Respond to the elephant vanishes

  This story talks about how the elephant came to the town and venished. The narrator, "I", describe the news about the elephant, as a normal citizen. However, to my surperise, "I" told the clue of the venishment of the elephant, which nobody else knew. And at the end of the story, the author only pointed out that the elephant got smaller and escape, leaving the readers to imagine how they escaped and what were their fates next.

  In my opinion, the theme of this story is about politics and the love toward animals. They adopted the elephant to the town, not because they love elephants, but some political reasons. And parties aruge a lot just about the very little land that the elephant is going to take up. On the contrary, the elephant keeper is the one that really love the elephant. They have lived together for 10 years and the elephant knows well what a move of the keeper means. The escape of the elephant and its keeper also means to escape the place which is full of politics and come to somewhere people really love animals and live together in harmony. And this is I think the author wants to express--to give pure love to animals and get away of political purposes.

Respond-I bought a little city

  This is a imaginative story! When I read the first couple of paragraphs, they remind me of a game I played called "simcity", in which the player build his own city by his imagination. Similar to the game I played,in this story, the narrator bought a city in Texas. When I play that game, I usually failed to manage the city fianlly and so did the narrator in this story!

  So why did the author write this story in this way? In my point of view, the author is expressing the difficulty of managing a city and developing the city in his ideal way, as well as balancing the contradictories. Maybe in the real world, there are many citizens complaining about the governors are doing a poor job, and this story attempts to let people know, the contadictions cannot be avoided. The author wants to reduce the number of dogs but hurt people's feelings. And any changes he is going to make have some negative effects. So people should understand this point and don't complain that much. Anyway, anything cannot be perfect.

Response to Marquez

  This story introduces an old man with enormous wings appears in Pelayo's yard. The Pelayo's keep him with the chicken and charge fees for people who want to see him. People treat the old man like the animals in the zoo and the Pelayos make him to get money.

  I think this story expresses two main points. The first one, just like Chekhov's Lament, the author wants the society to have more compassion to each other, especially those who are old, poor, in need or in trouble, just like the man with wings. The second one is that the author wants people to think independently, rather than being controled by religions. In this story, Father Gonzaga is the symbol of religion, who does rediculous things to make sure whether the old man is an angle

Oral Presentation-Chekhov

1. Visual aids: http://prezi.com/pic5kedukmmt/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

2. Outline:
a. Introduction about the story&author

b. Character analysis
   Iona
   Passengers
   Young cabby

c. The meanings of "Lament"
 
d. The theme: Call on people to have more compassion to each other.

3. Biliography:
Boyd, William. "A Chekhov lexicon ", http:// www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/03/classic

"Lament" dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lament?s=t

Marks, Ben. "Russia During Chekhov's Lifetime" http://virtueofthesmall.com/old_sites/littlegreenpig/articles/RussiaDuringCheckhov/

4. Other researched notes
"what is the main theme in anton chekhov's 'the lament,' also called misery" enotes.com http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-main-theme-lament-327514

Response to Lament

  This is a short story that seems easy, but means much.

  This short story talks about Iona, the cabdriver, whose son died but none of his passengers were willing to listen to his grief.

  The title "Lament" has a lot of meanings. Firstly, Iona lived a poor live and was looked down upon. Secondly, his son died. Furthermore, people in the society were cold-hearted and selfish. The comparison between Iona's horse and his passengers stress out how cold-hearted the people were, even worse than a horse.

  So Chekhove wrote this story to express his disappointment of that society and call on the government to care more about the lives of people in the bottom of the society.

Utopia project

Social Issue

Status Quo:

Minorities:

-          Black people, Asian-America, Latin-America, Aboriginals, etc.

-          Minorities are discriminated

Unequal job opportunity: black-sounding names are much less likely to receive callbacks

Unequal education opportunity: same as the former.

Symbolic racism: prejudice, judging one by color of the skin.

Cultural: their culture are despised unequally.

Racist

-          They lived with their arrogance and prejudice.

-          Publicly claim racism

Political structure

-          Governance

Government: Committee system. Congress, committee, and judiciary.

Representation in congress should be distributed according the population proportion of each race.

Committee is the highest administration power, which is comprised of 5 members. These five members must represent different races. Committee members are respectively restricted.

Judiciary has 9 grand justices, who are distributed to 9 different divisions and take turns in other divisions each year.

A racial court is designed to settle all the cases involving racial problems.

-          Rules:

dos

·           inter-race marriage

·           equal election right

·           equal representation: quotas according to the ratio of each race

·           equal right of education: quotas according to the ratio of each race

·           equal social welfare

·           right of property

·           freedom to choose religion

·           equal job opportunity: quotas according to the ratio of each race

donts

·           Public claim on racial discrimination

·           Unequal job treatment due to racial differences

·           Varied representation among races

·           Punishment: community service according to the impact of racial discrimination, jail, fine.

Social Structure

-          Social bonding

Every infant should have a surrogate parent after birth, who must be from another race. And the surrogate parent is responsible to teach the child the tradition and behavioral norm of their race. And they are honored to attend great events of the child, like commencement, marriage.

Racial Equality Day, 5/13.

-          Property dividing

Lands are equally divided. And they earn credit by their work.

Based on their work hours.

-          Member constitute

Minorities: Black people, Asian-America, Latin-America, Aboriginals, etc.

Anti-racist

Racist. (should not exist): have an investigation before admitted in.

Map:

Emergent self-service medical care stations: asthma, heart disease, etc.

These living spaces can be assembled by normal people. Everybody could build house as long as they are willing to put time and effort, which prioritizes meritocracy.

Open to the entire community. It represents the unity among the races. This means everybody trust each other.

Problems:

Some racists are appointed as the administrator, racial police, and judges. They abuse their power to attain too much interest for their own race.

The quota system fail due to its dissonance to meritocracy because quotas are distributed according to population ratio rather than meritocracy. Like in college admission, someone in one race may be permitted when he is less qualified academically than another one in another race, only because he has the quota.

Mating response 1

  If I only use one word to summarize my impression to this novel, and that is feminism. In this novel, things goes totally different than the "Gilead" we just read.Tsau is a place where females have much power in the society, while in Gilead females have no freedom at all. 

  Since novels are literatures that present an idea, the novel "Mating" maybe present an idea that women should be treated more equally in real life in Africa. Sometimes novels use some up-side-down imaginations to stress out something.

  Anyway, it is a interesting novel and I'm curious about stories happen later.