Connection is key!

When writing an author uses experiences to connect more with the audience. While reading chapter 5 I got caught up on the idea of intersexuality. Intersexuality is when a species has a connection with both male and female characteristics. It causes them to have feelings from both a male and female stand point so it causes the species to have appreciation for both sexes. In my opinion authors use a form of intersexuality in a way to deepen the connection that he or she may have with their audience. It causes us to be conscious of our own experiences and more appreciative of the story being told. Once we understand this connection, the text becomes more alive and enjoyable to us. These connections can be made on purpose and also can be made without the author even knowing. A novel that comes to mind when I think of authors writing about issues unconsciously is "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin. 

Kate Chopin bravely exposed an attitude of feminism to an unprepared society in her novel The Awakening. Her brilliant work of fiction was not recognized at the time because feminism had not yet become popular. Chopin defied societal assumptions of her time period and wrote the novel, The Awakening, using attitudes of characters in regard to gender, changes in the main character, imagery and Edna's suicide to illustrate her feminist position. Society during Chopin's time period believed women to be a weak, dependent gender whose position lay nothing above mothering and housework. In The Awakening, Chopin relays the basic attitudes of society toward women mainly through her characters Leonce, Edna, Madame Ratignolle, and Madame Reisz. She uses Leonce and Madame Ratignolle to portray examples of what was considered acceptable in society. However, Chopin includes the contrasting characters of Edna and Madame Reisz in an effort to express urges and desires disguised by the female gender.

In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier undergoes many changes. She discovers a sense of independence and shows this through her emotions and rebellion against her husband and children. She also experiences a sexual "awakening" as a result of her love for Robert and an adulterous affair with Arobin. Edna's life is changed so drastically that she realizes there is no way for her to live a normal life and be happy any longer. Edna's sense of independence is portrayed in descriptions of her feelings throughout the novel. It is also evident that she has found a new freedom when she rebels against her husband and the norms of society. Edna first feels emotions toward being independent when she swims for the first time. This is a turning point in her life, as she is able to swim off on her own, with the desire to "swim where no woman had ever swum"

Just as Edna did not conform to the standards of her peers, Kate Chopin rebelled against her own peers by writing the novel, The Awakening. She uses attitudes of characters in her novel toward gender, changes in Edna and her suicide to express her own feminist attitudes. Chopin was shunned from communities as a result of her strong feministic views and great ability. but later on she unknowingly helped women to want to find that independence through her story connection.

Rain, Rain, Should you stay?

in chapter 10 it talks about how weather in a story sets the atmosphere, the mood, and the feeling of a certain character. When I read the chapter I automatically thought of the use of symbolism so I looked up the meaning behind certain weather conditions.

RAIN- symbolizes a purification, often erases and wipes away the stain on a certain charcter.

SNOW- can have both a positive or negative meaning:  

1. can symbolize purity, good natured
2. coldhearted, death

DROUGHT- can symbolize helplessness or depression

Once I looked up these meanings some examples of this from literature popped in my head; "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck and "Holes" by Louis Sachar

In "The Grapes of Wrath"  the weather is barren and dry and dusty, along with the situation of the family. They are being forced from their land and it seems that their luck has run dry. The rain at the end of the story is even more important and signifies many things. The rain signifies the end of the drought which was the cause for their problems in the first place. Though the rain signifies spring and new birth, just like Rose of Sharon's delivery does, they both also bring death and calamity. Rose's baby is born all blue and dead from lack of food. The rain also brings the threat of death to the immigrants. The presence of the rain at the end of this story is so important to tie in the whole mood of the last couple chapters. Though the hard times are coming to a close, not everything is just right yet and there are still going to be some trials.

In "Holes" there was a vast, vibrant lake that made the town living by it survive. The lake produced every kind of nourishment for the town. It was the center of life. When Sam, the simple black man making a living from the lake crops, is murdered, the town suddenly stops getting rain. The lake ends up drying up and the town lies to waste. The lack of rain symbolizes the harsh payback the murderers had coming. It was a punishment to the town. Also Sam's girlfriend Kate is telling the story at that point, so the dried up lake means a sense of hopelessness for her. She wants to dry up and die just as the lake that Sam had lived on had done. When she dies a curse is placed on the people who live around the lake that in order to find a certain treasure she has hidden generations of their family must dig for years in order to find it. The drought continues for years as a symbol of hopelessness for everyone. Later on we see the story of Stanley Yelnats. He is the fourth generation of his family that has been under this curse placed. He is sent to camp to dig holes in the dried up lake bed looking for treasure. He is being taken advantage by having to dig holes from one person's obsession. In the end, the obsessed woman gets taken to jail and when that happens it begins to rain there and the curse is broken. The mood is no longer hopeless, but is joyful and happy. Weather is an enormous part of a good novel. It creates the mood and gives the reader a sense of what the characters are feeling. It simply makes the story more enjoyable and easier to understand.

 

What Communion really is

Communion, even though sometimes referred to as being religious, is a basically a gathering that is used to connect and unite. It usually takes place between people you care about each other. It is simply a way to tell one another i like/love you and i want to have a connection with you.
Communion can interpret a word in quite a variety of ways

• Whenever people eat or drink together, its communion.
• For example sometimes a meal is just a meal and eating with others is simply eating with other but more often than not, though, it’s not.

Communions are not always holy

• Communion can also represent intercourse, though intercourse does have more meaning that sexual being. 

If a meal goes bad it brings up things like people losing their appetite or walking away from the table. 

  

Example of a communion going wrong:

Macbeth, Act III.4

The banquet scene in Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy is probably the first “dining” scene that springs to mind when I think of famous examples throughout literature. There’s Macbeth, newly king, coming together with his thanes to celebrate his rise to the crown and to symbolically consolidate his power and witness their pledges of loyalty. But even while he’s welcoming his guests, the happy host is also dashing off to a corner of the stage to speak to one of the thugs he hired to murder Banquo and Fleance. He even invokes Banquo’s absence (“Here had we now our country’s honor roofed/ Were the graced person of our Banquo present”). And as if to throw these false words back in his face, the ghost of Banquo arrives on stage, and Macbeth, seeing his “gory locks,” and bloody visage, goes completely nuts, screaming at his thanes and yelling at the ghost that no one else can see.

Lady Macbeth tries to keep the peace, moving between assuaging her dinner guests (“Sit worthy friends. My lord is often thus,/ And hath been from his youth) and rallying her husband back from his vision to the matters at hand by verbally assaulting his masculinity (“Are you a man?”). I remember speaking in a middle school class about whether or not the ghost of Banquo should really appear on stage in this scene, or whether Macbeth should simply react as if he is there. Though I think the class was divided, since then I’ve never seen a production where the ghost didn’t physically appear on stage (as indeed, the stage directions indicate quite clearly he should). In the Macbeth I saw in London in May, Banquo’s body rose out of the platter of food set in the middle of the stage, his bloody hand reaching out of the roast boar, followed by his even bloodier torso.

This scene is a great example of a meal gone wrong – - everything the gathering was meant to accomplish (establishment of good feeling and loyalty between Macbeth and his thanes, a chance for his subjects to see the strength of the Macbeths’ marriage, their generosity as hosts, and even the simple mealtime goal of strengthening health through nourishment) backfires completely. Macbeth acts like an insane man; Lady Macbeth has to send all of the guests home; she herself has to wonder at her husband’s behavior, shut out completely from his experience of Banquo’s ghost. By the end of the scene, the initial charged and ambitious intimacy of their marriage has been irreparably damaged, both of their sanities brought closer to the edge, their fears and paranoia heightened, and their hopes of securing the unquestioning support of the Scottish thanes dashed completely. Done right, it’s a brilliant scene, full of tension, fervor and fear.