A Dialogue of Self and Soul

the dump, her home is small for all her eight little brother and sisters, she only has’s one

In Isabel Allende’s Inés of My Soul, one woman, Inés Suarez, challenges the traditional role of women and society by embarking upon a journey alongside her companion to conquer a part of the New World. Throughout the expedition, Inés faces challenges because of her gender, yet she also manages to use her gender and the traditional gender role to her advantage.

Could the killing of an unborn disabled child be considered acceptable in today’s society? Selective infanticide is a very controversial topic that many have argued about over past years. In her article “Unspeakable Conversations” disabilities activist and lawyer Harriet McBryde Johnson demonstrates her viewpoint on this issue. She writes this article as a story, with herself being the narrator. It follows her journey as she feuds with Peter Singer, a Princeton University professor, who has an opposing perspective regarding the killing of unborn disabled children. With this in mind, Johnson reveals her point of view using the strategy of a Rogerian argument and the rhetorical elements of

While the narrator recognizes the great care with which her husband is treating her she seems to constantly feel that she is being ungrateful. She calls herself out in her journal for being a “comparative burden” (Gilman) The room in which the narrator resides has a sturdy bed that is nailed to the floor. The narrator notes that there are bars on the windows and rings hooked into the wall. She wrongly assumes that this room was used as a nursery or gymnasium by the previous owners. As the reader, we are able to instill our own thoughts that this room was in fact built to house someone with a mental disorder. This begs the question of what the house really is, to contain such a room away from decent society.

The book reads, “On her first night with the Hubermanns, she had hidden her last link to him— The Grave Digger’s Handbook—under her mattress, and occasionally she would pull it out and hold it.” This is also a quote from her first night staying with the Hubermanns.

in her room. She would often tell her husband that she could see a woman creeping and

Interestingly enough, as the materials become more and more sturdy from wood to clay to stone, the darker and more hidden these intimate thoughts the narrator’s wife could be hiding from her husband. This intimate thought she is hiding is in fact a someone, and the moment she “steps inside” and shuts the “door,” it further signals to our narrator how his wife is truly attempting to cover up any possible stains or hints that will allow her husband to find out about her hidden secret. And when the time comes for our narrator to confront his wife’s shelter, he witnesses “tinkering at the window,” determining whether or his wife would open the “latches” as a reveal or seal the “cracks” to further mask the truth. As soon as our narrator begins to crack the pieces of the puzzle and grasps the knowledge that his wife is hiding something of significant importance, he is shown stuck dumbfounded in place as the movements at the window displays either the opening and reveal of her most intimate thoughts or further sealing of them away from

They show the limitations of women in society. She has to sit all day in the room, with no intellectual stimulation and have to see the bars on the window and realize there is no escaping the oppression of the female gender. There is even another room in the house that leads to a beautiful terrace and floral garden, but her husband refuses to let her leave the creepy, decaying, and trapping room. This is a clear symbol for the persecution of women. Finally, the nailed down bed represents sexual repression of women. Sexual liberation was not a common idea of the times, especially for the protagonist. According to Rula Quawas, “In a society that perceives women as childlike, irrational, and sexually unstable, it is certainly possible to see madness as a desirable form of rebellion against confinement rather than seeing it as the desperate communication of the powerless.” Sex is shown little to no interest by the narrator. It is only alluded to when it becomes clear that the protagonist is suffering from postpartum depression, and shows little interest in her child. Sex for the protagonist has only lead to her struggle with mental illness, an illness her “caring” husband denies is truly what is wrong with the narrator. She has no freedom with her body and mind, and her exploration (or lack thereof) has only lead to a loveless relationship with her child and a struggle with depression. This keeps her trapped in her

The Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South is one that is well known and familiar to us all. We all know of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the charismatic preacher who was undisputedly the leader of the civil rights movement in the South. We have all also heard of Rosa Parks, the black woman who would not give up her seat in the bus and was thus arrested for it, she was the catalyst that sparked the civil rights movement. They were the famous people often mentioned in the Civil Rights Movement. However, they were not the only people engaged in the Civil Rights Movement, there were many more, and their stories are just as important as that of Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. That reason

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

Page 4: “After supper she got out her book...I don’t take no stock in dead people.”

"The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt."

In the second page of the story the narrator talks about her room in there vacation house. She says this.

Throughout this semester in communications I have learned a lot about myself, how to deal with others, relationships, and more. There were some lessons that stood out to me the most, and that I thought about after class. The first was in chapter 3 about interpersonal communication and the self. During this chapter, we took a piece of paper and put four people that we knew down. We chose someone who we were just getting to know, and then others that we knew very well or that were very close to us. In this lesson, we were discussing the social penetration theory. The first step is the breadth which is a volunteered amount of information that we tell someone as subjects are being discussed. The second step is depth which is when we began to go deeper into personal information. The four people that I chose were a girl I had just met at work, my sister, my dad, and my boyfriend. After completing the circles and filling in the amount of information that I have covered with them, the girl I work with had the least, and my sister had the most filled in to the core. After completing this lesson, I looked at my paper and realized that almost everyone was more filled in to the core than my relationship with my father. This lesson struck a major cord with me because I never realized how surface level my relationship with my dad was until talking about this lesson. I knew that my father and I were not that close to begin with, but I never knew why. After this lesson, I understood that my

In our world constantly changing and the growth of the population living a victorious life in a world that offers few opportunities, it’s difficult because negativity can affect us on how we behave and how we pursue life. Aristotle believes that we should focus on living a good life by obtaining happiness and obtain the highest good by being self-sufficient. In the other hand, O sensei believes that we should acquire wisdom and virtue Also, that we shouldn’t engage in negativity acts and be virtuous. We should be able to find enlightenment by practicing Akido.Akido would help us find our inner self and inner peace. The practice of Akido is a great tool that can help us avoid negativity. Aristotle and O sensei believe that by living a virtuous life we must be able to obtain the highest good by obtain wisdom and virtue.