Realism

TASK 1
This story has a lot of details, which is something that realism has a a lot of. Realists like to break everything down and really take it piece by piece describing everything. The story really vividly explains what she sees, hears, and smells while she’s at her window just starting to mourn her husband’s death. It says, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.” In that quote, it didn’t just say that she looked out side and was looking at everything and proceed on with what she did next, she put the story in slow motion and described the setting just like it would have been if you were there. Everything that you smelled and heard was put into words. She also explains very detailed about when she is feeling a great joy due to the realization she’s about to have.
Choplin is really focusing on a non gender role environment. You know, she’s saying that this woman is just so sad because she “won’t have anyone to live for the years to come for”, but then the woman goes on to realize that that’s just it. That she doesn’t have to live for anyone but herself. At the end of the story, her husband walks in the door and it says that, “He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry” and she ends up dying of heart failure. I think that Choplin used such a dramatic ending because that’s how she feels about the role women take on. She maybe thinks that it’s devastating that women feel like they have to live for somebody else and that they don’t gain full self independence. By using this, she’s definitely trying to make people at least think about the possibility of not living for somebody else.

TASK 2
Wow, that was a very descriptive story. During the first part of the story I thought that it was going to turn out being very hopes and unchanging through out the end. Then, after I finished reading it, my opinion totally changed. I think that what he was trying to make his readers get out of the story was this one moral: You can go through the hardest times and the absolutely worst stuff, but don’t lose hope; hope and courage will get you through if you can just hold on. He was talking about how his “owner broke him” emotional, physically, and mentally, but then proceeded to talk about how after this tiny little thing that gave him the littlest bit of hope (the root), he had courage to stand up for him self.
He really explained very vividly the first attack by Mr. Covey when he almost passed out in the field. He says, “He gave me another kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet: but, stopping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell.” Right there he could have just said that I fell when I tried to get up, but he really wanted you to feel like you’re there. You didn’t have to wonder about anything or imagine anything, because he tells you all about it right there.
One of the social issues that Douglass wanted to change was that of slavery (which is the obvious one), but also, I think one that is kind of hidden is about having courage. He wants more people to stop giving up and being broken. He tries to change people’s opinion on this by showing that even though the slave wasn’t free physically, he was in a way. He was free spiritually and emotionally because he something that he didn’t have before. I’m sure that we can all just go ahead and assume what that one thing was, can we not?


TASK 3
For this last part of our realism project, I chose the song, or rap, called “Till the End”, by Lloyd Banks. This song, in my opinion, is an exact replica of realism, or at least from my understanding of what realism is. Lloyd is bringing up problems that are going on not only in the place where he grew up, but all of over the world. He states these things very casually and just kind of throws them in your face. He says, “You look behind you when you turn the corna cause death has promised ya you seen some niggas go before ya”. He’s bringing up the death of young people. He’s not trying to sugar coat it, but he’s saying that there are definitely places where you have to watch your back as you go around the corner. You’ve seen all these people die this way and death gives no mercy.
Another example of realism that really stands out to me is, “I never really smile much if you was here you'd know why; there's frustration and fire if you look in my eye”. He’s trying to address the problem of the hard times that people have been through, and also how it still affects you. Many people live through so many situations that are just so awful that they are numbing, but you can see it in your face. He’s not trying to make it seem like everything is okay and it’s not really that big of deal. He’s saying that the depression and hard times are here and there not okay. He’s saying that they haven’t left and they never will.