Krapp’s Last Tape: Young Life Vs Old Life

The tape is Krapp's memory, where he records everything that happened that day, such as a diary. The tape's first saying is that today he turned thirty-nine and that he still felt good (Beckett). Upon reading this line, the main two ideas that came to my mind were age and the feeling of the person. Thirty-nine is not an old age but it isn't a young age either, it is more like approaching the middle of a person's life. When Krapp says that he still felt "sound as a bell" (Beckett), he was saying that even though he knew he had turned thirty-nine, he still felt young and good. The life that young people have, compared to the life of what old people have, has been an idea constantly searched when trying to demonstrate the vivid and joyful life of the young compared to the monotonous and solitary life of the old. This idea is similar to the idea presented in Coming Through Slaughter, where Buddy Bolden was a person who had a music and women filled young life, but as time elapsed his reality changed ending up in a asylum and his name forgotten by everyone in town. The fact that the first word of the tape is a number, brings up the idea that the age and the years that a person has in this story will be directly relevant to the feeling of the person about life. If I had to choose if I wanted to be young or old, without a doubt the former option would be chosen. I don't know if this will be the response of an old person with more experience in life, or maybe a young person where his present isn't as happy.

In the description of Krapp's life by Beckett, his young years didn't seem bad at all, doing what he liked in the winehouse and even having a relationship with the beautiful lady. I thought Krapp felt a sense of melancholy when he listened to these tapes, seeing his past and comparing it to the present, but I was surprised when he said: "Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, […]Thank God that's all done with anyway" (Beckett). From this saying of Krapp he must have disliked what he did in the past. Krapp is saying that at the state the person is at the advanced life, he is far more developed and mentally superior, than the foolish young him. Personally I am seventeen and I don't see how one can hate these years but I haven't been able to live and old life, which contrary to what society thinks, it could be more gratifying and better. A doubt that I have after reading this story is about Beckett's personal life. How were his young years? When did all his fame come? How much did he grow spiritually in his old years? The answers of those questions will vary depending on the person, therefore their point of view could be different whether they prefer the young life or old life.

McCarthy And Fitzgerald

Last line of The Great Gatsby by McCarthy

Each day that passes we will be better. Until one day, we will cease to go forward

Last line of The Road by Fitzgerald

Always should wrong decisions prevail over right ones, their habitats inside the deep glens were infested with artifacts and ideas far more aged than man. A mysterious atmosphere constantly surrounding it made an endless humming of the unknown.

Response To Hamlet By Kenneth Branagh

After seeing this introduction I am expecting to be a movie where Branagh has tried to make a representation of the characters as close to the real Hamlet characters as he can. He says in a part that he wanted the best actors he could get, insisting the fact that they had to learn their own lines in Old English, being as close to the real play as possible in that sense. The setting of the play will also be very important therefore, choosing it to be a castle full of mirrors to help the audience visualize each character's reflections and soliloquies. Since he mentioned that he chose the filming to take place in a snowy and cold place, I am intrigued if the cold and surroundings have any significance in the story. Branagh stated that Shakespeare used it first but then it became everyday language and everybody is using it, and I am intrigued to know some specific examples of this fact

The Teacher’s Tale

Today my story shall be known to all,
There will not be adventures or any brawls,
But there will be an unexpected discovery
Which will leave some teachers very crazy.

I woke today to go to school,
Where I will hope to not become a fool.
I walked to school avoiding the cold,
While I fixed my clothes and looked all bold,
And running fast while the bell rang
I rushed past a tough and fierce gang.

To my room five minutes after the bell
Had sounded I arrived running like hell,
But everything was going very well
Until I hit the bottom of the well.

A chemical bottle fell off my hands, Landing next to the radioactive stands.
The bottle broke and liquid poured out the glass, While running and pushing came the next class.
Alexander came in with a football,
Threw it hitting the stand making it fall.

The giant clash of the glass and the ground Made a great and incredible loud sound.
I forced Alexander to clean it up,
But he placed the mixture into a cup
Carefully wrapping it and home taking it,
Before I noticed gone he was in a bit.

That night in the news he appeared with
The ooze stolen from my class. Saying the myth
That it was his with no mention to me,
And that it worked to grow quickly a tree.
I instantly tried to sue him by the law,
In the process I didn't get any paw.
The story ends me living in a ditch,
While Alexander stole and became rich.

The Road: To Trust Or Not To Trust In The Road

Trust is the most important factor in the building of relationships with anyone in the world. Depending on the trust there is with that person that bond between those two people can be taken more seriously. If a person is one that you can't trust a lot then you have to be able to determine how long the bond will be with that person and how deep the level of trust will be with that person. I like to think that trust is also a reversibility factor in the relations with other people. If someone is not trusted very much then you wouldn't trust with them some of your most important secrets and neither will they trust you with their secrets. I like to see it as if one person trusts a lot of things in you then you would most probably trust them the same back. In the case of The Road there is a very special relationship of trust built between the father and the boy because they are the only two persons they can trust. There is also the fact that they are not around many people they want to trust but there is a relationship not only of trust with each other, but also dependency. They trust their life in the others hand therefore they become dependent in the other person. If something happens to the father then the kid wouldn't be able to survive and the same thing happens vice versa, making them care for the others' life as much as their own. The degree of trust can be seen when the narrator says: "He wiped the boy's mouth with his hand. I'm sorry, the boy said. Shh. You didn't do anything wrong" (pg.247). When the boy is very sick his life basically depends on his father's ability to take care of him while surviving. McCarthy said the part where the boy felt sorry to show the reader that he fears for his life but more for his father's life because he will be more troubled and maybe because of his fault the bad guys could capture them. He is also apologizing to his father for the inconvenience produced and the possibility that they will run out of food while he is recovering.

The other kind of trust produced in this book is the exact opposite. The fear of trusting any other person in the road is clear because they are not able to know whether a person is bad or good. One clear example of the distrust environment with other people is when they meet the old man and he says: "I couldn't trust you with it. To do something with it. […] I think in times like these the less said the better" (pg.171). The level of distrust this old man has is very high because he avoids talking to them for the fear they are the bad guys and would do something to him. I don't blame him because in the position he is at I would probably do the same. Therefore since there wasn't any trust between these two parties there wasn't any bond made and only a sharing of food happened.

The Great Gatsby Revisited: Practice Makes Perfect

Many times in my life I have heard the lesson practice makes perfect and I really do think this is true. I play tennis a lot and in national tournaments I always see that people who train the most amount of time normally win. This isn't just luck, it is a skill they have been practicing a lot and finally they have come to master it. I think the same thing happens with literature, the more you read and analyze texts the better you get at it. Sonya Chung states that she agrees with this idea when she says: "I admire people who reread books over and over again.   Some writers I know reread certain books annually; it works something like a "checkup," a scheduled nourishing of that ineffable, particularized magic that is creative inspiration." Each time you read the book you will have better understanding of it and you will enjoy the reading more. I really do admire as well people that tend to reread books on a regular basis because it isn't always easy to read the same book. I think the main problem with this is that people before rereading the book come with the mindset of having already read and that they will learn nothing from it or not find anything new. Each day we grow as persons and that is what changes, and since we change the way we see the book will also change. That change is described by Chung when she states: "And yes: with great literature, the experience is deeper and richer with each successive reading." Each new reading you will give to the book will help you get more meaning out of it. Only the ones that reread books constantly are able to master the lessons and the real meaning of the book, making their understanding perfect by constant practice.

The Road: The Making Of Decisions

We have to face decisions all the time. Normally taking a decision isn't a life changing event but there are cases where a single decision can affect the whole course of your life. When I am faced with an important decision I tend to think thoroughly of all the outcomes and balance it out to see with which one I will get the most benefit from. We constantly by making decisions we shape the road of our life but in the book The Road it is the environment and the pressure that affects the decisions. Decisions have to be taken measuring all the positive outcomes and negative outcomes but there are cases when the decision has to be taken in less time and the analysis step is skipped. The father made a bad decision and the narrator describes this by saying: "He walked back and sat beside the boy. It was desperation that had led him to such carelessness and he knew that he could not do that again. No matter what." (pg.117) The decision the father had to make in this case had to be done and fast because they couldn't waste any time analyzing the outcomes. The need of food was the engine that pushed the father into making a desperate decision that almost cost his life. If I were the father I probably would have risked my life for finding food because my son was very hungry and he needed that energy to survive. If he wouldn't have gone into the house in his mind there would always be the doubt if whether or not there was food inside. In the situation of the book I think that both decisions would have been negative because if they went in they risked capture but if they didn't go in they risked dying from hunger. If the father had analyzed these outcomes he would probably chose to save their lives and not enter but the instinct and the hunger drove him into a desperate decision.

There are also other factors that affect the person's decision taking ability. When you have somebody you love near you, you might want what is best for them. The father knowing that the best thing for his son was to get food he went inside. The boy just before his father entered the house said: "I'm not hungry, Papa. I'm not,"(pg.108) when he really was starving. In this moment the father knew that the kid was saying a lie to prevent that his father risked his life for food. I think that that lie motivated his father more because he loved his kid so much that he didn't mind risking his life to make him happy. Also I saw this part as a foreshadowing that something bad was going to happen. The repetition of the kid trying to make his dad back off the idea of entering made me predict that something bad had to happen. It was almost as if the kid jinxed the going into the house and his worst fears happened. Sometimes that happens for example when you play tennis and there is a very important point you have to win. If fear starts taking over you and you think that maybe you will hit the ball out, it will most likely happen because you are focusing your mind on the negative and therefore making the mistake.

The Road: Are Memories Good Or Bad?

Memory by definition is: the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/memory), but it is also a lot more. Memories are the most important things in your mind because the memories are events that have happened in your life and by their importance you will remember them forever. Memories can also kill a person or make their life have some importance. A memory that could kill a person is the image of a loved person dying but a memory that can make a person's life be better is a happy moment with friends. In The Road both types of memories appear constantly in the father's life. Agreeing with the definition most memories are triggered by another event or object. One example of a memory is when the character's wife says: "A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart." (pg.57) This memory of his wife was triggered because his son had said that he wished he was with mom. The memory in this case is shown to the character by the means of his dreams. This is a memory that the character must be hurt when he sees it. Fighting for the life of three persons is really hard and the worst thing you can hear from one of them is that they don't want to live anymore and make you feel that all your hard work has been for nothing. I haven't personally had this experience but an example would be that when you are in a soccer team and you are constantly giving it your all for the whole team to win and everybody else in the team isn't trying and showing to you that they don't want to win. What probably happens next is that you lose hope and the desire to fight because the team you are sweating for isn't returning you the same amount of sacrifice. I really think that in that moment the mother had to be in an extreme degree of desperation to even think of abandoning her kid. Mothers are willing to risk their own life for that of their kids and in this case she is just abandoning his life.

The other kinds of memories are the ones that keep you positive and always hoping for a better future and outcome. The other memory he has of his wife is a more positive one and it is shown by the object that reminds him of her. The narrator says in one moment: "He pitched the sweatblackened piece of leather into the woods and sat holding the photograph. Then he laid it down in the road also and then he stood and they went on." (pg.51) Normally when a person has another person's picture in his wallet it is because the picture reminds him of this person and this person gives him hope and power to keep on going. The memory of his wife could have kept him going for a while, when he looked her picture. The moment when he leaves the picture in the road two different meanings came to my mind. One is that he has completely lost hope of his life and he just wants to give up. I think this is rather unlikely because he still gets the motivation to keep on going from his son which is the thing he loves most. The second meaning is the wanting to forget a memory that brings him down. I think the second meaning is more likely is that he wants to completely forget about her so he can look into the future and stop lamenting his past.

The Road: Surrounded By Hostile Environments.

There are days where simply things can't go any worse. That day everything happens to you and the more you try to make it better the more bad things happen to you. Some people say that it is only the way you look at the day that makes it feel like everything is bad but I say there are days where everything goes wrong. In these days you might fights with your parents, you might break up with your girlfriend, or you may have a very important competition or presentation and you will blow it. Fortunately this day is not very frequent and it doesn't last forever. Now imagine if that reality of having the worst possible things happening would never go away and will last for more than a simple day, and that situation is the situation in which the characters from The Road have to survive in. There has to be a moment where the pure desperation of nothing becoming better takes over the person's mind. One example of desperation is when the father says: "Will I see you at last? Have you have a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God." (pg. 12) This is a moment that by pure desperation of finding nothing to improve their lives the father screams for God and even starts questioning his heart and soul. This feeling of desperation and having nothing available to help you come out of the hole you are stuck in brings out the trust in God.

The Road is a book that since the beginning portrays the image of a world without hope and full of destruction. The first few lines say: "When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before." (pg. 3) Since the book is starting with this lines of darkness and no hope, I can predict that the book will be focused on how the world is brought to pieces and how hope with the passing of each day gets smaller and smaller. Also when the book mentions the part of the child I think that in that situation where no one else is around the father and son are two different persons but at the same time one. If one of these two persons happens to die then the other immediately will also die. If the kid dies then I think the father will most probably commit suicide because in all that desperation and solitude his motivation to keep going is to take his kid to a better place, but if he is gone then the father would think his life is worthless. The kid will also die without his father because he wouldn't know how to survive in this hostile environment. I don't really know what will happen in this book but seeing that it has been made a movie I am thinking that it will be and action filled book with a happy ending because movies most of the times have happy or at least endings where people survive.

The Religious Tales

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe: The Fear Of Death

This poem done by Edgar Allen Poe had a clear objective which was being scary and trying to scare the reader. But the composition of the poem is much more complex than just a scary story. In The Raven, Poe uses symbols to give the story different meanings. The raven clearly is an object inside the story but he represents a lot more. I think the raven is symbolizing the fear of death. The character is trapped inside a house and the raven is controlling his mind and thoughts. The character thinks this: "Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven "Nevermore." The fear of death is clearly shown in his thoughts because we can see how he wants to see angels and specially Lenore but the raven is saying to him never more. Lenore must have been a person that this character really loves and what he is trying to say is that he really more than anything wants to see her but the raven which is the fear of death says to him that if he dies he will nevermore see her again. This fear has controlled the character in such a way that he is vulnerable to the mind control of the raven when says: "And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!" When the character says this he is lost and will see life nevermore. The way the narration of this poem was done was very good because it managed to scare the reader. I really thought this poem was similar to Psycho because it kept on growing in intensity and when it reached the highest point the story ended and also because it was intended to scare the audience.

The Pardoner’s Tale: The Curse Of Gluttony

Food is the most elemental thing a human can have. Food is necessary for a person to survive but it is not good for a person to live for food. If a person eats and drinks all day without moderation it is considered gluttony. I think that gluttony is the moment when the food physically can't enter into the stomach because it is so full but the person still eats this because he wants. It is the feeling of never stopping. No matter how much you eat and how full you are you won't stop eating. Gluttony plays an important part in The Pardoner's Tale when it says: "O glotonye, ful of cursednesse! O cause first of oure confusioun! O original of oure dampnacioun, Til Crist hadde boght us with his blood agayn! Lo, how deere, shortly for to sayn, Aboght was thilke cursed vileynye! Corrupt was al this world for glotonye." (498-504) This act of eating in excess was considered a very important sin and even considered a curse. When the character mentions that it was a corruption that affected the entire world I thought if today there was the same problem. Actually if you think of it there are many people who are currently dying of hunger and thirst and they die because their body can't get enough energy to survive. I think that gluttony is certainly bad because you are eating the food that could be served to a person that needs that food more. In the other hand I think it is less bad than ordering large amounts of food and only eating a little because the rest gets thrown to the trash. The other subject that was addressed in this tale was the pardoner's role. When he says: "It is an honour to everich that is heer That ye mowe have a suffisant pardoner T' assoille yow in contree as ye ryde, For aventures whiche that may bityde. Paraventure ther may fallen oon or two Doun of his hors and breke his nekke atwo. Looke which a seuretee is it to yow alle That I am in youre felaweshipe yfalle," (931-938) This part I thought was very important because it showed a little about the church at the time. All throughout tale the pardoner had told about death and how it appeared out of nowhere came to the point where he said that in order for people to be safe and that death didn't get them they had to pay him and pay honors to his holy artifacts. This shows a lot to me how the church was in that time because it was a must to give them money to be safe and be able to go to heaven. I think that the main purpose of any religion is to guide you spiritually but most importantly to teach you how to be a good person. If you are a good person who harms no one and has a strong set of values then I think it is unnecessary to have to pay to the church because in that time the church was very corrupt and only wanted money.

The Wife Of Bath’s Tale: Forget The Past And Accept The Present

The idea of the past or your ancestors doesn't matter and the only thing that really matters is the present is something that is present in this chapter. I have some opinions about this idea that support it but others that disapprove it. I think it is wrong to judge someone for his last name. I have seen cases when people say that a person must be annoying because his father or mother was annoying making him annoying. I do think that habits and ways of behaving are passed down through generations but I don't think it is correct to condemn a person by what I know about his family members. There is a part in The Wife Of Bath's Tale where the idea of forgetting the past and only accept the present is shown when the woman says: "That he is gentil that dooth gentil dedis. And therfore, leeve housbonde, I thus conclude: Al were it that myne auncestres were rude, Yet may the hye God, and so hope I, Grante me grace to lyven vertuously. Thanne am I gentil, whan that I bigynne To lyven vertuously and weyve synne." (1170-1176) In this part the woman is asking him to forget her past and accept her present which is good. If I were her husband I would forgive her of her past because the only thing that is important now is the way she is and behaves now and not the way her ancestors were. I agree that the past is an important key to figure out how each person is and learn his roots. Another way this idea was shown is when she says: "Possessioun that no wight wol chalenge. Poverte ful ofte, whan a man is lowe, Maketh his God and eek hymself to knowe. Poverte a spectacle is, as thynketh me, Thurgh which he may his verray freendes see." (1200-1204) Poverty is a state in which a person is born to. The person didn't make a wrong decision that affected his life he was just born into it and had nothing to do and change it. I really think it is bad to judge a person by his economical state because it isn't the money that counts in life, it is rather the values and moral composition of the person. When she says that in poverty one learns to look life through a different glass it must be true. When poverty exists there are many things that aren't good about it and the need for this person to overcome these problems probably sets a new vision of the world rather than a person that has gotten everything he wants in his life without having to work for it in any way. I would definitely agree with the idea that it doesn't matter if the roots and ancestors of one person are bad if this person is good.