Mark Twain response

Italian government: squandering their funds, violating of the church, incompetent
Italian churches: overly decadent, juxtaposition between great riches inside and starving poor outside
Duomo: unnecessary, taking precious resources from the people in Florence, over-praised
Medicis: wasteful, flamboyant, wrapped up in material things, overly confident about their importance
“Masters” aka talented artists of the Renaissance: mindless servants of their patrons, dependent on patrons
Dominican friars: having the façade of being completely pious while simultaneously commandeering the Inquisition and its horrible acts
Civitavecchia: dirty, disgusting, having lazy and ignorant inhabitants, unworthy of even a patron saint
Papal States: having an incompetent bureaucracy, archaic and un-advanced
Romans: slothful, superstitious, ignorant, provincial, poorly dressed, having a corrupt church system, unsophisticated, prejudiced

St. Peter’s: bulky, unattractive, overly huge without being impressive
The Inquisition: hypocritical, barbaric
Ancient Roman entertainment at the Coliseum: barbaric, fruitless, over-hyped
Italian obsession with Michelangelo: excessive, exaggerated, unnecessary
European guides: a necessary evil, unintelligible, not knowledgeable – instead, just reciting facts, praise-seekers

Humorous quotes:

-“And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse everybody I can think of.”

-“And now- However another beggar approaches. I will go out and destroy him and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.”
[Vituperation means “verbal abuse or castigation; violent denunciation or condemnation” – it is shocking and humorous that he is describing himself so harshly as well]

-“One of these fat barefooted rascals” – in reference to Dominican friars

-“I suppose it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of Rome, and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal machine which would have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope all around but for a miraculous providential interference.”

-“Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for the first seventeen or eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that it begins to grow tiresome.”

-“In Florence he painted everything, designed everything nearly, and what he did not design he used to sit on a favorite stone and look at, and they showed us the stone.”

Twain uses shocking and blunt language and phrases that the reader wouldn’t expect. It surprises you in its harshness and forces you to consider the truth behind his words, although it might not be to the extent he conveys. He also uses a lot of sarcasm, which mocks his subjects in a more subtle, intelligent fashion rather than outright insulting them (though he does a great deal of that too).

My character

Emily crouched quietly in the shadowy room, gazing around at the empty shelves and dresser drawers around her. Suddenly, the deafening silence overcame her and she fell to her knees, instantly sobbing. Waves of salty tears cascaded down her sun-spotted cheeks as she unleashed an anguished cry that echoed against the bare walls, a further reminder of her solitude. As the last of her sobs subsided, she drew a deep breath and rose to her feet, prepared to face her first day without Kate.

With a click, Emily shut the door to her daughter’s vacant bedroom, hoping that Kate’s closed door would keep her memories at bay. She made her way downstairs where the morning sun streamed through the skylight, casting a ray across Emily’s half unpacked suitcase. Draped across the luggage was her newly purchased “NYU Mom” sweatshirt, its cuffs streaked with mascara from their role as Kleenex on her cross-country plane ride the night before. Leaving Kate at a school three thousand miles away was excruciating for Emily. This past weekend had been such a blur – meeting Kate’s new roommate, a trip to the grocery store to stock her mini-fridge, and then Emily and Cliff hugged their only child goodbye knowing they wouldn’t see her smiling face again until Christmas.

The foyer was lined with family photos and the framed snapshots beckoned to Emily as she passed through on her way outside to the mailbox. Kate with her soccer team after their championship win, the three of them on a weekend trip to Sun Valley, the beaming graduate in her cap and gown - all these memories washed over the lonely mother and at once she became livid. How dare Kate leave her alone? How could she do this to Emily, who had devoted her entire life to her daughter? And out of all the schools that had accepted Kate, why on earth would she pick the furthest away?

‘How ungrateful,’ Emily fumed to herself, storming down the front walk. Peering inside the mailbox, she was all the more distraught to find an envelope addressed to Kate - some brochure from one of the various California schools Kate had turned down in favor of the East Coast. Emily had had enough. In one swift movement, she slammed the mailbox shut and spun around, stomping back up the walk and into the house.

Cliff came home from work to find his wife in a crumpled ball on the kitchen floor. There she sat amid bits of smashed chinaware, clutching a half eaten package of Oreos in one hand while aimlessly flipping through a dog-eared photo album with the other. Hundreds of other family photographs lay strewn about Emily, who glanced up warily when she heard Cliff enter the room. Her expression explained it all to her husband; the mixture of sorrow, fear and remorse spoke more than any of Emily’s words ever could. Cliff extended his hand and pulled Emily to her feet, leading her to the couch before turning to the wreckage in the kitchen.

Emily awoke early the next morning and shuffled into the kitchen to brew Cliff’s daily pot of espresso. As she reached into the pantry for the coffee grounds, her hand grazed against the jar of Jif peanut butter, Kate’s favorite. Emily had used it to make Kate’s sandwiches for years, even back before her daughter decided she was much too grown up to go by Katie. Emily felt a twinge of despair as she recalled little Katie’s pigtails and chocolate stained lips. How wonderful a time that was for a mother, to be so adored by her child. Determined not to repeat the previous day’s actions, Emily turned her attention again to her husband’s coffee, pushing her longing memories to the side, at least for now.

After Cliff had left for the office, Emily decided she must spend today differently. She could dwell on Kate’s absence no longer. Musing over the day of freedom ahead of her, Emily began to list the ways she could spend her time, but she realized that each of them ultimately led to Kate. ‘Why don’t I run errands?’ she thought, but there was no prom dress to be picked up from the cleaners, no mechanical pencils needed for tomorrow’s math final. Grocery shopping was her next option, but without a group of ravenous teenagers around, the cupboards were more than well-stocked. It occurred to Emily that it was time to do something for herself, and herself alone.

Once she had pulled on a pair of sweats and tennis shoes, Emily set out to explore the neighborhood where she had spent the last few years. The three of them had moved into this cozy gated community right after Kate’s last year of junior high; Cliff had just gotten promoted and the new location allowed Kate to attend one of the best private high schools in the state. Emily had hardly gotten to know the place in all the time she had lived there, however. Throughout Kate’s education, Emily encouraged her to participate in a variety of activities and played an active role in her daughter’s life, attending PTA meetings, cheering at the sidelines of every game and assisting in the production of any recital or play that featured Kate. As busy as her daughter was, Emily’s schedule was just as hectic, if not more. As she strolled through the winding roads and cul-de-sacs, it dawned on this overachieving mother that for the past eighteen years, she had almost nothing that she could call her own. In fact, she had only one thing to show for nearly two decades of time and effort: Kate. All Emily had ever wanted was to be a good mother, but with her daughter becoming an adult, it was apparent that there was something more to life. Though only the day before she had been terrified of her loneliness, she now saw that her solitude was liberating. It was at that moment that Emily felt truly alive.

Writing response: I chose this character because I wanted to write in the perspective of someone in a different situation than myself but with certain aspects that I understood or had experienced. I’ve had friends go far away to school and I’ve missed them a lot, so I thought about how that felt and then took it to an extreme in the form of an overbearing mother. Something I thought was challenging was portraying both good and bad qualities while still making her believable. I wanted to show how Emily was very loving but also dependent to an unhealthy extent, which is something that’s tricky to portray. I used both familiar aspects (family, college, etc) and unsettling things, such as Emily breaking the dishes out of anger. I thought that would be the best way to make a believable character who still had some extreme characteristics.

Middlemarch response

Dorothea: naïve, inquisitive, confused, romantic, lonely
Eliot on Dorothea: P195 – “It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly and ingenuously.”
Telling the same idea: Dorothea is a very emotional character. She deals with things with her feelings rather clearly exposed. Though this can be viewed as a flaw, in moments of happiness it is a gift of hers and is very endearing to Ladislaw.

Mr. Casaubon: experienced, knowledgeable, jaded, proper, guarded
Eliot on Casaubon: P185 – “With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men’s notions about the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.”
Telling the same idea: Mr. Casaubon is a very smart man, but he focuses his intelligence and intuition on his work rather than the life that is taking place around him. Though he is very learned about people and places, he can’t read the events that occur in his life. This is shown in his reaction to Dorothea’s questions about what he thinks of art and architecture; he rattles off facts to her about the pieces, but has no emotion or connection to them.

Will Ladislaw: charming, scholarly, creative, observant, animated
Eliot on Ladislaw: P192 – “But the idea of this dried up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vendor’s back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and then passing his honeymoon away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities (Will was given to hyperbole) – this sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust…”
Telling the same idea: Will is also emotional and tends to be extreme (“given to hyperbole” indicates a tendency to exaggerate). This sentence is what led me to describe him as animated – he experiences dynamic emotions such as “comic disgust.” He is also romantic like Dorothea, as is shown by the jealousy he feels that Casaubon mistreats his wife (in Ladislaw’s opinion, anyway).

Eliot rejects the concept of fancying up characters in order to conform to some sort of ideal. Instead she seeks a “rare, precious quality of truthfulness” and attempts to portray characters as real people who are identifiable and can be loved even despite their flaws. I think she does practice what she preaches to some extent in Middlemarch; all three main characters do have flaws and are interestingly developed in a way that you can identify with each one. The only qualm I would have with the story is the way that Ladislaw is shown in a mostly positive light. His flaws aren’t developed as well as Dorothea’s or Casaubon, but I think that is only because we read such a short section of the story.

My own story

“Buona sera, grazie mille,” I thanked the cab driver as I quickly exited the trusty taxi that had just dropped us at the Siena train station. It was a few minutes past nine (21:00, that is) and our six-person gruppo needed to catch the 21:18 if we were going to make it home that night. Thankfully we made it with a few minutes to spare, and soon we were taking our seats on Saturday’s last Florence-bound train. A sense of relief flooded over the six of us, thankful to be on our way back to Firenze where we could catch a connecting train home. After a week’s stay in Florence, we had spent the day in Siena exploring the beautiful Tuscan hill town, but we had no intention of spending that night anywhere but our apartments back in Rome. With a heavy load of schoolwork to be done by Monday and empty pockets from a week of Florentine leather market perusing, we felt a sense of comfort knowing that in a few hours we’d finally be back in the Eternal City.

Our train rolled into Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Station just before eleven and we gathered at the end of the platform as Katie, a member of our gruppo, went to double-check departure times. Earlier that day I had jotted down a couple of the latest trains we could take that night, but we hadn’t bought tickets yet because we weren’t sure exactly when we would be back from Siena. A few minutes later, Katie returned with a clearly distressed look. She sighed as she told us, “Guys…the next train isn’t until 6:30 tomorrow morning.” We stared back at her with gaping mouths, shocked that neither of the trains we were counting on would be taking us back to Rome tonight. What in the name of Medici were we going to do?

After a few minutes of evaluating the situation, we decided to make absolutely certain that no train would be leaving for Rome before 6am. One of the few workers still at the station informed us that no, we were out of luck at Santa Maria Novella, but there were night trains running at Campo di Marte, the smaller station across town. The six of us quickly decided that this was our chance, and hastily hailed a cab to the other station. As our taxi sped across Firenze, we waved goodbye to the Duomo and the Florentine facades we had grown to love that week, but were ready to leave.

We pulled up to Campo di Marte, crossing our fingers for a night train to Roma, and sprinted into the station. Our hopes were crushed, however, as we scanned the departure times – the next train home wasn’t until after 7am. Forlornly, we dragged our feet along the platform with no real destination before hearing “Ciao! Ciao!” Having grown accustomed to Italian catcalls, we ignored the greeting until we realized it was coming from two formidably attired carabinieri who sternly demanded our passports. We waited nervously as the carabinieri read our information into their radios. I’m sure the same thought was running through all of our heads: paying for a hotel room would have been better than spending the night in a Firenze jail cell!

Thankfully, our passports were returned to us with only a few questions about our travel plans, and when the carabinieri learned that we were trying to get back to Rome that night, they pointed to a train a few platforms over and told us that it was about to leave for Roma. Frantically the six of us raced over to the train, limbs flailing and luggage dragging in a desperate attempt to make it home. We had just barely arrived when the conductor at the other platform corrected us – this train was going to Naples, not Rome. Thoroughly discouraged and now out of breath, we had to accept our fate. We weren’t making it out of Florence that night.

We stepped out onto the freezing, empty street and gazed around at the quiet store fronts, all boarded up for the night. With no other option, we chose to do the American thing – settle into one of Italy’s many McDonald’s. Open until 4am, this fast food establishment served as our warm haven until we made our decision. Should we pay for a few measly hours in a hotel or tough it out in the cold until the 6:30 train? As the sole male member of group, Ryan volunteered to venture out and see what he could find out about a cheap place to stay. Soon he returned with an offer we found hard to turn down – a nearby hostel for 22.50 euro per person. Defeated and exhausted, we gave in. It was almost 2am and we weren’t getting home to Roma, no matter how badly we wanted to or how hard we tried.

Though it cost us a collective 135 euro, we made the right choice. The hostel was clean, safe, and more comfortable than I expected, plus it gave us something that resembled a full night’s sleep. The next morning, we caught a 9:00 train and finally stumbled into our apartments around noon, drained and weary, but exhilarated from a night spent unlike any other before.


Writing response:

From writing this story, the most apparent thing I learned was how to cut out unnecessary details. I’ve realized I put in extra words and extra sentences, which is good when writing a really descriptive piece but when I’m trying to convey a message, sometimes it gets muddled. I would have liked to write this longer and include more thoughts and details of what happened because we had such a crazy night, but I think that this length showed the events and still conveyed the emotions we felt.

Benevenuto/Roman Hours reading response

In Roman Hours, the author makes himself much more accessible in the way that he portrays himself as weaker and more flawed. He speaks of how awestruck he was as a boy by such a lavish apartment, and how that apartment still has a hold over him now, which shows a human characteristic with a sense of fragility, whereas The Life of Benevenuto seemed a lot more like an attempt to impress. Something about his tone and the anecdotes he uses makes Cellini’s piece seem like an attempt at proving himself and asserting his skill and abilities. I think both are equally conscious of the reader’s presence, as each one is portraying an important feeling, but Cellini’s piece seems more like an attempt to impress the reader. I think because of this Aciman’s piece is more believable. As I said before, it’s more accessible and personally, I can relate to his feeling of awestruck wonder walking around Rome. I loved Aciman’s piece and I thought it was a more pleasant read, but part of that was the relation I felt to it because it was written in more present times about very familiar places.

My fable

There once was a town called Crayola, a place of great variety, where no two inhabitants looked exactly the same. Its plain cardboard walls contained vibrant streets filled with townspeople of every shade imaginable, from lemon yellow to robin’s egg blue. These townspeople, called Crayons, sent their children to the Academy of Chromatics, where young Crayons learned important things about their world, like why red mommies and yellow daddies have orange babies.

Children of all colors attended this school, but the most popular of them all was a little girl named Patricia. Patricia was a beautiful shade of neon pink, and her vivid hue complimented her bubbly personality perfectly. Her outgoing behavior and attractive color made it very easy for Patricia to make friends with the other children, and she was always the center of attention. Unfortunately though, she wasn’t always a very nice young lady. Patricia’s father was one of the wealthiest Crayons in town and since the moment she was born, Patricia had received every doll, dress or dessert she ever requested, and she was used to getting her way.

Another student at the Academy was a young boy by the name of Brandon. Brandon lived with his parents in one of the poorer areas of Crayola, and instead of sporting fancy new shoes every week like Patricia, Brandon rarely owned a pair of sneakers that his older brother hadn’t worn thin a couple of years before. Though he was very kind and caring, Brandon was also horribly shy and spent most of his time alone. To make matters worse, he was a plain shade of brown, making him an endless target of schoolyard teasing.

Every year on Patricia’s birthday, her father threw her an extravagant birthday party, with all of her favorite treats and whatever entertainment she desired, whether it was a petting zoo or a traveling circus. All of the children in town loved Patricia’s birthday parties and eagerly awaited their invitations in the mail. This year, however, Brandon’s mailbox was empty. The little brown crayon sadly dragged his feet into house and sat down at the kitchen table where his mother Betsy flipped through the Crayola Daily Chronicle. Noticing her son’s visible distress, Betsy asked him what was wrong, and when Brandon told her about the missing invitation, she reassured him it must just be a mistake.

“Go ask her tomorrow at school,” Betsy advised him. “Maybe she had our address wrong. I’m sure she meant to send you one.”

The next day before class, Brandon walked up to Patricia in the hallway where she was surrounded by a multicolored group of giggling schoolmates. Mustering up every ounce of courage he had, Brandon tapped Patricia on the shoulder. As she turned to face him, Brandon quietly explained his empty mailbox, nervously grinning as he suggested that maybe his invitation had gotten lost in the mail.

Patricia stared back at him for a second before she burst into laughter. “Your invitation wasn’t lost,” she replied. “I didn’t send one! I don’t want a loser like you at my birthday party!” All the other students in the hall joined Patricia in pointing and snickering at Brandon as he ran off down the hall in shame.

That weekend at Patricia’s party, all the children of Crayola – that is, except Brandon - brought presents in colorfully wrapped boxes and bags. After they had all stuffed themselves with cake and ice cream, it was time for Patricia to open her gifts. She excitedly tore at the first one, a striped package from her best friend Gretchen, a spring green Crayon with evergreen freckles. However, once she had ripped away the wrapping paper, Patricia’s beaming grin fell into a stormy frown.

“I already have this doll,” she pouted. “And I didn’t even like it in the first place.” Gretchen looked around the room in horror, completely embarrassed by bringing such an unacceptable gift to the party of the year. The rest of the presents were opened in the exact same fashion though, with Patricia promptly insulting each and every one. By the time she had whined about the final gift, all of the other kids at the party were more than ready to leave. Patricia had hurt the feelings of all the children of Crayola and this was the last straw. As the last of her supposed friends filed out her front door, Patricia yelled after them, “Fine! I don’t need any friends anyway! I’d rather be all alone!”

That Monday, Patricia walked into the Academy of Chromatics determined not to speak to anyone. She was better off by herself, she reasoned, and her wish was granted. None of the other children would even acknowledge her presence and the little neon pink Crayon spent her entire day alone, even sitting at her own table at lunch. When she felt a pang of loneliness, Patricia reminded herself how lucky she actually was – most days she ended up sharing all her cookies because they were from the best bakery in Crayola, but today, she had them all to herself. Little carnation-colored tears welled up in her eyes as she forced the last bite of cookie into her mouth, feeling a bit sick from all of the sweets.

When she got home that day, Patricia decided to have a tea party with her toys; after all, they couldn’t ignore her like all of the kids at school. As she set her little table and poured the cups of tea, Patricia turned to her favorite doll and asked her about her day. Not surprisingly, the doll stared mutely back without a word. Patricia sighed in disappointment. With no one to talk to, she was starting to feel quite isolated and lonesome.

“I’ll go for a walk,” she said to herself, thinking that the fresh air and colorful streets would perk her up. At first, her idea did the trick – with the waves from her neighbors and the smiling faces of the vendors lining the streets, Patricia didn’t feel so alone. After a bit of walking and a few wrong turns however, Patricia began to feel much worse. She had left her familiar neighborhood and had no idea where she was; Gretchen had always been the one who was good with directions. Patricia was terrified and felt more lost than ever, so she sat down on the curb and began to cry. Through her sobs she could hear footsteps approaching. She lifted her head to see Brandon staring back down at her tear-streaked face.

“Are you lost?” he asked her, tilting his head curiously. She sniffled and peered around the street before looking back up at him and nodding. Brandon thought to himself for a second, then smiled and extended his hand to her.

“Here, take my hand,” he offered. “Let me help you up.”

Stunned, Patricia took his hand and pulled herself to a stand, brushing off her peony-colored sundress. Why was this boy being so nice to her? She had made him the laughingstock of Crayola, yet he was the only child in town who would speak a word to her.

Her train of thought was broken by Brandon’s voice. “If you’d like, I can help you get home,” he offered. Thankfully she accepted, and the pair headed back to Patricia’s neighborhood. As they arrived at her front door, Patricia turned to Brandon and asked him why he would show her such kindness after what she had done. Brandon shrugged and answered simply, “It’s what I would want someone to do for me.” Patricia smiled back at him and began to open the door before spinning back around and wrapping her arms around Brandon in a grateful hug. After a moment, she stepped into the house, leaving Brandon blushing on the front step.

That night, Patricia climbed into bed feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Brandon had taught her an invaluable lesson – if she wanted to be treated with kindness, she must show others the same. The next day at school, she apologized to all of the children and promised never to treat them so badly again. Once again, Patricia was surrounded by friends, but this time with Brandon by her side.

My response:

What process did you use to select and narrow down anecdotes to use in your piece?

When picking anecdotes in my piece, I wanted to choose elements that would go together logically in a story, but would build on each other and become more significant, as the assignment mentioned. For example, in my second cycle of actions, I picked three things that Patricia would do by herself, with each one making her realize a little more how lonely she was.

Is your Resolution positive or negative?

My resolution is positive – Patricia realizes how she should treat people and becomes a better person because of it.

What is the Moral?

My moral is to treat others how you would like to be treated. This concept is sometimes called the “Golden Rule” and I really believe in it – treating people with respect is really important to me and I think that kindness is often an overlooked characteristic these days.

Do you think your Reversal comes off successfully; does it “surprise” the reader? Why or why not?

I think my second reversal is more surprising than my first. In the first reversal, Patricia just goes from being very popular to very lonely, which is a big change, but not as drastic as her change in attitude that comes in the second reversal.

Did you return to Machiavelli’s fable as an example and point of reference while you constructed your piece?

Machiavelli’s piece was helpful for me because it helped me see how the elements of a fable can all go together with the feel of a story rather than an outline, but what really helped me was the exercise in class where we constructed our own fables with that format.

What was the most challenging part of the assignment?

The most challenging parts of all these assignments for me has been the choice of language. I like my pieces to show, rather than tell, and it takes me a long time to write them because I keep stopping and rewording almost every sentence. This piece in particular was difficult for me because I couldn’t fit my whole story into 2 or 3 pages. I actually had it written as a bedtime story a mother is telling her children, but with that element it was more than a page longer than it is currently, so I took those out.

Do you feel better prepared to construct your next story after having done this assignment? Why or why not?

I do to a point – this assignment helped me think about the construction of stories and writing an outline for a story much like a paper. That helps me focus the piece and write in a way that leads to the intended outcome.

Machiavelli fable response

The context is set in Belfagor through an explanation of the initial conflict (the question of whether wives were truly the cause of misery), the nomination of a central character who will pursue a solution (the archdevil Belfagor), and a basic plan of action that the character will take (finding a wife for himself and reporting back). I think these three serve as the three standard European context elements. The turning point is Belfagor/Roderigo’s proposal to Gianmatteo: “In reply, Roderigo said: ‘My brother, I am deeply in your debt and want to satisfy you in every way; and so that you may believe what I can do I shall tell you who I am.’” At this point, Roderigo has in a way shifted the role of main character to Gianmatteo, and also switched the plotline. This is done through a few general core actions – Roderigo going broke, running from his wife, and proposing a deal with Gianmatteo. I’m not sure I see one central moral within the story, especially since it’s divided into the two main parts (one about Roderigo, one about Gianmatteo). The overall moral seems to speak about the problems that money can bring, although this is not stated explicitly. The main reversal was Belfagor’s threat to Gianmatteo, placing Gianmatteo in a sort of “jeopardy,” and creating a hurdle for Gianmatteo to overcome. The resolution comes in Gianmatteo’s defeat of Belfagor by scaring him with threats of his wife. What I liked most about the piece was its tone. It was pleasant without being overly simplistic and was an enjoyable read.