All Good Things Must Come to an End
Matthew Eliason
Nicholas Young
LITR221
January 26, 2014
All Good Things Must Come to an End
A Course Review of 2013-2014 Winter Semester of LITR 221 The amazing thing about literature is that it can be interrupted differently by each person who reads it. Which means that while one piece of writing is amazing, creative, and witty to one person to another person it could be the most boring, uninteresting, and redundant piece of literature they have ever read. In this semester of Literature 221, I was given the opportunity to read works from many different genres, time periods, and styles of writing. Some of which, like Emily Dickinson’s Life I and Life XLIII, Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, and Sherman Alexie’s What You Pawn I Will Redeem I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from. While others such as Ernest Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River, Mark Twain’s excerpt When The Buffalo Climbed a Tree from Roughing It, and the excerpt from Sula by Toni Morrison weren’t exactly my cup of tea. Emily Dickinson is a remarkable poet who often writes from a very emotional and self-examining perspective. This is why I really enjoyed the two selections of her work we had to read this semester. In her first poem Life I, the very first two lines make you stop and think, “I’M nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?” (Dickinson 2) Bam! I was hit in the face with self-reflection. Am I somebody? Or am I a nobody? Emily Dickinson continues by saying “how dreary to be somebody!” (Dickinson2 ) as if to be somebody is a bad thing. I love that Emily Dickinson questions the ideology of having to be surrounded by people and having to constantly be in a spotlight. Every move that you make is questioned and examined by people. Instead of being able to live for yourself and for your own happiness you are forced to live by the way society sees you. It made me see that maybe it truly is better to be a happy, content nobody. In her poem Life XLIII,
Nicholas Young
LITR221
January 26, 2014
All Good Things Must Come to an End
A Course Review of 2013-2014 Winter Semester of LITR 221 The amazing thing about literature is that it can be interrupted differently by each person who reads it. Which means that while one piece of writing is amazing, creative, and witty to one person to another person it could be the most boring, uninteresting, and redundant piece of literature they have ever read. In this semester of Literature 221, I was given the opportunity to read works from many different genres, time periods, and styles of writing. Some of which, like Emily Dickinson’s Life I and Life XLIII, Joyce Carol Oates’ Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, and Sherman Alexie’s What You Pawn I Will Redeem I thoroughly enjoyed and learned from. While others such as Ernest Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River, Mark Twain’s excerpt When The Buffalo Climbed a Tree from Roughing It, and the excerpt from Sula by Toni Morrison weren’t exactly my cup of tea. Emily Dickinson is a remarkable poet who often writes from a very emotional and self-examining perspective. This is why I really enjoyed the two selections of her work we had to read this semester. In her first poem Life I, the very first two lines make you stop and think, “I’M nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?” (Dickinson 2) Bam! I was hit in the face with self-reflection. Am I somebody? Or am I a nobody? Emily Dickinson continues by saying “how dreary to be somebody!” (Dickinson2 ) as if to be somebody is a bad thing. I love that Emily Dickinson questions the ideology of having to be surrounded by people and having to constantly be in a spotlight. Every move that you make is questioned and examined by people. Instead of being able to live for yourself and for your own happiness you are forced to live by the way society sees you. It made me see that maybe it truly is better to be a happy, content nobody. In her poem Life XLIII,
Cited: Dickinson, Emily. “Life I & XLIII American Literature Since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011. 2-3. e-Book. Hemingway, Ernest. "Big Two Hearted River." American Literature Since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011. 253-264. E-book. Morrison, Toni. "From Sula.” American Literature Since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw- Hill, 2011. 346-354. e-Book. Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” American Literature Since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011. 333-344. e-Book. Twain, Mark. “From Roughing It. When The Buffalo Climbed a Tree.” American Literature Since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011. 16-18. e-Book. Twain, Mark. “How To Tell a Story” American Literature Since the Civil War. Create edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011. 12-15. e-Book.