Making connections within a piece of writing, whether it's poetry or an essay or something else, has been a major 'epiphany area' for me these last couple of weeks. Finding interesting words or images, and then drawing lines to other words or images, and then taking it one step further to make conclusions about what the author is trying to say has always been hard for me to do, but these past couple weeks have taught me to take it one step at a time. It's gotten much easier, and will, hopefully, continue to do so.
The way that diction, or single words, can influence a piece of literature is amazing. The level of elevation or colloquialism, the dialect, and the connotations of words matter so much more than I thought. They contribute to the tone (the speaker's attitude) and mood (feeling the reader experiences) of the writing.
As someone who has taken two AP history classes, the essay format of the AP English essay makes me a little nervous, because I'm used to writing my essay and being able to check off bullet points from a rubric. Now, I have to be able to come up with unique interpretations and evidence, which is a lot harder than putting as many proper nouns on the page, as it was with the history essays. I hope that I can get better at writing these essays by reading a lot of sample ones and practicing writing them.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The Death of The Savage
Many crazy events can take place without people really grasping the reality of the situation, but when a death results from those events, people start to pay attention. In Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World, John Savage was a misfit within his Native American reservation until Bernard brought him back to the World State located in London. The people he met and things he experienced, along with his struggle with sin in a sin-filled world, led to his eventual suicide.
The World State was the genious creation of Huxley and showed what happens when a government goes to extreme lenghts make its citizens content. At an early age, humans are produced without a mother or father, and conditioned through repetition not to do anything moderately out of the ordinary. A class system is strictly enforced, and daily soma doses keep the population in a happily drugged state. As someone coming from the 'outside' world, John represents something out of the ordinary. Immediately red flags pop up in the reader's mind; in a society so rigidly controlled, something so wild and untamed cannot mean anything good. However, John becomes an instant sensation, and people come from all over the city to speak with him. Bernard, the man who brought him to London from the reservation, is enjoying his newly found popularity as well. The pattern of change, however, contains a foreboding feeling as the novel progresses.
The dynamic between John and Bernard changes when Bernard's love interest, Lenina, begins showing interest in John. John, as a devotely religious young man, resists whatever advances Lenina makes on him. The artificiality of the World State society has little effect on John. He continues to hang on to his memories of real feelings that he experienced on the reservation, whether they were bad or good. His emotions come to a peak when he is called to the death bed of his mother. After her drawn-out, drug-soaked death, John invokes a riot in which he throws the daily soma rations of some workers out of a window. Bernard is also involved in this fiasco, and unfortunately, he loses his popularity just as quickly as he recieved in. John's raw emotions are very out of place in the society he finds himself in, so he decides to isolate himself from the world. He goes to the middle of the forest and lives by himself in a tower, living off the natural land and reverting back to what his life was like on the reservation. However, certain antics he creates, like whipping himself as a part of an Indian tradition he was denied, draws the attention of the media and public. The pervasiveness of the World State society finally engulfs John, and he gives into a soma induced orgy when a host of people discover his tower. His guilt is overwhelming the next day, as he realizes what took place the night before. Knowing there is no way he can live with his guilt, John hangs himself.
When the media arrives the next day to observe more happenings, they find just Johns body swaying in the wind. The author describes his feet as if they were the needle on a compass, rotating "north, north-east, east...". This symbolizes the moral compass that the World State society is missing. All of their innovations: the conditioning, helicopters, soma, mean nothing if no one cares about their actions. The death of the savage illuminates the need for a moral standard in a society that has none.
The World State was the genious creation of Huxley and showed what happens when a government goes to extreme lenghts make its citizens content. At an early age, humans are produced without a mother or father, and conditioned through repetition not to do anything moderately out of the ordinary. A class system is strictly enforced, and daily soma doses keep the population in a happily drugged state. As someone coming from the 'outside' world, John represents something out of the ordinary. Immediately red flags pop up in the reader's mind; in a society so rigidly controlled, something so wild and untamed cannot mean anything good. However, John becomes an instant sensation, and people come from all over the city to speak with him. Bernard, the man who brought him to London from the reservation, is enjoying his newly found popularity as well. The pattern of change, however, contains a foreboding feeling as the novel progresses.
The dynamic between John and Bernard changes when Bernard's love interest, Lenina, begins showing interest in John. John, as a devotely religious young man, resists whatever advances Lenina makes on him. The artificiality of the World State society has little effect on John. He continues to hang on to his memories of real feelings that he experienced on the reservation, whether they were bad or good. His emotions come to a peak when he is called to the death bed of his mother. After her drawn-out, drug-soaked death, John invokes a riot in which he throws the daily soma rations of some workers out of a window. Bernard is also involved in this fiasco, and unfortunately, he loses his popularity just as quickly as he recieved in. John's raw emotions are very out of place in the society he finds himself in, so he decides to isolate himself from the world. He goes to the middle of the forest and lives by himself in a tower, living off the natural land and reverting back to what his life was like on the reservation. However, certain antics he creates, like whipping himself as a part of an Indian tradition he was denied, draws the attention of the media and public. The pervasiveness of the World State society finally engulfs John, and he gives into a soma induced orgy when a host of people discover his tower. His guilt is overwhelming the next day, as he realizes what took place the night before. Knowing there is no way he can live with his guilt, John hangs himself.
When the media arrives the next day to observe more happenings, they find just Johns body swaying in the wind. The author describes his feet as if they were the needle on a compass, rotating "north, north-east, east...". This symbolizes the moral compass that the World State society is missing. All of their innovations: the conditioning, helicopters, soma, mean nothing if no one cares about their actions. The death of the savage illuminates the need for a moral standard in a society that has none.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Close Reading (9 September 2011)
Me Talk Pretty One Day - by David Sedaris
http://www.macobo.com/essays/epdf/Me%20Talk%20Pretty%20One%20Day%20by%20Sedaris.pdf
David Sedaris's writing is unique in many ways, but one thing that really sets him apart from the rest is his use of vivid imagery. Within the first paragraph, he draws in his reader with a, quite frankly, weird image of the "Festyland" amusement park sign. This "far-flung amusement park... advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich." Already the reader feels like they don't belong in their sorroundings, which is just as Sedaris felt. As he becomes more alienated throughout the essay, his mental strength degrades and he begins to create the most interesting images in his head. For example, he asks himself: "why they don't sell cuts of meat in vending machines." The sudden image in the reader's mind of a vending machine full of meat is what makes reading a David Sedaris essay one of a kind.
An overarching theme in this essay, and in many of Sedaris's essays that are from his time in France, is the feeling of not belonging. The language used in the second paragraph is key to introducing this theme. He begins by having the students around him talking about all of their "vacations", which, by the way, are very important in French culture. Words like "mutual friends" are used to further create an atmosphere of which Sedaris is not part of. Moreover, all of the other students appear "young, attractive, and well-dressed" with "an ease and confidence" that he does not posess. This continues to contribute to his feeling of alienation and uncertainty. With the introduction of his malicious French teacher, on the other hand, David suddenly comes to the conclusion that "I was not alone." This outside force pops the bubble formed around the 'cool kids' and brings everyone closer together. The students bond over their terrifying experiences with the teacher and use their bad French "in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps." This goes to show, a common enemy may still defeat you, but the victims usually end up bonding together over the experience.
The most detail in this piece goes into describing the French teacher that seems to have traumatized Sedaris. At first the reader can accredit the teacher's image to a novice student's first-day jitters. However, the teacher goes on to repeatedly harass the students. She makes the students feel as if they are not good enough to learn the French language. For example, "The teachers reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France." The in-depth description of her as she "crouched low for her attack" instills fear in the reader, probably because most of us have encountered a teacher sometime in our student years that reminds us of this horrible woman. But even in the darkest of times, Sedaris still manages to fit in a couple jokes: "'I hate you,' she said to me one afternoon. Her english was flawless. 'I really really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take that personally." In the end, however, her cruelty ends up giving a sense of hope that only a true American could muster up: "The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult."
http://www.macobo.com/essays/epdf/Me%20Talk%20Pretty%20One%20Day%20by%20Sedaris.pdf
David Sedaris's writing is unique in many ways, but one thing that really sets him apart from the rest is his use of vivid imagery. Within the first paragraph, he draws in his reader with a, quite frankly, weird image of the "Festyland" amusement park sign. This "far-flung amusement park... advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich." Already the reader feels like they don't belong in their sorroundings, which is just as Sedaris felt. As he becomes more alienated throughout the essay, his mental strength degrades and he begins to create the most interesting images in his head. For example, he asks himself: "why they don't sell cuts of meat in vending machines." The sudden image in the reader's mind of a vending machine full of meat is what makes reading a David Sedaris essay one of a kind.
An overarching theme in this essay, and in many of Sedaris's essays that are from his time in France, is the feeling of not belonging. The language used in the second paragraph is key to introducing this theme. He begins by having the students around him talking about all of their "vacations", which, by the way, are very important in French culture. Words like "mutual friends" are used to further create an atmosphere of which Sedaris is not part of. Moreover, all of the other students appear "young, attractive, and well-dressed" with "an ease and confidence" that he does not posess. This continues to contribute to his feeling of alienation and uncertainty. With the introduction of his malicious French teacher, on the other hand, David suddenly comes to the conclusion that "I was not alone." This outside force pops the bubble formed around the 'cool kids' and brings everyone closer together. The students bond over their terrifying experiences with the teacher and use their bad French "in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps." This goes to show, a common enemy may still defeat you, but the victims usually end up bonding together over the experience.
The most detail in this piece goes into describing the French teacher that seems to have traumatized Sedaris. At first the reader can accredit the teacher's image to a novice student's first-day jitters. However, the teacher goes on to repeatedly harass the students. She makes the students feel as if they are not good enough to learn the French language. For example, "The teachers reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France." The in-depth description of her as she "crouched low for her attack" instills fear in the reader, probably because most of us have encountered a teacher sometime in our student years that reminds us of this horrible woman. But even in the darkest of times, Sedaris still manages to fit in a couple jokes: "'I hate you,' she said to me one afternoon. Her english was flawless. 'I really really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take that personally." In the end, however, her cruelty ends up giving a sense of hope that only a true American could muster up: "The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult."
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