1971. The significance of a title such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is so easy to discover. However, in other works (for example, Measure for Measure) the full significance of the title becomes apparent to the reader only gradually. Choose two works and show how the significance of their respective titles is developed through the authors' use of devices such as contrast, repetition, allusion, and point of view.
Ellen Hopkins is probably one of my favorite authors. She writes her books in free verse poetry, making reading them go by much quicker, and keeping the audience on the edge of their seats (figuratively). Sarah Dessen was an author I looked to for a cushion during my early teenage years, as she basically creates chick flicks and puts them down to paper. Hopkins' Impulse and Dessen's Along For the Ride are two examples of books with titles that aren't too obvious as to what the book is about.
Impulse centers around three teens, Connor, Vanessa, and Tony. The three of them are in Aspen Springs, a rehabilitation center, for their specific addictions/problems. Vanessa is bi polar, and is addicted to self harming. Connor comes from a rich family, that is, rich in money, but dirt poor when it comes to family love and respect. Out of the lack of attention given to Connor by his parents, Connor seeks out a sexual relationship with the house maid, and then later with one of his teachers. Tony came to Aspen Springs after an overdose on pills, a result of his previously having been sexually abused by one of his loose mother's boyfriends, and then having killed him.
Sarah Dessen's novel, Along For the Ride, begins when a girl named Auden isn't sure what to do with herself the summer after her graduation from high school, after she's been accepted to a university, and settles on living with her father, his new wife and their baby. Unsure at first, Auden finds herself becoming close to her stepmother and half-sister, and after meeting a boy around her age, Eli, starts spending every night out with him.
The titles of these books don't exactly give away their plots, so it's more up to the reader to look to the story and the techniques and tones the author uses to pick up why the titles were chosen. Impulse becomes understanding and apparent while watching the struggle of the teens in rehab to try to force themselves out of their old habits - Vanessa wants to cut, Connor wants to seduce his therapist, Tony is battling his suicidal thoughts. The book is told in first person narrative, so the theme of acting on impulse is pounded into the reader's head over and over, by being able to read and feel the thoughts of each character throughout their struggle. Auden's story, while the theme is much less apparent because of the lack of intensity and drama, the "along for the ride" comes in with the fact that while growing up, Auden never learned how to ride a bike, and so Eli takes her out every night teaching her, while they do simple, carefree things like grocery shopping and talking in diner tables. She's along for the ride. Having been reluctant at first about living with her father, with Eli's help Auden lets go of her worries about taking care of everyone in her family, and has a new chance at a childhood.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Death of a Salesman Summary & Analysis
Author: Arthur Miller
Published: 1949 (Viking Penguin, Inc.)
Plot:
Willy Loman, a salesman living in the shabby outskirts of New York City, is the center of the play with his career, honesty, family relationships, and even his own sanity in question. The play opens with Willy coming home to his wife Linda at a late hour, with her worried and immediately questioning him, asking if something was wrong, if he crashed his car, etc. Not long after we are introduced to Linda's personality and role in the play as the anxious, stress-ridden caretaker of Willy, he begins talking to himself in the kitchen, the topic only his son, Biff, and his life. (ex. "You gonna wash the engine, Biff?", "Don't get your sweater dirty, Biff!","No kiddin', Biff, you got a date? Wonderful!","No, you finish first. Never leave a job till you're finished - remember that." [Miller, 27-28]) His life revolves around Biff and his concerns that his son won't be "well-liked" and successful. Willy looked up to his older brother Ben as an example, a man who went to Africa, and at the age of 21, came out of the country rich with his findings (somehow..) of diamonds. In one scene, Willy is in one of his fantasies, imagining a conversation with Ben, asking him how he should raise his boys, and if he had done a good job. Willy pressures his son after Biff's flunking out of his math class, and therefore out of his university. Instead of going on to become the "well-liked" salesman Willy always wanted him to be (and wanted himself to be) Biff goes West to farm. On his visit home (the time period of the play) Willy's fantasies and conversations with people who aren't there (according to Linda) become worse, and he heads into a mental crisis as he's fired from his job, facing his guilt of not being successful like his brother Ben, not having Biff turn out to be successful and rich, and from the affair he had on a business trip that Biff caught him on, and is struggling and having to borrow money from his neighbor to pay the bills for his home. In the end, Willy commits suicide in a last attempt to save his family, hoping that from his death, his family would be able to collect the insurance money, and have enough to go on.
Characters:
Willy Loman - Representative of the failure of the "American Dream" and the tragic hero of the story. Looks up to his older brother Ben's success and wealth, feels guilt for not being as successful, not making his boys that successful, guilt for the affair on Linda, guilt and shame for losing his job and not being able to pay the family's bills on his own.
Biff Loman - Seen by Willy as his failure, however, Biff, unlike Willy, was able to tell himself he knew that being a salesman wasn't right for him, and that he was happy in the West farming, and that was success for him. He was able to see past the strict, cut-throat business world Happy and Willy were stuck in, and struggled with Willy always over his shoulder to find his own "American Dream". Struggles as the "disappointment" son to his father, wanting to do his own thing, while his father has his own plans for his son according to the life he was unable to have, and therefore wants fulfilled in Biff's lifetime.
Happy Loman - serves for the most part of the play as a buffer between Willy and Biff during their arguments. Happy followed in his father's footsteps in the way that he got himself into the business world, and while he wasn't exactly super successful or wealthy, did alright for himself. Throughout the play, Happy continues to reassure his father and mother that he will get married, and that he's "gotten bigger", though he's never really particularly noticed by either parent. He has an over-active sex drive, talked about in the beginning of the play between he and his brother, and seen in the restaurant scene when Willy meets the boys for dinner.
Charley - Charley is the face of Willy's guilt. He must continuously borrow money from Charley to pay his bills because he doesn't have a job, and when he offers Willy a job, Willy refuses, insisting he has a job, only a short while later reluctantly admitting his unemployed status.
Linda - As explained in the plot summary, Linda is the caretaker of Willy. She goes along with his pretendings and lies about the job he doesn't have, congratulating him and advising him to ask his boss to drive to Boston. She gets upset and defensive of his mental state when Biff comes home, telling him that his failure of his math class and of not getting the business job Willy wanted him to are the reasons for his talking to himself and the evidence she found for his wanting to commit suicide.
Published: 1949 (Viking Penguin, Inc.)
Plot:
Willy Loman, a salesman living in the shabby outskirts of New York City, is the center of the play with his career, honesty, family relationships, and even his own sanity in question. The play opens with Willy coming home to his wife Linda at a late hour, with her worried and immediately questioning him, asking if something was wrong, if he crashed his car, etc. Not long after we are introduced to Linda's personality and role in the play as the anxious, stress-ridden caretaker of Willy, he begins talking to himself in the kitchen, the topic only his son, Biff, and his life. (ex. "You gonna wash the engine, Biff?", "Don't get your sweater dirty, Biff!","No kiddin', Biff, you got a date? Wonderful!","No, you finish first. Never leave a job till you're finished - remember that." [Miller, 27-28]) His life revolves around Biff and his concerns that his son won't be "well-liked" and successful. Willy looked up to his older brother Ben as an example, a man who went to Africa, and at the age of 21, came out of the country rich with his findings (somehow..) of diamonds. In one scene, Willy is in one of his fantasies, imagining a conversation with Ben, asking him how he should raise his boys, and if he had done a good job. Willy pressures his son after Biff's flunking out of his math class, and therefore out of his university. Instead of going on to become the "well-liked" salesman Willy always wanted him to be (and wanted himself to be) Biff goes West to farm. On his visit home (the time period of the play) Willy's fantasies and conversations with people who aren't there (according to Linda) become worse, and he heads into a mental crisis as he's fired from his job, facing his guilt of not being successful like his brother Ben, not having Biff turn out to be successful and rich, and from the affair he had on a business trip that Biff caught him on, and is struggling and having to borrow money from his neighbor to pay the bills for his home. In the end, Willy commits suicide in a last attempt to save his family, hoping that from his death, his family would be able to collect the insurance money, and have enough to go on.
Characters:
Willy Loman - Representative of the failure of the "American Dream" and the tragic hero of the story. Looks up to his older brother Ben's success and wealth, feels guilt for not being as successful, not making his boys that successful, guilt for the affair on Linda, guilt and shame for losing his job and not being able to pay the family's bills on his own.
Biff Loman - Seen by Willy as his failure, however, Biff, unlike Willy, was able to tell himself he knew that being a salesman wasn't right for him, and that he was happy in the West farming, and that was success for him. He was able to see past the strict, cut-throat business world Happy and Willy were stuck in, and struggled with Willy always over his shoulder to find his own "American Dream". Struggles as the "disappointment" son to his father, wanting to do his own thing, while his father has his own plans for his son according to the life he was unable to have, and therefore wants fulfilled in Biff's lifetime.
Happy Loman - serves for the most part of the play as a buffer between Willy and Biff during their arguments. Happy followed in his father's footsteps in the way that he got himself into the business world, and while he wasn't exactly super successful or wealthy, did alright for himself. Throughout the play, Happy continues to reassure his father and mother that he will get married, and that he's "gotten bigger", though he's never really particularly noticed by either parent. He has an over-active sex drive, talked about in the beginning of the play between he and his brother, and seen in the restaurant scene when Willy meets the boys for dinner.
Charley - Charley is the face of Willy's guilt. He must continuously borrow money from Charley to pay his bills because he doesn't have a job, and when he offers Willy a job, Willy refuses, insisting he has a job, only a short while later reluctantly admitting his unemployed status.
Linda - As explained in the plot summary, Linda is the caretaker of Willy. She goes along with his pretendings and lies about the job he doesn't have, congratulating him and advising him to ask his boss to drive to Boston. She gets upset and defensive of his mental state when Biff comes home, telling him that his failure of his math class and of not getting the business job Willy wanted him to are the reasons for his talking to himself and the evidence she found for his wanting to commit suicide.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Response to Course Materials Dec. 2nd
Hamlet and Death of a Salesman. Those few words basically sum up what we've been and are doing now in class. Watching the movie of Salesman before reading the actual play was really helpful, so that while reading and annotating, I could picture scenes from the movie while it was happening during my reading. Finally, we watched the movie again, but this time after we had completed our annotations, so we could pause after major scenes to compare the staging/acting/script to the script we had read. The movie was overall really true to the script, and the staging and acting choices were much more easy to understand after we were finished reading.
Hamlet is kind of a different story. There were definitely some sort of cryptic phrases in Salesman we as a class had to hash out so we could understand underlying meanings/etc. But Hamlet isn't really just a few cryptic phrases here and there, it's the entire play. It's Shakespeare. I'm really glad right now we're taking time during the in-class readings of the play to pause and get help from each other and of course Ms. Holmes to kind of translate the unfamiliar language into more modern descriptions we can understand. Still, I'm wanting to be able to read and comprehend the play as we're reading on my own, instead of relying on the help from Ms. Holmes. I think for this one I'm going to have to get onto Sparknotes for the No Fear Shakespeare, so when I go back to annotate further, I can understand more and have more things to point out and analyze.
Hamlet is kind of a different story. There were definitely some sort of cryptic phrases in Salesman we as a class had to hash out so we could understand underlying meanings/etc. But Hamlet isn't really just a few cryptic phrases here and there, it's the entire play. It's Shakespeare. I'm really glad right now we're taking time during the in-class readings of the play to pause and get help from each other and of course Ms. Holmes to kind of translate the unfamiliar language into more modern descriptions we can understand. Still, I'm wanting to be able to read and comprehend the play as we're reading on my own, instead of relying on the help from Ms. Holmes. I think for this one I'm going to have to get onto Sparknotes for the No Fear Shakespeare, so when I go back to annotate further, I can understand more and have more things to point out and analyze.
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