Author: Valeria L.

The Story of Joseph 

I think that the character Joseph is good, but sometimes he speaks too much. He says like 100 words when he could just say it in 50.  Also, I think that Joseph´s brothers are good characters but not good persons. They sold his brother into slavery and sent him to Egypt.

The language of the story is difficult, confusing, and in my opinion terrible, I don’t like the switch words of the story because I think is a waste of time, it doesn’t help me to understand better, also it doesn’t help me on my reading skills on the English language.

I feel that I didn’t like most of the characters, the only one I liked was the Major. He is the only character that I don’t feel is hypocritical, he may be a bad person but he is someone who shows his intentions. Thomas Stockmann is a reckless person who doesn’t have a good objective, he is a person who doesn’t think about his own, he doesn’t think about his family. Hovstad and Aslaksen are extremely hypocritical people who only follow people and are never the leaders. I feel that I didn’t like the plot, we went from two brothers fighting over a bath and then one of them wanting to be a teacher, it’s a story because it could happen, but it is not likely to happen. The setting was in a small town in Norway before the 2000s, in some places it was at the home of the characters, like at Dr. Stockmann’s home, at his studio, and at Captain’s Horsters home. The language is a formal one from the past years that uses too many metaphors, some of them are difficult to understand and that’s why I have to read it twice. I don’t like this language because it is complicated and being a student whose my second language is English it makes it much more difficult to understand it. Some image that were imagined for me was the physique of Peter Stockmann, I imagine him as a slim and imposing man, who has a rather distinguished mustache, he is always dressed in a suit. Another one that intrigued me a lot was Thomas Stockmann’s physique as I feel that he must look like his brother but they are completely different in physique because their personalities are not similar. I also imagine how nice the town in Norway must be as they say it is beautiful, I imagine it is a little old but nice. I feel that the story can be similar to real life because the story talks about how there will always be people with much more power who will manage to manipulate and abuse their power. That there are going to be people who are just going to be followers of the wrong and corrupt one. In life, there will be people who want to improve and make this world a better place but they can’t rise above the people with power because they simply won’t succeed they would lose more than they gain by trying to do good for a cause. I feel that I am a combination of Peter and Thomas. Peter because I am a person who thinks about his family, and has priority in it, but I am not a selfish person and I question moral decisions. I am similar to Thomas in the sense that I always seek to tell the truth and be straightforward with people, sometimes I am a reckless person but I am not self-centered in the fact that I know that we are all alike.

Personal Response—Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy

In my point of view, the best character was Vasili, although he was the bad guy in the story he had a good development because we saw how he treated Nikita, we saw how he really was as a person, how the little details made him; his wife was irrelevant to him because we don’t even know her name, also how at the beginning he was always thinking about business and at one point he started to think it was his fault that they where on the snow storm and tried to think about him again but he couldn’t. It is a character that the small details give us an idea of what he is like and what he is capable of doing because of his selfishness. Nikita is a good character but nevertheless, he stresses me out too much, because he lets himself be treated badly by Vasili and thinks that Vasili is making him any good. He is always on his own world and has no direction in life, no goal, not even his family, Vasili knew where he wanted to go but he didn’t. Besides he is very naive and never thinks about himself and what his actions can lead to. I understand that people should not be selfish but they should think about themselves also.

I didn’t like the story because I felt it was moving too slowly. In the end I liked it because at last there was some action, in the previous chapters it was always the same, Vasili was selfish, worried about money and treated Nikita badly and Nikita left that attitude to him because he was a very blind person. The story is not realistic at all because a person can’t change from one moment to another, also a person can’t be so unintelligent not to feel hate for someone who did you a lot of harm, almost letting you die.

The ending was a little bit strange because the bad guy became good, but sometimes it made me doubt if Vasili was going to change. I liked that they added Nikita’s faith, this gave us an idea of what was kind of his goal of life, and who was really his Chief Master. I would have liked to know a little more about his life after Vasili’s death and what changed in him, a little bit of after story and was aspects changed in his personal life, like little bit more of context. I didn’t like the language at all because it was difficult to understand, and since English is my second language, it is quite difficult to understand reading with that weird formal language.

One of the most shocking images for me was how I imagined that the two of them were super bad from hypothermia and that Nikita was about to die. Also Vasili hugged him and waited for himself to die to save hugging his friend. I was also very intrigued by Nikita’s physique, I imagined him as a tall person but with a warm and beautiful smile, someone fat but strong, always wearing the same clothes, I amigined Vasili as a skinny and verb tall person, he never had a smile and wore expensive clothing.

I liked the structure because it was given in chronological order, there were no big time jumps and it was quite well organized.

One of the connections that I feel are left in the world is how there are bad people who don’t care about all the bad they can do, I feel that we also live in a world where power matters a lot in how you treat people; people are corrupted by money and think that you don’t matter for the social and economic status. Also conniving people know with whom it is convenient for them to deal badly and well without treating all people with respect. Nikita’s character is very unrealistic to me because he’s so good and there aren’t many of those people in the world anymore. Also, there are no people who don’t know the dangers that are out there.

One connection with the characters that I see myself in is that Vasili is not a hypocrite, he could be the worst person that you are going to know but is going to show himself of how he really is. Also Nikita is a person who doesn’t like seeing people suffer even when I don’t like that person I don’t like seeing them suffer.