Author Archives: kia326

In the opening of her essay, Gloria Anzaldúa uses the phrase “taming a wild tongue” in a very literal context of her being at the dentist and being told to keep her tongue under control. However, throughout the rest of her essay, she explains that being an immigrant in that era has affected her ability to speak Spanish freely and openly. Therefore, in this context, the “wild tongue” is referred to as the foreign language of immigrants that isn’t the primary language of the country they immigrated to. In addition, to “tame it” mean to silence the tongue, to make it speak the conventional language of the nation, to make it forget the native culture, and to make it conform to society’s standards. By forcing immigrants to speak only English, the United States is essentially denying them their right to freedom of speech. Another language should not be considered so wild and untamed that it needs to be saddled, but rather celebrated for its uniqueness. It is extremely important to encourage native speakers to practice their language so they can teach it to their children and prevent the language from becoming completely extinct, like many already have in the past.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

-wild woman: The wild woman used to go out every night to party and get drunk. After getting pregnant, however, she had to change her ways to be a better mother to her child.

-wild man: Thousands of years ago, wild men used to live in caves and wear animal skin for warmth.

-wild animal: The wild animal growled before disappearing into the woods to find its prey.

-wild beast: John has a repeating nightmare where wild beasts are chasing after him, but he is unable to run fast enough and ends up frantically waking up after getting devoured in his dream.

-wild thing: The wildest thing about visiting my home country Belarus, was that public bathrooms were not free and you could not use the bathroom without paying someone first.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

Oscar Wilde was a popular author, playwright, and poet in late Victorian England. He was a literary figure in the Victorian Era and belonged to the aesthetic and decadent literary movements. Wilde’s literary genres ranged from epigram to drama, from short story to criticism, and journalism. Back in the 19th century, Wilde did not have a good reputation as he was known for his wit, flamboyance, and his trials and jail sentence for homosexual acts. Oscar was alive a decade before the Sexual Offense Act of 1967 was passed in England, meaning homosexuality was still illegal in the country and something he had to serve time in jail for. The publicity of his private affairs caused him to be perceived as a controversial figure. However, people are way more accepting of different sexualities in the current time period, so Wilde’s work has resurfaced and is making another great impact on readers today who are not judging his personal life. I definitely think he is a wild author because of his courage and bravery to be himself and to put out such controversial work during a very close-minded time period.

Wilde was a controversial figure largely for his homosexuality and conviction of “gross indecency”. One of his poems, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, was inspired not only by his own incarceration in prison, but by the execution of a soldier for the murder of his wife. The repeated line, ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’, conveys a bigger metaphorical significance in the context of Wilde’s own life. This is a wild piece because it goes against the common notion that murderers are horrible people that deserve to be on death row for their crimes. Oscar Wilde takes the contrary approach throughout his poem by explaining the harsh brutality criminals face. Once again, he is successfully challenging society through his writing.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

In Hemingway’s “The Good Lion” and Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”, the authors both use the word “wild” to expose the tension between civilized and uncivilized existences. In both stories, the civilized world is conveyed as tamed, domestic, good, and normal; while the uncivilized world is revealed as untamed, wild, evil, and abnormal. However, the protagonist in “Where the Wild Things Are” is also considered wild, while the protagonist in “The Good Lion” is considered the complete opposite of wild.

In “Where the Wild Things Are”, the author uses the word “wild” all throughout the novel as a way to characterize the animals in the forest Max visits at night. When Max’s imagination took him where the wild creatures lived, “they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws” (pg. 21). The repetition of the word terrible symbolizes the untamed and vicious nature of these wild things. Even though the wild creatures warm up to Max and start loving him by the end of the story, he is still referring to them as wild because they are coming from his wild imagination after his mom classified him as a wild thing when he was misbehaving. 

In “The Good Lion”, the author uses the theme of wildness to describe the characters in his story in a very similar way. Wildness is perceived through the wicked lions as they, “roar with laughter and eat another Hindu trader and their wives would drink his blood. They only stopped to growl with laughter or to roar with laughter at the good lion and to snarl at his wings. They were very bad and wicked lions indeed” (pg. 388). The gruesome and descriptive imagery in this passage shows the reader the true extent of the wildness and savagery of these lions. This is also contrasted in the story through the good lion and his seemingly perfect morals.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

The Wizard of Oz is an interesting novel because it’s usually considered a children’s story due to the funky characters and magic, even though some believe the story actually alludes to further hidden meanings that only mature adults can comprehend. The communicator of this piece would be the author, Frank Baum, because he is using third-person point of view to narrate this story. The audience to which this book is marketed towards would be children because of the whimsical characters, however, this piece speaks to mature adults on a deeper level through its hidden metaphors and symbolism. 

A passage in this novel that contains the word “wild” would be the second paragraph in chapter 6. Here, the author is describing Dorothy’s and her friends’ journey through the woods as they walk along the yellow brick road. They hear sounds of various animals and the narrator notes, “But now and then there came a deep growl from some wild animal hidden among the trees. These sounds made the little girl’s heart beat fast, for she did not know what made them; but Toto knew, and he walked close to Dorothy’s side, and did not even bark in return.” In the context of this sentence, the word “wild” is describing animals that reside in the woods as untamed and ferocious. The rhetorical appeal of ethos is used when Dorothy’s small dog, Toto, is given credibility in knowing that the wild growls they heard belong to larger, more dangerous animals. The rhetorical appeal of logos is also used when Toto relies on reasoning and decides to not mess with the unknown beasts by barking back at them. Finally, the rhetorical appeal of pathos is also seen in this passage when Dorothy’s feelings are clearly portrayed as her heart starts to beat super fast because she is afraid of the wild animals.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

A song I listen to that I think is really wild would have to be ‘Overthinker’ by INZO. I chose this song because I love Electronic Dance Music, otherwise knowns as EDM. It is one of the wildest genres because the build-up rhythm replicates the feeling of anticipation in the brain and when the beat drops, the brain produces dopamine. This song holds a special place in my heart because it helped me find myself when I was just in high school and this Halloween I drove to Houston to see INZO perform live at a music festival. Even though we got to his set late, seeing him play ‘Overthinker’ was one of the best moments of my life, so I got tickets to see him again in April! 

‘Overthinker’ is a wild song because it actually includes a voiceover from an amazing philosopher, Alan Watts. His healing voice mixed with aesthetic beat drops bring out a feeling of nostalgia. The verse after the first drop speaks to me greatly, “Most of us would have Rather money than tangible wealth And a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed And to read about it the next day in the newspaper Is oddly more fun for us than the original event”. This verse helped me realize that important things in life are not materialistic. The philosopher goes on to explain that we lost our senses because of how tied up in our minds we are. This song reminds me to question reality and how I perceive the world around me instead of overthinking and living in my head.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

Gymnastics is a sport that displays strong coordination, physical agility, and flexibility of the people involved. This modern sport is divided between men and women, requiring them to compete with varying exercises. For women, gymnastics typically involves the floor, the vaulting horse, the balance beam, and uneven bars. For men, gymnastics typically involves the floor, rings, pommel horse, horizontal bars, and parallel bars. The players in this sport are the gymnasts, competing either on the individual level or in groups of teams. The communicators in this sport are the personal coaches that choreograph the gymnasts’ routines, select music for their floor exercises, as well as observe and spot the athletes as they preform their routines on the different apparatuses.

The internal gender dynamics of gymnastics are first seen within the audience. Women’s gymnastics is much more popular than men’s because there is more than twice as much people watching it. As a result, there is also a much higher level of participation in women’s gymnastics compared to men’s, making this sport predominately female. There aren’t many rules in gymnastics as there are in other sports. If the gymnast messes up their routine, falls, or looses balance, they get a certain amount of points deducted. This could eliminate them from moving onto the next level in the competition. My personal views on the interplay of sports and gender is that I love how the gymnastics industry is still mainly run by powerful and strong women. When most popular sports are male-dominated, it’s nice to see some female representation thats lets us have “our own thing” to be proud of, like Simone Biles winning a total of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals. Wildness in this sport means small female gymnasts are defying the laws of gravity by flying up so high in the air and doing multiple flips simultaneously. 

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

A film that I consider wild is Midsommar, which was released recently in July, 2019. The director of this film was Ari Aster, he was also the director of another popular horror film, Hereditary. Some popular cast members in Midsommar were Florence Pugh, Will Poulter, Jack Reynor, Isabelle Grill, Björn Andrésen, William Jackson Harper, and Vilhelm Blomgren. The theme of this movie is essentially a woman’s emotional journey towards leaving a toxic relationship as well as the severe importance of tradition in certain cultures. To give a synopsis of Midsommar, a couple travels to Sweden to visit a rural town’s celebration of the mid-summer festival. What begins as an ideal retreat quickly evolves into a violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

A specific scene from Midsommar that best reflects the film’s wildness would have to be the graphic ritual suicide scene in the middle of the movie. In this scene an elderly man and woman voluntarily threw themselves off a cliff onto stones. Although this bloody ritual completely terrified the tourists, it was a conventional custom for the natives. Rather than let themselves become a burden to the community, the elders would throw themselves off the cliff as a sacrifice. I thought this film was wild because it went so in-depth into the savage cultural practices of an Amish cult in Sweden. This is just one the the many wild scenes in this film because in our western society this kind of ritual would be considered horrific since we tend to throw our elders into nursing homes instead of off cliffs. 

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich

The dictionary defines the word “wild” as something that resides or grows in the nature. A “wild” environment is said to be uncultivated or uninhabited. An animal is considered “wild” if it is not domesticated and lives in the previously described wild region. Another dictionary explains that wild things are produced without any help from people. Being “wild” is described as being in a free state of natural existence. Since the term “wild” means uncontrolled, it can also be used to refer to something violent, extreme, or unusual. Things that are considered wild typically lack restraints and are left in their instinctive state. In addition, a “wild” idea could be described as something irrational or unrealistic.

Personally, I have always considered something wild to be free in a sense. Free from society’s standards and expectations, free to do as the natural feelings desire. Wild animals, for example, tend to roam wherever their epigenetic traits lead them. While domesticated animals are tied to their owner and the designated living space the owner has provided for them. I interpret “the wild” as being a natural environment far away from cities, towns, and civilization in general. The word “wild” could also describe people that tend to be carefree or unhinged, they are generally more impulsive and engage in risky behavior. As an adjective, wild can also illustrate situations that are chaotic and uncontrolled. People often describe going to the club or a concert as a “wild night out”. However, the most mundane people will still call themselves “wild”, so this word has its own definition for everyone at the end of the day.

Katsiaryna Aliashkevich