English 104 - Introduction to Narrative
Greg Pearson
My Mother is a Fish, My Sister is a Shoe
Category: 2 Essay: Carroll, Twain, Faulkner, Sebold | Greg Pearson
Each and every one of us has, at some point, probably during our childhood, asked the same thing: what happens to us when we die? A slightly speechless adult has looked down at us, trying to formulate some kind of explanation that will make sense, even though they themselves are...
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Posted by gpearson on December 09, 2003 at 04:27 AM
Healthy Hormones
Category: 10 Blog: The Lovely Bones | Greg Pearson
Susie’s life is abruptly cut short at the age of fourteen when she is brutally raped and murdered by her neighbor. This event is shocking, violent, and deeply disturbing. And yet this traumatic experience, which is also a sexual experience, however one sided, does not seem to have instilled the...
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Posted by gpearson on December 03, 2003 at 11:44 PM
To be or not to be?
Category: 09 Blog: As I Lay Dying | Greg Pearson
Darl’s final narration is delivered almost entirely in the third person, from what appears to be the perspective of Vardaman. In it he describes himself as he is loaded on to a train to be taken away, following his mental breakdown. However, this should not come as a complete surprise,...
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Posted by gpearson on November 24, 2003 at 09:49 PM
Your mother may be a fish, but why don't you bury her already?
Category: 08 Blog: As I Lay Dying | Greg Pearson
As I Lay Dying traces the journey of a family as they slowly transport their mother to her final resting place in Jefferson, 40 miles away. Along the way the narrative bounces from one family member to another as each relates his or her reaction to or interpretation of the...
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Posted by gpearson on November 18, 2003 at 12:18 AM
it's done and i'm rotten glad of it
Category: 07 Blog: Huckleberry Finn | Greg Pearson
Huck’s voyage downriver began as a big adventure, but the further he travels downriver the more it begins to take on serious overtones. The reader watches Huck as he grows from a child chasing Sunday school kids into a boy who must deal with very complicated issues. He seems to...
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Posted by gpearson on November 11, 2003 at 01:22 AM
Yeah... about those guys on the raft
Category: 06 Blog: Huckleberry Finn | Greg Pearson
Throughout the novel, as he moves from one “adventure” to the next, Huck is always altering his identity. This could be as extreme as faking his own death or as innocent as changing his name to “Charles William Allbright” or “Aleck James Hopkins” (108). In this way he is strikingly...
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Posted by gpearson on November 04, 2003 at 02:09 AM
The Reality of Death
Category: 05 Blog: Huckleberry Finn | Greg Pearson
Huck’s view of death in the beginning of the novel is largely informed by the books he reads, which either romanticize or glorify violence. This can be seen clearly in the attitude of Tom Sawyer’s gang. Their oath is basically a statement of who to kill and why. “Some [even]...
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Posted by gpearson on October 28, 2003 at 12:13 AM
Obscuring the Past: Contrasting the Effects of Silences in The Turn of the Screw and Wuthering Heights
Category: 11 Essay: James and Bronte | Greg Pearson
In their novels The Turn of the Screw and Wuthering Heights, Henry James and Emily Bronte each withhold from the reader significant details from their character’s pasts. These silences, while similar on the basic level that some fact has been obscured, are nonetheless used to achieve very different ends. In...
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Posted by gpearson on October 23, 2003 at 07:59 AM
Cowboy Up
Category: 04 Blog: Alice in Wonderland | Greg Pearson
The “wet, cross and uncomfortable” (21) creatures assembled at the beginning of chapter three are simply trying to decide how best to get dry, but a series of miscommunications arising from creative wordplay turns the situation into a nonsensical fiasco. The Mouse begins by interpreting “dry” as “boring” and so...
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Posted by gpearson on October 07, 2003 at 02:31 AM
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Category: 03 Blog: Wuthering Heights | Greg Pearson
Catherine, who throughout much of the second half of the novel bears an unnatural resemblance to her mother, breaks from this mold when she agrees to marry Linton (209-210). And even though both marriages are not predicated on love, the motives behind each differ in ways that are important to...
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Posted by gpearson on September 30, 2003 at 01:17 AM
To Be But One Sensible Soul
Category: 02 Blog: Wuthering Heights | Greg Pearson
Surrounded by people beset with major emotional crises, Nelly Dean presents herself as the lone voice of reason in the saga of Wuthering Heights. She was “convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and that lodged in [her] body” (94). And while the reader might...
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Posted by gpearson on September 23, 2003 at 12:14 AM
Turn of the Screw
Category: 01 Blog: Turn of the Screw | Greg Pearson
It is not surprising that a person so single-mindedly bent on discovering a paranormal conspiracy begins to see evidence of one everywhere. So certain is the Governess of the obvious truth of her elaborate theory that for her it becomes a foregone conclusion, controlling how she interprets everything around...
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Posted by gpearson on September 16, 2003 at 02:00 AM
practice post
Category: Greg Pearson
Today's avalanche danger: low...
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Posted by gpearson on September 11, 2003 at 12:48 AM