RMST202 Course-specific blog

  It was a blessing for me to be able to choose RMST202 out of the many courses I took. I initially chose this class for the credit requirement, and I had no idea about the content of the type. But when I participated in the class, I was pleasantly surprised by the new grading format and the amount of class discussion. In this situation, I found that I could read every novel recommended by the professor without the pressure of a grade, and the weekly blog I was required to write was a lighter load than in my other classes. This assignment felt less like mandatory learning and more like developing good reading habits. When I learned that I needed to complete a book each week, I would schedule my time wisely and read for two hours a day, Monday through Friday, to complete the book in an even but modest way. These two hours of reading allow me to quiet my mind, feel the words, and start my college day. In fact, it had been a long time since I had read a book in its entirety and carefu...

This week I read Soldiers of Salamis, a novel in which the protagonist begins by expressing his unhappy life, with his father's death, the departure of his wife, and his having to give up his fiction career to become a journalist again. He later interviews Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, who is giving a lecture at the university and tells the story of his father's confrontation with a firing squad. His father was shot in the Collell Sanctuary, escaped, was arrested in Barcelona, but took advantage of the chaos to hide in the forest before the arrival of Franco's troops and was found by a soldier who let him go. The journalist of this story was interested in Rafael Sanchez Mazas, and he began to collect stories about him, intentionally or unintentionally and decided to be the narrator of this story. The author of the novel is a seeker, not only in search of the details of the story and the forgotten hero but also in pursuit of his dream of becoming an author, which failed in its fi...

  I read Amulet this week, and here are some of my notes from the book. I loved Auxilio Lacouture, the narrator of this book, and when I first opened it, I was drawn in by Auxilio Lacouture's offbeat and humorous way of speaking. She describes herself and others, often with some lovely commentary on the side. I felt like I was talking to a close friend, and she would occasionally tell you stories about her daily life and spit them out while you listened and felt relaxed and happy. Her imagination is also rich. When she works with two poets, she constantly tries to understand their psychology and character and convey her impressions of them to the reader. This appropriate side-by-side portrayal does not make the two poets feel too abrupt but naturally brings out the nature of Auxilio Lacouture. Even simply cleaning dust, she associates with a poet's unique romantic thinking the way of life of these dust, the destiny of these dust. The image of a lively and romantic female poet ...

 I read The Old Gringo this week. The novel's content mainly revolves around the feelings and cultural conflicts of the three protagonists, Harriet Winslow, Tomas Arroyo and Ambrose Bierce (The Old Gringo). At the beginning of the novel, we meet Harriet Winslow, quietly thinking. So the author uses Winslow's perspective to describe everything that happened before in flashbacks. Ambrose Bierce (known in the novel as Old Gringo) is a journalist from the United States. While working for his employer, he constantly used his reporting to complete the task of attacking others. Still, when he continued to use sharp words to expose In the dark society, his relationship with his wife and children also drifted away. Finally, because of his reports, his two sons committed suicide. So Ambrose Bierce began to get tired of being a journalist. He vowed not to write again and came to Mexico to die. On the way to Mexico, he met Tomas Arroyo. Tomas Arroyo, a colonel of the Mexican rebels, took a...

This week I read W, or the Memory of Childhood. The article unfolds in two lines, one describing the author's childhood memories and the other telling the story of W the Olympic Island. In the article, the main character, an orphan, takes the eponymous Winkler's place by forging documents to escape military service. The real Winckler is a deaf and autistic child whose mother died in a mysterious shipwreck. Curious about the whereabouts of the real Winckler in the wreck, the investigators find the impostor and analyze the accident with him. Investigators finally analyze shipwreck logs and the harrowing scenes of Winckler's death and speculate that Winckler may have escaped or been abandoned. We don't know what the truth is, and the horrific scenes of the accident are an acceptable way to bring out the senses of the accident. After a brief opening description of the accident that seems to be the introduction, the author unfolds two threads: the story of W Island a...

  While reading the first part of this book, I was often confused and puzzled by the relationship between Quimet and Natalia because Natalia and Quimet didn't seem happy and happy in their life together. Quimet doesn't seem to care much about the heroine's feelings, nor does he know how to respect the heroine. He would call her "Poor Maria," although he never explained to the hesitant Natalia who she was; his unfounded suspicion hurts Natalia; he wants the hostess to quit her favourite bakery job because of his doubts. When I read this part, I was puzzled about why the heroine abandoned her honest fiancé and chose to marry such a new acquaintance and was often angry with Quimet's behaviour. In my opinion, the heroine makes choices too fast. But then I realized that this might be because of the background of the heroine's era, family background, and the people's attitude. When Natalia needed someone to marry, and everyone around her recommended Quimet,...

  I read Black Shack Alley this week, and here are some of my reading experiences. For me, Amantine, little Joseph's grandmother, is the unique character in the article, with a tragic but extraordinary fate. The author describes how his grandmother correctly made little Joseph's life ordinary and warm in such a poor situation. Despite the hard work on the plantation and how the clothes on his body were worn, little Joseph never touched the ruthless side of reality under the care of his grandmother. As a result, grandmother Amantine's image of a loving, simple, and hard-working black worker jumped on the page. Later articles tell the story of Joseph Jr. and her grandmother living a poor and miserable life on a sugar cane plantation. Nevertheless, The assertive Little Joseph's grandmother, Amantine, understood that knowledge was the key to the broader world. She worked hard to get a better life for Little Joseph. By looking up relevant information, we can learn that Bla...

This week I read Carmen Laforet's work Nada, and here are some of my post-reading feelings.  Through this week's reading of Nada, I learned about the desolate landscape of post-war Barcelona. Through the subjective and objective perspective of the protagonist, the author takes the protagonist's family as the main object of description, creating a microcosm of the miserable post-war society at that time. The author's expression is very delicate. The article contains a lot of reports of the scenery, which highlights the eerie atmosphere of the family and shows the protagonist's rejection and fear of living here. The words of the article are straightforward, but the emotions revealed are meticulous and accurate. It's easier to understand how the author feels and how things have gone. The protagonist comes to Barcelona to complete her studies and seeks refuge from her relatives. Still, when she lives here, she gradually gets to know everyone who lives in the family...

  This week I read The Shrouded Woman. The article begins with the perspective of a woman after her death. The narrator himself observes different reactions of people around her after her death and recalls the memories of her life. This part is composed. This kind of perspective of keeping one's acquaintances in the corpse is exciting, watching their attitude towards their own death, recalling their characters and making comments on the whole, giving people a sense of sobriety and rationality, as we all know, only we are not involved events, we can make an objective evaluation of them. And the death of the protagonist just happened to put her in this state. Nothing can highlight the existence of consciousness itself more than consciousness after death. In the beginning, when the protagonist observes the environment with ideology, he is pulled away from reality. He becomes a bystander to himself, and when she begins to recall consciousness, It is like being re-immersed in the envir...

 This week I read Parispeasant by Louis Aragon, and here are some of my readings. The author begins with his reflections on philosophical theories' development and then returns to himself. The errors and sophistry of the philosophical development put forward by the author of the first part made it difficult for me to understand what the author was trying to express (probably because English is not a native language). And the descriptions of the weather and climate that followed turned out to be something I felt relatively better understood. The author sees that anything material is connected to emotional thinking while at the same time relying on rational insights to correct mistakes and find the way to truth. This mixed life of rationality and sensibility has a more psychedelic colour. The combination of reality and illusion makes the author's existence blurred, leaving only a thinking person who is good at thinking. Consciousness. The author tries to get out of this life but ...

When reading the "combray" part, I clearly understood the author's unique writing style and thus recorded some of my insights into the author's articles. The author takes his thoughts as the central point and combines his feelings and vague associations when he is not awake with reality. There are many memories and feelings of his life in different places in the past in the vast space. Still, when the fragments of these memories come to an end, it is found that the author's body is still fixed, a small space constructed by a bed middle. The author's range of physical activity is not extensive, but the divergence of thought is extensive. The author's recollections contain many metaphors, which vividly describe his mood in the environment at that time. When the fragments of the recollection make the author feel unhappy, the metaphors used are primarily negative, distorted and oppressive. And when pieces of memory are nostalgic, the metaphors become open, bri...

Hello everyone! My name is Li Xiang, a freshman in the arts department, planning to major in economics and minor in psychology. But to be honest, I prefer art and the prosperous emotional relationship between people. In gradually studying economics, I found that this subject slowly made me feel bored and cold, so excluding the reality factor, I will May change my professional plan in the future. Before I took the first class, I just had an elementary understanding of this course. I chose this course just because it just met the professional needs and the course introduction looked good. Still, I didn't expect the course format to read and blog constantly. It's a novel experience for me, and I will do my best to run my first blog account. After watching the first lecture video, I briefly understood the course objectives and basic course introduction. I gained the first concept worth thinking about in the course: "Romance Studies belongs nowhere." I like reading books o...