Wallflowers

Wallflowers by Donna Vorrey

I heard a word today I’d never heard before──

I wondered where it had been all my life.

I welcomed it, wooed it with my pen,

let it know it was loved.

They say if you use a word three times, it's yours.

What happens to ones that no one speaks?

Do they wait bitterly,

hollow-eyed orphans in Dickensian bedrooms,

longing for someone to say,

"yes,you...you're the one"?

Or do they wait patiently, shy shadows

at the high school dance,

knowing that, given the slightest chance,

someday they'll bloom?

I want to make room for all of them,

to be the Ellis Island of diction──

give me our tired, you poor,

your gegenshein, your zoanthropy──

all the words without a home,

come out and play──live in my poem.

The first time that I read this poem I had no clue what the author was trying to say! After reading it a couple more times I started to feel that I wasn’t about words but about people that are not necessarily popular or have a family or somebody to that loves them. The second stanza is the one that stuck out to me the most so I am just going to focus on that.

“They say if you use a word three times, it’s yours.

What happens to ones that no one speaks?

So I see the “words” that people speak represent the popular or normal people in the world and the “words” not spoken are the people that are different from us. Words that are not spoken maybe are not understood or we don’t think that we need to use them and I think that the people that are different than us we don’t try to understand them, therefore they are not important to us. The second line in the second stanza is my favorite in the whole poem because it makes you think of what you are missing by not using those certain “words”. I believe that the author was trying to say that if we try to understand different kinds of people we will become a stronger person and he does by using the example of words.

The Heart of Darkness

On The Heart of Darkness I used the annotating style of reading-to-writing (pick up the author's style). I didn't really like this annotating process because it didn't allow me to enjoy the book fully. But I am glad that I tried this style on this book because out of all of the different authors i thought that his style was the most interesting. I thought that it was interesting because it is so different than mine. I like reading pieces that have a different style than mine because it helps me become a better writer. The characters were are very different in this book but the main characters all seem to be intelligent. They just use their intelligence in different ways. Marlow is very independent when it comes to thinking, he doesn't think the way everyone else does. He has seen many parts of the world so he has many opinions on the places that he has seen. Marlow is also very good at telling stories because he gets his listeners engaged and interested in his stories. Kurtz on the other hand is a man that knows how to use words to make people hear what they want to hear but also telling them what he wants to tell them. By doing so he has got what he has wanted but at the same time is being the target of all his fellow white men. This book is full of violence whether it is the Company towards the works or the natives towards ships. It is just sad to think that people around the world have to live like this and can't really do anything about it. I also think that it is crazy how Marlow;s journey up the river turns sort of turns into a big fight for survival on everyones part. I didn't really get into this book as much as I did The Kite runner but I enjoyed it more than The Great Gatsby. At first it was hard for me to get started but once into the story it came togehter more and was easy for me to read.

The Kite Runner

When I read The Kite Runner I used the self-to-text (interact with the book) style of annotating. So I pretty much just wrote what I was thinking while reading the book. I really liked using this style for this particular book because it was a very interesting book so it just let me focus more on the book than other things: tone, writing style, and indexes and glossaries. I really enjoyed reading this book because it tells a very good but sad story. I found that this style of annotating was the easiest for me because all I had to do is share my thoughts and it kept me more interested in the book, making it easier for me to read. What I thought made the story so strong is the characters. All of them were different and came together to make a big impact. Baba was definitely the most intriguing to me because he was the most complex. At first he comes across like he sort of rejects he son because Amir is not what Baba wants he to be but as the story goes on you learn that Baba sacrifices a lot for his boy. He really loves him and will do anything for him. What I also find interesting is that he does all of the work on his own and likes to prove people wrong: he is a hard worker. I really like the character of Amir also. Amir seems to struggle with his past all through the book and he can't forgive himself even after the people he hurt had. At first he had tried to impress his father because Baba didn't seem like he had approved of Amir. He went from a normal boy to a complex man living in the past. Later in the story he comes more of the son that Baba wanted when he went after Hassen's son. Hassan's character was interesting too. He was like a brother to Amir (literally was). He was always there for Amir: always faithful. At the beginning of the story he was more like the son that Baba wanted. Even when Hassan and Amir separated Hassan seemed like he was still a big part and reasoning to everything that Amir did. Sohrab was a lot like Hassan. At the end of the book he became like a substitute for Hassan to Amir. Sohrab was the only of Hassan that Amir had and was practically a son to Amir. I thought that is book was very very good. Not only because of the story line but because of the characters.

The Great Gatsby

While reading The Great Gatsby I used the annotating style of text-to-world(learn what the book teaches). So what mostly did was create an index and glossary and then within the text I summarized passages so that when I went back through the book it would be easier for me. I actually thought that this annotating style was good for me while reading The Great Gatsby because there were quite a few words that I did not understand. Then there were some facts that needed background knowledge to really understand. As for the book I didn't really enjoy the book as the other ones because I just couldn't get into it: I guess it didn't catch my interest. It was very slow moving and I prefer books that move at a faster pace. To me the book seemed to have no point. What stuck me the most is how the women acted. During that time in history I didn't know that women spoke to men as they were equal to them. I thought that they were more just stayed in the house take care of everything but in the book the women were more outspoken and they had servants to do all the house work. The characters were all very odd in an interesting way. Life was a lot different back then. Nick Carraway is a very quiet man who tended to keep to himself. Although he did tend to keep to himself he got himself mixed up in the drama. In the first chapter he says that he is a very open minded person so he is extremely easy person to trust. He can get people to tell him secrets: which is why I think that him and Jay Gatsby got along. Jay Gatsby just seems to be the opposite of Nick. He throws wonderful parties every weekend with many famous people that attend. There are many rumors that go around about him(secrets to tell Nick). He does this to find the woman that he loves: Daisy Buchanan who is married to Tom Buchanan. Gatsby will do anything to get Daisy back. Tom Buchanan is a very powerful man physically. He is rich and is cheating on his wife. Jordan Baker is Nick's lover in this story. I think that I find her character the most interesting because of how strong of a woman she is and that she plays golf and is famous for it. She speaks as if she is equal to men and doesn't care about what people think. Daisy Buchanan is a woman that cheats on her husband with a man that is has loved ever since they had parted. What I find very odd is the way of life that this story portrays. Everyone is cheating on their spouse and everyone drinks all the time. It just seems that no one has any morals during this time in America.