2007. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

Soldiers come back to the United States every day from Afghanistan with scars, both mental and physical.  Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises must deal with both the physical handicap his service has left him with in addition to exceeding feelings of hopelessness, each preventing him from being with the woman he loves, Brett.  Jake lives in the past, before his time in the army, and is unable to move forward.  Hemingway argues through use of detail, language and diction that war holds us back from progress.

                Hemingway begins by creating an air of uselessness surrounding everything in his work.  He is particularly famous for his language in conveying a sense of hopelessness.  The dialogue between Hemingway’s characters, especially in this novel, is very basic, and very ambiguous.  It sometimes appears as if Jake and Brett are talking about nothing at all.  They go around in circles, talking about what appear to be the most mundane and ordinary topics.  This creates a feeling for the reader that nothing matters.  Details or, more specifically, lack of details contribute to this established feeling.  Though we know Jake cannot be with the woman he loves, we are never actually told exactly what his injury is.  This is because Hemingway never tells us.  This deliberate vagueness is essential in adding to the illusion of uselessness.  It once again makes the reader think nothing matters.  Lacking details and specific language confuse and upset the reader.   

                Once the reader is convinced nothing has meaning, Hemingway swoops in to create some, using the specific event that ruined his characters’ lives: war.  All of Jake’s problems trace back to the battles he was a part of.  After drawing a connection between the hopeless feelings and war, Hemingway can easily claim war is bad.  The reader already feels incredible pity of Jake and his friends.  Once a cause is given to the terrible situations the characters live in, the reader has no problem despising it.  Hemingway convincingly makes the reader believe that war is wrong.

‘Hollywood on Wall Street”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/bruni-occupy-wall-street-and-hollywood.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Nobody wants to think of his or herself as a “bad person”.  In particular, those in the public eye tend to make an extra effort to appear “good”.  Frank Bruni discusses celebrities visiting the Occupy Walls Street protests in his article “Hollywood on Wall Street”, suggesting that these people are hurting the movement with their good, rather than helping it.  Using diction and details, Bruni sets the rich and famous apart from the protesters, and then creates the aforementioned meaning using the idea of difference combined with syntax.

                The Occupy Wall Street protesters think of themselves as the 99 percent of the country, so Bruni does everything in his power to place celebrities in the other I percent.  Words such as “lavishly” and “extravagantly” help to convey the idea that celebrities have a lot of money.  These words give the idea not only of extensive wealth, but of excessive wealth.  Bruni creates the effect in the readers’ minds that these people have much more than they actually need.  This is a sharp contrast to the protesters, who base their arguments on a lack of control of money.  Details further isolate people like Kanye West, who made “$16 million or so last year”.  Bruni includes how much money each of the famous people he mentions make, looking very different from the well under $100,000 a year most Americans make.  These techniques force the reader to see the celebrities not as one-of-the-many, but as the hated 1 percent.

                Having established the difference of celebrities, Bruni goes on to couple this with strong statements, making the reader realize the true outcome of celebrities visiting the protests.  After describing the celebrity endorsement of a company that manufactures in China, Bruni asks “How does that serve the jobs-hungry young Americans in Occupy Wall Street’s fold?”  This question has punch, and makes the reader think.  These celebrities are role models.  If, for example, Jennifer Lopez, tells us to buy a certain brand, we probably will.  In this way, she, and people like her, are actually hurting the movement, since it supports an outside company. 

                Celebrities are not like us.  They get up every day and make movies.  They have paparazzi following them around wherever they go.  They have a lot of money.  Bruni does his best to establish this fact in his article.  Given this incredible difference, we see that by attending protests, though genuinely attempting to help, celebrities are doing the opposite.   Bruni leaves the readers thinking that their heroes are, unintentionally, cheapening the plight of the American people.

     In the past few weeks we have done a lot of close reading, particularly with regard to The American Dream.  I find it really interesting to go back and reread the play, because there are so many things that I missed the first time around.  Sometimes, things are brought up in class that I know there was no way in a million years I would have seen originally.  Focusing so much on this play will help me when I read others, along with novels and poetry, in the future.  For example, it was pointed out in class that Albee does not use a lot of stage directions, so the ones that he does add in must be very important.  Stage directions (or lack thereof) were never really something I noticed when reading plays.  Now, I can notice whether or not a playwright puts stage directions in, where he does so, and most importantly, why.  This applies to all the things we noticed while close reading.

 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.

The world relies on farmers to provide nutrition for our people and materials for anything from clothes to cigarettes.  In the novel O Pioneers!, Alexandra Bergson, the protagonist, feels a connection to the frontier land she calls her home.  Willa Cather, the author, uses this connection to comment on Alexandra and, eventually, on marriage.

Willa Cather uses literary technique to establish a strong link between her main character and the country setting.  This is done partly through skillful use of diction.  Though the same exact words are not used to describe the woman and her land, Cather chooses words with similar connotations.  These words give the reader a sense of stability and strength, while remaining quiet and calm, all with a positive tone. Imagery is used in a similar fashion.  Cather paints a picture in her readers’ minds of rolling hills and trees waving gracefully in the breeze.  However, imagery further serves to make sure the reader knows the land is not weak.  It can be threatening when mistreated.  Cather shows through vivid description that the land, if it chooses, can wipe out an entire population by refusing to yield crops or giving a particularly harsh winter.  Alexandra is painted in the same way.  She is tall and serene, but will not stand for being crossed. 

The undeniable connection between Alexandra and the land serves as a commentary on all people.  Since the land and Alexandra have been connected in the reader’s mind, any way Cather describes the land or makes it act is automatically translated to Alexandra.  Since Cather thinks of the land and Alexandra well, naturally choices that this character makes are portrayed well. Alexandra chooses self-sufficiency.  She never marries, instead continuing to farm the land and expand her holdings.  Since we as readers like Alexandra, we see this as the right decision.

As Alexandra progresses through life, we see her encountering success, furthering our confirmation that the single, isolated life, living off the land, is the correct choice.  Around Alexandra, husbands and wives struggle, even resulting in the death of Emil, Alexandra’s beloved little brother.  Yet Alexandra, and her beloved country, stand strong.    Cather uses the country setting to show that marriage is not the fairy tale we are told as children.  Self-sufficiency through cultivation of the elegant and sturdy land or some more modern alternative is a much safer, and better, choice.

Protesters Against Wall Street

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/protesters-against-wall-street.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

                No matter where political loyalties lie, most Americans tend to get rather fired up during discussion of government.  This emotion can often prevent the speaker from making an effective point: he is too close to the subject.  This is not a problem for the author of “Protesters Against Wall Street”.  In this article, details are used to convey an authoritative yet calm tone.  The tone combines with use of diction and syntax to create a feeling that there is a need for change in the mind of the readers.

                The tone of the article makes the readers believe the author knows what he is talking about.  Details are extremely helpful in accomplishing this.  The author provides statistics such as “The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year…”  and “Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s”.  These numbers support the author’s position on a content level.  They say that the situation is pretty bad and must be fixed.  However, more importantly, they establish a sense that the author is intelligent and well researched.  The audience really has no idea where these numbers come from.  However, the simple fact that they are present helps us to place our confidence with the author. 

                The established tone works in conjunction with various other techniques to create an overall belief in the need for governmental change.  Diction gives the author’s message punch.  He selects words such as “Extreme”, “dysfunctional”, and “suffer”.  These words all carry a powerfully negative connotation, giving the piece the overall air of disapproval.  The reader is swept along with these words, subconsciously goaded into agreeing.  Simply reading a word such as “toxic” sends a person into alert mode.  Syntax has a similar effect.  Relatively short sentences like “It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation” add power to the author’s words.  Since the reader already trusts the author based on the previously established tone, there is no disagreement:  the government is not doing its job properly.

                There is no question that the author of this article is convincing.  The question is, why?  Without thinking about it, after only on reading of the passage, we trust and agree with the author. This is due to a combination of several techniques on two levels.  First, details work to convey an intelligent and confidence-inspiring tone.  Then, the tone combines with diction and syntax to make the reader believe in the author’s message:  it is time for change. 

10/9/11
In the past few weeks, we have learned a lot about comedy.  In particular, one of the prompts we practiced writing with made us contemplate the concept of "thoughtful laughter".  This made me wonder what exactly it is that makes us laugh at anything.  Sure, there is the obvious "we laugh because something is funny".  But there are many different types of funny.  For example, Albee's The American Dream is so funny because it so absurd.  We find it ridiculous, because we laugh.  Now I am much more conscious about WHY I laugh when I do.  Additionally, we have done a lot more practice writing recently.  When we learned about how to write an essay, it didn't seem so difficult.  However, now that we are forced to actually write open prompts, they become much more difficult.  I do think this will make me become a better writer though, as learning by doing is one of the best ways to learn.  From this practice, my writing will improve not only in AP Literaturem but in my other classes as well. 

 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.

Today, living in a world of screenshots and photographs, people often lack appreciation for the significance of a simple portrait.  In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a portrait is central to the story, arguably as important as any of the characters. Though inanimate, the title object serves to remind Dorian Gray of his moral decay as well as ultimately destroy him, two separate but interconnected purposes.  These purposes combine to convey Wilde’s message about the dangers of beauty.

                Throughout the novel, the painting acts almost as a portal to another world, a portal of truth.  In the world in which Dorian and his acquaintances live, everything appears fine.  Dorian is a young, handsome man, living life and making the most of it.  He attends fancy parties, falls in love, and has good friends.  However, through Wilde’s use of imagery, the painting allows us to peel back the shiny exterior of Dorian’s life and see what lies beneath.  Really, Dorian’s “soul grows sick”.  Though he stays beautiful, his moral wrongs manifest themselves in the painting.  It grows old and hideous.  Wilde uses vivid description to make even the most sturdy of readers shudder just thinking about the twisted lips and fiery eyes of Dorian’s portrait. 

                Even Dorian is unnerved by his painting, allowing it to lead to his downfall.  At first, the young Mr. Gray hides his painting away.  However, as time passes and Dorian grows more and more evil, he begins to delight in the painting.  The physical manifestation of his evil is something only a truly corrupt person can enjoy, signaling to the readers that the innocent Dorian Gray they once knew is gone.  Finally, remembering the horror it had once caused him, Dorian decides not to let a silly painting control his life any longer.  Why had he not destroyed it years ago?    Wilde here uses diction, selecting words that give the final scene a truly ominous feeling.  As Gray plunges a knife through the painting, the evil flows back into him.  The Dorian Gray everyone knew is gone, replaced by an old, mangled man, dead on the floor. 

                The portrait of Dorian Gray serves the two main purposes listed above, to document evil and to kill it.  However, these two meanings are not independent of each other.  Dorian’s life is ended by the painting because it so accurately portrayed his immorality.  In it he saw his evil, and trying to eliminate any evidence of it, Dorian destroyed it.  However, the painting was that evil.  In destroying it, he destroyed himself. Dorian Gray, though beautiful on the outside, was far from it beneath the surface.  Wilde, through these purposes created by diction and imagery, is saying that beauty really is only skin deep.