into giving away why he is acting mad, I found it interesting that Hamlet went on a rant about women in the world. It made me wonder if these were Hamlets real thoughts or if he knew this was a set up so he was making up ideals to rant about. As the reader, we know why Hamlet is acting mad so this leads me to believe that knew he was being watched so he made up a rant for cover. However, I also think that he could have just been very emotional at the time when he saw Ophelia and ranted about women and not known he was being watched.

While reading Hamlet I have encountered a few difficulties with the reading. The first diffuculty is with some of the vocabulary of Shakespear. While his sentence structure is somewhat earier to understand for me, some of his older slang is hard for me to understand. Despite this older slang there is the footnotes on the left page which helps me with understanding. However, when I have to look over at the footnotes it takes me longer to read and causes an interuption in my flow.

The significance of the title, The Dead, confused me until the very end of the story. Initially in the title did not make any sense to me since the plot consisted of a dinner party and the conflicts that arose there. However, once Gretta and Gabriel got back to the hotel room and Gretta breaks down and starts talking about Michael I think it makes Gabriel feel dead. The fact that Michael had such a passion for Gretta discourages Gabriel because he knows he will never feel the same love for her that Michael did. Therefor Gabriel feels dead inside.

What is the point of describing the entire dinner party when the most important part of The Dead is when Grettta and Gabriel are talking about Michael?

Passion.

Once Darl got taken away by the insane asylum people I realized that there have been hints the whole book that he was crazy. In the beginning of the novel when every member in the family called him "odd" and "off". Also, Darl laughed at things that he should not have laughed at. Throughout the entire book, the actions of Darl make sense once you find out that he is considered lazy. For example, lauging at his dead mother's coffin makes him seem very weird but once you discover he is mentally ill, it acts as a reason for his laughing.

My reaction to the ending of the book was a lot of confusion. The fact that Anse came back from town with a new wife was shocking to me. My idea of how this situation could possibly make sense is as follows. I think that Anse had an affair with Addie's sister years ago so Addie is very mad at her. Addie was so mad at her that her and Anse never told the children about her and Addie told people she "has no family". Therefore, Anse is already familiar with her and is sexually attractided to her. This is also why he knew to go to her house to get shovels. Wether this is what happened in the past or not, this is how I made sense of the situation.

The last chapter that we read was from the perspective of Addie. This confused me a lot because she had been dead for several chapters and now suddenly the reader is hearing her voice. Why did Faulkner decide to finally write a chapter from her perspective after her body had washed away in the river?  

My initial reaction to this chapter was that my sadness for her death decreased slightly. Until this point in the novel I had felt awful that Addie was dead. However, from the content of this chapter I believe that her passing away lead to a better life for her where she didn't feel obligated to Anse.

Fish.

Within the first 84 pages of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, the content of the text is about a lady who is very near her deathbed. She is over watching Cash making her coffin and a lot of family members are present at the house. Within Faulkner's writing about this, religion plays a key roll in this death. The family seems to be very religious or is perhaps just taking upon a religious affiliation in the time of this crisis. One thing I do not understand is why the lady watches Cash building her casket? Also, why does the family seem to do nothing to prevent her death?

William Faulkner's writing style in the novel As I Lay Dying is quite unique. Each chapter is about 2-6 pages long and seem to each be in a different point of view of a diffferent character. The diction that Faulkner uses would definitely be considered southern slang as he uses words and phrases like "I reckon". He also uses gramatically incorrect phrases and improper puntuaction which suggests that the characters are not very well educated compared to people of this day and age. Faulkner's style of writing is very casual and uses improper grammar and southern phrases which fits the characters of the novel.

Does any story still have the same effect on a listener if he/she later finds out that the plot of the story isn't true?

I think this question is important to discuss because this is the main question of what O'Brien is getting at the whole novel. I would be interested to hear everyone's opinion and wether or not they agree with O'Brien.

Throughout the whole novel The Things They Carried, the reader struggles to understand what is and what is not the truth in O'Brien's stories. By the time the reader finishes one of the last stories "Good Form", he learns that a majority of the book is made up which blew my mind. O'Brien talks throughout the entire novel about what makes a story true and how to tell a good story and then tells us that all his examples of "true" stories are not even true.

I believe that his point of this novel is not only to tell the reader about the environment of war but to illustrate what truth really is. I think that in O'Brien's view truth is whatever the story teller wants it to be. The message I got from his book is that as long as the theme and intention of a story is what the story teller wants it to be, the actual plot of the story does not matter.

Why is O'Brien writing a fiction war story and not a true one?

O'Brien is writing a fiction war story in order to get a reaction from the readers, as well as convey the characteristics of war, since he does not believe that a true war story will create a reaction.

Why does Jimmy Cross love Martha?

He loves the innocence of her and she gives him hope from the terrible life of war.

At the end of the first story in Unaccustomed Earth, the action of Ruma sending the post card that her father left behind is a symbol. This action symbolizes Ruma accepting that her father choose to live alone rather with her and her family. The post card represents the life of travel and secludedness    that her father desires because it is addressed to Ms. Bagchi, who is the new woman in his life.

When Ruma discovers the postcard in the garden her first impulse is to shred it but something within her restrains her from shredding it. This represents her decision and realization that her father actually just left her for a different life. Also, because the post card is in Bengali letters she can not interrupt what the letter says, just how she does not fully understand the life that her father is choosing over her. Within both situations of the foreign language in the post card and the unknown components of her father's new life, Ruma becomes accepting of them.  

If Ruma's father had not remarried and was living on his own, would he have moved in with Ruma and her new family?

If her father had not been married to Ms. Bagchi I belive that he would have moved in with Ruma. He still would have been hesitant of the move because he would still not want to invade into her new life but he would have moved in after the visit. His life with Ms. Bagchi is what is holding him back from the move he does not want but needs.

The title Unaccustomed Earth is very appropriate for the content of the short stories within the book. Unaccustomed means not familiar and out of the ordinary and there are many examples of this in the short stories. In Only Goodness, Rahul gets admitted into Cornell which is expected and glorified by his parents but the unaccustomed part is when the reader discovers his alcoholism. Another example is in the opening short short when Ruma's mother dies which neither her or her father was expecting.

The title also holds a deeper meaning to me. The fact that every human lives on earth makes it extremely familiar because it is our habitat and I find the phrase "Unaccustomed Earth" to be quite contradictory. However, as contradicting as that phrase seems I think that as a title it could also be interpreted to mean that no matter how familiar and predictable the world is, things still happen that no one can predict which is show throughout the short stories.

In Going Ashore, the final short story of Unaccustomed Earth, the 3rd person point of view plays a major part in how a reader interprets the story. Since this short story is in 3rd person, we have no insights into how Hema and Kaushik feel about their meeting of fate and affair in Rome. Without these insights, the reader is left to interpret each character's feelings by himself. A prime example of how this is important is when the reader has no possible way of knowing whether or not Hema will call off the wedding for Kaushika and I think this makes reading this story incredibly more interesting.

If I had known Hema's feelings and that she was not planning on canceling her wedding and staying with Kaushik it would have not been an interesting story. The ending to this story, with the characters splitting apart, would have been ruined or at least not as intriguing as it was with the 3rd person narrative.

Every chapter in the book How to Read Literature like a Professor is full of insightful knowledge about how to further understand the text one is reading. All of the insights that were presented in the book can be applied to any story and this was shown with the example text at the end of this book. The short story The Garden Party was a seemingly simple story about an upper class family having an elegant party when they learned a lower class man was just killed a short distance from their home in the lower class neighborhood next to their home.

Before I read this book I would have overlooked the numerous symbols and intentions of the author Katherine Mansfield. The first time that I read the short story I did not pick up on the symbolism of flight between the girls and the lower class. However, the book explain this symbolism to me and also taught me how to read more carefully in future works for symbolism. Despite the fact that I did not pick up on the symbolism of flight, I still read this work with much more knowledge of why the author made the weather perfect and the scenery of the garden so beautiful but made the lower class village such a dark and smoky place. Putting this short story at the end of this novel really showed me how to immediately apply the techniques of reading that I learned from How to Read Literature like a Professor.

The writing style of Thomas C. Foster in How to Read Literature like a Professor is quite different that those of the other authors I have read in the past. Foster presents the information in this novel in a style that is casual and passionate. For example, when he is writing about how authors use weather to depict a certain mood in their work the reader feels like he is holding a causal conversation with Foster rather than reading a bland paper on why rain causes a somber.

I really enjoy this style of writing and find that it makes reading the novel go by very quickly. Also, I think that this style of writing is a good approach to presenting the information given in How to Read Literature like a Professor because it is easy to write about certain topics in this book in a boring fashion. An example of this is when Foster is talking about how most literature pieces can be related back to the topics, themes and characters of Shakespeare's works. He finds interesting connections between Shakespeare and other works and writes about how "if you're reading a work and something sounds too good to be true you know where it is from". In my opinion, Foster's approach and writing style of this novel cause it to be a very enjoyable and causal read with valuable information.