Open Prompt Revision #4

1975 Also. Unlike the novelist, the writer of a play does not use his own voice and only rarely uses a narrator's voice to guide the audience's responses to character and action. Select a play you have read and write an essay in which you explain the techniques the playwright uses to guide his audience's responses to the central characters and the action. You might consider the effect on the audience of things like setting, the use of comparable and contrasting characters, and the characters' responses to each other. Support your argument with specific references to the play. Do not give a plot summary.

            In a play, the author cannot narrate, instead having to get meaning across in other ways.  This is true of Edward Albee’s The American Dream, in which the characters drive the action.  Through indirect characterization, literalization, and character interaction, Albee communicates meaning without using his own voice.

            Onstage action develops the characters.  It shows Mommy as savage and childish through her treatment of Daddy and Grandma, and the excessive use of a/an in her story of a shopping trip.  She tries to control the other characters through bullying language, and forces Daddy to have a vasectomy.  Daddy is the opposite of a man's stereotypical gender role.  This can be found in his lack of desire to open the door for Mrs. Barker and his inability to fix anything in the apartment. From these stage actions we can assume that he is wishy-washy and unable to do “manly” things.  Grandma is the least absurd character in the play, as evidenced by her rebellion against Mommy’s authority and break of the fourth wall at the end of the play.

            Bringing abstract ideas into the physical world allows Albee to create a harsh tone without a narrator.  Figurative language comes up in the body throughout the play. Daddy’s “Qualms” are transferred to his scars.  Grandma comments that the bodies of old people are “twisted into the shape of a complaint”.  The mutilation of the “bumble”, itself a deformed word, is described in figurative language that is turned literal.  In the universe of The American Dream, ideas take a physical form.  This creates a materialist atmosphere that shows the audience how superficial the American Dream is: we cannot understand ideas, only objects.

            Relations between characters, especially Grandma’s interactions, allow Albee to express meaning.  Grandma, the only character who fights back against Mommy’s control, has a special power in the play’s rhythm.  She has the power to make characters leave at will, as shown by her extraction of Mrs. Barker from the stage.  When sexual rhythm is created between Mommy and Daddy, Grandma interrupts and destroys it.  This power is even taken beyond character interaction; she can change reality by hiding rooms and the apartment’s water.  Grandma is able to control the play as a director does, ending it at the time she feels it is appropriate.  This power dynamic shows that, although the old American dream may seem to lack strength at the surface, it is actually in control under everyone’s noses.

Open Prompt Revision #3

1975. Although literary critics have tended to praise the unique in literary characterizations, many authors have employed the stereotyped character successfully. Select one work of acknowledged literary merit and in a well-written essay, show how the conventional or stereotyped character or characters function to achieve the author's purpose.

While bland, the generic can sometimes be used effectively.  In The American Dream, Edward Albee creates the characters Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma all as stock characters, designed on purpose to be "types".  Albee uses these stereotypical characters to create a broad image of America; this makes the play’s message relatable to as many people as possible.

         Albee uses indirect characterization to give the characters as little dimension as possible.  The characters call each other “Mommy” “Daddy” and “Grandma”.  These are titles, not specific names corresponding to family roles, which each character acts out generically.  Daddy is the stereotypical henpecked husband who just wants peace, Mommy is a gold digger who tries to control everything, and Grandma is the wise old person no one listens to.  While absurd, their formal manner is basically what someone would expect from the typical household in the late 1950s.  They seem to have money, but may only be putting on airs.  This makes the characters even more ambiguous because even their social class, which we should be able to identify easily, is obscure.

         The author uses his stereotypical characters to widen the scope of The American Dream’s meaning.  Albee’s message is that the American dream is hollow, but by definition it is open to everyone.  Because of this, Albee must use stereotypical characters to reach as many people as possible.  The play will more likely move people who are similar in some way to the family on stage.  Since this group is large, manny people experience the power of The AMerican Dream.  If it weren't, Albee’s purpose would become less powerful, revealing a truth about a part of society instead of the whole.

Open prompt response #2

1973. An effective literary work does not merely stop or cease; it concludes. In the view of some critics, a work that does not provide the pleasure of significant closure has terminated with an artistic fault. A satisfactory ending is not, however, always conclusive in every sense; significant closure may require the reader to abide with or adjust to ambiguity and uncertainty. In an essay, discuss the ending of a novel or play of acknowledged literary merit. Explain precisely how and why the ending appropriately or inappropriately concludes the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.

            The endings of literary works usually reveal something about their meaning.  This is true about the ending of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Sinclair's story about the lives of a group of poor Lithuanian immigrants to Chicago’s meatpacking district suddenly changes to an argue for socialism at the end of the book.  Sinclair’s shift away from the characters and overuse of political rhetoric create a preachy tone that ends the novel with a single-minded argument for socialism. This is not appropriate in the context of the whole work.

            At the end of the novel, Sinclair breaks from his narrative and begins to make the case for socialism.  He abandons the main character Jurgis, and makes his perspective too general, mentioning things that Jurgis has never encountered in the story.  The work seems to really be only about Jurgis becoming a socialist.  This hurts Jurgis' complexity, simplifying him into a launching pad for a completely new argument.  During these final chapters, Sinclair only writes about socialism.  The same rhetoric is repeated so much that it quickly gets boring, and pulls the ending of The Jungle further away from the rest of the story.

            The tone of the last few chapters suffers from the use of these techniques.  Sinclair writes the beginning and middle of his novel in a dark tone.  It seems fitting during descriptions of the abuse of workers and Jurgis’ trials and tribulations in Chicago, but for no reason the ending quickly switches to an ultra-hopeful and radical tone that, at best, does not follow and reads as an advertisement.  This makes the ending even more disappointing by destroying the weighty narrative and distracting the reader from the meaning of the beginning and middle sections of the book.

            The Jungle's meaning is wasted by its ending, an inappropriate and extreme argument for socialism.  What could have been an ending that put forward a stance on the improvement of industrial class relations instead became a political pamphlet.  Sinclair's goal with The Jungle was never to create meaning, it was only to spread his ideology.

Open Prompt Revision 1

 The prisoner's greatest hope is freedom.  Winston, the main character in George Orwell’s 1984, is a prisoner in the dystopian society of Oceania.  There, the state controls the thoughts of the people with psychological manipulation. Winston wants to break this control by defying the government.  Like the single prisoner who tries to break out, Oceania's government eventually captures and returns him to his cell.  Winston responds to the rules of his society, challenging the authorities for a while by trying to rediscover the past, but his will is broken and he again willingly conforms to the standards of Oceania.

                  In the society of Oceania, extremism rules.  Oceania’s leaders have changed history to make their Party legitimate, and put the youth through programs which encourage frenzied support of the government.  The people are kept chaste to an extreme.  They channel their sexual energy toward rallies  that encourage support of the government.  The Party encourages citizens to spy on each other.  Every room has a camera watching the people there.  The words “Big brother is watching” are everywhere, reminding people that they are being spied on.  The people accept the concept of Doublethink, or contradiction.  An example of this of the official slogan of the party: “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”.  Newspeak is a simplified language designed by the Party to make thought narrower. This speech makes it more difficult to express rebellious thoughts.  In Oceania, extremism and contradiction rule.

                  Winston defies the standards of his society by obsessing over the past, but his rebellion fails when the Party catches him and breaks his will.  Winston uses an old book to write an anti-Party entry in which he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” repeatedly.  When he is living with Julia in an old room above an antique shop, Winston is able remember his childhood.  He becomes obsessed with old things, most noticeably the room he hides out in and a glass paperweight, which let him escape from his society.  When the thought police catch Winston, the paperweight breaks, representing the beginning of the failure of his rebellion.  After his capture, he quickly gives in to torture and Party officials make him into an average citizen again.  Winston’s easy break under torture shows the inevitable triumph of the establishment over the defiance of an individual.

AP test taking

• Multiple Choice

1. Read the passage before answering any of the questions. Only if running out of time should you do otherwise.
2. Read questions and think about possible answers before looking at the choices.
3. Don't let the vocabulary in the question throw you.
4. Question types

          -Rhetorical function - What does this part of the passage do?

          -Context - What does this word or phrase mean in the context of the passage (keep in mind the author's intent)

          -Antecedent - what does the quote refer to?

          -Style - what techniques does the author use?

          -Tone - What is the tone of the section? is it the author's tone or the speaker's tone?

• Essays

1. Thoroughly read and understand the prompt. Misunderstanding the prompt is the most common mistake.
2. skim, then do thorough reading of the selection
3. mark it up, apply DIDLS
4. helps to memorize a few meaningful quotes for the open prompts

DIDLS

• Diction

1. The author's choice of words
2. check for double meaning
3. honorific or pejorative?
4. level of education of the author or speaker
5. Denotation or Connotation
6. Number of syllables

• Imagery

1. the verbal expression of a sensory experience

     -Emotive
     -auditory
     -touch
     -smell
     -"taste" - less frequent

• Details

1. information about what the author includes about the story

• Language

1. unlike diction, describes a larger body of text

     -informal or formal

     -esoteric (official style), or plain (plain style)

     -exact or inexact

     -what is this saying about the author/speaker?

1. Rhetorical devices

     -repetition

     -irony

     -platitude

     -tautology

• Syntax

1. How a sentence is put together gramatically

     -look for sentence length

     -unusual punctuation

     -conjunctions

     -voice (active, passive)

     -parentheticals - these often function as aside-like structures

     -where are the details? before or after the subject? at the end?

     

Writing

Writing

• Styles

1. Plain style - writing with few and short words. Makes complicated things easier to understand, eliminates clutter.
2. Official style - many long words and sentences, makes even simple concepts hard to grasp.  Easy to bury bad ideas under a mess of writing.

• Writing structure

1. Introduction - begins with a broad theme and narrows to a thesis
2. Thesis - effect and meaning only, include all goals
3. Body paragraphs - topic sentence must have something to do with the thesis, at least three pieces of evidence, quotes integrated
4. Conclusion - wrap up points, So what?

Analysis

Reading

• Active reading

1. First read - find unfamiliar words, note questions, underline significant parts of the text
2. Second read - beyond observation, analyze, comment on theme, persistent patterns in the text

• Important groups of literary devices

1. Irony

          -situational (circumstances ironic)

          -verbal (words are the opposite of what is meant)

          -dramatic (audience knows important information that a character does not            know)

1. Repetition

          -parallelism (repeated pattern of syntax)

          -epizeuxis (repetition of words in immediate succession)

          -diacope (repetition with one or two words between)

          -anaphora (repetition of words at the beginning a line or clause)

          -polysyndeton (repetition of conjunctions)

          -antistrophe (repetition at the end of clauses)

• Critical lenses

1. Archetypal - Archetypal similarities in literature reflect a universal set of patterns.
2. Feminist - Women are seen as the "Other" by our patriarchal society.
3. Marxist - Focuses of class relations in literature.
4. Structuralism - Text and only text.
5. Psychoanalytic - How do authors express their psychology on literatire?
6. Reader response - BYOM. Bring your own meaning, because literature has none on its own.
7. Deconstructionist - Language means nothing, so literature means nothing.
8. Historical - Explains literature by looking at the culture of the time.