In the play “A raisin in the sun,” the author depicted the environment of Walter Lee’s family. In the family of Lee, everyone has a goal to achieve: “Lee is tired of his job, he wants to be rich enough to afford his family; his son Travis and sister Beneatha needs tuition fee to support their education; his wife Ruth has a baby, but she is struggling since her husband considered that would be unaffordable; what Walter’s mother Lena wishing is Walter can take his responsibility to family”. However, due to financial problem, the family was living in a plain house, Lee’s son Travis has to sleep on sofa. On the other hand, the families faced bias, bias to race, gender, and culture, stop them from attending the middle class of society. Even though everyone in the family failed sometimes, they never give up their hope. Especially for Walter Lee and his sister Beneatha, their way to achieve the American dream, is business and education. However, Lee blindly trust his “partner” that there would be no risk for investment, he believed that he will be rich as long as he devote money to something; the over optimistic implied that the “investment” would fail. After Lee experienced a great suffer of losing his property, he realized that what most important to him is dignity, and his family, since they would always support him. According to a series of stage directions, the characteristic of families was shown, make readers understand that plots and characters are always related to each other.

Through over the novella of “Benito Cereno”, author Herman Melville mostly depicted plots with the perspective of Captain Delano and the third-personal angle, to create and visualize an anxious, suspicious, and mysterious atmosphere in the novel. There are many details that foreshadowing plots, but they can only be seen after readers know about the whole story and the truth was being revealed. Therefore, as I reread the novel, I find that they were plenty of meaning can be shown in each plot with a different angle. For example, it is a mystery that Don Benito always tried to protect his black slaves, It is too coincident that his health issue always hindered him when conflicts on his ship were happening, and while Captain Delano was asking for explanations, Don Benito was always trying to escape from the topic, this caused Captain Delano’s attention and doubted that if Don Benito was plan to murder him. When I read this plot at the first time, I thought that Don Benito might have a good relationship with his ship members, so he always ignore issues on his ship to prevent his slaves from being judged by others, but after I finish the novel, I found that the true reason was Don Benito was being threaten by his black servant Babo. Babo was trying to liberate other blacks, he served his master Don Benito and keep an eye on him. To avoid the black slaves being out of control, Don Benito had to avoid any conflict and stay with Babo, because he knew that once he leave the sight of Babo, a revolution of the blacks would likely to happen, which would put himself and other people on an extremely dangerous situation. Overall, the novella depicted enslavement in a negative view since the atmosphere created in the novel is very stressing. In my opinion, I sympathize Don Benito in this story because I think he took the most responsibility, he tried to avoid war, and to do so he had to maintain balance between American and black, even though his had such serious illness, he was trying to save everyone. Meanwhile, I can feel the desire of freedom of black, they urged to be liberated, and when they failed to be free, I can imagine the despair on their face, it is so hurt. In a word, the novel shows a strong condemn statement on enslavement. Although Captain Delano concerned who was going to murder him, his sympathies to blacks, and the loyalty of Babo to Don Benito he saw, blind his sense on the situation.

According to chapter 6, plot is the significant element that tell what happened in the story, which would shape the story and makes it genius, and it can be narrated in many different ways through discourse. These are very common to be used in the suspense novel, to promote the story, picture the situation, enhance readers’ emotion, and raise question and thinking. For example, if a crime was committed, readers are going to identify who is the criminal and how did he/she make it. Except some of the information are hidden temporary, the author would promote reader’s perspective with some hints, like the perspective of the novel’s characters, or a third person perspective like camera, sometimes even the thought of criminal, to state the plot from different angles and help readers to better understand the details, or lead to misunderstanding. Overall, most of the information must be related to the plot, which for the story to maintain its logic, otherwise, the story would not make sense.

In the “the stories do?” section, Culler said that storyteller would provide the pleasure and satisfaction to readers through literature, but reader’s mind should not be bonded with it. For me, I agree that what reader want to gain from literature is knowledge, or inspiration for them to gain knowledge. Gaining knowledge might not be happy and attracted, but it can make us wiser, once people stop just relying on what they see, and start to think the meaning behind words and superficies, we are truly ready to grow.

In Chapter 5 of Literary Theory, Culler mentions that metaphor, as one of the basic uses in language, it is also treated as respectable. He said that metaphor is commonly used to provide a vivid visual image to reader through instance of example, by connecting the knowledge which readers have already known or experience they have gone through, readers can more easier to understand the situation or put themselves into the plot or image(72). For example, in the poem “The sea is history” written by Derek Walcott, the author implies that time locks the history up, but there is no physical barrier which stop people from found it, the author is actually means that all the container of memory, culture, history, are buried under the sea and have been forgotten, as time goes by, these records have become a part of the sea, and the sea have become their container forever until someone discover them and dig them out.

In my view, metaphor is an important way to express the author’s purpose in the article. Metaphor leads reader to imagine and consider what meaning is behind the article from different aspects. It might also encourage people to think creatively and persuade reader to act as well.

In the chapter of “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation”, Culler argues that language, which is used to present meaning, is not pre-existing, on contrary, the meaning of language is given by various interpretations of human, that makes language meaningful. Therefore, literature is not just about reading words or sentences, but thinking what information and emotion writer wants to pass to readers. On one hand, culler mentions that meaning should not be determined by words. Language as a sign of convention, is restricting the expression of writer and reader’s comprehension, idea and imaginary are limited because language too rigid to deliver them. On the other hand, while reading a literature, analyze writer’s situation and feeling is crucial, because without it, different meaning might be delivered to reader cause misunderstanding. A good lecture can be more likely to cause a positive respond to reader, however, it is normal to say reader might have different views on the same lecture. As well as writer, reader also have their own culture, experiences, and values that shape their personality, that makes even a language might have different meaning to them. As a result, reading is like an unknown chemistry reaction, when writer and reader’s idea crash together, you have no idea what would come out eventually.

In my view, I am most interested in is that if language is created to deliver meaning, then meaning should not be bounded by words, but what if we create new words or languages to help us express and understand better, how do we deliver the exactly same meaning or felling to everyone?