Rosario Ferre "The Youngest Doll" reflection and response.

I personally really enjoyed reading "The Youngest Doll". It was a very mystical and symbolic way of showing how women were abused for generations. I really like that Ferre didn't give her female characters voices; They never spoke in presence of other men. I feel like that showed the true hierarchy. I also can tell that the prawns were a symbol for something. Because it continuously reappears throughout the text. I thought it was cool that it eventually started to ooze out of the niece. I feel like the prawn represented a curse that befell upon women in puerto rico, whom were exploited by men, and the curse continues to eat the women alive generations later, side to side with men.

Now I can't say I fully understood the context of this short story until I read the back story of Ferre and Puerto Rico. Now it all makes sense to me. I feel like the prawns represented the economic changes that were occurring in PR in her time. And men who rode on that change and started control over everything. Women had no choice but to be taken over by the new authorities. And thus their status in society continued to stay in the same place for many generations to come. The prawns had infested their lives and procreated through their blood for decades.

Belated Oedipus Blog

I once heard someone say that there is a golden secret to all thriving theatres; the re-occurring theme of the piece must be universally applicable to mankind. The reason we speak of Oedipus Rex still, centuries after its first representation is because Sophocles had explored a theme eternally relevant to men. The recurring theme of the play is revealed in the interplay between blind and the dark and light and wisdom.

research paper thesis

comparison between gothic literature and magical realist literature:

Similar in a sense that it explores boundlessly the parts of human life that are subsides or ignored in real life.

I will use Tell -Tale Heart and Youngest Doll as examples.

Gothic elements in literature: Reflection after readying Poe

Gothic literature explores the melancholy themes of a persons heart.
It generally reflect upon the darkness we carry in our minds that we often fear to acknowledge in depth. Therefore it's language is considered negative and depressing, however, entrapping because it beautifies and expands on the heavier load in the human conscious. It allows us to examine the fragile, highly sentimental parts of our world.

King Lear

People of high power or status tend to paint their past away with color of pride, not always remembering what lays beneath the thick toxic paint. They sit on a high pedestal not remembering what created them. And they begin to push all the good things away because they forget to appreciate the things that put them where they are. They only remember the details of their past once they lose everything they've gained. King Lear is a great example of this.
As soon as he loses everything including his mind and as his life leaves him he says the following:

Pray, do not mock me.

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less.

And to deal plainly

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you and know this man.

Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is, and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments. Nor I know not

Where I did lodge last night.  Do not laugh at me,

For as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

You must bear with me, pray you now
forget and forgive
I am old and foolish