In the play” A raisin in the sun” by Hansberry, the black family displays their stories of value about life, money and identity in society as a certain social class. In fact, these are sharp problems of value for all humans in any society. As a colored immigrant, I have met many problems similar to those in the play. I think this play is an epitome of the most common ongoing problems that occur in the real life. Walter tends to money as values, his mother and wife choose family and love. Walter’s sister Beneatha has her own idea of identity. In this play, I like Beneatha’s thought, I work in a multi-color people environment, there is a coworker from my country. However, he doesn’t like talking to me in our mother language, on contrary, he likes to be with white people, he tries to talk to Americans with his clumsy English all the time. He hates to be recognized as my race people. I respect him, I stop talking to him, but I wonder that even though he tries his best to assimilate himself into whites he is still distinguished as non-white visibly by his yellow face. Submerging in whites doesn’t mean acquiring the same social status as whites. I believe that showing the competence of desired social status with your own heritage, culture and characteristics is dignity. The play makes people ponder over their values which way is the right way to choose when people encounter such intersections.

It is hard for me to think or write a narrative because I seldom read word novels. I watch dramas and movies mostly which is the person-displaying of novels(scripts). I find that in the plays, audiences are the narrators most times, especially when the audiences tell the plot of plays to another person or they are telling the stories of what is happening to themselves in their mind.  They are put as the third person narrators by the play. Also, I find it is interesting that the play or director decides audiences as omniscient or ignorant narrators, for instance, when the play wants the audiences to know that this plot is a conspiracy, it plays what bad figures did thoroughly, whereas if it wants the audiences to be ignorant it displays limited perspective and confuses the audiences.

I enjoy watching movies and dramas though I am busy, sometimes I feel puzzled that why there are so many more important things like making money in front of me, but I waste time on entertainment? Am I lazy or bad? I realize the real meaning after I read the “What stories do” section in chapter 6 of this book. Actually, each movie or drama is a novel or story, and, in fact, what we mostly learn about social humanism are from these stories as drama and movies.  The reasons that I enjoy watching them are the pleasure I get, the social knowledge I learn,  the opposite criticism perspective I see, and numerous practice skills of daily life. All of those are unable to be learn from classes and scientific books much and deeply. Reading stories is an essential part of growing to be mature.  That’s why I can not resist it.

In Chapter 5 of Rhetoric, Poetics, and Poetry by Culler, Culler claims that there are four master tropes as rhetorical figures mostly used in poems that are metonymy. metaphor, synecdoche, and irony. Metaphor is comparing something to something, I think it is the most important technique in language usage in both poems and modern words. It can provide readers a better and easier understanding so that more effective information exchange can be achieved. In the poem of “The sea is history”, Derek Walcott uses metaphor a lot all over the poem, he compares the sea to history, compares emancipation jubilation to the faith, and almost finished the whole poem with metaphor figure. It is hard to understand what he really wants to utter without cultural and religious knowledge background, but viewers still can get the feelings through the metaphor based on the most basic knowledge.

I get a clearer understanding of the relation between text and meaning through chapter 4 by Culler. Intention, text, context and reader‘s experiences are four major factors determining the meaning of a text according to Culler, and language seems to be a platform for these factors to transfer meanings with each other. A more formal and regular language usage can help this communication platform function better with fewer barriers but not a complete determinant. It can never be a complete determinant because the experiences of readers at different times are uncontrollable. However, a better language command is easier for the transformation of meaning. When I was a kid I was not good at even my native language usage, every time I tried to express something I uttered in unorganized and impertinent words which made what the author says in chapter 4 that ” you may have intended to say x, but what you said actually means y “always happened in my early life. I got misunderstood for too many times and frustrated so that I choose to keep silent. I think the part of my brain that performs language function is not developed well and that’s why I am better at math than words, but I try hard to fix it and even labour for the second language now.

Jonathan Culler discusses five aspects of the nature of literature in this chapter, in my opinion, the most interesting and useful nature of literature is “Literature as aesthetic object”. Before it learned about literature from this book, I naturally thought that if a text made me feel beautiful and appreciate it should be literature. I think the most important function of literature is that literature makes more effects by using language in a special way. In this way which makes plain languages more beautiful and artistic, a text can capture more appreciation and enjoyable feelings from readers, as a result, it can affect more and make more impressions on readers than non-literature works. Like Jonathan Culler mentions in the chapter, some politicians use a literary way to propagandize political purpose because they want to convince the public as much as possible and they know the literary way can produce more effects on audiences to get them agreed. Any food has a function of refilling energy. However, a fully seasoned cooked food compared to boiling noodles is an artwork like literature and non-literature. Of course, a fully seasoned cooked food is more delicious and appreciated, so literature as an aesthetic object is a higher level of human civilization.