Quarter One Reflection

Barbara W. Tuchman stated, “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” Literature carries all the things that make up our lives and without it, life may just cease to exist. It has lasted all thourghout our existance, allowing us to connect to the past. Literature is the broadest form/idea that reaches everyone in the world and keeps us connected to one another. It allows everyone to reach the same level of understanding and to reach new thinking heights. It allows us to break out of the box and discover something new. By studyig literature, you're allowed to discover these new heights and expand your thinking capbablity. It will help you connect to everyone in everyday life. Literature allows everyone who reads and studies it to wonder into thier own little world, shielding them from everyone thing going on around them. It's an escape that you enjoy and want to wonder into again and again.

Reading takes an enormous roll in studying literature. I enjoy reading when the writing appeals to me and so far it has in my AP Lit class. My strength in reading is using reading techniques to understand the text, but my weakness is finding the overall theme the author wants me to understand. I find this especially difficult when reading a work I don't find interesting at all. My goal for reading next quarter is to learn new techniques that will help me defeat my weakness. The texts that we are reading in class most suprise me. Before in past years, the writings I was asked to read didn't interest me at all or challenge my thinking methods. But this year, the writings address more provocative subjects that really get my mind racing and I it makes me more and more excited about the next writing to read.

I have never exprienced as much writing as I have exprienced this year, but I'm enjoying it. The class is really helping me become more comfortable with writing such as with the Pancake Paper assingment. I'm finding out as I write more and more that my strength in writing is organizing my thoughts. My weaknesses are providing commentary on my claims and writing a clear thesis. Writing the "Sestina" paper allowed me to uncover my strengths and weaknesses, while the Pancake Paper allowed me to work on my weaknesses and better my strengths. I made the most growh in my writing when consructing the pancake paper because I had to break down the paper in different layers, which allowed me to examine each part of my writing seperately. By doing this I realized the need for more commentary and was able to write more in the paper. My writing goal for next quarter is to write a paper that suprises Ms.Ahearn.

Pancake Paper

A Cycle in Fences

Is there one set definition for all father-son relationships? Many may define it as a loving and caring relationship where the father teaches the son everything he knows about manhood. The play Fences, written by August Wilson, defines it another way. Fences is the sixth play in a ten-part series that examines African-American experiences during a new decade. This play depicts the life of a black family during the 1950s. August Wilson uses back-story to distinguish Troy and his children’s father-son relationships as part of a cycle that will inevitably continue.

Wilson defines the “cycle” as Growing Up within Generations of Damaged Black Manhood. The definition is defined through the use of back-story. Back-story is the history behind the situation at the start of the main story. In Fences, Troy recalls his past relationship with his father after Bono says he never got to know his. Troy speaks of his father negatively by saying, “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. He ain’t care nothing bout no kids. The only thing my daddy care about was getting them bales of cotton into Mr. Lubin.” Troy only experienced half the role his father should have taken as a parent. He only received the need-based side and not the emotional side, in which his father would shown Troy love and concern. As a result, Troy left his father’s home at the age of fourteen after a physical altercation with him and lived homelessly. He ended up impregnating a woman and giving birth to his first son, Lyons. To provide for his new family Troy starts stealing, which results in him being locked up for fifteen years. This leads to Troy not having a true relationship with Lyons and not having a true sense of manhood. If Troy really had a sense of true manhood, he would have decided to provide for his family legally. Troy’s actions lead him to becoming a flawed character and the cycle repeating itself.

Troy’s relationship with his son Lyons isn’t ideal. Troy wasn’t around to watch Lyons grow up and teach him about manhood. As a result, Lyons comes continuously to Troy for financial stability. This action should only be done when the son is still a boy, not a full-grown man. This gives Lyons the sense that manhood is going to your father to solve financial problems. In one incident, Troy tries to refuse Lyons’ request for ten dollars. After Troy questions Lyons’ lifestyle and how he was raised, Lyons responds defensively by saying to Troy, “You can’t change me Pop. I’m thirty-four years old. If you wanted to change me, you should have been there when I was growing up.” Troy has caused this reaction from Lyons simply because he didn’t teach Lyons about manhood and responsibility, even though responsibility is one lesson Troy managed to pick up from his father. Now Troy is left supporting Lyons financially. Troy also fails in his relationship with Lyons when he doesn’t support Lyons aspirations to be a musician. When Lyons invites Troy to see him play at the Grill, Troy says no. Bono even tries to encourage Troy to go by saying, “You got to be good to play down at the Grill.” Bono wants to imply that Lyons is a good musician and Troy won’t have wasted his time if he went. By Troy not going to see Lyons play, Lyons descends into a downward spiral at the end of the play and another reason is noted why the cycle continues.

Even though Troy has more of a relationship with Cory, the relationship still fails. At the center of their conflict is that Cory wants to play football after being recruited and Troy doesn’t want him to. Troy tries to stop Cory from playing by telling Cory’s coach that Cory can no longer play football, which causes the coach to tell the recruiter for Cory not to come. The reason for Troy’s action is the failure Troy experienced when trying to pursue baseball. Troy doesn’t believe that blacks can be successful in professional sports because he came up during times of segregation. On the topic of coloreds succeeding in sports, Troy says to Cory, “The colored guy got to be twice as good before he get on the team. That’s why I don’t want you to get all tied up in them sports. They got the colored on the teams and don’t use them.” Although Troy has good intentions, he puts his relationship with Cory one step backwards by not supporting him. Troy can’t come to grasp that times have changed for coloreds, even with everyone naming various successful colored players. The relationship takes another step in the wrong direction when Troy tells Cory he doesn’t have to like him to be his father, just provide for him. Once Cory questions this, Troy responds with, “It’s my job. It’s my responsibility! Cause it’s my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you!” Troy doesn’t realize there is more than just providing for your children, but also loving, caring, and even liking them involved. He fails to realize this because his father also failed to realize it when it came to his children. All of this conflict leads to Troy and Cory’s physical altercation. By the middle of the play, Cory is fed up with Troy’s ways and that he cheated on his mother. Cory decides to confront Troy, resulting in shoving, hitting and use of a bat. Troy then kicks Cory out of the house and their relationship ends the same way as Troy’s did with his own father.

The cycle that Wilson introduces in the play cannot be broken. The characters succumb to it continuously. It starts with Troy’s father failing Troy and then Troy failing with Lyons and Cory. It continues as Lyons and Cory repeat Troy’s lifestyle after his death. Lyons has lost his woman, Bonnie, which is revealed to the reader when he says, “Me and Bonnie been spilt up about four years now.” The split is caused by Lyons thinking that he was slick cashing other people’s checks and being locked up for three years. Lyons mirrors Troy’s life because Troy had lost Lyons’ mother when he stole to provide for her and landed in jail. Cory tries to break the cycle by trying to break away from Troy’s shadow. He wants to do this by not attending Troy’s funeral. Rose tells Cory, “That shadow wasn’t nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that’s all you got to make life with. That’s all you got to measure yourself against that world out there. Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t…and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was.” Rose is telling Cory that he can live like this shadow, his father, or make it to fit into whom he really is. The reader is left wondering which path Cory chooses, but given insight when Cory chooses to go to Troy’s funeral. Cory is still going to live part of his father’s life, but not all of it; making parts of it unique to himself.

Father-son relationships are analyzed throughout the play Fences. In the play, these relationships fail to succeed because they always fall to conflict. The reason for the break down is lack of communication. Not a single character attempts to fully understand another but instead always questions their actions, such as Rose did with Troy’s when speaking with Cory. She states, “I don’t know if he was right or wrong…but I do know he meant more good than he meant harm. He wasn’t always right.” Troy wanted the best for his children, even if his methods were unconventional. Lyons and Cory still managed to learn from Troy. So maybe there is one definition for all father-son relationships and that is ultimately that the son learns something from his father.

Fences Resource Bank

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Favorite Blog Homework

My favorite blog homework was posting a response to what you thought Mario Llosa's most compelling argument was in the article "Why Literature?"

I view this as my favorite blog homework because I really enjoyed reading the article. In class we had just learned about annotation and was assigned this article to annotate. At first I wasn't excited, but as I read the article, I got more and more intersted. Llosa presented many compelling claims that really got me thinking about literature and it's importance to the world's society functioning. The one claim that stood out most is the one I posted about(below) and it was about a comment Bill Gates made. Read it to find out more.

I posted:

"Mario Llosa's most compelling argument is that he would have booed Bill Gates for wanting to abolish paper and books and that computer screens would replace them. I would have booed Gates right along with Llosa. Reading a factual book on a computer is better, but not when reading a fictional book. I say that you can't curl up and enjoy a book on a computer screen like you can curl up with a printed book and get lost in its universe!"

"Sestina" Poetry Paper

How could you possibly understand a poem named “Sestina”, just by reading the title? You may assume it’s just a quirky poem about how to write a sestina or just think it’s another language. However, as you read, you discover that the title has nothing to do with the poem’s meaning. So how could you possibly understand this poem? The fact is that; Elizabeth Bishop uses setting, diction, and figurative language to convey the tone and theme of “Sestina”.

The setting of the outside is often mirrored on the inside. This relation to each other is displayed at the start of the poem where it says, “September rain falls on the house. In failing light, the old grandmother sits in the kitchen….” Outside the house rain falls, and inside the house there is a failing light. The “September rain” makes the outside dark and gloomy, just as the “failing light” makes the inside dark and sad. In the second stanza the lines, “her equinoctial tears and the rain that beats on the roof of the house…” shows another mirroring. The rain outside is reflected as the tears from the grandmother inside. One last display of this mirroring is present in the third stanza. “ The teakettle’s small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house.” Both inside and outside, the rain, which is mirrored by the tears of the teakettle, are dancing. The marriage of the two environments is an overall backdrop to the poem.

Bishop uses diction to communicate to the readers’ senses. “The kettle sings on the stove,” is usage of sensually vivid diction. The usage of the word “sings” appeals to sound in the poem. It adds a musical sound in the backdrop that makes the kitchen lively. “Tears” is a word used repeatedly throughout the poem. The use appeals emotionally to the reader. “Talking to hide her tears,” in the sixth line, “teacup full of dark brown tears,” in line 22 and “man with buttons like tears,” in line 29 are examples of the use of emotional diction to communicate a continuous mood of sadness throughout the poem. In the last line of the poem the word “inscrutable” is used. The word leaves the reader thinking, causing it to appeal intellectually. The reader is unknowing of how the lives of the grandmother and child continue.

Figurative language is the most significant element of poetry used. Bishop’s use of personification ultimately helps the reader understand the underlying theme. In stanza five she brings the stove and almanac to life. “It was to be,” says the Marvel Stove. “I know what I know,” says the almanac. An almanac offers knowledge on weather history, long-range forecasts, sunrises, sunsets, full moons, lunar phases and etc. The stove and almanac know something that the grandmother and child don’t. The almanac was hung to hover over the room. This unknowing factor of what is missing will gloom or hover over the grandmother and the child. “It’s time to plant tears,” says the almanac in the last stanza. Planting an item represents growth. This is the growth that will come to the grandmother over time through all of her grief. Personification is present once more in stanza 3, line 16, which reads, “The way the rain must dance on the house.” The dancing rain is moving or beating against this house of grief. The rain in this case symbolizes the restoration that shall move about or beat against the house. The restoration would be restoring the mood of the house back to its former state.

Without recognizing the setting, diction and figurative language present in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina”, it would be hard to understand the meaning and tone of the poem. With them the reader recognizes that the tone can be grief, gloomy, or somber. The powerful meaning discovered is that through all the grief and sadness that you may experience from a death, there is still is sense of restoration and a glimmer of growth. One last question is; Why would the poet named such a powerful poem only after its poetic form?