Music Describing Stowe's Writing

  

         I wanted to change some of my blogs up from what I have been writing about. So I decided to describe certain music styles in literature that fit with Harriet Stowe's writing. When I decided to write about a different topic and saw this choice on the list of possibilities, Stowe's writing immediately came to my mind. The reason I thought of her is that she wrote during a period when slave owning was a common practice and a sensitive topic. Their have been popular songs that the slaves would sing with each other to keep up the moral. Songs such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Wade in the Water" are still sung today in many different forms of music.
        These songs weren't just to keep their spirits up, but also to help some escape. Some of the songs held secret codes in them that would tell what directions to go for the underground railroad. I think this is a really ingenious strategy that enslaved African Americans used to escape wherever they were being kept. That is why I think their songs define that particular era, they held so much meaning to them in more ways than one.

                                                          

Creation Stories

 

    In the first Pod we did we had the chance to read about creation stories from earlier people. I decided to read "The Iroquois Creation Story". I enjoyed this story because it gave me a view of how the Iroquois lived and was a lot of fun to see how earlier people explained how they thought Earth, humans, and space was made. I have always enjoyed learning new theories other than by just learning what the Bible says. For example, Greek Mythology has always interested me and still does today. As for the creation story in our literature book I mentioned at the beginning, it is really unique to any others I have learned about.
    I will just give a short summary to explain the main points and to not spoil much. It tells how their is a lower and upper world. A woman ends up being pregnant with twins in the upper world and falls into the lower world. The monsters end up catching her on her way down and one of the twins forces itself through her side. the twins are basically God and the Devil so it explains how they fight and one of them eventually ends up winning. I really enjoyed learning about this view the Iroquois had of how everything was created. It was a very interesting story which I would recommend.   

                                                        

Discovering Emily Dickinson

        I have said in one of my past blogs that I enjoy short stories the most. After reading through some of Emily Dickinson's poems for Pod eight, I surprisingly enjoyed some of her poems. I know that you can't make someone enjoy reading a style of writing and I thought that the only poems I would ever enjoy was Poe's "The Raven". I think that everybody should attempt to read them though even if it's not their favorite style. That is what I did with Emily Dickinson's poems and I learned that she is really talented in the way she wrote.
        At first I was just reading them to be able to finish my assignments but I had to really think about Dickinson's poems in order to understand them. I normally don't enjoy having to reread something multiple times to understand it but I didn't mind with her poems. For instance, "I'm nobody - who are you?" really had me thinking about how people go through life. It is such a short poem but it holds a lot of meaning, and that is true for a lot of other poems of Dickinson. Overall, I am glad that we had a Pod for just poets. I have heard of Dickinson before but never really read any of her work.