The American Dream Analyses and Summary

Setting
The bland apartment has only one room shown in the play, and the entire story takes place there. There are two equally placed, fairly indistinguishable chairs for Mommy and Daddy. The city, apartment number, or any other outside details are never revealed, so it seems as if the outside world is split off completely.

Significant Characters
Mommy: The dictator. Mommy is strong willed and power hungry, using all of her power to rule over and belittle Daddy and Grandma. She represents the new culture and materialism, as she is very shallow and only values things and people on a materialistic level. She comes off as immature and childish in her dealings with other people.
Daddy: The follower. Daddy has no decision making power; no power at all, in most cases. He is completely bereft of the typical masculine traits, and is sexually described in feminine ways. He always does as Mommy asks unless someone else manages to wrest power from her.
Grandma: Reality and the audience. Grandma is a bit loopy in her age, but she's the most clear-thinking of anyone, and is the only character to use language in interesting and powerful ways. Grandma values memories and emotions just as much as material objects. She seems to dwell outside the play, and doesn't belong anymore.
Mrs. Barker: A conglomerate, often referenced to as a "we" or "they". She's extremely stupid and very arrogant about her power. Despite this, she listens to Grandma more than anyone else, even though she doesn't understand her. She uses sex to get power from Mommy. May represent big business and prostitution.
Young Man: Literally, the new American Dream. He is purely made of materialism with no real value, emotionless but beautiful. He replaces Grandma and harsh reality.

Plot: Very simple. Mommy and Daddy are at home talking about some people who are late. Grandma drops some boxes on them, they continue talking. Mrs. Barker comes, nobody remembers why. Grandma tells Mrs. Barker the story of the first child. The young man (American Dream) enters, Grandma gets his help leaving. The family adopts him.

Voice
Point of View: Due to it being a play, the point of view is objective. Characters are described indirectly if at all. This means that the author's opinion is not told outright, but instead through the characters. Therefore it's through the characters that the author's voice comes through, with his choice of characters and how they talk. Comes off less preachy due to the necessity of the reader's understanding it.
Tone: No narration means tone doesn't come easily. Can be seen through Grandma's observations and inferences made by the reader. Very reader-response.
Imagery: Once again, being a play, imagery is subtle. The only scene setting comes from the quick introduction paragraph, which is vague. However, images of the characters are given through their ways of speaking and subjects of conversation.
Symbolism: Very very obvious in some cases, AKA the young man being called "The American Dream". Blatant use of symbols pushes the author's voice.

Interesting Quotes

"I no longer have the capacity to feel anything. I have no emotions. I have been drained, torn asunder disemboweled. I have, now, only my person, my body, my face. I use what I have I let people love me I accept the syntax around me, for while I know I cannot relate; I know I must be related to."Young Man

"WHAT a masculine Daddy! Isn't he a masculine Daddy?" Mommy

Theme: The American people have become materialistic and fake, and only want what they think they want, not what they need.
Support: The symbols are the most obvious. Young child = old dream, which was what they needed. It was not perfect and had flaws, so they destroyed it. The Young Man = new dream, which is what they wanted. Hollow and without true meaning, but also pretty and can be used. All it needs is money. Also shown through characters, as mommy symbolizes materialism. Mommy and Daddy represent traditions being defied, as they break the traditional strong-man weak-woman family stereotype. Grandma represents the old, less materialistic ways and reality in the midst of absurdity- she ends up being deemed useless and leaves (or dies). 

Open Prompt 2

1984. Select a line or so of poetry, or a moment or scene in a novel, epic poem, or play that you find especially memorable. Write an essay in which you identify the line or the passage, explain its relationship to the work in which it is found, and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness.

"Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly," Jerry rattled out insightfully, amid twisting and rapidly changing trains of thought. While roughly inserted into the chatter of a often seemingly senseless character, this quote from Edward Albee's "The Zoo Story" manages to collect within it one of the main messages of the play with expert use of juxtaposition and parable.

The idea of a long journey that brings with its end only a return to the beginning point is one of the main messages of the play, and ushers in the glum, futile air that follows Jerry through the oblivious world around him. It suggests that some struggles will bring great pain and the reward would only be in the form of a swift delivery back. Jerry, one of the two characters directly included in the play, suffers constantly from this overhanging meaning. His lack of communication and relation skills render him distant from other humans, struggling to find some way to connect to others. Throughout the play and his conversation with Peter, one can slowly come to understand just how broken this has made him. He has no faith in love, no faith in good or bad, only in compromise and empathy. The distance he has travelled has been immense and painful and the play illustrates his experiences after returning to where he started, armed with new knowledge of the new, enlightened world. The people around him, however, have yet to learn.

Peter is exactly the opposite of Jerry, and this juxtaposition, as well as specific contradictions in conversation, emphasize what Jerry has learned and how it his knowledge sets him apart. While Jerry is eccentric, thoughtful and sharp-tongued, defying social standards, Peter is everything that a middle-class man is expected to be; slow, quiet, and scared of deep thought. He sits down at the same bench every weekend and reads. Jerry is all movement; he paces, flails his arms, and overall comes off as animated and lively. Jerry is thought and insight; Peter is trained content and placidness. An overflow of thought versus a lack of thought. In a way, the story explaining the quote forces Peter to confront this opposite world. Suddenly he's scared, because he's never lived in a world like that before. The public is too foolish to understand that journeys don't always end in great joy and success.

The parable of Jerry and the Dog is the defining point of the play, and it finally puts into perspective the real meaning of the quote. In the end, after all of his hard work and hopes, Jerry has gained nothing but questions about the very things people are raised to believe in. Love, hate and peace are all brought into question. Suddenly, working very hard might only bring a bitter stalemate, empathy on both sides. But in that brings cruel but crucial insight, knowledge that brings true understanding; despite how terrible the consequences. Jerry, in learning, attempts only to pass on his knowledge before taking his own life.

Each character in "The Zoo Story" is forced to grow, forced to go through great trials to gain knowledge that perhaps they always should have known. None of the characters come out the same. Through skilled use of contrasting characters and parable, Edward Albee expresses the importance of Jerry's message and leaves it to grow in the minds of his readers. 

Response to course materials 2

(Creative title, yes? Now to see if my failing memory can dredge up any of what we've done… By the way, I love parenthetical phrases and I will abuse them mercilessly.)

Reading The American Dream was an unexpected treat, and I'll be dwelling on it for a long time in this reflection. Not unexpected because I somehow didn't expect us to read a book we were required to buy; rather, I'm afraid I had rather low expectations for the books we were going to read. In general I've found High School literature to be boring and flavorless, classics chosen by a committee that I feel must be made up of old, doddering men that won't touch that "new writing". In some cases that committee has managed to add in a real treasure, but most often I've come out of literature classes disappointed.

This play was not a disappointment. From the beginning I found myself enjoying every line, even when the frustrating and talkative Mommy was taking the stage. It had me in a constant state of confusion and wonder until the last few pages, when a wonderful feeling of enlightenment settled across me. As I was finishing the play in Computational Physics (clearly the best place to read the Absurd), I couldn't stop myself from grinning hugely as everything fell into place. It was a bit like a Firefly episode where the very first scene is of desolation and death; the entire episode leads you to believe that every character you've learned to love is dead and gone, and only in the end, bit by agonizing bit, do you slowly realize that you've been tricked, that it all makes sense after all. I get the biggest thrill out of those stories, my brain scrambling to try and find some sort of meaning early on, only to get casually obliterated by the revelations that come with the end. (I then went on to read The Zoo Story, which while different and harder to understand, was equally brain-splattering. I just need to read it a few more times to figure out what my brain is desperately trying to grasp. I read the quote "Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly" about four times and I still can't quite wrap my mind around it.)

Moving on. Much of our class time not spent reading the play was spent on reading further information about DIDLS, specifically syntax (This is not including the past week, in which I apparently died for four days.). Syntax was never something I ever claimed to understand. Other literature teachers always mentioned it off-hand, like something we must already know, or perhaps like something they didn't really feel like explaining (and subsequently dealing with many confused questions). Now that I've learned more about it, and stopped feeling like a scrub, I can officially say that I love syntax. Clever use of syntax is one of those things that makes the classics chosen by the old-white-man-committee really worth reading (some of them, anyway). Syntax is what makes some poems go from plain to fascinating.  I don't write as much as I wish I did (if I say to myself that I write, does that make me a writer?) but in the rare times that I do, I'm all about syntax. It's fascinating to me that the way I put the same few words together in a sentence can completely change what people get from it.

I have to admit, the closed readings we did to identify syntax, as well as other parts of the now-legendary DIDLS, were not nearly as entertaining as trying to apply sentence structures in our own writing. I'm sure the practice will be very useful when we go on to annotate what we've read, but for now, I've found that I often need to force myself to find examples of language or detail. It doesn't help, however, that we were reading fragments of stories, which left me feeling disconnected from the real meanings. I like it when I can find a detail that subtly hints back to the rest of the story, or gives a brief idea of what the future will hold; short segments of stories deny me of the knowledge I'd need to figure out those connections, so I'm left to annotating text that to me means little. That's probably something I need to get past if I want to get the most possible meaning out of literature, especially when it comes to the AP test.

Reaching further back… The powerpoints. I'm not afraid to admit that my memory is so bad, I have a hard time even remembering some of the stuff we talked about. Lenses, I know. And… Urinals. No, what makes a urinal art. Right, multiple meanings and interpretations, which lead into lenses. I find critical lenses to be interesting in theory. In practice, probably due to the simplified way they were applied, I found them restrictive and boring. An entire lens just to look at economic impacts? While I can understand the interest in looking at that sort of thing, the way lenses have been presented have always made it seem like there are followers of each lens that never stray into enemy lens territory, lest they *gasp* mingle or combine. I've never been told if that's true or not, and it's given me a very critical (hah, hah) view of critical lenses.

There's clearly more we've done in class, but my brain is a little overworked right now, and it's refusing to accept the existence of any such things. Therefore, I now draw this reflection to an end, so maybe I can start slowly chiseling away at my other mountains of homework.

Scouts Failed to Protect Boys

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-09-23/Boy-Scouts-perversion-files/57833710/1

Editorials are all about spreading an opinion through subtle but manipulating language. This editorial, written to scorn the Boy Scout programs in the US, does an excellent job of keeping the manipulation quiet but effective. The article alone easily brings out negative reactions in the reader; few approve of sexual predators taking advantage of young boys. The writer further exaggerates this with clever use of diction, detail and syntax.

The author is clearly writing to project a negative opinion, and his word choice ties in wonderfully. Even the title of his article is clever; the scouts have not just done badly, they've "failed". This word instantly reminds people not of a small mistake or wrongdoing but of utter defeat of the highest sort, and often because of a lack of effort. He goes on to strongly claim that, "The Scouts' failure meant predators were free to stalk and abuse more innocent children, and some did." Failure, predators, stalk, abuse, innocent- all strong descriptions that, in a typical newspaper article, would be avoided in favor of less harsh words. However, he also does a good job of hiding his strong opinions, keeping out overly harsh or personal attacks that would detract from the validity of his opinion.

The detail used is limited but effective. It's worth noting that the article isn't packed with numbers and dates; rather, the author gets at the general ideas, as if trying to point out that it's not just the specific cases but the entire establishment that has a problem. However, he's not afraid to point out specific facts that he finds appalling; when pointing out that sex offender scoutmasters were allowed to simply resign, he gave the example of a scoutmaster that "In 1976, after five Scouts accused [him] of two rapes and other sex crimes, was allowed to resign." This select detail brings out the worst in the Scouts.

The sentence structure, like the diction and detail, try to press the idea that he is writing a news article instead of a personal opinion while still pushing his ideals. He uses nearly only lengthy sentences, with little variation, a rather dry and stuffy style that would be expected in unbiased news articles. It's an attempt to sound formal that succeeds. It's only his use of strong diction and selective detail that bring out his opinion, letting the syntax keep the article sounding official and reliable.

Though already assumed to have personal opinion included due to its status as an editorial, this article is expertly written to manipulate the reader while keeping their trust.

September Open Prompt

"2010, Form B. “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you.” —Sonsyrea Tate

Sonsyrea Tate’s statement suggests that “home” may be conceived of as a dwelling, a place, or a state of mind. It may have positive or negative associations, but in either case, it may have a considerable influence on an individual. Choose a novel or play in which a central character leaves home yet finds that home remains significant. Write a well-developed essay in which you analyze the importance of “home” to this character and the reasons for its continuing influence. Explain how the character’s idea of home illuminates the larger meaning of the work. Do not merely summarize the plot."

Home does not have to hold memories of warmth and comfort. The walls that separate shelter from the merciless wild don't necessarily keep out the cold. Often, the classic idea of the warm hearth and the happy home is turned on its head, presenting the idea of a home that left a scar. But how does such a classically comforting idea turn dark? This question, and its answer, is showcased excellently in The Phantom of the Opera (2005 movie). In the Phantom's case, his scarring impression of home started from birth, the day his mother beheld his deformed face. He was instantly unwanted, instantly feared, and was imprinted with an idea of the norm that would never leave him.

For a mother to fear her child goes against all accepted and expected norms. Mothers are understood to love and adore their child unconditionally, not hesitating or doubting because of a mental disorder, much less a simple physical deformity. That expectation dooms the Phantom. His mother hates him from birth, a mask to cover his face his first piece of clothing. It's not simply her abuse that scars him so deeply; it's the sight of well dressed young children, laughing and throwing in his face how unusual and freakish his family life is. He grows with the skewed belief that he was so terrible, his own mother was forced to fear him; far from the truth of the matter, where the blame lies squarely on his compassionless mother's shoulders. 

His mother's abuse centered around his deformed face- and his face would not stop haunting him. His natural defense mechanism, rage that scared off any that would potentially hurt him, only encouraged the feeling of being unwanted to imbed itself deeper within him. All that he met (spare two) feared him instantly, and his prompting them with acts of violence actively worsened the situation. If his home had taught him anything, it was that he would never be wanted; indeed, it was better to just scare away any that came close. He would never be given anything; he simply had to take it. It never occurred to him that others would ever feel differently.

Nothing but fear and rage was taught to him while occupying the gypsy freak show and his mother's house, the two places he originally called home. Love, and all concepts related to it, were left mysterious and intangible, fantasies to hover out of his reach. What he got instead of love was hate. When it came to his own passions, he had no model to follow; all he had were the lessons his mother and the operas he so coveted had taught him. Indeed, throughout the musical he employed shows of violence and poetic romance to further his goal, unable to put the cruelty of his upbringing past him. He went to great lengths to put together his owl opera and then secure the lead male role as his own; but at the cost of the previous lead's life. 

The memory of home is one that can be molded and changed. Few find themselves going through life with only one true home to speak of. Often, however, it's left up to others to let this happen; and for some, such as the reclusive Phantom, others are all too often unwilling to help. His memories of a cold and cruel home setting the standard for his life, he lived plagued by the ideas taught through such an upbringing, and it eventually engineered his fall. 

Reflections, Week 1

(Warning. Rambling ahead.)

Well, okay. Week one and a week or two of summer, as well. But either way, not too much has been discussed in detail, literature wise. And more than anything, with the reading we've done, I've been thinking more about why, exactly, I'm taking the course. It's certainly not for college. That's what we've discussed at length, too: what colleges want. We want to write good essays, tying in rhetoric and argument. It's information that has made me rethink all the essays I've written before. I'm not new at essay writing, after some 12 years of schooling, but the first week of AP english had me wondering why I was getting good grades. Last year I wrote many argumentative essays, and I was not writing bad arguments, but I never really learned to tie together the three types of argument. I never really put rhetorical situation into question. 

But I'm going to an art school in Australia. Writing, should my career go as planned, will not be taking precedence. Why care about how to write a good essay? As I read through Nuts and Bolts, it became more clear. I want my literature to train me to be better at communicating in general. Michael makes an effective argument on how it will make you sound more intelligent and more respectable; as he says, the "pompous style" only makes you sound… pompous. I loathe to think of myself falling into that rut. But I can see it in my writing, too. I've been letting the pompous style creep in. When he brought up how silly it made students sound, I physically winced; it was a style I'd prided myself on. Maybe I was less advanced at communication than I'd thought.

Reading Foster's book really drove home my new dedication to figure out how to write and speak more clearly. Reading about the effects of weather in literature instantly brought to mind arguments with my brother, discussing (loudly) the way weather was used in literature. He was always sure it had no real meaning, that it was something that was basically just written in because weather happens. At the time, I'd simply argued that he was wrong because when you write, you must have reason for anything to happen due to the fact that you decided to write it that way- but now my argument has gained real basis. Literature throughout history has used weather to hint at moods. "It's never just rain" indeed.

There have, of course, been other things discussed. But it was the summer reading and the powerpoints that really made me think, made me wonder at what my goals really were. Hopefully, I can actually learn to communicate through this class- and not just learn to write pretty, as I originally planned. 

An Essay on Textual Niceties

(In other words, author write good.)

        Writing and speaking in clear but articulate words is a goal that many seem content to ignore. Clarity is hard. Clarity isn't pretty. Unfortunately, clarity is the only way to effectively and powerfully get a point across without sounding alien. Michael Harvey adamantly supports plain and clear writing in her book The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, and in David Sedaris' narrative Me Talk Pretty One Day, he shows remarkable mastery of frank but emotional writing. His essay is active and concise, two of the most important keystones of the plain style.

         "Active verbs convey action." (Harvey, 15) While a fairly obvious idea, very few writers seem to grasp the idea that action is good. Sedaris is in the minority. His essay is packed with action verbs, moving the reader along as if they were standing in that very school, struggling to understand the french of those around them. The reader stood by as "the teacher marched in," (Sedaris, 1) immediately setting a mood of military strictness and placing the reader firmly in that classroom. Throughout the essay he continues to use action to propel the reader, without any odd words to make the reader stumble over.

         The concision in Me Talk Pretty One Day is as impressive as it is convenient. Sedaris has mastered the plain sort of writing that Harvey supports, completely avoiding the "pompous style" (Harvey, 2) with short and effectively used words. Nothing is dressed up in his essay, only made stronger. Due to his plain words, the reader relates more to his plight and situation. In describing a character, he tells us plainly that she had "front teeth the size of tombstones." (Sedaris 2) He could have written about this in a much more cryptic and therefore more respectful way, but with the language he uses, we instantly imagine the character in all of her buck-toothed glory.

        Sedaris' essay may not have been perfect. He slips into passive voice, shifts between past and present perspective, and uses references not always familiar to the average drudge. But with expert use of action to push the reader along and masterful word choice and concision, Sedaris does a commendable job of writing in the same plain but powerful style that Harvey so advocates.