Fiction Packet - But What Was Her Name?

Giving such a large amount of information in such a small amount of time is not an easy task for anybody, but these short stories in the poetry packet proved otherwise. I chose to read the story "But What Was Her Name?" by Dawn Raffel which is a prime example of that. This story is about a women that we are not given much detail about, only that she was lucky to of been born by "some trick of oxygen." Throughout the story you do not receive much more information about the women, only what she goes through in her life. This story was very life-like in the aspect that this story could be very similar to that of many women in the world. This was also a very sad and dark story which really got you to think deeper about the women and her life.

The story tells us the women is married late in her life, and "bore live descendants" which is a very uncommon way to say she had kids. It almost portrays the idea that either she doesn't have a connection with her kids or doesn't think of them as her children. The women is also a house wife and is said to be in the kitchen cooking for most of the story. She does her cooking and over time she grows old and fat and the years just fly past her. This is the life of many women in the world and not a very happy storyline that usually comes with a fiction story.

The ending of the story does not seem to get much better as all the others stories do in this packet. The women's husband is now dead and she will not take off her wedding ring. I feel like this is because the majority of her life was dedicated to serving him and now she is lost without him. It can also be inferred that she is a religious women as she calls out loud "Father?" which could be seen as her referring to asking help from God. Then the final line of the poem is basically her dying so there was an entire life of this women described in about 20 lines of writing, and after you know this women's life story you still don't know her name, as if she was forgotten rather than not mentioned.

Writing Down the Bones - Baking a Cake

This section really stood out to me among the rest. I really liked the analogy the author used to compare one's writing or product to a cake, and the ingredients are the details of the writing. Without the correct amount of ingredients then your "cake" will not come out right, or the reader will not understand what you are trying to say. Also, having all the right ingredients plays a big role in the process as well. If certain details are left out then you wont have the "cake" you wanted and everything will not come out right.

I also liked how the author talked about having a connection with your "cake". This is because it's not just any old cake, it's YOUR cake. It's a part of you whether you like it or not. You put time and effort into it and it will represent your thoughts and ideas. I am someone who really likes to put a piece of myself into my writing and call it my own. When I put my name on a piece of paper it represents me and I stand by it. Maybe it doesn't represent everything about me, but I wrote it for a reason and want it to reflect a piece of me.

I think the reason I liked this analogy so much is because I could relate it to anything I do in my life. Sure it worked well with writing, but to me it was more than that. When you bake a cake you make a goal, prepare your steps, and work hard to get there. The ingredients are the steps along the way that you want to put into your goal to help you reach it. Nothing good comes easy and you have to keep working on it to perfect your "cake". 

Tocqueville

Tocqueville is not like any other poem I have ever read before. I've read poems in the past with multiple meanings, different narrators, and hidden messages, but this one takes the cake. The endless possibilities are mind blowing after reading this poem because you are never quite sure which road to take. Everything seems to be so interconnected in one way or another that it almost sets you up to pick up all these different points of view and different meanings. This seems to be multiple poems hidden within each other, that also connect to a bigger idea while also having their own smaller picture.

One aspect that I questioned while reading this poem was how many different narrators had input throughout the reading. "I am 18, married with 3 children" (Pg 38) "I am 22 years old" (Pg 40) " I am 24 and have four children" (Pg 28) The reason these three passages stood out to me was because they almost seemed to be new introductions of narrators. Two of the three introductions mentioned some type of children or marriage with the speaker. However, one of them did not and it was odd to me that the one that didn't was the middle age and not either the first or last introduction. I also tried to compare the different introductions for any contradicting information that would lead the reader to believe that someone else was speaking but all three did not conflict with each other in any way. Another aspect I thought was very interesting was that the ages revealed in the introductions did not come in chronological order. In fact the ages revealed was in the order of oldest, youngest, and then middle.

Another clue that lead me to believe that there are multiple speakers was the fact that the poem contained multiple re-occurring themes spread out through the poem. This included war, a murdered child, the speakers wife, and the idea of portraying impressions of a certain people or idea. The speaker would almost jump back and forth from these different themes and switch his voice when speaking about them. This could be a result of different time frames in the speakers life or represent some kind of aspect the narrator is trying to get across to the reader. This was discussed in class that the poems were placed in this order to get the reader to see how ideas are portrayed to us in the news or to give the wrong impression to people about a certain topic.