Knock-Knock, Nobody's There.

Woods' English 2A: "The Voice from the Wall"

 3.

• I don't know if the first paragraph was supposed to be humorous, but I laughed. It began so dramatically and ended with "Either that, or he died of influenza...". I realized that Lena St. Clair has a very big imagination when she began to describe the story of her great-grandfather's death from her own point-of-view. 
• Was the beggar really a traitor? What did Lena's grandfather have to do with the death? What is the worst possible thing that can happen to you?
• What was the "thing" in the basement? (I doubt that it was really a thousand-year-old man.)
• I used to sometimes walk around the house with the same big eyes, the "scared" expression, thinking that my eyes would grow bigger, but I don't anymore. It was silly of me to try to change myself.
• Wow, Lena's mother saw danger in everything, just like Lena. I wonder if this is an inherited trait?
• What's with Lena's mom and the dangers of making babies? Was that what happened to her: Lena's dad made Lena's mom have Lena? Maybe so, but Lena's dad seems really nice from what I know. What if Lena's mom got into some sort of trouble on the streets and accidentally got pregnant and was rescued from her single-parent life by Lena's dad?
• Whoa, was Lena's mom afraid of being sexually harassed by a man on the streets or something? She didn't even try to protect her daughter! Just herself!
• Did Lena's mother even want the baby? Why did she keep bumping into corners with her stomach?
• Although Teresa, the neighbor girl, fights with her mom a lot, the arguments are filled with family love and compassion. Lena and her mom have never fought before, but somehow, their relationship is distant and cold, misunderstanding and somewhat unrelated. It's ironically weird.
• Wow, Lena's mother really needs to go see a therapist. She's kind of freaking me out.
• I didn't quite understand the ending. Was Lena imagining her relationship with her mother when she would finally have the courage to "pull her through the wall"? 

4. I CHOOSE TERESA! When her mom kicked her out of the house, she simply walks to Lena's house and uses her fire escape to climb back into her room. This reveals that she is, indeed, a rebellious one. Along with that, she is very confident in the fact that her mother will forgive her. She knows the relationship with her mother is strong, that they go through these "fights" just for the heck of it and forgive each other in the end. I admire her strength and self-confidence.

5. I'm not sure of the conflict because my brain was very confused in this chapter, but I think the main conflict is an internal one, man vs. self, Lena vs. her imagination. Lena was born with a big imagination, but it developed and expanded even further as she grew. However, Lena's mind is not filled with unicorns and rainbows but with gore and torture. Throughout the chapter, she struggles with reality and figments of her imagination, where she always makes the worst out of situations, but discovers the not-so-bad truth. I think Lena is afraid of going forward in life; yet, her imagination makes everything worse than they seem. In the end, her mom leaves her in a state of depression, making reality worse than her imagination...turning her imagination into her savior, away from reality.

6. Otay, I'm going to focus on Amy Tan's writing technique of mood, especially in the beginning. The word choice (sharp, whittle, broken, jagged) made the opening really creepy. I was somewhat scared and confused at the same time, but it made me anticipate the mood of the chapter to be gory and bloody.