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.