In class: Hitting Budapest

Hitting Budapest

What are the primary features of this world--spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? 

The primary features of the world in this story would be poverty, large amount of land, and hunger. I say poverty because the children in this story are compelled to search for food (guavas) to eat due to their hunger. They often speak of what life they would like to live that consists of America, houses, and being able to bathe and look nice everyday. The large of amount of land is there because the children are looking for food in multiple places so the country they live in must be vast in order for them to do that, especially if they are only looking for guava trees. That notion cold be due to the cultural feature of the world. A biological feature of this world would be pregnancy.   


What is the world’s ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? 

This world's main belief would have that you have to survive anyway you can. The children continue to go from place to place stealing guava from the trees. They do not seem at all guilty because they are hungry. When they see the woman has committed suicide, they devise a plan to sell her shoes to get food. Another belief would be not to waste food. When they first meet the skinny woman with a camera, they become intrigued by what she is eating. They, then, are later angry with her when she throws what is left of the food on the ground because she did not offer it to them if she did not want the rest and wasted food. Due to the high amount of poverty and a character's pregnancy, they are furious that she would waste perfectly good food. 


What are the precise strategies that are used by its creator to convey the world to us and us to the world? 

The writer sticks to the child's point of view and uses descriptions of the outsider woman with the camera you would never think of using like "the skinny woman" and "I can tell from the vein on the side of her neck, and the way she smacks her big lips, that what she is eating tastes good." The lady at end hanging by the woman is described with mostly the way she is dressed and how thin she is. 


How are our characters connected to the world? 


The characters are connected to the world because they are stealing from it. They are stealing from every guava tree they see since the tree they used to go to is now empty. 


And how are we the viewer or reader or player connected to the world?”

We are connected by the Child's point of view used. 

The Dewbreaker

I identify with the wife in the short story Seven. I identify with the wife because of the realities of immigration. In most cases, one member of the family goes to America (usually the husband) and then works to file for the rest of the family so that they could all live in America together.

The wife reminds me of my mother and how she felt coming to the United States. When my stepfather filed for us, he had to file for my mother and me. My younger brother, who was just a baby at the time, did not need to worry because since my stepfather was a citizen, he, too, was a citizen. He just had to get on a plane.

Unlike the characters in the story, we did not spend out first night in an apartment. My stepfather found a house with the help of his co-workers. A lot like the character in Seven, my mother wanted to work and my father did not really want her to. She spoke English because Jamaica has a  British education system but a lot of places assumed that she did not. She ended up going to a community college where she had to prove she could speak English properly.

I think this short story has a very realistic view of a man's life without his wife until she can come to the United States. While women would hope that their men would not be led astray by other women in her absence, the main character's thought is what she does not know cannot hurt her. What matters now is that they are together and that they must learn to blend in with the American lifestyle. They are not in Haiti anymore.

How are gender roles defined?

I read Yellow Wallpaper, Even the Queen, and A Good Man is Hard to find along with the class reading of Girl.
I think when it comes to gender roles it all boils down to dominance. Males have always been dominant in a patriarchal society so it is stereotypical to see male characters that are assertive and look down at women for being the fairer sex. The power a man holds is always put forth. For example, in the story Girl, the main character is being informed of all the things she needs to do that would make her a good wife and find a good man. She is not told how to be a better person for herself. She is making herself a better fit for a more powerful man. She is told specific things like how to iron clothes, how to not behave in the presence of a man, and how to cook. That is the stereotypical housewife.
In the play the Doll House, the gender roles are clearly defined. The wife goes out shopping and the husband belittles her for spending so much. He even shames her for buying macaroons. The title of the story makes sense when you delve deeper into the work and see more of how the husband treats his wife - like a child because in the time period of this work, women were seen as helpless creatures who need men's guidance to survive. He does not talk to her about anything serious and she leaves him in the end, stating that she has been treated like a doll her whole life, first by her father and then by him. That says a lot about gender roles when it comes to marriage as well. When a man marries a female, he takes the place of her father as her authority figure.
It is quite sad that this had to occur back in the day and it is even sadder that a lot of men still think like about women today. I think relationships between a man and women should not be a relationship that requires authority over the other but rather mutual understanding, support, and good communication.

Wes Anderson and Stefan Zweig

I have read Stefan Zweig's Twenty-Four Hours in the life of a Woman and watched Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. There are a lot of similarities between the two works. 

The two works shared the same theme of telling your story to a stranger. I think it is an interesting concept because in today's society, the thought of telling your whole life story to a stranger is the last thing on your mind. People do it on social media sometimes but it can be deleted from public view or can be denied in person. When you are telling someone in person, it is a lot harder to deny anything. Why a stranger? I think it is because if you were to tell someone you knew, they would be more likely to pity you. The characters in both Stefan Zweig's literature and Wes Anderson's film do not need pity or remorse for the events that affected them. This notion leads to a more romantic way of presenting characters because as a society, we are used to pitying characters like that because it is hard to feel empathy for something that has never happened to you. In movies today, characters like this would cry and seek comfort. In these characters, they only seek understanding and want someone else to know their story. Why? Well, I suppose they figure someone out there should know. 

Wes Anderson's strength as a director is the ability to recreate time periods with more accurate film styles, color palettes, blocking of characters, and not overdoing the use of modern technology. When people create movies now about stories that take place in another time period, they tend to overdo it, and it starts to look less authentic to the time period. An example of that would have to be the newest version of The Great Gatsby. I think he direct influence from Stefan Zweig's story content and the literary devices that he used. Story is really big in the movie and Wes Anderson tends to take on subjects that not a lot of other directors of our time would due to the popular demand of other movie genres. 

After reading the novella and seeing the movie, I have come to the conclusion that the similarities are no accident. He does use what he has taken from the author in a way that he can twist it in his way and create his own worlds. This makes him a good storyteller.