Boys

In the story boys the author did a very interesting thing in that he told the story through how the boys entered the house. it showed how at different ages different things impact your life. The relationships of brothers can be a very complicated one where insults and fighting can show the true compasion each brother shares for the other.

the story took you through their life in times of crisis (when their sister dies), in times of joy (the wedding), and to when they truly feel like men not boys (when their father dies). it shows how they cope with life and its issues of puberty, college, marriage, and death. It does all these things by showing how the boys enter the house either how they are dressed or what they are doing when they go inside. Then he sows adulthood by showing how they did not enter the house and how as you grow older you can grow apart from one another. it is a good story about life and how to survive it

The House on Mango Street

This is a story about a family and their struggle to "get ahead" in the world. The narrator of the story is the daughter who you believe to be the author Sandra Cisneros. It tells about her life as a young girl growing up without a home. In this story the family has just moved to a new house on Mango Street and they had always wanted a home; someplace to put down their roots. This house however is a shack and a mess she describes the windows as "they where so small you'd think they were holding their breath". through out the story she describes the house they wanted it was white, had three bathrooms, and real stairs not just hallway stairs. I feel that part especially speaks to the dreams and hopes of the underprivileged. I have had a very fortunate life so far and the idea of needing real stairs in my house was something I never even considered. I knew they where going to be there so it is something i have defiantly taken for granted. there is this sense of connection to the story for me as well though. Even though i have grown up much more fortunate then the narrator I have also experienced the pain of moving from town to town. I know how difficult that can be and how important it is to have strong family ties to help you adjust to a new life. 

The most important paragraph in this story is defiantly the conversation between the girl and the nun. The nun asked where she lived and the little girl pointed to her third floor apartment as if to say up there. The nun looked shocked that someone could live in a place like that . The author describes it by saying "You live there? the way she said it made me feel like nothing.  There, I lived there. I nodded." this is a women of god who pledge her life to helping the unfortunate but instead she gaffed at her and made her feel unimportant. I think this conversation speaks to the struggle she had growing up. If her home is such a despair that a nun can't even see the good in it then life must had been difficult.

Catastrophe

I feel for the most part that the play and the performance was pretty much the same but there were some a couple of glaring differences to me. First, where was the director's cigar? He is of high standing. A man that is suppose to be going to a caucus later so why didn't he smoke his cigar? The cigar is placed in there to show standing and high class especially when he makes his assistant run over and light it three times! I feel this is an important aspect of class in this play that Printer should not have left out. I think the fact that she gets out a flashlight might have to do with the subtle hint that a director's life is more difficult then the play portrays (It could simply be that the actor did not want to portray smoking during his scene). This could also be why the director never sits in his armchair as well. In the play he spends pretty much the entire scene sitting down in either his armchair or off camera in the theater. However, in the video play he is up and walking around with his assistant until he has to go off to the theater seats. I think Printer did this to show that his job was a little more difficult then it was being portrayed.