After I read the play “a raisin in the sun” by Hansberry, I noticed that Hansberry have used many stage directions to connect the plots with the characters, which enables readers to learn about the members of the family and what the family are struggling with. For example, the plot that Travis, Walter’s son, sleeps in the living room depicts the tough financial environment of this family.

Walter and Beneatha, whose father passed away and their Mama would receive a life insurance check. Mama wants to buy a big house and support Beneatha’s education with this check. While Walter wants to invest in a liquor store and improve their financial circumstances with this check but he is not supported by his family. Beneatha devotes herself in study and wants to change the situation of the black people suffering.

Herman Melville depicted a failed slave revolt that happened aboard the San Dominick. The three main characters in this novella are Babo, the leader of the slave revolt, Benito Cereno, the controlled Spanish captain and Amasa Delano, the white captain who stopped this slave revolt. Upon Captain Delano’s visit, Babo always stood by Cereno, reminding and threaten him to behave and keep the secret. But eventually the revolt was discovered by Delano and he and his man fought against the slaves. In the end, Babo was executed according to the law and died. Cereno also died from mental problems and torture. In this novella, Herman Melville described many scenarios in a vivid way, which enables readers to be more deeply expressed. In my opinion, the novella depicts enslavement in a negative light. This was a tragic story. I sympathize Babo the most. In the period of slavery, the reason why Babo organized this revolt was because he wanted freedom. He couldn’t even control his own life. As a slave, he was controlled by his master and was treated as goods. But eventually his revolt was in vain. After reading this story and recalling the movies and articles about slaves’ life I read before, I can feel how eager Babo was to gain his freedom. As for Delano’s blindness, he considered black people as those who were supposed to serve them only. I believed it was caused by the social background at that time that slaves had no rights or freedom at all.

After reading chapter 6, I gain a better understanding about events, plot and discourse of a story. Events are shaped into plot to develop the story. The plot is the basic element of stories, which is presented by discourse (which can from different angels). In a story, I think sometimes the most important part is the plot because it can attract people’s attention by its twists and turns, which can make them continue reading. If the plot at the beginning or the middle part were not appealing, readers would quit reading. This is the reason why I consider narrative is difficult but important.

A movie that I watched before, which contains many interesting plots and it make the ending of the movie quite contrasted with the beginning. A 70 years old retired man, Ben, applied for an intern program in a startup because he found life was quite boring after retirement. After he was admitted, he was assigned to work with the CEO, Jules. But Jules was quite skeptical about him at first and did not assign him the work. There are many plots showing how Jules keep a distance with Ben. At that time, I assumed that Ben would be fired soon. However, with a great personality and observation, Ben took care Jules in a careful way and gave her practical advice in work and life. The relationship between them became ease and they became soul mates at last, which was a great transformation.

In the “What stories do” section, Culler claimed stories can give readers pleasure and teach readers about the world. And  the pleasure of narrative is linked to desire and the movement of narrative is driven by desire. I totally agree with this point. I believe one of the reasons why many people love suspense  movies is that the twists and turns in the plots make people become more eager to know the truth by catching up. And most of the movies end with a satisfying ending, such as criminals are caught and polices’ and lawyers’ efforts pay off. It follows people’s desire and give readers pleasure. After all, if movies end as escaped criminals are at large, these kinds of endings are quite discouraging. Besides, through stories, we can find many different opinions and it can make us think deeply and gain a new view on things.

In Chapter 5 of Literary Theory, Culler talked about the “rhetoric figures”, “genres”, “poetry as word and act”, “the extravagance of lyric”, “rhythmic words” and “interpreting the poems”. The rhetoric part left a deep impression on me. Culler introduced four rhetoric figures to us, which are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. In my opinion, some of these rhetoric techniques have actually been used in our daily life. Take irony as an example, imagine one lady coming out of a salon with a new hairstyle and it suddenly rained, ruining her new hairstyle. She said, “what a nice weather”. But actually, she was complaining. I think this is an example of how irony rhetoric technique is used in our life, which is a verbal way.

“A metaphor treats something as something else (calling George a donkey or my love a red, red rose).” (72) When I was reading “Diving into the Wreck”, I found that metaphor is the main rhetoric technique of this poem. The wreck represents women’s rights and social class, which is neglected in a male-neglected society. The wreck is in the deep see. The same is true of women’s rights. I found this metaphor technique is interesting because this poem tells a story of diving into the wreck, which makes people wonder what the wreck is, how the story goes and what message the poet wants to convey. Especially in the beginning of this poem, the poet introduced her equipment for the diving, which attracted the attention of readers and continued reading. In addition, this metaphor helps transfer the meaning of this poem vividly by a story form.

From the chapter “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation”, one of the ideas that strikes me as interesting regarding the relationship between language and meaning is the method of reading literature works, which is the combination of poetics and hermeneutics. The author made the concepts of these two methods clear to us. The poetics is based on the attested meaning and aims to find out what have to be accounted and how the meaning is achieved. However, hermeneutics is based on the forms of the literature works and aims to discover new and better interpretation of the it. Poetics and hermeneutics are often combined to read literature works. I believe reading literature works by both of these methods is important and helpful for us to grasp and discover the meaning that we find in the literature works. Only when we know how the attested meaning is achieved by learning every part of the literature work will we have a better understanding of this, which I think is the basis of seeking to discover the new interpretation. Just like our annotations assignments, we read the poems, note what this part or that part is talking about and grasp what the author wants to deliver. After we have a basic understanding of this, we can read the poems again and try to think deeply.

In my opinion, the most interesting and useful angle of defining “literature” is its fictionality. In this chapter, when explaining “what is  literature”, Culler took the opening sentence of a book as an example, claiming that the “curious thing” of the poem 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.“（25） Since literature is not describing specific things or events, it leaves rooms for people to imagine, think deeply and relate the content with their own understandings. There is no certain answer to interpret literature works. As Culler claimed, ” the fictionality of literature separates language from other contexts in which it might be used and leaves the work’s relation to the world open to interpretation.”(33) For literature works, everyone has their own interpretations. In addition, people’s interpretation of literature works may also change over time, which i believe is one of the reasons why great literature works have been passed down to generations.