After reading Benito Cereno by Herman Melville,  I thought this book is Herman Melville’s reaction to slavery, but it does not describe about the cruel enslavement of African Americans in a negative or positive view. Instead, the history is directly presented to readers, reader is the story’s referee. I think maybe Cereno is the most tortured person, who try to find a balance between compatriots and sympathetic slaves, but it was difficult to achieve in the context of that time, so he died at the end.  Babo is another one important character, but what is sympathetic is his identity, a slave. He was the leader of the rebellion on the ship. Although he failed and eventually died, he was admirable. It’s hard to talk about Delano’s blindness, He has a twisted pride in his race and skin color but he is not the only one who limited by the legal slavery and other law at that time, even if we think he is a racist, he may never think about it himself. The truth is there may be all discrimination and unequal treatment at any time, we need to fight for it.

About chapter six “Narrative” by Jonathan Culler, I want to discuss of the animated movie called A Summer Day’s Dream，The story tells that before the upcoming celebration in a village, much things were stolen in different locations at same time. We followed the main character, Hakurei Reimu, to explore the truth and get to meet the people live in the village.  I think the difference between film and novel, the director more use the picture to narrative in movie. The audience can get information from the light and shade of the picture or scene changes, rarely needs to use their imagination to what the character or the events like, even the story is not straightforward and unconnected.

I agree with Jonathan Culler explained the narrative should somehow bring pleasure to the reader and be connected with desire in the “What stories do” section.When the readers are following the story,  they are satisfied with their curiosity and sense of participation.

In Chapter 5 of “Rhetoric, poetics, and poetry” by Johnathan Culler, Author describes the difference between poetry and rhetoric and the relationship between them. Metaphor, as one of the more interesting techniques, is to deceptively convey information to the reader when comparing something with other things. Although they are common in literature, readers need more knowledge to make associations and connect with words in the text.

I tried to find them in the poem, but someone like “the Song of Solomon” and “I crawl like an insect down the ladder” is c onfuse me. I find “the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth” in “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich is easy one, I thought “story of the wreck” and “myth” means when we look back on history, someone will record the events, who may be a historian or a poet. However, this is the process in their eyes rather than the reality that we can see and touch. Author try to lead us build up a system in order to doubt and verify.

After reading chapter 4 in “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation” by Jonathan Culler, I found the point that he explain the relationship between people and language is interesting. I like what he said “the story one can tell about a given work depends upon what theorists have called the reader’s ‘horizon of expectactions’ “. It means the book’s author try to use his/her works express some message, it can be the meaning of language, and which it also usually influenced by their environment, like government. However, the most interesting point is people got  different thinking caused by their different education and different belief  in the “interactive” between them and the language.  This thinking may cause people improve themselves, for example, my first languare is chinese, so when I learning english, I usually think about “why this word meaning that ?”, it may encourage me to know the word’s background.  I think this also is the reason why there are so much words from other culture in much language, assimilate and create.

After reading chapter II, “What is literature, and does it matter?” by Jonathan Culler, the point I was interested in was “Literature as fiction”. For me, the reason why fiction is interesting is there must be some parts connected to reality lives, they can be the political situation, the current events of the day even a war, hidden in author’s  writing , but the fiction creates difference and the new worlds , the difference with reality unleashes the imagination of the reader and which can make us, the reader, to follow the character or the time to figure out what happen. I think that is why reading research texts is boring, they lack a creativity and some literary beautification.