In “a raisin in the sun”, Hansberry depicted a typical color people’s hard life in a racial segregation district in Chicago. At the first of the movie, the older house, and the crowded room, which five people live in. Every member wants to get rid of their current life, and they want to improve their life. Walter is a selfless person, who thinks he doesn’t need to get his mother’s permission to plan how to use the money, also he is so blind that he thinks money can clear the difference up between black and white. He is a person who doesn’t take responsibility. Walter’s sister wants to be a doctor and she thinks she changed her status through her effort. Ruth, Walter’s wife, wants to have a baby, but she has to face the situation. Their poor economic condition can’t raise a child, and there is no place in their house. Walter’s mother uses the money to buy a house, she wants her family members will not live in a crowded place anymore. The basis of all things for the family is money. Despite how ridiculous the idea is, all purposes are to improve their life. In the end, Walter educates his son to go into that house proudly, they should be proud of their race. 

After reading the story, I can’t think the novella depicts enslavement in a negative or a positive light because the opinions of readers are different. From Babo’s perspective, the novella positively depicts enslavement, maybe from the perspective of Spaniard or white, the opinion is opposite of Babo. There are three main characteristics, who are capital Delano, a sick man Benito, and a black man Babo. Benito and Babo are masters and servants. I think I can’t evaluate whether the behavior of each of them is correct or not because they are doing what they should do. Babo organized the blacks in the ship to plan to fight for their freedom, they don’t want to be treated unequally. They just want to be the same as Spaniards and white. The only small dream in that time is ridiculous, in the eyes of white and Spanian, the blacks are inferior who have no right to say no and they should obey their commands. However, the result of Babo is to be executed. Benito is a good leader who treats people well. He tries his best to prevent the fighting, but he does not control it. In my opinion, the relationship between Benito and Babo is very good. So why do all white and black have a good relationship like Benito and Babo? Actually, the whites and the black can’t get along well with each other at that time. After several months of Babo execution, Benito also passed away. All in all, all discriminations and unequal treatments couldn’t exist at any time, everyone has equal rights and the same. 

I find it is seriously difficult to write a novel as a narrator. First, I should think about what kind of story is, who the characters are, and where it happens. It should be logical. The author says that the plot is the most basic feature of narrative and is the structure of a story, and a plot requires a transformation. I like to watch horror and crime movies because you can hardly infer what is going on and what is going to happen. Every plot is very amazing and you can not predict. When I watch these kinds of movies, I will concentrate on watching it and be addicted to it. As if I am also the crime. Plots are ever-changing, and the results may be unexpected. I think these changes are transformations. I remember a movie, a man is killed by his four friends, but the police think he died of natural causes. His wife remarried to one of the four friends, the wife poison in the food to her new husband every time. Their daughter is bringing by her grandparents. Many years later, the daughter’s stepfather dies, her Mather is the crime. She tries to find the evidence, but she finds the fact is that her Mather is killed her stepfather. However, she chooses to cover the truth as a prosecutor and says that the stepfather died of natural causes. Finally, her Mather was acquitted. From the perspective of human nature, her choice is correct. 

I learn what focalization is about from chapter 6. The focalization includes temporal, distance and speed, and limitations of knowledge. The stories give pleasure to readers, and the pleasure of the narrative is linked to desire. Events, plot(story), and discourse are both important parts of the novel.

In the chapter 5, Cullar states the usage of rhetoric on literacy and some different kinds of rhetorical figures. The four master tropes are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony. I think writers use rhetorical figures in their work, which can express their thoughts profoundly. The metaphor don’t express original meaning, it treats something as something else. I think the aim of metaphor is to grab readers’ attention, then the readers want to know why the author use a metaphor and what the author express. Cullar writes “my love is rose” in this chapter, this is a metaphor. The use of the rose to mean “love” can indicate that someone’s love is so precious. Derek Walcott uses a metaphor in the first part of “The sea is history”, “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.” Derek expresses that the tribal history is not existing,  and it may not record. All monuments, battles and martyrs have disappeared, but the sea is not. The sea is always seen, then the sea is history. 

In the chapter “literature, meaning, and interpretation,” Culler states three different dimensions, there are the meaning of word, of an utterance, and of a text. I am interested in“ meaning, intention, and context” in this chapter.  People are accustomed to thinking that the meaning of an utterance is what someone means, or understand the intention rather than meaning.  Actually, intention, text, context, and readers all determine the meaning. They influence meaning together. Culler states that the meaning of work is what the writer accomplished, not what the writer thinks during the process of writing and what the writer’s thinking at some moment in writing.  Meaning is a notion, it is more about what people understand and try to understand in the text. Culler says “meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless.” I think this sentence is the most important point of this part of the chapter. For example, my friend asked if I had a good day on my birthday, I answered yes. The meaning of this thing is that I had a good experience on my birthday. My friend may think that I received a lot of previous gifts and think about what a beautiful place that I did. She began to imagine more details about context. People can read the same article and experience the meaning, they will construct different contexts.  We watched a movie as young, as we are adults, we will watch it again, we will have different feelings. The context is changing because of the background. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless. 

Culler came up with five points theorists about the nature of literature, there are literature as the foregrounding of language, literature as the integration of language, literature as fiction, literature as aesthetic object and literature as intertextual. I found the most interesting and useful is literature as the itegration of literature because the theory change my opinion of literature. In my eye, the literacy works is the expression of author’s psyche. When we read literature, we can feel author’s feel. However, Culler told me to consider all of the organization of its laguage first, not the expression of author. Literature is the integration of language, we should feel the contribution of different words and elements in strcuture of literature, which can be charm of literature.

After reading chapter 2 “what is literature and does it matter,”  Jonathan Culler doesn’t tell us what the definition of literature is, he just makes some examples in some aspects to make readers to know literature. I think the most important aspect of this section of the chapter is to understand literacy and non-literacy correctly. Reflection is a necessary factor in literature. Non-literacy is easy for people to understand, and not to ask questions. “But ‘thing’ in the phrase ‘a curious thing’ is not a physical object but something like a relation or aspect which doesn’t seem to exist in the same way that a stone or a house does”, it indicates that the writer describes the object vaguely that he writes, so that reader can not understand and point out what the object is. People are likely to get more information and want to know more,  they also are curious about implicit meanings of literature.

One question that stays with me is that “What is involved in treating things as literature in our culture?”