Year round we have been working on various topics and readings in English class, Going from debates to politics and wars to new opportunities and mind boggling symbolic books.
We have been given a reflective essay and I chose to write about my favorite blog post and its inner meaning.() It contains explanations of examples I gave in the blog post about the symbolism of windows in “the house on Mango Street”
Windows is my favorite post. I think this post because it was an assignment that gave hint to a window being a confinement in one way, but a light of hope in another way. I never saw a window as hopeful. It most likely depends on the mindset of the person. As a kid, I lived in the car, I have seen more hrs in a car than an average person will their whole lives. If I had homework, I’d just have to do it in the car. If I had a test the next day, even if it was 2am, it was “oh well sleep in the car”. You can guess how leisure time was treated if sleep and homework were put off for it. Never happened, in fact I bet if I had not started to overachieve in school I’m sure that I would see three places in a day. Home, Car, School. Everyday Home, Car, school (not in order). Yet at the same time I had no real right to complain because of all of the people dying everywhere sleep or no sleep, car or no car. However the windows in the car were the worst part. Car windows defeat the purpose of a Driving lover. The windows a lot you to see a second of something, a driving lover is obviously in the car for 2 reasons. Speed and comfort.
Speed is a reason because obviously if a person had a day to walk somewhere or horse carriage somewhere then they would, but it is quicker and more comfortable to drive. A car, though, is like a box trap, and windows are the sike out. When you look out at the windows onto a mountain, don’t you ever get the erge to touch the mountain, but you can’t. Or in my case, if you were a child and saw seconds of kids playing in a yard laughing and having fun, wouldn’t you want to go laugh play and have fun too. I did. I rarely got to. Instead I saw the same image through the window every time I looked out. I knew where I was so well just from looking out the window I could already tell where I was going. The bad thing about that is that, at this point the new scenes, the “I want that” feeling went away. After seeing it so often, I grew out of it as if I was experiencing it. Growing up for me happened fast as far as mature thinking goes. That is because I spend 12 years of the 15 riding around seeing other people live their lives. But I didn’t get to live mine. I got to sit in a car and look out the window wishing that I could just slow down. Be normal.
“ I can relate, I love to take pictures of nature but I’ve always ridden in a car so there was no way to take a great picture. I used to have to watch the kids play outside though my window while my childhood drifted away, I didn’t have very many friends and sadly no one really wanted to be my friend. So I sat there looking out the window, unsure whether I should go out into the bare coolness of a shallow friendship that has no real important. Or watch what it looks like to grow up being friends with only one person. Today I still look outside the car window, but I have my own camera to capture what I wish I could just step out of the car to see.”
I’m pretty sure when I wrote this I was thinking of exactly what I wrote and quoted. Feeling somewhat trapped because there was no way to avoid running into the situation. The women in the story were trapped because they were too beautiful and were held back by parents or husbands. That leads into another type of being trapped.
“These are just examples of women who are alone, depressed and feel as though they have no outlet.”
The insider on this statement is basic. I always feel to a certain extent trapped in my own thoughts giving no outlet. The only way to let things out for me was to sing, and then I got into drawing, then writing poems. However it doesn’t undo the confinement. Writing or not it still never changes the fact that someone Is lonely. I have my sister as an example as well. A pretty deep story she told me exhibited how trap she was as a teenager living with the world’s most pestering mom. She could never go anywhere because she had to babysit me. So she turned to drawing as her window. But as soon as she got more attached to me than her window, she never was able to escape until she left home. The drawing opportunity was no longer an option because she had to give it up. That was her dream, but her desire was to just enjoy her teen life. She didn’t really get to do much of that and spent it moving around looking for that magical outlet that she lost once she stopped drawing. Then her window became me. She spent so much time with me that I loved her just as much as I loved my mother. Yet her confinement continued. The petty punishments continued, and she endured it to her escape. My sister unlike the women I talked about in my post was able to get out of her trap but only by one way. She stopped staring out the window, got out of the chair, left out the door and went far away (college), Resuming her school career briefly. I took this horribly because she was like a mother to me and I love my sister so much that her pain is my pain. I feel a little like Esparanza because I have a way to get out. With 3 other siblings from my mother’s side to tell me what not to do, I pave my way into the to do’s.
I guess I do figure that everything is a way for a reason and my post was this way for those reasons. It is my favorite because It related most to what I said in the story and is the deepest one that I have written almost. My writing goals for the summer are to write and read at all. Most kids don’t do jack squat during the summer, especially writing so i want to be a little different and not forget how to "read big words" (LOL). I hope I’ll be able to check out 6 goooooood long books and just read my way out of the madness!
