Kris's 102 Blog

My favorite character from “Desiree’s Baby” is Madam Valmonde, she is the mother of Desiree. She is my favorite because even though Desiree was not actually hers and Desiree was a foundling Madam Valmonde still took her in. Even in that time period it was looked down upon to have a baby of unknown origins. When she visited Desiree when she had her baby, Madam Valmonde did not despise her daughter any less when she realized that the baby was racially mixed. She even hugged Desiree and kissed her on the cheek, a sign of a loving mother to her daughter. Another reason I loved Madam Valmonde is that when Desiree got kicked out of her marriage and house, Madam Valmonde told Desiree in a letter that she could come back home with her. And that even her baby could come live with Madam Valmonde. She was willing to risk the downfall of her own name to have her daughter stay with her. Now that is a mother’s love.

Having to watch my half-sister! I have to constantly watch my little half-sister while I have a full semester of class, have to drive my brother around because he is too lazy to get his own driver’s license. And then when I do get home around 3:00 I have to get my half-sister off the bus, make sure she does all her homework, and then on top of that cook dinner and then do my homework. All while my brother sits upstairs and plays video games. I can not get a job because their will by no one to be home when my 6 year old half-sister gets off the bus. My mom works late sometimes not coming home till 7 at night, and she does trust my brother who is 19 to watch her because he can barley watch himself as it is. The only time to myself is Sundays when I go to church and then spend the whole day at my boyfriend’s house. I also clean the house when I have time to in between breaks, its just stressful at times especially when I have a lot of homework or studying to do for classes. But I still love my family, just wish I could have a little bit of help from time to time.

In the story “The Storm” Calixta is married to a lower class man, she was beautiful and even caught the eye of a higher class man in her earlier years before she married. Alcee is a high class man, he was charmed by Calixta in their early days and they both had passion for each other. Married now, Calixta, and Alcee drift apart but on one stormy night they were brought together. Calixta is not to be entirely blamed for what happened in that house during the storm, Alcee was predatory towards her, when she moved away to get further away from him he just followed suit. He did not give her a chance to have her own space, he even went inside her house without permission. But she was also to blame for falling for him when they kissed, even when she knew that her husband and child were caught in this storm. I do not think the story blames them both, as the ending left on a happy note. And nothing ever like that happens again, they both get the passion out and go separate ways.

It takes a lot of persuading to get me to step foot outside my comfort zone. I am as stubborn as an ox, and will complain your ear off if it is something drastically new. But I have gotten better with time to push myself out of my comfort zone and try new things. The main person to push me is my boyfriend, he is patient with me and won’t get upset if I become reluctant to push myself. But he also, keeps onto me about trying new things, even though he is the introvert and I am the extrovert.

Most of the time it is to push me to either try a new game, or new a new place to hang out. I love to go places, but usually I stay in my little window of stores, parks, and eateries. I am happy he has taken me out to many places I probably would never have chosen to step foot in.

Mrs. Chopin was raised by the very intelligent women of her family. Even though my father never died, my mom and father divorced when I was 7 and I was raised by my mother and my Nana till I was the age of 13. Both women that helped raise me were brilliant women. I am also very independent and intelligent, and have a love for writing.

In the time frame of my parent’s divorce I plunged myself into reading and learning how to write stories and being influenced by writers. J.K. Rowling who wrote the famous Harry Potter series and Erin Hunter who wrote the Warriors series were two of my favorite authors at the time. Mrs. Chopin when things went a muck in her life she turned to writing and wrote stories that were incredibly successful.

In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the Grandmother is the one who caused the death of the whole family. She was the one that got the kids into a frenzy to see the “old plantation” when in reality she did not even know where she was. The Grandmother took them down the old dirt road where the Misfit was, she also flagged him down and then blurted out who he was when he came to help them. So I think that the beginning should have changed, so that the Grandmother had stayed behind and the rest of the family went to Florida. That way Bailey’s plan on not stopping till they got to Florida, or the cat causing the accident and the Grandmother never recognizing the Misfit ever happened.

And the one event that caused the story to turn out like it did was when the grandmother was talking about the plantation and took them down the dirt road. If they would have kept going down to Florida the family probably would not have met their demise.

Flannery O’Conner is a fabulous writer, and her book “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is one her books that left me stunned. From how the family dynamic of the chaotic family, to the people they meet like the barbeque man named Red Sammy who seemed fine except how he treated his wife. Also, the Grandmother was not very nice and was very stuck up in her ways about things. But what really stunned me was the ending when the Grandmother’s family meet the Misfit and his gang. With a car accident like the one the family endured flipped over and the car unusable, the father Bailey had a good idea to call to the first person he saw coming down the road. In his defense he did not even know what the Misfit looked like and thought he was just a tad bit shady, but nothing too bad that Bailey did not think to ask him for help.

The Grandmother on the other hand screamed out that the man helping them was the Misfit which caused a whole scene. The two men that were with the Misfit took the mother, father, two kids into the woods and no one except the two men come back out. Which I suspect that they have killed them. All that is left is the Grandmother who frantically pleads for the Misfit not to kill her, but the Misfit does it anyways putting three rounds into the Grandmother. I was not expecting such a gruesome ending to the story, it was kind of sad that no one mad it out except the bad guys.

My all time favorite anime is Fruits Basket, its about this girl who is pretty much homeless living in a tent in the woods. When all of a sudden a boy who goes to her school finds her and she finds out she has been sleeping on his land, so she goes to the house that the boy lives in and meets all of Soma family that live there. Well the part that is a surprise or twist to this seemingly normal and boring anime, is that whenever someone from the Soma family touches or gets hugged by the opposite sex they turn into one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs. The family is cursed and had been cursed for hundreds of years, and the poor main character named Mrs. Honda is stuck in the middle of this.

Writing papers were hard for me because I always had ideas but could never make them flow easy on paper. I also was terrible and still am not the best when it comes to grammar and make plenty of mistakes. I am trying to fix that and work harder in getting better at catching my mistakes. English essays were always the hardest to write because they were so structured and the fear of accidentally citing something wrong and getting marked for plagiarism scared me. But having an outline to help me keep on track and make things flow better they have gotten easier to write. The work cited page was probably my least favorite page to work on, it had to be a certain way, and when I first went into college English I had no clue how to write one. Got marked a lot for missing a phrase or misspelling a word. So yeah citations, grammar, and the work cited page were all my struggles with writing.

“Where the Wild Things Are” when I was younger did not seem to be filled with

underlying themes. But as I got older and listening to it again I saw that there were themes hidden in the story, and it was not just about a misbehaving boy who got sent to his room with no food and fell asleep to wake up to his mom leaving his food for him.

The themes I found hidden in the book were:

1. There is power in the imagination of people
2. Childhood is full of monsters (raw emotions, anxiety, etc.)
3. Once people tame their own monsters they become the ultimate KING of the Wild Things
4. And there is no place like home and love

Adults can see some of these messages because they experience them themselves or have experienced them in their childhood.