Materialism, Is that what we want for us?

During the XIX century, appeared a literary movement, called Realism. This movement was born against Romanticism. Realism was mainly focused on real life problems such as bad living conditions, money resources or familiar problems. In that sense, social issues were the focal point of realistic works. According to that, and also to what I have learnt in my Literature classes, I can say that real life problems must be depicted by books, paintings, etc., in order to understand what really happens in this society as well as finding possible solutions to that.

First of all, I want to say that after giving a little explanation about Realism, it is necessary to tell you about D.H.Lawrence`s life. Lawrence father was a miner and his mother was a teacher. She was superior to his father, because she had got the chance to study. It is important to mention that Lawrence childhood was round of poverty and economical problems. He won a scholarship to study at Nottingham High School. As you could see, Lawrence infancy was not so happy. This is going to be reflected on his pieces of writing.

In “Odour of Chrysanthemums”, Lawrence tried to depict his early childhood. The characters of this short story were a mother who was a teacher and a father who was a miner. If you remember, at the beginning of my paper I wrote that Lawrence´s parents where a teacher and a miner respectively. For that reason I strongly believe that Lawrence attempted to write his own life because it had a huge impact for him. I remember that in “Odour of Chrysanthemums” Elizabeth was very unhappy because she was not so sure if she was in love with his husband. They could not have any chance to improve their living conditions, because the man, who was a miner did not have enough money resources to do it and also because he did not want to be better. He just liked enjoying his life with his friends, drinking alcohol, but he was also trying to support his family. In this case, the only thing that was important for them was money, what can be summarized in materialism. If we think about the title of this tale, it is completely related to the moment in which Elizabeth got married to her husband, at one moment she says: "It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole." With this quote she is showing to the readers her dislike and disappointment with her marriage, but especially with everything that could be related to her husband. Besides, here is easy to see that Elizabeth was just interested in money, and if her fiancé could not give it to her, even though he was very hard worker.

Second, in “The Rocking Horse Winner”, it is also easy to notice how materialism can affect human beings life. In this tale, Hester does not love her child, and she just used him to have more money. She liked taking advantage of him, without thinking that she was damaging him. Materialism was present again. In both stories, women roles are the ones who are materialistic because they are just interested in money. Furthermore, this might be related to what used to happen during the 19th century in which women were not happy because they had just to take care of their children without having the opportunity to have more funds.

Making the relationship between those stories and realism, I can say that they are realistic. They are showing to the readers, how things were in the past. Women wanted to be better in order to have the chance to work and to not take care of their children and cleaning their homes. Moreover, every detail that is given by the writer let us make the relationship with our society, our reality, and with what happened in the past and even today.

If I start thinking about how could those stories be incorporated into the EFL classroom, I would say that materialism does not help you to be happy. You are not going to be a better person because you are rich. The best person is the one who has beautiful and sincere feelings, who accepts others as they are, and who thinks that life is good because you are there and you are happy thanks to what you have. The idea is that students can notice that money is not enough. For that reason it is necessary to give some examples that can be meaningful for them. For example: if you are a rich person and you have a lot of money, but someone in your family has a terminal disease. In this case, money will not help him/her to improve his/her health. So, does money help you to be happy? I strongly believe that a lot of money can help you to be happy just if you can help someone with what you have.

During a class, I would like to ask students to write a list of things that they think are necessary for them. Then, the teacher is going to ask them if all of them are necessary or some are just because they want to have them. The idea here is that students can notice that in life not everything is need.

To conclude this paper, I can say that materialism is present in most of the people, but the idea is that we can able to show to the rest that there are things that are more important than money. Having our own purposes and goals about what we want for our future will help us to organize ourselves, and to notice that we can work in order to reach all what we want, but without thinking that money will help us to be happy.

Sources
D.H.Lawrence “Odour of Chrysantemums”
D.H.Lawrence “The Rocking Horse Winner”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts)
http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/realism.htm

Outline for my final paper

Materialism, Is that what we want for us?

1. Introduction to Realism.

2. D. H. Lawrence life.

3. "Odour of Chrysanthemums" and "The Rocking Horse Winner".

4. Applying those stories in the EFL.

5. Conclusion.

September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden

September 1, was a poem which was written by W.H.Auden during a complicated period of time, of the last century human history. Through this poem he tried to represent what was happening before Second World War was starting. He describes his feelings, thoughts and fears about war.

From my personal point of view, this poem is very realistic because it expresses how human beings can be when they want to get power over society. Evilness is a crucial word when we want to refer to what human beings are capable to do when they want to be superior and destroy others.

According to what I believe and what the author expressed at the end of this poem, the only way we can change what is happening for instance in middle east is that people expresses awareness for their world as well as expressing love to one another. Moreover, it is important that people also need to be empathetic with the ones who are suffering.

Through this poem I could imagine what was happening at that period of time, I could feel what people felt. Besides, I believe that even though Auden`s poem is very strong in some aspects, he published anyway, and that is something very important for me. We cannot hide what we think or feel, we are human beings and we are free to express our thoughts.

To sum up, I can say that the poem is very easy to follow and also captures readers attention, because it is a true story.

Comment on Karen Medina`s entry

I totally agree with you Karen when you mention the importance of mother`s roles in children`s life. Mother is the one who is always taking care of her children, and trying to guide them in the right way of life. In this case it was easy to see how money can influence on the relationship between a mother and her son. I strongly believe that even though a son will want to do anything in order to help his mother, this was not the right way of doing it.

Besides, I can say that as you mentioned in your comment "The Rocking Horse Winner" a lot of negative aspects but I believe that those aspects can help you to teach that money is not everything in life. That maybe you can be millionaire but if you are not happy, money will not facilitate you to find happyness.

Karen, I think that you wrote very interesting aspects that called my attention, for example the way in which you start the post, and then you showed that everything changed and at the end mother`s love had changed and then she did not care about what his son was suffering.

Furthermore, in today`s world I consider crucial to remember the real mother`s role. Understanding that children are to take care of them and to teach them what is right or wrong and not to sacrifice them taking advantage about what they can do.

Karen you wrote very interesting ideas and thoughts about the short story, great job!

See you!

"The Rocking Horse Winner" by Karen Medina

After reading this poem I could realize how important could be a mother to her child. In this case Paul was so concerned about the money problems his mother had that the only thing he wanted was helping her. Suddenly, he discovered that he could get some money with lucky so rides his little rocking-horse and figured out that it gave him the name of the winner horse in the races. He was so preoccupied about getting more and more money that he forgot about everything in his life and started riding the horse so fast and constantly that he got very ill and dies.

I believe that he wanted to help her mother so badly and replace the lack of a paternal image that he believe he was the provider of the family. I really don’t understand how a mother can permit a situation like this. It is supposed that a mother must provide and pay attention to every single need the child could have, but in these case was the other way around. The only consequence this situation causes was the child death, the mother changes money for the life of her own son.

I enjoyed reading this short story, but it has a lot of negative aspects of life. I think it is good to learn about your mistake and thinks that money is not everything in life. Money can help you to be happy but you can't buy happiness with it.

World and conflicts in our hands...

After reading T.S. Eliot`s poem, "The waste Land", I can say that it was a very difficult poem to read. Difficult because it was a little bit hard to understand. Maybe it was because Eliot wanted to say so many things and he did not organized them. Now I am going to try to write about what I understood or what made me feel this poem.

In relation to what I understood about the poem, I can say that Wars are very shocking facts that can affect people`s feelings and thoughts. Moreover, I noticed that specially Eliot was very influenced by this huge conflict, and obviously everybody were.

This waste land that Eliot is describing is a place which maybe was devastated by those conflicts and this was changing everything that was happening; places and people were changing all the time. People were very scared about what was happening, and Eliot too. The poem involved me a lot on what the writer was feeling. It made me feel fears as people were feeling at that time.

Perhaps I writing things that have nothing to do with other people`s perception, but everybody is different and will comprehend something in different ways. Whether I am right or wrong I wrote what I felt. Possibly this waste land is the space between the good and the bad aspects of the war, and what comes after this conflict finishes.

How life can affect people`s perceptions

"Odor of Chrysanthemums" and "The Rocking Horse Winner" are two short stories which were written by D. H. Lawrence, a British writer.

After reading the two stories, I realized how did Lawrence`s childhood impacted him. While I was reading “Odor of Chrysanthemums” I could notice that the story had so many events that were very similar to Lawrence`s life. This reminds me about realism, because the writer tries to focus his works on his own experiences and how difficult was for his family to stay in the world. One of these two stories tell us about a family in which there was a minner man and also a woman who was a teacher, both characters were very similar to his parents. In this tale we could see how many problems this marriage had.

Furthermore, the other story which was named “The Rocking Horse Winner”, also depicted a family which did not have enough money, and they wanted to have more. Maybe this was also related to his own life, and as it was difficult, for that reason he wrote everything that he lived once he was a little boy.

In short, I can say that both stories are showing us how difficult life is, and how can this affect us in our future development in society.

Virginia Woolf

Writing is art, as it is painting, dancing, singing, etc. Every time I think about art, I analyze how important could be to have his/her own space for the artist. For example, if a writer wants to write a book or a poem, he/she may need to have privacy in order to feel to think and to do whatever he/she wants to do. That is why I strongly believe that to have our own space makes us feel more comfortable.

As it was easy to see in Virginia Woold`s essay, women`s role was not important, so for her it was essential to have her own room to write, to think, and to be free to express her ideas and thoughts. I think that our own room is our best space, and it is unique, our room is the only place in which we can rest, because it gives us tranquility.

Having a room for our own can be difficult, so what happen when someone does not have his/her own room, and he/she needs to have it? In Virginia Woolf, she did not have any money to buy her own room, and she need to have it because she needed to reflect on what she wanted to write. Spaces give us the chance to reflect, think and analyze our lives or whatever we want to, and each person must have that time.

People should have their own place to reflect on themselves!

Oliver Twist... From the past to these days...

If I think about what really called my attention while I was watching the movie Oliver Twist, I can say that people, but especially orphan children had to steal because if not they could not be able to live in that society. That was the way of thinking of so many people, but was that appropriate for people or children? Obviously not because stealing is not a way of living in excellent conditions, as it is known a better person is the one who try to improve his/her life, but working.

The movie made me ask me if adults did not think about the damage that they were causing to young people. Besides it impacted me a lot that abuse on children, because I would not like to see that near to me. For example I started to imagine as if I was Oliver, and I think that I could not support that.

Even today, it is easy to see children who are 10 years old or even less, and they are stealing at supermarkets, stores or in the street, and that is something that we should stop, because children are our future, and we have and need to help them to be better people.

Interpreting life through literature

The signalman is a short story which was written by Charles Dickens during the 19th century. In this book was easy to see the impact that mechanization and globalization had in the signalman´s life. I realized that he was focused just on his work, without taking care of his personal life.

From my point of view, another important aspect was the train the one represented how life was passing in front of his eyes. In that sense this short story gave us a message behind; it tells us that we cannot permit that life goes and we have not done anything different. We need to enjoy life and to profit it.

I strongly believe that literature shows us what really happens in our lives and also makes us think about real issues. For that reason it is necessary to try to interpret what a text tries to tell us. Through literature we can understand real life situations because everything is being shown from a different perspective. In some cases literature can be poetic, but the most important aspect is that we have to know how to analyze it, and how to put in practice the learnt message.

How can you be a person if you are discriminated by everybody?

In Frankenstein story, it was easy for me to see how much impact can have discrimination in someone. As we all know, Frankenstein was an experiment, but even though he had his own feelings and he wanted to be loved and to be respected by the rest of the people. I strongly believe that nowadays there are hundreds of injustices around people, and sometimes we tend to discriminate someone just because of their appearance, but we do not pay attention on their thoughts and feelings. It does not matter how someone looks like, because the most important thing is what he or she is.

While I was reading Frankenstein, sometimes I felt that some pieces of the text were related with what was happening to me at that moment. For example when Victor Frankensteind said "...endevouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness...", that was related with my feelings. If I think about this, I can notice the impact that a reading can have in the reader, and how could it be related with him or her. Forgetfulness and loneliness were concepts that called my attention in the text and also touched my heart.

When I have fears...

When I have fears, I know that I am not alone, that even though I have been living so many important issues in my life which have been scaring me, I have my family and my boyfriend with me. They are always giving me everything that I need; if I need someone who hugs me, they do it, if I need help, they do it. I strongly believe it does not matter how bad are you feeling, or how many bad things had happened to you, because everything is going to work well if we are being supported by someone who is really important for us.
It is crucial to keep in mind that we have to accept when we have committed a mistake, because if we do not do it we are going to become in mediocre people. People have to fight for what they desire, because it is known that sometimes it is difficult to fight when we want to get someone or something.
People have to do what they want, it does not matter what the rest think about that; feelings, family, friends, dreams, are essential in everybody`s life, and we cannot lose those important aspects, because they help us to be stronger.

Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge

“Poetry is an art…of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections, both relatively to human affections, by the production of as much immediate pleasure in parts, as is compatible with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole”.

After reading this quotation and having read the poem Kbla Khan written by Samuel Coleridge, I can say that poetry needs to be part of our lives. There are many things that can be related to poetry, for example we can make a poem about our own life experiences`, or we can create a poem based on our dreams and plans for the future. If we would like to have a different and better world, we can make it in a poem. Poetry helps us to express ourselves in a way that everybody can feel something once he/she reads that piece of writing. As it was mentioned in the previous quotation, "Poetry is an art...of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections..." It is important to say that it does not matter who you are or what you like to do, the main idea is that anyone can write a poem, but you have to say what you really want to. You have to express your thoughts, ideas and feelings.

A poem has to be real, fluent and sincere, in order that this can provoke any kind of expressions and feelings in the reader.

"Little black boy", William Blake

When I read the poem “Little black boy” I could realize the importance of the relationship between mother and son. It is easy to see that the mother was always protecting her son, and taking care of him. What really calls my attention was the way of thinking of a black boy, and what it´s mean to him being a black person. In some cases we can see that black people is considered as the worse thing in the world. On the contrary, the poem showed us that maybe there could be many differences between black people and white people, but in heaven there is not going to be any difference. In that place everybody will be considered the same; they will have the same rights.
The picture that I relate with this poem was “Madonna and the Child”, because it shows us a mother protecting his son and that it is the main issue of this poem, how a mother can save his little boy.

Discrimination in Shakespeare`s work and inside the classroom

My final essay is going to be focused on Discrimination. First of all, I am going to give a definition of the concept that I mentioned before and then I am going to analyze how discrimination is expressed through Literature in Shakespeare´s texts such as “The Tempest” and “The Merchant of Venice”. I chose this topic, because I consider it really important in everyone´s life and also because it is something that can be connected with an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom. I am going to use some examples from my own experience as a student and as a future English teacher; the examples are going to be focused on things that I have seen in my work experience because I think that they are important in this topic.

The Encarta`s encyclopedia defines Discrimination as an “unfair treatment of one person or group, usually because of prejudice about race, ethnicity, age, religion, or gender”. This means that a discriminated person is the one who is segregated by the rest of the people; there are a lot of reasons because they are left a side by others, such as the skin color, or the place where they came from, and some others. As it was mentioned in the definition, this unfair treatment is related to a prejudice. Do you know what a prejudice is? Well, a prejudice is referred to an action or way of thinking about a something or someone. Longman´s dictionary defines this concept as “an unreasonable dislike and distrust of people who are different from you in some way, especially because of their race, sex, religion, etc”. By this definition, it is easy to compare it with the one that I gave before. Having read both definitions, are you able to say that those words can be considered as synonyms? Almost for me, they are synonyms because both are terms which refer to a bad treatment to another people.

If I think a little bit more about Discrimination and the topics that we have seen in our course of Literature, I can see the importance of this topic and how useful could be Literature when you want to teach something like this. When we were studying Shakespeare, and we saw the text “The Tempest” and then the movie “The Merchant of Venice”, I could notice that William Shakespeare was more than a famous English writer, because he was always giving us some messages behind the text. Those two texts gave us a message that it is really important for us, as future English teachers to keep them in mind, and in this case the message behind was Discrimination. In the case of “The tempest”, we could see how colonialism influenced this topic, which was Discrimination. In that book, it was easy to find discrimination to Caliban, a slave, and as we all know, people who has got a lot of money is going to discriminate the rest of the people, who are slaves. In relation to “The Merchant of Venice”, the message was at least implicit in the movie, because everybody could see how Jews were treated by Catholics; this awful treatment, just because they had different beliefs and ways of thinking. When I think about that, I start asking myself if I could discriminate someone because of his/her skin color, or religion, or even their work and if they have money or not, because I really believe that everybody is different but it does not matter how different can anyone be from another one; everybody must have the same rights, because we are all human beings and that make us equals between the other people. I would like to know if you would accept being discriminated or would you like to see that your best friend if being discriminated because of his/her skin color? In my personal opinion, I would not accept such as sacrilege, I am against Discrimination, because we have to accept each other and we have to be respectful in order to be respected.

In my personal experience, when I see someone who is in the street and he/she is wearing dirty clothes I immediately think that maybe he/she is poor. That shows us that stereotypes are part of our society, and that is a factor that also affects Discrimination, because if we create a bad stereotype about someone, we are going to discriminate him/her because of that image that we have in our minds.

In the case of the Chilean society and Chilean schools, I start thinking in an imaginary situation. I imagine a school which is located in the South of Chile, in the 9th region. This school is a private one, so it is located in a high level place. It is supposed that there are going to attend students with money, because they have resources to pay for it. Near to this place, there are people who live in the countryside. There is one family who has a lot of money, so their children are going to attend to this school. To this school are attending students with a high economical level, and those students from the countryside. As we know, their accent and pronunciation is going to be different from the ones who live in the city. In the English class, the teacher asks one student from the countryside to read a paragraph, and he did it very good and clear. Then the teacher asks to another student, to read the same piece of writing. He did it, but his pronunciation was not very good. This makes me think that it does not matter where are you from, the most important thing is that you can do your things well, and without judging people because of their appearance or beliefs.

In relation to everything mentioned before, would you accept discrimination inside the classroom? Would you accept your students bothering between them? In my case I would not, because as I said before we have to be respectful to be respected and we have to accept each other, because we are all human beings.

Work cited:

Shakespeare, William. “The Merchant of Venice” (Movie)
Shakespeare, William. “The Tempest”. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html
http://www.jcu.edu.au/eo/JCUDEV_010542.html
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861605112/discrimination.html

Outline final paper

Topic: Discrimination

Title: Discrimination in Shakespeare`s work and inside the classroom.

1. Introduction.

2. Definition of the concept Discrimination.

3. Discrimination through Literature and William Shakespeare.
a. The Tempest
b. The Merchant of Venice

4. Connection with an EFL classroom.

5. Conclusion.

Summary of Chapters 33 and 34 from Sense and Sensibility

Chapter 33:
One day Marianne went to the jeweler and there was John Dashwood. The next day went Brandon while Sir John was visiting them and he thought that Brandon and Elinor will probably be married. He congratulates them but Elinor tried to explain him that there was not any married , while John also tells her that Edward is going to be married to Miss Morton.
He also laments that Marianne has lost her beauty and bloom through illness, and will hardly marry well now.

Chapter 34:
Dashwood´s family decide to give a dinner for the Middletons, to show their delight for their new company. Brandon was also invited, while John wishes to do everything possible to speed up the "supposed" marriaged between Brandon and Elinor.

Catholics versus Jews, a big deal.

In this review I am going to talk about a movie which is called “The Merchant of Venice”, and I am going to relate its main topic with reality. This movie it is based on a William Shakespeare play and it was written in 1598, but there is not an exact date.

William Shakespeare was a really famous British writer who was born in April 26th, 1564 and he died in May 3rd, 1616. He has been known as one of the most famous writers around the world. Shakespeare had written a lot of important and known movies, such as Romeo and Juliet (1595), Hamlet (1601), Otelo (1603-1604), The tempest (1610) and some others.

“The Merchant of Venice” took place in Britain, during the 16th Century. This movie principaly narrates the differences between Jews and Catholics. In this case, we can find two main characters of it who were Antonio and Shylock. Antonio was a Catholic man who was known as the merchant. On the other hand, Shylock was rich Jew man, known as the usurer. The movie started when Bassanio asked Antonio for some money that he needed to travel to Belmont because he wanted to visit Portia, a rich woman. The problem starts because Antonio did not have any money to lend him. For that reason, Bassanio went to visit Shylock and he asked him for the money. This is how the story goes.

During the movie I could notice that Shylock and Antonio were enemies. So it is really important to say that at that age, Jews and Catholics were adversaries, because Jewish people were not considered as normal citizens. At one moment, Shylock said to Antonio, Why we can not have the same rights? We have the same blood, the same feelings, we are all equals. That calls my attention because I agree with Shylock and I think the same as him.

In the past, Catholic religion was the main belief around the world. They were like the owners of everything; they were the ones who had more power. Jewish people have different beliefs, they are completely different from Catholics and for that reason they treated Jews as the worse thing of the world. This means that Catholics hated Jews because of their beliefs and from the other side Jews hated Catholics because of the same reason and also because they were always discriminating them.

Jewish´s beliefs are very different from Catholic´s beliefs, for example: Jews do not believe in Jesus, they believe in Yavhé; they read the Ancient Testament; their Church is called synagogue; their Leader is called Rabbi; and their most important day is Saturday (Sabhat). From the other side, Catholics believe in Jesus; they read the Bible; the Church is their temple; their religious leaders are Priest, Archbishop, etc; and their most important day is Sunday. As you can see there are a lot of differences and probably that caused the problems between Jews and Catholics. During the 1600 c, the Catholic Church was the one that had more power around the world.

During the Second War World, we could find those kinds of problems, because Jewish people were not considered in the society. There is another movie which is called “The beautiful life” (La vida es bella), it is an Italian movie that talks about what happened with Jews all along the Second War World. In that movie we could see how Italian Jews were treated by Catholics, and how they abused of them.

As you can see, even during the Second War World was present that problem, and now it is not the exception, because we still have those problems between these two religions. “Christians have criticized Jews for rejecting Jesus as their messiah, and Jews have criticized Christians for corrupting the concept of one God and following a false messiah” (http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/christianity_judaism.htm), for that reason they do not tolerate each other.

I think that problems between different beliefs and religions had always been here, especially between Catholics and Jews. Probably there is a prejudice in relation to Jewish people. As I said before, Jews have different beliefs from Catholics, but that does not mean that they do not have the same rights. I am not in favour of discrimination because in my opinion, every person has the same rights, even though they have different thoughts. I do not like to see how people are discriminating others because of their beliefs. I believe that this problem is because we are not accustomed to accept a variety of ideas and thoughts. We are all different and for that reason we have different beliefs and we have to accept that. It does not matter what happen, we are all equals and that is the only important thing.

References:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/christianity_judaism.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice

Outline: The Merchant of Venice!

1. Introduction.

2. William Shakespeare's life.

3. Summary of the movie.

4. Relatioship between Antonio and Shylock.

5. Differences between Jews and Catholics.

6. What is happening now? Do we have those kind of problems?

7. Personal opinion.

What women love most...

As we could see on "The Wife of Bath", she got married five times, and in that period of time it was like a very libertine behavior. If I make a comparison about this and what happened in the past, I can say that now is completely different because it does not matter how many times a woman can get married, or probably people do not get married even though they live with their boyfriend or girlfriend, but it is not so important. In the past, it was like a very religious life and this means that if the Church said that women could not be pregnant if she was not with her husband, but it does not matter that, because now we can see girls who are just 17 years old and they are pregnant. In conclusion I wanted to say that time affects the way of seeing what is happening.
Related to women and sex, I can say that they really want to be understood by men, they want to be loved and respected by them. If a man do this, they will feel like they are the more important and beautiful person in the world and in their hearts.

Chaucer: "Truth"

"Truth" is a poem which was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet. In this poem, Chaucer make an interesting analysis about what happened a that time. When I read this poem for the first time I started thinking about "what does it mean truth?". For me, the truth is what you are, and you do not have lie about who you are. Chaucer said that if we say the truth is going to be the better way to go to heaven. If I think about this, I can say that religious and God are really important issues, because there says that if we follow what God have said, you are going to be in the right way. But, what happen today? Is the Truth an important issue?, I think that nowadays, telling the truth is not a big issue, because now everybody lies. Analizing this, I can say that now, each person just know his/her own truth, but they do not know anything about the rest. For that reason it is really important to say the truth, it doesn´t matter if you don´t believe in God, but saying the truth can make you a better person.

"Be satisfied with what you have, even if it isn’t much..." Geoffrey Chaucer, "Truth"

My definition of an Epic poem!

What comes to my mind if I think about an "Epic poem", is that it can be something written by a really important person in the world. In that poem, he/she tells us about the important and sucessful issues that he/she has lived or probably another person lived. In that sense is like a biography of a relevant issue that had happened in the past or probably it can be also a fictional poem.

What is literature?

“ no text provides self-contained meaning; literary texts do not exist independently of readers‘ interpretations. A text …is not finished until it is read and interpreted....religious, cultural and social values affect readings” (Kennedy and Gioia, 2005)

If I think about this definition, I would like to say that one of the most important things when you are reading a text is your own interpretation about it. When you read something, you will always have a different interpretation which is going to be different from others´ definition. Each person has different point of view and different opinions and that depends on the context, such as the political or the social context. Is the person who is going to decode the message given from the text, so for that reason it is really important the interpretation from the reader. One thing is the way the writer uses to write a text and another different thing is the way the reader uses to interpret the text and with what he/she makes a relation according to the interpretation.