Fifth Business

      1.      Author/Setting:  Written by Robertson Davies, Fifth Business is set mostly in a town called Deptford in Canada.  During World War I Dunny is mostly in England, where he fought.

2.         2.  Characters:  Dunstable (Dunstan) “Dunny” is an eccentric old man writing a novel length letter to the headmaster of the school he works at as an attempt to validate his existence.  He’s obsessed with saints and with his own “fool saint”.  Mary Dempster is Dunny’s “fool saint”, the woman who he believed saved him and resurrected his brother.  She’s a sweet, kind, and simple woman, not seeming to really be fully aware ever since the snowball.  Liesl is important to the plot because she acts very possibly as the devil.  Percy Boyd Staunton, later known as simply "Boy", is possibly the star of this story in which Dunny is fifth business.  Paul Dempster is Mrs. Dempster's son, and he could be interpreted in many ways.  The circumstances of his birth could lead to an interpretation as a Christ figure, but his career as a magician lends him more to being an anti-Christ.  He is the other character in this novel that might be the lead that casts Dunny as fifth business.

            3.  Plot:  When dodging a snowball as a kid leads to a series of chain reactions Dunny doesn’t know what to do.  His poor neighbor went “simple”, which led to his falling in love with her, which led to his sub-concious need to defend her, which eventually made him go to war.  In the war he was nearly killed but was saved by the image he saw of Mrs. Dempster.  This is when he becomes obsessed with the idea of saints.  While on a quest for saints Dunny stumbles upon a magic act put on by Paul Dempster, the boy whose Birth pushed Mrs. Dempster over the edge.  Dunny ends up as Mrs. Dempster’s guardian and puts her in a home so that he can search for saints whenever he so desires.  One such trip leads him to Paul again, but this time he also meets the devil.  Liesl names Dunny as fifth business, the role he has been playing his whole life without knowing it.  

4.        4.  Narrative Voice:  Fifth Business is written in first person, in the past tense.  The narrator is extremely unreliable.  Davies uses a lot of biblical imagery, not just with the saints, but even Paul’s birth is a parallel to the birth of Jesus.  One symbol we see is the statue of Madonna that Dunny finds before he goes into his coma.  This statue draws a connection between Mary Dempster and the Virgin Mary.  It also symbolizes the purity of Mrs. Dempster.  The tone for the most part is academic, seeing as it is basically a memoir written by a school teacher.

5.        5.  Quotes:  “Having me in the dining-room was almost the equivalent of having a Raeburn on the walls; I was classy, I was heavily varnished, and I offended nobody.” – Dunny.  This shows how Dunny is fifth business.  He is much appreciated and the world is better with him in it, but he isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary.  “I thought I was in love with Leola, by which I meant that if I could have found her in a quiet corner, and if I had been certain that no one would ever find out, and if I could have summoned up the courage at the right moment, I would have kissed her. But, looking back on it now, I know that I was in love with Mrs. Dempster.” – Dunny.  This is the first time that Dunny ever admits to loving Mrs. Dempster, and since the novel is about their relationship, it’s pretty important.  This quote is also important because it connects Leola and Mrs. Dempster as the two faces of Madonna.

6.        6.  Theme Sentence:  Don’t let the stories of others rule your life, you are who you are and that doesn’t need to be defined in any way.  Dunny lets the stories of the saints rule his life, even when he fights with Liesl he follows the footsteps of someone before him.  When he breaks her nose, it is reminiscent of St. Dunstan pulling the Devil’s nose with tongs.  The idea that Dunny is fifth business shows that you shouldn’t try to fit yourself into a predefinded position, because Dunny doesn’t fit perfectly into his role of fifth business and therefore spends his life grappling with it.  Even before his position is defined, he struggles with his nature.

Pride and Prejudice

      1.  Author/Setting:  Jane Austen set her novel Pride and Prejudice in her own time period, the late 1700’s/early 1800’s.  It takes place in England, mostly in the small town of Longbourn where the main character and her family live.  The characters also go to London and Pemberley sometimes.


      2.  Characters:  The main character in the novel is Elizabeth Bennet, the wittiest of her sisters and second eldest of five.  Elizabeth is the least sociable of her sisters in that she is too smart and sarcastic to fit well with society of the time and as such doesn’t always try to.  Mr. Darcy is the love interest.  He’s the pride to Elizabeth’s prejudice, and the money to Mrs. Bennet’s greed.  Mr. Darcy appreciates Elziabeth’s rebellious nature and sparkling repartee.  Elizabeth’s sister Jane and Darcy’s friend Mr. Bingley also play prominent roles in the novel.

      3.  Plot:  The Bennet’s go to ball at their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley’s, house and it shapes the rest of their lives.  Here Jane meets Mr. Bingley and they seem to get closer and closer to marriage, the next step in Victorian society, with every passing day.   This ball is also where Elizabeth meets Mr. Darcy, a man she thoroughly detests because he is too proud and narrow minded to dance with anyone.  Eventually Mr. Bingely leaves and all of the Bennets are sad, for they had been hoping to see wedding soon.  Right before they leave an officer named Wickham comes around and he and Elizabeth hit it off.  Elizabeth goes traveling and happens to run into Darcy who proposes to her, admitting to his affections for her.  Elizabeth says no because she had just found out that Bingley left because Darcy told him not to marry Jane.  Lydia runs off with Wickham a bit later in the novel, and Darcy helps to find them.  When the chaos is over we learn that Bingley and Jane are to be married and so are Elizabeth and Darcy.

      4.  Narrative Voice:  The narrator is in third person and omniscient, though things are mostly told through the perspective of Elizabeth.  Again we’re in the past tense.  The main imagery in Pride and Prejudice is through Mr. Darcy and Pemberley.  Mr. Darcy symbolizes pride, and the upper class.  Pemberley symbolizes the life Elizabeth could have led, and the foreshadowing of her happiness.  When Elizabeth first sees the Pemberley estate she realizes that she could’ve been happy there, and that leads to her later realization that she could be happy married to Darcy.


      5.  Quotes:  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”  This quote is the first sentence of the novel, which makes it even more significant than it already is.  This quote shows a lot about the novel and its themes.  It illustrates how ridiculously stereotypical the novel and the characters are, and how very concerned with money the characters are.  “Till this moment I never knew myself.”  - Elizabeth Bennet.  This is right after Elizabeth finds out that Wickham is not a very nice man, and she is realizing that she may be too quick to judge people.  If Elizabeth had never uttered these words she may never have understood herself well enough to later realize that she had fallen in love with Mr. Darcy, which is a rather important part of the novel.


      6.  Theme Sentence:  The main theme of this novel is that to get enough love and wealth to be happy, you must be who you are.  Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia are all very out-going girls, if only in that none of them seem to project a very different image in public than they do at home.  We also see this in the exaggeration of the character traits in the novel.  The symbolism in Mary's piano playing skills is a place where we see an example of unhappiness due to her not being true to herself.

Hamlet

      1.  Author/Setting:  Set in Elsinore, Denmark, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of his most well-known works.  It takes place in the late medieval years, though its exact time frame is unknown.

1.            2.  Characters:  The main character here is Hamlet, a young man distraught after the death of his father and his mother’s “o’er hasty marriage”. He starts to go mad, though it is argued by some literary critics that he is only faking being mad.  The Ghost of Hamlet the elder is a prominent character for though he is not always on stage he is the reason for most of Hamlet’s actions and possibly for his madness.  Another really prominent character is Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend of sorts.  She is a sweet girl, she inspires love in all who surround her, which ironically leads to bitter fights later.

            3.  Plot:  Hamlet just came home from school for his father’s funeral/mother’s wedding when the guards see his recently deceased father wandering the grounds.  They decide that he should be informed of the matter and so he keeps watch with them that night and after seeing the ghost decides to go peak with him.  The ghost tells him that Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, killed him, and that he must be avenged.  Now for a good while Hamlet ponders what he’s heard seeing opportunities to kill Claudius and holding off.  Ophelia talks to him on her father’s orders, trying to discern the cause of his madness, but he spurns her and that is where we mark the beginning of Ophelia’s madness.  Eventually Ophelia drowns, and Hamlet and Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, both jump into her grave and fight over who loved her more.  In the end of Hamlet the queen drinks poison meant for Hamlet, Laertes cuts Hamlet with a poisoned blade, Hamlet kills Laertes with a poisoned blade, Hamlet kills Claudius with said blade, and then Hamlet dies of his wounds, leaving almost everyone dead on the stage. 

1.            4.  Quotes:  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” – Marcellus.  When Marcellus says this he is probably referring to multiple things.  One of the things he is talking about is the “damned incest” between the Queen and Claudius, another thing is the corruption in the monarchy that led to Claudius being king in the first place.  Besides the political corruption there’s also the rampant murders and madness which is spreading like the plague.  “Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward…” – Hamlet.  One point that is commonly made about Hamlet is that he spends most of the play wondering whether or not he should kill Claudius.  This quote shows why he’s reluctant and what he thinks about his own decisions.  He's reluctant, because he's worried that his idea is based in idiocy, yet he thinks himself a coward for being reluctant.

1.            5.  Theme Sentence:  We don’t know the meaning of life or if there's anything after death, so we can’t sit around and wait for life to come to us, people have to take action or bad things will happen.  In Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy he  discusses the ideas of life and death and what both of them mean.  We also see the symbolism of death come through with the skull, and the symbol of religion in the ghost, which goes to shows that Shakespeare is pointing out how little we know about death.  In Hamlet’s Act IV soliloquy “How all occasions do inform against me,” he says “to find quarrel in a straw when honor’s at the stake,” this quote shows us that he believes action is the right course, and where does his pondering get him? Dead.  Along with the rest of his family and multiple other people.

Ceremony

      1.  Author/Setting:  Ceremony was written by Leslie Marmon Silko.  The time in which Ceremony is set son after World War II, but the novel does not take you on the journey of Tayo’s life in chronological order.  Because of this we are moved around in time somewhere between the 1920’s and 1950’s.  Most of the novel takes place in and around the Laguna Reservation in the South West U.S., but some parts of the time web take place in the Philippines and a mythical land.


      2.   Characters:  The main character is Tayo, a man recently returned from war and suffering from PTSD.  Tayo is half white and half Laguna Pueblo, so he tries for Indian cures, when the white scientist cures don’t work.  This is where a man named Betonie comes in, half American Indian and half Mexican he understands the different worlds that Tayo is trying to peacefully inhabit.  Ts’eh is Tayo’s lover (for lack of a better term), a smart woman who knows herself and the world well.  Emo is the antagonist of the novel, he tries to kill Tayo, and tortures Harley.  Harley is a friend of Tayo's who also went to war, he became an alcoholic and now spends his days drinking.  Rocky is Tayo's cousin, but after a while they become like brothers.  


      3.  Plot:  When Tayo returns home from the war, a part of him stays in the Philippines where he was fighting.  Rocky, who entered service with him, died over seas, and at one point over there Tayo believes a man his comrades killed was his uncle, at least in spirit.  At the time of the story PTSD wasn’t a diagnosis, and the doctors don’t know what to do for Tayo.  The American Indians call it ghost sickness, and try to cure it their way.  It turns out the only way to cure Tayo is with a good old fashioned ceremony.  While Tayo goes on his journey we see glimpses back into his childhood, explaining how he ended up living with his extended family.  In the present time of his journey Tayo meets Ts’eh, the final piece of his puzzle.  Ts’eh helps Tayo though the last part of the ceremony, curing him and saving his community.  The last part of the ceremony was when Tayo was being hunted by Emo, Leroy, and Harley.  Emo ends up torturing Harley to try to get Tayo to come out, but Tayo refuses, knowing that more people would die if he saved Harley.  Along Tayo's journey we learn about witches, who created the white man, and about the stories told among the Laguna people.


      4.  Narrative Voice:  The narrative voice of Ceremony is a third person limited perspective.  It’s written in the past tense and often shares Tayo’s confusion.  There is a lot of symbolism in the novel, the main points being directions, colors and the idea of cycles.  The directions are important to the American Indian people, each direction signifies a different thing, and which way animals and people move shows us what thy are trying to accomplish.  The colors often come into play to help show cycles, such as green signifying the Spring, which in and of itself symbolizes the cycle of rebirth.The tone of the piece is not really formal, but it is slightly detached.  The diction can be slightly irregular, thereby separating the reader from the flow of ideas.


      5.  Quotes:   "It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different." – Old Grandma.  This quote sums up the ideas of the book pretty well.  It expresses the idea of rebirth and cycles, which is a prominent theme throughout the novel.  It also shows the importance of stories in culture, particularly American Indian culture.  “The end of the story.  They want to change it.  They want it to end here, the way all their stories end, encircling slowly to choke the life away.”- Ts’eh.  This quote shows how stories, even though they are being repeated can be changed.  It also shows the importance of carrying the stories on, even as the culture dies out.


      6.  Theme Sentence:  Stories are the truth of this world; they record our past, forecast our future, and help us through the present; believe in the idea of the stories and the ending will not be a bad one.  Silko uses the juxtaposition of the poetry and the story to show us how the past and present coincide and also how the stories are interwoven.  Silko also uses quotes to enforce this meaning, such as the one by Old Grandma above.

Death of a Salesman

1.            1.  Author/Setting:  Written by Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman is set in the late 1940’s with multiple flashbacks to unidentifiable years.  The actual happenings of the play are in Brooklyn, but the flashbacks take place in other cities in the U.S.

2.            2.  Characters: The play focuses on the life of Willy Loman, a destitute salesman who has possibly started to go crazy after being fired from his job and being underappreciated.  Willy places large emphasis on his being well liked, though by the end of his life he isn’t liked so well.  Linda Loman is Willy’s wife, a very kind and patient woman who tends to let people trample all over her.  Their kids, Happy and Biff, also play a large role, neither is truly successful and so neither is truly loved by their father in the end.    

3.         3.  Plot:  When Willy realizes that the only way to support his family or keep his house is to accept charity from a friend or a job offered out of pity he decides he'd rather kill himself than admit that defeat.  This is the story of why Willy committed suicide, as told through flashbacks of Willy’s life.  Willy works as a salesman but never really works up the corporate ladder, so he drives to other cities to sell his products.  In one of the cities he has a mistress and unfortunately Biff stumbles upon this fact.  When he does he and his father grow apart, leading to more familial problems.  In the “present” of the play Biff and Happy are staying at home for a bit, trying to help cheer up their father who appears to have attempted suicide a couple times.  Instead of helping their attempts show Willy that he needs to get money even more and drives him to make one last attempt at suicide.  This time he succeeds, thereby getting the insurance money to help provide for his family.

4.         4.  Quotes: “A diamond is hard and rough to the touch.” – Ben.  This quote says that a true dream is a diamond.  A true, organic dream isn’t manufactured or manipulated by society, it’s solid, it’s got substance that you can thrive off of.  It also shows that a true dream like that is rare, and may look hard and unsuitable on the outside.  “I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have - to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him." – Happy.  Happy here is telling us what the stated dream is in this play, and he shows how his father did die in vain.  Willy’s sons should’ve learned from his death that what he had been striving for isn’t what anyone should be striving for, but Happy instead thinks that it’s all he should work for.  He’ll follow in his father’s footsteps toward the dream which will alienate him entirely.

5.        5.  Theme Sentence: The more you work for a petty society driven ideal the farther from it and more alienated from yourself and those you love you’ll become.  The symbolism of the single flute playing in parts of the work show how alone Willy is, which proves that his striving for a societal ideal has cut him off from his family.  Through Willy’s confrontation with his boss about not going on the road anymore we see that he really is getting farther from his goal, because he explains that earlier in his life he was promised a job there in New York, but as he got older he got farther from getting the job.  We also see this idea in the imagery of the jungle that Ben wants Willy to go to.  He lives in NY, so to go diamond hunting in a jungle is definitely farther away than his job on the road.

The American Dream

      1.  Author/Setting:  The American Dream was written by Edward Albee.  It takes place in an unspecified time, which lends itself to around the 1960's, the time Albee wrote it, seeing as he wrote it incorporating details from his time.  It could also be taken in a modern day setting, because not much happens that would define it differently.  The setting in terms of location is in Mommy and Daddy’s apartment, the action happens in the living room of said apartment, but other rooms are entered and alluded to.

      2.  Characters:  One of the main characters of this play is Mommy, a strange, outspoken, abusive woman.  She constantly harasses and emasculates Daddy, she seems to have slowly hacked a young boy to pieces, and she often insults her mother.  Daddy is another main character, he is Mommy’s husband and has next to no self-esteem left after living with her for years.  This makes him a quiet uncertain character, the exact opposite of Mommy.  Grandma is a very important character because she breaks the fourth wall multiple times during the play.  She is also important because though she often acts as outlandishly as the others she’s the only one that the reader or audience can relate to.  Grandma is a symbol for the old American Dream.  Mrs. Barker is the outside force that causes things to happen in Mommy and Daddy's lives.  She is the president of Mommy's Women's Club, and the president of the Bye-Bye Adoption agency where Mommy and Daddy adopt their child.  The Young Man is also a significant character, he is the twin of the child Mommy and Daddy adopted, mutilated, and killed.  He appears to have lost all emotion by feeling what was happening to his twin, which makes him a symbol for the new American Dream.

      3.  Plot: In The American Dream we see Mommy and Daddy in a very unhappy marriage with neither party being at all satisfied.  They seem to believe that a woman named Mrs. Barker is the answer to their problems.  When Mrs. Barker comes by no one really knows why she’s there, but you later learn that her agency was where they adopted their first son from, and we see that they are attempting to adopt another child after murdering the last one.  Along the way to this understanding Grandma rants about how people treat old people, and we meet a young man who appears to be the twin of the first son.  Grandma is the only one who puts the pieces together, and is the reason why the audience can put them together as well.  In the end the young man decides to stay with Mommy and Daddy, even though he is a legal adult and for the moment everyone is satisfied.

      4.  Quotes:  “I no longer have the capacity to feel anything. I have no emotions. I have been drained, torn asunder disemboweled. I have, now, only my person, my body, my face.” –Young Man.  This is a very significant quote.  In this quote we see some of the ideas of the new American dream, and how the old American dream would feel about it.  It shows consumerism and the concept of the remoteness of this new American dream.  “That’s the way things are today; you just can’t get satisfaction; you just try.” – Daddy.  This quote again shows the commentary on the new American dream.  It sahows that no matter how promising the new dream looks it will still never be as fulfilling as the old dream.

      5.  Theme Sentence:  The meaning of this play is that to have a truly fulfilling life you can’t rely on the current whims of society, or let consumerism rule your life.  The title of the play promotes the idea that there can only be one “American dream” at a time which shows the idea that everyone should have this cookie cutter life but the way the characters speak shows a mockery of that cookie cutter life, showing us that it isn’t something we should strive for.  We also see this theme in the symbolism of the hat Mommy buys.  When Mommy buys the same hat twice due to the idea that the color is off because there is a difference between beige, wheat, and cream, we again see a mockery being made of societies consumerism.  The imagery of Grandma being the old dream and the Young Man being the new American dream is how we see that the so called “American dream” is just the current whim of society.  It’s so changeable that there are two different dreams within the span of a generation. 

Synthesis of Course Materials, Part 4

Literary Genres

We learned a lot about different literary genres and reviewed eras of writing; because understanding the influence on pieces of literature helps us better understand the meaning of the piece.

-Comedy

            There are many types of comedy, including, but not limited to, High and Low Comedy, Lampoon, Slapstick and Burlesque.  Each different type of comedy relies on different things to make it funny.  Some use hyperbole, others use ridicule, and some rely on crude jokes or buffoonery.  What makes a comedy, well, a comedy is not actually the humor, but the way the plot moves.  The protagonist must start in a low place, and gradually move to a high place by being true to his or her self.

-Tragedy

            Tragedy isn’t actually defined by its sad characteristics, but, much like comedy, by the way the plot moves.  In a tragedy a character must start in a high place and gradually fall into a low place.  The characters typically begin their fall by breaking a societal rule.

-Absurdism

            Absurdist Theatre is rather different from the other genres. It cannot be defined by the motion of its plot, because there tends to be little to no plot motion.  Some characteristics of Absurdist Theatre are use of small talk and understatements, futility, and the instability of characters. At a first read an Absurdist play may seem like pure nonsense, due to the character instability and the way the characters tend to talk.

-Eras of Writing

·         Classical period – Greek and Roman dramas about the gods.

·         Medieval period – Appealed to the Church, had very idealistic love.

·         Renaissance period – Think Shakespeare

·         Enlightenment period – Rise of Deism, America's revolution against England.

·         Romantic period – Wrote about nature and individualism

·         Victorian period – Sentimentality, think Brontë Sisters

·         Modernism – Based in realism

·         Post-Modernism – Surrealistic writing with tie ins of realism

Synthesis of Course Materials, Part 3

Techniques for Analysis

-What are some techniques that you could use to analyze literature?

The one thing that I rely on more than anything is DIDLS.  You could however also use SSTIFS.

-What is DIDLS?

DIDLS is an acronym for Diction, Imagery, Details, Language and Syntax.  Diction is the author’s word choice (pejorative, connotations, etc.).  Imagery is the language that appeals to our five sense, word choice that evokes a sensory response.  Details are the details, names, dates, any other small important things that the author chooses to throw at us.  Language is basically the way the piece is written.  It involves the authors overall word choice and their tone, leading to an effect such as scholarly or childish.  Syntax is the sentence construction, where words are placed, how clauses are working and the like.

-And SSTIFS?

SSTIFS is the acronym for Situation, Speaker, Tone, Imagery, Figurative language, and Structure.

-What’s the difference and how are they used?

The difference is mostly in how they’re used.  DIDLS is used more for close reading of prose fiction, whereas SSTIFS is used more often for poetry.  Both of these systems help us sort out the techniques the author uses to create effects which in the end create meaning.  When you have to analyze under time constraints, these systems are what make it manageable.

Synthesis of Course Materials, Part 2

Essay Techniques

The first thing we learned about writing essays was TAP, or Thesis Answers Prompt.  If for some reason unknown to mankind your essay gets lost in the abyss and only your thesis remains, it should be able to stand by itself as an answer to the question.  The reason for this is, at least partly, because during the timed essays we’ll have to write on the exam the essay will practically write itself if the thesis answers the prompt.

Another thing we learned to help us with writing essays is how to write a proper introduction.   The first sentence of your essay is very important, it’s what will draw the reader in, or leave them behind.  And you want to draw them in.  The first sentence should be something catchy and general about the topic you’re going to cover.  It should be something that makes sense in the essay, but doesn’t throw literary analysis at the reader too soon.  You should also make sure that your introduction has some of the background necessary for the rest of the essay.

The newest thing we’ve learned about writing essays, and the concept is still very new to us, is plain style.  Plain style is, much like it sounds, a simple form of writing.  It is clear and direct, and free from unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.  Plain style is good to write in because you can keep your scholarly tone without seeming pretentious.  It also helps with timed essays because you get to the point faster without all of that flowery language.

Synthesis of Course Materials, Part 1

Literary Terms

-What are literary terms?

        Well, they’re terms that deal with literature.  In the beginning of the year we started learning and reviewing said literary terms.  We learned words from multiple categories of literature such as Drama, Poetry, Analysis of Rhetoric, and other miscellaneous terms.

-Why do these terms matter?

        If we’re honest, they don’t really.  If we can define them, which we can, then we could describe them, or use synonyms to get our point across.  But we’ve entered the world of literature now, and it has its own language.  Now that we’re in the world of literature, using the lingo is so much easier than attempting to make an argument without the lingo.  For example, instead of repeating “fatal flaw” over and over again in an essay we can say “hamartia” now, and be done with it.  Another reason to use the literary terms is that on the essays for the AP Exam the terms will look impressive; thereby making our arguments look more valid, whether or not they actually are.

Open Prompt Revision 4

2009. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

         There are a lot of clumsy people in this world, so a character dropping something in a story shouldn’t mean anything, it’s just something that happens in life. But when analyzing a literary work you have to realize that most everything means something.  In Nella Larson’s Passing, we see how simply dropping a teacup is a symbol, and thereby how it affects the work and discusses characters or themes.

         One of the main characters in Passing, Irene, is hosting a small party when she notices her world is crumbling in around her.  Her best friend, Clare, is talking to Irene’s husband Brian, when it clicks in her mind that they must be having an affair. We as the reader don’t know what it is that makes her think that, and we don’t know whether or not she’s right, but as she realizes it, she drops the teacup she’s holding.  The teacup breaks instantly as it hits the floor, and we realize instantly it must be a symbol.  The question is, what does it mean?

         The broken teacup has a few different meanings, the first one reveals things about Irene’s mental stability.  Basically her grip on reality broke with the teacup.  She had always trusted Brian and Clare but all of a sudden she thinks they’re having an affair.  For the rest of the novel, Irene is changing. She is more jealous and suspicious, more malicious, and her thoughts become rather scrambled. For example, at the end of the novel Irene helps expose Clare’s race to her husband (he thought she was white when she was really a fair skinned black), which she knew was the most dangerous thing that could happen to Clare.  And at the very end Clare falls, jumps or was pushed out of a window.  We don’t know which it is, because Irene is our narrator and her thoughts have become amazingly jumbled.

         The teacup reveals things about Clare as well as Irene.  The teacup is porcelain, and the color of porcelain is off-white, which matches Clare perfectly.  This is because Clare is “passing”.  In the time that novel takes place, blacks and whites were still fairly segregated and extremely racist.  The blacks had significantly worse lives than the whites so some of the really fair skinned backs would try to pass as whites.  Clare Kendry was one of those blacks, she took her “passing” so far as to even marry a white man.  The blacks who “passed” were likely to be killed if the truth was ever discovered.  When the teacup falls from Irene’s hand and breaks we see foreshadowing of the end.  The teacup is Clare, falling out of a window, breaking or dying. 

         When we look back at this we see that Larson didn’t leave an ambiguous ending as most people believe.  She spells out the answer to everyone’s question.  How did Clare fall?  Did Irene push her out of jealousy and spite? Did she jump, trying to finally free herself from her self-constructed prison? Or did she fall, just slip, was it all a horrible accident?  Larson tells the answer with the teacup.  It is dropped by Irene, which shows us that Clare was pushed by Irene. 

         These things show us just how important symbols are to stories. They give us the answers we are desperately seeking, and are used to show us things about characters in the novel.  So really, it’s never just a teacup.

Open Prompt Revision 3

1983. From a novel or play of literary merit, select an important character who is a villain. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the nature of the character's villainy and show how it enhances meaning in the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.

            What is the root of evil?  It seems like the answer should be simple.  If the question went up on Spruz, people would probably answer with Chris Walter.  But we’d also get a lot of other random responses.  The reason behind the question’s ability to be answered in so many ways is its generality, evil is different in everyone.  The nature of Mr. Hyde’s villainy is pure humanity, and it enforces the meaning of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by starting to illustrate Stevenson’s idea of humanity and evil.

            In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson really investigates humanity, evil and how they intertwine.  The premise of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that Dr. Jekyll, a scientist, makes a drink that turns him into another part of himself.  This other part of himself is evil and goes by the name Mr. Hyde.  Mr. Hyde looks different than Dr. Jekyll, because he is basically a different person.  He is described as very ugly, as though he has an obvious deformity, but it’s all internal.  He really is evil, he murdered people in cold blood, and tried to take Dr. Jekyll over.  As Dr. Jekyll makes sure we understand, he himself isn’t pure good while Mr. Hyde is pure evil, it’s about a 90 to 10% ratio, which shows us how no man is purely evil, but it also shows us that no human is flawlessly good.

            Mr. Hyde is not your typical villain; he doesn’t have some sob story about his childhood that made him the way he is, unlike most super villains. Part of the reason that he doesn’t have said sob story is because Mr. Hyde came into being suddenly, he didn’t have a childhood to attach a sob story to.  Without having a traumatic past to draw from, the reason that Mr. Hyde can be so horrible is, quite simply, that he’s human.  More people than there should be in the world are murderers, and those people have the same ratio as you and I of good and evil (assuming that Jekyll is right about his good vs. evil ratio), they just succumb to the 10% of badness. Now multiply that human dispassion by 9 and just try to imagine the result.  Imagining that someone could be like that all of the time is frightening, but Stevenson imagines it anyway.  He uses it to show us how horrible humans could be, to warn us away from being evil.

            Jekyll in the end starts getting taken over by Hyde even without the draught; Hyde just inherits his body and wreaks havoc on London.  Jekyll fights Hyde, but to no avail, he simply can’t overpower the evil inside him.  And that’s the point that Stevenson uses to get his meaning across, that if we allow evil to thrive, even if only for a very short period of time it will overtake us.  The evil will continue to thrive unbidden and cause us the people we love harm.  Why?  Because we are merely human, and humans aren’t strong enough to stop what we start.  So the nature of Mr. Hyde’s evil, that being his humanity, is how Stevenson gives us the meaning of the novel.

Open Prompt Revision 2

2002. Morally ambiguous characters -- characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good -- are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

            Love is the center of so many human conflicts, but maybe it isn’t just humans who desire love enough to kill for it.  We see this in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster is very morally ambiguous because he does good and bad things, and often times his bad deeds are justifiable.  The monster’s moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole because it helps show us the meaning of the novel.

            Frankenstein’s monster is actually sensitive and caring, despite how he is so often portrayed.  All he wants is love and acceptance.  If he was human we would call him a good guy, not morally ambiguous, but straight up good.  He’d also be a pitiful character, and we tend to side with those we sympathize for.  However, he isn’t a human, he is a “monster” and because of that he is never accepted by society.  After being rejected time and again by society the monster gives up on trying to get what he wants the “good” way.  Instead he decides to fight to get love, and kill people close to Dr. Frankenstein to try to get back at him. After that point he becomes viewed as the bad guy, he really becomes a monster in the readers’ mind.

            Frankenstein’s monster manages to stay morally ambiguous because when he starts killing people he gains more pity from the reader.  His killings are an act of desperation, and humans tend to have more compassion for the underdogs, and the people acting out of desperation.  The monster had asked Dr. Frankenstein to make him a wife, and when he was denied his one dream he resorted to the only other thing he knew.  Violence.  The only reason he is familiar with violence is because it’s what he’s gotten from society.  He’s been mistreated and hurt, denied companionship, and denied understanding.  So because it isn’t his fault he is the way he is, the reader doesn’t see him as evil, but they also can’t overlook the fact that he is killing people, and as such the monster is still viewed as morally ambiguous.

            The monster’s moral ambiguity is very significant to the work because it makes the reader ask questions. What is ok in real life?  Do circumstances justify crimes?  Is it ok to kill for love?  Shelley uses the monster to show the world how ambiguous crimes can be.  She asks the reader to ask the world why.  Why do we discriminate against those who appear different from us?  Shelley is questioning not only crimes and the moral compass, but the world as a whole. She questions value systems of her culture, racism, and the line between good and evil.

            All in all Frankenstein teaches us that we should question morals, see the gray areas, and decide for ourselves the truth of the matter.  It also tells us to keep an open mind and to give everyone a chance, they might not be as different from you as they seem.

Open Prompt Revision 1

2003. According to critic Northrop Frye, "Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning." Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.

            To bring suffering accidentally upon others is a sad thing, but to do it while trying to ease their suffering is a tragic thing.  This is what happens to Oedipus in Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", the more he tries to ease the pain of the people of Thebes, the more he harms them, which makes the work significantly more tragic.

            Oedipus is told by the Oracle of Apollo that he must rid Thebes of the killer of the previous king to lift the current plague that's about.  After hearing this, Oedipus begins his desperate attempt to help the people by finding the king's killer.  This is when Oedipus's hamartia is first revealed.  His hamartia is his disbelief, and here it is demonstrated by his disbelieving in the power of the gods by thinking he can change something set by the gods.  When this play was written the Greeks believed that you couldn't defy the fate that the gods created for you, and here's Oedipus attempting just that.

            Oedipus keeps seeing things skewed by his disbelief, and thus he makes his people suffer more.  This is pointed out when Oedipus is told that he is the one who killed the king, but Oedipus refuses to believe that any of the men he killed could have been the king.  Here Sophocles is showing the idiocy and immorality of killing a stranger.  Oedipus's hamartia affects the Theban people until he finally sees the truth.

            A Greek tragic figure could not overcome their hamartia, but they could eventually recognize it and attempt to minimize its influence on their lives.  Once Oedipus recognizes his fatal flaw he leaves Thebes to spare the citizens. The rest of his life he tries to fix the wrong he's done, and avoid future problems. 

            Sophocles uses Oedipus's hamartia as a means of creating tragedy.  Back in the time when this was written, the more tragic a drama was, the more people paid attention to it.  That was why Sophocles made his plays so tragic.  He also made his meaning very clear.  The meaning was largely not to defy the gods.  This was a common theme in dramas of the time and it was something that most of the original audience would pick up on right away.  A slightly deeper  meaning that Sophocles instilled was to keep their flaws to a minimum.  He used Oedipus's large disbelief to show that.

            Overall, Sophocles uses Oedipus's hamartia to show us not to defy the gods, and also not to disbelieve in the power of the gods, or we will bring suffering on those whom we most desire to keep from suffering.

Response to Course Materials, December 11

             In the past two weeks of AP, I've actually learned a lot about American Indian culture.  Because of reading Ceremony we've been discussing it a lot in class, and also I was in the group that read two essays on culture for the forums (technically one was the Silko Essays, but really it was just a lot of cultural background).  One thing I found really interesting (as I'm sure many others did, seeing as it's an English class) was when Ms. Holmes told us the American Indian languages are verb based.  It was hard for me to even imagine that, and when Ms. Holmes gave us an example, I still couldn't get past it, but at least now I understand what she meant.

            The discussions we have in class are amusing and informative at the same time, for example in my hour we really like discussing the color yellow and male pregnancy.   It's taking us forever to get through our sections (we just started going through the second group's section) but I know that we're really going in depth in the novel, and I'm glad that we are.  Discussions have gotten a bit less hostile, and people are actually listening to others more now, so that's always a good thing.  Well, I've never known how to end these posts, so bye everybody.