Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Blog Post #8: Life of Pi- Creative Project
Text: Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Essence: Imagination and storytelling is essential in the struggle of survival.
Brief Summary of Text: The novel begins when the author encounters the story of Piscine Molitor Patel on a trip to India. Piscine himself then relays the story of how he as a young boy, self named Pi, grew up in a zoo with his family in Pondicherry, India. Extraordinarily, he adopts three religions, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam, all at the same time. When he is sixteen, his father decides to move the family to Canada and on a ship crossing the Pacific, they travel with the zoo animals they are selling. A storm and an unidentified malfunction causes the ship to sink with the only survivors to be Pi, a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, all clinging to survival on the same lifeboat. The story follows the adventures and perils of Pi as he struggles to survive on the terrain of an seemingly endless blue ocean and as he confronts the problem of coexistence with Richard Parker. Eventually, after 227 days of wandering, he finds land and while being interrogated about the sinking of the ship, reveals a more realistic chain of events with the animals replaced by human beings.
Prompt: 2011B. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), novelist Edith Wharton states the following:
At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.
Choose a novel or play that you have studied and write a well-organized essay in which you describe an "illuminating" episode or moment and explain how it functions as a "casement," a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.
Thesis: In Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the final scene where Pi Patel retells his story but replaces the animals present on the lifeboat with human survivors illuminates the conflict between factual truth and figurative truth. This clash exhibits the essentiality of imagination and storytelling in the struggle of survival.
Iceberg View of Culture: Rituals in the book that Pi follows help keep his sanity and give him great comfort. These include the religious routines and the daily schedules he made for himself to "keep [himself] busy" (190). The shallow and deep culture behind this include the definitions of insanity, patterns of handling emotions, and concept of "self". In Pi's self-created culture at sea, he associates insanity with lack of habits, of structure. He connects to his identity through the practice of prayer to avoid getting spiritually lost in the strange, sometimes sinister, situations he is thrust in. He also keeps his emotions in order by constantly using rituals as a way to mold what is abstract or ambiguous into a shape he is able to accept and comprehend. Though despair was often looming in the horizon as a "heavy blackness that let no light in or out", the darkness would be chased away and "God would remain, a shining point of light" and Pi "would go on loving" (209). This allows him to continue to believe in the metaphysical nature of his story.
Food is also a aspect of culture found in the book. Under the surface, food represents rules of conduct, relationships to animals, notions of leadership, and concept of "self". Compared to his former life in Pondicherry where Pi is a vegetarian and never has to worry about sustaining himself, everyday on the sea is a fight for food and water. Eventually Pi loses part of his innocence and humanity due to his effort to stay alive. He goes from weeping "heartily" over the "poor little deceased soul" of a fish to a violent hunter always in search of the next meal (184). Pi also uses food as a way to tame Richard Parker, to show who has the power in the situation, symbolizing his control over his savage, animalistic side.The difficulties food presents to Pi burden him with weight of realism as he strives to hold on to his idealistic story.
Creative Project and Explanation: An illustration depicting two eyes, one right and one left. The iris of each eye is filled with a scene showing one perspective of Pi's voyage.
In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the meaning of Pi's remarkable journey was to convey the magic and wonder but also the vital necessity of imagination and storytelling in the struggle to survive. Faced with the harsh reality of having to survive alone on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, Pi turned to his resplendent imagination to weave for himself a story of non-literal truth. The major story element of having to cope with living with a tiger is revealed to be an alter-ego Pi created for his savage, animalistic personality that surfaced due to the extreme conditions he was thrust in. By bending reality and being able to tell the "better story", Pi is able to survive 227 days as the last human survivor on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific. The drawing of the two eyes embodies this message of dual truths, one factual and the other figurative. While one eye illustrates the amazement and joy Pi felt when he lifted himself out of his suffering through his storytelling skills to appreciate his awe-inspiring surroundings, the other shows the crude, hopeless reality of his existence and his descent into a primeval state in his fight for survival.
In the iris of the right eye, the marvel of a perfect day at sea for Pi is shown. Throughout the novel, Pi often describes these moments of wonderment and beauty in great detail, letting his imagination take him away as he loses himself in the scenery and not the hardships of the ocean. "[T]he sea is a city," Pi observes as he describes himself gazing down on "what Tokyo must look like at rush hour" (176). Not only does the mass explosion of life underwater take Pi's breath away, but also the magnificence of the sky. Musing that the stars shone so bright "it seemed absurd to call the night dark", Pi imagines falling out of Vishnu's mouth to behold the entire universe (177). The idealistic image of Pi and Richard Parker peacefully together in the lifeboat represents Pi's dual natures coexisting and cooperating together for his spiritual and physical survival, but also the distinct separation between the two characters. Pi refuses to acknowledge that his identity and Richard Parker's are one and the same. To make this contrast clear, he thoughtfully notes how Richard Parker's "brute strength meant only moral weakness" and compared to the strength in Pi's mind, "it was nothing" (122). Furthermore, the quixotic merging of the two skies reflects this perfect juxtaposition of Pi's two selves.
In the iris of the left eye, the flawless ocean scene is thrown into turmoil. The bitter reality is that life in Pi's lifeboat was awful. "Everything suffered," Pi lamented (238). The ocean below and the sky above were constantly his enemies, threatening to take away not only his life but also his spirit. "I felt even my soul had been corroded by salt," Pi admits, the physical suffering manifesting itself in his mental suffering (268). The foreboding sea and menacing sky surrounding Pi show how Pi was often confronted with this despair. The futility of being a castaway, of being "a point perpetually at the center of a circle", would be grasped by him over and over again (215). The other cruel truth is that there is no Richard Parker the tiger to keep Pi company, to help keep separate the two conflicting natures of Pi. Throughout the book, Pi struggles with maintaining his hold on his humanity and essentially his identity. "Something in me died then that has never come back to life," Pi quietly grieves after his devastating encounter with the Frenchman (255). "It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing," Pi says to explain the rapidity with which he became a ruthless hunter (185). The image of the tiger hovering above Pi demonstrates how the inner violent, savage nature of Pi has come out. The only way that this truth did not destroy Pi was because of his ability to tell the "better story".
The symmetry of the two eyes shows how one needs to be able to see through both frames of thinking in order to survive. While most people would emphasize the rational, reasoning view concerned with only "dry, yeast-less factuality", Yann Martel argues through Life of Pi that the imaginative, storytelling side is equally if not more important in one's will to live.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Blog Post #6: Surroundings Free-Response Essay
In the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the main protagonist, Elizabeth Bennett, learns to both embrace and overcome her prideful, independent nature. Her character is molded by her cultural and physical surroundings, which change her for the better by the end of the story.
Elizabeth grew up in 19th century English society, born to a moderately wealthy middle class family in the countryside. For all her life, her mother, along with the rest of society, have insisted that young women must marry well and marry soon. The only way to ensure a comfortable, happy life is to marry a wealthy man. The idea of a single young lady having a bright future on her own was inconceivable. This constant pressure on Elizabeth has led her to develop her own ideas about marriage. Instead of having the effect of making her obedient to society's values, Elizabeth, seeing her mother's sometimes ridiculous efforts at match-making, has come to reject the idea that women must rely on men to take care of them. She is determined to make her own path and not be pushed into an undesired marriage. Her stubbornness to not conform with society is partly influenced by her father who is also slightly eccentric and prefers to dwell in solitude instead of attending the many parties and dances his wife insists on. It can also be noted that Elizabeth was closest to her father, admiring his intelligence and appreciating his humor.
Another aspect of her surroundings was the heavy emphasis on family reputation. Elizabeth's family was not the most socially gifted. Her mother and younger sisters often forgot social decorum in their pursuit of husbands. Furthermore, they were not terribly wealthy either and were often looked down upon. Elizabeth's self-esteem therefore could not be supported by her family, so she had to rely on herself. Her pride was also hurt quite easily, especially by others who had the wealth and the family reputation like Mr. Darcy, and she often overcompensated in fixing her pride by developing prejudices. However, her nature that was so proud that sometimes it bordered on insensibility also saved her from making what can be seen as rational, but joyless decisions. One example is her refusal to marry her cousin, the extremely self-conscious and dreadfully dull church parson. Although accepting his proposal would not only mean having a comfortable life but also keeping her family grounds, Elizabeth rejected him because she was to prideful to let herself be unhappy for the rest of her life.
But though her pride would save her in one situation, it would prevent her from seeing the true natures of other people. This can be seen in her trust and admiration of Mr. Wickham and her disgust and annoyance with Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth had to overcome her pride and acknowledge that she was wrong about the characters of both men in order to find her true happy ending.
I think I just fell into every pitfall that I was warned about in 5 Steps to a 5. First off, I don't think I chose the right novel to write about. While I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice very much and it was included on the list of suggested books in the essay prompt, I could have chosen a book I had studied in a more academic light and more recently too to write about instead. I thought I had a good grasp on Pride and Prejudice until I started writing the essay and had trouble coming up with the specific details to support my thesis. I didn't realize just how familiar I had to be with the novel I would choose to analyze. So that meant my whole essay was off to a bad start.
Things I did like about the essay was the freedom of choosing what you wanted to write about and the generality of the prompt. It was refreshing to write without so many limitations on content and focus. However, this freedom also made it difficult to organize my essay. In the essay above, I was more or less dividing my essay in regards to different aspects of the surroundings that had an effect. I saw other essays where they followed a more chronological order in regards to the book. Anyway, my structure did not show much complexity of thought. I was also bordering on vagueness as I discussed my evidence for the essay and more than once I had to stop myself and ask if I was giving too much plot summary.
Also, since the prompt is rather broad, my thesis and thus my essay did not address all parts of the prompt equally. In particular, I don't think I analyzed how the surroundings illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole very well. Since you have a full length novel to work with and draw examples from, it is difficult to condense your thoughts and your writing to just the most significant, relevant, and meaningful details. I had so much I wanted to write about and I think that really slowed down my progress as I was unable narrow down my examples and my writing became rather ineffective as I was trying to extract meaning from all these sources. I also tried to push myself to find the complexity in the story, which I tried to explore at the end but I didn't have enough time to expand that theme to illustrate the overall meaning of the piece.
To improve I'm going to have to practice. That's not new. And I'm going to have to prepare much better. My goals are:
1. Over the year, to keep a catalogue of all the works we study over the school year in class, since they're bound to cover a broad spectrum of types, literary movements, and themes, that I can use to write my free-response essays over. I want to make sure I'm really familiar with them and I understand the complexities and deeper meaning within each one. As I accumulate more works, I will probably keep a running list of them, so I can remember and go back if I have too, with a few notes on each one about its most important themes. This way I can have a broad mental library to draw from.
2. Familiarize myself with sample free-response prompts and sample student essays for those prompts. The prompts for the open question are all rather general and broad. If I can be used to seeing these prompts and figuring out how best to answer each one through reading sample essays, I will be able to start my essay more quickly and more effectively.
3. Write the actual free-response essays. Half the fight I believe is being able to make that decision and choose the correct piece to analyze. I can practice this and practice writing an essay about a full length of work in such a short amount of time. I really need to practice selecting the proper details and organizing my thoughts about the book to write a relatively condensed essay about it. And I need to make sure I'm molding my examples to be relevant to the prompt.
Elizabeth grew up in 19th century English society, born to a moderately wealthy middle class family in the countryside. For all her life, her mother, along with the rest of society, have insisted that young women must marry well and marry soon. The only way to ensure a comfortable, happy life is to marry a wealthy man. The idea of a single young lady having a bright future on her own was inconceivable. This constant pressure on Elizabeth has led her to develop her own ideas about marriage. Instead of having the effect of making her obedient to society's values, Elizabeth, seeing her mother's sometimes ridiculous efforts at match-making, has come to reject the idea that women must rely on men to take care of them. She is determined to make her own path and not be pushed into an undesired marriage. Her stubbornness to not conform with society is partly influenced by her father who is also slightly eccentric and prefers to dwell in solitude instead of attending the many parties and dances his wife insists on. It can also be noted that Elizabeth was closest to her father, admiring his intelligence and appreciating his humor.
Another aspect of her surroundings was the heavy emphasis on family reputation. Elizabeth's family was not the most socially gifted. Her mother and younger sisters often forgot social decorum in their pursuit of husbands. Furthermore, they were not terribly wealthy either and were often looked down upon. Elizabeth's self-esteem therefore could not be supported by her family, so she had to rely on herself. Her pride was also hurt quite easily, especially by others who had the wealth and the family reputation like Mr. Darcy, and she often overcompensated in fixing her pride by developing prejudices. However, her nature that was so proud that sometimes it bordered on insensibility also saved her from making what can be seen as rational, but joyless decisions. One example is her refusal to marry her cousin, the extremely self-conscious and dreadfully dull church parson. Although accepting his proposal would not only mean having a comfortable life but also keeping her family grounds, Elizabeth rejected him because she was to prideful to let herself be unhappy for the rest of her life.
But though her pride would save her in one situation, it would prevent her from seeing the true natures of other people. This can be seen in her trust and admiration of Mr. Wickham and her disgust and annoyance with Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth had to overcome her pride and acknowledge that she was wrong about the characters of both men in order to find her true happy ending.
I think I just fell into every pitfall that I was warned about in 5 Steps to a 5. First off, I don't think I chose the right novel to write about. While I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice very much and it was included on the list of suggested books in the essay prompt, I could have chosen a book I had studied in a more academic light and more recently too to write about instead. I thought I had a good grasp on Pride and Prejudice until I started writing the essay and had trouble coming up with the specific details to support my thesis. I didn't realize just how familiar I had to be with the novel I would choose to analyze. So that meant my whole essay was off to a bad start.
Things I did like about the essay was the freedom of choosing what you wanted to write about and the generality of the prompt. It was refreshing to write without so many limitations on content and focus. However, this freedom also made it difficult to organize my essay. In the essay above, I was more or less dividing my essay in regards to different aspects of the surroundings that had an effect. I saw other essays where they followed a more chronological order in regards to the book. Anyway, my structure did not show much complexity of thought. I was also bordering on vagueness as I discussed my evidence for the essay and more than once I had to stop myself and ask if I was giving too much plot summary.
Also, since the prompt is rather broad, my thesis and thus my essay did not address all parts of the prompt equally. In particular, I don't think I analyzed how the surroundings illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole very well. Since you have a full length novel to work with and draw examples from, it is difficult to condense your thoughts and your writing to just the most significant, relevant, and meaningful details. I had so much I wanted to write about and I think that really slowed down my progress as I was unable narrow down my examples and my writing became rather ineffective as I was trying to extract meaning from all these sources. I also tried to push myself to find the complexity in the story, which I tried to explore at the end but I didn't have enough time to expand that theme to illustrate the overall meaning of the piece.
To improve I'm going to have to practice. That's not new. And I'm going to have to prepare much better. My goals are:
1. Over the year, to keep a catalogue of all the works we study over the school year in class, since they're bound to cover a broad spectrum of types, literary movements, and themes, that I can use to write my free-response essays over. I want to make sure I'm really familiar with them and I understand the complexities and deeper meaning within each one. As I accumulate more works, I will probably keep a running list of them, so I can remember and go back if I have too, with a few notes on each one about its most important themes. This way I can have a broad mental library to draw from.
2. Familiarize myself with sample free-response prompts and sample student essays for those prompts. The prompts for the open question are all rather general and broad. If I can be used to seeing these prompts and figuring out how best to answer each one through reading sample essays, I will be able to start my essay more quickly and more effectively.
3. Write the actual free-response essays. Half the fight I believe is being able to make that decision and choose the correct piece to analyze. I can practice this and practice writing an essay about a full length of work in such a short amount of time. I really need to practice selecting the proper details and organizing my thoughts about the book to write a relatively condensed essay about it. And I need to make sure I'm molding my examples to be relevant to the prompt.
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Blog Post #5: "Thou Blind Man's Mark" Poetry Essay
In the poem "Thou Blind Man's Mark" by Sir Philip Sidney, the poet expounds on the topic of desire. Through alliteration and metaphors, the speaker creates at first a despairing, accusatory tone towards desire's effect on him and then transitions, through use of personification and repetition, to a triumphant ending.
Sidney begins the poem with a bout of sophisticated name-calling, with which he uses to describe the maliciousness of desire. He uses metaphors with harmful connotations to bequeath titles to desire, such as "blind man's mark," "scum," and "fool's self-chosen snare." To emphasize these phrases and their underlying detrimental meanings, Sidney uses alliteration such as "cradle of causeless care." This extensive list of names gives off the feeling of both the speaker being scathing towards desire but also the heavy despair the speaker feels or felt towards it to continue ranting against it. By listing so many of desire's flaws and dangers, the speaker fully conveys the vast, evil hold desire has over him and how its "end is never wrought".
The speaker of the poem also seems to be speaking directly to desire as if the concept were a person, using "thou" or "thy" frequently when addressing it. By personifying it, desire becomes more of a tangible threat and concern, rather than just an intangible concept. Desire is described to be selling "worthless ware" which the speaker has "too dearly bought, with price of mangled mind." The repetition of the speaker's exclamation "Desire, desire!" and the comment of "too long, too long" help further to illustrate the futility the speaker felt towards fighting desire's grip on him and how desire did not help him like it should be, which is "my mind to higher things prepare."
Then the speaker transitions to a different tone when he starts repeating the phrase "in vain" at the beginning of his lines. Starting with "in vain thou has my ruin sought," the speaker emphasizes how all of desire's actions, making him "to vain things aspire", kindling "thy smoky fire," were to no avail in making him fall for desire's traps. This time the repetition serves to highlight the speaker's triumph in conquering over desire's effects as everything desire has done was "in vain." Sidney explains that "virtue hath this better lesson taught-- ", using a dash to make the final ending message distinct, to seek his rewards in himself and not elsewhere. The final line, "desiring naught but how to kill desire," concludes the poem on a positive, contented note. The use of the noun and verb form of desire helps to add that sense of a complete ending, but also highlights the irony behind the line, showing that one can never truly escape the clutches of desire.
After going through the norming packet, I am actually pretty okay with my poetry essay. A lot of the things I brought up here I saw in some of the higher-scoring essays there. For example, the transition in tone and how it was created by the repetition and also the effect of the personification of desire. So, I'm getting better at not only identifying the poetic devices but also explaining their role in conveying the speaker's attitude. And I actually finished my essay in the time limit! I think a lot of this is due to the fact that the poem we had to analyze was so short. This gave me more time to organize my thoughts about it and develop a complex thesis to base the essay off of. The fact that my thesis was stronger made the writing much easier since I had a central idea I could connect everything to.
I still have much to improve on. The first thing that struck me while I was writing my essay was I could not name some of the poetic devices. Terms I was looking for, like anaphora, I just could not remember. I would know that there was a poetic device being used but not know what to call it. So I just talked around it in my essay. Another issue that we went over in class was describing the structure of the poem and how it contributed to the analysis. I could not identify that it was a sonnet and being knowledgable about such structures would have facilitated and increased the depth of my interpretation. Also there were some aspects of analysis that I missed; for example, the introspective tone of the middle lines and how the repetition gave the effect of the speaker trying to persuade himself. I also did not clearly identify the central problem, which was that desire was preventing the speaker from seeking higher things. In conclusion, I could have addressed the complexity in the piece better. I still must teach myself to search for the complexity in the poem.
Another thing I noted was my use of textual evidence could have been more sparing. I tend to over-quote the piece I think, and that tends to just drag on the analysis portion of the essay. I need to be more selective with my quotes and choose the ones that I'm really going to analyze. In afterthought, I could also be better at organizing this essay and adding to its cohesiveness. Some of my paragraphs don't flow very well at all.
I feel like a significant portion of my problems have to do with the actual writing of my essay, though I can always work on my analysis skills of course. To improve on my poetry essay, I will:
1. Learn and memorize my poetic devices. I will go and dig up my notes on tropes and schemes and review them. I will also look at the powerpoint on sonnet structures so next time I will be more prepared to fully analyze them. Sonnets are commonly used on the AP exam so it will be helpful to be familiar with them.
2. Read more poems. Poetry was never something I read a lot of so I should start reading more if I am to be proficient at analyzing them. I know that poetry is a lot different from prose so it would be most beneficial if I were used to the way that poems convey their meaning. I plan to find ones in the Literature and Composition textbook.
3. Work on my writing. One thing that has always helped me was reading high-scoring example essays. They give me ideas on how to structure and communicate my interpretation of the poem. I plan to read the norming essays posted on Edline for this particular prompt. Another way to improve my writing would be to write more. So using my 5 Steps to a 5, I can practice writing to the poetry prompts they have provided there. I am not sure my writing is up to the level of sophistication that a 9 or 8 essay requires so I have lots of room for improvement.
Sidney begins the poem with a bout of sophisticated name-calling, with which he uses to describe the maliciousness of desire. He uses metaphors with harmful connotations to bequeath titles to desire, such as "blind man's mark," "scum," and "fool's self-chosen snare." To emphasize these phrases and their underlying detrimental meanings, Sidney uses alliteration such as "cradle of causeless care." This extensive list of names gives off the feeling of both the speaker being scathing towards desire but also the heavy despair the speaker feels or felt towards it to continue ranting against it. By listing so many of desire's flaws and dangers, the speaker fully conveys the vast, evil hold desire has over him and how its "end is never wrought".
The speaker of the poem also seems to be speaking directly to desire as if the concept were a person, using "thou" or "thy" frequently when addressing it. By personifying it, desire becomes more of a tangible threat and concern, rather than just an intangible concept. Desire is described to be selling "worthless ware" which the speaker has "too dearly bought, with price of mangled mind." The repetition of the speaker's exclamation "Desire, desire!" and the comment of "too long, too long" help further to illustrate the futility the speaker felt towards fighting desire's grip on him and how desire did not help him like it should be, which is "my mind to higher things prepare."
Then the speaker transitions to a different tone when he starts repeating the phrase "in vain" at the beginning of his lines. Starting with "in vain thou has my ruin sought," the speaker emphasizes how all of desire's actions, making him "to vain things aspire", kindling "thy smoky fire," were to no avail in making him fall for desire's traps. This time the repetition serves to highlight the speaker's triumph in conquering over desire's effects as everything desire has done was "in vain." Sidney explains that "virtue hath this better lesson taught-- ", using a dash to make the final ending message distinct, to seek his rewards in himself and not elsewhere. The final line, "desiring naught but how to kill desire," concludes the poem on a positive, contented note. The use of the noun and verb form of desire helps to add that sense of a complete ending, but also highlights the irony behind the line, showing that one can never truly escape the clutches of desire.
After going through the norming packet, I am actually pretty okay with my poetry essay. A lot of the things I brought up here I saw in some of the higher-scoring essays there. For example, the transition in tone and how it was created by the repetition and also the effect of the personification of desire. So, I'm getting better at not only identifying the poetic devices but also explaining their role in conveying the speaker's attitude. And I actually finished my essay in the time limit! I think a lot of this is due to the fact that the poem we had to analyze was so short. This gave me more time to organize my thoughts about it and develop a complex thesis to base the essay off of. The fact that my thesis was stronger made the writing much easier since I had a central idea I could connect everything to.
I still have much to improve on. The first thing that struck me while I was writing my essay was I could not name some of the poetic devices. Terms I was looking for, like anaphora, I just could not remember. I would know that there was a poetic device being used but not know what to call it. So I just talked around it in my essay. Another issue that we went over in class was describing the structure of the poem and how it contributed to the analysis. I could not identify that it was a sonnet and being knowledgable about such structures would have facilitated and increased the depth of my interpretation. Also there were some aspects of analysis that I missed; for example, the introspective tone of the middle lines and how the repetition gave the effect of the speaker trying to persuade himself. I also did not clearly identify the central problem, which was that desire was preventing the speaker from seeking higher things. In conclusion, I could have addressed the complexity in the piece better. I still must teach myself to search for the complexity in the poem.
Another thing I noted was my use of textual evidence could have been more sparing. I tend to over-quote the piece I think, and that tends to just drag on the analysis portion of the essay. I need to be more selective with my quotes and choose the ones that I'm really going to analyze. In afterthought, I could also be better at organizing this essay and adding to its cohesiveness. Some of my paragraphs don't flow very well at all.
I feel like a significant portion of my problems have to do with the actual writing of my essay, though I can always work on my analysis skills of course. To improve on my poetry essay, I will:
1. Learn and memorize my poetic devices. I will go and dig up my notes on tropes and schemes and review them. I will also look at the powerpoint on sonnet structures so next time I will be more prepared to fully analyze them. Sonnets are commonly used on the AP exam so it will be helpful to be familiar with them.
2. Read more poems. Poetry was never something I read a lot of so I should start reading more if I am to be proficient at analyzing them. I know that poetry is a lot different from prose so it would be most beneficial if I were used to the way that poems convey their meaning. I plan to find ones in the Literature and Composition textbook.
3. Work on my writing. One thing that has always helped me was reading high-scoring example essays. They give me ideas on how to structure and communicate my interpretation of the poem. I plan to read the norming essays posted on Edline for this particular prompt. Another way to improve my writing would be to write more. So using my 5 Steps to a 5, I can practice writing to the poetry prompts they have provided there. I am not sure my writing is up to the level of sophistication that a 9 or 8 essay requires so I have lots of room for improvement.
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