Eva Is Inside Her Cat

 

Most women dream of achieving physical beauty. It has been a timeless quest. Yet, in this story, Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez explores the burdens that such beauty may create.

The central character, Eva dreams of being ordinary. She is troubled by the lascivious glances of men and her father's sensual avarice. She gets insomnia problem and even blame on her ancestors for making her being so attractive.

Being extremely beautiful also restrains Eva's personal freedom. In Columbian traditional culture, the woman usually could not choose the person to marry to, especially to the women who were extremely pretty. Absolutely, Eva faced his problem, and she keeps thinking of the "boy", her lover , all the time.

Last but not least, Eva is a variety of the biblical Eve come again, blaming the curse of her beauty on the first woman and indicates that keeping beautiful is always an issue for all the women.

Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka published in 1915. it generally tells a stry of a travelling salesman, Gregor, who wakes up and finds himself transforme into a monstrous insect-like creature.

The story is totally a tragedy. Although Gregor was a saleman, he tried his best to support his family. He wanted to send his sister to better place for furthering violin skills and use his income to pay his father's debt. However, after his family found him become a insect, everything changed. He became a drag of the whole family, and gradually no one cares about his life.

Gregor concerned and cared his family thoughout his whole life,but his family eventually abandoned him and were so indifferent about his death. They decided to go out having a picnic, and the story stoped with endless sorrow.

The Trial and The Parable of the Doorkeeper

First of all, I have to say Kafka's work is really abstract and hard to understand.As I was watching the movie, I could not really get the idea of the story.

The Trail is one of Kafka's best-known works. Basicly, it tells a story of the main character Josef K who gets arrested after waking up in the morning. However,he does not even know what his crime is, and finally get executed by two people late at night.

As for the parable of the doorkeeper,in my opinion,it is just the forshadow of the death of Josef K.The doorkeeper does not let Josef go though the door, and tells him that there would be more and more doors with doorkeepers if Josef enters in the door now.As the doorkeeper says, it implies Josef K will never win and get rid of the trial, and in the end, he has to face the destiny of death.

Two Avant-Garde Groups and Movenments

Der Blauer Reiter:

• It was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany.
• Der Blaue Reiter was a movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded the previous decade in 1905. 
• The name of the movement is the title of a painting that Kandinsky created in 1903, but it is unclear whether it is the origin of the name of the movement as professor Klaus Lankheit found out that the title of the painting had been overwritten. Kandinsky wrote 20 year later that the name is derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of riders, combined with both love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal. 
• Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order.

Die Brücke:

• Die brucke in English means "The bridge" 
• The movement was started by a group of expressionist from Germany. 
• the had a huge influence on the "evolution of the creation of expressionism"  
• Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernest Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Dadaism:

• It is a cultural movement that bagan in Switzerland during World War I
• From 1916 to 1922
• The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature-poetry, art manifestos and graphic design.
• The theme of Dadaism is anti-war and anti-art
• Three representatives: Tristan Tzara, Mercel Dunchamp and George Grosz.

Pop Art:

• It is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the later 1950s in the United States
• It presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc
• Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them.
• Three representatives: Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters.

Magic Realism

Although it was a little bit cold, I was still really glad to start learning magic realism on the grass in such a sunny windy day.

According to dictionary, the magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. I love magic, and I tried to learn some easy tricks when I was little. However, I have never touched anything about the magic in the literature. From the name, I found out that the magic and the magic realism must be related to each other, and it is going to be the most interesting part of the literature class in the whole year.

I am looking forward to see the magic of literature.

The Lady with a Dog

Although The Lady with the Dog is perhaps Chekhov's best known and one of his best-loved stories, after I read the story, it did not bring me a big surprise as I expected before. This novel really exemplifies Dostoyevsky's subtle yet powerful style, using language economically and never saying more than he needs.

From my personal perspective, the best part of the story is not its twisted plot, but the ending. When I first time read the story, I thought the ending was hasty. I did not understand why such a great writer finished the story so fast and carelessly. However, after I second time went though the novel, I felt like the ending with no endings is more likely to be perfect. We do not necessarily need a ending as O Henry's, but with this ambiguous ending, we are able to imagine more than just the plot. You may guess they finally become a couple and be together, or speculate that the corrupt world separate them apart. That is the reason why I think this is the most interesting part.

Dostoevsky

Today in the class, I did the presentation about Dostoevsky's works, therefore I did a lot of research about this great writer.

Dostoevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays.He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Also Dostoevsky was one the primiere existentialist authors in Russia, and I found out that Notes From the Underground is his most famous existentialist work.

Meanwhile, I think Dostoevsky is the most interesting writer I have found out so far, and I would certainly read his works such as The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov during my free time to further my study,