post #1

In Mending wall there is a sense of separation that the narrator is trying to convoy to the reader. The wall is a way to discourage communication and keep the farms of the neighbors apart, but as the narrator is trying to explain that the men dont have things that would make a wall necessary. He explains that his apples from his apple orchard "will never get across and eat the cones under his pines" so there is no reason for the separation of the two properties, but regardless the neighbor is out fixing the wall every "spring mending-time". I believe that frost is challenging the idea of order and asking why we feel obligated to put a physical structure between us and our neighbors. 

Accident, Mass. Ave by Jill McDonough explores what our pre-set reactions to certain events are, and how we are always quick to get ourselves into argument that we cant backtrack from. In the poem, the narrator gets into a crash with another women on Mass. Ave in boston and immediately gets out of the car, starts yelling and trying to verbosely attack the women into submission. Defensively the other woman uses another preconceived idea of how to respond, returning anger with anger, exacerbating the situation far beyond what is necessary. The women narrator internally feels embarrassed when she sees no damage is done to the car, and the other woman becomes overly worried because of the viscousness of the narrator. Both of the women learn that these pre-set reactions caused them to be angry and un compassionate, they relieve that they were both scared and just didn't know how to show it without seeming weak. 

Learning to Read looks at a time in our history when slaves were just being educated to read and write as a free people. Harper explains that the southern slave owners forbade the blacks to read because of the ideals that books can install into them about freedom and human rights, but after they were free the northern teachers felt an obligation to make up for lost time. The "yankee teachers" went down south to teach the upcoming generation of free slaves to read and write so that they could better themselves as a people, and have a fighting chance in society. While enslaved the blacks only way of preaching and spreading Gospel was word of mouth because they didn't have bibles or preach out of. Many of the older slaves that had been in servitude since birth were believed to be to old to start learning to read and write, but now that they were allowed to read the word of the lord directly from the scriptures there was a new found motivation to learn. 

In The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education, Rev. Kolvenbach's preaches the ideals of Jesuit values and how we must all be avenues of justice and attempt to create a world of peace and political stability. All of the literary works focus on a theme of human understand, and our way of progressing in life. In Mending wall, the narrator is trying to move past old ideas of separation and take away the physical barrier that the wall puts between the neighbors. Accident, Mass. Ave explains the evolution of the argument the two women are having, and how they come to understand each other and find a way to connect after a scary event. Finally in Learning to Read, we see the perseverance of a former slave to gain independence from her masters, and learn to read, which she was told he would not be able to do.