By Tuesday, add you comment to the blog.
I will comment by Wednesday on your analysis to help focus your studying.
The task:
- Select a story we have read this week.
- Conduct a close reading of a few pivotal paragraphs or follow a pattern throughout the story.
- Suggestions: look at a particular part of speech, words relating to a character or setting, or words repeated throughout the story.
- Develop a thesis statement from your observations and offer some examples to support it.
- This isn't an essay, more of an outline or a paragraph...just to get you thinking.
- Include what you would continue to explore if this were an essay...
For those who are finished with their papers by Monday, we can discuss your observations and will continue the discussion with those don't have to study for mind crushing exams on Tuesday.
In the short story Barn Burning by William Faulkner, descriptive detail is used to paint a more dramatic picture for the reader. One of the most prominent details that Faulkner highlights is the darkness of the woods and the night sky. On page 157 Faulkner described the outside as the “black tunnel of the drive to the lightless house” (59). The reader gets a vivid description of what the outside would look like surrounding the house. In the previous paragraph Faulkner described the “harsh silhouettes” (56) of various objects throughout the house. This is an effective technique for William Falkner to use because later on he describes the fires that are set. It is very easy for the readers to imagine the contrast between the darkness of night and the red glow of the fire in the distance.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ashleigh for going first. Your observation about contrast is clear and accurate. To improve your analysis, I offer the following suggestions/questions:
ReplyDelete1. Suggestion: Analyze every noun, verb, and adjective in the text you quote to support your genreal observation...comment on tunnel, lightless, harsh, and silhouettes.
What are tunnels like, why say light-less instead of dark? How can a silhouette (an outline or shadow) be harsh? Is that a paradox?
2. Yes, the contrast is sensory and visual, the contrast between light and dark, but what do light and dark symbolize in the story beyond a setting description?
3. Also, who is telling providing this quote in the story, whose point of view? A narrator? A character? Almost every description in this story also has a moral component. Is the dark good or evil? Does the narrator like or fear the dark?
You have selected a fine quote to look at, but need to dig deeper to improve your analysis and lift your essay score to 90 and above.
In the story Happy Endings, by Margaret Atwood, the author expresses her opinion on life. Atwood thinks that life should be lived to the fullest, and starts off by giving the audience a chance to pick the happy ending. However, through all of the scenarios in the story, Atwood is trying to tell us that every story ends up with the same scenario in the end. Not every person sees a scenario as happy, even if it does end happily. People tend to focus on what happens rather than just the outcome. Atwood uses her story to give people a chance to reflect on the happy ending, rather than the circumstances that brought on the ending.
ReplyDeleteAshley, Margaret Atwood's short story could be taken that way. However, your exam will require you to quote the text directly to support your observation about theme. Without the direct quote, there is no way to score effectively. even in a thesis, your statement must focus on the elements of language such as imagery, diction, syntax, figures of speech, patterns or emphasis--writerly techniques-- that convey you feelings.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this story is about conflicts in marital and extra-marital relationships particularly and is valid only for those stories involving vows between two people.
It is also about how stories work, not how life works.
In the story A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor, the usage of foreshadowing and descriptive detail work together to create an intese story about a typical American family. First on page 242, while describing the dirt road that the family was on, O'Connor states, "The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankment" (60). People who drive or have been in a car know how dangerous "hilly" dirt roads are and how even more dangerous "sharp curves" are if they are traveling fast. O'Connor goes on to describe the negetive results of this road, a crash.
ReplyDeleteWhen The Misfit showed up, he "was holding a black hat and a gun" (72). Also, one of the men with him " was a fat boy in black trousers"(71) while the other man wore "...a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. It is not even announced here that it is The Misfit, but O'Connor offers enough detail for the road being "dangerous" and the men wereing "black" for the reader to know that these men are not good people. The fact that they all have guns also adds to the intesity of the situation.
While driving to Florida, the outfit of the grandmother is being described. it is stated the "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" (12). This foreshadowing will then lead into the events with the dirt road and the misfit.
However, even with the foreshadowing in O'Connor's short story, the ending was still shocking because of the way the events took place. Knowing the family was doomed was one thing, but the way they went, especially the grandmother, was shocking.
The misfit usually has his men kill people for him, but for him to kill the grandmother after she stated "You're one of my own children" shows one of two things. Either the misfit really hates his mother or the misfit loves his mother and is angry at the grandmother for saying he was her son.