Overheard conversation

After my work, I went to Fred Meyer to deposit my paycheck to the Alaska USA Credit Union. It was 5:30 pm, a rush time, so I waited in the line. There were many people, everybody talked about different things. One man talked to his wife about the vacation in May; two ladies were complaining about the noise in their office. I didn’t try to listen to anybody; therefore, I heard one conversation of two young women about a birthday party for their friend Linda. One of them said, “I was talking on the phone with Emily about Linda’s secret birthday party while I was cooking dinner and I accidentally spilled the beans; Emily was mad on me”.

In my mind immediately popped up the picture from that conversation. The first woman’s name was Kelly. She just came from work and started cook dinner. She decided to cook some healthy food. So, her choice was to boil the beans with other vegetables. She started preparing the ingredients; she washed the celery, carrots, pepper, tomatoes, parsley. Then she tried to remember where she put a can with beans. Kelly found out that it was on the top shelf in the kitchen cabinet. She placed the ladder in front of the cabinet and reached the can with beans. When she came down, the phone started ringing. She took a phone. Her friend Emily was calling to ask a couple questions about Linda’s birthday party on Saturday. Meanwhile, Kelly tried to open the can with beans, because she already put all ingredients in the pot with boiling water; it was time to add the beans. Therefore, she was talking with Emily; she was destructed by doing to things in one time. As a result, she accidentally spilled the beans on the floor. She started laughing at herself. Because of this situation, she even forgot that she was talking to Emily all that time. Kelly hung up. It wasn’t really nice, but her floor was covered by beans.

This overheard conversation made sense but in two ways. I could think literally about talking on the phone and spilling the beans, like it usually happened! Although, the part of this conversation, when Kelly told Emily was mad on her, didn’t make sense without the continuation of their conversation. I could guess that she was mad because Kelly hung up or because she didn’t pay attention to what Emily was saying. Another case was if I could understand this conversation and “spilled the beans” as an idiom. It would be a different story and the result of it. Kelly could tell somebody about the secret party, thus she would ruin the surprise. That’s why Emily could be mad on her.

As we can see, the phrase without context can have so many explanations and variations. People can be mad because of not having enough information or not paying attention to the context of conversations. The context can change people’s lives. There are lots of situations when people heard just a phrase that had a different context, if they would hear the whole conversation.

Salvation

Langston Hughes attracts readers beginning from the title of this story. Using “Salvation” as a title, he eventually makes the readers be prepared for an adventure. This word raises curiosity of the readers. Hughes could call his story, for example, “Incident in a church” which is not a good attractive title. “Salvation” implies for an interesting narrative. From the beginning of the story, even from the first sentence, the readers can see that it is a true autobiographical story from author’s childhood. It is nonfiction about the church, or it is related to the church, because using the word “sin” people usually think about God or prayer. Then he uses the entering sentence “It happened like this”, which momentarily prepares us to become a part of author’s past.

This is a narrative story with elements of description and process. There are many cases when the author uses lots of descriptive adjectives to make the picture in our mind more clear and understandable. For instance, “wonderful rhythmical ceremony”, “old women with jet-black faces and braided hair”, “old men with work-gnarled hands”. Also Hughes describes all actions more completely using many verbs in the sentences. Verbs convey the sequence of the events. For example, “aunt came, and knelt at my knees, and cried”. Using those verb forms author makes us feel this story as a process; it is not a quick five-minute action, it continues through the evening. We that it is evening, because of a few phrases: “Now it was really getting late” or “every night for weeks”. Then author in detail describes what happens. He uses a past tense because this situation happened in his childhood long time ago. Putting dialogs in the text, Hughes make us realize that it is a true story with true people. Also there are many questions in the story. Those questions usually are repeated (“Why don’t you come?” or “Won’t you come?”) in order to finally get answers.

In this story we can notice lots of short sentences. It is precise and clear statements, which make a big sense in the text. For instance, “I believed her” from that we can clearly see the author’s feelings, or “Nothing!” which implies the result of expectations.  The sentence “So I got up”, which is even made as a whole short paragraph, separates two parts of the story: the situation in the church and being with understanding what happened. The description of feeling miserable and shame (“I cried, in bed alone, and couldn’t stop”) in the last paragraph, finally, makes the narrative completely understandable and sad. The last sentence which carries the main idea of this incident has a huge sense in everybody’s life, when we think about Jesus. This sentence is a guide for the readers who didn’t understand the main purpose of this story from its beginning.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The first thing everybody can notice in the story “Me talk pretty one day” is the title. People who know English, who can speak or read in English, who can understand English immediately, can say that there is a huge mistake in the title of this story. Why the author didn’t write it right?  He wanted to give us a hint of the idea of the story. It is all about people who are struggling with learning foreign languages.

The author made a main character of this story the forty-one year old woman, who moved to France to learn the language. I think people who have tried to learn another language cannot understand how it feels like. In this short story the author give us a good description of the main character’s feelings. For example, in the 2^nd paragraph, the woman has a feeling that everybody speaks French better than her even they are also from the different countries. The author describes her feeling very concretely using only one word “intimidating”. He shows that the woman felt that she is not like others. Still she could understand only a half of what the teacher said.

Author places a few teacher’s phrases with “words” that don’t have an exact meaning. The woman heard everything the teacher said but some words were like bunch of letters. The author makes the reader realize how the woman understood French by putting all those “no meaning” words. There are a couple of phrases: “Sometimes me cry alone at night” and “That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you” that don’t have correct spelling. I understand why he does it. These phrases don’t make sense for people who know French.

She could speak only this way, making weird mistakes. Author wants to tell us how usually people are trying to talk even making stupid mistakes.

In this story the woman says that she was convinced that everything she said was wrong. It is not true. Making mistakes, she learned more and more French, but the author placed this saying to describe her situation. He places some examples like the ignoring the phone ringing; how she pretended to be deaf, when someone was asking any question. It’s a true story. For most people, it might seem funny, even ridiculous, but it’s a true of her life. She was afraid to seem stupid. Given examples make sense in explaining all situations she was involved in.

The teacher plays a negative character. She is making her students feel uncomfortable. There is a phrase: Over time it became impossible to believe that any of us would ever improve”. When I read it, I thought that the teacher was not a good person. She doesn’t want to understand how that woman felt. Every teacher’s job is to help the students. She didn’t do her job well in this case. She didn’t help them. Then, I read the last few paragraphs and realize that teacher by pushing her students and making them feel kind of miserable made a great job. She made them understand more French. And they wanted to learn more. The last phrase is all about woman’s understanding why the teacher did it. The author wrote a good story. And all phrases and examples showed this situation more deeply, inside. I liked it because I was in similar situation. Reading this story, I understood that author showed everything how it was, how it felt like.

Voyagers

Voyagers

Rockwell Kent

Oil on canvas board (1923)

Located in the Rose Berry Gallery, 2nd floor

   The painting “Voyagers” has a powerful effect because of its idea. The color plays a central role in this picture. The blue-turquoise sky, clear straight horizon line, then dark-blue sea, and purple mountains make this painting different and enigmatic.

   It is difficult to determine either there is the sunrise or sunset. I see it like the sunrise, the beginning of a new day, new life. The voyagers float to the light with hope about the future. I cannot see the focal point yet, but most colors are dark in the picture and my look stops on the bright light spot on the left side over the horizon and I see the big figure of the flying man in the sky. First, I need try to analyze all aspects of this painting.

The artist uses the figure-ground contrast emphasizing the size of people standing on the ship and the small ship in front of the huge mountains. We cannot see the whole voyagers’ ship I think because the artist wants us think about people not about the way they are moving. These people, without any clothing, personify the beginning of their new life, their revival without past.

   The painting is very bright, sensible. It has almost all colors of the rainbow except red and green. Therefore, it doesn’t make the picture less noticeable because all colors are saturated. The dark blue water seems cold and dangerous. The unusual purple mountains represent the border between the light and darkness. The figure of the flying man facing to the sunlight becomes orange. The beautiful blue sky is pure, without any clouds on it. The line of the horizon is clear and creates a sense of calm. The wave lines on the sea imply change. The zigzag lines of the mountains create sense of unrest or even danger.

   When I look at this picture, sometimes it appears that the figure of a man flying out of place doesn’t fit. If it was not painted, it would be clear that people are traveling or sailing in the new world, new life is emerging on the horizon as something warm and bright yellow between the mountains. But this figure of the man carries some idea. Why the artist painted this big human body with closed eyes and outstretched hands? Contours of the body, hair, eyes, nose, muscles, ribs, knees are clearly drawn; they are smooth. I think the artist uses the similarity effect to show us the relationship between the voyagers and the flying man in the sky. It is all about the potential of the human spirit. The flying man represents the strong people who don’t know what is going to happen in the future, how it will be. That is why the flying man’s eyes are closed, it represents nescience. Therefore, he is still flying with his outstretched hands to the warm, calm light, to the happiness – his destination. A boat on a background of mountains shows that there is not the only one ship with people going to the sunlight. There are other voyagers who are going to try a new joyful life.

   Despite the fact that the eyes are focused often on the flying man, I cannot say that the focal point is he. Looking at the picture, I suddenly realized that my eyes stop at this bright, yellow light, which is a little left of the picture, between the mountains. It contrasted sharply with the other objects of this picture. I think that the focal point is the sunrise.  

   This painting makes me think about human’s power and courage that help people to be not afraid of trying to do anything, to live how they want.