Ideas and Intellect

 A Raisin in the Sun is very different for me because it is written in a way so foreign to me, and so different from the other books we are forced to read in school. This is one story where race is not explicitly stated to be a huge issue that is related to the crux of the plot, but there are some underlying tones and themes that may reflect race. This watered-down theme of race is something you do not see in literature we read often, as most books are willing to shove this idea in our face because the concept of being subtle is also foreign to the writers of those books. So I wanted to compare one of my past school reads to this piece: namely To Kill a Mockingbird . To Kill a Mockingbird's main conflict is centered around a court case involving a black man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman. In this book, the racial tension between the Klan and the supporters of the black man on trial are clearly defined, even if a white person is defending him. The oppression of black p...

 After reading another of Fitzgerald's works, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz , I started thinking about how diamonds are portrayed in literature. It intrigued me because I had a very different perspective of what diamonds were after reading the book compared to when I read or watch other forms of storytelling.  Diamonds are usually considered to be flawless and the most prized valuable by most people, only rivaled in significance by gold. However, diamonds are portrayed differently in different pieces, which makes sense, but is also strange given when we think of diamonds we think perfection. In King Solomon's Mines written by H Rider Haggard, the heroes of the story manage to escape a cave and retreat with diamonds, and live lives of wealth and luxury after the climax of the story ends. Infinite wealth is a standard interpretation of diamonds, but there are ways to make this interpretation bad. In The Diamond of Kali by O. Henry, a general who recounts his epic tale of reco...