1.
1.1
1920’s were the first age of sexual liberation. The first period of feminism had had fruit. At that time, D.H. Lawrence was about his thirties. He still couldn’t accept it. In addition to the tragedy of his childhood about women, his marriage wasn’t happy, either. Hence, he had a stereotype of women. So this essay was written in 1920’s in response to the women’s rights movement. In my opinion, D.H. Lawrence wrote this essay for all human beings, especially for women. He thought that women couldn’t do men’s work, couldn’t really be in place of men. Even though after World War Ⅰ, women had knew that their abilities were as good as men’s even better than theirs. However, he still advocated that women who did those men’s work would be unhappy and unnatural in this society. He thought all women have to do was just give births. Other things were all unnecessary. He wanted to transmit his ideas to everyone. He couldn’t bear that women did men’s work.
He wrote this essay with a concrete example, cocks and hens. He never formulated his ideas in naked and direct way. That was why he used the example of cocks and hens. The fowl society stands for the real human society. Cocks mean men; on the other hand, hens mean women. It is an analogy. The persuasiveness of this essay depended chiefly on the power of the analogy used by D.H. Lawrence. In this way, readers would be curious about what is the main idea that Lawrence wants to assert. Besides, the topic of this essay was attractive, too. He used the words-cocksure and hensure to modify women and men. The gender roles exchanged. Readers would feel interested in the special topic. Then D.H. Lawrence succeeded. He caught readers’ attention on this essay. Lawrence could transmit his point of view to readers.
Each different reader is likely to have a markedly different reaction. Men and women, in fact, may react quite differently. The submissive readers would follow Lawrence’s view and think that women shouldn’t do men’s work. I think most of men, at that time, might be submissive readers. They didn’t want women to steal their work. They would think women doing so were against human nature. Besides, D.H. Lawrence implied that our role, as readers, was to meet his own level. He wanted us to be submissive readers and be convinced of his assertion. At the beginning of this essay, Lawrence used “it seems to me” and not with the assertion. It was disarming. Then he started to develop his own opinions about women nature. We might follow his words.
On the contrary, most of women might be resistant readers. They might ask questions like these: What is human nature and what is women nature? Why should we follow the gender definition of women given by men? They would feel angry when they read this essay. What’s more, people now might also be resistant readers because the idea transmitted by D.H. Lawrence was outdated and not suitable for nowadays society anymore. The society has changed. Tendencies change the passing times. Women can also own power and skillful ability.
1.2
Zora Neale Hurston’s tone of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” was always bright but still with a little sense of loss. She wrote about her blackness with a little bitterness. We wouldn’t feel that she was really sad or frustrated being Negro. She said so in this essay, “I am not tragically colored.” For Hurston, she met the most difficult time of racial discrimination during 1940’s to 1960’s. Although this essay was written in 1928, it also showed that white people look down on black people. In 1860’s, Civil War broke out. Then the North won, and black people were released. The government made the policy-The Reconstruction. Black people could live in the autonomous region themselves. The whole essay was written under this social environment. Zora lived with Negro in the autonomous region when she was young. She didn’t realize the real situation of black people until she moved to a place with white people.
However, even though the government gave civil rights to black people, white people still despised them. The society didn’t change. Hurston herself saw white people as bearing the weight of racial problem in America. They couldn’t throw the racial baggage away. Nevertheless, Hurston didn’t really hate white people because she benefited from the policy of the government.
The central idea of the whole essay that Hurston wanted to express was that black people were good, and she was proud of her race. However, she wondered why other people treat them disdainfully. She wanted to solve this situation in the society. Although in the essay her tone was always optimistic, she still couldn’t forget that she was a black woman, and many people would look down on her, and her race.
Hurston divided this essay into four sections to express her changes of mind. We can see form the structure and narrative devices first. In the first section, she indicated the significant change that took place in her self-perception when she moved from Eatonville to Jacksonville. When she was a little girl living in a little Negro town, everyone treated her well. She was everyone’s Zora. After she went to school, she began to change. She remembered the day she “became colored.” She learned there what it meant to be “a little colored girl.” She suffered a sea change. She started to discover another herself. She was warranted because of her color of skin. In the second section, she didn’t feel shamed or have great sorrow dammed in her soul. She didn’t wallow in self-pity but instead look hopefully seeing the world as her oyster. “No, I do not weep at the world─I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife,” she said so in this section. She started to know the situation of black people. And all she had to do was to face the problem in the world, the oyster, instead of weeping tears.
In the third section, she changed the central roles of the society. She was in a position of black people to see white people who were invaders to their world. She wrote with the example of music to explain her ides. Different races have different responses to cabaret music. They, black people, would feel excited. She became so colored when she listened to music. However, white people didn’t have any special feeling. At that time, Hurston said that “He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored,” to describe those white people.
In the forth section, she started to look into human moral judgment. She thought that the secular concept beyond good and evil, right and wrong were always prejudice. She finally understood the real situation of black people. But she still couldn’t understand why they, black people, were so good but other people even God took discrimination on them. Her diction was questioning. She used an example of bag to narrate her idea. There were four bags standing for four races and many miscellanies such as bits of broken glass, a rusty knife-blade standing for sorrow and pain in this world. And God put these miscellanies into bags. However, God put first for brown bag. Hurston didn’t understand why for God, brown bag should be put miscellanies first because it meant that black people should tolerate disaster and painful lives first. She wondered why God and the religion couldn’t treat black people equally. She seemed confident and proud of her race so she would ask these questions.
Then we can read her changes of tone in this essay. In the first section, her tone was always optimistic. She started to know the race problem when she was sent to school. Although she didn’t show any bitterness, the last few sentences of section one still foreshadowed her ideas in the following sections. In the second section, she was first optimistic because she said, “I am not tragically colored.” In the last few sentences of section two, she mentioned the difference between white and black people. She said so, “The position of my white neighbors is much more difficult.” However, she just expressed her ideas about white people by using few sentences. She touched the issue lightly. In the third section, she used music to express the difference between white and black people. She wrote with the proud and confident tone. Black people could enjoy music that white people couldn’t understand. Nevertheless, she was also in a little bitter and questioning tone because she felt most black when she was with her white friends. She had to face the reality. In the forth section, she took herself as a fragment of the Great God. The priceless and worthless stuff she was made of. She wasn’t sad but just under the sense of loss. Her tone was not optimistic or pessimistic but a little helpless because she knew the reality and saw it through. She didn’t know why they should be treated unequally. Hurston stated her ideas that through the essay about white people always adumbrated. She wouldn’t use intense words to state her ideas. Besides, when she thought of the situation of black people, her tone was just a little bitter and helpless.
2.
In my opinion, Maxine Hong Kingston’s “On Discovery” wants to address an idea about the excruciating and terrible tortures for women in Chinese culture to readers, especially for westerners. We can use feminism to analyze this story. She wrote a story to express her view. The story was like a told tale because of its beginning-“once upon a time. ” In her story, a man, a real man not a traveler, came upon the Land of Women and was captured by them. Maxine Hong Kingston wanted to show the situation that men versus women. Then the man suffered kinds of cruel tortures. He was transformed into a woman. The author described these horrible tortures in details and clearly. The most frightening one might be the description of foot binding. However, Maxine Hong Kingston wrote the plot in an easy tone to describe this cruel torture that Chinese women suffered for centuries. After few months, the man became a real woman step by step because he would feel embarrassed when he washed his bandages. Finally he really became a woman, a servant in that land. Maxine Hong Kingston contravened the commonplace acceptance of Chinese women as sex objects by subjecting a man to the tortures suffered for centuries by Chinese women. She wanted men to know how tragic Chinese women were before. “On Discovery” renders legendary material in an attenuated, suggestive, parabolic style. We sense an odd kinship between her impulse to concentrate a story and her impulse to vary a story.
In the last paragraph, Maxine Hong Kingston tried to explain the time and place of this story. The first time was the reign of Empress Wu because at that time, women had power. Although foot binding wasn’t invented in Tang Dynasty, she used her imagination to combine women’s power and foot binding together. Women themselves didn’t need to have foot binding; on the contrary, they could force men to do so. The second guess was that the story happened in North America. Maxine Hong Kingston said that in order to frighten westerners. She wanted them to think themselves. Maxine Hong Kingston wanted to let men know how tragic those women living under past Chinese culture were. She wanted to tell men how terrible behaviors they forced women to do. In presenting obvious fiction as though it was history, Maxine Hong Kingston laid bare the method she was to use throughout the story. She not only challenged the “historical” construction of Chinese but presented alternative accounts as “counter-memory.”
We can analyze this story in a different way. We can explain that the story was Chinese discovery. The word “Gold Mountain” implied us that idea. The Chinese were on discovery for a new land and new lives. They were like Tong Ao who discovered a new land. However, they couldn’t win respect; they couldn’t have their voices and rights. They were the minority in the white society. They went there for a better life but were still like women who couldn’t have their own rights and treated coldly by the westerners.
Marriage á La Mode is a story about electronic living. This interesting story is fictitious and imagined by the author, Russell Baker. Russell Baker is a journalist and columnist so he can always point out the drawback of the reality by irony. He has been charming readers for years with his astute political commentary and biting cerebral wit. We can see this feature also in this story. The more electronic and convenient lives we live, the less humanity we will remain. This is the main point that the author wanted to express. Although this fiction might be written in 1980’s, the time computers had invented, Russell Baker still had a foresight for the future of electronic living. He took a good and right guess. Maybe we would think the fiction wasn’t really a fiction just because the things written in the story happened in our real world now. However, at that time, Russell Baker wrote, the things in the story was impossible and an imagination.
Nowadays, we have lived in the high-tech world. We count on electronic equipments. However, the gap between people is bigger than before. Everyone becomes indifferent to others. If people continue doing so, the world one day will belong to electronic devices. The world no longer needs human beings. Maybe that was the reason why Russell Baker wanted to write this fiction. He wanted to warn people at that time. Do not let us be controlled by machines. He didn’t want that we took time to invent electronic devices for our better lives; however, in the end machines would replace human.
We can analyze the fiction through its plot. The leading role of this story was a person who lived with machines instead of real human beings and relied on these electronic equipments much. He had never seen people for seven years. It was amazing, wasn’t it? He deeply believed that he could live well even though just with electronic devices such as computers, televisions, and telephone machines. For example, he could order meals, answer phone calls, even marry only by the electronic devices. It was really unbelievable! Marriage was an important thing, however, the man could decide only through a computer. He never thought that he would be married. “I did not intend to marry,” he said. He married not because of love but money. He found that if he was married, he could save two percent when he paid taxes. He now had lost his own humanity. He was controlled by electronic devices. He was no longer a human being; he was dead. Because of this reason, there were no wonders that he didn’t want to see people. He had lost his real mind as well. He sold himself to the technology.
Russell Baker used dialogue to depict this fiction. Readers would feel vividly as the roles talked in front of us, in our surrounding. The way would arouse readers’ interests. For me, the conversation here is interesting. “People ought to see people, ought to talk to people,” said the machine. “If God had meant people to see people, he wouldn’t have given us the telephone-answering machine,” the man said. According to this conversation, we can obviously discover that the machine became a real person. It would have its own ideas, emotions and want to see people. On the other hand, the man became a machine. Their characters exchanged. The man didn’t remain any humanity himself. He was replaced by the machine. We could see this at the end of the story. “If you’d turn off the tube, machines could have a little privacy around here,” the telephone machine said. Then the end of the story described, “The beeping became intense.” What an amazing end it is! The machines fell in love with each other, and they also needed a little privacy just as real people. Russell Baker really expressed his anxiety of modern lives in an interesting and humorous way.
3.
a)
Maxine Hong Kingston used a woman’s tone to tell her aunt’s tragedy. She spoke in her own voice. She knew her aunt’s story from her mother. Then she said this story again to readers adding her attitude. She described her aunt more pitiful in order to excite readers’ sympathies for her aunt. If Maxine Hong Kingston only wrote this story objectively, the story would be boring. If she only described this story in a straightforward style, we wouldn’t feel impressive. The story would be like news telling a woman who did unfaithful behavior, and we just knew a story about her aunt’s life. We wouldn’t have willing to read it. Even if we read it, we might leave nothing in our minds. So Maxine Hong Kingston chose a good way to tell this story and let it become more dramatic by combining story from her mother and fiction made by her. There were countless things, many of them produced of Kingston’s imagination and curiosity. Due to this way of story telling, the story would be more attractive to readers. We can discover her aunt’s secret life, the personal aspect of her life. Then readers would put their sympathies on she rather than hate her. The primary image is that of the cheating aunt, the adulterer, whose story is artfully recounted by her niece, Kingston. Besides inserting her mother’s story into the fiction, Kingston also mixed story with explanation, interspersing her aunt’s tale with broader details about the Chinese culture.
b)
Maxine Hong Kingston used a biased way to depict her aunt’s story. Because we can feel directly that Maxine Hong Kingston tried to redress her aunt’s behavior. She added many plots to make us feel pitiful to her aunts. She exaggerated the facts. The story would be more powerful and dramatic. Then readers would feel impressive. She wrote many startling scenes to scare readers. We would be frightened and thought that her aunt was pitiful. In my opinion, Maxine Hong Kingston thought that she could accept her aunt’s behavior. Although she still didn’t mention her aunt’s name, in the end her aunt was still a no name woman.
The last paragraph was scared. Her aunt had committed suicide; however, she still haunts Maxine Hong Kingston. Although everyone had forgotten her aunt, Maxine Hong Kingston didn’t. She would devote pages of paper to her. It was an old tradition in Chinese culture. We would burn paper money, paper clothes, paper house and so on for those dead people. Besides, she used the drown ghost to describe her aunt. The Chinese are most frightened of drown people because they would search for the substitutes. She said this to let us know that her aunt was dead under hate and unwilling.
If I write this kind of story, I wouldn’t use the way like Maxine Hong Kingston’s. I would describe the fact thorough just as writing oral history. I have ever read a book named “ The Stories of Taiwanese Daughters-In-Law; The Lives of Sim-Pua.” It was a history book of Taiwanese daughters-in-law. Its writing skill was oral history. She visited many women who were daughters-in-law and asked many things about them. She wanted to show everyone what were their lives. They were no name women, too. If I am going to write a story about a no name woman, I will follow the way I have mentioned above. I will look for information about that no name woman and ask people who know her to tell me things about her. And I will combine their viewpoints for this woman. I don’t want to use a fiction to tell a story. It is too faked. Although I know fictions have power to attract readers, I still want to show the real concept of that woman. I want readers to do their judgments through knowing a truth. I even won’t use exaggerative descriptions. I will write different parts of that woman. Readers won’t see just one comment on that woman.
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