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.
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.
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