Outside Reading

While doing my outside reading the past week, I realized just how much I love reading. But I also realized how much I analyze what I am reading now. Throughout Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, I noticed the major themes such as Societal beliefs versus one's own beliefs. Sayuri, being a geisha and a woman, is subject to a great many rules she has to abide by in how she dresses and how she behaves. Geisha must walk, talk, sit, eat, and even sleep in certain ways. Everything is to attract the male attention. I found a great many parallels to this and our current society. Woman are still meant to be seen as beautiful constantly. Even high school boys get wierded out when girls show up to school in sweats with no makeup, even though they do it every day. Also, take the fashion industry; the fashion industry is a multi billion dollar industry that is meant to make woman more attractive to men, and to tell men what they should find attractive. It doesn't matter that some woman just like fashion because they like to look nice. Woman subconciously crave male/female attention. Societal beliefs may change over time, but the principal ideas remain carved in stone.

The Awakening finale

Today in class we were discussing whether or not Edna's final end, her suicide, was an act of weakness or of courage. I unfortunately cannot decide which side I am on. I automatically view suicide as a weakness simply because of my personal beliefs. And in Edna's case I think that when Adele said "Think of the children" Edna didn't think of them or the people she would hurt, she thought of the child within her. She knew she'd gone too far against her normal life to go back to it, this is represented in the actual at of suicide. She'd swam too far out to go back. Her only choice was to end it there. The ambiguous part of her death is whether or not she did it intentionally. It leads the reader to believe that she knows what she's doing, but you have to wonder if she just got caught up in it all and swam so far she couldn't swim any more. Her weakness could also be seen in the possibility that she gave her life out of the grief of losing Robert, a tragic love story. However, this seems unlikely because it goes against the general theme of the novel. On the courageous side of the argument, it takes quite a bit of courage to take your own life. She may have seen that she was affecting her family and others negatively and it was simply the best solution to take herself out of the equation. I do not know for sure which side I am on, but I am leaning towards the side of weakness.

Victorian Women

As we learned about the stereotypical Victorian woman, or "Angel in the House", I realized one thing; I would personally go insane in this time period. The women had to be perfect and unselfish and quite honestly the worst part for me would be wearing the corset all the time. I have worn a corset before, and  the style itself is beautiful and amazing, but it does hurt after awhile. Feeling weak from lack of oxygen would not work out in my favor. Because I personally have such beliefs that are against Victorian ways, it is to be expected that throughout the novel The Awakening, I will be more inclined to agree with Edna Pontellier. She does not like the ways of society and she is unhappy with the lifestyle of being a mother-wife, this controversial belief makes Edna exactly what the people of her time do not want. She would be the equivalent of a black sheep amongst a flock of white sheep. There is something different about her. It seems really interesting to me that in our society  we praise individuality, and yet, Kate Chopin was chastised for her writings.

Reflection on timed writing

I am unbelievably happy this week because of the peer editing done on our timed writings. Throughout my AP courses, it was essays that I needed to grow in and getting any score above a six was amazing for me. So, this week when both of my peer editors gave me scores above a six. Being able to go over our other timed writings has shown me what I need to work on and how to fix the problems. I still need to analyze my claims more, but over the past timed writings I have fixed the problems with using 1st or 2nd person and fixed the majority of my issue with staying on topic and not rambling. Another factor that may have helped make this past timed writing so much better was that I really enjoyed the prompt. I liked the story and I had a real connection with it because I could trace many elements such as diction, tone, and definitely imagery. The story is about overcoming goals to follow your dreams and I feel like everyone can connect to that. It will probably not be until the next timed writing that I figure out whether or not I did so well because I am truly growing in my writing or if it was my enjoyment in the prompt that made my paper so much better.

Allusion presentation

I was working on my Allusion presentation this weekend and I realized that most woman in literature have a horrible reputation. There are many pieces of literature which revolve around woman empowerment, but more often than not there in a woman that is evil and ruins a man's life. Though this is but a reputation, it is woman like Delilah that give woman their bad reputation. Delilah lied to and seduced Samson and then tried to ruin his life for a bribe. She lead him on and used him. This theme is reoccurring in movies and television shows, as well as in literature. In movies such as Step Up 3D, the girl is sent in by "the enemy" to find out secrets to take down the hero. However, in modern adaptations of the story, most woman fall truly in love with the hero and they can't go through with their mission. Woman in the bible however follow two stereotypes, the saint and the sinner. They are typically prudes or prostitutes. In history there is no gray area in which woman can be both. Delilah obviously fits under the category of the seductress and a woman like Esther or Mary (the virgin) would fit under the saint category. I understand that some woman are the heroines, but generally woman aren't given much space to move in their stereotyped roles in literature.Why is that?

This week in lit class we worked on our timed writings. Both of the students who graded mine gave me a five. Though a five is a very good score for my first timed writing, in my opinion, I would like to get my papers up to a nine. It's almost comical in my timed writing that it was mostly simple errors that were made. I was very brief in my analysis and I expected such problems; however, the grammatical errors that were made and the major usage of first person narration were a surprise to me. I was not aware of the small errors I make when I'm writing under pressure. I've written AP essays many times and they've all been under pressure, but the prose essay was more difficult to take in, in a time limit. Having to read and annotate the passage and then write an essay that is well thought out and grammatically correct is a very intimidating task to be put forth in one class period. My one question that keeps running through my head is, what happened to make it unacceptable to use first person in a formal essay? What caused it to be considered so informal?

Application of close reading techniques

While we were doing the close readings in class I started to get more and more interested in it, because it gave the words of the novel new meanings. So, while I was re-reading my favorite book, The Hunger Games, By Suzanne Collins I wanted to apply it. This is the passage I decided to try analyzing:
"As soon as I’m in the trees, I retrieve a bow and sheath
of arrows from a hollow log. Electrified or not, the fence
has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of District
12. Inside the woods they roam freely, and there are added
concerns like venomous snakes, rabid animals, and no real
paths to follow. But there’s also food if you know how to
find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he
was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing
even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake
up screaming for him to run."
The first thing about this passage that I noticed was that she refers to the animals as "flesh-eaters." I thought this might be important because she speaks of them as though they are in-human or zombies. The  animals are supposed to be thought of as dangerous and evil so the people of District Twelve don't want to hunt in the woods illegally. Also I thought it was interesting that when talking about her father's death, she says that he was "blown to bits in a mine explosion." The way she says it has a tone that is disconnected. It's as if she doesn't care, when in reality her mood is trying greatly to accept her father's death. She is trying to get over his death by pretending she doesn't care. I can tell she wants to accept his death because she follows her last statement by saying, "Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run." The close reading techniques we learned in class really can be applied in other novels and now I can't stop close reading in every reading i do, even on my own time. Thank you Literature class!

Close Reading

So, in class we've been working on close reading. I must admit to you, reader, I find it very complicated. When you're close reading a passage you have to think of what the author means by every word written. Connotations of words, meanings of verbs, and symbols appear frequently in close readings. I never thought that reading Foster's  How To Read Literature Like a Professor would apply so greatly to a single passage. The most abundant aspect I'm finding in close readings, is how a tone can change the entire meaning of a passage and how the reader can interpret the tone to be something completely different from what the author means it to be. For example, when someone writes "That was the day that I lost my sanity. It was a long road to lose it, but now that it's gone it feels as though I've never had it," the tone could be comical or sad. The tone changes an entire work. In All the Kings Men Jack is at Judge Irwin's funeral discussing it as if it is of the very least importance; however he could have been truly upset depending on how the reader interpreted it. I am a person that generally over thinks everything that I say and do, so when trying to figure out the tone of a piece, I constantly wonder if I am reading a passage in the correct tone or not. For those of you out there that are just like me, my only advice would be to not over think. Typically your first instincts are correct. Trust yourself and let your instincts guide you through your close readings, you're more correct than you think.