Close Reading 9/23

'There are downsides to looking this pretty':Why women hate me for being beautiful

By Samantha Brick

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2124246/Samantha-Brick-downsides-looking-pretty-Why-women-hate-beautiful.html

Shunned because of her looks?  That’s what Samantha Brick believes.  In this article, Brick explains why her looks have been more of a hindrance than a blessing.  She often struggles to keep jobs because of jealous bosses, and struggles to fit in with friends because her looks overshadows theirs.  She explains how the women she encounters in her life, whether they are friends, neighbors, or colleagues, dislike her because she believes they are jealous of her beauty.  Using clever diction, figurative language and stylistic syntax, Samantha Brick creates a strong argument for why she thinks women hate her for her appearance.

            The different uses of passive and active voice in this article helps emphasize the different events in Brick’s life.  When describing all of the things that people do for her because of her looks, she uses passive voice: “I was tapped on the shoulder and presented with a beautiful bunch of flowers.”  This use of passive voice makes it seem like the nice things just mysteriously happen.  The audience doesn’t know who gives her flowers, just that she was given flowers.  It emphasizes the point that she doesn’t do anything to deserve these nice things, except for the fact that she looks nice.  Then, she uses active voice to show how she maintains her good figure: “I work at mine-I don’t drink or smoke, I work out, even when I don’t feel like it…”  The active voice allows Brick to sound like her good appearance is all a result of her actions.  She takes responsibility for her good appearance, but the things that happen as a result are not her fault. This helps her to portray herself as an innocent victim, one who is punished by the actions of jealous women.    

            Samantha Brick uses figurative language to show how her looks have been good and bad.  She uses the metaphor of an open door to show that she has literally had people open the door for her, but has also had many opportunities as a result of her looks.  However, she says that many doors have been “metaphorically slammed in [her] face.”  This shows that her looks have also caused people to scorn her and put her at a disadvantage.  The metaphor makes it easy for the audience to understand how her looks impact her opportunities in life.

            The diction in this article also helps Brick to convey her message.  When describing the clothing that she wears so as not to attract attention to herself, she uses the words “baggy” and “somber-coloured.”  These words have a negative connotation, which helps to emphasize the bad appearance of the clothes.  They show the desperate actions she must take to be accepted by the other women.  She not only has to wear clothes she doesn’t like, but she has to wear ugly clothes so that the other women aren’t jealous of her looks. 

Open Prompt 9/16

1970. Choose a character from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay in which you (a) briefly describe the standards of the fictional society in which the character exists and (b) show how the character is affected by and responds to those standards. In your essay do not merely summarize the plot.

                Society plays a large role in Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice.  This novel revolves around the Bennet family, and more specifically, Elizabeth Bennet, the headstrong, rebellious daughter in the family.  Elizabeth is one of the only characters that thinks for herself and does what she wants, not what is expected of her.  Society affects all the characters in the novel and Jane Austen uses it to create a satire of 19^th century English society.

                The society that Elizabeth Bennet lives in is, to put it simply, foolish.  Most of the characters in Pride and prejudice follow with society’s expectations, including Mrs. Bennet and Elizabeth’s sisters.  In this society, all young women are expected to search for a husband to be able to start a family.  Every year, there are several balls in which the ladies seek out potential husbands.  For many of the characters, the only thing that matters is to find a suitable husband.  This makes the balls some of the most important events.  Even Mrs.Bennet believes that her only job is to raise her daughters and marry them off to wealthy men.    

Because of their infatuation with balls, the women of this society can be seen as shallow.  They spend copious amounts of time socializing, meeting as many people as possible and trying to get invitations to balls.  The young ladies don’t care about anything except fancy dresses for the balls and meeting handsome, rich men that they might be able to marry.  Lydia is an excellent example of such a character.  She craves parties and attention from men.  She marries early, even though she doesn’t know the man very well.  Love is often not a factor in marriages, all that matters is that the man has money to support the young lady and is willing to marry her.

                Elizabeth Bennet, however, goes against society and refuses to be obsessed with parties and socializing.  She enjoys spending time reading and prefers to take her time finding a husband.  She believes only in marriage because of love.  She decides to only marry someone if she loves him.  She is even offered a hand in marriage from a man who is relatively wealthy, but she refuses it because she does not love the man.  This is almost unheard of in their society and causes her mother to become furious.  During balls, Elizabeth prefers to sit on the side and watch rather than dance with all the eligible men at the ball.  The contrast between Elizabeth’s actions and society’s actions allows Jane Austen to effectively create a satire of nineteenth century British society.

Response to Course Material 9/9

This week, we talked about vocab, the rhetorical situation, how to write an AP Lit essay, and Arguments.  Although the vocab was a bit annoying to learn, I think that these words will definitely help me in the long run.  In my Contempt Lit class, we are reading About A Boy by Nick Hornby and I noticed some words that were on our vocab list.  I felt so proud of myself when I understood the sentence: "Will had met Barney before, and knew for a fact he wasn't lovely, so he chose to ignore the non sequitur." 

Over the summer, we read The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey.  One of things he stressed was keeping the writing concise and not filled with useless words.  While I was studying for the ACT, the test prep book mentioned many of the ideas that Harvey included in his book.  For example, one of the strategies the prep book talked about was choosing the shortest answer on the english section.  It said that if multiple answer choices are saying the same thing, but one is shorter than the others, the shorter one always wins.  I recognized this concept from Harvey's book, which focused on how to display ideas in the shortest, most concise way possible.  This really helped me because on previous tests, I have gotten confused when all the answer choices sound like they can be correct and I can't decide which one is the right answer.  Another concept that the ACT prep book covered was the best way to write and organize the essay.  ACT graders often look for good organization in essays.  Some of the tips in the prep book were similar to the ones from the powerpoints we looked at.  These helped me understand how to structure the paragraphs and how to take into consideration the rhetorical situation.

Third Entry-language

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" and The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing

In his essay “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” David Sedaris writes about his experience learning French at a school in France.  He manages to write in a formal style, but keeps the tone light and casual.  This creates a funny and entertaining story that still follows the advice given by Michael Harvey in his book The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing.

Sedaris is effective in using conjunctions in his writing.  For example, in this sentence: “After paying my tuition…” (11), Sedaris uses the conjunction to connect this sentence with the one before it.  Conjunctions “help prose feel connected from sentence to sentence” (Harvey 30).  This is exactly what Sedaris does throughout his essay, leading the audience through and helping show what is coming next. 

In addition to conjunctions, Sedaris also uses many commas in this essay.  Almost every sentence in this essay contains commas and many of them contain multiple commas.  This is shown in the second sentence: “After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a carton stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich” (11).  Despite the length of the sentence, the reader can still understand what is going on.  This follows what Harvey says, that “commas allow one to create long, complex sentences that are still readable” (35).

There are only a couple examples of passive voice in the Sedaris’ essay, but the places where he does use it are reasonable.  When describing the returning students, he writes, “vacations were recounted, and questions were raised…” (11). The passive voice doesn’t identify the subject: who exactly recounted the vacations or raised the questions.  This is because he didn’t know.  Sedaris wants to emphasize this feeling of unfamiliarity.  Everything is foreign, the school, the people, even the language.  Harvey says, “passive voice makes sense when you want to emphasize an action…” (17), which Sedaris does in this passage.

Sedaris follows Harvey’s advice on using tricolon.  Examples in groups of three are everywhere in Sedaris’ essay.  He mentions that the first Anna “worked as a seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends and hated the mosquito” (12).  When he talks about the things he hates, he lists three things: “blood sausage, intestinal pates, brain pudding” (13).  When he talks about the things he loves, he lists three things: “IBM typewriters, the French word for bruise and [his] electric floor waxer” (13).  Even the actions of the teacher are in groups of three: “she crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman’s desk, and leaned close…”  All of these groups of three help to make the essay feel “balanced and complete when they contain three items” (Harvey 53).  

   “Me Talk Pretty One Day” follows many of the suggestions given in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. Sedaris avoids using the “collegiate pompous style” or in other words, “big words, self-important phrasing, a flat one, long gobs of prepositional phrases, nouns galore, and abuse of the passive voice” (1). This creates an effective narration, giving the audience an enjoyable experience through his stor

Second Entry-Poetry

Here are my five goals:
1. Be able to recognize themes
2. Get better at identifying tone 
3. Be able to identify the speaker easier
4. Getting more familiar with poetry terms
5. Work on the questions that ask about the definition of a word

When I was doing the practice problems, I realized that I got kind of confused with the theme questions.  I think maybe I just don't understand theme as well as I should so I will definitely need to work on that.  I also get confused with identifying the speaker, especially if the speaker changes within the poem.  For tone, if it's obvious, I can usually tell but sometimes I'm not so sure.  Hopefully I will be able to improve on it.  I didn't know some of the words that i encountered in the practice examples so I want to broaden my vocabulary.  Finally, I really want to get better at recognizing the meanings of word because on the practice problems, I got every one wrong!