Junwoo Lee's Blog

 Rating: 9/10   The narrator of the story made it easy for me to immerse myself in the story. Everyone will have an experience of being in love as a little kid. Even though our behavior when we were in love as a kid will look silly and funny as we reminisce those days, I can say for sure that we were as passionate as any adult can be back then, too. In the short story, the young boy went to Araby, the bazaar, because of Mangan's sister. She asked the boy if he was going to Araby, saying that she can't go because of a retreat that week in her convent. The boy ensures Mangan's sister that he will go to the bazaar and get something for her. He eventually arrives at the bazaar about 10 minutes before the closure, but he then realizes the reality and gets filled up with anger and anguish.  I liked the depiction of the boy opening his eye towards reality, apart from idealism. Blinded by love, the boy went to Araby but eventually escapes from the fantasy and illusion he was seeing

 Rating: 7/10 The significance of this story was that James Joyce threw pieces of sentences and pieces of the puzzle but never got to actually finish up the puzzle by himself. For instance, Father Flynn passes away due to several strokes he got, but as we progress toward the end of the story, we find out that he was actually mentally unstable. Also, Old Cotter indicates that there was some unhealthy relationship between Father Flynn and the young narrator, but the readers never get to find out what it is actually. Like these, James Joyce left a plenty of room for the readers' own interpretation throughout the story. Another point to focus on is the usage of term 'paralysis'. This term can be applied to both 'death' and 'religion'. For Father Flynn, 'death' became a paralysis of his life, but it was a way out from the paralyzing binding by the 'religion'.

 Rating: 8/10   As I quite didn't understand why the title was set as 'Gooseberries', I focused on the object 'gooseberry' throughout the story. Gooseberries were the trees Nikolai planted after he got a townhouse with his wife's capital. In contrast to Nikolai who like the taste of the gooseberries he got from the trees, Ivan didn't really enjoy them, saying even the freshest ones tasted sour and unripe. I think these 'gooseberries' were the medium that shows the different standards of happiness and different ways people achieve happiness. Nikolai's was close to materialism, which portrays the behavior of many people nowadays. People tend to evaluate not only themselves but also other people by their possession, lifestyle etc., even though all of these might just depend on one's values. I was struck by the fact that a story written more than 100 years ago conveys such a criticism about our society.

 Rating: 7/10  Dmitri Gurov is a unique character who shows more emotional bondage with women that that with men. As he dislikes his intelligent wife, he has various affairs with other women. This story is about a particular 'lady with the dog', Anna Sergeyevna. Unlike other women he had met before, he truly falls in love with her and even visits her town where she lives with his husband.   Throughout the story, I particularly enjoyed the expressions that was made by Gurov(or Chekhov) when elaborating his emotions about Anna. Also, the unseen gap between Anna and Gurov was partly shown through the elaboration of these two characters, and this was another interesting point of this short story. Meanwhile, as I personally don't enjoy unclear, vague ending, I would like to see another finishing style of <The Lady with the Dog>.

 Rating: 6/10  I hadn't had much interaction with Russian writers before, so this short story was another fresh contact to Russian writings. The story was about Ivan, who meets two widows and tells them about Peter's denial. By listening to the story of how Peter denied Jesus several times and finally realized his awful mistakes, the two widows were moved and their eyes shed tears. After observing their reactions, Ivan walks away with satisfaction. His feeling of peacefulness shows by the description of the background as Ivan walks home.  To interpret this story through Hero's Journey, I personally don't see the point where any of the characters take part as a 'hero'. Throughout the story, the only character who 'can' be called a hero is Peter from Ivan's story. For Ivan and any other characters such as widows, I personally don't see any action which can be step 5, 'crossing the threshold'. As I believe it would not be precise or exact to

Rating: 8/10   A Sound of Thunder was my initial experience of Bradbury's works. The fact that the story was written several decades ago worried me, but this concern vanished at once. This story was easy enough to read through smoothly, while it was also profound enough to have something to think about. Focusing on the "butterfly effect" throughout the story, the author introduced a new approach to 'time travel'. I've only had experiences of reading time travel stories that repeat the same sentence like "Don't interact with yourself in the past", but never read a story concerning how a tiny change in the past will greatly affect the future(or the present). This story straightforwardly showed how ONE footstep accidentally made in the past completely changed the style of life in the present, such as a change in spelling of the words(TIME to TYME, TAKE to TAEK, etc.). It was a sensation for me to experience a brand new viewpoint that I had never th