Blog Post #4: "The Known World" Prose Essay- A Reflection

“When he, Moses, finally freed himself of the ancient and brittle harness . . . all that was left of the sun was a five-inch-long memory of red orange . . .” In the novel The Known World by Edward P. Jones, the author records the evening of a slave names Moses and through his description, reveals his inner character. Utilizing an omniscient third person point of view, specific details, and natural imagery, Jones creates the identity of someone whose sense of being is tied to the earth that he works on.

The first detail the readers learn about Moses is that “he worked . . . well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them . . .” Moses is portrayed as a lone soul who is not necessarily lonely; details such as his own wife and “his son among them” leaving the field ahead of him accentuates his solitude. The third person narrator furthers this effect of distance, the audience having to meet Moses from afar rather than an up-close first person account. Along with the continual reminder of his solitude are vivid descriptions of his surroundings, of nature. The sunset is described as “a five-inch-long memory of red orange laid out in still waves across the horizon.” These create the world of which Moses is so intimately connected to. This connection is essentially revealed in the following action: as Moses is working in his field, he takes “a pinch of the soil” and eats it, “not only to discover the strengths and weakness of the field, but because the eating of it tied him to the only thing in his small world that meant almost as much as his own life.” That the earth means so much to him that he feels the need to ingest it, to physically make it a part of him, is significant in the way that, although he is already legally tied to the land since he is a slave bound to work on it, he completely embraces this identity. And in doing so, he has found his own freedom in it-- the freedom to be with and do what he loves. 

This theme of tight kinship with the land continues as the narrator describes the taste of the land, being of a "metallic life," which will soon be replaced by "a sour moldiness" that signaled the "coming of fall and winter, the end of a relationship he had begun with the first taste of dirt back in March." Once again, he is faced with the option to return home and yet, "for the third time that week," he turns away from "home and food and rest." To emphasize what calls to him the most, where he feels most at home, the narrator narrates how "he turned his head slightly to the right and made out what he thought was the sound of playing children, but when he turned his head back, he could hear far more clearly the last bird of the day as it evening-chirped in the small forest far off to the left." The irony at the end is that "when he was an old man and rheumatism chained up his body, he would look back and blame the chains on evenings such as these and on nights when he lost himself completely . . ." Though he had gained his freedom through acceptance of circumstances, they were still chains nonetheless.

This is the aftermath of my second practice prose essay. It was . . . not exactly satisfactory. I'm definitely not where I want to be. As compared to my first essay, I don't think I improved by much. Again, time was my enemy. I did not finish my essay, though I did get further than last time. I felt like I needed more time to process the prose passage and to think through my argument than I should be. One of my goals was to practice analyzing passages so I could become faster and more proficient at it. This way more of my time could be devoted to the crafting of my writing. I kept thinking my thesis had to have complexity right at the beginning; however, when we were norming the essays in class for this same piece, a lot of the higher scoring essays developed their complexity throughout the piece. I always seem to get hung up on the first paragraph because I've been told that it's very important to have a strong introduction, but it's equally, if not more important, to have a strong body building that argument up.

I tried the organization method that I mentioned in my last prose essay reflection- the one where it follows the piece chronologically. I am not sure I used that method correctly. Looking back, I realize that I placed too much emphasis on identifying and examining the literary elements than I did on the deeper meaning of the piece: the development of Moses's character. I began the piece with quite surface level analysis. And though I did delve deeper into the piece, I was still describing one facet of his character, though an important one albeit. I'm not sure that would have earned me a high enough score. And because I was busy analyzing literary elements, I spent more time writing about the beginning of the piece than I did of the end. This was because I would bring up an example of one literary element, explain its significance, then have to move on to the next chronological literary element, explain its significance, when it would have been better to focus on one specific part of the piece and explain how it contributed to Moses's character and used the analysis  of literary elements to support that explanation. That would have made my writing make a lot more sense and having a structure like that would have facilitated my writing and hopefully I would have finished my essay in time.

I would give this essay a 5/6 score because I think I quoted too much from the passage and I didn't have enough of my own analysis. I did however touch on the complexity of the prose and deliver specific text evidence and have a thesis statement that made an argument.

Blog Post #3: "The Flowers" Prose Essay- A Reflection

"It seemed to Myop. . . that the days had never been as beautiful as these." So begins the "The Flowers" by Alice Walker, a short story that starts off light-heartedly enough, but through Walker's masterful use of connotative imagery and diction, as well as a suspenseful narrative pace, takes quite a dark, sinister turn. Walker is able to convey through her story the loss of innocence and naivety in a young child. 

Walker first creates an aura of a lovely autumn morning through her imagery. Myop, the little girl who is the protagonist, is found "skipp[ing] lightly" through her day, which is described as a "golden surprise," "light and good in the warm sun." As she wanders farther and farther form home, the imagery and setting began to take a more ominous appearance. Having to keep "an eye out for snakes" while confronting "strange blue flowers" and the "strangeness of the land itself, Myop starts to feel the day become "gloomy," "damp," "the silence close and deep." These all foreshadow the following events to come, the inevitable doom of a peaceful morning.

Walker also sets the pace for her short story to match the events that are unfolding. In the beginning, the sentences are longer, more complex to set a slow, relaxed mood. "She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment." As the day slides gradually by, suddenly it is punctuated by the one-sentence sixth paragraph. After this dramatic turning point, the syntax becomes shorter, more abrupt, to mirror the disrupting of peace and ultimately of the innocence of childhood. The dead man that Myop stumbles upon is described as this: "He had been tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him."  

Ah, my performance on this prose essay was pretty depressing. It's funny since analysis essays on the AP Language and Composition Exam were my favorite to write. I actually enjoyed taking apart a piece of writing and examining its components for its hidden meaning. And I thought I was decent at it. Obviously I am very out of practice.

My number one enemy was the time limit. I was completely thrown off guard by it. Judging how much time I needed to read the passage throughly, to plan and outline my essay, to actually write the essay-- all these things were jumbled up in my head as I started the assignment. I found myself floundering in deciding how I should actually begin the essay. Well, one strength, if you can even call it that, is I knew what was expected of me, meaning I knew what the prompt entailed of me. I knew I had to find specific examples of literary techniques and connect them to how they create the meaning behind the story and how they prepared the reader for the ending. And I didn't have much trouble finding them in the passage either. But I had no clue on how I should organize my essay, how I should put everything together. And this led to time running out on me since I didn't have a clear plan.

Usually I organize my essay to correspond with the chronology of the actual passage; I analyze the story from beginning to end. This gives it a cohesiveness and flow. However, this time it was like everything I knew before flew out the window. I even had a lot of trouble determining the meaning behind the story, which looking back, was actually quite obvious. I'm not sure why I found it so difficult, especially since the meaning behind the short story was a pattern in literature that has been found over and over again. I guess I was overthinking it and I had thought to myself, "That can't be it. It's too simple!"

In class, during our discussion over this, we were able to analyze the text much more comprehensively and profoundly. I really need to challenge myself to think more deeply over the prose, since I believe my analysis was relatively shallow compared to what we did in class. The themes of flowers, of seasons, of time, that we picked out of the story, I had missed. I've never been very good at analyzing symbols; I've always been more of the small details person-- diction, imagery, figurative language, those kinds of things. I need to be more proficient at the big picture analysis too. Also, being able to identify those in such a short time period, I need to be better at that too. But more than anything, I need to organize my thoughts. The essay I have written above is so sporadic. My examples jump all over the text. If my essay is to score any points, I need to write with a much more elegant and thoughtful structure.

My three goals this time are:
1. Get comfortable with the time limit. To do this, I will review, apply, and then adjust to my own personal liking the time suggestions in Chapter 5. And once I have my pattern down, I will be more efficient at tackling the prose essay. I will have to practice writing more essays under strict time limits. The sample prompts in 5 Steps to a 5 I will use to practice with.
2. Read and analyze prose pieces. Using examples from the textbook, I will practice reading, identifying the meaning, and determining the writer's craft used to create the meaning of short prose passages. This will make it feel more natural on the real thing. I will practice this every other week.
3. Look up and learn more ways to organize analysis essays. I can do this by not only reading up on papers that we got on this topic from AP Language and Composition, but also reading sample essays, especially the high-scoring ones. This way I can make sure that I am matching the depth of my content with the level of my writing. Reading sample prose essays would be extremely helpful in giving me ideas of how to write my own essays and in setting a standard for which I can compare the progress in my own writing.

Blog Post #2: Practice Multiple Choice Exam- A Reflection

After taking the Practice AP Literature Multiple Choice Exam in class and evaluating my performance on it, I have realized that there is a lot I have to improve on before the AP Exam in May. But first, I will assess my strengths in literary analysis. Most of these come from taking the AP Language and Composition class and exam last year, which has a similar test format. Consequently, I am stronger in prose analysis than poetry analysis, as prose was the primary type of passages we studied. Also, I am slightly more familiar with literary terms, such as alliteration or foreshadowing, than the average English student, though I do need a bit of refreshing. In AP Language and Composition, I was drilled to always search for and then keep in mind the purpose of the piece while I was reading. This skill helped me answer several of the multiple choice questions correctly. I am also quite good at reading and retaining the information of passages at a decent rapid pace, which is necessary to fulfill the strict time limit on these tests. All the basic skills that are needed to take an AP multiple choice skills I have a basic mastery of; these include focus, timing, process of elimination, the educated guess.

This leaves me with the elements of the AP Exam specific to AP English Literature that I am not familiar with or am anywhere close to mastering yet. My weaknesses were revealed to me one by one with each question I missed on the practice exam. First, even though I mentioned keeping the purpose in mind was one of my skills, I sometimes still lose this mindset when I am reading complex passages, especially if the questions ask of me specific details or lines of the passage. It is always important to keep in mind the big picture when answering inferential questions and not be muddled by particulars. Secondly, I need more practice with analyzing passages of poetry. Even though they seem to be easier to read, and take less time to read, the fact is poems need to be read with even more cautiousness than prose. The language used in poetry is much more intricate and each line has a complex meaning and purpose behind it. This requires a metaphorical way of thinking, which I found myself lacking while answering questions. Thirdly, I also had some trouble answering the "except" questions on the test. I would often be stuck between two answers, so I need to work on my elimination skills.

Now to construct a magnificent plan of improvement. I think the best way for me to improve is to take more practice exams just to get used to analyzing and interpreting passages correctly in such a short time period. Also, I want to bring these methods that I use to break down multiple choice passages into my classroom reading. Along with that, I will aim to ask of the literature we study in class the same types of questions that are asked on the AP exam so I will be familiar with the way of thinking the test-writers want me to have in order to do well. Furthermore, I will pay particular attention to analyzing poetry passages as I have not as much experience with them as I do with prose. In 5 Steps to a 5, there was a list of eminent poets that may show up on the AP Exam, so before May I will be sure to take a look at some of their poems as preparation. Another thing I have planned is I need to either review literary terms I already know or learn new literary terms that I don't know already; and not only that but be able to apply them to actual pieces of literature. On one question particularly, #47, it asked of me what meter the poem was in and I, who did not know anything about such a topic, was bewildered. So terms like that I need to learn what they are and how to use them.

The key to achieving what you want is to set good goals. My goals for this year are:
1. Practice the AP English Literature Multiple Choice exam. And by practice I mean taking practice exams and reading passages that would appear on the AP Multiple Choice exam and answering questions that would appear on the AP Multiple Choice exam. If I do this often enough with a wide a variety of passages and questions, this will be very good preparation. I plan to do one passage and its corresponding questions per week until spring, which is when I would practice full exams more often, timing myself of course.
2. Learn the literary terms I need to be successful on the exam. I assume we will learn these in class as the year goes on, but if I do encounter terms which I do not know or need a review on, I will be sure to look those up and keep track of them so I will be prepared next time it shows up in a question. Having a good grasp on the language of the test is key to achieving a good score on the test.
3. Take the skills I learned from taking the Multiple Choice exam into the classroom. The capabilities of comprehension and extension need for the multiple choice exam can be used in studying literature outside of the exam. Doing this regularly will not only help me analyze texts in class, but help develop these skills so I will be even more ready to take the AP exam. These skills include: going beyond the literal and finding the deeper meaning, keeping in mind the author's purpose and determine how the author develops it, reading carefully and closely to get a full understanding, etc.

Sources: http://topachievement.com/smart.html
5 Steps to a 5 AP English Literature
AP Literature and Composition textbook

Blog Post #1: My Design

The design for my blog was carefully chosen to set a tranquil, peaceful, yet professional mood for readers. I believe it is with this setting that people can be most intellectually productive and effective. To accomplish this goal I selected cool-toned colors, using a bolder dose of blue with tints of green blended in. Blue and green are both known to promote "calmness and serenity" as I wanted readers to focus on the text on the screen and not be distracted by other things. Blue, however, was also a color that bordered on aloofness, even a coldness, so I preferred a shade of blue that also hinted of green to warm up the tone, since I wanted my blog to be inviting to other readers. The title of my blog is white in order to contrast strongly with the background colors, which is also why the body text is black. This just facilitates easier reading and comprehension.

The font for the title of my blog is "Arial" which was chosen for its minimalist and modernist qualities. It's simplicity is refreshing, contributing to the soothing effect I wanted my blog to have, and it is easy to read, eye-catching in a subtle manner. It also gives off a very polished effect, as I want people to take my blog seriously. The font for the page text is "Georgia" which I chose partly for its more traditional mood to contrast with the title font, as I want each entity to stand out in its own way. "Georgia" is also quite effortless to read and still business-like, just traditional enough to give it a formal air but modern enough to avoid being out-of-style. I want the font to not distract from the content of my blog, allowing people to really take in my words, but also add a little style and class to my blog to make it visually appealing.

Sources: http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/color_green.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/color_blue.htm
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/02/19/establish-a-mood-with-typography/