Friday, January 17, 2014
Friday, December 13, 2013
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Blog Post 19: Lawrence Essay
Part 1:
Prompt: The following passage is from D.H. Lawrence's 1915 novel, The Rainbow, which focuses on the lives of the Brangwens, a farming family who lived in rural England during the late nineteenth century. Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how Lawrence employs literary devices to characterize the woman and capture her situation.
In D.H. Lawrence's novel, The Rainbow, he uses polysyndeton, repetition, analogies, and rhetorical questions to characterize the woman as an adventurous woman who wants to leave her drab situation for the quest of knowledge.
Lawrence uses polysyndeton to emphasize the woman's current painfully boring and unsatisfying situation. The situation is described as being filled with "warmth and generating and pain and death" (Lawrence 7-8). The repetition of the conjunction lengthens and dramatizes the situation as being extremely boring and unsatisfying for the woman, yet the perfect life for all of the males. The woman's current situation forces her to want something more in life.
To characterize and show that the woman is adventurous, Lawrence uses repetition of words that imply leaving. Lawrence repeatedly describes the house or the woman as "faced out" or "looking out" into the distance and into another world (17,30). The woman is not only looking far off into another world, but into her hopeful future. She is ready and willing to move out of her current situation and into a satisfying life.
Lawrence uses analogy and rhetorical questions to show that the woman wants to reach a place of knowledge. The vicar, full of knowledge, is compared to her family and husband, content with a methodical lifestyle, in the analogy: "what was it in the vicar, that raised him above the common men as man is raised above the beast?" (Lawrence 54-56). Lawrence shows that the vicar, or outside world, is greater and more powerful than her husband, her current situation. The woman wants to be a part of this greater power and so she is questioning how to achieve that level above her current situation.
Lawrence later answers this question by stating: "It was not money nor power nor position" but the "question of knowledge" (61,66). The polysyndeton once again emphasizes how none of those traits raise the woman to the next level, but knowledge can and will. The use of polysyndeton at the beginning and the end characterize the two different situations of monotony and power.
Lawrence uses polysyndeton, analogy, rhetorical questions, and repetition to show that the woman desires knowledge and is willing to achieve this knowledge in order to leave her unsatisfying situation.
Part 2:
Rickey Terrell graded my response to this prompt and gave the essay a 6. My essay is a 6 because I have a "reasonable analysis" of the passage, but it was "less perceptive" and not as developed as a 7 essay. My essay provided a "sustained, competent reading" of the prompt and of the passage, which showed through my analysis. I completely agree that my essay is a 6 essay because although I did have a fairly competent analysis of the passage, I did not write about or figure out the complexity of the passage, which prevented my essay from scoring higher. Because of my lack of control of my writing style, both Rickey and I agreed that that is why the essay a 6 and not a 7.
I would definitely improve my essay by comparing and contrasting the men and the woman. In the third and fourth body paragraphs, I touched briefly on the idea that the men were comfortable with their methodical lifestyle, while the woman wanted to have something more in life. We discussed in class how the woman is facing outward while her husband faces toward the sun. It is ironic that the husband faces the sun and is complacent with his current situation, while the woman is facing away from the sun and is the one that is yearning to grow. The irony of the relationship between the man in the woman is definitely part of the complexity of the passage and is important part to add to my essay in order to improve it. I would improve my essay even further by writing about the tension that the woman feels at the beginning of the passage, which also applies to the comparison between the man and the woman. Unlike the men, the woman actually questions the situation and recognizes how to get out of her current situation, which Lawrence shows through the use of the rhetorical questions at the end of the passage. I briefly touched on the idea of the rhetorical questions and how they relate to the woman's questioning of the situation, but to better my analysis, I would discuss how the rhetorical questions contrast the woman and the men even more.
The men are overall very complacent with their situation. They are completely content with farming all day, manipulating the earth to produce food, and raising and killing the animals. They follow the cycle of life and death everyday and are very content. They are in a monotonous situation, but the men stick with their profession because it is what they know. The idea of their complacency is shown through the anaphora and parallelism in the first paragraph. This parallelism and anaphora characterize the men because Lawrence lists all of their daily activities to show how monotonous their lives are, but yet how content the men are. I did slightly discuss the complacency of the men, but not in much detail. To improve my essay, I would add this analysis and characterization of the men, which also helps to characterize the woman.
After my research on D.H. Lawrence and our class discussion, I would discuss the irony between what the woman wants and D.H. Lawrence's ideologies. Lawrence believed that people were beginning to focus too much on the mind instead of the body and that people should move their focus back to the body. The lady is trying to move away from the body (blood, life, death) and toward the mind and knowledge. If Lawrence believed that the body is more important than the mind, then the men are actually more important than the woman in the passage. They are the ones who work and are complacent with life, death, and the body, while the woman wants to achieve knowledge. Part of the complexity of the passage is that the men's farming job is just as important as the vicar's knowledge. I did not touch on the idea that the two groups are both important, but instead, in my third body paragraph, I discussed how the two groups contrasted and how the vicar had power over the farmers.
Prompt: The following passage is from D.H. Lawrence's 1915 novel, The Rainbow, which focuses on the lives of the Brangwens, a farming family who lived in rural England during the late nineteenth century. Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how Lawrence employs literary devices to characterize the woman and capture her situation.
In D.H. Lawrence's novel, The Rainbow, he uses polysyndeton, repetition, analogies, and rhetorical questions to characterize the woman as an adventurous woman who wants to leave her drab situation for the quest of knowledge.
Lawrence uses polysyndeton to emphasize the woman's current painfully boring and unsatisfying situation. The situation is described as being filled with "warmth and generating and pain and death" (Lawrence 7-8). The repetition of the conjunction lengthens and dramatizes the situation as being extremely boring and unsatisfying for the woman, yet the perfect life for all of the males. The woman's current situation forces her to want something more in life.
To characterize and show that the woman is adventurous, Lawrence uses repetition of words that imply leaving. Lawrence repeatedly describes the house or the woman as "faced out" or "looking out" into the distance and into another world (17,30). The woman is not only looking far off into another world, but into her hopeful future. She is ready and willing to move out of her current situation and into a satisfying life.
Lawrence uses analogy and rhetorical questions to show that the woman wants to reach a place of knowledge. The vicar, full of knowledge, is compared to her family and husband, content with a methodical lifestyle, in the analogy: "what was it in the vicar, that raised him above the common men as man is raised above the beast?" (Lawrence 54-56). Lawrence shows that the vicar, or outside world, is greater and more powerful than her husband, her current situation. The woman wants to be a part of this greater power and so she is questioning how to achieve that level above her current situation.
Lawrence later answers this question by stating: "It was not money nor power nor position" but the "question of knowledge" (61,66). The polysyndeton once again emphasizes how none of those traits raise the woman to the next level, but knowledge can and will. The use of polysyndeton at the beginning and the end characterize the two different situations of monotony and power.
Lawrence uses polysyndeton, analogy, rhetorical questions, and repetition to show that the woman desires knowledge and is willing to achieve this knowledge in order to leave her unsatisfying situation.
Part 2:
Rickey Terrell graded my response to this prompt and gave the essay a 6. My essay is a 6 because I have a "reasonable analysis" of the passage, but it was "less perceptive" and not as developed as a 7 essay. My essay provided a "sustained, competent reading" of the prompt and of the passage, which showed through my analysis. I completely agree that my essay is a 6 essay because although I did have a fairly competent analysis of the passage, I did not write about or figure out the complexity of the passage, which prevented my essay from scoring higher. Because of my lack of control of my writing style, both Rickey and I agreed that that is why the essay a 6 and not a 7.
I would definitely improve my essay by comparing and contrasting the men and the woman. In the third and fourth body paragraphs, I touched briefly on the idea that the men were comfortable with their methodical lifestyle, while the woman wanted to have something more in life. We discussed in class how the woman is facing outward while her husband faces toward the sun. It is ironic that the husband faces the sun and is complacent with his current situation, while the woman is facing away from the sun and is the one that is yearning to grow. The irony of the relationship between the man in the woman is definitely part of the complexity of the passage and is important part to add to my essay in order to improve it. I would improve my essay even further by writing about the tension that the woman feels at the beginning of the passage, which also applies to the comparison between the man and the woman. Unlike the men, the woman actually questions the situation and recognizes how to get out of her current situation, which Lawrence shows through the use of the rhetorical questions at the end of the passage. I briefly touched on the idea of the rhetorical questions and how they relate to the woman's questioning of the situation, but to better my analysis, I would discuss how the rhetorical questions contrast the woman and the men even more.
The men are overall very complacent with their situation. They are completely content with farming all day, manipulating the earth to produce food, and raising and killing the animals. They follow the cycle of life and death everyday and are very content. They are in a monotonous situation, but the men stick with their profession because it is what they know. The idea of their complacency is shown through the anaphora and parallelism in the first paragraph. This parallelism and anaphora characterize the men because Lawrence lists all of their daily activities to show how monotonous their lives are, but yet how content the men are. I did slightly discuss the complacency of the men, but not in much detail. To improve my essay, I would add this analysis and characterization of the men, which also helps to characterize the woman.
After my research on D.H. Lawrence and our class discussion, I would discuss the irony between what the woman wants and D.H. Lawrence's ideologies. Lawrence believed that people were beginning to focus too much on the mind instead of the body and that people should move their focus back to the body. The lady is trying to move away from the body (blood, life, death) and toward the mind and knowledge. If Lawrence believed that the body is more important than the mind, then the men are actually more important than the woman in the passage. They are the ones who work and are complacent with life, death, and the body, while the woman wants to achieve knowledge. Part of the complexity of the passage is that the men's farming job is just as important as the vicar's knowledge. I did not touch on the idea that the two groups are both important, but instead, in my third body paragraph, I discussed how the two groups contrasted and how the vicar had power over the farmers.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Blog Post 18: Final Portfolio Reflection
Throughout this entire trimester, my skills as a writer, a thinker, and an AP Literature and Composition student have drastically improved. The two pieces that show my improvement and the two pieces that I am most proud of are my Comparison/Contrast Essay of Angela's Ashes and my group's American Drama Video Project. My Comparison/Contrast Essay is by far the assignment that I am most proud of because of how much I learned about Angela's Ashes and about all of the different themes. When I first read and watched Angela's Ashes, I did a fairly shallow analysis of just the very apparent themes and ideas. But during this assignment, I could dive deeper into each individual theme and use the book and the movie to shine different lights on these themes and ideas. Because I was able to dissect multiple themes of the play, my overall analysis was in-depth and addressed the complexity of Frank McCourt's relationship with himself, his family, and God. The strength of my essay was my analysis of the similarities and differences between the prose and the movie scene. I did struggle with the mise en scene analysis more than the analysis of the book because I find it harder to analyze the directors ideas in how to portray these themes or different characters. Since I do find mise en scene difficult, my analysis of the movie was weaker than that of the book. The Comparison/Contrast Essay is definitely, by far, the piece that I am most proud of and that shows my improvement the most.
The American Drama Video Project is the other assignment I am especially proud of. Even though our group did not get the highest grade or have the best movie in the class, this project gave my group the opportunity to use many aspects of our creativity. We read the play Six Degrees of Separation and compared the play to The Walking Dead. It took a lot of creativity and analysis to relate these two very different, yet similar, productions. We were able to relate this two by making a Paul a zombie and comparing Paul's infection to his homosexuality and his race. The strength of this project lies in our ability to relate the two different productions and to use our creativity to apply the complexity of Six Degrees of Separation to The Walking Dead without losing any of the meaning behind the work. Although our idea was strong, our project definitely had some weaknesses. We struggled in creating the storyboards because we did not know exactly how we wanted to produce the film. Instead of returning to the storyboards after we were done filming, we just left them as they were. But overall, I am very proud of our Video Project.
Overall, I was very attentive and often participated in class. In most of my classes, I do not participate by answering questions, and I did not necessarily answer questions that you asked during class, but I would always pay attention to all of the group presentations, class discussions, and the answers to all of the questions you asked. In class, I actively took notes during class discussions and during student presentations. Towards the end of the trimester, I began to volunteer more frequently in class because I felt more comfortable around you and around my peers. I also learned that volunteering in class helps to keep me attentive and also helps in the learning process.
For individual papers, I will be completely honest and say I was not very productive during class. Whenever I work by myself on an individual assignment, I get distracted very easily and struggle getting everything done. While I can't work very well in class, I would work diligently on that assignment every night until it was do. Such as with the Comparison/Contrast Essay, I struggled to work in class, but I would work consistently at home. But with group projects, since I am not working alone and do not get severely distracted, I stay on task both at home and at school. I do consider myself a good group member because I always do my part, and if necessary, more. During group projects, I generally designate myself as the member that keeps the entire group on track. My normal role is important and very participatory because I need to be involved in all aspects of the project and make sure that the final project has all of the necessary parts.
At the beginning of the year, one of my original goals was to be aware of myself and my feelings toward a text and use this awareness to analyze the text. The true purpose of this goal was to learn how to answer multiple choice questions that pertain to tone and reader response. I am definitely still working on this goal, as I find it difficult to stay completely aware of myself and aware of the text and when to combine these two feelings and when to keep them separate. Whenever I analyze a prose or poetry passage, I will think how this this passage affects myself and how it would affect the average reader.
Another one of my goals was to break down the ambiguity of texts to find the deeper meaning. This goal was designed to help with questions on the multiple choice about author purpose and meaning. I have worked on this skill throughout the trimester by thinking of all of the possible meanings of a passage, and using these meanings to establish the complexity of the passage. I am still working on this goal, as it is difficult to pinpoint the complexity. I plan to continue working on this goal by truly digging deeper into every book, poem, or prose passage I read to find the core meaning. By working on this goal, it will help me on the multiple choice and the essay portions of the AP exam and help in my everyday reading.
And my final goal was to really dive into the text without any expectations or judgments. At the beginning of the trimester, especially while reading poetry, I would begin each passage begrudgingly, expecting horribly boring and difficult text. But if I get rid of this expectation and judgment, I can keep an open mind while reading a text, which will help in finding deeper meanings. Throughout this trimester, I have tried my best to go into every text with no prior notions or judgments, which truly allowed me to learn something new or reach that deeper meaning in most texts that we have read. I plan on working on all of these goals through this next trimester so that I can become a better reader, writer, and AP test taker.
The American Drama Video Project is the other assignment I am especially proud of. Even though our group did not get the highest grade or have the best movie in the class, this project gave my group the opportunity to use many aspects of our creativity. We read the play Six Degrees of Separation and compared the play to The Walking Dead. It took a lot of creativity and analysis to relate these two very different, yet similar, productions. We were able to relate this two by making a Paul a zombie and comparing Paul's infection to his homosexuality and his race. The strength of this project lies in our ability to relate the two different productions and to use our creativity to apply the complexity of Six Degrees of Separation to The Walking Dead without losing any of the meaning behind the work. Although our idea was strong, our project definitely had some weaknesses. We struggled in creating the storyboards because we did not know exactly how we wanted to produce the film. Instead of returning to the storyboards after we were done filming, we just left them as they were. But overall, I am very proud of our Video Project.
Overall, I was very attentive and often participated in class. In most of my classes, I do not participate by answering questions, and I did not necessarily answer questions that you asked during class, but I would always pay attention to all of the group presentations, class discussions, and the answers to all of the questions you asked. In class, I actively took notes during class discussions and during student presentations. Towards the end of the trimester, I began to volunteer more frequently in class because I felt more comfortable around you and around my peers. I also learned that volunteering in class helps to keep me attentive and also helps in the learning process.
For individual papers, I will be completely honest and say I was not very productive during class. Whenever I work by myself on an individual assignment, I get distracted very easily and struggle getting everything done. While I can't work very well in class, I would work diligently on that assignment every night until it was do. Such as with the Comparison/Contrast Essay, I struggled to work in class, but I would work consistently at home. But with group projects, since I am not working alone and do not get severely distracted, I stay on task both at home and at school. I do consider myself a good group member because I always do my part, and if necessary, more. During group projects, I generally designate myself as the member that keeps the entire group on track. My normal role is important and very participatory because I need to be involved in all aspects of the project and make sure that the final project has all of the necessary parts.
At the beginning of the year, one of my original goals was to be aware of myself and my feelings toward a text and use this awareness to analyze the text. The true purpose of this goal was to learn how to answer multiple choice questions that pertain to tone and reader response. I am definitely still working on this goal, as I find it difficult to stay completely aware of myself and aware of the text and when to combine these two feelings and when to keep them separate. Whenever I analyze a prose or poetry passage, I will think how this this passage affects myself and how it would affect the average reader.
Another one of my goals was to break down the ambiguity of texts to find the deeper meaning. This goal was designed to help with questions on the multiple choice about author purpose and meaning. I have worked on this skill throughout the trimester by thinking of all of the possible meanings of a passage, and using these meanings to establish the complexity of the passage. I am still working on this goal, as it is difficult to pinpoint the complexity. I plan to continue working on this goal by truly digging deeper into every book, poem, or prose passage I read to find the core meaning. By working on this goal, it will help me on the multiple choice and the essay portions of the AP exam and help in my everyday reading.
And my final goal was to really dive into the text without any expectations or judgments. At the beginning of the trimester, especially while reading poetry, I would begin each passage begrudgingly, expecting horribly boring and difficult text. But if I get rid of this expectation and judgment, I can keep an open mind while reading a text, which will help in finding deeper meanings. Throughout this trimester, I have tried my best to go into every text with no prior notions or judgments, which truly allowed me to learn something new or reach that deeper meaning in most texts that we have read. I plan on working on all of these goals through this next trimester so that I can become a better reader, writer, and AP test taker.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
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