The poem Squares and Angles by Alfonsina Storni is all about conformity.  Her use of repetition of objects with the straight edges and ninety degree angles all point to this idea of conformity.  The idea of her being a feminist makes me think that she looks at this problem of men being in control of everything and ruling the world leads people into losing their identity and that the things that make humanity will lose its shape like the teardrop at the end of the story.  This was almost happening to american culture in the 1950's.  Everyone was moving into suburbia with the same homes and yards and the contest to see who is the most american it drove society to its breaking point in the 1960's with the hippie movement.

One of Yehuda Amichai's many poem's is God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children.  This poem is about how that the transformation of a person throughout their life.  When I read the poem I felt about how in the paragraph how it relates to my own faith on how in the beginning of your life you are given a break but once you grow older and take on more sacraments you take more responsibility.  Then when you are in the most suffering you can think of God will be there for you no matter what.  He will then look over everyone and the ones who love him back will be cared for, but everyone receives his graces from time to time.  With this caring that he has given us we need to share this compassion to the world around us to bring everyone closer to God.

In class we were asked to act out one of the stories that we read for class.  My group selected to act out Bernard Dadie's The Hunter and the Boa.  This tale was about how a man gains access to power and uses it to only profit himself instead of saving his community from the terrors that happened over twenty years.  He then came to the decision of staying alive and becoming poor or dying with his wealth.  This conflict was not answered in the story.  Which made me think about what would I do?  I probably would chose staying alive to take punishment for what I have done by only serving myself and not the community in general.  I believe the story would have changed if the hunter would have used his information to help save the people he would have never had this proposition forced on him or he would not stay alive and become poor again.

For class one of the readings we had due was The Bone by Birago Diop.  The one thing I first noticed about his style of writing was that the moral you were supposed to learn was in the first sentance of the story.  The Bone's moral was about not being selfish about your possesions and and being giving to those who you are close to you.  The one thing he used in his story was the use of repetition.  The one phrase he said during the process of his death when he asks how the bone is doing.  This phrase just on its repetition just reinforced the moral, for all it showed was that he wanted to enjoy every morsel and was not willing to give it to his hut brother.  This selfishness lead him to lose more than just his meat, but also his wife and life.

Howdy,

This fine Tuesday on April 2nd Mercyhurst brought Terry Bisson on campus to read some of his short stories for interested students.  Well the first selection he read was called They are Made of Meat.  The story is the classic first encounter tale.  This though turns the tale upside down seeing how extra terestrial's may view seeing humans for the first time.  This was an interesting take for the aliens veiwed that since humans were not even part mechanical and that they were all flesh and bone or also known as "meat."  This baffled them about how we have done so much.  This idea of seeing that the human would be incapable of what we have accomplished because our lack of technology as part of our being is kind of astonishing.  This story shows the ability of humans and how far we have come that we would baffle aliens on our accomplishments.  Even though they chose to ignore us, because this concept would have been hard to explain to their superiors.