Today was full of many things that were extremely moving to me. In class we talked about Beckett’s Texts For Nothing which sparked much conversation about why the text was so confusing and what the meaning behind it was. After class we went on the James Joyce tour which is one of my favorite things we have done so far. It really gave me an inside look on his early life and that explained a lot of the themes and stories found in Dubliners. Themes such as leaving Dublin because of his poor experiences with the city itself, and some quirky things such as the jumping over the fence. After the tour we went to the coffee shop and bookstore thats pictured in this post, and I ended up not getting coffee because they said they were out of non-dairy milk :(. I really enjoyed all of the books, and the ones about Irish history were all from authors I knew and understood now. This makes me feel a lot closer to Irish history. After the bookstore we walked across the river and saw the monument of the famine which I found extremely powerful. The statues of the people and the children were almost alien-like which I think was the point of it. It was to relay that the time period, that it was almost portrayed as not being real and the people there were so hungry that they didn’t even look real as well. Afterwards we saw a Beckett portrayal which I found extremely interesting because it didn’t clear up what those texts are actually supposed to mean. But the woman who portrayed this was absolutely incredible. The sound and emotion that was portrayed was something that stood out to me. It made me feel almost connected to the texts, even though you didn’t know what they were supposed to mean. Today made me feel more connected to the Irish history and the authors behind it.