Reflection on "Fish Cheeks"

             Well, first of all, I really enjoyed this story. This story was able to express its idea effectively in one page. And what I liked most about the story is the way of writing her experience: showing.

             Definitely, this story is about confessing. It talks about the embarrassing (but after all valuable) experience of a young Chinese girl. However, in this story, only few sentences revealed her feelings explicitly (ex) “Dinner threw me deeper into despair”, “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas?”, “I wanted to disappear” are some of the few sentences that explicitly show the narrator’s feeling.) The essay consists of only one or two sentences of explanation and a bunch of sentences of depiction of the situation.

             But ironically, by simply showing what she experienced, Amy Tan was able to impress the readers far more powerfully than by explaining what she felt indirectly. By imagining the situation the narrator described, readers can share the narrator’s experience indirectly. Mere description can make readers get “persuaded” (so to speak) more naturally than explicit explanation. As this story is a story which the narrator confesses about the lesson she realized from her youth experience, it would be important for the writer to appeal her confession to the readers. In that perspective, Amy Tan was successful in writing this story.

             To sum up, I was definitely attracted to this story and I think the reason why I was fascinated is that this story used the method of “showing” rather than “telling”. I should employ this method when writing a story or a college essay as far as I can.

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Jingyeong: I just simply organized the summary at the first part of my reflection, because I couldn’t think of much broader ideas. But reading your reflection, I guess you got several interesting points to be detailed. What I don’t understand is the goal of the author. I mean, persuading has its goal in it. Then, what is the goal of the author?

Chonghyun Ahn: I do agree that her indirect description of what she felt “showed” than “tell” about what happened. Good luck on your story and college essay.

Rhee Ji Yoon: I agree that showing is usually more important than telling. I am in the Creative writing class taught by Mr. Garrioch, and I realized that the stories that are less complicated but more descriptive are more powerful than the ones that are sophisticated. “Little Prince” is a very easy story, but you can learn a lot while reading it. (+Do you sympathize more with the Little Prince or the pilot?)

Topics that I like to write:)

This is part of the assignment for the creative writing!

Topics that I like?


6. Phone Tag. Write a fairly long, complicated phone conversation overheard by someone in the room. All three people—the listener in the room, the caller, and the person on the other end of the line—are involved with each other in some way (not necessarily romantically). Let us hear the other end of the conversation, without actually hearing it. This means you will be giving us only one side of a conversation, so you will have to work to make the side we’re hearing intriguing and capable of carrying a story. The listener in the room can guess what the person on the other end of the line is saying, but try to keep this guessing to a minimum, and make sure this guesswork is done with integrity—well after the unheard speaker has spoken. 600 words.

--> Situation that I want to make: Jen, an ordinary career woman, does a blind date with a guy named Alex. While dating, Alex gets a phone call and converses with someone. Jen, overhearing the conversation, starts to feel frightened as the conversation goes on. (ex) Alex saying "Hey, remember, I only want a fresh meat. Fresh and alive". And when hearing that, Jen remembers the recent news she saw, about the human flesh.) Jen, after Alex ends the phone conversation, makes an excuse and runs away. But actually, Alex was a sushi cook. Alex wonders why Jen runs away, thinking that Jen is freaky.

Reflection on "Sarah Cole: A type of love story"

             The story “Sarah Cole: A type of Love story” is a typical confessional story. It honestly reveals about the relationship the narrator had with the woman Sarah Cole.

             But when reading the story, I somewhat felt uncomfortable about the predisposed idea of characters, that the ugly people tend to be more substantial and more “real”. In the story, the handsome narrator thought Sarah was different from other folly women who are vapid. However, as time passes, the narrator realizes that Sarah is not that different from the others in essence: she wants to boast her handsome boyfriend to others. Disappointed at the reality, the narrator acts cruel to her, in order to kill the relationship for their benefits.

             And all of these sequences in the story show that the old idea of “good, kind ugly people” is wrong. The narrator certainly had this prejudice towards ugly people and this resulted in another scar from the relationship between him and Sarah.

             This myth would have come from the ordinary people’s envy. Of course it is often true that the ugly people tend to be kind and humane. However, considering the counterexamples, it is plausible that those who are ordinary would have created the myth because they want to complement the inferior aspect they feel from those who are handsome and pretty.

             To sum up, I felt uncomfortable about the old myth related to ugly people and thus felt interesting about how the story disapproves that myth. It can be seen that the narrator is confessing about the misunderstanding he had about the ugly people.

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Jin Gyeong: I pretty don’t understand the last two paragraphs. Do people really regard ugly people good and kind? (Or, is that can be called myth?) I think there is a stereotype about ugly people that they will always grumble and would have lower self-confidence. As you can see in the animations or movies, enemies (the evils) are depicted ugly (or extremely beautiful??) What do you think about my opinion? J

Chonghyun Ahn: Although I don’t agree on the notion that your interpretation of “hot” boyfriend, I certainly find your criticism on the “old myth” on the function between ugliness and truthfulness very interesting. Why do we have such myths? Is it because that is often true in real life? Or is it because of common men’s envy?

Hyunseok Lee: Sometimes I wonder about “reverse discrimination” in appearances. Handsome or attractive people often regarded as ill-tempered ones, while lots of people expect unattractive people to be kind and cool. If we don’t like the fact that people should not be judged based on exterior appearances, reverse discrimination also should be removed.

Reflection of "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep"

                  Reading a science fiction is at once fascinating and depressing. It’s amazing to imagine how technology would develop while it’s depressing to somehow acknowledge that even in the future, the selfishness of human will never change.

             “Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep” is the novella that is fascinating and depressing. And it portrayed an interesting model of the future: humans and machines will become similar.

             This model is deeply related to the irony presented in the novella. In the story, Androids, who are supposed to be distinct (usually in an inferior way by human’s standards), are so similar to humans (both physically and mentally) that it is hard to know whether the one is Android or not. On the other side, humans in the story are becoming alike to the machines in that they try to program their mind status like the computers adjusting their state with programming.

This interesting phenomenon, humans becoming machine-like and machines becoming human-like, can be explained with the two factors: human’s desire to replicate themselves and to be superior to others. These seemingly contradicting desires of humans are actually same in an essence; selfishness. Because humans are self-interested, they want to make another version of them while willing to be superior to their replicas. And when linking the selfishness(people have) to the outcome of that impulse, it’s easy to understand the irony in the story: people’s desire to discriminate themselves with replicas simply resulted in the opposite situation, humans and machines becoming similar.

             Overall, I thought that the story was effective in depicting a dystopian society with the irony related to human’s desire.

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Jin Gyeong: You wrote on topic which exactly points out the main idea of the novella and what Mr. Menard talked in today’s class. Your analysis about the motivation of human making Androids was interesting. And I especially liked the expression “humans becoming machine-like, machines becoming human-like”. I think this short phrase really describes what’s going on now, and what will be like in future. How about adding more comparison between the Androids and humans before mentioning the ironies?

Rhee Ji Yoon: “Ironies” that you have mentioned at the start of second (or is it third?) paragraph are not mentioned and explained fully yet, right? (lack of timeL)

A piece of narrative: for American literature

           Julie was sitting in a classroom, writing something passionately in her notebook. It was a force diagram of a simple pendulum motion. She marked gravity, tension, centripetal forces, other things related to mechanics.

           She didn’t understand. She didn’t know why she got 10 points off for solving up the problem in a correct, Newtonian way. Although her solution was different from that of other students (who simply copied the solution suggested in the textbook, she thought), she was confident about her own independent solution. However, when she went to Mr. Jones’ office, she was surprised to see a large, red slash in her answer sheet.

           She was bewildered and angered at the result. She had always thought that Mr. Jones was not that logical (not only in physics but also in the whole thought process), but she never thought that he would give her such a big insult. Feeling necessary for explaining her perspective, she asked him,

“Mr. Jones, actually, I cannot understand why my solution is wrong.”

Mr. Jones saw her in a condescending way (at least it’s what she thought) and gave her a chance of explaining what she thought is right. She confidently presented her solution. It was clear and brief. She thought her solution could win over Mr. Jones’ “opinion”.

After hearing all the solution she presented, Mr. Jones started to question doubts on her explanation. At first, she was confident about her solution, but as few minutes passed, she started to feel doubt on her solution. However, not wanting to acknowledge her ignorance, she asked for some time to reorganize her thoughts about the problem.

And she was trying to mark the forces correctly in the diagram. After organizing her thoughts, she stood up, and walked to the Mr. Jones’ office, with her face filled with shame.

“Well… I have to say that I’m wrong. I think I was confused of the basic concept of force.”

“Yeah, that happens. Actually, I liked your passion and confidence on your own idea.”

Although she found that reply unexpected, she just kept listening to what Mr. Jones said.

“You’d better enhance the physics concept you have. Julie, are you humanity-oriented?”

“Yes, I am humanity-oriented.”

“Well…..although you may not further study physics, physics is obviously the interesting subject to study. You know, everything is physics. From miniscule atoms to enormous galaxies.”

After a little pause, Mr. Jones said,

“Anyway, it was good to do a discussion with you. I hope to see you in an honored-physics-class. Have a nice vacation!”

And this was what altered Julie's academic interest and future career. 

Creative writing assignment #2: Dialogue

           Elisa had never shared her room with anybody as long as she remembered. But as she attended university far from her house, it became inevitable for her to stay in a dorm with a roommate. Her first roommate in her life was Samantha, who always held a nice smile on her face. (This can be the reason so many guys feel affection towards her, and also the reason Elisa felt more betrayed by her friend Sam.) But with her adorable appearance, Sam started to bring her boyfriends into her room very frequently. It was the first semester of Elisa’s university life, and she decided lump Sam and wait one semester for a new roommate. However, it soon turned out that freshmen were to stay in the same room for a year unless under special occasions. So Elisa went up to the Dean describing her situation, but the Dean simply insisted that a roommate’s love life was not a very unique problem and that Elisa had to handle it herself. Elisa came to stay with Sam for one more semester. But when Sam brought a new guy named Samuel only a day after the semester had started, Elisa found it hard to tolerate any longer. She went out the room, contemplating hard the best resolution.

Elisa waited Samuel to come out of her room. When he came out, Elisa greeted Samuel naturally. After a few talk, Samuel tried to say goodbye by saying “Again, Sorry for interrupting you. You must have been uncomfortable to leave the room.” However, Elisa intentionally elongated the conversation by saying “That’s okay. It’s not the first time for me to do it.” Then, in a continued conversation, Elisa implicitly revealed how her roommate Samantha is a flirt. And in accordance with Elisa’s derogatory comments about Samantha, Samuel got upset and disappointed at Samantha. However, soon, Samuel found out that there were some contradictions in Elisa’s comments. (we didn’t decide what the contradictions are) Because of that, Samuel and Elisa fought with each other. The dialogue part would start from the part where Samuel apologized Elisa to the part where Samuel and Elisa argued with each other.

Reflection on "The conversion of the Jews"

           One of the most basic works that should be done in understanding something is to understand the surroundings. In the case of understanding literature, one should consider the context of the individual texts. And in the case of understanding individual, one should consider the individual’s interaction with other individuals or the society that the individual is in. The relationship between an individual and a society is mutual; the society is formed by the individuals and the individuals are formed by the society. And the story “The conversion of the Jews” shows an interesting interaction between an individual and a society. The story is set in the exclusive Jewish society in New York. The society revolves around the words of Rabbi Binder. However, Oscar (also called as Ozzie) challenges the orthodox that exists in the Jewish society. Oscar eventually succeeds to make others (especially Rabbi Binder) acknowledge his radical ideas, but he soon commits a suicide instead of complying to the order of Rabbi and his mother.

           While reading the story, I got to think about my identity in Korean society. Although it sounds snobby, I am in a high position for the high school students to have. I am a student in KMLA, a school whose students are praised as “genius” for the past school life. I am planning to study abroad, having a freedom to explore what I want to study. And most of all, I have a gifted environment to actualize my goals: my parents’ cheer and economical room for assisting in the process. These conditions cannot be achieved easily for majority of students. Obviously, I am in a top position in my age and I am happy with my place in the community.

           However, I still think that my current status can always change, and try to think about the basic problem that the society has. While watching news, I sometimes get frustrated about the prejudice exists on the foreign laborer and often feel satisfied about the fair decision of the judges to the legal case. Although I should admit that I am not that active in expressing my opinion, I am a progressive rather than a conservative.

           Some might think that my attitude is not that appropriate in terms of changing the society. They might say that the radical personality of Ozzie would be more helpful in influencing the society. However, personally, I think that the aggressive, conspicuously rebellious act like that of Ozzie can be very ephemeral but the soft but incessant act, like the act of changing the people’s perspective gradually with the critical and unprejudiced media, is more helpful in changing the world.