Summary of "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World"

The story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” is an interesting and weird kind of story. At the beginning of the story the group of children who see the dead man wash up on the beach couldn't manage to figure out if it was a human at all until it they came closer. Then they start playing with the dead man which was very weird. When one man notices the dead man, he spreads the word among his village. It is clear that the village very small because it was “made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses” therefore it was not hard to find out that the dead man was a stranger to the village. The women in the village, who clean him up, tend to have some sort of admiration towards him describing him as the “tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen”. The women in the village are the ones who make the dead man clothes, dress him, and clean him. They even start to fantasize how a great husband, strong, helpful man he would be in the village if he was still alive. His house would be huge and his wife would be the happiest women ever. Compared to their husbands who are “incapable of doing what he could do in one night... weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth”. This shows how the women would imagine their perfect guy to take care of them and their household. The oldest woman however looked at the drowned man with more compassion than passion and says he looks like an Esteban. The stubborn, young people of the village disagree saying his name is Lautaro but “it was a vain illusion”. One woman who had cleaned the old man well was disappointment when the others had to drag the dead man rather than carry him because he was so heavy. This made her start imagine that people would view the dead man as a “handsome fool” since he would be too heavy to even sit down in a chair without breaking it. Towards the end when the man are going to throw the dead man’s body into the sea, the women keep decorating his body with flowers, holy-water jars and nails, the man of the village found it ridiculous because his body would be torn up by the sharks anyways. As a woman uncovers the dead man’s face, the man realizes that it’s really Esteban and they praise him even fighting over the privilege of carrying him.  In his honor, they name the village after Esteban and have a big funeral. The village image would represent the memory of Esteban by having huge houses, and breaking their backs planting flowers.          

Research and Writing

            This spring semester I’ve gotten a lot more experienced in writing papers and researching the topics. I’ve written papers before, but it wasn’t until this cluster that I’ve discovered how easy writing papers could become. Finding any information is easy these days, especially with Wikipedia, but I learned that not all sources can help give you a strong argument. In this class, and the others in the cluster, I learned how to navigate through the web, go to LaGuardia’s library website, and even use the texts we paid so much for. With the right amount of research, and too much is never enough, you could begin an outline. It’s good to have an outline of your essay before you actually start writing it. This gives you a bit of motivation that you can actually write the essay and with everything in place it just seems like you could free write your thoughts into the paper instead of staring at the computer screen for hours thinking what else can you add here and there. A good start leads to a great finish so having a good thesis is also important. With an outline and good research you can have a few arguments, sometimes you have to even argue against yourself but you know you could write a great A+ paper. Writing multiple thesis’ and picking one that fits your support the best really helps in getting a good grade and making writing a lot smoother. Finally what I have learned about writing a paper is the citation part and how Ms. McCormick stresses how it has to be perfect, it makes me realize that it’s really important. It lets the reader know that you put a lot of your thought and time into the paper and makes them feel better about reading it, and possibly enjoying it more. Overall writing a paper longer than three pages doesn’t scare me anymore because I have learned how to break it down.

“The Mirror in The Matrix of Media Ecology”

 This article “The Mirror in The Matrix of Media Ecology” by Kenneth Rufo is about the scene when Neo is about to enter the Matrix through the mirror. The mirror is like the beginning of what Neo is going to experience. This world that is to them the real world which describes the story of Lucan where it creates an ego. When Neo is entering this new world, there are a lot of changes through the mirror movements. Through the liquid exterior mirror, it represents a reborn occurring. The first scene which he goes through this river path describes him being born and then released to the Matrix. It’s like Neo was dead at one point, then alive and so on which leads to the statement that there was always a double him. There is a contraction between the real world and the matrix when it says that the iris always a battle among humanity to get freedom while in the matrix its “freedom”.  The mirror is the gateway to this new world where supernatural things occur and the rules of psychics don’t exist.  

Hero's journey--Joseph Campbell

Mythology as many people read say that its not real so if it’s not real why do people get so fascinated with it and what does it teach you? Myths don’t have to be real for one to acknowledge it such as the hero being presented in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. The Adventure of the Hero is where the hero is considers the one and is viewed in great admiration  while he goes through the three stages which are  separation, initiation ,and return. In separation their is the call where the hero often refuses but with the help of supernatural aid their is motivation. He crosses a symbolic threshold where he “rescues a maiden, recover a treasure — before returning to his society to receive the adulation accorded to one who braves the various kinds of demons that keep the more faint of heart from undertaking the Adventure”. He challenge is to adjust his emotions towards women when he meets with Temptress or a goddess. By experiencing this first stage, the hero uses what he has learned from his journey and shares his knowledge with the people in his society. The hero in part two is portrayed as a model for action whether he is seen as a saint, warrior, emperor, lover or redeemer.e is also modeled for existentialist lines where he relies on his own mid to get through though situations no demons or gods to support him. The citizens have hope for the hero to protect them against the forces of darkness by creating an  Edenic world. Campbell “ranges East and West, from the earliest recorded civilizations to contemporary cultures, to collect stories of heroes for examination and dissection under his critical microscope”. By having a hero and knowing his quest, it brings that security and restores happiness the society has lost and the hero can restore. 


Info link: http://ehis.ebscohost.com.rpa.laguardia.edu:2048/ehost/detail?sid=9505a7a9-71e5-44f8-bc85-d45555a01a25%40sessionmgr12&vid=64&hid=5&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mjh&AN=103331NON11169260000095

The picture of Dorian Grey rough draft

There’s clearly a lot of thought and creativity put into The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. The story and its details could reference The Bible, myths and history from the past, and a lot on human characteristics and psychology, which show a lot of work and a lot of imagination from the author. Imagination is a combination of experiences stored in a person’s memory along with thought and creativity to reach a specific goal or issue that the person may want to overcome. Imagination plays a huge part in the story and it also gives us a big role to understand it more after a little analytical review. The theme of imagination is very powerful and through Basil, Lord Henry, and Dorian Gray we can see how it can change lives, especially through the portrait drawn by Basil himself; however, imaginations true power can be seen and experienced by the readers themselves when we speculate and try to explain the events occurring in the book. Without our imagination this is just another story and Basil's painting of Dorian Gray is just another portrait, but because of many different backgrounds and beliefs we can see that there’s more to these objects. For example: Dorian Gray lives a simple life until two things enter his life, Lord Henry and the portrait. It's left ambiguous what corrupts Dorian the most, is it the portrait being magical, or is that just superstition and it’s really just Lord Henry’s bad influence that makes him believe somethings changing about the picture, as if his mind was playing tricks on him?




Some may believe that it’s ..(superstition or mind playing tricks) but I believe its .. ( the opposite.) because I can’t imagine it any other way.

-or-

This story is a great example of the power of imagination, it has a lot of ideas for us to take in, but also requires us to put in a lot more to answer questions like these