Monday, May 23, 2011

British Architecture-Research Topic

1.British architecture
2.I want to explore why Brits aren't building such extravagant buildings anymore
3. Why aren't the buildings being built so grand; What happened to spark a change in the way they build buildings?
4. Is this happening because of religious changes? Is it all because of money or the lack of money? Is it a power change?
I want to explore the British architecture because I believe it has a lot to tell us about their history and were the Brits are headed in the future

Monday, May 9, 2011

Mrs Begum's Son and the Private Tutor and the color contrast!

Just in the second paragraph you can see the importance of color that is used throughout the story.
The second paragraph mentions 8 different colors and its not even that long of a paragraph! Color is brought up numerous times, did anyone else pick up on this? The Asian Women's Centre was also painted a bright orange, is this the narrator trying to neutralize things at the end of the story?!

You also have "the white liberal nightmare" which would be translated into the white terror, where the clashing of cultures is portrayed through color references. You have the red, blue, or yellow men at the communist rally.

Magid is trying to get everyone to "love and stuff" and he wants all the cultures to mix together and he thinks everything would be much nicer.

But unfortunately not everyone wants all the cultures to unite and you see even his own brother doesn't want this.

Zadie Smith Picnic, Lightning; A Mystery Within a Mystery

To me this story involves two mysteries; what gender each character is and the mystery of who killed who!
This was a very complex story written my Zadie Smith. The characters genders are not clear besides Clara & Elane; you could interpret the characters as either female or male. We aren't even sure if the narrator is male or female.

The form is written in a way that shows the readers the complexity of the story. We aren't completely sure about the characters making this a complex reading and it can also be interpreted in many different ways depending on how one reads it.
The form contradicts itself. There are also many different possible plot lines.

Clara riding the London Chunnel does give us a time frame when this story is taking place and that would be around 92' or later.

I find it interesting that the narrator is very upset by Clara and the "boy" have some sort of relationship. The narrator seems blunt and uncaring throughout the story about the "boy" but (s/he) really actually cares. But over all I can't trust the narrator because of the open-endedness the narrator leaves us with at the end of this short story.