Jane Austen's Romantic Realism

A lot of people know this bright author, one of the most influent and representative of English literature, but do they know how similar this smart British girl was to the characters that she created and that Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley made world-wide famous?. The truth is that Austen’s novels not only tell a romantic story, they also picture the reality lived in the early 19^th Century’s England, and besides, reflex the author’s thoughts, desires and personality.

Austen was born in 1775 in the middle of a close-knit English family, and was educated mainly by her father and brothers. Since she was little, she developed a remarkable artistic ability, which was enriched by her love to reading, and encouraged by her parent’s constant support. However, her most famous works, such as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), won’t be written until her last years of life.

Some people seem to believe that Austen’s main characters had some resemblance with her own personality, actually, many people recognize the similarity between the author and Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of her most famous novel, Pride And Prejudice, ; both girls, in fact, have certain common characteristics, like their strong and independent attitude, as well as the confident and love that both felt to their older sisters.

Is also a curious fact that most part of her works was first published anonymously, because of the fact that women were not allowed to express most part of their ideas or thoughts in that time.

Austen’s defiance to this obsolete, old-fashioned rules can be also identified in most part of her works, and has represented an example of struggle and self-confidence, in a time when women we widely discriminated by the most cult societies of Europe and America.

One way or another, Jane Austen’s novels, truly represent masterpieces among the rich 19^th century English literature. Even when she died in 1817, her works is still studied and read as an example of romanticism and as critic to the English discriminatory and aristocratic society.

  

Fast Meals and Dispenseable People

As many people in and out of the US probably know, fast food is an actual and irreplaceable part of the American lifestyle. However, is this Fast Food Nation starting a social breakdown in which burgers and pizzas are the main enemy? The truth is that the large fast food chains all over the country are creating some serious problems, and most of them go much, much further than only obesity. Restaurants are constantly pursuing one single goal: accelerate the production of food, and in this way, increase the earnings. Nevertheless, this uncontrolled growth, besides decreasing the food’s nutritive value, also is becoming the human work in something extremely easy, repetitive and monotonous, which also makes the employees easily exchangeable and dispensable.

Currently, the most important part of the fast food chains’ workforce is formed by teenagers, immigrants or elder people, in a few words, people easy to control and to dismiss. All of these groups are also people who usually need money and will be happy and glad to receive any payment, even though it’s not enough to cover almost any need.

Besides that, nowadays, most of these chains are more interested in improving productivity or throughput rather than quality, this fact has transformed these restaurants in some kind of factories which now depend more on machines than human force. This accelerates the work and besides that, makes the employees easy to exchange.

However, this means that these employees are being put under pressure and they have other types of responsibility; actually most of these fast food chains have some sort of “Bible” in which they teach everything a good employee needs to know, and of course, these people have to memorize and learn these procedures. According to this, these “easy” jobs in Mcdonalds or Burger King, are not totally bad, in some way, they encourage the teenager to develop certain responsibilities that may help him in the future to get a better job. Still, teenagers must be aware that under the eyes of these companies, they are pawns, who can be substituted at any moment.

In summary, for better worse, we can say that, although, in these works, people don’t receive good payments, and is treated like objects; fast food is part of the way Americans live, and for some teenagers, working in Mcdonald’s, Burger King, Dominoe’s Pizza or Pizza Hut, is some sort of ritual, that they must complete in order to become adults. In the same order of ideas, these chains also allow some sectors of the population such as the elderly and the inmigrants, to have a worthy job and to earn some money.

Haiku, Natural Japanese Poetry

The haiku is a type of typical Japanese poem, characterized for having a very peculiar structure, being formed only by three verses of five, seven and five syllables respectively, giving a total of 17 syllables. In the same way, the haiku is usually inspired by the nature, and the changes that it develops with the changing seasons.

古池や　蛙飛込む　水の音

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

This separates into on as:

fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)

ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)

mi-zu no o-to (5)

Translated

old pond . . .

a frog leaps in

water’s sound

Its origins can be traced to the eight century, when the Chinese characters arrived to Japan, and therefore, the island culture and literature started to grow and improve. One of the first and most important poets who wrote haiku was Matsuo Basho, who defined the basic characteristics that the poem has today.
Besides the poem itself, many Haijin (name with which haiku writers are known) usually make a draw to represent the ideas or messages implicit in the verses, this act is known as Haiga, and is very common in the Japanese day-to-day life.

Haiku is in fact a really simple but interesting poem, which can be redacted by any person who could be interested in spending a few minutes of his or her time, thinking and writing. Actually, in today's class we wrote two of these poems,

I'll show you mine right now...

Evening Sun

We will see the sky

Swaying in the evening Sun

While the clouds pass by

Cold Climb

Winds howl in dark rage

with cold dread we start to climb

No more fear, calm down