Thursday, May 9, 2013

Rosario Ferre "The Youngest Doll" post by Monday evening May 13

Please post your personal response to "The Youngest Doll" here.  First just give your reaction to the story, your interpretation (or thoughts about) various events and characters.  I am especially interested in your ideas about the ending.  Please quote at least twice from the story.

After before or after, read the accompanying essay that explains the economic and social situation of Puerto Rico at the time of the story and leading up to that time (1976).

After reading the essay, write a brief paragraph explaining how/why the essay helped you understand the story.  Choose one passage from the essay that affected your understanding of the story and include a reference to it in your discussion.

So this is a two-paragraph blog--first on the story, then a response to the essay.  Enjoy reflecting!

7 comments:

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  4. After our discussion in class I fell in love with the story! I loved how everyone interpreted the symbols in the story differently. It was interesting how the prawn symbolized male ideology . It was crazy how the woman's life came to a drastic halt as a result of the prawn and this prawn was a metaphor of a woman getting married to a man. What I found disturbing was how the male doctor acted like he was really treating the woman but in reality he was trying to prolong her illness for his own self benefit. Overall the story is brilliantly written and it successfully captures women's depiction of men during this period in time. The first time reading the story it didn't make sense to me and the plot wasn't clear but the second time around truly opened my eyes and made me view the story in a whole new light.

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    1. isn't it wonderful when a story does this--like opening a puzzle and finding all sorts of things inside! I could tell you were enjoying this discussion :)

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  5. After reading "The youngest doll" in class, I viewed the story a totally different way, than when i read it myself. Even though i fealt it was a story about bashing men, It was still very interesting how the prawn was depicted as the male species, in a womans life.The story opened up my eyes to how woman were mistreated during those times in Puerto Rico. Woman were basically used as trophy wives and were not able to be the srong figures that we are used to today.

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    1. did the men deserve "bashing" in this case? Yes it is good to find out about historical context!

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