Close Prompts: Against Gay Marriage

Before i begin, I would like to clarify that i'm all for gay marriage and i have nothing against loving the same gender but this article proved to be interesting and I figured maybe i'll practice reading and analyzing from another person's point of view and discarding my own. Like Ms. Holmes said, sometimes, you need to step into the author world and leave your opinion behind. So here is me leaving my opinion behind. 


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Recent television series and movies prove to support the expression of oneself, specifically on the topic of being openly gay. This movement that has slowly been gaining momentum since the 20th century where individualism became just as important as conformism in a communism society. However, little light has been shed on the other side of the argument and Eddie Thompson, in response, writes The Argument Against Gay Marriages to provide his reasons for not supporting the cause. Thompson writes Argument to answer all the questions that activists ask but are never answered to, finally coming to say that gay-marriage is only a struggle with deeper motives, bad for the well being of our society and looked down upon by God. 


The most noticeable trait that Thompson puts onto the table is the dehumanizing of the word "homosexual", "gay" and "lesbian". The most obvious example in contained in the first paragraph where Thompson hints at the fact that homosexuals are aiming for something more than equality, saying "there is a deeper agenda at work here..." and he further pushes human qualities away from the terms when he goes into deeper detail and yet refuses to give a proper name to any homosexual and consistently using these terms until it sounds like he is talking about a species of animals that are pinning against "the well-being of our society.".


Secondly, Thompson proves his point by first using very frank language, thus achieving a very straight to the point tone. From the very start, he does not beat around the bush nor does he subtly imply anything. Instead, he takes the subject head on and pulls the reader in with short, stabbing sentences like "gay and lesbians already possess rights equally protected under the law. They have the exact rights that I have today. They can marry a member of the opposite sex if they so choose, just like I have done. " By using sentences that are short and somewhat rhythmic, Thompson is able to establish a sort of trust with the reader, not with his facts, but the fact that he will be honest with his opinion.


Details also contribute to Thompson's matter of factly tone, as he spits out sentence after sentence and connects them like points on a graph. He first starts out with any specific detail,"gay lobby encourages behavior deemed unacceptable by every major religion" then follows with a string of other facts that lead to a single, finite conclusion, " The truth of the matter is marriage is a sacred union ordained by God, and nothing man does can ever really change that." The details work not only to support his opinion but also to reinforce the trust established by Thompson.

These all work together to prove Thompson's point; that homosexuals should not have the right to marriage because they are already equal to another being and that any changes made by humanity towards the subject would not be successful.

Response to Course Material: Ceremony

Ah.

I liked Ceremony a whole lot better than DOS or TAD, but reading it the first time around was really confusing and i had to resist the urge to Sparksnotes some things that i didn't understand. In Ceremony, i felt like i was being tugged from one TV channel to another where nothing makes much sense because its all jumbled together.

But i get it now. Thats just Ceremony's nature, that sort of 'you'll understand it later' deal. Everything sort of makes sense and i look forward to talking to my peers about it in class. Which is a much better feeling than the 'i-want-to-slam-this-freakin-book-down-dude-stop-puking-why-r-u-banging-Night-Swan-wtf-is-up-with-the-mountainlion-its-symbolic-but-how?-omg-thank-the-Lord-I'm-done.' feeling i had the previous week.

I feel like i have an emotional connection to Tayo because I've gone through similar things he has, to a much lesser extent, being Asian raised in white culture, i struggle with the same struggle he goes through. Its like...where is that happy median between your roots and the environment that you live in? Theres not one, you've just gotta make one thats right for you. At the same time, i wish he'd grow himself a pair stop trying to run or give up. He's very emotional for a guy (I just typed 'gay', Freudian slip much? haha) and it sometimes annoys me at how impulsive he is. But hey, you're not gonna like everyone in life.

Also, the rate at which 5th hr annotates as a class is almost alarming because we just have to explore every end thread of every detail and there's so many varying opinions. Since i have no words to describe how much it gets on my nerves, i shall replace it with this image:

But I guess its better than running past any important info, right? Overall, a good week, the moving of the annotation due date made my day. Good night all. :)

Open Prompt: That's What She Said

Here's my first go at analyzing Ceremony before the entire class has discussed it.

2010. Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience. Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Alienation and exile can be a frightening experience that allows for character development in both the real and literary world; a scared new student put into a new high school may be shy at first but can overcome that fear and develop a new confidence in himself.  Likewise, the character Tayo in Ceremony by Leslie Silko feels estranged from Native American culture because he is part Indian and part white. Coming home from the trauma of World War II, after losing his brother figure, Rocky, Tayo realizes the rift in himself and struggles to put those two parts of him together.

Tayo's internal strife that the novel centers around comes from his surroundings yet starts in his roots. His mother is a prostitute and his father was a drunk that disappeared before he was born and by the age of four, his mother abandons him with his uncle, Josiah and menacing aunt, simply called 'Auntie'. While Josiah does his best to incorporate him into the family, Auntie distances him from her son, Rocky, and herself, hating the fact that he is half white. This is his first conscious experience of being alienated from his culture, as he recalls the silent truth between him and Auntie as a child, an unwritten code that Rocky would be favored and he would not be noticed. The alienation grows even further as Tayo comes back from World War II, where he experiences the pleasures of being an American. Tayo comes to the epiphany that it was not him that the girls and booze was serving, but simply the uniform that he wore. Now, Tayo has no where to turn, his brother figure, Rocky has died during war and as he was away, Josiah had also died. Being half Indian, Auntie refuses to accept him and without his uniform, he is nothing to whites. 

Eventually, Tayo does find a way to heal the two parts of him; by doing a ceremony. While there are no specific instructions other than being told that the ceremony changes to accommodate with the times, Tayo finds  a way to bridge the gap in himself through a series of events. The series of events, objects and people are meant to allow him accept certain things in his life that he has not and embrace a part of himself. He falls in love with Ts'eh, also known as Montano, symbolizing his love for the wild and clues him in on the fact that the ceremony actually exists. Once he begins to believe in it, animals also begin to appear to help him, making Tayo acknowledge the fact that he also has a deep belief in the mythical teachings that whites disdain. By the end of the summer, he is able to return the missing cattle that Josiah had bought; thus letting Auntie accept him into the family. Finally, he completes the ceremony by watching the death of his friend, Harley, accepting that life completes itself in a circle and death is the end of it. By the end of the novel, Tayo is able to return home, accepted into his family and community, completed and whole.

The rift that Tayo has between himself is important to the novel because it comes to symbolize the many things that Silko is trying to say; its not just a division of Tayo but also representative of the rift between of two cultures as well as the different generations in Native American culture. Having Tayo complete the ceremony, Silko proves her point that there are problems created by the intrusion of American culture but it can be eventually cured.

_____

My right wrists hurts so bad because i was typing so fast.  : D

Close reading: Why men are in trouble

Goal: Add more voice and analysis and blend it all smoothly with sophistication in 40 minutes. (Taking 5 mins away, considering you need to read the article/analyze). Also, i'm going to try deter from the 'formulaic' strategy a lot of people use because it just doesn't allow for growth much.

Here we go folks. 

Its often regarded as a common fact that girls mature earlier and at a much faster rate than men, some studies showing a four year difference in brain development between boys and girls of the same age as well as maturity. However, the article Why Men are in Trouble (Trouble) by William J. Bennett takes this to a whole new level. In his article, William uses diction to create a matter of factly tone that he uses to expose the fatal flaws in today's society and its effects on the male population.

Bennett structures his article by first citing his claim then, after establishing the fact that men are falling behind women, then pointing out the responses and sources to the problem. The matter of factly tone is first established by the numbers, the third paragraph being filled with, where Bennett builds his creditably as a intelligent writer and trust by his reader. Along with politically correct and unbiased words such as "out of wedlock" rather than something more humorous like "baby Daddy" that gives Bennett his tone, there is also a realism he presents that makes the reader know he is likely to be intelligent but also experienced. This is evident when he states "I've heard too many young women asking, 'Where are the decent single men?'". The diction that Bennett uses hones in onto the fact that he is not blind to society or the world, creating a truthful and brutally honest tone.

Using this tone, Bennett goes future to use it along with diction to prove the failures men in today's society and its problem areas. He first expresses his view of men failing by using words such as "pathetic" and men being "left in the dust", bringing about the subconscious comparision to the coyote that was outsmarted by the roadrunner. Furthermore, he uses language to show the holes in societal logic, specifically using video games as a segway. Bennett exploits the failures of society, comparing the number of video game hours to men's productivity, "Today, 18-to- 34-year-old men spend more time playing video games a day than 12-to- 17-year-old boys" . There is also a tonal shift in work, going from brutal honesty to slight disappointment in today's culture as he points out that people are telling men to 'be a man' yet failing to define what exactly is it. All this comes together in his last paragraph where he sums up the point of his article: "that industriousness, marriage and religion are a very important basis for male empowerment and achievement" and the fact that men are receiving mixed signals to the importance of these pillars, where the media has skewed the necessity of these things to achieve. 

Bennett compiles a series of facts and examples, led by simple yet defining choices in words and comparisons that come together to prove that men today are more at risk of failing, not only to women, but overall as a person if they do not pull it together. 

Response to Course Material

D: So sorry, it was saved in my draft! Oh and Ali Van, I think we've been peer reviewers before right? I went through and made sure I capitalized all my "i"s for you. Thanks for that tip. :)


I'm so confused!
I don't know how to approach my writing. Like, my thought process is so scattered and utterly disorganized that i sometimes wonder how i'm supposed to make sense about it. The essay over A Barred Owl and The History Teacher made my head spin because there was so much that I notice but I couldn't put it all into words, it was all there just not....there. (That doesn't make sense does it?) When we went through it I kept going "Yeah! I noticed that!" followed by "OMG how did i miss that?!" or "Why didn't I think of that!" or
"I'm a complete dumbsuck for not mentioning that.". Its like, I have good ideas, but the way I approach it (anxiety maybe?) and the way I execute my work seems to be lacking. Something about making the words come together confuses me, i notice that my writing lacks a certain.....spot on...its almost...vague-like.

Sometimes, when I'm writing these essays, I feel like I'm dying, shriveling up on the inside because I have so much to say and I can't put it out into words. Which is bad because I'm the type of writer where if I can feel a piece of work, it flows through me onto the paper yet I can't connect with anything we've read all year. Not even one bit.

Anyways,  I liked that we went over Salesmen. Father vs. Son, Linda being the not-so-doormat character, Willy is a prostitute. Pretty awesome, I feel almost proud that my Salesmen book is all marked up properly and its not even filler annotations, y'know, the type where you just underline and repeat what you just said three pages ago, my annotations were AP worthy. Or, atleast I'd like to believe that. I started a little bit on Ceremony by Silko and I can't wrap my head around it. The story's timeline is different, jumping from place to place, there aren't any chapters and the narrator sounds like he needs to grow a pair and deal with his problems (I'm only on page 40, he's just puking everywhere.)

Just treading through Ceremony now and trying to learn the best I can. Lit is still my favorite class and AP is supposed to be challenging, hopefully I can grow from this.

Open Prompt: Wine on the Streets

2009. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

One of the biggest driving force in society is its insatiable appetite, restaurants account for a portion much of any developed country's revenue, taking food in, putting out new inventive entrees and in any underdeveloped country; people would kill for a meal. However, in A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens takes hunger to a whole new level. From one simple scene, the dropping of a wine crate in the middle of the street, Dickens characterizes the societal needs, wants and motivation during the book's setting.

A Tale of Two Cities is set around the late 1700s in either Paris or London, where there is conflict between the aristocratic class and the suffering peasants that work beneath them that eventually leads to the French Revolution. In the streets of France, outside of a wine shop a wine casket is broken, where red wine is split into the streets and its peasants begin to lap up the split wine like wild, untamed animals. 

Dickens describes the scene as chaotic and provides a grotesque and disturbed attitude towards the crowd that is swarming simply for wine. This chaotic hunger for a liquid is meant to represent the hunger that the peasants have for food, literally, and for freedom. In the book, the aristocratic characters are described to be evil, foreboding characters that have no sympathy towards anyone that works beneath them, especially the peasants. They are described to the overworked and under appreciated muscles of France, dying from hunger. The hunger is then taken metaphorically when the reader realizes that the setting is during the French Revolution, when peasants became rebels, trying, starving for the freedom that French higher class and royalty has taken from them.

The mad scene in which hordes of people are crowding around food, lapping up red wine is also meant to represent the mob mentality which plays out later in the book. The red wine symbol can also be extended to mean blood, which is exactly what Dickens wants the reader to realize when a peasant, hand soaked in wine write 'blood' on the walls of the street. Indeed, the symbolism in the fallen win crate, the mob mentality and blood, is then realized when the peasants join together quiet literally spill the blood of the French royalty and their suppressors on the streets in which the wine had been split earlier in the novel. 

Charles Dickens grew up during a time that was barely making its way out of the French Revolution and he himself came to critique the society of his time, where a frenzied mob with the same motivations held the same amount of weight as it did in his novel. Dickens uses the split wine to embody the hunger for justice and freedom of people who were ignored and at the same time, extends his metaphor to show the mob mentality through the red wine's color and the actions taken to obtain it and what was done with it. 

Open Prompt- To Kill a Mockingbird

1996. The British novelist Fay Weldon offers this observation about happy endings. "The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from their readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By a happy ending, I do not mean mere fortunate events -- a marriage or a last minute rescue from death -- but some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation, even with the self, even at death." Choose a novel or play that has the kind of ending Weldon describes. In a well-written essay, identify the "spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation" evident in the ending and explain its significance in the work as a whole.

Childhood has often been marked as a time of discovery and growth, where we learn to deal with the consequences of our actions, where the classic coming of age story begins. In To Kill a Mocking Bird, the young narrator, Scout, comes to an emotional and mental epiphany by the end of the novel as she is standing on Boo Radley’s porch.  Harper Lee paints a novel of Scout’s emotional development and eventual understanding of the world when ‘understanding’ one and another became a rare and novelty action.

To Kill a Mockingbird, is a classic novel about a young girl living in a small town, Maycomb, during a time where racial tension ran high. Through her experiences with her brother, friend and Father, as well as a mysterious neighbor deemed “Boo” Radley, Scout eventually learns to see the world from another person’s eyes.

Scout’s initial mindset at the start of the book was childish and immature, typical of a child, having no understanding or respect towards others. Scout’s description of Boo Radley was nothing short of a monster; she thought of him as a person who only came out at night, ate small animals, had teeth made for maiming things and bloodshot eyes. Although, by the end of the novel, after seeing an innocent man condemned and being saved by Boo Radley himself. She then describes him as a man with incredibly pale skin and proceeds to walk him home. Scout reaches a moment of emotional epiphany and growth as she stands on Boo Radley’s doorstep and sees the world, her world, from his point of view. Harper Lee uses a rather nostalgic tone as Scout describes seeing herself from Boo Radley’s doorstep many summers ago, making a play out of Boo Radley. This innocence that she possessed at the start of the novel has grown into maturity as she is able to do what her father said, to go “into someone’s skin and walk around in it”.

This moment of revelation in Scout’s life is central to the ongoing theme of the novel, the idea that one should treat another as he would like to be treated, no matter their skin color or of how you first judge them.  The novel’s title To Kill a Mockingbird directly relates to Scout and the plot of the novel as Tom Robinson, a falsely accused black man symbolizing a mockingbird is killed, because Scout no longer possesses the naiveté that drove her mostly white town to convict Tom Robinson in the first place. Instead, Scout has finally obtained the ability to see the world from another person’s eyes and realize that they are the same, that they are equal, to everyone else. So no longer makes fun of Boo Radley, sneaking into his backyard and leaves his doorstep with respect towards the man.
 

The ability to truly understand and empathize for a person may be more common known now than it was during Scout’s time. Since then, the world has grown more liberal but during Harper Lee’s time, a court may hold a guilty verdict simply for the color of a man’s skin. In her novel, Lee exploits this continuing theme in her time through the eyes of a child that has yet been taint by society’s corruption. She, instead, shows the insight that Scout achieves by using Boo Radley and Scout’s relationship as parallelism to that of a white and black man in her time. Only this time, Scout doesn’t hold a guilty verdict on Boo Radley, she comes to understand and respect him.


Ms. Holmes: Somehow the commenting on this died and my peers were not able to comment on this page. I'm working on the solution but they have posted their comments on my Spruz profile page. Please don't take off points for them. Thank you. :)

                      

Response to Course Material: Satisfaction

This week.

Wow.

For the first time in my entire English career, I got satisfaction, I was satisfied. Go ahead, laugh. Are we good? Done laughing? Okay. :)

In terms of actually going through and reading into each and every single line and figuring out the ambiguities of it; I was more than happy to let it happen. Although I was sorta disappointed that we didn't get into hot and heavy  heated discussions since I was so ready for two people go at each other with their theories and whatnots. But thats just because of my sadistic self and the fact that I enjoy the drama. Overall, the amount of class discussion we did and the amount of participation was a nice change than the average two or three people  talking back and forth in a regular Lit class. Some ideas are still blurry to me since I haven't finished annotating the entire play, still, I agree with lots of ideas that has been thrown out during class. which was really helpful as well. I'd go over the details of the characters and symbolism and motifs and ambiguity of Albee's play but that would take forever and who wants to read through that?

Also. Rewriting the Eros essay was a major help and I actually saw improvements in my work, not only in meaning and interpretation but also in the thought process and sophistication of my writing techniques. Those huge Diction and Syntax packets are doing their jobs!
Ohh and I really enjoyed and appreciated the terms games we played last Friday. It really helped refresh and learn some new vocab words.

So, we didn't learn much substance in terms of techniques/vocab/thingsweneedtoknow but I think with the forums and discussions, its opened my eyes to what others think.

Alast, this is the end of my response. So, I say to all a farewell and goodnight and SUCK. IT. CHEETAH. (5th hr inside joke haha.)

Closed Reading: 'You'

Okay. I read this article, actually it was an essay, a long, long time ago. You know its a long time ago because I didn't even site the date or URL that I copied and pasted the post from, which is something I always do nowadays. Still, its a very moving article/written piece of work and I'd like to really break it apart. So I'll just quote it here. (its the last paragraphs of it since the entire piece is really long)

"Occasionally you imagine her fights and her arguments- catch yourself quarreling a point to the air as you read a newspaper, just in case she thinks badly of you. But then you remember that if she can read your thoughts she probably knows their justifications and talking to no one is probably a sign of old age anyway.


You want her to talk back to you, just to let you know that she's ok.

But you know that she is.

You've been there before.

Faith was rude, and obsessive, and difficult, and adored by… most people she met. But people don't fall in love with perfection, they fall in love with flaws, with humanity, because we're all egotistical enough to believe that we'll be the one to make them change.

Did she change? Perhaps.

Or perhaps you just adjusted around her; that charming, immovable force.

You've changed.

She came back to you once, after an argument on a street corner in some god-forsaken small town you'd been sent to. It was raining and you'd earlier tried to help her stay dry while she hadn't even noticed the rain. Later, of course, she didn't take kindly to being reminded of her earlier weakness.

But she'd sprinted back and stopped abruptly, as if coming to the realisation that what she had wanted to say was completely stupid. "Sorry, I- I just meant… that I really did appreciate it. I might not have at the time but I really did."

Is that a silly thing to remember?

Her presence dances among the roses- not the way she was but the way she should have been.

You leave her in the olive grove, unblemished, unscarred, whole- a happy sixteen-year-old.

Happy endings can be drastically different- who's to say what makes 'happiness'? This is a happy ending, as different and unconventional as it may be.

Faith fought while she was alive; against demons, against you, against herself.

Now she lies at rest, content. She might no longer be with you but it's selfish to think of that as bad. There's no more struggle. And though your heart aches and your eyes are all cried out, it'll be ok. There was no map, no plan of your lives together- it had never been your intention to love her. You just do. Yet even without the map you still found ways back to each other. No matter how far she slipped she always came home.

One day you will follow her, find your way back home."

________The Actual Close Reading_______

There comes a moment in all our lives that we've looked back at all we've lost, all the gain, success, sacrifices, all those moments of could haves, would haves, should haves, did and did nots, when we are able to stand like Scout on Boo Radley's doorstep and see all the world for what it is and realize the beauty of it all. In Roses Left Behind by Jessica Kellgren-Hayes, the obscure narrator describes her life after a great loss, dealing with it and eventually coming to peace. Kellgren-Hayes uses language, diction and syntax to show the reader the mental thought process going on inside the narrator's mind, show the reader the grief, the pain and eventual enlightenment of the narrator finding what true happiness is. 

The first and most noticeable element to Kellgren-Hayes' style of writing is the second person point of view that she uses, most likely to allow the reader to step into the shoes of the narrator through the use of this type of language. When the narrator states "You want her to talk back to you, just to let you know that she's ok.", Kellgren-Hayes wants the reader to be able to feel the feeling of lost, the lost of a life that will never exist again and does this by deliberately using the 'you' to direct it to both the narrator and the audience. Another technique of language that the author uses is the "stream of consciousness" where the narration shifts between 'you' directing to herself and 'we' as well as spruces of thoughts put in mid-sentence. This is made clear when the narrator questions "Did she change? Perhaps...You've changed". During that time, it was the thoughts of the narrator coming out, asking herself then answering herself as well. Kellgren-Hayes does this to show progress and continued pain that the narrator is going through. 


Futhermore, the lost, depression, adoration, frustration and hate is reinforced by the diction. The narrator describes Faith as a person who was "rude, obsessive and difficult, and adored by....most people she met." and then goes on to say that "people don't fall in love with perfection, they fall in love with flaws, with humanity...". The contrasting word choices and sudden change from negative to positive words shows the amount of feelings between the narrator and Faith, showing the struggle and love.  The diction works to reinforce the established mood of lost and loneliness, especially when Kellgren-Hayes chooses to describe the narrator "quarreling a point to the air", it shows how much the narrator is missing and grieving, even to argue with a person when they are already dead. 


Finally, the mood and tone established by the language and diction comes together in the last paragraphs. Here, the syntax is the technique of choice, the narrator first stating "There was no map, no plan of your lives together- it had never been your intention to love her. You just do." putting emphasis on the last part of the first sentence, defining the fact that things just came together, and the second sentence coming off almost as a command. This technique is used again to establish the meaning of the piece by saying "Happy endings can be drastically different- who's to say what makes 'happiness'?" by putting emphasis on the last part, we see the narrator come to an enlightenment, realizing what happiness can be and going even further by questioning the social connotation of happiness. Then, she answers her own question, saying that happiness is different for each person, and for her; "This is a happy ending.".


Happiness can be a long arduous road, filled with love, grief, hate, desperation, the Kellgren-Hayes shows it beautifully in her piece. The life of others and our own cross, separate, criss-cross, tangle, and through diction, language and syntax, shows that happiness is simply from a person's point of view. Its not the people, place, money, time, it comes from the peace that has to be established from within. There is a map, no compass, just you finding "your way back home."
___

Open Prompt 3: The American Dream

2002. Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

______

I once read that 'Only crazy people see things in black and white'; that the reality exists in all shades of grey, that for every good there is also a bad. In Edward Albee's play The American Dream, exists a character named Mommy, a figure of a scheming, witty, impatient woman. Though, with all her bad qualities, the reader never identifies her as 'evil' nor 'good', because, through a litany of literary techniques, Albee was able to characterize Mommy so that she comes to life, where, in her, resides both the good and bad of humanity.

Albee's play showed a classic dysfunctional American family, one where no one in the household can have satisfaction, where the past plays not role in the present and every moment could act independently from the moment before. Albee writes a play based on the idea of The Theater of the Absurd, bringing into light the consumerism of the American society. 

A key player in Albee's play is Mommy, who is shown to be childish and scheming yet kind, sometimes mean yet humanizing all at the same time; much of this characterization is shown through his use of language and detail. Mommy's initial characterization comes in the first couple pages of the text where she throws a very childish temper tantrum over a wheat/beige colored hat. That language that Albee uses to show Mommy's personality is very distinct; there are many 'ands' and 'she said/he said' characteristic of how a child would tell a story. Furthermore, the contrasting language between how she treats Grandma are very contrasting, at one moment she pitys Grandma, in another she is telling her to "Shut up", however she cries when Grandma is taken by the 'van man'. The varying reactions to Grandma is characteristic of any child throughout their lives, carrying a love-hate relationship to their care givers. Finally, Albee details the readers into Mommy's childhood, showing how guile Mommy can be, deceiving other children that she does not have a lunch so that she could save food. All in all, Albee uses various techniques to show the shades of grays in Mommy's personality and characters, both the good and bad.

In The American Play, one of the biggest reveals is the fact that Mommy and Daddy had an adopted son in which they disemboweled and murdered, however, even then Mommy is not shown the be evil or antagonistic. Part of this comes from Mommy's symbolic nature, representative of the materialistic and shallow America, where Mommy isn't an individual entity, she is one part of a whole society that Albee is representing through her. Because she is representing the nature of humans, Albee knows that humans are inherently childish, scheming, unsatisfactory creatures and draws from it. 

Through his portrayal of Mommy, The American Dream is further heighten because it fits into the imagery the playwrite has created; Grandma as the old American Dream, the Young Man as the current American Dream and Mommy as the changing character who picks and chooses which dream she wants. Albee is showing the reader what could become because naturally, being humans, everyone is at one time or another, childish and hateful, kind yet resentful and hopeful.

Response to Course Material 2: Breasts!

Did i grab your attention with that? Breasts! In school! This is why i love this class. I believe that Lit. just naturally attracts a plethora of diverse people and you get this wonderful amalgamation of ideas that can all be handled maturely (hopefully) by my fellow peers. For those who don't know, the person who read as Grandma said 'Breasts' presumably because of the sexual subtext rather than 'Beast'.

Now, onto the actual response.

DIDLS!  This stuff is gold. The syntax worksheets did wonders, along with that packet over what exactly *was* syntax. It is the way the words are arranged and the choice of when to put the verbs, nouns and subjects, it actually makes sense! I actually feel competent with syntax now. Usually i try to shy away from the syntax and divert the attention to how awesome i can write on diction or detail but now, it feels like i'm on familiar grounds, maybe a little shaky ground, really, but I can atleast manage.

Along with DIDLS we along practiced the introductions and techniques, effect and meaning. Honestly, it makes sense. In my highs chool career, just separating DIDLS into two or three paragraphs and using enough good examples will get you and A but here, here is a more efficient and mature to handle writing about some literary work. By learning this, it opens up a whole new possibility for how to arrange my paper most efficiently.

Finally, The American Dream by Albee. I've never read of his plays. I rarely ever read plays outside of school because its just not my thing. But there is beauty in it. I mean, I'm sure we all caught the sexual subtext but reading that was like peeling an onion; there was just so many layers to it. Although it didn't make me cry, (there was a lack of emotional appeal to it)  it did hit home on the topics of the American consumerism and such. There was just SO MUCH in that book that could be read into. Also, I like how short it as. And maybe Albee made it short to leave the play open ended and free for the reader to read into it. I guess thats what Ms. Holmes was talking about when she said that a Classic work should change as you change because it leaves holes open for interpretations by the reader.

Thats all. I hope to hear what other people think about The American Dream since we haven't discussed it. ;)

Goodnight ya'll.

Closed Prompts: 8 Zombie Apocalypse Survival Strategies (For Zombies)

To Ms. Holmes and the three people who are going to be reviewing this article; you will probably stifle a laugh, chuckle or maybe roll your eyes. But come on! When i read some of my peer's articles about the economy in Europe or a play or something that makes me *feel* like a zombie is gnawing on my brain, it kills me. You can tell how painful it was for them. It shows in the writing. So, i figured, maybe I'd write about something that I find interesting so that it doesn't seem like I was having a bone rebroken as I was writing it.

And lets face it, you'd rather read my article talking about zombies than the BP oil spill or gay marriage.

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There are several times in our lives when we go through it thinking about ourselves, how we feel while neglecting the views of others. In the article 8 Zombie Apocalypse Survival Strategies (For Zombies) by Chris Bucholz, we get the classical extinction via cannibalism from the zombie's side of the story. Bucholz shows the everyday zombie how to survive in a very entertaining way, using diction, language and detail to grab the (decaying) reader's attention and bring home the point that it is not impossible when the whole world is falling apart. Additionally, Bucholz also relates the life of a zombie to the everyday livings of the average human.   

The diction of the article is very distinct; it lacks a certain sympathetic tone, instead, it is replaced by a technical and objective inevitability. The article begins with “The first thing you'll notice after zombification is the Hunger.” Firstly, the term ‘zombification’ is used very casually like the word puberty. By using this term, it gives a certainty to the possibility of becoming a zombie. Additionally, the term “Hunger” is personified. Bucholz chooses this word and makes it something like the first stage of “zombification” causes the reader to realize how absolute the reality is and makes the reader feel like a zombie. There are no pitiful reasoning, no apologies or condolences about being turned into the undead, Bucholz attacks the survival of the zombie head on. By using technicality of the wording, the writer is able to put seriousness in a rather larger than life fantasy.

Bucholz uses language to bring the reader into the zombie apocalypse by choosing a second person point of view. Again, this reiterates the technicality of the article. Along with the point of view, the continuous usage of methodological and mundane language, however, there is an underlying humorous tone to the make believe article. There is much juxtaposition in the language and detail of Bucholz’s article like “The rich zombies will get richer, and if you can't be one of them, you'll want to at least be working for one of them.” He often choses two very contrasting details and uses it to bring to light the ‘humanity’ of being a zombie.  You would think that in an apocalypse, being rich or poor does not matter because it is survival that does but by bringing the two contrasting ideas, Bucholz shows the irony of it all thereby creating humor.

In this article, Bucholz uses diction, language and detail to enrich the writing by showing the seriousness of the situation thereby creating a funny and amusing article.

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Again. The time constraints are killing me. The third paragraph was rushed, can you tell?

Open Prompt 2

2005, Form B. One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel or a drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.

The desire for power and control has motivated humanity since recorded history where men and women rally for power between each other. This reoccuring phenomenon shows itself in the play MacBeth by William Shakespeare, where Lady MacBeth seeks to gain power through MacBeth. Shakespeare uses detail and imagery to create a character who is willing to do anything to gain power and through her search to gain control, Shakespeare ultimately uses Lady MachBeth's character to show the consequences of guilt and the subconsciousness as well as the ability in woman that is hindered by the patriarchal society.

Lady MacBeth is the wife to MacBeth, a wealthy general who has recently seen many victories in battle. He then meets three witches that predict he will be King of Scotland, thereby instigating that he must murder Duncan, the current king, to do so. MacBeth is first reluctant to kill for power but is motivated and manipulated by Lady MacBeth who puts his manhood at stake for not being headstrong at getting what he wants. After killing the king and the father of future kings, both MacBeth and Lady Macbeth slide into insanity and paranoia. In the end, Lady MacBeth kills herself and MacBeth is beheaded by his rival, Macduff and all peace is restored. 

Lady Macbeth is well aware of her gender and its status during her time period, one which is seen as a lesser and more subordinate to men. She uses MacBeth is gain more power since it is the only way she can. When MacBeth hesitates to kill King Duncan, she uses her cunningly challenges MacBeth's manhood, forcing him to kill the king to prove himself.From this detail, the reader can conclude that Lady MacBeth is willing to do anything to gain power for herself and her husband, motivating him to kill the King, calming him afterwards and even saying that if she were a man, she would have done so too in order to gain the throne. This relevation is even further exploited and consecrated when Lady MacBeth again keeps MacBeth's composure when he sees Banquo's ghost. 

Shakespeare also uses imagery to describe Lady MacBeth's struggle for power and its consequences. Shortly after killing the King and Banquo, Lady MacBeth begins to sleepwalk. During her fits of sleepwalk, she talks incessantly about her bloodstain hands, describing the scene in which one can cover up even with the finest silks of Arabia. This is the turning point in Lady MacBeth's character, as much need as she felt to gain power for herself, she also feels a great deal of guilt for causing the deaths of now more than several people, including innocent women and children. 

Through all of this, Shakespeare uses Lady MacBeth as a conflicted character, striving for power, manipulating to get it and then having her consciousnesses turn on her.
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Arrggg. I ended up not finishing because of the time constraints, which is sad since the conclusion is my strong point on character essays. :(

Response to Course Material 1

I joined AP Lit because, like many other students, i was really tired of the read, here is the point, test, rinse and repeat situation And so far, i have to say that Ms. Holmes and her class hasn't disappointed. I trotted into class hoping to find a way to dig deeper into literature without the help of Sparksnote and i really do think by the end of the year i'll be able to read the Canterbury Tales again without grimacing/wincing/gagging and appreciate this work of Chaucers.

DIDLS. (Or, as i pronounced it, diddles) is what we learned for the first weeks or so. The first, D, my favorite, diction was very familiar with. As a matter of fact, i adore diction and is the one i'm most comfortable writing about in any paper. Imagery, detail, language, i also feel like i had a good footing on. Syntax is the one i'm still stumbling on, sometimes i think i get it, sometime i don't. It feels vague, almost and very hard to grasp the entire entity of it, Wiki says one thing of it, Google says another, but i think it is one of those things that you can find once you get used to it.
I enjoyed reading the textbook, to a certain extent. The examples can be horrendously long and overbearing at times (see Chapt 3) but the definitions and explanations are easy to understand and very clear. It really helped me reinforce DIDLS and close reading.
Finally, the essay writing. Its new, its sort of bizarre, but the more i realize what the AP peeps are looking for, the more i understood why the essays we initially looked at and graded got the grades they did. I'm still fighting a wild case of perfectionism but i'm getting there. Breaking apart the prompt and writing the thesis really helped me. While i did appreciate literature, i didn't know how to make my writing 'sophisticated' and , what i learned from the History APs was; thesis, examples, BS, get a 4/5; doesn't help much here. I was really glad to have been taught exactly how to approach the prompts.

Also, one last thing, kudos to Ms. Holmes for picking out such a variety of reading like the David Sandiers one, its such a breath of fresh air from British Lit.

Open Prompt 1

I'm going to ignore the urge to put my name down and say i tried my best here, folks.

2009, Form B. Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political or social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

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Society is often called the fruits of humanity, one of the few things that distinguish humans from being animals or savages. Though, in this community that we build to bind one to another, comes friction and tension, constantly streaming through history. Authors are often shaped by what he or she is experiencing in their time period, like in George Orwell's novel, 1984, where he writes a story about the future of a government with unlimited power. Orwell uses elements of diction, Ingsoc, a language of Oceania, and detail to build a novel that isn't just a story, but also a chilly foretelling of the possibly of the domino effect.

In 1984,  the protagonist is a party member named Winston Smith, working at the Ministry of Truth, designated to alter past articles. Winston is stuck between what he knows, like the airplanes being invented by the Wright Brothers, and what he is told, that Big Brother invented airplane. Constantly, he is being watched from telescreens and the Thought Police are patroling every corner of the every citizen's mind. He eventually finds love with a woman, another person who realizes what Big Brother is doing. Eventually, they are caught in their affair and as traitors of the country, sent to be brainwashed, and in the end, betrayed each other. By the end of the novel, Winston has completely recognized his 'insanity' and come to love Big Brother. 

The diction and language in 1984 is clearly distinct. Orwell builds a completely new language called Ingsoc, specifically designed by Big Brother to manipulate the people. Through this language, Big Brother has altered the meaning of words, where people are unable to think negatively about the government, thus giving them unlimited power. This is Orwell's commentary on the growing communistic nations of his time, changing the minds of the people, manipulating it in such a sense where people are unable to even consider an alternative than communistic rule. He further explores the idea of communistic propaganda with the specific term doublethink, an Ingsoc word that Winston describes as the ability holding two contradictory ideas at the same time. For example, the political slogan of Winston's time is "WAR IS PEACE, SLAVERY IS FREEDOM, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" to the average person, it would not make sense. To the citizen of Oceania, through doublethink, it has a specific meaning. By doing this Orwell is comparing the citizen of his novel to citizens of communistic countries, where they find the laws of the countries strange in one way but accept it as is because there is no other way, an idea eerily similar to North Korea's citizens.

The issue of Orwell's time period was communism, he lived in a period of constant warfare and unstable governments which clearly provided the structure for his novel. The political issue adds to the continuing twists of the novel, where the reader wonders the reality they are being shown and whether Winston will prevail. In the end, when Winston doesn't, Orwell uses the fear of his reality to drive it home for readers. The novel doesn't provide a 'what not to do' scenario towards a totalitarian government, instead, it explores the idea of a socialistic and communistic nation, where those who control the present also control the past and future.

Close Reading 1: Hope and Loss

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/opinion/sunday/loss-and-hope.html?hpw

I find it eerily nostalgic looking back on September 11. Today is the 10th year 'anniversary', if you will, of the tragedy. Its strange how the flow of time can turn a memory of coming home from school, turn on the TV and find that every channel is flooded with the same clip and newswoman, to ten years later, and bam, now I am writing about an article concerning that very event. 

Firstly, the author of the article uses imagery to stress the "Hope and Loss" that we felt that day. By comparing the two towers coming down to "a cloud of what looked like Pompeian ash", it gave the reader an idea of the severity of that September morning. It wasn't just the coming down of two buildings, it was being compared to the volcanic erupting that happened so abruptly that historians and archaeologists were able to find families, instantly and completely consumed in ashes and lava while in daily life. Thus, using this example, the author was able to bring the reader back in time, to let them know the amount of shock and grief America was under that very day.

The contrasting diction contrasts all the different emotions being felt then and now. The author uses phases such as "There was as much hope as grief, as much love as anger" and "surge of compassion and hope that accompanied the shock and mourning of that September day" to show the range of reactions. No only that but the words let the readers subconsciously know that with there terrible day in our past there will be a better tomorrow, again reiterating the theme of hope. 

"Hope and Loss" also has a very profound sincerity, a sense of timelessness to it. In it, the article details "We tried, almost immediately, to understand how the morning of 9/11 would change our future. A decade later, we’re still trying to understand, looking back and looking ahead. It is not enough simply to remember and grieve. ", by referring to the past, present and future, the author does a compelling job of hitting the emotional mark of September 11. To the average citizen, the modern America was the international powerhouse, the big guy, the one not to mess with then, suddenly, someone did just the opposite. Suddenly, America wasn't the invincible, it wasn't even the powerhouse, someone took America off its pedestal and gave its citizens a reality check; America wasn't intangible. In those sentences, the author completely captured the essence of what we all felt; the sense of loss, of 'what do we do from this?' because America wasn't just about winning, it was about winning against all the odds. By saying "It is not enough simply remember and grieve." the author captured the ultimate spirit of humanity; the ability to fall, grieve then rise above it all to do something even better than before.  

An Informal Introduction: Why I Named This 'Swings'

What does that have to do with AP Lit, right?

In essence, pretty much nothing. Swings was the title to a story I read about a year ago, about the lives of two people who go in and out of each other's lives, accounting all the good, bad, ugly, things in a person and life. Usually, I want to scratch my eyes out when I read a review that says something like "touching story, made me cry my eyes out, etc, etc" except it really did make me cry and I lived every moment like I was there in the story. It was then that inspired me to write, to really love literature, to understand how to really hit a reader that way.

So here I am now, trying to figure out how to make magic happen in the hearts of readers.