Seveteen Syllables, A&P, Etc Essay, Research Paper

Let me see, what stories should I choose to discuss in my response paper? I asked myself. Well, all stories we came across were very interesting and worth reading, maybe except one or two that were painfully long. So I really ought to pick the ones that caught my attention the most and the ones that I could closely relate my own experiences to. As this thought went across my mind, three stories came right out of my head without even allowing me several more minutes to give a more thorough consideration over some of other pieces we had studied. My selections are Seventeen Syllables , The White Stocking , and A & P . These three stories were well written. It was a real pleasure reading them, therefore, I developed a strong urge to dig into the stories and analyze them. I wanted to discover every single idea the authors tried to bring across in those stories and understand it as if I was the writer. I hope my response paper will bring readers a deeper understanding of these three stories and help them develop their own personal insights towards them.

In the story Seventeen Syllables written by Hisaye Yamamoto, a mother with newly developed passion for creativity is Tome Hayashi, a Japanese woman who had come to the States to escape the traditional role and identity prescribed to her by the Japanese society. She now lives in a farm with her husband and Japanese-America daughter, Rosie, where they pick tomatoes for a living. The creativity of this woman, however, has not rested on how to be a loving and caring wife, but rather on writing Haiku, which she sees as a better way to reject the memories of a once unhappy life and a motivation to move on and lead a new and more fulfilling life.

Hayashi s life was not a happy one. She had been through so much, borne the things that were unbearable, and possibly had been hurt so very deeply that she almost closed her heart. Hayashi came to the United States and became a first generation Japanese-American mother, leaving behind a broken relationship with a man of higher social class and her country. By having a relationship with a man of higher social standing, she defies the traditional role and value expected of a Japanese woman. Even though I think such a social stratification is preposterous, it is the way it has always been for thousand of years. Hayashi, who is a wife and a mother, develops an identity outside both of these roles. By writing Haiku, she is entitled to a new role beyond being a wife and a mother; her creativity moves her beyond the traditional family role given to her by the society and her husband. Hayashi s creativity helps to free herself from her social role, but it is clear that she does not take pressure from society alone, but also from her husband. It is very obvious that her husband is discontented with Hayashi s new identity because she had not been kind of a loving and caring wife he wanted her to be. As his frustration level increases, his anger gradually builds up and eventually reaches its pinnacle, where he takes the award brought to Hayashi for her achievements in Haiku, and breaks it up and burns it. Upon destruction of the award, he completely destroys her dignity, sense of self, the marriage, and her identity.

My attention and thought, for a moment, was completely riveted on the conversations between Rosie and her mother both at the beginning and at the end of the story, which was the only access the readers had to Hayashi s life in the past and her passion for writing. For instance, when Rosie is being asked close to the end of the story by her mother why she married her father, she thinks to herself It was the most frightening question she had ever been called upon to answer. Don t tell me now tell me tomorrow, tell me next week, don t tell me today (288). She knew she would be told the truth and it would not be something she ever wanted to hear. Yamamoto effectively puts emphasis on these conversations through Rose s perspectives, which allows the reader to see Rosie s fear and reluctance in not wanting to hear what her mother has to say about her past. The nature of the relationship between Rosie and her mother is completely revealed through these conversations. I think Rosie and her mother realize the difficulties they face when communicating with each other, and they both know that this gap in the relationship between one another or rather between the first and the second generation cannot be easily patched. When Hayashi asks Rosie to promise her that she would never marry, perhaps she does not want to see the same thing happen to Rosie as it did to her, maybe because Tome had never been in control of her own life that now she is trying to make up for that by attempting to pull a little control over her daughter s life. However, I think that Tome is well aware of the fact that her daughter may not be emotionally capable of processing what she has to tell her or ask from her as well as the profoundness and further implications that her message may convey. As a mother, she soon realizes that the promise she wants from Rosie may affect Rosie for the rest of her life in a very negative way and immediately responds by saying you fool (289). The story does not really indicate whom Tome is referring as a fool. From my understanding, Tome could have referred this fool to herself. It could have been that she was reprimanding herself for the utter absurdity of her request of Rosie to agree to never marry by saying to herself you fool , or it is also possible that she was in fact calling Rosie a fool for actually agreeing to her mean and absurd request. I think Rosie does not really think in the way her mother does. She promised her mother to stay single partially because she knew she had to emotionally support her mother, and it could also be possible that she just did not know what to say or what to do. What happened to Tome does not mean it would happen to Rose. We know that she is trying to protect Rosie, but how can a mother ask her daughter to agree not to marry because her own marriage happened to end up in a miserable failure? In the last scene, Rosie cried and embraced her mother much later than expected because she could not fully comprehend what her mother was trying to tell her. For Rosie, the complications life has to offer are yet too hard for her to see through and she has too little of an understanding of the world that her mother lives in.

Perhaps what both Rosie and her mother were trying to reject was the knowledge and the fact that, at least in their youth, they had less control over their own lives than did men-Hayashi was not in control of her own life and now Rosie is not either

The story The White Stocking written by D.H. Lawrence is a very powerful piece of work because it hit me with a sense of thrill while I was reading it. As I went through each sentence and paragraph, I was always so eager to find out what would happen next as the story progressed. The story was beautifully written and it seemed that I could not get enough of it. I did not even realize that I was at the end of the story until I hit the last sentence.

Although I have never seen a story like this actually happened in real life, I have heard about stories similar to this and have seen them…

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