I see that A Raisin in the Sun shows a poor family’s dreams exposed to racism for several generations. The author shows this poverty through the place they live in; it is a poor and old neighborhood. The first scene shows the apartment’s old furniture, which has no privacy and consists of one bedroom where all the family members live together. Each one of them has his own dream about the future. Because achieving their dreams and getting rid of that poverty depends on their possession of money, this money is the most important theme in the play. Also, Race and Discrimination have many negatives; one of them when you have many dreams that you can not achieve because you do not have the price of your dreams. The personalities in this family differ, as each one of them has a different dream. Mama’s dream is to own a big house that includes her family to provide a warmer and calmer atmosphere. Walter’s dream is to be the owner of a project to help his family be better, and Beneatha’s dream is to be a doctor. The different characteristics make them conflict together because they want to achieve their own dreams with money. The author draws a picture of the social life of African Americans at the time through this play.

  At the end of the story, I see that author Herman Melville shows some of what was happening in the past in America. This means that whatever happened in the past is worse, because stories do not always fully show the facts. The most important thing for me in this story is; how did these enslaved people feel when injustice and slavery were done against them in the name of law? Actually, I see that there is no hero for this story because everyone lost his life, but I really feel sad and bad for all the characters. The blacks were only trying to prove that they were as strong and good as the whites, and this was explained by the author through the character of Babo. They wanted nothing but freedom and equality between them and the whites, they wanted to go back to their homes. I see that it is important to sympathize with those who were forcibly removed from their families and peaceful countries. those who were treated without any respect, without adequate food and were subject to death at any time. If the blacks had ever acted violently, it was because they felt wronged and humiliated. Therefore, the black lives matter, and also the lives of all human beings are important, and we are all equal.

         When I started writing a few years ago, I found that it is difficult to be the narrator of a story because you are the one who creates heroes, places, and stories from your imagination. It is hard to imagine all of this at the same time to present a story that has a good plot. I admit that it was hard at the beginning, but it became easier with training. My first successful writing was a short fictional story that tells about a couple returning at one night with their car when a fire broke out in the forest near them. The husband rushed to rescue the injured, but after he returned he started to search for his missing wife. The plot of the whole story was to find out where the wife disappeared. I wish I could share my story with you, but it is in arabic language. 

        I agree with Culler that the narration is what makes the meaning in the stories. Also, I see that the main purpose for the stories is to give readers pleasure, knowledge and desire to explore more than what they live in their daily life. The narrative of any story can take you off to another land to live with its sadness, its happiness and with all the life in it. It makes people more social and more understanding of what real life can do for them and what it takes from them. Finally any fictional story with a good plot makes us know new personalities that we will not be able to recognize in real life, because fiction always takes us where we wish to be. 

    In chapter 5, the author talks about poetry and rhetorics. Poetry tends to be more persuasive while rhetorics tends to be a more imitated alternative. In “The sea is history” by Derek Walcott, the beginning of the poem caught my attention because the metaphor interested me. Walcott states  “Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that grey vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History.” He states that the sea is history and that really caught my attention. This example illustrates the extravagance of lyric because he is comparing history to a sea. There’s a level of exaggeration in these sentences because there’s no comparison between the sea and history. But what I think the author is trying to say when he basically compares the sea and history to one another is that both share a major similarity; many things can easily vanish in both. The sea is deep filled with many lost non-retractable items, much like history where things can easily slip and vanish. History as we know may not be the full truth of the history many people experienced because history is told from the perspective of those who are able to tell it; those who hold the power to write it. 

   I see that the most interesting idea in this chapter is the part that relates to “language and thought.” As Culler says that there is a theory that says “language expresses the existing ideas by providing methods for this.” So language and thought interact in many significant ways, thought comes first, while language is an expression of what we think. Also each specific language has its own influence on the thought and action of its speakers. Likewise, according to Culler, Expressing ideas that we think are easy and natural in our language may require a great effort from us to express them in another language. This brings us to an important point, anyone who has learned more than one language is struck by the many ways in which languages differ from one to another. I think that this part reminds me of myself when I started learning languages other than Arabic. Sometimes it was very difficult for me to express what I was thinking in English, I felt like my thoughts were frozen, and other times I couldn’t express them at all. Therefore, Culler mentions that literary works often try to reconfigure ideas in order to be able to express things that we did not expect to think of before. The relationship between language and thinking is often a strong one, but literature generates other ideas so we can see a different reality.

     I think that the most interesting angle about the nature of literature is “literature as fiction” because it explores human conditions as a whole and it wants to understand the world around us. This part of fiction that talks about human nature is the most difficult. However, there are some other literary works that are fun. Sometimes literary fiction is a kind of entertainment, not all fictional literature considered as entertainment, but this kind of fiction gives the readers some enjoyment and advantages which helps them to forget their cares. Also, Fiction literature gives us the chance to interpret events according to our imaginations. One of the defining features of literary fiction is the ability to create characters, as Culler says “Literary works refer to imaginary rather than historical individuals.” Another feature of the fictional literary work is that it is not limited to the time at which a literary work is written, but rather, it depends on the time in the work that the story revolves within. As Culler says “ but to a time in the poem, in the fictional world of its action.” Variety and difference in a work of fiction makes it valid for all times, not just the time in which they were published. And that is what makes it interesting!

  1.      Culler defines literature in many ways. After reading Culler’s “What is literature and does it matter?”, what stuck out with me the most was Culler stating that “ works of literature come in all shapes and sizes.” To me I think this is the most important aspect of this chapter because it properly defines that literature is not bound to one definition or one term. Literature comes in so many different “shapes” and it could sometimes be hard to distinguish between different kinds of literature. The author shows us this by comparing two forms of literature; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which resembles an autobiography and a poem by Robert Burns – ‘My love is like a red, red rose’ which isn’t like a Shakespearean poem.

      By drawing this inference the author is showcasing two different forms of literature and showing the readers that literature isn’t bound to a specific form of writing. Two completely different forms of writing can be put in the same category and still be classified as literature. It’s important to think of what the definition of literature is because we are surrounded by literature by it daily. There’s really not one specific way to define literature and we all have our own different interpretations of it, which only makes it much more important and unique. 

2.        The question that stayed with me while reading this chapter was what classifies a piece of writing as literature? Since there’s really no certain way a literature piece is written or written about a certain thing, how can you determine what is literature and what isn’t?