Response to Course Material #1

DIDLS was one of the first things we studied this year: diction, imagery, details, language, and syntax. As I've been writing, I've found that diction, imagery, and details have been the ones that come most easily to me, depending on the work. Language (as in metaphors, similies, personification, etc.) was one I didn't really understand at first, I just sort of skipped over it, lumping it in with diciton and syntax but now that I read about it in the chapter, I realize its really quite simple, you just have to look for it. Syntax, then, it the difficult one. I understand that it's the "arrangement of words into phrases or sentences", in the words of our text book. It's just a little bit harder to recognize and use to show effect and overall meaning in an essay. The more we talk about it and work with it, however, the easier I think it will be become.
Close reading has also been a big topic. I never though about annotating text before but now that I've begun, I think I enjoy it. I haven't thought about it much in any novels I've been reading but I did annotate a few poems by Allen Ginsberg in my copy of "Howl" and Other Poems. Nerdy, right?

As far as writing the essays, its very hard to get used to and I've always had difficulty writing a thesis. However, the idea that an intro should consist of only three parts (opener, background, thesis) is definitely helping. As for the thesis itself, breaking down the prompt as we learned is making it a little bit easier. It helps to be able to recognize the goals of the prompt and find the techniques, effects, and overall meaning (sometimes, the hidden "so what" question). Overall meaning is probably what many of my theses have been lacking or at least, it was something I certainly didn't understand. So far, I don't think closed prompts are easier or harder than open prompts. They're just very different. On the one hand, its nice to have the text in front of you for the closed prompt but its also nice to be able to choose a work that you might know fairly well. Putting DIDLS into my essays has helped give them a focus and annotating the closed prompt texts is an obvious advantage, as well as marking up the prompts themselves.

Poetry is a genre of literature that, although I've always appreciated, I've just started to really enjoy reading. I was blown away by Rossetti's poem "Promises like Pie-Crust" in the text book. Because of her poetic techniques as well as her powerful meaning. So far, I've found that close reading a poem is just like close reading any other text (annotating, looking at DIDLS, techniques to effects to meaning, etc.) except that you have to be aware of poetic techniques that wouldn't be present in prose, such as meter, rhyme, and form. We talked about reading sentences on a first read and then going back to look at line breaks. Reading a poem in sentences instead of lines has never been an issue for me. In fact, I find I have to remind myself to go back and see if line breaks are significant.

Overall, what we've gone over in class so far has gotten me excited to keep getting better at close reading and analyzing texts, as well as simply being exposed to new literature. I love talking in class about certain pieces and techniques used in them to create meaning. I think talking out loud about a text is one of the best ways to get new understanding out of it, especially after you've gone through on your own first, annotating and seeing what you can find.

Open Prompt #1

1985. A critic has said that one important measure of a superior work of literature is its ability to produce in the reader a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude. Select a literary work that produces this "healthy confusion." Write an essay in which you explain the sources of the "pleasure and disquietude" experienced by the readers of the work.

More often than not, as humans, we experience many emotions at one time, often conflicting, caused by the multitude of people and circumstances in our lives. Great works of literature, according to one critic, should produce this same effect of "healthy confusion". In Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, a romance set during the Civil War, almost every emotion felt by readers are accompanied by opposite ones. Mitchell uses details and imagery to show characters and events that create the conflicting emotions of "pleasure and disquietude" in the reader.

Scarlett O'Hara, a young woman of the southern aristocracy, is the novel's protagonist. Throughout the novel, she alternately hates, gets along with, and eventually loves the charming Rhett Butler, a blockade runner who turns up now and then in Scarlett's life. Through her constant use of well-placed details, Mitchell shows readers that Scarlett's character is a head-strong young woman, willing to use any means necessary to get what she wants. For example, when Scarlett's plantation, Tara, is threatened by heavy property taxes, Scarlett dresses to the nines and goes to visit Rhett in jail. Despite the fact that she hates him, she smiles and batts her eyelashes, before finally asking Rhett for the money. The details given in this scene paint a clear picture of Scarlett's character. She makes a dress out of the green velvet curtains at Tara, peers at Rhett from underneath her delicate eyelashes, and, when he sees through her flirtations, storms away like a toddler having a tantrum. These details certainly create a "disquietude" and displeasure about Scarlett's character. This negative feeling toward her, however, is countered when we are given details of Scarlett at her best. Later in the novel, after Scarlett and Rhett have married, Mitchell's wonderful description of their daughter, Bonnie, through Scarlett's eyes, create the "pleasure" that was missing. Scarlett watches her baby girl and notices the curve of her soft cheek, the gentle curl of her hair, the bright blue of her eyes, and later, as a toddler, her curiosity and vivacity. The details Mitchell so carefully weaves into the novel create opposite emotions about Scarlett and her personality.

Imagery also plays a heavy role in creating the "healthy confusion" of emotions in the novel, especially when Mitchell describes the South during the Civil War. At one point in the novel, Scarlett leaves her family at Tara to stay with her aunt in Atlanta. At first, Atlanta has all the charms and romance of a Southern town in the 1860s. Mitchell paints glorious pictures of its people and places. For example, Scarlett goes to a dance with her sister-in-law, Melanie. Although Scarlett is in mourning for her first husband, Charles, she longs to dance. Mitchell describes the atmosphere clearly. She writes of the brilliantly colored skirts twisting and flowing around the dance floor; the sharply dressed Confederate soldiers in their gray uniforms; the banners on the walls of the brightly decorated hall. All of these descriptions create a feeling of immense pleasure as the room seems to come alive inside the mind of the reader. Later, though, as the Yankees attack Atlanta, the town turns grim. During one attack, Scarlett is forced to deliver Melanie's baby and cannot flee the invading army. The scene is described flawlessly. As Scarlett runs through the streets, looking for help, cannons explode in the distance, moving closer and closer to her house; dust rises up from the streets; brightly colored houses lay dark and deserted. Scarlett screams for aid but finds none and as she puts on a brave face for Melanie, the reader can feel her terror. This emotion is completely opposite to the one felt at the dance hall, both created by Mitchell's use of imagery.

A certain level of "healthy confusion" is necessary to any great work of literature, as one critic stated. A piece comes alive when readers can feel those opposing emotions. Through the use of well-thought out and carefully placed detail, as well as stunning imagery, Margaret Mitchell creates that sense of "pleasure and disquietude" about characters and events in her novel, Gone with the Wind.

Close Reading #1 - "Tasteless" by David Sedaris

Read it here!

Imagery and details are two of David Sedaris' most important tools in his writing. He uses detailed descriptions to create clear pictures in the reader's mind. These help to tell his story in the clever, funny way that is obvious is all his writing. In this article, he creates images relating to food and his inability to taste or appreciate differences between foods. One of his first great uses of detail and imagery is in his comparison of himself to a convict, in the way he eats. He says he eats "how a prisoner might eat", shoveling food into his mouth, not caring what it is as long as he gets it into his mouth. He provide details about how he eats ("one arm maneuvering the fork and the other encircling the plate like a fence") that further his use of imagery. He goes on to say that might be due to his coming from a large family. Then, he brings up the convict simile again when he says he would whisper to his sister, "convict-like, out of one side of [his] mouth" to ask for her food. This comparison and the details he uses to create it, form a very clear picture in my mind of what David must look like when he's eating, which, when you picture it, is laugh-out-loud funny. He uses this same technique of comparison by imagery and detail to make the article witty several more times throughout the work. For example, he compares eating the giant food at a hamburger chain called the Claim Jumper to being "miniaturized, shrunk to the height of a leprechaun or a doll and dropped in the dining room of regular-sized people."
David also uses diction and language to his advantage in order to make "Tasteless" a clever, funny piece of writing. For instance, when he is creating his convict comparison at the beginning of the piece, he uses language to enhance that when he says his arm was "encircling the plate like a fence". When he equates his arm to a fence, I automatically think of a prison yard, furthering the comedy and effectiveness of the comparison. In the way of diction, David often makes interesting word choices. For example, he writes that some French friends who were visiting the states "are floored by the size of the portions". The use of the word, "floored", creates such a clear image in my mind of these shocked, appalled French people. That one word did so much more than the use of "surprised" or "taken aback" could have done. He uses other strong words that have the similar effect of creating strong, clear images such as "giddy" and "mediocre".