The adventure of Yvain the knight

                    Yvain the knight is a French romance novel written by Chretien de Troyes. It’s all about romance and adventure. All started after Yvain’s cousin had been defeated by another knight called Esclados. Yvain the knight went to seek avenge for his cousin and decides to take on this task as a personal challenge.  Yvain defeats Esclados as he wished. Laudine, Esclado’s wife was really furious to learn that her husband has been killed by another knight. All she wants is revenge. They looked all over the castle to find Yvain, but they couldn’t find him. With the help of Lunete, Yvain cured from his wounded, and he falls in love with Calogrenant’s widow Laudine.  

                  Later in the novel, Yvain convinced Laudine and marries her. But after the marriage was done, Gawain convinces Yvain to go on an adventure with, which Laudine agreed to let him go. But she gives him a year to come back to her or he will be concider as her husband no more if he takes longer than a year to come back. Years after, Yvain has forgotten the promise he made to his wife, and he goes crazy because Laudine bars him to come back. He would do everything to get his wife back.

                In order for Yvain to get his wife back, he goes through a lot of difficult situations, and difficult decision. For example, in the forest he intervenes in the battle of the lion and the snake. At first he didn’t know which one he should helped, and then he chooses to help the lion. And the lion in his turn pays repays him with a lot of loyalties.

               On his journey to reconquer Laudine back, the knight Yvain has a lot of difficulties. One of the difficulties is that he had to follow order; he also has to forget about himself and fight battle for other people. In another word he has to put his personal thoughts or feelings aside and do hat ever they ask him to do. For example, Yvain has been ordered to fight his beloved one Gawain. These two characters both love each other but they had to put their love aside and fight as required the two sisters. Yvain turns himself into an avenger to help woman who’s in need.  Yvain wins back his wife with the help of Lunete, after rescuing her from being burned. 

The thief and the dogs

           "The thief and the dogs" I have read this novel twice, it's really interesting. This novel wrote by Mahfouz has a lot of lessons. The novel begins in a morning where Said Mahran the main personage of the novel is released from prison, after a four year sentence for robbery. 

           This novel is all about vengeance Said wants and reintegrate in his community or society again. Since he has been in prison, he lost every single thing he had. His wife, a book that he wrote and his six-year old daughter, and he is trying to get everything back.Said plans to take revenge on Ilish Sidra, an associate who turned him in and who then, after Said’s incarceration, secured everything that Said had home, money, and his wife, Nabawiyya.  Ilish is provided with the police protection, which make it difficult for Said to get his revenge. But Said is trying everything he can to get Ilish down.

           Said visits Ali al-Junaydi, his late father’s religious counselor. The Sufi sheikh offers him food, advice, and sanctuary. Said accepts the hospitality and spends his first night of freedom at the sheikh’s house. Within the next three weeks, he returns there twice, after criminal deeds. 

          This personage Sheikh in the novel played an important role. Even though all Said wants is revenge, Sheikh is trying to convince him that revenge isn't a good way to solve problem or to ease emotional pain. We can clearly notice that Said is emotionally in pain from the beginning of the novel till its end. Said loses everything once he got into prison, he tried to get his belonging back, unfortunately he cannot. Even his six-year daughter doesn't recognize him anymore; she keeps running away from him. All of this things put Said in pain and all he wants his to get revenge from the people who put in in this situation. Sheikh, the religious counselor father is giving him good advice to forget about revenge which he thinks that isn't going to take Said nowhere. Said as a poor man doesn't listen to any advice, all Said has in his head is vengeance. It is really sad that Said died seven days right after he has released from prison. 

         This character "Sheikh", Mahfouz used him in the novel as a tool to preach against war, crime and violence that where happened in his society in this era. While reading the novel, it gives you a good sense of how our society his and how people actually prefer the way of violence to ease their pain. 

Analysis of The Tempest

                  The tempest is a play by William Shakespeare. Throughout this play you can notice that power is making the rules. In the centuries that the play was written it was all about power. If you have power, you can control and dominate anything. When I look these two characters "Prospero and Caliban" very close, i see that there is a big conflict between them. Caliban was the first one who ruled that island before Prospero with his devil power taken over or conquered the island. Even though there is cold war between these two characters,they still teaching or share to each other things they know. For example Prospero taught Caliban how to read and how to speak his language. In Caliban in return taught Prospero a lot of good things about the island. However, the fact that Prospero is the one is ruled the island, there is a kind of jalousie. Caliban hates the fact that Prospero is ruling the island and he doesn't have power to control the island anymore, and he feels like Prospero is using him or makes him turns his slave to do whatever he requests. For these reasons, Caliban wants to be free and takes control of the island again. To do so, Caliban wants to kill Prospero in order to take control of the island again. 

                  There is also an exchange of culture between Stephano and Caliban. Stephano at first thinks Caliban was a a fish because he smells just like a fish. Then he thinks he can make a lot of money with Caliban which he considers to be a strange creature if he takes it back home. As back home Stephano is just a poor guy in the middle class with respect, he thinks that would be a good idea to take Caliban with him. In his mind people are going to like it because Caliban look like a fish, and he actually expects to get respect if he does such a thing. Caliban in his turn wants Stephano to be his master, so that Stephano can help him killing Prospero. 

                    There are several other conflicts in the Tempest. Caliban against Prospero, Alonzo and Antonio against Prospero. All of these conflicts have the same objective which is the envy to dominate. They all want to be free from the one who has the power to control them. 

                     Later in the play, Shakespeare concluded that everything goes back to normal. At the end everybody make peace to each other. As they have made peace, they plan to get back to their native country. As for Caliban, the play doesn’t say what Prospero did with him. But from my understanding, I can assumed that Prospero leave Caliban on the island. I assumed Caliban stay on the island because at the end Prospero rejected him. And I don’t think no one would still want to be in contact with someone who hates you and wants your death.

      

      

Catgut

                Catgut by Anna Gavalda is really interesting. Through that text, there are a lot of things that catch my attention.

                In summary, the story talks about a veterinarian who worked in an a small city where people don’t really trust a woman who’s taking care of their animal. If they bring their animal in,they have to wait and see what she is doing. Unlucky for her, a night a customer called her to come taking car of his animal who was sick. Once she got there, there wasn't any problem with the person's animal. They were drunk and the only thing they wanted is to abuse her. The doctor in her turn take revenge of what they had done to her. 

               

               In think anger and emotion make Dr. Lejaret to take revenge from the people who hurt her. Because not only people don't trust her to take care their animal but also they are not paying her well after she worked really hard for them. Now does what she did to the three men right after they raped her? No, for me the men and the Doctor shouldn't do a such of thing. But in my opinion, i think Dr Lejaret takes her one justice because it might be the only way she could get justice from these men. Waiting on someone else or a judge to give justice might take too long or she might not get it. So, because the men were drunk and harmless, she took the advantage to take out the testicles of one and graft the balls below the Adam’s apple of the other one. 

               At the end i think the doctor kind of feeling bad for what she did because it was really wrong. But she was not afraid to pay the consequence of what she had done. All she did is asked to her neighbor to take care of her pets and waiting for the police car.The last sentence actually catches my attention "I only hope that they won’t turn on the siren." I think she only fear that they don't put on the siren after she got arrested. Maybe she thinks that is a shamed for her as a doctor who have done a terrible action.       

    

                

Contentment

         This poem mostly talk about contentment and riches.

                  Health or reputation: which is held dearer? Health or possessions: which has more worth? These quotes are saying that nothing worth more than health.  A lot of people think if they have plenty of money, they don’t need anything else. But the thing is you may have all the riches in the world, without health your riches is useless. You cannot be happy if you don’t have health. Health is the most important thing someone need. If you have health you can work and have and enjoy anything you may want. However you may have everything but you cannot enjoy it because you don’t have health. Health is the most dearer than everything else. In other words these quotes are asking what is the most important to you. Your life or all the fancies you have. Do all your possessions mean something to you if you don’t have health? Money doesn't mean anything once you are on your deathbed that’s what these quotes are basically saying.    

“Great love incurs great expense, and great riches incur great fear, but contentment comes at no cost.” I think this quote means to possess some good stuff you have to pay for it. But happiness is cost-less; you don’t need money to be content. You have to spend a lot of money to have the perfect love. We tend to believe that if we have money we will be happy for the rest of our live. Experiences prove it wrong. Money don’t bring happiness, you may need money to give you fancy things like materialistic but not happiness. Now a day money talk, if you don’t have money there are some sort of things that will not possess. This means the society which we are living in force us in some ways to recognize that money is what count and you have to possess it in order to survive or have anything you want. However, you become fearful when you have a lot of money. You don’t feel secure, you mind isn’t in peace because you are worry about people who are jealous of you. Most of the time, people want to be rich because they think they will be happy and other people will show them respect. But they forget that money don’t buy happiness or contentment. That is the reason why most of the times people with a lot of money are stressful. You can be happy without money and once you’re happy you don’t have any stress and you are fearless. 

Motion and Use

                      I’ve read the poem Motion and Use of the Tao Te Ching. There are some quotes that catch my attention. But I’m going to give my opinion one, which is "The motion of the way is to return".

                    From what I understand, I can explain that this quote is referring to "Life." Life of any kind of living. When I think about "life", I notice that it is going in circle (not to say backward). In my opinion, life starts from a point and ends at this same point. What I mean by this is that before any kind of living come to life, I consider it was in rest which means it was dead. Once life gets into that kind of living, it comes with weakness and gain strength over the times, it lives, grows with the support of another kind of living if there is one. But as time passes, this kind of living has skills and does all sorts of things in its own. However, in a certain periods of times this same kind of living starts to lose its strength, it starts to be weakening again and loses all the skills it has. For instance, let’s take a baby who just born. Let's consider before the baby was born, he or she wasn't existed (the baby was dead). I take the words did not existed as same as the word death, because something who is dead means that something is not existed. The baby comes to life with nothing, it is weak, can't help himself, he need someone to depend on. As time passes, the baby begin to grow, gain strength, becomes an adult, he has skills and other stuff. As life is a circle and as it is approaching to end at the point it begins, the adult who was a baby at the beginning starts to lose all of his strength, he becomes weak, he loses all skills and the other stuff he has. This means the adult who was a baby become a baby again as he or she is closed to the end where his or her live started. The baby becomes old. However e to understand that it is not like this all the time. Not all kind of living goes all this steps, some of them goes straight to the end. In other words they live for a short amount of times; they don't have a chance to enjoy their life. But as I wanted to make my argument clear, I pointed all of these things out. The reason why I say the adult become a baby again is because there is a time where he cannot help himself anymore, other people have to take of him like he had been taking care of when he first came to life. When this person finally gets to the point his life began, he or she dies. Life is traveling to return to the point where it starts. I prefer to life is going backward, it is going backward because it takes us directly back to where it took us. 

Introductory Blog

                        Everything looks really strange when you leave your country to go a different one. All you put in mind is that it will be a great adventure and you will enjoy it. But once you get there you seem to be lost, and feel you are not in the right place. It’s like they put you in a game without knowing how it is played. All you know is you are here and try to figure out how things work. That was me the first time I came to the USA. I wasn't in my skin at all.

                         My name is Stevens Alexis, I was born in Haiti. I move to the United States not too long ago. I lived in Florida before I came to Wisconsin.  I speak three different languages, which are Creole, French, these two are my first languages and English is my third one. I’m a pretty cool person. However, people sometimes think that I’m a really mean person which I don’t think is true. I love to play basketball. It is my passion to reach a higher level like NBA if I keep playing and working hard.

                        I’m a freshman at Silver Lake College who’s going for Computer Science. This is second semester I’m taking four classes. World literature is one of them. I took French literature before, it was pretty interesting. I read a lot of poems and I learn plenty stuff about some writers. So, this semester I’m taking world literature, which based on all writers and theirs poems all over the world. I’m pretty sure that I will benefice a lot from this course. And I hope it enhance my knowledge with things I didn't know or recalled me of stuff I might forget.