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The Treatment of Raphael

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Apollo” reminded me of the treatment of migrant workers. Now I know you might be confused however the relationship between the main character boy and the houseboy Raphael. In the story we see Raphael being very kind to the main character despite how his parents treat Raphael. We see Raphael playing with the boy even though he knows he might get in trouble. However, in the end, we still say the main character stab Raphael in the back by claiming Raphael had pushed him causing Raphael to get fired. This reminded me of migrant workers from other countries in the United States. Migrant workers come to the United States and do the jobs many other people don’t want to do due to their level of danger, demanding physicality, and low pay. This migrant always uses cheaper products as well as things like fruit and meat. Fruits and vegetables are often harvested by groups of migrant workers who travel through farms picking things for farmers. This kind of mass labor tha
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New (french) title

When we read Recitatif I didn’t think too much of the title I figured it had something to do with the story but as the story went on we were never introduced to that word. I thought it was interesting to look into according to Wikipedia “"Recitatif" is the French form of recitative, a style of musical declamation that hovers between song and ordinary speech, particularly used for dialogic and narrative interludes during operas and oratorios”. This sort of makes sense because the structure of the story is somewhat random and sporadic. We get this sense that it's not quite a normal story. However, I don’t really see a strong connection to the music aspect of it and I am not sure if the french part plays into it so I would like to propose an alternate title. Les mystères des souvenirs (the mysteries of memories). Sorry if that’s not how you actually write in french I took Spanish so I just used google translate so I could keep the French theme. For the first part of the stor
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Change in attitude

The first quote I am going to talk about from “The Evolution of My Brother” is on page 150-151 when Jenny is talking about how she feels about getting to go to the camp at Stanford. “All I wanted for so long was to be part of a family that wasn’t mine. To have an excuse to love mine less, an excuse to run away instead of staying so close all the time. .. I was about to experience my first taste of independence.” In this quote, Jenny talks about how she yearns for independence and freedom from her family. Throughout most of the story, Jenny talks about feeling held back by her family. She gets annoyed by her younger brother who she feels she has to parent and her parents don’t seem to watch over them much. I think the sense of going off to college and away from our parents is something many of us high schoolers can relate to Jenny about. My second quote from “The Evolution of My Brother” is towards the end on pages 174-175 where Jenny expresses what seems to be an opposite sentiment com
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The Englishmen in Guests of the Nation

“‘I want you and noble to bring them out: you can tell them they’re being shifted again; that’ll be the quietest way.’ ‘Leave me out of that,’ says Noble suddenly. Jeremiah Donovan looked at him hard for a minute or two. “All right so,” he said peaceably. ‘You and Feeney collect a few tools from the shed and dig a hole by the far end of the bog’”. 5th paragraph on page 296 from Guests of the Nation by Frank O’Connor I think this passage shows a lot about the dynamic of the Irish soldiers throughout the story. The passage starts with Jeremiah Donovan explaining how he wants Noble and Bonaparte to start the process of taking the Englishmen to their death. Jeremiah clearly doesn’t seem to have much empathy for the Englishmen. Jeremiah’s orders are very blunt and he has no problem lying to them in a way that might give them false hope. It also seems a bit cruel that Jeremiah has Bonaparte and Noble play a role in the execution of the Englishmen. As we saw throughout the story Noble and Bon
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How do the stories balance real life and apocalypse?

How do the stories balance real life and apocalypse? One of the things I always admire about apocalyptic fiction is the balance the authors have to create. They need to make the apocalypse scary and jarring as well as make us feel as though this could be our world if we continue down a certain path. The technique of making readers feel as though this is an unlikely yet still possible reality pulls readers in because it opens their imagination of what could happen in their world. In Ray Bradbury’s There Will Come to Soft Rains we see this high tech house that can cook food as well as cleans and do all the chores people normally hate to do. With the capabilities of robots I’m sure there is a robot out there that can make eggs and after a programmed amount of time throw them away like in the story. Many people have robotic vacuums like the mice we see in the story. Therefore, these details make us feel as though we could be living in this society at first. However, we then here about the
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