I’m going to do my second paper coming from the critical perspective. The short story I chose was The Story of an Hour. I’m going to discuss Mrs. Mallards final hour and how she discovers in her last dramatic hour the immeasurable beauty of life, and her new outlook of her future.

I really enjoy this short story. It’s not everyday I read something about Native Americans, so changing up my normal ready to something different was a nice change.

I had a hard time following this story and understanding the point of it. It seemed to flip back and forth in time, and didn’t follow one clear sequence. I spent most of the time extremely confused and I didn’t like it.

I found it funny how the boy’s father kept trying to get a rise out of people and intentionally making rude comments. It made for an entertaining story as rude as it was. Although, if I was in the situation as one of the waiters I wouldn’t have reacted so politely.

I felt like this story was really drawn out and was way too long. It seemed to take forever for the plot to unravel and the point of the story to be revealed. However, I did like the whole idea of chinese poems for some odd reason. It gave the story a nice twist. Better than reading about characters getting raped.

The story didn’t seem to have very much detailed and lacked a lot of explanation. I felt like I was missing chunks of the story and confused the entire time. I did not like this short story and I was shocked at the situation Liz puts herself in. I couldn’t believe she let it happen and wasn’t more active in trying to stop Jim from hurting her.

My first reaction was I was very confused and didn’t understand what was going on. After completing the story and thinking about the events that occurred I began to understand it. The Story of an Hour isn’t one you read everyday. I don’t understand why you would marry someone if you didn’t really love them in the first place, and then celebrate when they pass away? It doesn’t seem right to me.  The ending was different and one you wouldn’t normally hear. It wasn’t a very happy ending. I didn’t like the story.

Question: What is some of the history of Jazz music and who were some famous Jazz musicians of the 1950’s?

Step 1: I went to the google search engine and typed in Who were famous Jazz musicians in the 1950’s?

Answer: Some of the most popular jazz muscians of the 1950’s consisted of Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats, Max Kaminsky, Eddie Condon, and Wild Bill Davison.  Most of this group were Midwesterners, although there were a small number of New Orleans musicians involved. The Lu Watters band was also a very popular band and consisted of very young musicians. Through the 1950’s and 1960’s Dixieland was one of the most commercially popular jazz styles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz

Step 2: I went back to google and typed in History of Jazz music.

Answer: Jazz is a blues style of music and is derived from African Americans.  It focuses on the pain of love, injustice, overcoming a broken heart, and facing down adversity. The blues originated from hymns, work songs, and field hollers. Jazz and blues are the prime sources, as well as the foundations, of rhythm, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and country music.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/history_of_jazz.htm

My first reaction after reading the first couple of paragraphs of the assigned reading was it shocked me and I was taken aback by it. After completing all the paragraphs I realized sadly that situations like the ones provided really do happen . Maybe not  to those extremes, but they do occur in our society today. People killing each other over the ones they love, cheating on spouses, or leaving their partner for someone else. All ending in someone lonely, hurt, or dead. It made me think about some of the corruption and cruelties of the world people shouldn’t have to suffer through. Although, I did find the reading a bit entertaining.

In my revised autobiography I cut out some of the details about the actual death and summarized it more. I added in more information about how I dealt with and overcame the death of my friend. I shared life lessons I took from the situation, and talked about them so I could help others who are or will deal with something as tragic as a best friend dying or important person. I didn’t change the my reaction to the news or the part about his funeral. These were life changing events that will forever stay with me and I felt the need to share them.