Reading Response for 2/15

The readings for this week were interesting. They all dealt with human nature and the different things they were going through. I thought they also focused on the mind and what could happen to people’s minds when they are dealing with certain circumstances.

As in the first few readings, war was the prime subject. War affects everyone in different ways, especially the soldiers. The little boy in the first reading didn’t know what to think of it. At first he was laughing at the men and then at the end he was devastated because he lost his home and his family, which is still happening today over in Iraq. This reading was very descriptive which helped to understand what the boy was going through.

Crane’s writings also dealt with war as well. He wrote prose and poetry about it, both of which were creative. I liked the poems more than the prose because I thought they were different from most poems I have read in the past. I thought another interesting part to his poems was that the title of his poems was also the first line of them. I wonder what he came up with first?
Harper also had a selection of poems that I liked. Along with Crane they were different from what I have read before. It was also nice to read from a woman writer of the time, considering this time was focused on the war going on and the men fighting in the war.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman needed some help. I have read The Yellow Wallpaper before and also have seen a movie version of it. Every time I read it or see the movie again, it still creeps me out a bit. I feel somewhat bad for the narrator because she is so messed up. She doesn’t even realize what is wrong with her. Reading something and seeing it on the screen also give a different perspective. Sometimes the screen depicts the writings accurately and sometimes they don’t. In this case I think you would understand that something is terribly wrong by either reading or seeing it, which is a strong point for Gilman, that she can convey something like that just in words.