"Poetry is full of surprises."
Predictable subjects can still surprise.
Theme: What a says about its subject.
Tone: The feelings or attitude about the theme.
Common themes: Love, death, marriage, childhood, specific event, an inanimate object, flora, animals, ocean, a meal, growing up, declaration of feeling/independence...pretty much anything can be made into a poem.
"Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy
Wow...with the imagery of childhood toys, this poem speaks to a dead woman who could not bear to live in a world that sees physical perfection as the highest currency.
The title brought the expectation for me that the poem would be about a favorite childhood toy, yet as I read the comments she heard from others, "exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle." I was led to the theme that it's common to feel we don't live up to others expectations. "To every woman a happy ending." seems to allude to the idea that in the end, she was dressed up pretty and got a new nose from the mortician, "a turned-up putty nose." and finally she looked good! Such a sad poem, really hit home about "fitting in" and how cruel people can be. I think the tone of the poem was sarcasm...as if...."are you happy now, jackass...she's pretty. She may be dead, but she looks good!"
The speaker: a family friend...a neighbor...some one who saw or heard what comments were made to the girl about her physical characteristics...yet just seems to be watching from beyond interaction and sees the hypocracy of the conditional love and then expresses the sarcastic telling of the sad turn of events.
"Leaving the Motel" by W. D. Snodgrass
Snodgrass...love that name!
Anyway, the theme is romance and a one-nighter. "We've nowhere we could keep a keepsake-"...like it's a clandestine meeting, private and secret. The tone is acceptance for a temporary pleasure. Hmm...could be something else, like...sweet memories. "That's all. We can't tell when we'll come back, can't press claims, we would no doubt have other rooms then, or other names." They have checked into separate rooms, under assumed names, and join in one room only to cover their affair. They might get to meet again, yet...who know when...and who knows what name they'll use next time. There are no names mentioned in the poem, so that keeps the "secret" facade going...and the acceptance of the limitations of their relationship and no discussion of the physical intimacy they shared, only the terms of their meeting. Sad, and happy...glad they could find some temporary happiness and pleasure and sad that they have to sneak around to get it. Maybe "lilacs" is a metaphor for the love they made...and that the flowers are left behind in the rented room at their "wayside" meeting place?
"Woodchucks" by Maxine Kumin
The theme is animals..."The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses. I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace." The animals the speaker had tried to kill with cyanide had a percentage of survivors who were hiding below where the poison couldn't reach. The tone is anger...the writer, feeling he was a non-violent man, was brought to anger and violence with his anger toward the food thieves. I think the speaker is a man, the provider of the family...and felt vexed by the survival of the little animals which now lived to eat their food. Then, the speaker writes about shooting the survivors...like a triumph over an enemy, "Ten minutes later I dropped the mother." And, there is one more left...and he hunts this one at night and he dreams of killing it, "I sight along the barrel in my sleep." Eeww! This guy has an axe to grind...just waiting to pick off the last one! Then, he uses the simile of the Nazi camps of death that he wished they had all died without a fight with the first poisoning attempt....unseen, as if he didn't see the prisoners at the internment camps of Hitler, yet he knew there was death, "If only they'd all consented to die unseen gassed underground the quiet Nazi way."I wouldn't equate the murder of scores of human with a few garden-eating rodents...yet the idea of how badly the speaker wanted them all dead really came across. Wow! I just read the paragraphs about the poem on page 425 and the speaker was a woman! I really called that one wrong! She's a gritty and angry survivor...ain't she? And, so crass and cold.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
27 March 2007, Class Discussion
Poetry
We should feel cozy with identifying the Speaker, Setting, and Theme by now.
Discuss:
"Mid-Term Break" by Seamus Heaney
First line? must be sick...or someone is?
What gender is the narrator? I thought male, since greeters shake his hand.
How many children are there in the family?
Relation to narrator...the deceased individual?
"a foot for every year"...means a 4 year old.
Necessary Terms (Basic Vocabulary)
abstract – words that express a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object, ie. love, faith, honesty.
allusion
a reference—whether explicit or implicit, to history, the Bible, myth, literature, painting, music, and so on—that suggests the meaning or generalized implication of details in the story, poem, or play.
imagery
broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object.
metaphor
(1) one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them; (2) an implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal. Sometimes used as a general term for figure of speech.
scanning/scansion
Scansion is the process of scanning a poem, analyzing the verse to show its meter, line by line.
simile
a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection.
speaker
the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem.
style
a distinctive manner of expression; each author’s style is expressed through his/her diction, rhythm, imagery, and so on.
symbol
a person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents or "stands for" something else. Often the thing or idea represented is more abstract, and general; the symbol, more concrete and particular.
tone – the poem’s attitude or feelings about the theme.
Language Terms
alliteration
the repetition of initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words— for example, "While I nodded, nearly napping" in Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven."
ambiguity
the use of a word or expression to mean more than one thing.
assonance
the repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings— for example, "The death of the poet was kept from his poems" in W. H. Auden’s "In Memory of W. B. Yeats."
concrete - representing or applied to an actual substance or thing, as opposed to an abstract quality: The words “cat,” “water,” and “teacher” are concrete, whereas the words “truth,” “excellence,” and “adulthood” are abstract.
connotation
what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes.
denotation
a direct and specific meaning
onomatopoeia
a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes; buzz is a good example.
personification
(or prosopopeia) treating an abstraction as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities.
rhythm
the modulation of weak and strong (or stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech. In most poetry written before the twentieth century, rhythm was often expressed in regular, metrical forms; in prose and in free verse, rhythm is present but in a much less predictable and regular manner.
theme – the subject of a poem.
We should feel cozy with identifying the Speaker, Setting, and Theme by now.
Discuss:
"Mid-Term Break" by Seamus Heaney
First line? must be sick...or someone is?
What gender is the narrator? I thought male, since greeters shake his hand.
How many children are there in the family?
Relation to narrator...the deceased individual?
"a foot for every year"...means a 4 year old.
Necessary Terms (Basic Vocabulary)
abstract – words that express a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object, ie. love, faith, honesty.
allusion
a reference—whether explicit or implicit, to history, the Bible, myth, literature, painting, music, and so on—that suggests the meaning or generalized implication of details in the story, poem, or play.
imagery
broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object.
metaphor
(1) one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them; (2) an implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal. Sometimes used as a general term for figure of speech.
scanning/scansion
Scansion is the process of scanning a poem, analyzing the verse to show its meter, line by line.
simile
a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection.
speaker
the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem.
style
a distinctive manner of expression; each author’s style is expressed through his/her diction, rhythm, imagery, and so on.
symbol
a person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time figuratively represents or "stands for" something else. Often the thing or idea represented is more abstract, and general; the symbol, more concrete and particular.
tone – the poem’s attitude or feelings about the theme.
Language Terms
alliteration
the repetition of initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words— for example, "While I nodded, nearly napping" in Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven."
ambiguity
the use of a word or expression to mean more than one thing.
assonance
the repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings— for example, "The death of the poet was kept from his poems" in W. H. Auden’s "In Memory of W. B. Yeats."
concrete - representing or applied to an actual substance or thing, as opposed to an abstract quality: The words “cat,” “water,” and “teacher” are concrete, whereas the words “truth,” “excellence,” and “adulthood” are abstract.
connotation
what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes.
denotation
a direct and specific meaning
onomatopoeia
a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes; buzz is a good example.
personification
(or prosopopeia) treating an abstraction as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities.
rhythm
the modulation of weak and strong (or stressed and unstressed) elements in the flow of speech. In most poetry written before the twentieth century, rhythm was often expressed in regular, metrical forms; in prose and in free verse, rhythm is present but in a much less predictable and regular manner.
theme – the subject of a poem.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Poetry; Reading, Writing, and Responding
When we read poetry with attention to detail, we will respond.
"Responding involves remembering and reflecting as well."
Reading poetry can make us more "active" readers. Even though the texts may differ, though if we develop specific questions about poems and work on our reading skills, the guess-work can be removed from the study of poetry and we can gain greater satisfaction from the poems and our interpretations of them.
Reading poetry; sharpens our reading skills because poetry can be somewhat compact and concise and work on a "shareable language for feeling."
Responding to poetry; sharing through the language of poems can help us uncover feeling. The reading may cause feelings of pleasure or discomfort, yet the use of language is directly connected to how one may be emotionally affected by the poems.
Writing about poetry; We write about poems to keep notes on our personal reactions to poetry. We can formulate questions about a specific work to help us understand the voice of the poem, the "agenda" of the poem, come to understand hidden meanings or even overt meaning.(how does the title affect your reading and response to the poem? What is the poem about? What makes the poem interesting? Who is the speaker? What role does the speaker have? What effect does the poem have on you? Do you think the poet intended such an effect? What is distinctive about the poet's use of language? Which words especially contribute to the poem's effect?)
Pay close attention to:
1) Reading the syntax literally.
2) Articulate for yourself what the title, subject, and situation make you expect.
3) Identify the poem's situation.
4) Find out what is implied by the traditions behind the poem.
5) Use your dictionary, other reference books, and reliable Web sites.
6) Remember that poems exist in time, and times change.
7) Take a poem on its own terms.
8) Be willing to be surprised.
9) Assume there is a reason for everything.
10) Argue.
"[Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone]", by W. H. Auden
The speaker of this poem seems to be addressing an audience of people who have come to memorialize a loved one who has died. Perhaps the writer wrote this in private, while he was experiencing his own pain about his loss, yet the poem begs to be read aloud to share the feelings of loss and grief.
"He was my North, my South, my East, my West,
my working week and my Sunday rest." (pp 411, Norton text for class)
This really struck a chord with me. Then again, the whole poem struck a chord with me! The poet bears his soul, stripped down to the very rawness of how he feels about the death of a loved one. He wants to shout to the world that he feels his world has closed upon him. That time needs to stop, and that everyone should notice that a special someone has departed from the earth. Also, the thought that "nothing now can ever come to any good." The poet is feeling completely out of his element...with no hope for the future and no desire to take in the world around him. The speaker is grieving and uses everyday occurrences to express his desire to stop activity all around. "The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun," wow...the poem is full of pain and the language used by the poet drives the idea home that he won't be partaking in the worldly activity around him...that there is no need for it all anymore since he lost his loved one.
This poem always makes me cry. I saw it first in the movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and then I wanted to read it at my deceased husband's burial, yet I couldn't speak it that day. The words ripped through me and I couldn't even read it alone to myself. I could only rewind the scene in the movie over and over and cry and cry and cry. I cried for over 3 years whenever I watched the movie and revisited that scene. What am I saying!!!? I still cry when I read this...there are parts of me still in that stage. "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
"Responding involves remembering and reflecting as well."
Reading poetry can make us more "active" readers. Even though the texts may differ, though if we develop specific questions about poems and work on our reading skills, the guess-work can be removed from the study of poetry and we can gain greater satisfaction from the poems and our interpretations of them.
Reading poetry; sharpens our reading skills because poetry can be somewhat compact and concise and work on a "shareable language for feeling."
Responding to poetry; sharing through the language of poems can help us uncover feeling. The reading may cause feelings of pleasure or discomfort, yet the use of language is directly connected to how one may be emotionally affected by the poems.
Writing about poetry; We write about poems to keep notes on our personal reactions to poetry. We can formulate questions about a specific work to help us understand the voice of the poem, the "agenda" of the poem, come to understand hidden meanings or even overt meaning.(how does the title affect your reading and response to the poem? What is the poem about? What makes the poem interesting? Who is the speaker? What role does the speaker have? What effect does the poem have on you? Do you think the poet intended such an effect? What is distinctive about the poet's use of language? Which words especially contribute to the poem's effect?)
Pay close attention to:
1) Reading the syntax literally.
2) Articulate for yourself what the title, subject, and situation make you expect.
3) Identify the poem's situation.
4) Find out what is implied by the traditions behind the poem.
5) Use your dictionary, other reference books, and reliable Web sites.
6) Remember that poems exist in time, and times change.
7) Take a poem on its own terms.
8) Be willing to be surprised.
9) Assume there is a reason for everything.
10) Argue.
"[Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone]", by W. H. Auden
The speaker of this poem seems to be addressing an audience of people who have come to memorialize a loved one who has died. Perhaps the writer wrote this in private, while he was experiencing his own pain about his loss, yet the poem begs to be read aloud to share the feelings of loss and grief.
"He was my North, my South, my East, my West,
my working week and my Sunday rest." (pp 411, Norton text for class)
This really struck a chord with me. Then again, the whole poem struck a chord with me! The poet bears his soul, stripped down to the very rawness of how he feels about the death of a loved one. He wants to shout to the world that he feels his world has closed upon him. That time needs to stop, and that everyone should notice that a special someone has departed from the earth. Also, the thought that "nothing now can ever come to any good." The poet is feeling completely out of his element...with no hope for the future and no desire to take in the world around him. The speaker is grieving and uses everyday occurrences to express his desire to stop activity all around. "The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun," wow...the poem is full of pain and the language used by the poet drives the idea home that he won't be partaking in the worldly activity around him...that there is no need for it all anymore since he lost his loved one.
This poem always makes me cry. I saw it first in the movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and then I wanted to read it at my deceased husband's burial, yet I couldn't speak it that day. The words ripped through me and I couldn't even read it alone to myself. I could only rewind the scene in the movie over and over and cry and cry and cry. I cried for over 3 years whenever I watched the movie and revisited that scene. What am I saying!!!? I still cry when I read this...there are parts of me still in that stage. "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
Thursday, March 22, 2007
POETRY!!
Poetry is:
Beauty, form, flow, rhythm, rhyme, balance, imbalance, upset, anger, loss, recognition, history, humor, satire, politics, music, childhood, adulthood, sharing, covering, documentation, revolution ....putting words together that evoke emotion.
A form of "emotional download"...free up some "mind space" for new thoughts, or put our thoughts into permanence, and learn what others feel and think. Sometimes, I think poetry can be bland if the topic doesn't excite me...and then I feel like I am less of a reader because I must be missing something about an other's intellect or intent or use of words to create beauty.
Poetry is music, a flock of birds flying overhead in unison, a crowd cheering on a team, the birth of a baby, the death of a loved one...all things can be put to verse.
Group Discussion
1) Share our responses
2) Create a list of adjectives
Fear, hopes and dreams, other's actual experiences, relationships, symbols, pain,
addiction/drug use, vitality and youth, aging and growth, purge, encouragement,
educating, deathly, deep, entertaining, confusing, upsetting, funny, intelligent, elegant, secretive, ambiguous, romantic, relaxing, powerful, childish, artistic, wordy, complex, repetitive, fluffy, challenging, old, musical, expressive, brief, amusing, boring, and flowing.
Our groups three feelings/adjectives about poetry: Difficult, exciting, and emotional.
3) Read my mind (the professor's), what are her goals? To familiarize us with different authors of poetry and have us attain an appreciation of poetry. Maybe even write some poems. We will learn the terms of poetry, and analyze the messages it contains. Get us out of our comfort zone and embrace something new. To expand student's horizons, to view other people and cultures, to learn more about ourselves and each other, to understand what "good" poetry, to have fun with poetry,to make us more "active" readers and to write some poetry.
Professor read aloud a poem!
Beauty, form, flow, rhythm, rhyme, balance, imbalance, upset, anger, loss, recognition, history, humor, satire, politics, music, childhood, adulthood, sharing, covering, documentation, revolution ....putting words together that evoke emotion.
A form of "emotional download"...free up some "mind space" for new thoughts, or put our thoughts into permanence, and learn what others feel and think. Sometimes, I think poetry can be bland if the topic doesn't excite me...and then I feel like I am less of a reader because I must be missing something about an other's intellect or intent or use of words to create beauty.
Poetry is music, a flock of birds flying overhead in unison, a crowd cheering on a team, the birth of a baby, the death of a loved one...all things can be put to verse.
Group Discussion
1) Share our responses
2) Create a list of adjectives
Fear, hopes and dreams, other's actual experiences, relationships, symbols, pain,
addiction/drug use, vitality and youth, aging and growth, purge, encouragement,
educating, deathly, deep, entertaining, confusing, upsetting, funny, intelligent, elegant, secretive, ambiguous, romantic, relaxing, powerful, childish, artistic, wordy, complex, repetitive, fluffy, challenging, old, musical, expressive, brief, amusing, boring, and flowing.
Our groups three feelings/adjectives about poetry: Difficult, exciting, and emotional.
3) Read my mind (the professor's), what are her goals? To familiarize us with different authors of poetry and have us attain an appreciation of poetry. Maybe even write some poems. We will learn the terms of poetry, and analyze the messages it contains. Get us out of our comfort zone and embrace something new. To expand student's horizons, to view other people and cultures, to learn more about ourselves and each other, to understand what "good" poetry, to have fun with poetry,to make us more "active" readers and to write some poetry.
Professor read aloud a poem!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Preparation for Midterm, March 20, 2007
Literary Criticism and Fiction
Vocabulary:
The Canon
Speaker/narrator
Characters (Major, main, round (characters that change/develop), flat (characters that are unchanging and predictable), stereotypes.
Setting, time and place
Figures of speech/figurative language (language that creates connections between our ideas and senses)
Simile ("eyes as blue as the sky")
Metaphor ("his intellect was as big as a comfy couch")
Extended metaphor, detailed and complex metaphor
Symbol (puts two things together that might normally seem unrelated)
(rose, flag)
Archetypes ("literary elements that recur in cultural and cross-cultural myths")
Allegory ( an extended symbol used throughout an entire work)
A Myth can be a story when there is an allegorical or symbolic connection.
Theme (the central idea of a story) message
BRING IT ALL TOGETHER and analyze
Focus (the viewing aspect)
Voice (the verbal aspect of the focus)
Several focal characters=unlimited point of view
1st person ("I"), sometimes an audience within the fiction is an "auditor"
3rd person (he, she)
3rd person omniscient=unlimited access to thoughts of several characters
Centered or central consciousness
Persona (the voice or figure of the author who designs the story)
Plot (the arrangement of the action)
-conflict(exposition, rising action, a discriminating occasion, a turning point/climax, then a falling action, leading to a conclusion.)
-expectations
-structure (the order of events provides the structure and plot)
-flashback (Sonny's Blues)
STORIES to Review:
"The Elephant in the Village of the Blind"
"20/20", by Linda Brewer
"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe
"Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway
"Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty
"Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville
"A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan
"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"A Souvenir of Japan" by Angela Carter
"The Management of Grief" by Bharati Mukherjee
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor
Whew...from here I'll reread the stories I feel less familiar with and review the questions after each story to refresh my thoughts on the fiction. I'll read and make notes about the "Essay" document posted to help us prepare for the exam and also prepare my Word document in MLA style to be ready for tomorrow's test.
Vocabulary:
The Canon
Speaker/narrator
Characters (Major, main, round (characters that change/develop), flat (characters that are unchanging and predictable), stereotypes.
Setting, time and place
Figures of speech/figurative language (language that creates connections between our ideas and senses)
Simile ("eyes as blue as the sky")
Metaphor ("his intellect was as big as a comfy couch")
Extended metaphor, detailed and complex metaphor
Symbol (puts two things together that might normally seem unrelated)
(rose, flag)
Archetypes ("literary elements that recur in cultural and cross-cultural myths")
Allegory ( an extended symbol used throughout an entire work)
A Myth can be a story when there is an allegorical or symbolic connection.
Theme (the central idea of a story) message
BRING IT ALL TOGETHER and analyze
Focus (the viewing aspect)
Voice (the verbal aspect of the focus)
Several focal characters=unlimited point of view
1st person ("I"), sometimes an audience within the fiction is an "auditor"
3rd person (he, she)
3rd person omniscient=unlimited access to thoughts of several characters
Centered or central consciousness
Persona (the voice or figure of the author who designs the story)
Plot (the arrangement of the action)
-conflict(exposition, rising action, a discriminating occasion, a turning point/climax, then a falling action, leading to a conclusion.)
-expectations
-structure (the order of events provides the structure and plot)
-flashback (Sonny's Blues)
STORIES to Review:
"The Elephant in the Village of the Blind"
"20/20", by Linda Brewer
"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe
"Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway
"Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty
"Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville
"A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan
"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"A Souvenir of Japan" by Angela Carter
"The Management of Grief" by Bharati Mukherjee
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor
Whew...from here I'll reread the stories I feel less familiar with and review the questions after each story to refresh my thoughts on the fiction. I'll read and make notes about the "Essay" document posted to help us prepare for the exam and also prepare my Word document in MLA style to be ready for tomorrow's test.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
In-Class Discussion of the different approaches to Literary Critique
APPROACH QUESTIONS OF:
Feminists question Power-gender or between the sexes
Marxists question Power
(Psychoanalytical)
Freudian question Motivation
Jungian questions Collective consciousness/motivation
Reader Response questions How does the reader respond and why
Biographical/Historical questions Author's history/relation to era & culture
I was completely inspired by the "reader response" critical approach. I thought, "Wow...that's a huge category and full of avenues."
I also now feel more comfortable knowing that critique is subjective, that any statements can be argued for and it's just a matter or interpretation and presentation.
Feminists question Power-gender or between the sexes
Marxists question Power
(Psychoanalytical)
Freudian question Motivation
Jungian questions Collective consciousness/motivation
Reader Response questions How does the reader respond and why
Biographical/Historical questions Author's history/relation to era & culture
I was completely inspired by the "reader response" critical approach. I thought, "Wow...that's a huge category and full of avenues."
I also now feel more comfortable knowing that critique is subjective, that any statements can be argued for and it's just a matter or interpretation and presentation.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Literature Critique is in an evolution!
Well, after at least three drafts of possible thesis statements and further investigation of the two stories: "Sonny's Blues" and "The Management of Grief" I have come to a conclusion.
I started out to compare two characters in two stories and how the authors present characters that deal quite differently with strife. Well,"Sonny's Blues" provides both characters I desire to analyze. So, here is my draft with the first paragraph and thesis. I am sure the paper will continue to take a life all it's own, which will be welcomed and will not come as a surprise at this point.
A.V. Woolston
Professor Hueners
English 210
20 March 2007
The Human Condition; Peace or Purgatory?
Life has its joys and difficulties. Some people have more than their fair
share of the latter. Yet, how one reacts and responds to struggle and strife may be
the litmus test for what is constructive and what brings true understanding and
change. James Baldwin, the author of “Sonny’s Blues”, presents a story of two
brothers leading drastically different lives, yet each meeting their own reality in
individual terms. Sonny’s oldest brother, a man who has tried to live his own life
in pursuit of conventional ideals of success, narrated the story. Sonny seemed to
fly in the face of structured living. Sonny dreamed of becoming a musician and
while he pursued this dream, he succumbed to periodic drug use. The older brother
was driven to realize the middle class dream of education and “normalcy.” The
story guides the reader through the drama of Sonny’s drug addicted lifestyle and
brings the reader full circle to a place where the older brother somehow “gets” the
idea that Sonny is indeed a musician and a tormented soul full of empathy for
others. Baldwin created characters within his story that provide the reader with
very different personalities and by offering such colorful roles and individuals
who respond to personal struggle quite dissimilarly, the author confirmed the idea
that everyone struggles with misfortune in their own lives and that everyone has a
different approach in dealing with their own subsequent pain.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable ed.
Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York, W. W. Norton and
Co., Inc., 2006. 81-105.
I started out to compare two characters in two stories and how the authors present characters that deal quite differently with strife. Well,"Sonny's Blues" provides both characters I desire to analyze. So, here is my draft with the first paragraph and thesis. I am sure the paper will continue to take a life all it's own, which will be welcomed and will not come as a surprise at this point.
A.V. Woolston
Professor Hueners
English 210
20 March 2007
The Human Condition; Peace or Purgatory?
Life has its joys and difficulties. Some people have more than their fair
share of the latter. Yet, how one reacts and responds to struggle and strife may be
the litmus test for what is constructive and what brings true understanding and
change. James Baldwin, the author of “Sonny’s Blues”, presents a story of two
brothers leading drastically different lives, yet each meeting their own reality in
individual terms. Sonny’s oldest brother, a man who has tried to live his own life
in pursuit of conventional ideals of success, narrated the story. Sonny seemed to
fly in the face of structured living. Sonny dreamed of becoming a musician and
while he pursued this dream, he succumbed to periodic drug use. The older brother
was driven to realize the middle class dream of education and “normalcy.” The
story guides the reader through the drama of Sonny’s drug addicted lifestyle and
brings the reader full circle to a place where the older brother somehow “gets” the
idea that Sonny is indeed a musician and a tormented soul full of empathy for
others. Baldwin created characters within his story that provide the reader with
very different personalities and by offering such colorful roles and individuals
who respond to personal struggle quite dissimilarly, the author confirmed the idea
that everyone struggles with misfortune in their own lives and that everyone has a
different approach in dealing with their own subsequent pain.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Portable ed.
Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York, W. W. Norton and
Co., Inc., 2006. 81-105.
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