Sarah Heck

I believe that the Trickster in this story is the mouse. It runs up the Mother’s pant leg, and she is left there screaming while the Father and Son sit there and laugh at her. In a sense, the mouse is dividing the family. The Mother leaves the house just like the mouse does, and she swims in the creek, although she cannot swim. The Father and Son cannot understand why she left. The mouse has caused trouble and made the Mother realize what problems her family has. Although the mouse has caused all this mischief, it has allowed the Mother to bring about change and finally stand up for herself.

I do not believe that McMurphy was suffering from a mental disorder when he was first admitted to the mental hospital. Actually, he was quite clever in escaping farm work duty and jail. By going to the mental hospital, he thought he would be able to relax for awhile and then be released. McMurphy acted as if he was suffering from a mental disorder at the beginning so ensure that he would be admitted and fit in with the others. Throughout the course of his stay there, McMurphy does begin to suffer from mental problems, and it almost seemed as if he was actually mentally ill all along. He is given many opportunities to escape from the hospital when the women sneak in one night, but he refuses to leave. However, this may be due to the treatment forced upon him by Nurse Ratched. It is almost like the hospital made him go insane. It seems like the hospital doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Nurse Ratched conditioned McMurphy to act in a particular way and she knows all of his weaknesses. This eventually leads to McMurphy’s lobotomy. McMurphy ends up becoming more like the patients there, as the patients become more like him, and can stand up for themselves.

I believe that the conflict between McMurphy and Big Nurse does suggest a different world outside of the mental hospital. Many of the patients have a skewed view of what sexuality is due to the opinions that the Big Nurse has. Nurse Ratched wants to supress any form of sexuality in the ward. McMurphy continually challenges the Big Nurse in her opinions about sexuality. This begins to stir controversy in the ward, as the other patients begin to see that the world outside of the mental hospital is different than what Nurse Ratched portrays it to be. The Big Nurse loses control over the patients, and this is evident by the time they all go on the fishing trip. As an almost escape from Nurse Ratched and a wanting to experience life outside of the mental hospital, many of the patients sleep with the prostitute. It is a way for them to see what life is like outside the hospital and almost feel human again, due to the way they have been treated and almost lied to by the hospital staff.

One thing I have noticed in Blood Wedding is how love and marriage is portrayed differently than love and marriage in modern times. It seems that the weddings taking place in the time of Blood Wedding occurred because the social status of the bride and groom’s families were similar. To some extent this takes place today, but it is more acceptable to marry someone out of your social status. For the characters in the play, it is extremely unlikely that one would marry out of their social circle. This is evident when it is hinted that the bride and Leonardo did not marry possibly because of his family not having enough money. Even though it seems that the bride and Leonardo were in love at one point in time, their love could not rise above the social standards put into place. The dialog on page 50 between the mother, the father, and the bridegroom suggest that money has the greatest role to play in whether the two will get married as the father says that his daughter has/can manage his money and the mother says that her son can do the same thing. Money is also mentioned on page 46 by the mother in law talking about the two rich families coming together.

The women in the House of the Spirits seem to have great lasting power to enable change. Each woman seems oppressed in their own way, but they appear to rise above it in the feminist movement. This starts with Nivea who begins to advocate for women’s sufferage. Clara on the other hand uses a silent tactic on Esteban, to ‘put him in his place’. Alba, who has been abused by Esteban Garcia is able to rise above the abuse once she escapes imprisionment and is helped by the poor woman. Each of the women goes about rising above their oppression in their own way. The women seem to employ non violent, subtle tactics to get their points across, rather than the men, who use violent tactics as seen in the government revolutions. The women have longer lasting change, as opposed to the men, whose revolutionary ideas have led to relatively little change.

In Chapter 4, Blanca and Pedro meet for the first time and immediately fall in love. Their love, however, is forbidden because of the division between social classes. Esteban’s character has the most influence throughout the story. He is represented in Clara’s journals and through Alba because he is still alive throughout the story. Esteban seems like he is unaware of how far Blanca and Pedro’s relationship may go because Blanca is just a child, and it is an unwritten rule that they should not be together. It seems like he expects Blanca to understand that they should not be together, even though she is a child and only understands that if you are in love you should be together. It is a little strange that no one picked up on this until it was too late. It is still strange that Esteban would even allow them to play together as children if he was so obsessed with the divisions between social classes.

I believe that the author has complete authority over the material that is written. They can choose what to add, what to embellish, and what to leave out of the story. In House of the Spirits, the author is using bits and pieces of Clara’s journal and Esteban’s personal accounts to tell a story. Yes, Clara’s journal is completely fictional, but it is in the way that the author presents the information that allows her to tell the story. It seems that the author focuses more on making Esteban look bad more than anything else, and she does this by placing more emphasis on the passages in the journal that deal with Esteban’s anger. It is the same with the Corrido. Each singer was the author and in turn was allowed to present the story in the way that he wanted. No matter what medium the story is presented in, the author will have the final say. However, this does not mean that the author is correct in his interpretation of the material. We, as readers have the right to interpret the material in the way we see fit and disagree with the author. The author tries to push the reader in a certain direction, but it is up to the reader which direction to take.

The circulation of the Corrido through its’ many singers and different versions indicates that literature is ever changing, at least in this context. I never really thought of literature being this way. It seems that whatever is written in a book is ‘set in stone’ and must be left untouched because it is wrong to undo what has already been written. The Corrido also has a social aspect to it. The purpose of it was to tell news of what was happening to Gregorio Cortez, and that was the reason why it was always changing versions because each person embellished it a little more before passing it along to someone else. This allows for a different interpretation each time someone reads or hears the Corrido sung. This is extremely different from traditional literature because you basically know what you are going to get when you open up a book. With the Corrido, it is different everytime.

I believe that much of the Corrido dirrers between the story and the movie. Parades’ collection shows Gregorio Cortez as a man who is a blood thristy killer. However, the movie tells a different story. In the movie, Cortez is described as a family man who killed the sheriff only in response to the killing of his brother and to protect his family. The role of the interpretor is brought in to add to the effect that Cortez was a good man, just misunderstood. There are many discrepancies between the two. This is based on the author’s perspective, and a result of the changing times. In the early 1900’s when the Corrido was written, it was around the time of expansion and conquering the old West. The movie, from the 1980’s came at a time where equal rights was the main idea, and a move to eliminate discrimination. I think that this is why there is such a difference between the tellings of the two stories.

Tayo embodies the struggles on the Laguna culture. He has just come back from war, and realizes that things have completely changed. He is unsure about how to get back to who he was before the war. He is struggling with who he was and what he has become.
Throught Ceremony, there is the theme of loss of identity. Tayo has lost his identity as a person and the Laguna culture has also lost part of its’ identity through the greater influence of the ‘white man’. Both Tayo and the Laguna culture are trying to find a way back to their roots. The author shows this through the transition of the individual to the group. She is saying that not only an individual undergoes change, but so does an entire culture, who must learn to adapt to the changing times. The culture can exhibit some of the same problems that an individual has. The author is saying that no matter what, change will happen. Change may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is how you adapt and get back to your roots that makes the difference of whether you lose your identity.