Introduction/Rip Van Winkle

Introduction:
My name is Charles Elrod. I'm from San Antonio, Texas. I am 21 years old and a junior at TCU. I am an advertising/PR major. If I were chancellor at TCU, I would try to build stronger relationships with the students, like creating more traditions as well as allowing a fun tailgating scene at football games, and changing the food situation so that they can eat at other restaurants other than the cafeteria, which gets old after a while. If I could have dinner with any three people they would be Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Seinfeld, and Seth Rogen. Really the only time I read is during the summer when I'm not busy with school. I read mostly magazines like "Rolling Stone", "Sports Illustrated", and "The Sporting News". I also enjoy reading books. Some of my favorites in the past have been "Catcher in the Rye", "Jimi Hendrix: Room Full of Mirrors", "Stairway to Heaven", "In the Company of Heroes", and "A Million Little Pieces". I believe I am good at writing but I don't necessarily enjoy it. It's very frustrating sometimes when you have writer's block. Like most other people my age, I text message a lot but I haven't gotten into the twittering because I don't really understand what it is. I have read, understood, and agreed to the syllabus.

Blog Address:
Charles Elrod, ENGL 20503, http://charleselrod.blogspot.com

Rip Van Winkle:
I really enjoyed the "Rip Van Winkle". I'm not really into the superhuman, mythology, almost sci-fi genre that is present in the story, but I enjoyed it in this particular one. I feel as though Rip Van Winkle is kind of a weak man. He would do stuff for other people but when it came to himself and his family, he never seemed to prevail. In a sense, he represents America while it was just a set of colonies controlled by Great Britain. His wife, I feel, represents Great Britain because she's always chastising him and scolding him for the things he does wrong. He then climbs up the mountains with his dog, meets and old man who gets him drunk and passed out from liquor. He wakes up 20 years later and comes back down to realize how much everything has changed. At first frightened by the change, he realizes that the United States is now a country after defeating Great Britain in the Revolution. He's scared until he hears the death of his wife which occurred a few years earlier. What this story represents is the change of America after the Revolution. In the end of the story, Van Winkle is looked up to by other men who wish they could've drank the liquor that was served to him, but before, like America, he was weak and despised his wife while also being frightened of her (just like the colonies' relationship with their mother country). While he wasn't really accepted by those when the colonies were ruled by Great Britain, he finds himself finally accepted when he comes back to a new, stronger country.