Response to “Dearth” in “Willful Creatures”

       The short story “Dearth” is one of the collections in Aimee Bender’s book “Willful Creatures.” It is telling the story about a woman with seven willful potatoes. Every time woman throw out these potatoes, potatoes will come back on next morning. Gradually, the potatoes become almost torso, which have hands, feet, neck, fingertips, toes, and so on. Meanwhile, the woman’s relationship with her lover is not good. Her neighbor always have new suitor. When she is hungry, she cuts these potatoes and bakes them. Unfortunately, after she finishes one entire enormous potato, there are only six potatoes left. She feels sad so she buries these six potatoes. She lies to her neighbor that her bathroom is broken for hiding her “children.” Afterwards, she digs up these potato babies accompanying with her neighbor. She seems to be a psychopath. However, a farmer accepts that these potatoes are woman’s children.  

       The plots are illogical, so I guess that this story is a sorrow story implying the negative effects of abortion on females. Sunflower symbolizes the nice things, such as love and hope. There are three clues that can prove that:

       Formost, sunflower just turns out for the woman’s neighbor who always has new suitor. The woman is jealous of her neighbor’s love relationship because the woman’s relationship with her lover is bad or even dead. Her neighbor owns happy life，but the woman does not. Every time when she sees her neighbor has a new suitor, she will be hungry. It is not a kind of dearth for food, but for love.

       Second, the woman tries to drop her potato babies on sunflower woman’s front stoop. It is implying that the woman think the sunflower woman will be a good mother to take care of her potato babies. She thinks the sunflower woman has the mother’s ability to love potato babies.

       Third, no matter how dark the sky is, sunflower is always brilliant. The author describes at least twice that the sky is dark. It shows the woman desires the nice thing in the rugged environment. This sunflower is the hope for future and the love for her potato babies. There is a sentence appears when she realizes that her babies become torso. “Sunflower on the hill waved at her in fields of yellow fingers.” Perhaps her babies bring new hope to her after her lover left.

Response to “The Forest”

            The short story “The Forest,” which is written by Andrea Barrett, is describing the story of Rose Marburg’s sister - Bianca in the third person as the onlooking perspective. The whole story is composed of the conversations between characters, descriptions of behaviors of characters and environments. Among these parts, the conversation between Krzysztof (a Polish biologist) and Bianca is the most important part of this story. They meet at Constance’s party which seems to be full of scientists. In the party, Bianca looks like the shadow of his sister Rose because Rose is too outstanding. She feels uncomfortable about it. Beside, the participants’ conversation including abundant scientific information so that Krzysztof and Bianca feel the party is boring. They drink vodka and talk about the forest, the animals in the forest and their life. Krzysztof tells Bianca many old passed things. And Bianca is reminded of her grandma. Then, they decide to see deer in a park. Unfortunately, Krzysztof gets hurt in muddy marsh. When they go to hospital, Bianca realizes that Krzysztof likes her. At the end of the story, they come back to the party. People seem like misunderstanding something, but they do not explain. Bianca leaves the party and drives Krzysztof to his hotel. 

            Honestly, the story seems like conveying a nonobjective and theoretic argument, but it is too difficult to understand totally. According to the reference, Barrett uses special structure to show the inevitable gap between the young biochemists and elder biochemists. In my opinion, it may be right. Krzysztof calls himself as “the foibles of elderly” for emphasizing he is a senior. At the same time, there is a meaningful ending at the end of the story: “she drove as if this were the point fro which the rest of her life might begin.” Comparing the Bianca’s point with Krzysztof’s, Krzysztof wants to back to the pass because he is old, but Bianca just want to leave and have a new start.

Response to “Designing Gamification in the Right Way”

       According to the academic paper ““Designing Gamification in the Right Way,” gamification is a concept of designing games as a supplementary tool in education for achieving its clear goal that get better pedagogical outcomes (such as “increasing the number of students who submit the homework on time”).

       The author uses the whole paper to illuminate how to design gamification in the right way. Obviously, the points are divided as four subheadings. At first, the author clarifies that a gamification needs a clear goal, which will make the process of designing a game much easier. Besides, the clear goal will be convenient for evaluating after the game run. Next, designers of gamification need to target player’s group and types. Under the reference from this section, the author concludes Bartle’s player types ( achievers, explorers, socialisers and killer) and Marczewski’s gamification user types ( player, socialiser, free spirit, achiever and philanthropist). Moreover, he proposes that gamification should make different goals for different user types. Next, the author illustrates other variables (such as gender, age, cultural orientation and academic performance) through analyzing other scholars’ studies. And he concludes that targets games as a supplementary tool are more beneficial in education. Finally, gamified learning content is necessary in the process of designing games. The author concludes that students can learn better by viewing a PowerPoint slideshow by analyzing two experiments. In the last part of this paper, the author shows the critiques and potentials of gamification.

Analysis of“Marge Simpson, Blue Haired Housewife: Defining Domesticity on The Simpsons.”

4 Steps of Academic writing:

1.     Introduce topic

2.     Define key terms/ideas

3.     Disscuss/explain

4.     Use example

Analysis:

       The academic paper“Marge Simpson, Blue Haired Housewife: Defining Domesticity on The Simpsons” by Jessamyn Neuhaus obeys the rules of writing an academic paper.

       At the beginning of this paper, Neuhaus proposes the background of the topic first that “the meaning and relevance of The Simpsons to American society” is a hot argument nowadays. Next, she concludes many questions from Simpsons observers about this TV show. Then, she introduces the topic generally as “The Simpsons satirizes the mythology of sitcom suburban families and that Marge Simpson’s character reveals the fictionality of the televised housewife in subtle and blatant ways”(Neuhaus).

       Second, Neuhaus defines key characters in The Simpsons (Homer & Marge) and other mentioned Television shows. For examples, Neuhaus explains that Homer is “boorish, greedy, lazy, clumsy” and Marge is sensitive to the needs of family and more intelligent than Homer.

Third, Neuhaus discusses and explains the topic by two ways. One is comparing The Simpson with other old Television shows. For example, the systems of family of The Simpson and TV shows like Father Knows Best are different totally.  The general system of sitcom suburban families is like mythology. While females are playing domestic role, males play centered role, especially fathers. However, the roles of male and female are exchanged in The Simpson. Another one is using examples from episodes to supporting her ideas. In this paper, the author mentions Marge’s blue high hair. And the hair is discussed for a long paragraphs that it has different implying meanings in different situations.

What is the marge’s role? How is it represented?

       Marge is not only a domestic character, but also a main character who plays an important role for satirizing the American ideal nuclear family in The Simpsons. Her personality and behaviors reveal that sitcom suburban housewives are unrealistic. The satire, irony and symbol are main methods to represent Marge’s role.

Summary and Symbols of "She Used to be My Girl”

Summary: 
     "She Used to be My Girl,” which is one episode from American television show The Simpsons, describes that Marge Simpson meets her old friend Chloe Talbot who becomes a famous journalist and comes back to Springfield. Chloe is successful, graceful and gentle. Lisa likes Chloe very much so that Marge becomes jealous. Lisa wants to go to the U.N. Women’s conference with Chloe, but her mother doesn’t allow her to do so. Therefore, Lisa hides into Chloe’s car for going to the conference. On the way, Chloe has a phone call which commands her to report an active volcano. When they arrive at the foot of the volcano, the volcano is erupting. Lisa and Chloe are trapped by magma. In the end, Marge saves Lisa and shows her powerful mother’s love. At the same time, Chloe’s ex. boyfriend in high school time saves Chloe by driving a helicopter. 

Symbol:  

Two-headed goat: every thing has two sides.

Court-ordered ankle bracelet: The monitoring of government

The cop: ruthless, careless

UN Women’s conference: feminism

Clown: loser

My interpretation for this story:
    These symbols imply two kinds of interpretation.
    First, the whole story is telling us that things are not what they look like. Chloe looks like very successful, but her job has risk. For example, the event of reporting an active volcano is very dangrous. As same as the identity of "two-headed goat," it is no doubt that everything has two sides.
    Second, the whole story is showing the feminism by contrast. The contrast of attitudes between Mr. Simpson, Mrs. Simpson and the cop reveal the power of females obviously. The males in this episode are spineless and ridiculous. Contrarily, the famales are valorous and self-giving, especially Marge Simpson.

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