The Waste Land by TS Elliot.

Since the moment I started to read “The Waste land” by Elliot I wondered why it has been called “one of the most important poem s of the 20th century”, but I jut had to read the first lines to realized why it has been considered as one of the most important poems, because a phrase like; “April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) are quite difficult to forget, due to the fact that they are very meaningful for anyone who has a sensitive heart.

Elliots’ greatest masterpiece “The Waste Land” impressed me a lot, because we can find all Eliot’s knowledge, about Latin, Greek, German and Sanskrit elements from mythology and history. Moreover what really called my attention was the first part of the poem in which it is intended to show the problems of life and death, on existentialism.

From that point of view in the first part of the poem we can come up with a final conclusion of it; life brings death and death brings life, like in a closed perpetual circle.

To conclude I’d like to mention that even though the poem was hard to read and understand, I could get at a first glance the importance of the poem as it was written in a realistic way, because if we observe the first stanza of the poem we are going to realize that it contains a few romantic and beautiful imagery from the past, which will not again reappear in the rest of the poem. These past almost pastoral imagery serve as a sharp contrast to the horrifying and real images depicted throughout the rest of the poem-degenerating, destructive, decomposing and debilitating, which in result creates a very disturbing picture of the wasteland-the world we live in.

D.H Lawrence: "Odour of Chrysanthemums" & "The rocking Horse winner."

D. H. Lawrence short stories such as “The rocking Horse winner” and “Odour of Chrysanthemums” are closely connected to me, because both are full of symbolism and realism.

I believe that these two stories are connected because even though they differ in the plot both are related to one another in the sense in which they show family issues with real and possible stories. That it is why both stories are full of descriptions of the spaces and emotions in order to keep a real and believable story to their readers and in that way engage more easily to the readers with the stories.

On the one hand we have "Odorous of Chrysanthemums” which from my own perspective, Chrysanthemums symbolize the Bate's broken marriage in this story. Mrs. Bates, Elizaberh does not like the smell of Chrysanthemums because it reminds her of Mr. Bates. She tells to the readers her dislike of the flowers to her children by saying "It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole." When Mr. Bates dies at the end of the story, a vase chrysanthemums was knocked over and breaks. Mrs. Bates is quick to clean up the mess of the chrysanthemums, symbolizing her marriage.

To me, Mrs. Bates has an epiphany towards the end of the story. She is more upset about the financial aspects of her husband's death than the actual loss of him. She realizes that she wasted her time getting angry with her husband and judging him, even though he was just a hardworker trying to support his family. She realizes that she is the worse spouse and fears meeting him again in death.

On the other hand, “The rocking horse winner” that sustains its perfect pitch from start to finish. This story also tells to the readers another family conflict such as the lack of money inside the family house. The main point to compare both stories is to put on discussion both female characters of the story to realize that the major problem of 19 century women was that they tend to feel unhappy and frustrated, because of their lives as mothers and wives that weren’t allowed to be free or succeed.

To conclude, it is relevant to mention that these two short stories share an empathic point of view of the female characters, as well as they show the strong role of men in society. Besides, are simply realistic because in every detail of the stories we as readers are able to associate real life to the story and be more engage to the stories.

A room of one's own by Virginia Wolf.

I strongly believe that we all enjoy Virginia Woolf’s book title; a room of one’s own, because we have had probably being interrupted while writing or reading something and as far as I’m concerned, most of people tend to stop that process of thinking while being interrupted. However, for many of us, this just isn't an option. But a lack of writing space should never keep us from writing. With a little determination and some creativity, we'll always find some way to work. From my own perspective, as a future teacher I’ll probably use this book to teach my students the importance of having a space to write or be alone when thinking.

First of all, I believe that we as human beings are lack of privacy due to the fact that we live in a society and we have to share our sapce with others. Secondly, we have had the ones that for example, while being children had to share our room with our sisters or brothers and when being an adult our children interrupt our private space, but we must have always a room of our own in which to write, a space internal that is fully and wholly our own, if not a physical space where we can quietly fold our hands, not dishcloths or the pijamas of small children, and ponder. And in our writing, we must strike matches in the dark, starting with the dark that lies within us. Because that dark will connect to the dark of another and another, like the thin thread of a spider web. And those threads connecting will keep us all whole.

From a feminst perspective I think that it is important for us, women, to know the importance of having a private space to think, to write, to read, to feel, etc. leaving aside all those daily duties and enjoy the time with ourselves in order to know us better and in that way the ones that love to write can have more inspiration and take a piece of paper and write their emotions and moments with themselves.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

Progress, for whom?...

I truly believe that no one is against "progress”, because the word progress supposedly implies an “improvement" for the society that is changing. But, the big problem that the social-economical progress has it is related to how just some people can have access to that change, take advantage of it and be influenced in a positive way. On the other side there is a very expensive price of progress that some people have to pay, due to the fact that progress is not just measured in a monetary way it also can be measured in the amount of suffered lives, especially those lives that didn’t have the opportunity to take advantage from the progress.

As far as we are concerned Governments have been pushed progress on non educated people to obtain monetary gains and increase their economic development, but we just need to observe what is really happening; poor people is becoming more vulnerable and rich people is increasing their profitst at the expense of those disadvantaged population.

During the Victorian era in England this situation was not completely different from the situation that we are living in today’s world. The British considered themselves as the model of the civilized world. However, beneath the surface of this great empire laid millions of subjugated people. This unfair social and economical situation experienced among the poorest it is also very well depicted in “Oliver Twist”, a novel written by Charles Dickens in the XIX Century. The main character of this novel, Oliver Twist was a poor and an orphan child who also experienced the injustices of life paying the price of the British progress during the industrialization process.

From my personal point of view, I believe that Oliver's experiences demonstrate the legal silence and invisibility of the poor, because the main character also represents the typical stereotype of the poor. However, Dickens himself exhibits middle-class prejudice, because he reproduced through the story the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes in Fagin, the"old" and "villainous Jew” who abused of some children to obtein money. This is in itself another problematic in our contemporary society, as the inherent anti-Semitism which attaches to Dickens’ descriptions of him are difficult for the modern reader to dispassionately assimilate.

To conclude, I think that we have to bear in mind the Universal Declaration of Human rights when we contemplate what is happening in our society and we cannot forget that this Declaration is not only concerned with civil and political rights but also with what are known as economic and social rights. Changes and progress for all societies should be always part of every single human being.

"The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens.

This English literature course have made me think about how through fictional and non-fictional stories, literature makes us reflect and appreciate societal issues. Since we have been reading and discussing some literature pieces we are being able to realize that literature is the mirror of society and it gives voice to those who are voiceless, it gives life to the lifeless and it also gives hope to the hopeless. However, because literature is the mirror of the society, some writer attempted to write or describe the flaws of life and weaknesses of humanity to justify both sides of mortal and immortal life.

If we start to analyze the book called “The Signal-man” a ghost story written by Charles Dickens we are going to realize that his author wanted to portray to the readers societal issues that were occurring during the Victorian time as well as his own view of life. As we know “The signal-man” was setting in the middle of the 19th century, a period of time in which industrialization and progress were the main issues among the European society.

As I mentioned before, there are many real elements of a society that we can find in a literature piece and sometimes those real elements are mixed up with non-fictional literature elements in order to represent in an enjoyable way of reading the society problems. In the signalman both elements; societal issues, non-fictional elements and metaphors were portrayed to show to the readers how the main character saw the society, he was just a specter of what was happening in the 19th century mechanized environment.

Literature elements such as; supernatural things (the ghost) and the box in which the signalman used to lived, represent Charles Dickens’ state of mind. He also wanted to depict in his book his realistic perspective in which he was feeling the societal changes and the mechanization of humanity.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

While I was reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley I had the opportunity to imagine the entire story and I felt like a little child while reading it, because I was able to open my mind and think as a kid who is always wondering why things happen.

According to the period in which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she was very influenced on the nature of Romanticism as well as her own experiences with life. If we think about the hidden message that Mary Shelley presented us in the book, we are going to realize that the story can be read as a tale of what happens when a man tries to create a child without a woman. Furthermore, the fact that the main character, Victor the modern scientist who created the monster was challenging the nature through his experiment represents how science and religion were confronting at each other, because it can be represented the powerful idea that man could change nature and being seen as God when having control of technology.

If we want to see the societal issues that Shelley depicted in her book, we just have to focus our attention in the main character, Victor, the modern scientist who unleashed upon an unsuspecting society. He was not fully aware of the consequences of his creation, the monster called Frankenstein, a new race of human beings. He spent his entire life trying to destroy the same creation. His excesses finally destroy him. From my point of view Victor represented the part of the psyche that is governed by the instinctive impulses of sex or aggression, as probably Freud could also describe him in his office.

To conclude I’d like to mention that I really like this book, because even though I’ve had read it before, this second time I could realized the context in which it was written. Besides, I also was able to open my mind and read as a child, due to the fact that through the image of Frankenstein I remembered the period when I was a child and as him I had to learn through my observations and by imitating what I saw, as well as Frankenstein Jr.

"I wandered lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth.

Wordsworth poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” can be very easy for us to interpret it if we know something about the Romantic era and its poetry, due to the fact that it emphasized on feelings such as freedom from rules, spontaneity, solitary life, intuition, love of beauty and nature and some irrational ideas about the self.

From my point of view, I believe that this poem puts the reader in the poet's state of mind, because it describes his process of thinking as someone who was wandering of a cloud, in its celestial route above earth in order to represent a peaceful factor such as loneliness. Although, to me loneliness does not carry a negative connotation; one can read this line as peaceful solitude as opposed to loneliness. Moreover, we can see through the poem that Wordsworth was not only alone, in fact he was happy to be alone as he enjoyed the tranquility of solitude while contemplating daffodils’ beauty.

To conclude, I’d like to relate this poem to my own experience with loneliness and what I always do to fight against that feeling. In Wordsworth case, the contemplation of nature was his only way to avoid sadness. In my own case to look at the stars give me the strengths and the hope I need to proceed when I feel sad and alone. Some other times I just appreciate the stars and the sky without having any reason, just to observe God's creation and realize what life has giving me. Some people sometimes fail to appreciate nature's wonders as they go about their daily routines. We have to learn to appreciate our environment.