Literary Meeting Notes Example: Members in attendance: Montelango Castana Author/Text or Topic: Isabelle Allende House of the Spirits

Plot/Characters: The story is currently focusing on Rosa, a beautiful young girl who is waiting for her fianc to return from work. He is away running a mining operation. Her fianc is a powerful man named Esteban Trueba. He has associations with right wing politics in the country where the story occurs, Chile. Rosas father is also involved with politics; but with a rival, left-wing group. Right now, the characters in the story are concerned about Rosa because she is sick. How the characters deal with Rosas illness reveals their underlying motivations. This is something Allende does in all her stories; she uses crisis situations to reveal character traits and motivations. Themes/Motifs: At this point in the story, the theme is that people are negatively affected by strict patriarchal societies. The women in the story do not have say in their own lives because of patriarchal dominance. Likewise, the men in the story are despotic and tyrannical because they are exalted in a society where might makes right. This theme appears to be a motif in Allendes other works. Often times, Allendes stories negatively portray patriarchal societies by showing how they hurt people. Literary Techniques: One of the literary techniques Allende is employing is juxtaposition. The story keeps jumping from the peace and tranquility of Rosas family house in town, to the brutality of life in Estebans mine. This use of juxtaposition works to emphasize the character traits of Esteban and Rosa as well as the stories theme concerning patriarchal societies. Allende also uses magio-realism in which the real and the fantastic are combined to emphasize theme and characterization. For example, Rosas ten foot tall purple dog, Barabbas, shows her families tremendous wealth and unique position amongst the townsfolk. Both the use of juxtaposition and magio-realism are common amongst Allendes contemporaries and are typical of modern Latin-American writers in general.

Senior Special Projects Creative Writing Meeting Notes Example: Members in attendance: Montelango Castana Author/Text or Topic: Human Frailty Meaning: Billy shared one poem this week called Caught in the Headlights. The poem forwards the idea that often times people act it ways that are misconstrued simple because they are overwhelmed by the pressures and complexities of interpersonal situations. The voice of the poem cries out in anguish after offending a potential friend. The speaker feels frustrated because he knows he has completely blown it, and he wishes he could think faster on his feet and be more confident. Lilly submitted two poems to the group, Yeah, Right, and Promise Ring Broken. Both poems forward the idea that people are easily manipulated and hurt by people who take advantage of romantic feelings. In Yeah Right, the speaker in the poem is wounded when she finds out that a boy who she has shared intimacies with was with two other girls the same night. In Promise Ring Broken A girl throws her promise ring at a mirror, breaking the mirror and the ring, only to look down and see her own fractured image in the broken pieces of the mirror disgusted that she so attached her sense of self to the faithfulness of a teenage boy. Literary Techniques: In Billys poem Caught in the Headlights he uses assonance in the form of the repetition of the long o vowel to emphasizes his sadness and frustration: So on, and on the music played on / While I stood now so alone (5-6). In Lillys Promise Ring Broken she uses imagery to mirror the speakers psychological breakdown. As she shatters into pieces because her trust has been betrayed, so to the mirror shatters into pieces: Fly ring fly / Not to freedom, but straight into my eye / Split it into shards sharp enough to cut straight through to the soul. / I look down to see my new self: jig-sawed, edged in black, lying quite separate from a ring with the stupid little opal heart crushed into worthless dust (11-16).