Whitman vs. Dickinson

While Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered the "Mother and Father of poetry", there styles are very different. While Whitman is sort of an off-the-cuff writer who writes an incredible amount of free-verse, Dickinson is a very organized and introspective writer. Though Dickinson doesn't write everything she is thinking, her poems are loaded with information and extremely dense.

Emily Dickinson

   Dickinson makes me think that I need more of a historical background when reading her. She throws all of these situations into her poems which makes them tough to analyze and understand. Though this is a problem, I really enjoyed how she personifies life around her. For example, its as though she has somehow made the fly more relevant than death in her fly poem. Starting out with the line about a fly allows the reader to think about the sound of a fly while going through the rest of the poem. As we read along, Dickinson addresses death like its just one more annoying thing in life.

Walt Whitman

   Walt Whitman is really all over the place in his writing. We discussed it in class and used the terminology "letting it rip" which is fitting for this style of writing. He has very broad topics in which he just lets his mind go and whatever is there at the end he goes with. He also establish a sense of patriotism and sharing with his readers a strong sense of optimism for the country, (which we could all use with the presidential elections coming up soon). But his position of being "one with the nation" gives me hope that we are going to have a positive future and whatever happens is for the best.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Part 2

   What was really intriguing throughout the novel was Harriet Beecher Stowe's writing style. It was almost as though she didn't want readers to create a deeper meaning within the novel. She empowers the voice of women to increase emotion and empathy for the characters in the book. She describes everything that is happening to eliminate any kind of false perspective and negativity that could have been attributed to her once people read this book.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Part 1

   What really struck me at the beginning of the book was George's story. His story of being a smart guy who was very good at what he did, but then being pulled back into slavery really allowed me to understand how serious slavery was back then. Blacks were unable to even try and make a life for themselves if white people didn't think so. Though he found a good situation for a while living with Mr. Wilson, who treated George very nice and with a lot of respect, he still wasn't able to live a real life doing something that helped the world as well.

Margaret Fuller

   Fuller really dives into the relationship between men and women. It's no surprise that from the reading she is trying to gain equality for women. She writes about the household partnership as caregiver and provider. I believe that she is right to challenge the notion that men are ALWAYS the provider and women are ALWAYS the caregiver. The inequality has been going on such a long time that hardly anyone during her time ever thought of trying to become equal to men.

Lincoln

  I love Abraham Lincoln's writing style because of his concision. He doesn't go on for pages writing about one thing because he doesn't have to. For example, in the Gettysburg Address, he is addressing people who are grieving, the last thing they want to hear is a three hour speech on the people that had died there. (Though the speaker before him actually did have a two hour speech). Though I like when writers describe situations with every detail, I appreciate what Lincoln can do in a short amount of words.