Close Reading #2

“The Game is All-Consuming, at Least Until the Outside World Intrudes” http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/movies/brooklyn-castle-directed-by-katie-dellamaggiore.html?ref=movies

            In the review, “The Game is All-Consuming, at Least Until the Outside World Intrudes”, Manohla Dargis portrays “Brooklyn Castle” to be a touching, engaging, and exciting documentary. She does this through her usage of diction and figurative language, and the details that she incorporates.

            Throughout the article Dargis shows the reader how the film is captivating and emotional through her word choice. This begins in the very first sentence of the review when she refers to “Brooklyn Castle” and an “irresistible documentary”. Also in the first paragraph while describing the chess matches in which the team featured in this film partake, Dargis says, “…you come to know these children…as you witness their pulse-quickening matches”. The use of the word “pulse-quickening” emphasizes the tension brought about by the film that ultimately results in fascination and excitement. These feelings show that Dargis is trying to portray the engaging qualities of the film. The article also exhibits diction that presents a feeling of tenderness that comes about from the film. For example in the fifth paragraph Dargis says, “…their students, who can wear their burdens heavily, with worried eyes and anxious jittering”. By including the adjectives “worried” and “anxious”, the reader feels bad for the students experiencing anxiety, making the plotline touching and heart wrenching.

            In addition to her diction, Dargis also uses figurative language to emphasize the emotional and exciting aspects of the film. For example in the first paragraph she says, “The child chess champions…don’t take long…to crush you”. In using the phrase “to crush you” Dargis demonstrates the effects that the conflicts in the film have on the audience. By using these words rather than saying “makes you sad”, it emphasizes the level of attachment that the audience develops to the students and how touching the film becomes. Dargis also shows how exciting the matches in the documentary are by referring to the winners as “conquerors” in the third paragraph.

            The details of which Dargis includes in her review of “Brooklyn Castle” also contribute to her representation of the film being touching and engaging. For example, in the second paragraph she lists some of the hardships that certain members of the chess team are facing and their dreams to fix them. By including these details, feelings of sympathy arise within the reader, thus showing how emotionally touching the story is. Another example in which details contribute to the overall representation that Dargis is trying to portray is when she says, “It’s deeply satisfying watching these public school, hard-knock kids win…” in the final paragraph. By not only including that the film is “satisfying” to watch, but also that the children win, the reader already knows that the plot will not be disappointing, and therefore full of excitement. The satisfaction also proves her point that they documentary is engaging.

            By making strategic use of diction and figurative language, while also incorporating relevant and meaningful details, Dargis reflects her feelings towards the documentary to the reader. Because of this, the reader feels that that the viewing of this film will be a captivating, exciting, and emotional experience.

Prompt #2

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.

                In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a conch shell is used to symbolize order and civilization throughout the novel. This is done through strategic timing, uses of the object, and changes reflecting on it. Golding uses the deterioration of the conch to emphasize the absence of society and the effects that it has on the boys.

                At the beginning of the novel, the sound of the conch is used to assemble the boys who are stranded on the island. Once together, it is also used to signify who may speak—whoever holds the shell can talk and all others must remain silent. By having the boys use the conch in these ways it comes to represent order by keeping them together and under control. It also indicates the ideas of civilization through the organization of power and the control over the group of boys. Without the shell the boys would not have been able to come together all at once and discuss. They also would not have been able to hold a mature meeting in which they were able to discuss their options and ideas—a necessity in any civilization.

                As the novel continues, the boys begin to lose their sense of order with which they began.  As this occurs, the conch shell begins to fade away as well. For example, as Jack and his followers become more ruthless in their hunting and start to rebel against Ralph’s leadership, the once deep pink of the shell turns to a pale cream, and as the story progresses it continues to become meekly colored by a cloudy transparency. When Piggy, the only character to truly maintain all of the ideals of civilization throughout the novel, is killed, Golding writes that the conch shell shatters completely. In doing this he is symbolizing the complete deterioration of all sense of order that the boys had began with.

                William Golding uses the decomposition of the conch shell to show the meaning of the novel, which is without the rules of society, people would be consumed with self interest and be evil in nature.  The symbolization affiliated with the conch shell signifies the process of this occurring with the youth in the story. Because children have not been exposed to civilization for as long as adults, they are able to lose their grasp on the importance of it. As this occurs, they also become more self indulgent and vicious without true purpose. Since the order that the boys once knew fades with the color of the conch, Golding’s overall meaning in the novel is emphasized.

                The conch shell in Lord of the Flies not only symbolizes order and civilization as it begins to deteriorate throughout the novel, but also contributes to the overall meaning of the work that Golding was portraying. The corresponding of the loss of all remnants of the ideals of society and the fading conch emphasizes the effects on the boys and the savagery consumes them. This ultimately reflects that without the rules and constraints of civilization, humans would be selfish and evil.

Response to Course Material #2

In the past few weeks we have covered quite a bit of material. We have learned about existentialism, critical lenses, literary movements, The American Dream, theatre of the absurd, how to write an AP essay, and we also expanded on analyzing literature using DIDLS. Something that was of particular interest to me was how to write the AP essay. Before that lesson, I had no idea how much thought had to go into the directions of the prompt alone.  Realizing that you must first identify the three parts that the prompt is asking, for before even beginning to analyze the piece, is something that I never would have considered. In the past, essay prompts have been pretty straight forward—find commonalities between multiple works, explain how a certain character changes over time, etc. Never had I been asked to analyze the author’s motives for writing things in a certain way. Because of this, I found myself lost when it came to devising a thesis for the sample essay that we were shown in class—regardless of knowing the three things that the readers will be looking for. I look forward to further expanding on how to do this in class.

                Last year in British Literature, we spent some time learning about the different critical lenses as well, but we never spent a lot of time focusing on how they were applied. For example, I knew that a feminist critic would use gender roles to form a theory about a piece of literature that they were reading, but I never made the connection that the analysis had to do with the author’s motives when writing the story. I am very glad that we spent some time learning about how each form of criticism is applied in this class because this will help us gain an understanding of the works that we read over the course of the year and on the AP test. It will also help us to annotate the pieces that we read. If we consider all of the different forms of literary criticism, we can think about all the different things that the author could have been considering consciously, or subconsciously, while writing it (as we are beginning to see in The American Dream. We also spent some time talking about the literary movements in British Literature, but we never compared them all with one another as we did on Friday. Having a clear comparison of the different movements over time will help in making distinctions between them. Knowing the specifics of each literary movement will also help determine an author’s motives based on the time he or she wrote something. I look forward to learning more about these literary movements and seeing more examples of how we see them in literature from their eras.

Close Reading -- Review

For my close reading, I chose a review of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” from the New York Times called, “An Introvert Finds His Way Through Teenage Terrain” by Manohla Dargis (http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/movies/the-perks-of-being-a-wallflower-directed-by-stephen-chbosky.html?_r=0). In this review, Dargis is trying to get the point across that this movie is standard in theme but still interesting. This is seen in her use of diction, figurative language, and details.

            Dargis incorporates many words to express her feelings of the work—being an interesting yet common story, with a style similar to that used by many other filmmakers. For example she says, “The results are likable, unsurprising and principally a showcase for the pretty young cast…” (paragraph 4). The word “likable” implies that the characters were easy to connect with and well rounded, however since this word is followed by “Unsurprising”, the reader is left to infer that the plot is stereotypical and unoriginal. Another example of Dargis’ use of diction to show her feelings towards the film is when she says, “Their characters never expand beyond their generic if sensitive outlines…” (paragraph 5). When one thinks of the word “generic”, it creates a picture of hundreds of the same, therefore when the writer of this review used that word it strengthened her idea of the film being very common.

            Along with her word choice, Dargis also used interesting figurative language when writing this review to express that the film is unoriginal. For example while describing the plot of the film Dargis says, “Charlie’s parents aren’t tearing him apart…” (paragraph 3). She does is not saying that Charlie’s parents are not literally ripping him into pieces, but rather she means to convey that they are not making his life exceptionally difficult. Using this more extreme phrase to describe it makes Charlie’s life sound even more boring and average, and thus leads the reader to believe that the plot of the movie is not exciting or original.  

            The details included by Dargis are also used to lead the reader into thinking the movie is unoriginal. She places an emphasis on the ways in which the director/writer made the story similar to many others, while avoiding including any details that might reflect originality to the piece. For example Dargis makes an effort to show the aspects of stereotypical filmmaking used when she says, “Mr. Chbosky brings you into this familiar world through the usual cinematic points of view, by way of Charlie’s eyes, voice and flashbacks, but also through the ubiquitously hovering camera” (paragraph 4). After this sentence she goes on to explain how this adds to it being unoriginal without incorporating any of the other aspects that the director might have used that are not quite so cliché.

            The ways in which this writer formatted her work with detail, diction, and figurative language helped create and emphasize her view of the movie, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. Because of these, the reader can infer that she found the film to be greatly lacking originality in the storyline as well as filmmaking techniques.

Prompts (September 16th)

1982. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience with a scene or scenes of violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid plot summary.

                In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding includes various scenes of violence to prove his idea that humans are evil in nature. He does this by adding in scenes with excessive amounts of violence as the plot progresses, thus showing the reader how the distance from civilization has turned the boys into savages.

                The first example of this is seen is when Jack decides to take some of the boys hunting. This causes them to acquire a thirst for blood and they become more violent and ruthless with their killing. The boys grow obsessed with hunting and use brutal tactics—even killing baby pigs for the sport of it. These extreme levels of violence in their hunt show the reader that the boys are losing their grip of right and wrong and are becoming savage in the lack of civilization.

                Another example of a violent scene with meaning is when all of the boys go to a feast with Jack’s group. Here they speak of the beast and how they are going to kill it. Excitement grows as they talk of how they will triumph over the beast, causing them to lose their sense of reason by the time Simon walks in from the forest. The boys lose control and violently attack him, ultimately resulting in his death. This again shows Golding’s expression of how the boys had become primitive without the rules of society to keep them in line.

                The third example of Golding’s use of violence in scenes to show the meaning of the novel is during the climax of the story when Piggy and Ralph go to Jack’s fort to get Piggy’s glasses back and Roger drops a boulder that hits Piggy and sends him airborne. This causes Piggy’s head to be smashed from the impact and he dies instantly. This is the final scene of violence used by Golding and its dramatic imagery gives the reader the sense of horror. The violence in this is used to emphasize how truly savage the boys have become since their initial arrival on the island. In addition to this, Golding’s targeting of Piggy creates a greater contrast—the one who maintained the ideas of society throughout the novel is being killed in the most savage way. This makes the brutality seem even more extreme, thus reiterating how horrible the boys have become.

                Golding uses these various scenes of violence to portray the overall theme and meaning of the novel—without the rules of society, people would be evil in nature. The brutal acts represent the change in morality within the boys. The more horrific the action, the further they have grown from civilization and the more savage they have become.

Response to Course Material

Over this past week, we spent most of our class time going over literary terms and the AP writing basics. The terms were very difficult to fully understand without first being exposed to examples showing their usage.  It was also frustrating to have to memorize a single word for something that I used to identify with a phrase or two. To me, it seemed silly to use a word such as paraprosdokian to describe a concept as simple as a surprise ending to a phrase. The word itself is not even recognized by Microsoft Word, so why should I need to know how and when to use it? My view of this changed, however, after looking at the PowerPoints on Spruz about AP essay writing. After seeing how extensive the process of identifying the rhetorical situation and setting up an argument is, I realized that these confusing terms might actually be able to help me create a more clear and concise essay after all. As Harvey often mentioned in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, it is important to not be overly pompous in your essay, and to stay focused on the topic. Keeping wordiness to a minimum by replacing lengthy phrases with these new literary terms will help do this. For example, one of the techniques used by authors is the repetition of conjunctions in a series of phrases. When writing about this in an essay, the word polysyndeton could be used to describe it instead of the nine words used previously. Since the majority of the essay is probably about a much greater topic than that repetition, it is better to use the term to describe it. This way the reader will not have to deal with the constant distraction of the writer straying from the main idea in attempt to describe a minor concept.

"Me Talk Pretty One Day"

In the essay, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, David Sedaris generally follows the rules laid out in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey. Sedaris uses a comfortable writing style to describe his experience learning French in Paris while maintaining clarity and strength.

One of Sedaris’ more notable strays from the rules given by Harvey is his use of commas. In “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, commas are often misplaced and overused. For example Sedaris says, “And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying” (14). This sentence violates Harvey’s rule: “Don’t put commas between subject and verb… or between any such close pair of grammatical elements” (Harvey). Being that “for” and “that” are closely related words, there should not be a comma placed between them separating one idea. Another example of poorly placed commas is when Sedaris says, “…the coming months would teach us what it was like to spend time in the presence of a wild animal, something completely unpredictable” (13). Instead of placing a comma after the word “animal”, the rules of The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing say that a semicolon would have been the better option. “The semicolon signals the end of an independent clause—but it also idicates a link … to the next clause” (Harvey). The action of spending time with a wild animal and the description of what it would be like are the independent clauses in this case, and therefore should be separated by a semicolon rather than a comma. More examples of the misuse of commas are present throughout Sedaris’ essay.

“Me Talk Pretty One Day” does an outstanding job of avoiding the use of the pompous style mentioned by Harvey at the beginning of his book. He says to use a more concise structure to strengthen verbs and adjective. Sedaris uses an informal tone throughout the essay giving it a conversational feel. This allows the reader to better understand the writer and increases its clarity. An example of this can be seen when Sedaris says, “Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t help but take it personally” (13). The humorous approach that he took combined with the common vocabulary used is easy for the reader to connect with and understand. If he would have added unnecessary adjectives to describe the feelings that it brought about it would have taken away from the clarity of the essay.

Sedaris also follows Harvey’s advice in regards to the use of in-text questions. For example Sedaris says, “I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object which is incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?” (13), it follows Harvey’s summative question role; “…questions can also serve a summative function, helping the reader digest what you’ve just argued even as you point the way ahead” (Harvey). The question from “Me Talk Pretty One Day” provides emphasis to Sedaris’ idea that assigning a gender to objects is silly and unnecessary.

With the exception of certain grammatical errors, Sedaris does a good job of following the guidelines given in Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. The essay does a good job of avoiding an overly-elevated vocabulary and following the basic structure of standard college writing.

**The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing for Kindle does not have available page numbers**