Close Reading 1

Red Sox Nation Hits the Reset Button

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8307572/red-sox-nation-hits-reset-button

Bill Simmons who wrote this article is a die hard Red-Sox fan who is reflecting on the Red Sox season after they made a blockbuster trade with the Dodgers.  The diction,  imagery, and details all add to Simmons's view on the Red Sox's season.   

This column is full of pejorative diction describing both the Red Sox season and their management.  Simmons uses words like illogically, recklessly, and senselessly describing the way management has constructed this team.  Words used to describe the team include broken-down, swoon, and squandered.  The use of pejorative diction really emphasis his frustration with the whole franchise.

Bill Simmons also uses Imagery to help explain what it has been like to watch the Red Sox this year.  He sums it up using a readers email describing watching the Red Sox the last couple years being "married for twenty years, no longer loving one another, but still staying together for the kids." This evokes feelings of struggle and misery.  People know couples who are in this situation and can relate to what Red Sox fans are watching because of this analogy. 

In this column, Simmons also uses details to help describe what the last two Red Sox seasons have been right.  He references the "beer and fried chicken team" which was a scandal last year it was reveled that pitchers who weren't playing would have beer and fried chicken during games in the locker room.  He also adds how the general manager fled town after last season and the team has already quit on the new manager this year.  These details all help get across Simmons' view of the dysfunctional Red Sox.

Diction, imagery, and details were all used to help portray the Red Sox's struggles.  By using these rhetoric devises Bill Simmons is able to comunicate what it has been like the last two years as a Red Sox fan by relating it to peoples daily lives.

Prompts #1

1995. Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Choose a novel or a play in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character's alienation reveals the surrounding society's assumptions or moral values.

Characters in novels and plays often represent certain issues or conflicts in society.  In To Kill a Mockingbird, the character Tom Robinson represents racism and the general attitude towards African Americans in the south.  

Tom Robinson, a poor african american farm hand, was falsely accused of raping a white girl despite minimal evidence against him.  Almost the entire community believes Tom is guilty which represents the animosity towards african americans during this time period.  The only evidence against Tom was Bob Ewell's word saying that he witness Tom rape his daughter.  This represents how much more influence a white person had than an african american.  Bob Ewell was one of the least respected members of society and even his word was considered better than Tom's.  

Scout's father represented Tom and even she was treated differently as the trial approached.  It shows how angry and agressive society can get over an issue like race.  This anger has been know to affect and even harm innocent people.   The innocent person in the novel was Scout who was almost stabbed while she was walking home at night.  

Tom Robinson and his trial has become a symbol of racial issues in America.  To Kill a Mockingbird has become an classic piece of literature in large part due to the portrail of racial issues through the characters in the book. 

Response to Course Material #1

So far we have focused on literary terms and understanding how to write an essay.  Both these terms and the information about writing an essay are things that you can utilize to do well on the AP exam.  The information about writing essays will also be useful in college and writing in our professional lives.

Actually memorizing the literary terms wasn't that difficult.  However, trying to distinguish them in a passage was very challenging.  In order to choose the correct term, I had to analyze the writing in ways that I'm not used to.  Searching writing for symbols while thinking about the authors purpose and tone was very difficult.  I fell like with practice I will be able to get used to reading poetry and literature while analyzing it this thoroughly.

When we took notes on the essay writing information, we outlined how to communicate clearly and write a strong essay.  The three sections worked together to teach us to write an essay, while communicating your ideas in order to get your point across, and how to incorporate these ideas into the essay for the AP exam.  Without making an effective argument it makes it much more difficult to make your point clearly.  You have to organize your argument and figure out what type of argument you are making.  When making this argument you have to keep in mind four essential  things.  Why are you writing this piece, who are you writing it for, how do you want to be perceived as based on your writing and what are you writing about.  By just using the structure that was described during the Argument Slide Show you will have a well structured essay without it being written and fine tuned for the purpose that you intended.  On the AP exam it is essential to know your audience and your purpose for writing the essay.  The AP exam wants you to identify and point out literary devices which is why it was important to memorize the literary terms as well as be able to identify them in writing.  The AP exam also requires that you write a persuasive argument which requires a proper setup and knowing how to communicate your ideas effectively.

All the things we do in class begin to seem more and more interrelated once you begin to analyze them. By merging all these ideas together, I can see how our reading as well as our writing will improve.

Blog 3: Nuts and Bolts Analysis

David Sedaris effectively utilized many of the techniques suggested by The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing in his essay "Me Talk Pretty One Day."  Sedaris used several of the methods including: using action-verbs to improve clarity, the use of parallelisms to make the piece more graceful, and using pronouns to make the writing flow

Harvey emphasizes using active verbs instead of linking verbs.  He explains "things get ugly" when linking verbs are used to represent actions (Harvey 15).  In "Me Talk Pretty One Day" almost all the action is described using action verbs which make the story much more clear.  When describing what was happening during class, Sedaris used active verbs when he writes "The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sunshine and detest lies" (Sedaris 12).  In addition to making his writing more clear, Sedaris also uses concepts from The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing to make his writing graceful.

Harvey suggests that using parallelisms helps improve your writing.  Harvey describes the effects of this rhetorical device when he says, "Parallelism makes writing more comprehensible, graceful, and memorable" (Harvey 50).  Parallelisms were used throughout Sedaris' essay.  Sedaris uses a this rhetorical device when he writes about the teacher's actions, "She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman’s desk, and leaned close" (Sedaris 12).  By using the parallelism here, it not only helps the writing feel more graceful, it also helps the piece flow. 

Harvey talks about how using little words like pronouns allow the writing to flow because the author doesn't have to keep on repeating the antecedent.  After stating the name of the subject, the seamstress, Sedaris refers to the seamstress only as she and her for the rest of this passage, "The seamstress did not understand what was being said but knew that this was an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper of her slacks" (Sederis 12).  The use of she and her instead of the seamstress every time makes the paragraph much easier to read.

By using the principles in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, Sedaris creates a piece of writing that flows, is graceful, and is clear.  These traits allow "Me Talk Pretty One Day" to be an effective piece of literature that tells a story and delivers its themes and purpose clearly.  

Blog 1 Diagnostic Test

     It surprised me how in-depth  some of the questions were especially some of the questions about the tone and the interpretation of the passage were.  It didn't surprise me that there were questions about who the speaker is and what the passage is about.  Those questions seemed pretty similar to the reading section questions on both the ACT and the SAT.  The frustrating part about this test was how closely I had to read the text to find some of the answers to the questions, but i was encouraged that many of the questions seemed somewhat familiar to ACT questions.  Overall my experience was pretty positive taking the diagnostic test despite it feeling like it took forever complete.

Blog 2: Poetry Goals

1.  Understand the authors purpose for writing the poem with more accuracy and precession
2.  Find more symbols in poems
3. Learn how to find the poem's major conceit
4.  Be able to find the poem's irony if it has any irony
5.  Be able to recognize poetry terms when they are utilized in a poem

     In the practice problems I often couldn't determine the author's purpose for writing the poem.  When I was reading the poems, I had trouble finding the more complicated symbols.  When I was asked to find the poems major conceit I didn't know what to look for.  One of the poems had irony in it and I had trouble figuring out what it was.  When i was asked to find the use of a poetry term in the poem, I had difficulty determining when it was used.