Realism

A Story of an Hour-
In “A Story of an Hour,” the protagonist is described as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” This suggests that she possess the desire to be free, but she cannot. The author continues his description by saying, “…but now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.” This explains how she is staring into the sky, just contemplating her freedom now that her husband is dead.

The social issue that Chopin is trying to solve is the lack of freedom of speech; women in the Victorian era were not allowed to express themselves. She also explains how women in marriages had to compromise everything for the man, in spite of their own desires. Louise questions herself by saying, “And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter?” The protagonist in this story is so repressed that the concept of love mystifies her.


"The Battle with Mr. Covey"
In this story the characters is known as a slave, but it has more detailed to it and in what kind of slaves he was. Like for example in the text the author wrote, “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, and the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” In my words and anybodies word, this mean that he was pretty much dead inside and had no reason to be happy what so ever. He also said how he felt when he saw this man beat him and tortured him like he would and could, just because he was a slave. Textual evidence to what I just said or somewhat similar was, “At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint gleam of hope that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my life and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear....” This may also means something of how he wants to be free and how he sometimes visualizes his freedom, but at the end the dreams and hope vanish away only to come to reality which is the fact the he is a owned slave and will live with fear and somewhat hope for his remaining time.

There is one social issue that this writer wants to solve, and that would have to be slavery. In this story he is talking much about a African American slave who is being treated like an animal by his owner. He is talking of how this slave gets whipped and bowled off for no reason. At the end of this story he tries to show and prove that a slave will not always take every bad thing that they go through. They are also human and have to right to stand up for them. This story is told by an African American writer therefore, they might know what it really is to go through this torture.
I feel that Douglass’s purpose for writing this was to show and explain with every detailed how he struggled to be safe and how he was tired of being treated bad, like he was no human. He wants to prove that a white man isn’t the only people or race with rights. He feels like everything and everyone should be equal since everyone has to ability to fight and defend themselves whether they are black or white. I fell that he brought this for a certain reason and that was to stop slavery and show the horrible feeling and tortures slaves get, and get people to realize. This may had been along time ago, but then again it might have open peoples mind and their views of slavery.

A song by Tupac "Changes"

What is modern realism today? Well lots of things are. For example a have chose a piece of writing from one of my favorite rappers. Even though he may be up in heaven, when he was once here the only thing he would rap about was realism and how real life was for an African American person, and I may not be African American, but all of us can relate to some of the things he raps about. The song I have chosen is “changes.” This song talks about how hard people try to imagine a nice perfect life, when it really isn’t like that, and no matter how hard they try to change that, no changes are being made. There is this one specific line in the lyrics that makes me feel like he was tired of living the ugly, imperfect life. This was what he said, "Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?" Here is another phrase, “I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.” Where he is trying to throw out how things are almost too same like the old days, and how just because he is black things don’t change for them and people see them as bad people. One last Phrase and its most definitely self explanatory, “And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped & I never get to lay back.” And if you don’t know what it means figure it out.