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.