60-5-4

She hurried down the stairs breathlessly, kicking and knocking over mother’s work table that was set up right by the stairs. For many people, balancing passion and responsibility is a walk in the park, but in Theodora’s case, it was more than difficult. In the story April Showers by Edith Wharton, the protagonist, Theodora Dace had to find a way to balance out her passion for writing and family responsibility. **(Great intro. Can you find a way to insert your thesis statement here?)** Theodora is a very brave protagonist who still manages to seek a way to write and still be able to care for her younger siblings. Her mother suffers from a sickness and leaves her in charge of making sure her brother and sister get ready for school every morning. With so many things going on, she finds it hard to write and still be responsible for other things, but every minute she gets, it’s all put into the novel. Once her brother and sister are off to school, she locks herself in her room, drops her head on the old wooden table that stood alone in the corner writing her literature. Sometime she even for gets about responsibilities around the house that she doesn’t even get half of the things needed to be done finished because of her engagement in writing. **(I think this a a good description of the conflict in the story. What literary terms best describe what is happening here?)** She plans on giving the money back to her family if she gets her novel published and also to send her brother to a better school. She stays busy at home while her father runs off to work taking advantage of every second she gets to get her novel done. This makes the tone of the story a serious. She really wants writing literature to be part of her life and now gets real serious and doing does all that she can to make that dream come true knowing that she has lots of other responsibilities around the house. When her uncle, James comes from Boston, he starts to tell her about Kathleen Kyd, the famous society novelist, she gets even more serious and motivated about writing that it starts to eat at her. She feels as if something that is part of her is missing the moments that aren’t spent writing. **(Are there any literary terms you can use to describe her feeling?)** Edith Wharton makes this story very interesting for the reader by the way she puts in dialect. Theodora’s uncle seems to be like an uneducated character by the way the Wharton creates his dialect. When talking to John, Theodora’s father he says, “The bath-rooms alone are worth the money” from his dialect it can be seen that he probably hasn’t been to school as toddler. **(Why do you think Wharton did this?)** In Conclusion, Theodora has been through so much to try and balance out her passion and responsibilities that she was heartbroken once she found out that her novel has been mistaken for someone else’s that she cries till her she could no longer see clearly. She decided after being embarrassed that for now on none of her writings will be seen by the publishers that messed it up ever again.


 * (Luke, you did a very good job of setting up the paper with the intro paragraph. If you include a thesis statement the intro and the rest of the paper will sound even more structured and well-argued. If you have trouble with creating a thesis statement, re-read your concluding paragraph and use it at a guideline (think of "tying" or "wrapping" the intro and conclusion together**). **You have done a great job of summarizing the main points of the story. Take another look at your draft and see if you can find places where the literary terms you are learning in class can be used to further describe what is going on.) -Rachel**

The yellow wall paper is a story written in the 1920’s the years when women were treated way differently from women of today. Back than women were treated less than men and usually were the ones doing house all the house work. Their husbands sometimes locked them in little rooms and wouldn’t allow them to leave. They had other people come in and do the house work like cooking and cleaning while they were in these cells. Their children were watch by other people and they were able to see them often. The protagonist Jane in this story is a very round charcter. **(how?)** She was mistreated by her husband John. She was locked in a room alone and was going crazy. Her children were watched by other people and she wasn’t able to see them. She was confused at first, didn’t know what to do. Her husband was treating her like a child and didn’t really know what was going on with her. All she wanted was freedom, to be free from all this and live her life. The yellow paper that was on the wall, symbolized patriarchy, she ripped it off the wall. **(where else do you see patriarchy in the story?)** Now, John on the other hand (antagonist) was living his life. He held his wife captive and would let her fulfill herself. When people can’t fullfill themselves, it hurts them and can cause them to go insane. He really didn’t care. He had her locked in a room with bars on the windows as if it really was a jail or something. He was the bad guy in this sense. She was hurting inside but he couldn’t see that. The theme to this story is that when people can’t fullfill themselves, it hurts them.**(what about the things that prevent fulfillment?)** Jane was locked in room and could get any self fullfillment and this caused her to go kind of insane or mad and really hurted her mentally. John was clueless though, he didn’t know what was really going on with his wife, he claimed that he did but really didn’t. All she wanted was to be free and live right.

In April Showers Theodora, the main character wanted to become a writer which was her id. Her mother thought, was sick and she was assigned to be in charge and take care of her younger siblings. She had to make sure her brother and sister got ready in the morning for school every morning and also was in charge putting breakfast on the table. She had to find a way to take care of her brother and sister and still write. She sometimes forgot about her responsibilty because was so focused on writing. She decided that to make up for this, she will give the money to her family once she got her book published and to make sure that her brother got into a good school **(how would you define this aspiration to inevitably help her family? Is this consistent with her id behavior? Also, is there any noticeable use of dialect in the story?)**

In Twain’s “The invalid’s story the narrator was on a mission. His friend died and was to deliver his the body to Ohio. Some how the body was delivered to another city and he didn’t know. Once in the train there was a really bad smell that stuck up the whole place. He thought it was the body but it really was the cheese that was sitting on the top of the box of guns, he thought was the body. They of course didn’t know this. His id was tell him to throw the body out because of the smell, but they tried to modify the smell by adding other smells which made it even worse this was his ego. His superego was the fact that him and the expressman sat there and took the smell. The expressman was the one that really tired to fix the smell but kept making it worse and worse. He was a different character from the narrator, his dialect was very different. He was doing a whole lot of taking through out the whole trip. He talked like he was country or something **(what kind of person do you think of when they are described as being "country"? how exactly did his dialect make you perceive him? Do you think the author gave the expressman this dialect for a particular reason? To make him more likable, more simple etc?)

(What about the end of the story? Do you think the conclusion can be related in any way to the concepts of the id, ego, and superego?)**.