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After reading "Wolf's Head Lake" by Joyce Carol Oates, I can't help but feel confused. I really didn't like how it was structured because it made the story boring and ongoing. I don't fully understand what the point of the story was. I know it has to do with a lake and a guy and what's happening around the lake, but the structure of it all really brought it down and I usually love eerie and mysterious types of writings. Maybe the whole structure is as mysterious as the story. In "Recuerdo" by Guadalupe Valdes, there is a mother and a daughter who work for a big, sweaty, and disgusting man. This man wants to marry the daughter and the mother gets angry. Then, the mother is conflicted because she wants better things for her daughter. She doesn't want her daughter to starve like the rest of her children. The mother wants her daughter to have a better life than she had. She doesn't want her to struggle or marry a poor man that can't even work for their kids. She wants her life to be successful with a successful man in her life. I believe that it's sweet that the mother, Rosa, wants a better life for her daughter, Maruca, but I don't believe it should be by marrying a rich man. Love is a wonderful thing, so in that sense, Rosa is wrong.
ReplyDeleteSidney Carranco
“Doves” is about a rather lonely and quiet women, who becomes fascinated by small grey doves. Further in the story, she finds herself at a country bar dancing with a man, and imagines herself to be the heartbreaker that the songs describe. I liked how the author plays with the symbolism of grey doves. She purchases them because she believes that they won’t be too needy, then later discovers that they actually do yearn for attention, just a she learns about her own need for regard. “Symphony” is about a woman who is describing her lovers. She refuses to discuss the one man whom she almost fell in love with, then goes back to discussing how the universe will never truly let her fall in love with any man. “Girl” describes guidelines from a mother to a daughter, showing her how to properly behave and adapt to societal norms. I enjoyed how she goes into great depths when describing her past, and current lovers. To me, this exemplifies just how critical and observant the woman was of them. I believe that a common theme among the three stories, was love. Though the three present different ways the topic of love was incorporated, they each shared an experience with the idea.
ReplyDeleteValerie Jackson
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Wolf’s Head Lake” is practically taking us through a bystander’s point of view on people who regularly drive around his area. He shows us the storm and the endless mountains with the lightning forking down to the ground. We get this ominous almost eerie feeling when he depicts the pocket knife blade with the stranger and his companion. It seems that the stranger and this companion are bad in some way, and this is shown with the trickle of blood. We also come to believe that this person or people circle the town just to infiltrate and do some wrong. Guadalupe Valdes’s “Recuerdo” is about a woman named Rosa who goes to a divorce attorney. She meets up with a man who offers to care for Maruca, Rosa’s daughter. Rosa remembers Maruca coming home saying the man touched inappropriately. It seems that Rosa is unhappy with her life taking care of so many children that she becomes fascinated with the idea of marrying an old wealthy man instead. She even begins to think this opportunity will never some up again, and she starts to think this might be a great solution for her daughter, so she won’t have to live the life she lived.
ReplyDeleteAlyssa Campos
Wolf Head's Lake by Joyce Oates set a scenic picture with her use of vivid imagery. Her use of detail allows the reader to taste and see the picture she paints. Mentioning the scene and the tastes and scents associated with it, Oats is able to place the reader right where the character stood, feel what they felt, taste what they tasted. It is as if the reader is at the lake. Later on, the story takes a stormy turn as it seems an attempted kidnapping goes underway. These characters are revealed to be frightful and dangerous. Does she make it out? In Recuerdo, another intimidating encounter occurs. But, in this story, there is conflict. Rosa has been offered she would be hard pressed to refuse. Due to her socioeconomic situation, giving her daughter to the the lawyer would be a win win for her. Her daughter would be financially safe and Rosa would have one less person to care for. However, she is aware that her daughter is afraid of the lawyer, and he is a predator waiting to take her into his lair. Can she do it? Do preferences matter when there is a secure and stable future ahead? Can her daughter make sacrifices, such as how Rosa sacrificed in raising her?
ReplyDelete- Jose Montoya
In Joyce Oates' we are taken through vivid imagery in a second person point of view, which is something I don't normally read often and I kind of liked finally being able to explore it. She has incredible details of being at the lake and what it felt like being there. It makes you feel like you are there too to experience all the activities happening at the lake. The ending sentence of the story makes me want to know more and what is going to happen next. In Guadalupe Valdés's Recuerdo I felt uneasy most of the time. I felt so uncomfortable with the man and how he presented himself. It was made fairly obvious the kind of person he is when Rosa's daughter says he's touched her and Rosa listens to him say he could take care of her. We see the two sides of Rosa and what she wants for her daughter and being financially stable. When a girl named Petra comes over, I could tell she is somehow a "sugar baby" to soldiers along the border and her mother doesn't want that for her and gets upset with her. Then we have her thinking about how she wishes to live financially stable. She then begins to question her daughter being given to someone with money and how it would be so much easier with her. This upset me because in my mind how could a mother even THINK to sacrifice her own daughter like that? Just to make money issues easier? I also see though how she just wants the best for her daughter, but I just wish she could think of a more stable life for her in a different way. I want to know more behind her mindset and what exactly was the outcome of it all.
ReplyDeleteFaith Ortiz
In the first story, " Wolf Head's Lake" there is exquisite imagery and the readers are able to picture everything from the scene. This was a very confusing reading because nothing was laid down in front of us to be able to pinpoint what it was about. There are these mysterious people that keep circling the area were children are present, and that seems to be very problematic. We are not told any details about what happens in this story, or if these children are safe. I have to say that there may be a lot of imagery for the readers to visualize the scenes, but as a reader I didn't have enough details to make out what the story was about. In the second story, "Recuerdo" a mother is faced with the ultimate decision choosing to set up a life for her daughter filled with success and mistreatment, or choosing for her to be happy while being financially unstable. Reading this essay it seems like it's with an older time period because now I believe that women have the ability to make a name for themselves, and succeed on their own. This mother wants nothing but the best for her daughter. However, now that she knows that some rich and awful man wants to marry her, her perspective changes. She sees that she can barely handle her own children, and that she has had a couple of unsuccessful marriages. She doesn't want the same for her daughter so she's faced with deciding whether her daughter being married to that gross rich man would actually be beneficial for her daughter to keep her from suffering.
ReplyDeleteLianna Andrade
“Wolf’s Head Lake” by Joyce Carol Oates wasn’t as interesting as I thought it was going to be. There wasn’t really a story, per se, just more a telling of events that didn’t really led anywhere. There were parts that I thought would be built on but the conclusion I was looking for wasn’t there. I did think the imagery she used was very good and the use of second person POV was a surprise, as this writing style isn’t really used often, but that was honestly the only parts I thought stood out. I wanted to like this piece but I was just confused in the end. “Recuerdo” by Guadalupe Valdés was uncomfortable, to say the least. It’s uncomfortable for so many reasons but I think the main thing was how real it is. There are certain people, especially back then, who don’t get the chance to marry for love. It was financial secure and stability over happiness. A part of me wants to dislike Rosa for putting her daughter up against the man who groped her but in the end, she just wants Maruca to have the things she never did; to live comfortably and without suffering in the ways she did. I hate that the story cuts off before the ultimate decision is made but in a way, I’m happy that it’s so open ended. There’s a chance where Maruca can live her own life and stability will somehow find its way to the family. I really enjoyed reading this story but the voice in the back of my head reminding me that it’s not just a story keeps that uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.
ReplyDeleteTeresa Villarreal
“Wolf’s Head Lake” didn’t appeal to me in the way that Joyce Carol Oates other stories have. I felt like it was going on and on with no real point to it. I tried finding a sort of “underlying” meaning to the story but I just can’t seem to find anything. Could this possibly be symbolic in any way? I didn’t understand mostly what was going on but it seemed like it was just the narrator describing her surroundings. I want to know the meaning behind this description of the place the narrator and the people around her, are at.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the story “Recuerdo” by Guadalupe Valdés. I know for sure that the title itself gives away what the story is about. Remembering something that happened. It starts off “It was noon” which led me to think that this is a past event and sure enough it was. I liked the details in the story and the strong sense of imagery that was explained. The story itself was very interesting and felt like there was a lot going on. What I would like to know is what Maruca’s stance in the story was? I know that she is a pretty girl but what is it that makes her mother so upset at her.. was it just her looks?
Ilene Guevara
In “Wolf’s Head Lake” by Joyce Carol Oates, we are taken to a tourist lake area, studded with cabins and shady characters, like the kids drinking beer and the man cruising around wearing sunglasses even though it’s dusk. After doing a quick internet search, the location for the story seems to be in Upstate New York, but there is a real Wolf’s Head Lake in Florida, and with the description of the fading summer and the mosquitoes, seems like it could be in FL, except for the lake being on the foot of the mountains. It’s a strange tale of fact and fiction interwoven. The writer is painting a picture more than telling a story in showing us Wolf’s Head Lake. She wants us to see the shadiness, the dark coming on, in the way the man acts like a wolf trying to find a “way in” at the lake shaped like a wolf’s head.
ReplyDelete“Recuerdo” by Guadalupe Valdés shows how poverty creates desperate actions, like selling one’s daughter to rise above dire circumstances. Maruca’s mother, Rosa, is not cruel to her daughter: we know that she abhors what Maruca’s friend does, down by the Rio… She has marked feelings of anger towards the divorce attorney as well. Rosa notes the ugliness of Lorenzo, but she also knows the ugliness of her own life with her husband, and really, really wants something better for her daughter, at a cost….
Natalie Roeglin
“Wolf’s Head Lake” by Joyce Carol Oates is a short story of a young girl who is vividly listing her surroundings. There is an apparent ominous tone that is carried just after the beginning and builds as the story comes to an end that leaves the audience hanging. I can’t help but feel that there is more going on than what the narrator is giving, but I can’t quite pinpoint what it is exactly. When I first read the short story, I had no clue what was going on. To me, it was just a jumble of words that were useless and did not add up. But, as I read it a second time I had this feeling that the character is in a situation where death is right around the corner. At one point she talks about a nameless man who is driving to the cottages on the lake where she is currently, but we are never given a clear idea of who he might be, and the only reason I feel that this male figure plays an important role is because she ends the story by saying, “I see the slow passage, he’s patient, circling the cottages, looking for the way in” (165). Which leads me to believe that she knows that this man is up to no good, but the plot, and especially the end, becomes convoluted because the author isn’t giving us more to feed off of. Who is he? How does she know what he’s doing when they aren’t in the same place? Is she psychic? Or are they in this together? We are left to our own imagination, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to suspenseful writing, but I find this to be particularly upsetting because we don’t really know if he’s bad or not, or if there is more to the story than just the uniqueness of her surroundings on the lake. This one left me questioning the writing, instead of enjoying what I was reading.
ReplyDeleteGuadalupe Valdés’, “Recuerdo,” is a short story based around the many conflicting emotions of a particular woman named Rosa. Her life has flashed before her and she is now old and living a life she never would have pictured for herself. She is asked to meet a man, Don Lorenzo, who is a disgusting piece of human garbage who sexually assaulted her daughter yet continues to guilt Rosa into asking for her daughter’s hand in marriage. He is a rich man who makes his money as a divorce attorney which gives Rosa the idea that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if her daughter did marry him because then she would have a life without worry. On her way home, she contemplates her life, thinking of all the burdens that she is carrying on her shoulders, and she breaks for a split second when she thinks, “don’t depend on me! I can hardly depend on myself” (168). She is so concentrated on her emotions that they all come bubbling to the surface and when she sees her daughter, Maruca, she lets them out by getting mad at her for talking to her friend. It’s a sad tale that makes the reader wonder about their own life and whether they are on the path they always imagined they’d be.
Kimberlee Salas
In "Wolf's head Lake" I enjoyed reading all of the imagery in this story I like being to read these kind of essay's because then I can get a full good view picture of what I am reading. In this story she is talking of the things that are going on around her around the lake? I was more curious to know why she was at the lake and was she explaining the surroundings becuase she enjoyed them or did she have a bad memory from the last time she was there. To me personally I didn't understand where the story was leading or what I was suppose to get out of the story.
ReplyDeleteIn "Recuerdo" I felt a little sad knowing that she was reminiscing on this past memory. When you're living your life you never really know the troubles you're facing until you actually look back on your life. I feel like Rosa deserves so much better other than her horrible husband he abuses their daughter.
-krystdamayne Guerrero
“Wolfs Head Lake” by Joyce Carol Oates was a good read I had a great secondary point of view but it was a bit confusing to read. It has enough detail to give the reader something they can picture and it was beautiful. It does take a strange turn where the person gets kidnapped and it leaves you wondering if they make it out. It was hard to find the meaning behind this story even after several reads. “Recuerdo” by Guadalupe Valdes is written so well it shows how being poor can make some crazy decisions in one life. Rosa gives a glance in her life and what he had to endure growing up it was crazy from her daughter being assaulted and later is asked for her hand in marriage. Rosa contemplates this and wants to give her daughter a better life at what cost though. Its sad to think about that in some places women go through this.
ReplyDeleteAndi Rubalcava
The first story by Joyce Carol Oates called “Wolf’s Head Lake” was a bit hard for me to understand. It was not the way it was worded or anything to that effect, but rather the structure of it. The story would be going one way with an idea then suddenly turn the other way and start talking about something else without a smooth transition. It needed to set the chronology of the ideas in order so that the story could flow better. Also, the story could use some dialogue because it seems dry and the statements are sudden and bold. The second story caught me by surprise. The fact that a daughter was being molested by a man way older than her, then the mom considering letting her go to him due to financial troubles was not right to me. As a parent, it should be top priority to shield your children from bad people. There was plenty of dialogue in this story which helps with creating a visual about the characters. The structure of the story was good and made it very easy to read and understand. The ideas flowed well and the details in the story made it easy to imagine the setting and the characters.
ReplyDeleteFrancisco Rosales
In “Wolf’s Head Lake” by Joyce Carol Oates, a narrator is going the audience by informing us what they are seeing as they are looking out the rusted cottage door. I had a difficult time understanding what the meaning of this story was. I enjoyed how eye opening and captivating the first line of the story was, “...sky’s marbled with clouds and some of them are dark, heavy, tumescent as skins of flesh ready to burst.” This line offered an eerie tone, and this type of diction carried out throughout the story. The narrators emphasis on the setting being dull and stormy, really helped set a visual image of the sights they were describing.
ReplyDelete“Recuerdo” by Guadalupe Valdez, is told in a third person point of view. When Rosa finds out that Sauzo has an interest in her daughter, she has conflicting emotions. She discussed how her daughter can have any man she wants, and worries that she might settle with a young bum. She doesn't want her daughter and her future grandchildren to live in poverty. I wanted to know more about Sauzo. Had he and Rosa engaged in a relationship previous to this event? Had they known each other for a while? Why does she not feel anything but anger towards this man. Does she fear him, maybe due to something he has done in the past, or is capable of doing? I really enjoyed the second story because it was very relatable, and the format made it any pleasant reas.
Valerie Jackson
In the story a wolfs head lake by Joyce carol Oates is a very interesting story that jumps from one imagery to another. It is very descriptive in a way I can visually see what oats is explaining. I like how we get into her head, and see and hear her thoughts as she says them, as if were in her head, on page 165, “..., where maybe he lives, or has been living but he’s checked out now, or if he’s left some clothes and things behind in the rented room…” the way the author ends it, doesn’t really give us an ending but more of to be continued, the day doesn’t end but her observations do. Recuerdo by Guadalupe Valdes was an intense imagery that I found myself relating and even asking an older sibling right now that, how does it feel to look at yourself in the mirror one day your 17 then blink and come back to see yourself 50 with kids? They simply responded the way you feel conflicts with how you look. On page 166 Valdez writes, “ her reflection in a smudged and dirty window told her that she was no longer even a girl”. That moment of reflection on whats happening is a rude awakening for most people very depressing, I don’t know from experience but I know I saw myself 13 once and helpless, now I feel completely responsible for myself and well being. But the main discussion personally, is I found myself being persuaded and relating to what rosa has to say about her daughter never having to struggle again, her nor her future kids, or family. The fact that I even considered it shows how thoroughly the author explains rosas thoughts, as if she typed them as she thought of it herself minutes before she typed it out. On page 169, the last few sentences, theres closure, a final idea her final opinion on the idea “no need at all” to struggle. That was her final decision, but what would Maruca think or say? That is what leaves the readers interested and wanting more and feeling the urge to talk about the story how good it was, the dialogue as well was very interesting to read to hear and play out voices in our heads on what they were discussing.
ReplyDeleteStephanie Ruiz
I genuinely enjoyed the writing style of Joyce Carol Oates in "Wolf's Head Lake". When the author talked about leaning on the rusted frame of a spring door with her two piece on, I got a sense of nostalgia. I felt the drops of dew on my skin that one has after leaving a body of water, and the cold air of the night that accompanies such, with no sun to warm you. I felt the dirty metal covered with rust. I felt the pebbles, the dirt, the grass, all beneath my feet. While the environment is mostly what stood out to me, the people she described were almost as interesting. The whole setting seemed so familiar aside from when the author described the prostitution and whatnot. The image of older kids being loud smoking and drinking when they're not really of age and the younger kids shouting and playing almost makes everything seem normal and that everything is okay, when it's really not, as we learn when the centre of the story shifts to the strange men and their "companions".
ReplyDeleteCompared to the first story, "Recuerdo" was so much more serious. The story was centred around the convictions of a woman, who I assume to be a prostitute, who is wondering as to whether or not she should marry a man named Don Lorenzo who she doesn't love only that he may provide for her. A man who is neither attractive, nor respectable, yet, would be able to provide for her and her daughters. She not only lives in fear as to what will happen to her, but she lives in fear for her daughters, not wanting them to socialise with her friends, who one can assume are also prostitutes, fearing that they might be influenced by their stories that glorify the lifestyle they've chosen.
Ricardo Garcia
I believe both stories share a theme of wanting more in their lives, as their current ones do not satisfy them. This is especially the case with the second one, “Recuerdo,” as the mother psychologically projects onto the daughter her own issues: her early pregnancy, a lack of a fatherly figure to support them, the stress and agony of being a mother to several children. She is an unhappy person, and there is a blatant hypocrisy in her words, though understanding her psychological state is imperative to understanding how reasonable her hypocrisy is. We see it that she most certainly wants what is best for her child, and nothing so much of her having to gain from it. We see that she is willing to give her daughter up to a filthy man, both personality-wise and hygienically. “Don’t depend on me! I can hardly depend on myself” This is a very much revealing line, and an obvious one at that. We see the hypocrisy in her wanting her daughter to not become a “slut” and have babies and have a broken family, like her mother has, and we see that it is understandable. We understand that despite the mother wanting what is best for her child; we see that even she understands that perhaps it is not ideal, but it is her ideal of happiness, a happiness further away from her current scenario.
ReplyDeleteThe first story is a story of one describing their hometown. It is also a story that tells of a longing to be the driver behind the wheel, to circle around Wolf’s Lake, to leave Wolf’s Lake. We see how the narrator fantasizes on the driver’s rational, what would make sense for the person to be driving around. Did they forget something? Did they miss someone? Did they lose their way? Those are several questions the narrator may have asked or have asked.
Gary Tolar
No, this is not a satisfying paragraph.
DeleteGary Tolar
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