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.

    

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there are symbols that can easily be seen everywhere. However, the most dominant symbol in this novel is the green light. By using the green light as such a significant symbol, Fitzgerald channels Gatsby through it. When Gatsby goes to reach for the light, he can never make it there, it always goes out. To help enhance the story as a whole, the green light creates the initial setting, shows Gatsby’s loss of hope, and represents how the American Dream is unattainable to Gatsby.

     In The Great Gatsby, the symbolism behind the green light represents hopes and dreams. Gatsby wants more than anything to get back with Daisy, but this cannot happen for him. He doesn't realize how everything is always moving forward, and what they used to have before is no longer there. We see their relationship goes nowhere, because she has moved on to Tom and she loves him now. In the very beginning of the novel, Gatsby is looking out across the water and notices a green light. He reaches out towards it, and that conveys an entire different literary meaning intended for the readers to pick up on. If it weren’t for his initial drive for the green light, it wouldn’t be the symbol that is held up to be.

     Green is the color of hope. While Gatsby is reaching towards the green light, he is really reaching for his hopes and dreams to come true with Daisy. Little does Gatsby know that the green light is actually coming from Daisy's house, which resembles how he desperately wants to get her back. Reaching out to this light will lead him to his end goal: getting Daisy. As hard as he tries, the light doesn't getting any more attainable. It's so far across the waters, and all he can do is see it. This goes to show how he can't attain Daisy and all he can do is dream of someday getting her and hope that it comes true, which we see that it never will. 

     Gatsby is representing how America is running down into nothing. He is unable to reach his goals, and he can’t get what he wants to be happy. He is trying too hard to fit in with society, and that’s why he isn’t reaching his goals. Currently, this is how everyone is turning out to be. Everyone is meshing into the same person, and that is not the right way to live to reach individual goals. The green light greatly resembles this idea.

     If the green light had never been mentioned in the novel, there wouldn't be a connecting image. Through the light, we can see at the very beginning of the novel that there is something that Gatsby wants, but we aren't exactly sure of what that is. As time goes on, we are told that this light stands at the end of Daisy's dock. Once we know that, as readers, we put the pieces together. There used to be a “light” between Daisy and Gatsby, but as time went by it slowly diminished. What he thought was so close and easy to recapture, ended up fading away right in front of his eyes. Gatsby no longer had anything left to live for. 

Summary and Analysis: Ceremony

Author: Leslie Silko—part Laguna Pueblo and White.

Setting: In the Laguna Pueblo reservation mostly.

Main Characters:

Tayo: He is the main character in the novel. He was left to live with Auntie and Robert at the age of 4. Throughout his life he struggles with finding that he truly is. He is half white, and have Pueblo. He goes off to war and comes home with some major PTSD (vomit everywhere). He can’t be cured with the medicine found in the Pueblo Laguna tribe, so he ventures to find medicine from the white culture, thus pulling the two sides together.

Auntie: She is very “white”. She doesn’t treat Tayo very well, and she kind of just cares about appearances and superficial things.

Josiah: Tayo’s father figure, Tayo is very upset about his death. Josiah raises the cattle. He also is all for the Pueblo culture.

Rocky: Has been assimilated into the white culture. He is very well liked by all of them, and kind of turns his back on Pueblo culture.

Grandma: Kind of just goes with the flow doesn’t really care.

Harley: Tayo’s friend who went to war with him. He came back with a drinking problem, not PTSD.

Emo: Tayo’s childhood acquaintance. Him and Tayo don’t like each other much, and he attacks him at a bar for saying white people are better than Pueblos.

Plot:

            The book opens with Tayo and his grief for his newly lost “bros” Rocky and Josiah. There is also a drought in the Pueblo reservation and now Tayo believes that this is his fault. He is struggling with that assumption for some time. He throws up all the time, and this is because of his PTSD problem that needs to be fixed. He stays at home with Auntie, Robert, and Grandma since his mother abandoned him at the age of 4. His father is white, but he doesn’t have any idea who exactly his father is.

            When Tayo does return from the war, he realizes that his other friends are also going through the same sickness problems as he is, yet they handle it a different way: through alcohol. They don’t realize that this is a temporary solution though, and it really does a lot more harm than they think. Because of this, Grandma calls in the Pueblo medicine man, Ku’oosh, and he performs a ceremony that does very little help to Tayo. Auntie really doesn’t like Tayo, and we can see throughout the novel that she wishes he had died instead of Rocky.

            The summer that they got enlisted in the army, Josiah bought some cattle. Night Swan, his companion, encourages this idea. Then, another medicine man is called in on behalf of curing Tayo, Betonie. He is more connected with the white culture. Tayo then leaves to find the cattle and to complete the new ceremony, yet he finds them in the mountain. Then, he runs into T’seh and spends almost the whole summer with her. Then, he is told that Emo and his other friends are causing problems back in the reservation, and they are blaming it on Tayo and telling the police.

            To get away from the police, he follows T’sehs advice. He realizes that to complete the ceremony, he has to hide in a minefield that he has come across to add the element of white culture. Emo and his friends are there and Emo tries to get him to come out of his hiding spot by torturing Harvey. Tayo doesn’t fall for it though, and returns to Ku’oosh to tell him what have happened. Ku’oosh then says he has been cured, and the ceremony ends.

Theme:

A big theme in this book is that you have to balance cultures in your life, but you can’t just pick one. You always need the equal balance. Tayo is the perfect example of this. He clearly can’t just live off of Indian culture, or just white. He needs both of the medicine men in his life.

Narrator: 3^rd person

Symbols/motifs:

Speckles on cattle: represent stars or Tayo’s mixed cultures.

Colors/directions: show how detail is very important in his life

Alcohol: shows how it can’t be the only cure, its only temporary.

Quotes:

1.     “Nothing was all good or all bad either; it all depended.” This quote shows how not one thing is purely all good or all bad. You have to look at everything in multiple ways, that’s just how life works. You can’t completely categorize things as all good and all bad.

2.     “It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the name sounds different.” Grandma says this and it really reinforces the idea of reciprocity in the Indian culture. Everything is the same story, just repeated differently. She is connecting the past and present all in one. 

Course Materials

We are literally almost done with this class. We are on our last book, which is so unbelievable to me. I feel like we have constantly been annotating/reading this entire year, and now it's almost done! I really enjoyed Ceremony, although the time changes were really annoying and hard to keep up with, I finally think I got the hang of it. Especially the second time around annotating because I left my first copy in Mexico so I had to do it all over again. In the end it really helped me understand it more though.

So far, I think Fifth Business is the best book we have read. At least compared to Ceremony because there aren't as many changes in time to keep up with. I kind of like reading plays more though, because I like being able to read together as a class and then go through a second time with a better idea of what is truly going on. I can't believe it's our last book! At this point, everything is so bitter/sweet. And now, that AP test is right around the corner. I feel like I have made improvements on what to do and what to expect for this test, but it still is just going to be a matter of luck for me. It will be a lot like the ACT I think, which definitely wasn't my strongest scoring section, so that should be fun for me...But I absolutely can not wait until after the test for us to just chill around and watch youtube videos! It's a very exciting time of year!

Prompt Revision #3

2006. Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole.

                  In Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, he uses the setting to help convey certain meanings to the audience. The Loman family is based in a city like setting, surrounded by apartment buildings and other individuals. However, their house hasn’t always been like this. It was originally more in the open, and during this time the two boys, Biff and Happy, were merely men. As they were growing up, Willy had taught them that the only important thing to success was being well liked and having a good physical appearance. As soon as they were faced with life after high school, they realized this wasn’t true the hard way. The country setting helps show individualism, self-discovery, and potential.

                  After high school, Biff was forced to find a way to make a living for him self. He traveled out to the far west, and found work on a farm. Unknown to him at the time, the audience could eventually tell that on the farmlands, Biff was content with himself and free from being forced to do something he didn’t want to do by his father, Willy. When around Willy, Biff feels that he needs to lie to him in order to make him happy about what he has done with his life. While out in the country, Biff has different opportunities. He can do whatever he wants with his life. While he is out west, he realizes the importance that he has. However, all of that goes away when he finally comes back to visit Willy.

             The American West symbolizes potential and future success. Biff could have a lot going for him, yet he grew up in such a materialistic society. Miller tries to show his audience that Biff needs to find himself by leaving his hometown. Going out West is just the way to do it. His escape from Willy’s delusions and the American East’s materialism suggests how he is discovering himself. Biff needs to realize that looks and being well liked won’t get you anywhere in life, and growing up on a farm, away from material society is just the place to discover himself. When he comes back, he knows that he screwed up his life. He realizes how he grew up with such a false view of success, and that he would have to start all over again.

            To show how Willy has not moved on, the play mainly takes place in his small apartment like structure that never changes. It is surrounded by settings that have changed though. Their house used to be out in the open, but then all of the other homes were built around it. They were trapped, not being able to escape the new things around them, and not being able to escape their fate. They grew up with such a false idea of what being successful is, and now they have to accept that they will never be able to keep up with everything around them.

             By including the American West in the play, Miller helped convey ideas of individualism, self-discovery, and potential. Without these, the play would simply be a depressing story about how some people simply can’t get anywhere in life.

Summary and Analysis: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Summary and Analysis: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Author: Tom Stoppard

Setting: We aren’t really given many details about setting, besides that they are in Elsinore, in a forest, and on a boat. Other than those directions the audience is left to decide what they want about the setting.

Plot: The opening of this play has two men playing a coin toss game together. They are traveling, and one of them begins to notice that every single time he flips a coin, heads it is. About ninety-some times in a row. They begin to think their luck is amazing, and get into mindless chatter about probability and really, we discover that all this talk is really nonsense, and no matter what fate doesn’t change. Whatever is meant to happen, will happen. They just have yet to accept that. Next, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern run into the Tragedians (actors) and the player. They want to perform for R&G and make them pay. Suddenly, R&G end up in the castle in Denmark, right before Ophelia and Hamlet. They run into Claudius, who of course, mixes the two up immediately (like they do themselves a lot) and he presents them with a task: to find out what is going on with Hamlet.

While they are figuring out how to do such a task, they begin to think of games to help them come along with it. One of them pretends to be Hamlet, while the other asks him questions that will soon get at his craziness. They then start up with the ever famous “question game” (that was really annoying to annotate) and get caught up in that and they almost forget what they are there to do. They never really come to a direct conclusion about Hamlet’s craziness, and then they start questioning death and how exactly it really works and what happens after it. Then, we are brought to the play within a play. R&G find themselves watching a play very similar to what has just happened in the castle. It is so much like what is happening, that even two spies die (clueing that they are soon to die, no matter what).

The last setting we are told is the boat setting. R&G are sent to England by Claudius with Hamlet. They were handed a letter by the King to give to the people in England. It demanded that Hamlet be killed. They knew that this is what the letter contained, but they didn’t know how to act upon it, so they did nothing. Hamlet, however, knew what the letter said, and he was not going to die. So, he geniously switched the real letter with a different one while they were sleeping that said R&G were to be killed instead. Once they figure this out, they begin wondering why this has to happen, but they cant do anything about it. Horatio closes this play with the closing of Hamlet, making it come full circle.

Characters:

            Rosencrantz: Guildenstern’s partner in crime. Him and Hamlet were childhood friends, and Claudius has called on him to come figure out the truth behind Hamlet’s craziness.

            Guildenstern: Rosencrantz’s partner in crime. Him and Hamlet were childhood friends, and Claudius has called on him to come figure out the truth behind Hamlet’s craziness.

            The Player: He seems to be the only one that really understands life in this play. He knows how everything works, and he seems almost God-like. He is the leader of the Tragedians.

            Hamlet: He seems selfish in this play. He isn’t shown that much, but when he is, he seems mean. He switches his death letter with one ending the lives of R&G.

Quotes:

1.     “Life is a gamble, at terrible odds—if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.”

~ In act III, The Player says this to R&G after his play about him taking the throne the way he did. He says this because not everyone will be successful in life, in fact very few people will. Throughout the book, chance seemed to be, in a sense, a motif. Though not everything was based of chance, they kept mentioning probability and how that is how you got through in life. This isn’t true though, we saw that it was all fate and nothing was able to change that.

2.     “We’ve travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.”

~In act III, Guildenstern says this to Rosencrantz when they realize that Hamlet is no longer on the boat. This shows how they aren’t in control of their lives at all anymore. They just have to accept their fate and deal with what they discover about it.

Narrative Tone: In this play, we aren’t introduced to a narrator, which means that we don’t have to worry about seeing things through a certain point of view. We see things as openly as we can, all just facts and details. This allows us to see multiple characters at a time as well. The tone of this play is different than Hamlet. It has comedy in it, and it is more light and friendly. Though we know the end will be tragic, we still aren’t thinking about that the entire time throughout the play.

Theme/Symbols: We are all a part of a bigger, more important story. We cannot change our fate and we have to accept how things are and how they will be. We all act as characters to move along in life, just like R&G. The players and plays within the play help relate back to this theme. They will always just be actors on the stage, and there is nothing they can do about it. The coin toss shows how we cant change our fate; it was always heads, no matter how many times they tossed it.

Response to course materials #7

Since our last response to course materials, we have finished R&G are dead. I really didn't enjoy it all that much while we were reading it, but the movie really helped me see it better and it helped me make connections that I didn't quite catch when we all read it together aloud. I found myself actually enjoying my annotating, which is a very rare occasion for me, and I also LOL'ed a little bit, so overall, it ended pretty well!

We have also been working on stuff for the AP exam, and though I am still not stellar at everything, I can feel it all coming together. I will need to practice my writing skills though, because I realize I'm not the most organized with my ideas. I'm excited to give it another go on monday and see what I can improve. Hopefully enough to score better than a 4 like I did on our last practice essay!

Finally, we have started Ceremony, which doesn't seem too bad so far. I like that it isn't a play, honestly I'm tired of them right now! I think that Ceremony is more enjoyable because it's understandable, besides all the time jumps! I think reading it by Wednesday will be hard for me though, because I am in a different lit class also right now and I have to read a book for that too! So yay, reading time all week until 3 a.m! Can't wait! Overall, I'm excited to actually understand this book at a collegiate level, it seems to have so much significance within the lines!

Open Prompt Revision #2

2006, Form B. In many works of literature, a physical journey - the literal movement from one place to another - plays a central role. Choose a novel, play, or epic poem in which a physical journey is an important element and discuss how the journey adds to the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

                  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the most well known pieces of American literature. Within its’ many lines lies different truths about the current world around Huckleberry Finn, and many different conflicts that people in the world have faced. After reading the title of this novel, we can automatically infer that it is going to be an adventure story, of someone going out on a journey to capture something they need. And we see this very dominantly in this novel. As Huck and Jim travel up the Mississippi River we start to see what they are both in need of. While reading this novel, we see the relationship that forms between Huck and Jim from being on the river, we see that they can be away from the flawed society while on the raft (not completely escaping societal problems), and that they are both on their way to greater freedom.

                  Huck and Jim were already connected from the beginning of the novel. In the beginning, Huck thought of Jim only as a slave, of being property. As they spent more and more time together and traveled down the river, he began to realize how everything he was being taught was flawed, and that Jim was in no way a slave. He was a normal human being. Just like a river, they are forced to accept each other for who they are and they can change their attitudes towards each other. Jim soon becomes Huck’s father figure and he sets examples for Huck to follow.

                  Immediately, we see that the river is a symbol for freedom. After Huck fakes his death to his father, he has a raft that safely carries him down the Mississippi River, well seemingly safe. Once he runs into Jim, they realize they both are going to the same direction, and they make their quest together. We see that they run into troubles when they are off of the water and on land. These troubles show how the societal problems are not going to go away, and they still affect Huck and Jim while they are just leaving the city of St. Petersberg. After they have traveled a bit further down the river, we see another event that shows how land isn’t exactly safe. They stay with an unknown family while Huck pretends to be someone he isn’t, and after a few days of living well, it all goes down hill. There is a mob that breaks out against the family he is staying with. In response, Huck and Jim flee and begin their travels down the river again. We see that the raft is a good source of safety for both Huck and Jim.

                  Throughout the novel, we see many ways in which Huck and Jim are struggling for personal freedom. Originally, Huck goes on this adventure solely for that purpose; for it being a cool adventure and a story to tell. But we see how he is actually escaping from something real, and we see how he is affected by society around him. The teaching of slavery and racism are not accurate, and he wants to get as far away as possible from these beliefs. That goes to say why Jim is fleeing. He wants personal freedom; he wants to find his family that he was torn apart from.

                  Overall, the meaning behind the Mississippi River is a very dominant one in this novel. But the events that occur on the river and the coming of characters are prevalent towards the plot. Both characters discover their true identities by growing a family relationship towards each other, by being away from the flaws of society, and by achieving freedom together. All of the events create these two characters, and provide for a novel depicting society and using satire to show these flaws. The former inexperienced, naïve Huck, transforms into a matured, grown “adult”, while Jim makes a huge jump in roles from being a slave