Episode 2: Tuesday Night Show

00:00:00 - Good evening to your audience and welcome once again to your favorite educational podcast.

00:00:09 - Today we have some great surprises in store for you. First, we want to share with you the new name of this program that is Tuesday night show with your hostess Ana Forero and me Laura Velases.

00:00:21 - Thank you love. Today we're going to approach a very acclaimed topic for you, which is the novel. We are going to share with you some interesting facts about the novel and analyze three wonderful works of the authors. Sylvia Plath, Alice Walker and the best known Mark Twain.

00:00:37 - Okay and in order to start, do you know what is the difference between novel and novella?

00:00:44 - Actually no, tell me love, what is it? Well, it is pretty interesting because the novel is a one that contains more than 49,900 words and a novella is a one that contains less than 49,900 words. Okay Lausso, in that way the short novel is the one that has around 50,000 to 79,000 words, isn't it? Exactly, so people don't forget that a novel is a long piece of narrative in literary prose and its purpose is to entertain and tell a story involving characters and and usually a set of organizations.

00:01:18 - Thank you.

00:01:19 - And for the last fact, do you know what is the meaning of novella in Latin?

00:01:23 - Not really.

00:01:24 - Well, basically from the Latin, it means new story.

00:01:28 - For that reason, the novel represents imagination and creativity.

00:01:32 - Wow, that's curious!

00:01:33 - Okay, people, to begin with, I want to start this analysis with the Alfred Silvia plot and her amazing story, The Belder, so it is kind of a semi-autobiographical novel that follows the story of Esther Greenwood, a young woman who is struggling with a mental illness and societal expectations in the 1950s. So for me it's very important to analyze her writing style, the author's writing style, because in that way we're going to understand better and in an easier way the themes of this story. So for the reason the writing style is characterised by a vivid imaginary, introspective tone, and in some cases intricate use of language, and in that way she created like a rich and immersive reading experience.

00:02:16 - So with the same vivid and often unconventional imaginary, she tried to confide the inner emotional landscape of her protagonist.

00:02:24 - For example, she uses a lot of metaphors and symbols to describe a steric mental state.

00:02:30 - For example, she said like, the silence depress me.

00:02:34 - But it wasn't the silence of silence, it was a token that she was suffering depression.

00:02:41 - So turning into the details, the main thing of this story is identity and femininity.

00:02:46 - Okay, that's pretty interesting now.

00:02:48 - Yes, yes, those topics are so so important, yeah?

00:02:52 - Yes, based on the time that is 1950s, that's pretty important.

00:02:56 - Yes, it's kind of different.

00:02:59 - Okay, so this story is about like a star's journey to find her own identity and break free from societal countries.

00:03:09 - So the story is about a college girl, she is a good student, she is a gifted writer, she is like a fashion magazine contest winner, that's something important, isn't it?

00:03:20 - That she won like a competence.

00:03:22 - So she is like the world-read oldest child in a typical family with two children and she is a clever games player, but something kind of bad is that she was sexually confused and that of course she was like a mental patient.

00:03:37 - Oh my god.

00:03:38 - So if we want to understand this story it's important to coverage some of the most important authors.

00:03:43 - So for example we have Sir Greenwood, you know, but it's the protagonist, the main character.

00:03:48 - But also we have Buddy Willard, he is Steric's boyfriend, he is the son of one of her mother's friends and Buddy is a student at Yale and he plans to be a doctor, which is good.

00:03:59 - I told him that she won kind of competitions, so for the reasons she was part of the magazine one of the best magazines in the United States of Southern New York City so in that place she met and yes she met one editor and who is called Daisy she is like the boss and she she was a friend she was a real friend she was so kind and she support a story during all this process so also we have Doreen in this

00:04:29 - In this case, we have like a glamorous, like the beauties and the sexiest girl in the world.

00:04:36 - She is also winner of the same competence as I told you, but she's from the studio.

00:04:42 - She and Esther met in New York City, of course, and Dorin tried to help Esther with clothes and men.

00:04:48 - Okay, that's a good friend.

00:04:51 - I think so.

00:04:53 - But now, listen to this.

00:04:55 - We have Betsy.

00:04:56 - She is one.

00:04:57 - She's another friend.

she's again one of the winners but she's from the Midwest so she's bright ingenious she's like an esmeralda cookie Betsy becomes a model but she's the innocent friend the lovely friend okay yes of course there is a big difference between the ring and Betsy exactly so that's the climax I told you that she was part of a competition she wanted competitions so for the for that reason she won like a one-month paid internship at the ladies magazine in New York City

00:05:32 - So she lived in the same hotel with 11 college students

00:05:36 - So that group was divided into two small groups

00:05:41 - These small groups were called the good girls and the bad girls

00:05:46 - Yes, but reason why?

00:05:49 - They were classified and identified in terms of the relationship to men and society my god no that's terrible I mean no I can't accept that I can't yes so they were not given value in terms of their own personality starters or even in the average so for the reason is there it was like terribly aware of this problem and the dilemma was that she was totally confused about which team she wanted to be due to the social pressure she didn't know how to handle these situations and her own emotions and even her own emotions so for the reason she started to suffer from pressure yes she suffered anxiety depression and in that way that made her like a thought a talk herself by couldn't herself that's so bad and do you know what is more sad that there are some people who is leaving that currently I can't understand that thought well now continue with the second part of this beautiful podcast thank you so

00:06:50 - Thank you so much Lau for that information about Sylvia Platt and the builder. I want to continue our topic with first of all to talk about Alice

00:07:01 - Walker who is a North American black writer. She is 79 years old and she's still alive. Yes and she's a very important inspiration for young black girls who want to talk about their own stories so anyways when she was a child one of her siblings hit her on a night for that reason she came see from that eye but it's not bad at all because for that reason she had the opportunity to get a scholarship and study in a very good university where she decided to write and basically she's now recognized herself as a black feminist, following your other author who is Sylvia's love.

00:07:55 - Yes, I like it because it is talking about educational opportunities.

00:07:59 - Yes, that's pretty important.

00:08:01 - So now let's talk about one of her most famous novels, that is the color purple.

00:08:07 - The color purple is not a common novel and it is because it is written based on a set of letters of a black girl from the USA called Sally that had a very, very difficult life.

00:08:22 - Yes, and she decided to write letters to her sister, Neri.

00:08:27 - I'm so sad.

00:08:28 - No.

00:08:29 - I have a sister too.

00:08:30 - Wait.

00:08:31 - It comes worse.

00:08:32 - Oh my gosh.

00:08:33 - Well, the story starts with Sally, the protagonist being raped by her father, but a lot of times it didn't happen just one, a lot of times. And she even got pregnant twice about those rapes.

00:08:47 - Yes, that's super sad and this is kind of hard to read because the whole book is set up as back bad moments of the protagonist with Sally yeah that's pretty sad so basically uh then that she got pregnant and everything her father exchanged let's say exchanged her for a cow what yeah just a cow just a cow okay and then Sally got married um and her sister the younger sister was adapted for a community in Africa. From that point their lives got separate and that's why they start writing letters to each other and that's basically why the novel is not conventional because Alice Walker wanted to show the diversity of black people. That's why Sally uses something that

00:09:44 - Walker has called black full language and that's pretty important because

00:09:49 - Sally didn't have enough education so the way that she wrote it's completely different than Nettie because Nettie writes in a standard and polite way because she had the opportunity to study in a good way. Yes so this book has a lot of moments where Sally had good and bad times but one of the most good time is when Silly met Sophia, who talked to her about self-love and being estimate and respect from the audience. That's fundamental. Yeah, that's really nice.

00:10:28 - That's amazing. So that's basically why we want to talk about some of the important themes of this novel. The first one is the stereotypes of gender because Walker also wanted to show a critic of those stereotypes because the man is the one who is able to hypnotize women and women is the one who just keep quiet about that situation. On the other hand we can talk about race showing the bias between white and black people and finally this book also talked about religion and imperialism apart an important field of our society. This is very important because in literacy word as a black woman she knows how to tell a good story but at the same time to tell history through a story. Yes, that's very good. So we can keep our customs traditions and audience. So okay, people, dear audience, dear Anna, we want to finish this episode with the analysis of one of the world's famous novels, Tom Sawyer, which is written by Mark Twain. I have to be an audience and I really love this novel. Yes, Tom Sawyer is a classic comic of age novel that tells the story of a young boy named, of course, Tom Sawyer, who is growing up in a fictional town of sign Peter Brooks, but based on a mystery along the Mississippi River where our authors,

00:12:05 - Twain, grew up. Oh yeah, so in that way he used his real life in order to write.

00:12:13 - Yes, the same as the authors that we talked about today. Yes, yes, like the same settings and experiences. So okay, one of the notable aspects of Twain's writing styles in Tom Sawyer is his use of humor has satire, so Twain employs with irony and exaggeration to satirize British aspects of society, including in hypocrisy, superstition and social norms. That's true.

00:12:38 - So, through his humor, Twain provides like a critical commentary on the flaws and foils of human nature, making the novel both entertaining and thought-provoking. Yes, the idea of him was created a vivid and engaging portrayal of American mind-west of the 19th century.

00:12:59 - Basically, the novel begins with Tom's everyday life and he was kind of a naughty boy with his best friend who is Huckleberry Finn. As a fun fact, the second part of this novel is the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Oh, his friends. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty interesting.

so basically one of the most important moments of the novel is when they witnessing a murder in a griff jar and the boys were to keep it as a secret but their guilt and fear hound them throughout the story, adding suspense and tension to the jar. I really love everything with suspense.

00:13:39 - Yes, of course, but they continue living a lot of adventures including searching for hiding treasure and getting lost in a cave and getting caught up in a feud between two families.

00:13:50 - Yes, something important is that in that way the novel also explores the social and cultural norms of the period, so depicting their drudgery attitude, superstition and small-found dynamics of the 19th century in the American Midwest, of course. So in that way I have to repeat it, join, use as humans, attire, and vivid descriptions to depict the characters and settings, providing in that way a rich and immersive reading experience. So at the heart of the novel we have a vocal of Greg Stomps. Stomps is coming of our journey. So he navigates the childhoods and joys of childhood. But he learned, he learned the importance of honesty and responsibility. So in that way he developed his own sense of morality. So Stomps grew as a character from a bad boy to a more mature and responsible young woman.

00:14:45 - So this is like the central thing of the novel that we can change.

00:14:49 - Yeah basically it's pretty important because Tom learned a valuable lesson about friendship, brotherly and consequence of his action that it's pretty important for Mark Twain that he's have every single moment and moral of the story.

00:15:05 - Exactly. I do believe in second opportunities.

00:15:07 - Yeah, that's true. So now I want to conclude this beautiful podcast saying that every single author talks about what they know. For example, we start with

00:15:19 - Sylvia Platt, who talks about how it's been a women in the 1950s. That is pretty hard and there are a lot of people judging. And it's social pressure. Yes, we continue living in social pressure in a different way.

00:15:35 - Then we have Alice Walker who is a black woman so you also talk about her own experience being jumped in North America and finally we have Mark Twain whose inspiration was his family so that's why he has a moral of the story because he wanted to her kids grew up knowing what is bad and what is good and the changes that our society needs at that time. Okay amazing. So thank you so much Anna, thank you so much dear audience for being here and okay so see you in the next episode. Thank you bye.