Some believe that it will bring some new tiding relating with astrology. They pretty sure that the movement of stars and the other outer space objects may give influences in their life.

Others have inner trust that anything new is a point of new beginning.  So, they hope that it will change their life for better.  And they believe that if  it starts good, maybe then the year would be nice.  Maybe if the beginning is good so would be the end..

Whatever the belief is, there will be no difference if they do no effort to make it becomes different. Either better or worse. It depends on what kind of efforts they do are.

Do not hope that everything will turn better by itself.
Or that whatever you hoped will be fulfilled by themselves.
Hope that you may do your best for all of them.
And do it!!

It’s a new year, save it from same old same old.
And do it happily.
That’s how you’ll get a HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010.
Let’s enjoy our next 365 1/4 days journey around the sun! (^_^)

As an illiterate woman, Pelageya refused to learn how to read and write even though her husband insisted to teach here by himself. She never feels sorry that she couldn’t read until she found a perfumed letter from her husband’s jacket. She was afraid that it was a love letter. She even imagined that her husband had affairs with a well-educated ladies and made fun of her. Being anxious to find out about what the letter about, she started studying to read.

In the third month of studying, Pelageya finally mastered the art of reading. Hardly, she read the small handwriting on what she thought a perfumed love letter. She read it through twice and found out that the letter was from Maria Blokhina, her husband’s friend who supported him to liquidate illiteracy, and of course, his wife as the closest person should be free from illiteracy too.

The story tells us about not to feel late in learning something because it may makes us feel sorry. However, Pelageya gives a good example in not to judge something before we know the truth.

Analysis:

• There are two narratives in the story. It has one narrative embedded within another framing one. The main narrative is one which tells us about Pelageya’s illiteracy. Another one, which is embedded, tells us about a conflict which was occurred by the illiteracy (the founding of a letter in Ivan’s jacket).

• Through this short story, Mikhail Zoschenko is seriously trying to persuade us to liquidate illiteracy because it may give many problems to them who experience it (illiterate).

Eddie was born in a low class family. This condition gave the results of Eddie’s characters and life. His father is a belligerent drunk, not very supportive or caring towards his sons. He worked at Ruby Pier and often returned home drunk and was violent toward Eddie and Joe. This behavior might be appeared because of the oppression he got dealing with his economical condition. The way he treated his children then influenced in Eddie’s and Joe’s life too. They also got the oppression of the condition. Especially, the ideology of the American dream tells them that their self-worth is earned by economic success.

Eddie never had the desire to work at Ruby Pier like his father did since he desired to get a better economically life. Older he was, more oppression he got from the low class condition. To overcome this oppression, Eddie dreamed to be an engineer, but then he found that there was another faster way to get his self-worth, i.e. by participating the war. After Eddie returned from the war, he was very depressed and angry at what he had done with the remainder of his life. He never had another career aside from Ruby Pier and he eventually moved back into the same apartment building, where he grew up, to take care of his mother. We can tell that Eddie internally stores a lot of regret, hatred and anger about his life. Those feelings made Eddie became a melancholy and closed person.

Eddie is not the only character who gets the effects of class roles in the society. Almost all the characters of the novel do. The Blue Man got a miserable life as the result of it. He became a child labor to struggle to get by financially. He then felt inferior especially since he was a stutterer. In an act of desperation, he resorted to a primitive medicinal measure – drinking silver nitrate. As this, later considered to be poison, did not cure him of his ailments, he assumed he was not taking a high enough dosage. As he continued to ingest more and more silver nitrate, his skin began to change colors (which he remedied by taking more silver nitrate), until eventually he was completely blue. He was left jobless after being fired from the sweatshop for scaring other workers. Eventually he found refuge with a group of carnival men, and his life as a “commodity” had begun. After traveling from carnival to carnival, he found permanent employment at Ruby Pier, where he was referred to as the best freak in the entire show. He lived above a sausage shop, playing cards at night with fellow circus performers and even occasionally Eddie’s father, earning his living by sitting in a cage all day, half dressed, as people walked by and stared in shock, awe, and sometimes, disgust.

Ruby, also came from a low class family. She did not have much money growing up. There were many guys who would like to be her husband but her background brought her to be blown away by Emile’s monetary whimsicality. After sufficient courtship, Emile proposed to Ruby and she gleefully accepted. The condition then changed Ruby’s life completely. She felt like a Cinderella whose dream of meeting her dream prince came true.

The class does many roles of almost all the characters in this novel. Each individual has his/her own way to overcome the oppression which he/she got. It shows that this novel reflects those social institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological function. Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven reflects class struggle and materialism: think how often the quest for wealth traditionally defines characters.

1. Introduction

On this paper, author tries to examine the analysis of socioeconomic and history of class struggle which were revealed by Buchi Emecheta in her novel, Second Class Citizen. Since the story of the novel took place in two countries, Nigeria and England, then the analysis also based on the condition in both countries in 1940-1970s, according to the time when the characters of the story live.

2. Analysis

Second Class Citizen is a novel which showed us the true story of Buchi Emecheta, the author. It is about the struggle of Adah (the main character) and her survival, not only of herself but also her dreams, while growing into a woman, moving from a high class position in her native Nigeria to a very poor class in a predominantly white European society. She struggles with motherhood and with being a wife and supporting her entire family along with being her own independent person. Part of her struggle also deals with the issues of race and being black in the face of English racism. By telling us the real life of 1940-1970s in Nigeria and England, Buchi Emecheta directly shows us the socioeconomic condition in both countries at the time. In Nigeria, the condition was so bad that many children, especially girls, could not get education. Adah was not allowed to continue her study while her brother was asked for it. It was not only about the discrimination where sons always be the priority, but also about the socioeconomic there. The economic condition of a family determines what a daughter should do; continuing her study, working to support her own life and her family, or getting married with a (rich) man chosen by her parents. In this case, Adah struggle hard to get her rights to continue her education. She tried a lot to change her class from the low one into the middle and she succeed in doing that, even she reached the high class, lived with a good wealth as a 1st class citizen in Nigeria. However, her struggle was not end yet. She was still having a dream to go to a country which she thought that it would be like “heaven”. She desired to live in United Kingdom and started to do another struggle to make her dream comes true. She asked her husband to study in England (she paid for it) and after a year she and her children move there too. Adah has arrived in the United Kingdom and this was where she went from a first class citizen in her native Nigeria to a Second Class Citizen in England. She had a hunch that England was like a “heaven” since she heard much that there are many successful people there. She found that the socioeconomic there was good but she never expected that she would face a very great racism which didn’t let her, as a black woman, to get a good life there. Even she had to have a very big effort to find a place for living. Then, the other big—even bigger than before—class struggles began in UK. First of all, as a black woman who lived in a predominantly white society, she had to struggle against the racism. At the time, black class people there couldn’t get good facilities such as housing, job, hospital, etc. She could get them if she had much money, but still it would be very hard for her to get good job to gain much money. However, the struggle she did gave a good result in the end and it showed us about how hard for a black person to live well in a white society at the time and how big is the effect of the skin color for one’s life. Another tough struggle which she had to do in UK was facing her lazy and bad husband. She lived in a foreign country and she couldn’t get any support from her husband. Even he made her in trouble even more by behaving as a bad student, worker, husband, and father for their children. Adah stood up to her husband and when he putted her down she used her intelligence to find ways around her husband’s behavior. He was very stubborn and at times mentally abusive and this was Adah’s only defense in fulfilling herself as a person and her dreams. That case is another class struggle which Adah did as a woman who was facing the patriarchalism. The result was that she decided to leave Francis, her husband, and started living and growing her six children by herself. This is another condition which shows us about class struggle which many women should do at the time.

3. Conclusion

The socioeconomic condition and the history of class struggle in the novel Second Class Citizen were revealed directly by the author, Buchi Emecheta, by describing her own real life from her childhood until the end of her marriage. By reading this novel, we can get the information that the condition of socioeconomic in Nigeria in 1940-1960s was not good enough. The struggle which Adah did to improve her quality of life was very hard but resulted in her wealth as a successful woman. However, she had to start it over again when she lived in United Kingdom.  As a “dream” country, UK did have a good socioeconomic, but it could be got mostly by the native people there. Immigrant, especially black people, couldn’t get a good life since the racism still existed there. Then, Adah started to struggle again against the racism and against the gender discrimination which her bad husband emerged.

Some of the main points of struggle for Adah are being a black woman in a predominantly white society, learning of the women’s rights movement during the seventies and the fact that there is birth control available to her, and her struggle to pursue her goal in becoming a writer and ultimately between four children and a lazy abusive husband the time to write.

Robert Browning

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Imagery:

• Sight         : “grey sea”, “long black land”, “yellow half-moon large”, “startled little waves”,  “fiery ringlets”, etc. (almost all the parts of this poem give sight imagery).
• Hear         : “voice less loud”
• Touch      : “warm sea-scented beach”

Surface meaning:

The Robert Browning’s poem, as the title shows it, is about a meeting at night of a couple who are in love with each other. To meet the woman, the man should do a very long journey through the sea with his boat, walking through three farms, until he arrives at a farm. Still, he has to be very careful when meeting her because exactly they are not allowed to meet each other. That’s why the man comes at night and they should talk with a very soft voice.

Deep meaning:

This poem is telling us about the process of a relationship. When someone has not find his love, his life feels so lonely that Robert Browning represented it by “the grey sea and the long black land”.  Love can be aimed to someone or dream. Then, to be able to reach his love, he passed trough many challenges and restrictions. However, he did it happily since he has a big optimistic. After all the hassles, he succeed to find what he looked for. The loneliness has gone and was changed by brightness (“And blue spurt of a lighted match”). And finally, he got what he dreamed about.

Theme:

• Love is something that needs a hassle and sacrificial to be gotten.
• A success will be reached if someone has a big motivation and works hard pass trough many challenges and restrictions.

Messages:

To reach our love/dream, we have to work hard and enjoy the process. By doing it, we will find the real happiness of our success.

by Robert Herrick

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.

Surface meaning:

In his poem ‘To Daffodils’, the poet Robert Herrick begins by saying that we grieve to see the beautiful daffodils being wasted away very quickly. The duration of their gloom is so short that it seems even the rising sun still hasn’t reached the noon-time. Thus, in the very beginning the poet has struck a note of mourning at the fast dying of daffodils.
The poet then addresses the daffodils and asks them to stay until the clay ends with the evening prayer. After praying together he says that they will also accompany the daffodils. This is so because like flowers men too have a very transient life and even the youth is also very short-lived.

Deep meaning:

“We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring.”

Robert Herrick symbolically refers to the youth as spring in these lines. He equates/compares human life with the life of daffodils. Further he says that both of them grow very fast to be destroyed later. Just like the short duration of the flowers, men too die away soon. Their life is as short as the rain of the summer season, which comes for a very short time; and the dew-drops in the morning, which vanish away and never return again. Thus, the poet after comparing the flowers to humans, later turns to the objects of nature – he has compared the life of daffodils with summer rain, dew drops.
Theme:

• the short-lived nature of life, the fleeting passage of time.
• like the flowers we humans have a very short life in this world.
• beauty is not going to stay forever.

Messages:

Life is short, and world is beautiful, love is splendid and we must use the short time we live to make the most of it. This is shown in the words “haste”, “run”, “short” and “quick”.

Naah!! Not by eating it, nor by seeing it, but by reading it on Japanese comics (manga).

Conan: "Why do I get the Kid's Sushi?? Wheew!!"

More and more mangas I’ve been reading till now, more and more images of Sushi I’ve seen.

And it feels so great when I ate it in the first time. A bit weird thou, since I wasn’t used to eat any Japanese food. But after a while, I missed to do it again xD.

So, in Sushi Tei I was:

Look at the mug of OCHA (Japanese plain tea)! That's how "Sushi Tei" is written.

K, K, I know that you couldn’t read it clearly. Here you are:

Well, sure I didn’t go there alone…

I love being together with family or friends…

But since I live far away from my family, with friends (Yani, Ditha, Puri, and Fia) did I enjoy my dinner:

Memory.....!!! ^^

And….after a pretty long waiting, the Sushis came:

ITADAKIMASU......!!!! (^_^)

While eating them, I was thinking about how great the idea of creating Sushi is.

You know, they are served in a very attracting way to whet your appetite and make you easy to eat them:

Just need A SINGLE MOUTHFUL!!

Yummy!!!

But then yesterday, I got a project to make biography of a big company’s leader.
Hmmm….great chance!!! But how to write it??? (>_<)
*I’ll tell you my steps on the other posts*

Anyway, that was the reason why I made this new account.
I’ve to start writing again!!!
I could write on my old blogs, but to be honest…I even don’t remember where they are!
Too bad for me,
But good for you, I guess…
You don’t need to find any horrible blog of mine…

Hey, did u find this one???
Poor you, guys… D: