After I read the play “a raisin in the sun” by Hansberry, I get to know that the author has utilized the stage directions to depict the portrayal of each character and the place where this play occurs. In the play, by using detailed stage directions, readers are able to understand the specific actions of each character and expect what is going to happen. The characters live in an old, crowded and poor house, and their quality of life is lower compared to white class. And each of them dream of living in the life as good as whites. They work hard to reduce the racial segregation and dream of living in the life that is as good as whites. Ruth’s husband, Walter Lee. He wants to invest on a liquor store to earn enough money to make the life better. His younger sister, Beneatha, has the different belief compared to her brother. She does not care about the money from her father’s insurance, but she is eager to become a doctor in the future and make changes of her life by herself. However, she is facing the identity and status in the society. Their mother, Lena, as well know as MAMA in the play, she wants to distribute her husband’s insurance money into two. One for Beneatha’s education, and one for buying the house with more bedrooms and a backyard. The main purpose of these actions is to improve their quality of life and reduce the racial gap between them and the whites. The stage directions help connect each character with each other, and allows the audience to understand the true meaning behind the play more clearly.

By reading through the novella ” Benito Cereno”, I reckon that it has a tragic ending. No one is the gainer throughout the entire story. The author, Herman Melville, depicts that enslavement is a movement that is brutal and inhumane. There are three main characters involved in this novella, which are the white captive Cereno, the white commander Delano and the smart black slave Babo. By describing Babo, the author has mentioned that Babo captures Cereno and initiate this uprising in order to recover all slaves’ freedom. However, the white commander Delano, who is considered as a rich-experienced white captain, has been described as a rescuer to save his life and other Spanish sailor’s lives from the revolt black slaves. In the end of the story, Babo was killed due to violation to law; and Cereno was dead since he suffered from mental disorder and torture.  Both of them ended up with sad ending. With more comprehensive reading of the entire novella, it is not difficult to tell that the author expresses slavery as a negative light. From the relationship between those three characters, the author shows the severe segregation of whites and black and the description of the social status of those two racial groups at that period of time. The purpose of the uprising of the black slaves is not only to fight back and prove that there is no difference between whites and black, but also they want to find a way to pursue their own freedom. Personally speaking, the true meaning about this story that everyone should learn  is that there is zero tolerance on racial discrimination. We live in the same world. We have same rights to fight for our future and share the same opportunities in order to achieve our goals. Nobody is inferior to anyone, and no one should have more power over anyone. We are the same. Everyone should be treated equally and deserve to live in the way they admire. In this story, I show sympathy to those slavery who are forced to move away from their families and homes. They should live peacefully with their families and enjoy their lives, but someone destroy all the good things from them, which I find it is extremely cruel, unethical and inhumane.

After read the chapter six “Narrative” by Jonathan Culler, the author has discussed the importance of plot and discourse of a story. plot is considered as the fundamental element of a story. A good story consists of a beginning, a middle and an end. There are connections between one and another, which offers pleasure to audience since it is rhythmic for the order. And discourse is the term that can be described as various ways to display the story based on different sequence of acting. I am the person who loves watching TV shows, dramas and movies, especially those relate to detective and suspense. A good detective or suspense drama or movie is able to catch audience’s attention due to exciting plot, and sometimes they are unpredictable, which provides opportunity for audience to imagine what is going to happen afterward. I still can remember there was a detective movie that I watched couple years ago about a boy hid the fact that he killed his girlfriend, and a detective tried to find who was the murderer. During the time I watched that movie, I assumed that the murderer was another guy based on the beginning and middle of the plot. Then, when it came to the end, there was a reverse of the entire story that the murderer was the girl’s boyfriend. I was shocked since I thought he was innocent.

I totally agree with author’s idea that narrative is what the exact meaning behind the story. Because the function of narrative, the plot of story gives us pleasure, emotional resonance, knowledge and imagination. And at the same time, it also teaches us how this world works and how we look at this world in different ways. The narrative of each story can bring all readers to the world that is constructed by the author to feel and understand the actual feeling from those characters in that story, which provides the real life experience to all readers to make them more socialized and understand the operation of the true world.

In Chapter 5 “Rhetoric, Poetics and Poetry” by Jonathan Culler, Culler has discussed the relationship between rhetoric, poetic and poetry, and introduced various poetic and rhetoric techniques. In the very beginning of the chapter, Culler mentions that poetics has effects on literary works by explaining the conventions and reading operations that make them possible. On the contrary, rhetoric is considered as the technique which is able to construct the effective discourses on literary works. Culler introduces four master tropes which are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. By reading the poem called “Diving into the wreck” by Adrienne Rich, the predominant rhetoric used across the poem is metaphor. According to Culler, “Metaphor treats something as something else.”, it functions powerfully and succeed in conveying the author’s emotions and meanings. Take the title as the example. Rich compares the difficulties for fighting for women’s rights to wreck, which catches reader’s attention to wonder what exactly the wreck is, what does it represent for. It provides imaginations to readers and impresses them with various vivid pictures in their mind. But at the same time, it also express the feeling to readers. The second paragraph of this poem, “There is a ladder. The ladder is always there. hanging innocently. close to the side of the schooner.”, Rich compares the ladder to the silence and the failure for fighting for their rights. It signifies helplessness. They tried so many times in order to change the situation, however, it failed. There is noting  they can do, only be silent.

After reading chapter 4, “Literature, meaning and interpretations”, I have understood the relationship between language, its meaning and its interpretations.  As Culler discussed in the article, we can not just ask meanings from words. Meaning is based on difference and determined by four factors which are intention, text, context and experiences of readers. It is very difficult to ask about meaning since there are various dimensions or level of meanings: the meaning of a word, of an utterance and of a text, and sometimes it is possible for these factors to transform with each other. The meaning of a literary work can be interpreted differently based on personal experience, culture, language, and so forth. There is a saying stating that “There are a hundred Halmets in a hundred people’s eyes”. When it comes to literary works, people have their own specific understanding of the context of the works and build up their own characters and scenarios in their mind.

In the section called “The Nature of Literature” which is from Chapter 2 of the article “What is literature and does it matter” by Johnathan Culler, Culler had interpreted the nature of literature from five various angles which are literature as ‘foregrounding’ of language, literature as the integration of language, literature as fiction, literature as aesthetic object and literature as intertextual or self-reflexive construct. Personally Speaking, the part I find is most interesting among these five angles is literature as fiction. One of main factors that makes literature different from other works is there is a particular relationship between literature and the world called fictionality. As Culler mentioned in the article, ” The literary work is a linguistic event which projects a fictional world that includes speakers, actors, events, and implied audiences.” , literary works provide imaginary world to readers and leave some space for them to build up their own scenarios and create the characters based on their understanding of that particular literary work. Compared to non-fictional works including newspaper, textbooks, instructions and so on, literature gives brand new experience for readers to wonder what is fictionality really about and interpret it in their own ways.

1. After I read the chapter “What is literature and does it matter?” by Johnathan Culler, in my opinion, the most significant aspect of this section is that we should not look through non-literary works with colored eyes, and both literary and non-literary works need to be treated equally. To some extent, they all function well to express and convey authors’ feelings and thoughts. Alike Culler has discussed in the very beginning of the section, “For students and teachers of literature today, there is a whole range of critical projects, topics to read and write about- such as ‘images of women in the early 20th century’-where you can deal with both literary and non-literary works”. It indicates that nowadays, universities carry out the model that combines literary works with non-literary works to explain literature related problems. In the modern time, the primary work we keep in touch with is non-literary works since it makes more senses for us to understand compared with literary works. Moreover, Culler also addresses that to some extent, non-literary texts will be transformed into literary works. He took an sentence from a philosophy book, “A curious thing/about the ontological problem is its/simplicity.” Even though the essence of this sentence is not considered as literary work, it still attracts attentions due to an interest in the word, their relations to each other, etc. As far as I am concerned, it is vital to think of the definition of literature since it is everywhere in our lives. We can find it no matter where we go. Even a small piece of text will have chance to be considered as literature even though the essence of it is not.

2. When I went through the first pages of this chapter, the question which always stays with me is that “What distinguishing characteristics can distinguish works known as literary from those are non-literary?”