Conversation Meeting #3 (the final meeting)

It was sad that on November 12th me and Adel had our last conversation. He told me that he would have to stop meeting with me due to the fact that he was leaving on his extended break to go with his family back home to Saudi Arabia. As a student in our foreign education program he has different term dates and won't be back till late January to start school again.
It was nice to hear that his Kids had fun over Halloween and that they embraced the american tradition of dressing up for Halloween. I was also really glad to hear that Adel's son was getting so much more comfortable at his new kindergarden and was making new friends! I asked Adel if he though having his kids in the American school system was good for them and he said that their are some advantage and disadvantages. One advantage is that his kid are quickly picking up English, his son already critiquing Adel's english word choices. I agreed with him saying that his kids will be so advanced already having the capacity to speak two language and being culturally knowledgeable about two very different ways of life. The only disadvantage he feels is that he doesn't want his kids to lose touch with their roots. This is why, once Adel is done with his schooling, his family is moving back to Saudi Arabia.
We later got on the subject of his Wife who's name I could not properly pronounce or spell. Adel mentioned that they had an arranged marriage and that his wife actually has the same grandfather as him, marry inside the family he says is common from where he's from. This being complete different from courtship in America, this was an interesting topic to me. He said that yes he did have some say in their marriage and that they are very happy together. He told me that he thought it was interesting that the Western culture sees how women are treated in his country like how they are not allowed to drive a car and how he thinks its ridiculous that we make such a big deal out of it. I disagreed with him saying that driving is a freedom and a independent right of an adult to travel as they please and how forcing women to ask for permission and be at the mans discretion of whether or not they can go anywhere seems unfair to me. He compared driving around his six sisters and his mother when he's at home to driving around princess Diana. He said its a honor to take them where they need to go and that people should me more concerned with the ridiculous number of car accidents due to stupidly high speed limits. I never knew that they had such an issue with car accidents and traffic violations but that did not change my opinion that women lose a inherent freedom when they are denied the right to drive. I realized after our last conversation that the only thing that I truly regretted not asking Adel was if he allowed his wife while she is in America to drive or not.... my guess is not.

Conversation Meeting #2

Because of me and Adel's busy schedules, we were not able to meet until October the 12th.  I met with him once again at the TCU bookstore and our conversation seemed to deepen much more in our second meeting. This was probably due to the fact that in our first meeting we communicated all of the basic information about each other and were now more comfortable sharing views and beliefs with one another.
We discussed religion and how he approaches discussing the touchy subject with others that he meets at TCU. He was raised and has always been a devout Muslim and wondered how much information I knew about his religion and the Quran. I told he that I had a general knowledge of it, having taken and enjoyed World Religion my freshman year at TCU. We discussed how we all can learn from each other and that are different beliefs and practices actually had huge connections and were based around the belief that there is one all-powerful God. We further discussed how the conflict between the Western and Muslim cultures since 911 has effected how people treat him in America. He explained that no where in the Quran does it state that people should kill others in an act for God and that the terrorist that people associate with the Muslim religions are extremists. I agreed with him, giving the example that if someone that was not Christian heard that someone murdered an abortion doctor for God that they would be considered an extremist and a bad example of a true Christian.
Along with the discussion about religion, we once again got on the subject of drinking. I told him I felt that there was no harm having a drink or two at dinner and that I was raised with alcohol around the house. I told him that because my parents made me feel comfortable drinking around them and showed me the appropriate way to drink, I have never had a issues with drinking and have never been in trouble for it. He explained that in his religion he feels that alcohol alters your true state of being and that a man should honor God by staying true to himself and not engaging in things that can disrupt your state of mind. After talking about this subject, I agree that drinking is very stressed in the American culture, especially in college. It is interesting to see how Americans have has a long history of stressing alcohol consumption, especially in the 1920s during the . Its amazing to compare this to the traditional Muslim culture who has never had an issue or history of alcohol in their society and shows how extremely different our cultures really are.

conversation meeting #1

I met with my conversation partner Adel over coffee at the TCU bookstore mid September. It was funny because we played a bit of phone tag, neither of us knowing what each other looked like. I was surprised when I first met Adel. In my mind I pictured a younger undergraduate student like myself. I learned Adel was in his thirties and was actually at TCU to earn his Ph.D in linguistics after already earning a Master in it at a school in his hometown in Saudi Arabia.

He told me that everyone in his family had gone to college in the United States. His cousin just returned home after graduating from the University of Virginia and Adel explained that his father, his uncle, and most family members that were older then him had graduated from different universities from across the country. I found it interesting and inquired about where his family went upon graduating. He said that all of them went back home to Saudi Arabia. This made me wonder if most people in other countries grow up concentrating on their studies so they can come to America and experience our higher education system.

It was interesting to discuss with Adel his hunger for communicating with other students to better his English. He explained that most of the people he meets on the different college campuses he has been on (he has also taken some classes at University of Texas at Austin) are only interested in social drinking and only invite him to bars or parties. Adel explained that being a devout Muslim he refrained from consuming any alcoholic beverages, it being against his religion. I could see how the typical college kid could only socialize when alcohol is involved and I empathized with Adel on not having as many opportunities to perfect his English.

It was amazing to see how Adel’s mood perked up when we discussed his family. He explained that he was married and showed me pictures on his phone of his daughter Yara and Abdullah. He showed me cute pictures of his son and daughter playing with the parrots at the Fort Worth Zoo! Adel was explained how his son was having a hard time adjusting to kindergarten and how the only person he seemed to trust at his school was his homeroom teacher and he never left her side. I told Adel that I thought most parents of kids who are from other countries must experience this and that I hope his son gets to feel more comfortable here in America. 

The Lottery

I felt that this story shed light on the dangerous effects of blindly following tradition and not questioning the reasons and implications for practicing a ritual. The weird and mortifying ritual of stoning a random member of the community each year gave for a very interesting and engaging read. 

The community that the story was based around reminded me a lot of the community that we see in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" and how when the majority of a community is wrong in its beliefs or assumptions and takes advantage of popular view and tries and controls the public interest. The fact that no member of the community even tries to question or change the tradition of the lottery is a direct stab at people allowing ridiculous traditions to effect their lives on the simple minded basis that it has always been that way. 

The presence of family is interesting in the story. Families are seen grouping together and identifying themselves with one another during the town meeting. It seems that these families have loving relationships with one another and in turn the towns people themselves seem to form a tight knit community. But the second that Tessie is chosen for execution, everyone around her including her family turns on her. I feel that this goes against every image and idea that we have ever learned about our family. We have learned that our parents and brothers and sisters have our best interest at heart and in this story it is obviously not the case. The fact that everyone can so easily accept random selection of death into their lives seems very odd and kept me on edge during my entire reading experience.

Hills LIke White Elephants

“Hills Like White Elephants” is one of my favorite Ernest Hemingway short stories because it is filled with multiple themes and hidden meanings. There are three major themes that can be inferred when reading the story: gender roles, white elephants, and of course Hemmingway’s infamous ice-burg theory. When talking about gender roles, it is apparent that the man in the story is the controlling figure when he decides what and when they will drink as well as constantly imposing his own feelings on the female character. The female in the story is obviously more mature than the male but is undermined by the pet names that the man calls her (“jig”) and even by Hemingway himself who always refers to the male as “the man” and the female as “the girl.” Even though the man is trying to seem like he cares what the girl wants it is apparent that he just wants her to have the operation for his own selfish reasons. This places the girl in a position of power because she is the one who gets to have the last word on whether she will keep the baby or not.  The symbol of the white elephant can have many different connotations. An elephant in the room is always said to be a child and the elephant represent fertility in Hinduism. The ice-burg theory is definitely implemented in this story because Hemingway never explicitly says the subject of the man and the girl’s discussion, the meaning is imbedded within the conscious, preconscious, and subconscious elements of the story. The clouded situation that the man and the women seem to be in never gets resolved in the end. The readers are left to question whether or not the girl crumbles under the man’s control or if she stays true to her own morals and keeps the baby. 

A Good Man is Hard to Find

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner is just one of her many short stories she published in her lifetime. The short story has elements of religious overtones, comedy, death, and a warped definition of a “good man.”  The religious overtones were mostly influenced by O’Conner’s own experience with Religion, being a devout Catholic herself, and her passion to prove the truth of Faith through her literary writing. I automatically disliked the grandma in the story because she cared more about looking and dressing like a Christian than actually acting like one. She acts like she is more moral or holly than the other family members even though she is the one who deceives the family by lying to the kids about a “secret panel,” making the family take a detour in their vacation that resulted in disaster. The combination of a comedic bickering of a family on vacation mixed with undertones of death and the unexpected killing of every character in the end of the story made gave me a rollercoaster experience when I read it for the first time. It is almost sick and twisted in way, and I especially experienced this when I read: “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed in a frenzy of delight. “But nobody’s killed,” June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car.” (1053) My favorite part of undertone that I recognized right away was the fact that they were all getting ready to get in the car and the grandmother was taking so much time preparing her outfit incase of an accident, “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” was a big red flag to me that the family was going to have a turn for the worst.  The biggest moral question in this story that I discovered was if the grandmother actually underwent a miraculous change of heart by reacting out to her killer with motherly love or if she was just saying what she thought would most likely keep her from dying. The most important quote that I took from the story was at the end, when everyone is dead and the Misfit is talking to his friend about the grandmother, he says, “She would have been a good woman if he had been there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

The Yellow Wall Paper

“The Yellow Wall Paper” was my favorite of all the short stories we read this semester and I enjoyed every moment of reading it. This dark story lives in a gothic environment with the old colonial mansion being described as beautiful, cheap, queer, strange, and untenanted.  The Narrator of the story is the women in the story whose husband has locked her away in the nursery of the mansion because he witnessed her undergoing some “hysterical tendencies.” This is an element of male dominated gender roles with the controlling husband thinking he is doing what is best for his wife but in all actuality keeping her isolated in the room is driving her to insanity.  The domineering husband is a doctor and tries to cure his wife of her post pregnancy depression but the wife is having hallucinogenic experiences when she stares at the yellow wallpaper. “There is a recurrent spot where the apttern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” is one of many examples throughout the story where the women sees things in the wall paper. When we discussed this short story in class, I felt intrigued when we dug into what the actual experience of finding expression in an inanimate object; like when you were a kid and you force your mind to see the outlines and figures in the dark as real things. This story is also a clear example of an unreliable narrator. The women is obviously unstable and at the end of the story she describes how a woman was trapped behind the yellow wall paper and then the perception shifts and you learn that she sees herself as the woman that finally escaped from behind the paper on the walls.