Goodbye!

Thank you to all who made this semester so great. I really enjoyed this class a lot. I wish you all the best and hope we can keep in touch! (Aldo and Bety had gone home, and Verónica and Iván couldn't make it ... and Benjamín?)

Have a great holiday, a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)

Shelley

The Adventures of Nietzsche (humor)

"Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman, a rope over an abyss."

Youth Does Not Guarantee Your Hapiness

4.5 out of 5 stars. Youth does not guarantee your hapiness.              

October 29, 2013

By Mónica Fernanda Guevara Maldonado.

This review is from: The Picture of Dorian Gray

I was looking for a reading with some mystery, suspense, fiction and romance; on “The picture of Dorian Gray”, definitely I got all of these. 

There has been a lot of controversy with classifying this novel into the correct genre, but generally it is placed in the genre of Philosophical fiction and Gothic fiction.

This novel was written by the Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde, and first published as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890 in Philadelphia.

 The story tells of a young, captivating and extremely beautiful young man called Dorian Gray, grandson of one Lord Kelso, who returns to London as the unique heir of the house of his aunt, Lady Brandon. Here, he meets Basil Hallward, a well-known artist who immediately becomes interested in Dorian.

Basil asks Dorian to sit for a portrait, he accepted and when it is finished; it becomes the masterpiece of Basil and also the key of the story.  

On the other hand is Lord Henry Wotton, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth, beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure; when he meets Dorian he upsets him with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth; this speech makes Dorian to worry of his most impressive characteristics that are fading day by day, so he eventually curses his portrait, which he believes will one day remind him of the beauty he will have lost.

In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him to stay forever young; however, he has no idea of the price of this action…

Over the time, Lord Henry’s influence over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a disciple of the “new Hedonism” and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London’s slums, however, a series of unfortunately events incite Dorian to put the matter behind him and started to live a life full of irregularities that slowly transform to the charming Dorian Gray in a masked and sadistic monster.

In style and content, this story has as much in common with science fiction as it does with other Romantic novels, with the first, due to the hallucinations that Dorian experiment and the creepy descriptions of the portrait when it begins to transform.  

In contrast, its similarity with Romantic style is because of the description in the dark Dorian's thoughts, his changing mood and at the end, with his feeling of regret and loneliness.

In conclusion, personally I think this is a complicated read because of some terms and allusions with the Greco-Roman literature, but it goes quickly, that makes it exciting and unpredictable keeping your attention in the whole book.

This story is a good utopia in which eternal beauty and youth are possible, definitely an enviable opportunity for those who are afraid of getting old or for narcissist people, but at the end, the reading makes clear that: “youth does not guarantee your happiness”. This could be the learning of this brilliant story. 

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Fatima F. Dominguez Aburto Huesca.

Oscar Wilde was a British writer who incur in many types of writing, such as prose, poetry and theater plays. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is one of the last plays that he wrote.

This play tells the story of John (or Jack), his friend Algernon, his love for Gwendolen and how a name can change a lot of things and perceptions. Jack is a young man who in London always present himself as Earnest. ¿The reason? He has created this character for release himself of the stress of some situations. The problem comes because he is in love with the cousin of his friend Algernon, Gwendolen, and he decides to propose to her. Algernon, or Algy, found out that he is not Earnest but John and reveal that he also has a character like that, Bumbury, and for that reason he start wanting to bother a little to Jack. Jack is tired of Earnest and decides to “kill” him. But… Will that be all right? Or will Jack learn how big is the importance of being Earnest?

This play is definitely fun and easy to read, which is not that common in plays, because you can sympathise or not understand the characters but in any case they are interesting.  Every character in this play had a very particular personality and idiosyncrasy to very unique things. This make that their interaction with each other flow in very singular ways, just like the odd friendship between Algy and Jack, and make the play, somehow, very dynamic.

Oscar Wilde always created characters that shown his own particularities and the way in which he perceived the society around him. This is the main reason why in all his works you can find many thing that has a vizar point of view of what is important and what is not. Of course that “The importance of Being Earnest” is not an exception for this and because of that some of the situations are hilarious.

In my opinion for being easy to read and imagine, interesting and very fun, I will give this book 5 of 5 stars.

The Joy Luck Club Review By Hugo Dinorin

4 out of 5 stars

The Joy Luck Club Review

By Hugo Dinorin, October 29^th, 2013

This review is from: The Joy Luck Club

In every family, there has been at least one discussion or hassle between parents and children because of the different ideas and experiences that each one have. However, there will be always a strong bond in every parents-children relationship. 

The Joy Luck Club concentrates in all that, narrating the history of 4 Chinese women who, because of different reasons, migrate to America, and their daughters who are born in America. These 4 women started a group called “The Joy Luck Club “ for playing the traditional game of Mahjong, chatting about her lives and spending some good time together. Though, they are not only related because of the club, they also have problems in their relationship with their daughters.

Throughout 4 chapters, Amy Tan, the author of the book, develops the story of how was the women’s life before coming to America, why the women come to America, how was the childhood and  experiences of their daughters. Besides, each chapter is divided in 4 episodes in which is narrated the story of each women or daughter, telling in detail what is their “side of the story”. That is, I every episode, each one narrates, explains and share how was their own experiences.

So, Amy Tan gives you a piece of the story through each chapter, giving you the opportunity to compare and contrast the life of each character, and with that, she gives you the parts of a puzzle  in order to that helps you understand every character of story and their ways of behave.

In my opinion, The Joy Luck Club is a book written with emotion and passion, because Amy Tan based these four histories in her own experiences as a Chinese-American and her relationship with her mother. Thus, she transmitted her feelings and emotions through her words, creating an incredible book.

The Secret Adversary.

4.0 out of 5 stars

Life could give us an unexpected adventure.

By Belmontes Joshua (October 29th, 2013)

The Secret Adversary, from Agatha Christie. 

The story happens in London, 1919, when World War I has finished. Two old friends, Miss Prudence Cowley (Tuppence) and Major Thomas Beresford (Tommy) are looking for a job; life is expensive and they need money. But furthermore, they are looking for something else in life: Adventure. Tuppence is a very clever girl and she find a way of getting adventure and money, and Tommy joins to her in it. But they didn’t imagine what sort of things they’re going to pass through.

Tommy and Tuppence are hired for a mysterious objective: To find a missed American girl know as Jane Finn, who was traveling from US to France in an ocean liner called Lusitania. Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915 by a German submarine, and the ship sank, but Jane was one of the survivors. Someone saw Jane receiving a sensitive confidential document from the American ambassador. This document had the purpose of help Britain's Government through the War but for 1919, when the War was over, that document would be very harmful.

Now Jane is missed and nobody knows about her. But an evil secret group is trying to find her to pick the document she had and use it to manipulate Labour Party and British people to create a bolshevist revolution and defeat British Government. This secret group is leaded by a mysterious person known as “Mr. Brown”, but actually nobody of the group knows him: The Secret Adversary.

Tommy and Tuppence start following people of the secret group to get clues about the whereabouts of Jane. They'll try to find Jane before the group does it, because the group has been ordered to make a general strike on the 29th of the current month. But trying to accomplish their task, they will put their lives in danger, they will known secrets of the Government, they will be in a suspicious environment but also they’ll change their lives.

Agatha Christie was an internationally recognized writer; her books have been sold to many countries and the genre is mainly mystery. Her book “The Secret Adversary”, written in 1922, is her second novel and the first one with the young couple of detectives Tommy and Tuppence. This couple and another famous character, Hercule Poirot, would catch the hearts of millions of readers through a very big number of books.

The girl with the dragon tattoo

5 stars of 5 stars

By Sandra Alfaro, October 28^th, 2013

This review is from: The girl with the dragon tattoo (Stieg Larsson)

Genre: Novel

 

“Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man”

Henrik Vanger is an old man who has been received every year in his birthday a mystical flower which no one else knows who sends, and where it is from.  Mr. Vanger and his rich Swedish family, who have common business, lives in a little town named Hedertad.

Mr. Vanger  granddauther ,Harriet Vanger,  has been lost for several years, and since that, Mr. Vanger has been thinking she is not  died  and contact Mikael Blomkvist who is an important  journalist in a renamed newspaper,  to searching she, and to writing  memories about Mr, Vanger’s life.

Mikael Blomkvist one of the principal characters is a conscious journalist who recently lost a trial related to embezzlement corruption investigation against to an influent  rich businessman and Blomkavist in a way to obtain revenge decides to investigate the Harriet case. 

The journalist and his assistant Lisbeth Slander, a mysterious hacker, antisocial and intelligent girl, starts  to investigate  what happened with Harriet. In the investigation Mikael and Lisbeth meeting the Vanger Family, and their relation with Harriet, besides some family problems.

Stieg Larsson a Swedish journalist, who died of a heart attack in 2004,  wrote this best seller novel which explain the importance of personal and natural emotions,  particularly  topics about corruption, sexual abuse and missing people in  the presently, related  with feelings and  thinking’s  with some appropriate level of fail.  This book it’s the first part of the three books saga.  The novel was narrated in third person, and when you start to read the sequence and the chapter’s organization (dates), you can feel like a person who is in the story and glimpse the places in the background.

I was looking for some detective novel and I chose this book last august from my pending book list, one friend recommended this book related with social criticism, because I remember some months ago we were talking about “quality of life” and I say:  “I read the statistics and Swedish is one of 5 countries with the most quality life” and she told me “Have you ever listened about The Girl with the dragon tattoo?” and when I start to read ,the female violence, against, disappointment, fail, appear in that pages. Most of the time “the first world” it is viewed as a model to follow but in this case the book shows many contradictions about that.

When I was reading this book I remember the case of many missing women in the entire world, and Mexico is not the exception, the case in Ciudad Juarez, represented an example about this disappearances, in addition the social media have similarities with Mexico like some of that are coopted from rich people with corruption; moreover, exists congruent journalists like Blomkvist who is searching the truth.

 The character that I found the most interesting was Lisbeth, here is a girl who shows her sensitivity to woman behaviors and that is her motor to involve she in the investigation about Harriet, moreover, she has her own story, which is narrated in a lot of lines in the novel, and provide us an extremely denote about currently social female problems and nowadays the common speech says:  “the importance of the women has been increasing”,  but the global statistics show the opposite, referring specific to view woman  like a sex symbol.

 With 644 pages, this book is heavy, yet hard to put down. I consider, the book reflected the currently reality not only in Swedish which has a high level of development in healthy, education and other services; has an appropriate criticism and reflexing social problems. I recommended this book to people who like the mystery and the actual discussion topics.