Why I Chose the Psychoanalytic Lens:

The lens I chose is the lens of psychoanalytical.  I chose psychoanalytic because not only is it the one I find the most interesting, but also the one that I think provides the most insight into characters and the message each character is trying to send, deliberately or not.  Beloved is a book set in pre- Civil Rights, a time where equality was a notion far from the imagination.  Civil Rights didn’t take place for a little less than a 100 years later, this is how behind society was in terms of equality when Beloved is depicted.  Yet, the people that started Civil Rights were only a couple generations away from slavery, from the time period that Beloved depicts.  These people were the pre, pre initiators of Civil Rights.  These were people that persevered through even more limited rights and equalities than those that fought Civil Rights.  These people had to persevere through being treated as a nonhuman.  That is mindblowing.  Try getting a raise from a boss that doesn’t think you deserve it, and then try getting the ability to sit at a dinner table with someone who doesn’t think you’re a human.  The difference is night and day and more.  Yet, they succeeded.  How? This is what intrigues me.  More than anything, this is what intrigues me: how? This is what I think the psychoanalytic lens give me more insight into.  That subconsciously, these people were trying to change the world they just didn’t know on the scale they were doing just that.

What am I trying to get out of this project? Thats a tough question because I believe that sometimes the destinations that are created from empty roads are greater than those planned out.  I don’t have a foreseeable desire out of this desire.  I want it to give me greater insight of me as a person, and my country and the outlook of racism in this country.  But beyond that, thats why I do the project.

Feminist Lens: Janet Gil

Women are supposed to cook and do housework.Women are responsible for raising children. Women are not as strong as men.

Although it is 2015, gender inequality is still a global issue. Stereotypes have managed to influence how people view women’s capabilities. This is not okay.

For my AP Literature class I will be reading the well-known novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. I decided to analyze this text with the Feminist critical lens because I can relate too the difficulties women must handle to overcome judgement. This lens interests me much more than other lens because it has to do with an issue we still face today. Since this novel takes place in the 1870's, women have close to no rights, especially colored women. I think it will be fascinating to analyze how Morrison portrays Women in Beloved.
One of the other lens I considered was the Historical Lens. In this lens you are required to pay close attention to a text because you have to determine the time period it is taking place in. Finding around the time the text place in helps you tie back to other historical events like the Holocaust, or World War 2, eventually allowing you to receive a much better understanding of the text. However, I hope that by choosing the Feminist lens I will learn more about character interactions when reading anything.

Feminist Lens

The critical lens I decided to go with is the feminist lens. I decided to go with the feminist lens based on the preview I got from the book. In the book there is a female figure that appears quite often and getting to understand her character and her purpose in the book is something that caught my attention. The lens of feminism is something very interesting because it analyzes the role of a women and how in some instances by economics, politics, and social issues women are being oppressed. Women now a days get payed less than men, and the sad thing is people agree and let it happen. Society has placed an image for women that we must follow or else we arent considered ideal but instead not the right image to portray a woman. Its been a long road for women to be represented because men think they are more superior than women and men control everything especially in politics. Back in the day women were not aloud to vote or even have a say in government but we as women have persevered and worked hard to get the respect and say we have today. Although our say is little we as women persevere and work hard until we get what we want. Viewing the reading through a feminist lens helps see how women have progressed over the years.

Blog Entry #1: Why I Chose This Lens -B.H

The critical lenses I chose for this book is the new historical lens, which is studying literature with the context of history of that time of the book plus the author’s background history. I believe this lens can give the reader a better understanding of what the main idea of this book by exploring what was going around at that era and finding out why the author wrote this book judging from his or her history. The reason why this lens stand out from the others is that this lens will give the reader an easy pathway into knowing what’s going around the protagonist and the understanding of why the author published this book for the world. The mindset perspective I chose were mostly used in social studies; the teacher would make us read a passage from a historical figure through the historical lens. That way we can see clearly what he or she was talking about by researching the figure’s life and the time period he or she lived in. The other lens I was considering was Marxist lens which was reading about the social classes the book portrays. This lens is a great way to figure out how each class treat each other and how the protagonist mentions how his or her life gets impact by it. What I’m going to get out of this project is to master new historical lens so that in the future, it would become an easy lens to do.