Homework: Seaside

             The floor creaked when I took one step forward. I continued to pace myself as the creaking continued with every step I took. I heard a whoosh of air and felt the chill of the wind, a feeling that strangely complements the stinging sensation from the sun’s rays against my skin. I went farther along, and the feeling of the ground underneath my feet changed. At the same time, the creaking stopped. I started to feel the warm, powdery sand in between my toes. The more I walked forward, the more the sand enveloped my feet. The smell of the air turned a bit salty. I could hear waves crashing on the shore. I walked further, and I felt the wind get stronger. The sound of the waves got louder as well. The sand underneath my feet started to feel moist. It became a lot colder, and it became tougher for my feet to sink in.

            I stopped walking and just stood still. The cool water rushed up to my feet and got pulled down where it came from. The water rushed up and down once again. As I felt the waves crash on my feet, the heat I felt from the sun would dissipate. The wetness the water left on my feet made the blows of wind feel colder against my skin. The temperature of the water on my feet made stimulated my entire body. The loud sound of the waves crashing on the shore blocked all other sounds from my hearing and brought me peace. The smell of the air was refreshing as if it was cleaning out my lungs. The feeling was relaxing. 

Homework: Penguin Persistence

            Somewhere in the cold Antarctic Ocean, over pure white ice caps that extend far and wide, a young penguin waddles side to side, walking away from its rookery. It walks closer to the ocean, becoming more and more susceptible to the orcas that can easily take it away and devour it. The penguin continues to waddle with its two short legs and small webbed feet into the open unknown with nothing but two flippers to defend itself. Slowly it walks, closer and closer to the ocean.

            The penguin continues to walk. Farther from the rookery it goes. An observer may start to question why. Penguins are social animals that live in large colonies, and these colonies take care of each other. Yet, this penguin chooses to leave the group it has come to know and risk his life questing on its own.

            The penguin’s journey continues. What seems like an eternity has passed and the penguin has yet to show its purpose for traversing such great distances. The rookery is no longer in sight. Finally, it stops waddling. In front of him is the edge of the ice cap and the infinitely extending ocean. The penguin looks around, searching for any of its predators. However, instead of diving into the ocean as an observer would expect, the penguin bends down, picks up a small, shiny and perfectly round pebble. The pebble seemed as if it had no flaws just like a perfectly cut diamond. It had ice crystals around it, which made it seem to be embraced in the glow of the sunlight. The penguin bends down and holds the pebble with its slim beak. It wobbles around to face its back and waddles forward.

The penguin makes his way back to the rookery with the pebble in its beak. It travels the exact icy path back to its home. Finally, penguins of its kind become visible from its viewpoint. The rookery was close by. The penguin stops waddling and puts the pebble down on the icy ground. It starts running through its feathers with its beak like a comb through hair. It picks up the pebble from the ground once again and starts waddling back to the rookery.

          The penguin finally reaches his colony. He waddles passed penguins of different sizes. He stops in front of one of them and puts down the pebble it so difficultly obtained on the ground in front of the other penguin. It was as if it was offering its diamond of a pebble to the other of its kind. As the pebble lies on the ground, the other penguin simply waddles away as if rejecting the offering.

            The penguin picked up the pebble it travelled so far to acquire and waddles away from the rookery once again just how a rejected suitor walks away from the object of his affection. The penguin travels again and repeats the same efforts in obtaining a pebble equally as beautiful as the first. Again, it travels back to the rookery, looking for another mate to offer its pebble to.

            Whether the penguin be rejected again or not, it still exerts the same effort in offering to a potential mate every time. The number of times it gets turned down does not affect its determination to try again, because a penguin’s reason for living is to mate for life.

Reaction to "Photographs of My Parents"

        In photographs, Kingston’s mother always looked serious. There was no evidence of her enjoying herself or anything she is doing. Kingston’s father, on the other hand, looked happy. He was having fun in the activities he partook. I believe that these differences are caused by their living conditions.

Kingston’s father lived in America. In all of the pictures he sent his family, he was found a better life there. By sending his pictures to his family, he provided them with the satisfaction of knowing that he was living under good conditions and that when they get to leave China, they will be living that life as well. He enjoyed his life as an immigrant in the States. This happiness was due to the fact that he lived in a free country. He did not have to go through the suffering endured by the people in China.

Kingston’s mother, on the other hand, lived in China. I felt as if she was longing for her husband who was not present in her and their children’s lives. She lost her children shortly thereafter. There was no relationship that she could be happy about. She went to medical school to keep her busy, and given from her diplomas, she was very much accomplished. However, I believe she could not feel the real happiness she would have had she had her family. Aside from this, there was something about all women in China. As the awkwardly pinned flowers suggest, women at that time were not really given much importance. These flowers suggest that though these women graduated from medical school, they weren’t treated with the same equality as men but as second-class citizens. This prevented them from being really happy. There is emptiness in their faces as seen in the photographs. This can also be seen in Kingston’s mother’s pictures being defaced by different markings. It was as if these markings symbolize society’s way of damaging Kingston’s mother’s sense of self-importance.

I think Kingston’s mother did not openly talk about her photographs because of the memories they contain. She left China to have a better life. Looking through those pictures and talking about them would bring back all the pain and adversity she went through, memories she certainly would not want to discuss. In the end, when Kingston recounts of her mother leaving China, it was as if a sense of independence for her mother was implied.

Reaction to "The Death of the Moth"

In Woolf’s essay, the persona narrates his observations of the life and death of a moth. He recounts this moth’s activities and the outside forces present in the moth’s surroundings. He uses the moth as a metaphor of his own self as he speaks of the value and excitement of life followed by the forcefulness and the inescapability of death.

In the beginning, the persona talks about how this moth, a kind of moth that flies by day, is different from others of its kind. He somehow speaks of this moth’s characteristics and its uniqueness, which also seem to personify himself. He speaks of how the moth possesses traits that do not go as extreme as a butterfly’s or a moth’s that reside in the dark. This somehow describes the persona’s own personality. He is not a type whose character sticks closer to a sanguine or a melancholic disposition. He is sort of just in the middle, somehow stating that he has a balanced, calm-natured personality.

The persona also speaks of the moth’s surroundings. His description of it was of something much greater than the insect. The moth’s life seemed like such a minute detail with everything that was going around. Through his narration, he also implied that the circumstances of the outside forces are totally independent from the moth, but the moth is very much subject to these forces. This can be a comparison to his influences on the rest of the world and vice versa.

As the persona narrates the motions of the moth, he implies the great effort the moth puts into its every action. He emphasizes how the moth does so much and exerts a lot of effort to produce a force that has no effect on external circumstances. No matter how much the moth tried, its exertions are incomparable to the forces present in its surroundings. He follows this up by narrating the death of the moth, that no matter how hard the moth would have tried to fight for its life, the moth’s death would have been inevitable. In relation to the life of the persona, this narration of life and death is apt. The persona would be facing struggles and working his hardest to live his life. However, in the end, there is a force greater than him, greater than every being on this earth, that is unavoidable, and this is death. The only thing a moth or a human can do is to live life to the fullest until it is taken away.

Reaction to "Midsummer"

After reading the text, I was somehow confused as to what the message of the narrative was. I guess this story was somehow open-ended. I didn’t know what to conclude since it simply narrated the mundane events of one afternoon, wherein its plot peaks at the arrival of a girl and ends as the two characters walk away.

The text has quite a detailed description of the setting, though it was not explicitly mentioned. One could imagine the characters’ surroundings as one reads through the paragraphs.

When the man first saw the girl, I immediately thought that it was a mirage of some sort. It is quite easy to immediately conclude such a thing when the description of the man’s surroundings seemed so lifeless. When the author describes what the man caught sight of when he sees the girl by the well, the thought that she was a figment of his imagination was intensified. The description of the girl’s bosom was quite strange for me, and I did not really understand its importance in the story.

When the girl came back and had an actual conversation with the man, I accepted that the girl was a real person. I did not really grasp the point of the events that followed. I did not understand what was going on between the two characters and if sexual tension was implied by the author or if it was just in my head. In the end, I was confused whether her asking him to go home with her was the Filipino trait of hospitality or something else. Also, when the girl said, “I have told mother about you,” I thought about how she knew of him before their conversation, which would mean that she knew the man was watching while she poured water over her head. The narrative is honestly just a blur in my head. 

Reaction to "The Woman Warrior"

              This text reminded me a lot of a novel I once read in the past, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I guess this is because of its similar themes and discussion of old Chinese traditions and their blending into American lifestyle. All occurrences in both novels were parallel, if not the same.

            The biggest similarity I saw between the text and Amy Tan’s novel was the inferiority of women in society. If a Chinese family in those times bore a daughter, it would be more of a curse than a blessing. Girls were considered useless property, worse off than geese. They were treated as something one would only take care of for the benefit of the family she would marry into someday.

            In the persona’s youth, growing up in America was difficult, especially with the Chinese culture her parents lived by. This greatly affected her relationship with her mother when she would feel unloved by her parent. All her accomplishments were never good enough. She was always compared to someone greater. She was called a “bad” girl, and she believed that the only way she would be considered good was if she was a boy. Also, the discrimination she encountered worsened her already damaged view of herself. Not only was she subject to her mother’s condemnation, she was exposed to others’ disapproval of her as well, not because of who she is inside but because of what gender and race she was.

            If I lived in these circumstances, I would have no self-esteem whatsoever. Constantly feeling inferior would only make me want to accomplish less for myself. It would be as if I would not be deserving of anything good in life. I find myself lucky to live in a society where men and women of all races are treated equally. I find the persona in the text to be a strong woman for undergoing and surviving all the judgment and challenges. She is, in fact, a woman warrior herself.