close reading 3

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/05/my-prediction-obama-will-and-should-win-on-election-day/

This article is definitely taking the side that Obama should win. There are lots of details about how Obama the statistics say he will like how "The electoral vote margin will likely be 281 for Obama and 257 for Romney." The author of the article has a tone that suggests he also wants Obama to win. Not only does he try to get most readers to like Obama he gives plenty of reasons why we should not like Romney. By giving us the imaged that Romney had no “strength of character.” 

Prompt

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.

The Hunger Games by  Collins has a title that hints at the main plot of the whole book. The title also includes a major theme in the book that is referred to often.

One of the plot points the title is the hunger games which Katniss is sent to in place of her sister. the Hunger games is a game set up by president Snow. The title also brings out another aspect of the hunger games. The games are called the hunger games but you see that the games are more of a game then just staying alive. We see this when Katniss tricks the game maker into letting both her and Peeta be the winners. She does by having her and Peeta almost eat berries that will kill them.

The title also has significance in a common theme, hunger. Throughout all the districts this is a theme when we see that there is never enough food to go around. Also there is a deprivation of food because it is all being sent to the capital and the people in the capital are all fat and have access to as much food as they want. The significance is also shown when we see that Katniss' father has died and she is forced to break the law to make sure her family doesn't die from starvation.

response to course material #3

So far in class we have watched the Death of a Salesman and I think I liked watching the movie better then reading through the book because it gave me a visual that i can fall back on. The overall book though is a little confusing and I'm not sure that if in the end Willy kills himself on purpose. He talks about being more useful dead then alive so he might be talking about his insurance and how if he died the family would get the money. But in the end he seemed so excited that they were all going to be successful and he was talking about going down to Boston so then maybe he didn't kill himself on purpose? But over all the whole thing was really confusing to me I'm going to have to read it a few more times to be sure about anything in the book. When mrs. Holmes first talked about reading books more then once i thought 'you've got to be kidding' but now I get that its actually really helpful and so far the things we have read in class I don't mind reading again.

Going over other peoples Blogs is kind of fun. II enjoy reading other peoples opinions about whats going on in class. And its nice to know someone is reading my blog and I'm not just doing it for the grade. But it can be a little embarrassing to have a classmate point out your mistakes and critique you though it is helpful.

We also did an in class writing thing. And that was... well an experience. Its hard to say were I stand as far as if I'm ready for that but i think i did okay. And the Century Quilt was not as hard to decipher as I thought it would be. But I think that with more practice and a LOT of help I might be about to do what Mrs. Holmes say we should be able to do.

Emily Mackson

Summary of The American Dream

The American Dream is a play written by Edward Albee set in the 1960s. The play would fall under the category of absurd theater in many ways. His tone would come off as sarcastic and very repetitious.

The characters of the play The American dream are all very different. There is Mommy who we see as the power or head of the family and Daddy who has been emasculated and Grandma who gives off a feminine and a masculine charm and Mrs. Barker who is a proper lady standing for more then what she really is and finally the Young Man who is the American dream. Each character very different but playing a role in the theme emasculation.

There is one part of the play that really stood out to me as being important. When Grandma is telling Mrs. Barker about the bumble that Mommy and Daddy used to have,

“GRANDMA: Then it turned out it only had eyes for Daddy. MRS. BARKER: For its Daddy! Why, any self-respecting woman would have gouged those eyes right out of its head. GRANDMA: Well, she did. That's exactly what she did.” This quote is talking about the bumble having liking Daddy instead of who most little boys like, Mommy. This quote also refers to how that action and those feelings are unacceptable for the bumble to feel.

Close Reading Number 2

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/21/sen-graham-calls-admin-handling-libya-case-study-in-failure/

Rep. Rogers calls latest Libya intel disclosures ‘orchestrated defense’ of administration


In this article the author uses a lot of diction that would lead you to believe that what Rogers has said is true. They call it the "deadly attack" and then leading you to believe it was brought on by our own administration.
The article includes details that would make the reader appauled that the administration would do such a thing. Like that 3 other US citizens were killed along with the ambassador Stevens.
The language on this post is very informative. Even though the author wants you to be on the side of Rogers that would fall under diction. Everything he is saying is very detail oriented and informative> the author is just telling the reader facts so that you will choose his side.

Prompt 2

1970 Also. Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

In the book The Picture of Dorian Gray the pictures purpose is to take responsibility for his actions and to show how his inner self. By taking responsibility for his actions there are no repercussions so he does what ever he wants. While he does what ever he wants his uglier self is shown in his painting, showing his dark side to the world.

The two purposes of the picture, to show his inner self and to take responsibility for Dorians actions are closely related because they both change the painting itself. The painting becomes more evil as he does representing his soul. While it takes responsibility for his actions by not letting any of the age show on his own face but appear in the painting. 

Response to course materials #2

In class we learned a lot about humor. I thought that being funny was something you were born with but it looks like you can plan it. and apparently there are many forms of it... who knew! But the one that struck me was the theater of the absurd. When we read the play The American Dream it was really confusing to me because there seemed to be no plot. Then I understood what theater of the absurd was, it was really well absurd.
The in class essay structure we did on the prompt really scared me to be honest. If thats on the AP exam count me out!  I am totally not prepared for that. I'm going to have to work on that a lot.We went through it all so fast and it seemed really complicated. But I guess with enough practice i might be able to do it! I'm not sure yet thought,
The literary movements were kind of fascinating. seeing what people were inspired by at specific times in our history. All of the themes and heros of the writing went along with the time period. Or maybe the time period went along with the writing? Who knows.
Emily Mackson

Giant Panda Cub Born at National Zoo Dies

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/09/23/giant-panda-cub-born-at-national-zoo-dies/?test=latestnews

There is a lot of diction in this article that makes you feel bad for the Zoo and the mother. Like in line two they mention the "saddening zoo officials and visitors." The author talks about how hard it is for a young panda to stay alive through the first two weeks of a panda's life because of infection and their extremely small size.
The most vivid imagery given is when they describe the size of small pandas, which are according to the author "the size of a stick of butter."
There is a lot of detail about the Panda's mother and the history of the Pandas at the zoo. According to the article they were given to the washington zoo by China in honor of president Nixon's visit to their country. The author also tells us about the dead baby's mother and that the baby came as a surprise because she had had five miscarriages before giving birth to this baby.
As far as syntax goes all the sentences are long creating a pattern of long rhythmic story telling. The tone is not very elevated but is more like a friend talking to a friend, keeping it informational and conversational.  There is a quote said by a girl named Murray, she repeats the word beautiful creating an emphasis on the importance of the beauty of the situation. The article ends on such a sad depressing thought but really bringing the emphasis back on the death of the little cub.

~Emily Mackson

Prompt

1972. In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.

In the first scene of The Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon the opening act gives away a lot of the major themes for the build up of the play. Eugene gets yelled at by his mother about setting the table and he brings up one of the major themes in the play dependency. Throughout the whole show there is a struggle for being independent or being to dependent for most of the characters. Another theme also brought up by Eugene in the first scene is coming of age, where he finds himself intrigued by the thought of women.

Eugene Brings up the theme Dependency by wondering why Laurie can't set the table of course she cant because she is to sick. But she really is not she is being to coddled by aunt Kate because of aunt Kate's sister, Laurie's mother, Blanche. Blanche lost her husband, Dave, a few years back and she and her two daughters have moved in with her sister Kate and husband and their two kids. Blanche has been so dependent on her sister all these years now because of it. She has no job, no money, she cant support her two girls. This is a major theme in Nora's case also. Nora is the daughter of Blanche and dreams of being a Broadway star but when she gets the chance she is cut off by her mother who refuses to let her do it thinking she is to young to have so much independence.

Eugene finds himself growing up and in love with his cousin Nora. He knows that this will never happen but is still found trying to get a glimpse because he is going through puberty. But during the second half of the show he really steps up and becomes a man. finding himself not in love with Nora because he has now excepted the responsibilities he must because his brother left to join the army and his father had a stroke. His mother and aunt had a fight about money and his aunt left because she went to find some, being to dependent on her sister all her life. All thats going on in the family for him has really hit hard and he is willing to grow up a little to make it work.

~Emily Mackson

response to course material

We have only had one week of school, but surprisingly i have learned a lot. I have never really needed to connect homework assignments to my life let alone anything i have learned at school. But the things we have learned in AP English over the summer is really helping me. we read How to Read Literature like a Professor by Foster which has helped me read books just for fun as well as school. I think that this was a very helpful book for the school to have us read over the summer because we will be reading a lot of literature over the course of the school year.  Foster wrote about a lot of things that i knew in the back of my mind but never really applied to literature. 
Also we read The Nuts and bolts of Writing a College essay, which has helped me immensely when writing any essay including my admission ones for colleges. The book had a lot of detail concerning things that I personally did. Of course i didn't know that i was doing them but when i thought about it I did quite a few of them. The book mentioned on thing about pompous style which i thought was a little funny because the previous book we had read had a very pompous style.
We have also been looking at literature terms. Learning them gave me another perspective on poetry. i looked back over the summer poems we were supposed to read and saw a lot of things that I had missed when looking at them during the summer. I also think that these terms will help me throughout AP English when reading poetry, though I don't think that we will be reading much more Poetry which is sad.
~Emily Mackson

blog post 3

Personally I would not think of this essay as a college essay, more along the lines of a story telling out of a book. which is what it is. But analyzing it against the book the Nuts and Bolts Of College Writing by Harvey, Sedaris seems to be a pretty good writer.

The book starts out talking about how all of these college kids think that they need to sound smart so they adopt this very pompous style of writing. I would not call his writing style Pompous in fact I might call it a little humble because he talks about how he is forty-one and returning to college (David Sedaris) Later in the book he talks about how he "took to spending four hours a night on my home work" because he wanted to create an identity for himself. He wanted the teacher to notice him, but in a good way. Harvey also talks about how people who need to be good writers use big words to make themselves seem smarter while good writers know the importance of the smaller words. I would categorize Sedaris as the writer who knows the importance of the small words, because he never uses gigantic words to pump up his vocabulary.

Another section Sedaris follows very well is chapter three: Flow. Harvey talks about keeping the same subject and not straying because its extremely confusing to keep up with. Sedaris keeps the same subject the whole time, French class. He never strays from the topic whether to talk about his French teacher or his French homework or speaking French.  Another part of the flow section was keeping consistent characters which Sedaris does very well. Instead of introducing us to a bunch of the kids from the class he stays consistent with just the Teacher of the French class. Harvey also talks about "the logical turns and links" which he uses quite frequently. One of the most frequently used is the cause links like when he says "The first day of class was nerve-racking because I knew I'd be expected to perform" (David Sedaris). This is an example of a cause link because of the word because, it shows the reason or cause for the action.

My favorite thing that Harvey mentions in his book is Gracefulness. he talks about a specific idea called rhetoric, which in the writing world is more specific to mean the "the science or art of persuasion by means of stylistic or structural techniques" (Michael Harvey). Sedaris uses this very well when it comes to his teacher. He tells us constantly about how his teacher is harsh, unpleasant, and very hard to please. one great example of how he uses words to make his teacher unlikeable is this quote " She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman’s desk, and leaned close, saying, 'Oh yeah? And do you love your little war?'" (David Sedaris) with this quote he characterizes her in a way that makes he seem extremely scary and unlikeable.

Overall i think that Sedaris did a very good job with his essay. It flowed very well there did not seem to be any grammatical errors he did not use the pompous style that so many writers do and gracefulness.

~Emily Mackson

Blog Post 2

1. Understanding the language.

2. Bringing my own experience to the story

3. Reading a poem 4 times...

4. Figuring out WHO is speaking.

5. Reading a poem to find the answer

For number one they talk about the different meanings of the language and i usually don't see that. Number 2 is more of a personal thing... I have never actually related myself to  to a poem or in other words "put my self in my shoes." I never like to read a poem  multiple times, once i read it I get the meaning. But the way they talked about how each time you read the poem you will learn more from it and understand it better. For number my 4 I wrote down WHO in capital letters because I always figure out who they are speaking to, but not WHO is speaking. And lastly number 5 is about going back after a read a poem and rereading the section to find the answer. I always just choose the one i think is best, but if I go back and reread it will help be correct.

First test of the school year

As i was taking the diagnostic test i was reminded about how i love to analyze poetry and literature. The test was very easy to take and gave me much hope about the AP English Literature class i am enrolled in in the fall! There was a part about the history literature which I surprisingly found to be more intriguing then i would have thought it. The thing that got me down a little were the essays not because i can't do them, just because they are not fun to structure and plan out. Though i do enjoy writing. Overall it was a nice first test of the school year and weirdly enjoyed taking.

~Emily