The reading "The Source", by Katherine Anne Porter gives the reader and insite as to how important rules and discipline are to making a southern plantation run smoothly. We see this dictatorship suddenly emerge in the character, Grandma. She is only truly happy when she gets things her way and when everything is running like clock work. When she goes down to check up on the plantation we see her dictator like conduct show its true colors. The instant she gets down there she starts bossing everyone around and getting everything back to the way she likes it. The slaves are doing all of these extra chores on top of their field work and really getting worn thin. In the story it says, "...They loved their Grandmother;...just the same they felt that Grandmother was a tyrant, and they wished to be free of her;" (5). This shows that the slaves although had much appreciation for their Grandmother at the same time they wished that she would go a little bit easier on them. I think that the Grandma is only calling all of the shots because not only does she have much wisdom on how to run a plantation smoothly, but she has an undying love for the country and only wants the best for the plantation. Although the people who work on the plantation may be worked too hard, at least they can live in a better enviornment. The Grandma helps the slaves out emensely by giving them better clothes and a better place to live in. The story explains that Mister Harry, the slave owner, mistreated the slaves by not giving them enough food or not supplying proper clothing and living spaces. The Grandmother was just there to make sure that the slaves were being treated properly.

In the second reading, "The Old Order" one of the main themes was interracial friendships. For all who live in the south during this time, friendship between blacks and whites is completely forbidden. Although in this story we see that Miss Sophia Jane and Nannie work together as friends to care for both of their children. Both of these women give birth to newborns at the same time and this forces them to work together to not only take care of the babies but to take care of the whole house on the plantation. Miss Sophia Jane takes care of both her own white child and Nannie's black child. During this time Miss Sophia Jane breast fed both children and took them both as equals all throughout this time when Nannie was busy with keeping the house clean. Nannie felt that the children should have been treated differently, that the black child, her child should not be treated the same as the white child, it should be treated as less equal. Whereas Miss Sophia Jane thought that treating them equally was the only way to take care of the two children. It is strange to me that Nannie would feel this way but then again I can see why because that's what she does everyday. She takes care of the white family and makes sure that they have everything that they need and forgets all about what she might need. This shows a truly loyal slave. As for Miss Sophia Jane, she shows that not all white people treat their slaves poorly. She shows cultural diversity and that she sees what inside of people not just their outward appearence.

The story "Dry September" by William Faulkner for me was a story full of excitement and confusion. At the beginning all of the guys are sitting around in the barber shop talking about how Miss Minnie Cooper got raped by a black man. The black man they are blaming the raping on is Will Mayes whom the barber thinks had nothing to do with it. Because of the barber siding with Mayes the other men in the barber shop are going against him and they are getting enraged. McLendon walks in and gets everyone except the one barber to side with him. Everyone who is against the barber, have no proof that Mayes was the one who did it. They haven't talked to anyone to even see if Mayes was anywhere near Miss Cooper that night. McLendon wants everyone who is against the barber and Mayes to go and "see" aka hurt and kill Mayes. So then after they sit around an argue about who did what they decide to go. This is where I started to get confused.
The barber and the main arguer, McLendon who hate eachother, get in the same car to go see Mayes. So after all of the men just called the barber a "niggerlover" and who despise the barber all get in the same car anyways. That just didn't seem right to me. Then they reach Mayes' house and they get him outside only to beat the living daylights out of him. When they are talking about the fight they say on page 444 that, "The others expelled their breath in a dry hissing and struck him with random blows and he whirled and cursed them, and swept his manacled hands across their faces and slashed the barber upon the mouth, and the barber struck him also." This was confusing to me because they say that even the barber, the one is supposedly on the side of Mayes', hits him. Why would the barber hit Mayes? I can kind of understand why the barber would do something like that because there's no way that he could have stood his ground against all of the guys beating up Mayes, but still I would like to think that maybe he would just stand there and watch instead of hitting the poor guy.
Anyways, so then they all get back into the cars, including Mayes and they start driving to a abandon road, obviously to beat up and kill Will Mayes. The barber keeps telling McLendon to let him out of the car, but McLendon won't allow it he keeps telling him to jump out. And this is when Mayes realizes that the barber is in the car and he tries to get his attention, but the barber won't answer him. Apparently Mayes and the barber are friends. Again this is where I start to get confused. The barber jumps out of the car while it's still moving and hides in the ditch on the side of the road. he jumps out because he doesn't want to have to witness what the guys are going to do with Mayes which is understandable. But then my confusion sets in. As the men drive away the barber continues to hide in the ditch, he even hides in the ditch when other cars drive by. Is he trying to avoid being seen so that he doesn't get blamed for killing Mayes? Or he is hiding from the guys who killed Mayes? I was thinking probably both. I would think that the guys who are killing Mayes would want to find the barber so that their dirty deed doesn't get out.
Moving on to Miss Minnie Cooper. This woman seems like she's lost her umph from her golden years. She's not married, has no children, and seems like just a lonely old woman. The story states that she used to be a charmer and caught the eyes of many men back in the day, but now she just kind of sits on the outside of things and goes unnoticed. I really believe that she made this whole story up so that she could have all eyes on her again because when she walks through town after the story has gotten out, all of the men in town tip their hats to her and notice her a lot more. Also after everyone starts noticing her more the second she gets out of site from people she starts bursting out laughing. This makes me think that maybe she's thinking "Haha I fooled them" or something like that. I hate her and I hate that she got poor Will Mayes killed over her lies.

The three readings that we read by Kate Chopin all had
underlying themes of relationships, both married and unmarried.

The first story, "At the Cadian Ball" discusses relatioships before marriage. This whole story is drama-filled, what with Bobinot wanting Calixta, but her wanting Alcee and Clarisse wanting Alcee, but he wants Calixta. At times it was hard to tell who was in love with who. You could tell that Claixta didn't want anythign to do with Bobinot, but she knew that it would help her out in the long run if they got married. Alcee to me was Calixta's bad boy and Bobinot was her good guy. Every girl wants the bad guy, but always ends up with the good guy. Alcee wants Calixta and no one else, but at times it does seem as though he had something going on with Clarisse. In the story it explains that Alcee loved Clarisse, but she didn't love him back. So Alcee probably moved on to Calixta even though he knew that he would eventually be with Clarisse.

Moving on to "The Storm", we see that Calixta and Bobinot marry and have a child together and we also see that Clarisse and Alcee marry as well. Both marriages don't seem to be keeping Calixta and Alcee happy, the marriages almost seem as though they were arranged to happen which they probably were. I mean Alcee and his wife aren't even living together. Clarisse and their kids are in Biloxi, while Alcee is home cheating on her with Calixta. You can tell that their marriage isn't about love. On the other hand, Bobinot and Calixta seem as though they have a little bit of love for eachother, they are living in the same house. Also when the storm hits she seems to be quite worried for both of them, praying for them to be kept safe. Then again we look at what happens while Alcee comes over, and then we can come to the conclusion that maybe Calixta and Bobinot aren't in love.

The third story, "Desiree's Baby" again we see the theme of relationships. The relationship between Desiree and Armand before they have their baby seems to be working well, them seem like their in love. I knew it wouldn't last for long because once they find out that the baby is biracial they split. I love how Armand automatically blames Desiree for the baby's mixed race and then we find out in the end that it was actually Armand who is mixed race. The twist really makes a great ending. I felt bad for poor Desiree because she ends up killing herself, which upon reading for the first time I did not catch that she killed herself. But, what happened to the baby? It says that she picks up up and takes it with her I thought so if Desiree kills herself then where does the baby go? I wanted more information when the story ended, I was quite upset.

All in all, these three stories I thought were much better than the other stories, because the other stories seemed kind of bland to me. These stories although they were short we well written. I love stories that have a twist at the end too!

The story of Frederick Douglass informs readers of what life is like being a slave in the south. There were many things throughout my reading of this tragic story that I found hard to stomach. The beatings of the slaves to me were gruesome and unnecessary. At points throughout their descriptions I found them to be extremely explicit. For instance, the first beating that Douglass witnesses of his Aunt Hester by Mr.Plummer was the beginning of my stomach ache. Just reading and imagining what the slaves had to endure disgusted me. I think that the description of this beating for me was a little too vivid to imagine. Mr. Plummer really let Aunt Hester have it, he whipped the living day lights out of her. He strips her down and ties her hands up and takes out his cow hide and really lets loose on her. Could you imagine if you had to undergo a beating like this just for going out and attempting to forget about the lifestyle that you have to go through everyday? Granted that was the life of a slave to have to have no freedom whatsoever, but still the beatings were a little excessive. Poor Douglass runs and hides in a closet halfway through the beating because he can't stand to watch it anymore.

The other beating that pushed me over the edge was the beating of Douglass himself. He gets beat by Mr.Covey. Douglass had a hard time when he went to go get wood because he had never worked with oxen before. So when Mr.Covey finds out about his trouble he takes him back out to the woods cuts himself a new whip out of a gum-tree and rips off Douglass' clothes and begins beating Douglass. Again imagine being Douglass and never have been beaten before, could you deal with being beaten this way?

Moving on away from the beatings, there was another part of the story that I thought was a bit unsettling. I'm not sure whether anyone else in the class caught this but Mr.Covey buys a woman slave only for breeding. He hires her and hires a married black man to in layman's terms make babies and lots of them. Apparently Mr.Covey was short on cash and only had enough money to buy one slave so he must have figured that buying one woman and forcing her to create children was teh best thing to do in his position. For the ladies of the class, put yourself in this woman's shoes, how would you feel if you were bought just to give birth? This is just disgraceful to me. But you can see how much of an importance southern plantation owners put on their slaves. I wonder if her beat her as well if she didn't create a child that met the requirements that he had in mind.

Overall this was a good way to see the opposing side to the south during slave times. I found this story at times a little to full of description especially throughout the description of the beatings.