O'Connor Baldwin and Alexie Reflection Essay

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Reflection Paper

The readings I enjoyed the most were James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and Sherman Alexie’s “The Reservation Cab Driver.” Each of these readings was different. The Baldwin and O’Connor readings were short stories and the Alexie reading was a poem—but I felt like each one spoke to me in a meaningful way, and that is why I liked them best. “Sonny’s Blues” made me think about the special connection that brothers have even when they do not understand each other very well. I was happy to read this story as it concluded with an empathetic scene in which the narrator finally begins to understand Sonny and sympathize with him. O’Connor’s short story was different in that it really troubled me—and I could not get it out of my mind. I often found myself thinking about the characters, the mother and Julian and the black woman on the bus and her child. I especially liked the ending, however, with the reversal that changed everything and challenged my perspective and my understanding of what was happening. The mother, who annoyed me as much in the beginning of the story as she annoyed Julian suddenly became sympathetic to me and I understood myself in the light of Julian’s reaction to his mother’s condition: the epiphany that meant for him became my epiphany too (and I think that was O’Connor’s intention all along). Alexie’s poem was one of my favorite readings of the course: I loved the simplicity of it, the humor, the irony, the subtlety of Alexie’s jabs, and the heart that could be felt beating within the verses.

What I learned about myself as a person from reading these works was that I need to spend more time in reflection. I don’t want to be the type of person who doesn’t think deeply, who doesn’t notice others or understand what they are going through. Flannery O’Connor managed to break my heart in a way I did not expect to happen. James Baldwin managed to open my eyes and make me see a side of people that I did not expect to see. Sherman Alexie made me laugh and made me stop and wonder why we are always caught up in our own self-interest when really life can be so simple. I enjoyed the hard-boiled character of the Reservation Cab Driver—a man who free of sentimentality but very aware of the irony of things. These writers made me feel like I had some soul searching to do—and they all made me want to read more of their works, too. I now have O’Connor, Baldwin and Alexie on my list.

I also feel that thanks to these works, my ability to critically analyze a text evolved.

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Part of that is because these works were so well written that it almost made it easy to see how the writer was working on the reader. In other stories, there was some ambiguity that I was not sure how to think of it—like in Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” This story may have had some underlying meaning that I was supposed to perceive, but I felt like I could not quite be sure about how it was working on me. In my writing on this paper I felt like I struggled to capture what it was I was supposed to be seeing. I felt like I wasn’t quite getting it even though I was trying to put things together and make it work. I could not tell if this was my inability to analyze it effectively or if the writer was simply not as in control of the narrative as, say, O’Connor was with hers. With O’Connor’s story, I could go back and see how she was setting me up for a reversal, how she was preparing the way for a greater understanding of myself at the end. What I like about Alexie was that the simplicity of the poem helped keep me hooked, and the way he used words made me start thinking about concepts and ideas that were inspired by the names he gave characters.

I think that in the future I would like to keep a journal and write about my reactions to the stories and books I read. Writing about what I have read in this class has helped me to think more about my own feelings on the stories and how the impacted me. I feel like writing is a way to commune within yourself, to give voice to your inner thoughts, and even a way to make yourself just think. I enjoy letting my mind go as soon as I start writing: I like the idea of my mind being like a wound up toy that is ready to spring into action as soon as you set it down. For me, putting pen to paper is….....

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