That's Awkward (Dramatic Irony) - Short Story Blog 2 (How I Met My Husband)

"He always tells the children the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and naturally I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and makes them happy."

~ Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband


This last part of the story made me really uncomfortable - the dramatic irony was just too much! First of all, she writes this whole long story about how she obviously loves the pilot (and probably is still in love with him), even though they only had a brief fling. She talks about how she admired him and bonded with him, and then he just leaves her and never responds, so she settles for the mailman. Who, by the way, only has two paragraphs. Her husband only has two paragraphs, but her four-minute infatuation gets a freakin' novel. While we as readers know all of this, the mailman doesn't. When he thinks she is interested in him, we all know she's just waiting to be swooped up by a different man; this makes it SUPER awkward when he tells his children she couldn't stay away from him. Can you imagine her telling him the truth? "Umm, no honey, I was actually desperately in love with another man and still am..."

This kind of makes me think of women today. Women say they want a nice guy, but they always go for the bad boy when given the chance. The respectful guy just isn't that exciting, and especially for naive, sheltered girls (think about Roncalli girls. I fear for the female portion of our grade next year), someone who is a little more aggressive is a very intriguing and enticing idea. But, fear not, good guys, you all prevail in the end. A woman will always settle down with the nice man when she is ready to grow up and face reality. And that is exactly what Edie did.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star / Mood - Poetry Blog 1 (For Week 2!) (Bright Star)

The poem Bright Star, by John Keats, describes a man who looks into the sky and sees a star; he tells how he would act differently if he behaved as the star. The way I see this poem, it can be divided into two parts.

The first part is his description of the star's action. It watches the world and sees the beauty of it - particularly, nature. The star is compared to an insomniac who watches the "moving waters" and "snow upon the mountains and the moors." What the star is observing is later contrasted with what the man would.

The second part describes what the man would do if he were as loyal and constant as the star. He would watch, instead of the world, a woman. He says that if he were to do one thing for the rest of his life, he would "awake forever in a sweet unrest, still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, and so live ever - or else swoon to death." (It was definitely an "aww" moment.)

While the poem is creating contrast, there are several similarities in it. The narrator tells what he would watch forever and what the star continually watches, but they are both unchanging. They both are watching something. Also, the woman and nature are being indirectly compared. Each is the object of something's/one's attention, and each is beautiful enough to be so. Both the woman and nature are depicted as gently moving, which helps the reader make the comparison and creates a soft, peaceful mood. The narrator also uses words like "eternal" and "forever" to make time seem almost non-existent; this also contributes to the peaceful mood.