Close Readings- Number Three

TAKING NOTE; So Many Screeners and So Little Shampoo, but Are Our Planes Safer?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E7DF113EF936A2575AC0A9649D8B63&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

    
     In this article I found diction, details, and syntax. The author is trying to persuade you into thinking that even though we have all this secuirty and all these rules for flying on airplanes, that they really aren't all that much safer.
     The diction is this piece is really all just denotative. But there are some connotative diction also. Such as "The report notes, dryly, that ..." Using dryly states that the report was boring and uninformitative. Details in this piece persuade us to believe that airports and airplanes aren't much safer than they were before 9/11. In paragraphs 8-10 the article gives examples from a report about the TSA's spending and how it really hasn't helped with changing airport security. Using factual evidence is extremely helpful to use in a persuasive essay. Syntax in this piece is also used to help persuade you since its an opinion piece. The writer uses a mix of long and short sentences and uses semicolons with short sentences to help you keep reading. An example of this is "They do; but there's a hitch." They also use rhetorical questions. Such as, "Is it really necessary to ban shampoo and hand cream?"
     This article did a good job of using the persuasive technigues and using different literary elements to help with the persuasion. It grabs your attention and it doesn't just wander off and bore you in the middle of it. It keeps you reading and intrigued and defintiely does persuade you, or make you more for the other side of the argument.

Prompt #1: 2009, Form B

2009, Form B. Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political oe social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explazin how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

     In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Twain explores social issues. The main literary element he uses is satire. He satirizes social classes and religion mainly. Huck Finn's father is a complete idiot and just doesn't know anything. But, the black slave, Jim, is more intelgent than the white man that is Huck Finn's father. Pap, Huck Finn's dad, is a white male, which means he is on the very top of the social class pyramid in this novel. And Jim, is on the very botttom. But their attitudes and intellgience levels are completely opposite.
     Jim wasn't someone that anyone would trust because he is African American. But Huck Finn, trusts him more than anyone else does. He realizes that just because he has different colored skin, doesn't mean that he is a different person. Twain shows this by Jim kind of becoming Huck's older brother and caring for him. He shows how the different social classes mix, and how the pyramid just gets thrown off because Huck trusts Jim so much.
     Another way Twain uses satire is with religion. Huck's aunt, whom he lives with, teaches him all about the Bible and what God does and why Huck should pay attention. But Huck just doesn't even care and says that he's not even sure what all of this means and why he needs to learn it. This completely goes against the norm for the time period. Twain just really wrote in a completely different way and satrirized a lot of things that other writers wouldn't have.

Response to Course Material: Number One

      After reading How to Literature as a Professional, and doing the presentation for it. I realized that I didn't know as much as I thought I did. And all those childhood movies and books, they aren't so childlike after all. They have so much more meaning than just being entertainment for kids. Like Shrek for example, it's not just an ugly, hated ogre saving a princess, who also turns out to be an ogre. It's all the fairytales put into one movie. I realized this once I read the chapter about Hansel and Gretel. He mentions how many writers use "kiddie lit" to relate their stories to, and well, it works. He also mentions how everything comes from one story. And he's right. Like he mentioned, I haven't read everything there is to be read, but for the most part, I can relate some part of a book I am reading to another piece of literature.
      In The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, it gives you tips on how to write a well written essay. After taking notes on the powerpoints, it made me think of this book. Many of the things in the presentaions were noted in the book. Such as having a clear reason to write the paper, and getting your point across as easily and as well stated as possible.
      We also focused on literary terms. I noticed these in the poems we had to read over summer. I wasn't exactly looking for them when I first read them and I missed some things, that maybe I shouldn't have. But when I look back at the poems, I see a lot more than I did before. In Sonnet 20, I noticed free verse. The poem doesn't really have any specific rhyme. Also, I saw juxtaposition. Neruda writes, "My ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold;/ my beauty, for the wrinkle on my forehead./ My love: I love you for your clarity, your dark." (lines 12-14). He states a beautiful thing for when he talks about "ugly", and an ugly thing when he talks about "beauty". He loves her no matter what she looks like and for who she is.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

When I first started reading this essay, some things just didn't sound right. As I kept on reading, it didn't exactly get better, but it didn't get worse. Sedaris followed some things from Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, but not everything. I feel as though he added commas where there shouldn't have been. Such as the second sentence. "After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theatres, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwhich." (Sedaris 1). The comma pair he uses doesn't work here. In Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, Harvery notes that "the pair of commas works rather like parentheses to mark the beginning and end." (Harvey 36). The commas Sedaris uses confused me and made the sentence hard to read. Harvey also wrote that you should use quotations when writing words in a different language and Sedaris uses italics instead of quotations. For the most part Sedaris' essay was well written and had flow, but I didn't really understand the message behind it completely.

Poetry Goals

1. Don't look into the poems meaning until the second time you read it
2. Figure out the subject matter of the poem;  understand the meaning
3. Pay attention the rhythm and rhyme
4. Consider the title of the poem
5. Who is the narrator? What's the setting?

I chose these goals because these are things I usually miss or overlook. I never read the poem once just to read it. I start by trying to figure out the meaning, but it really helps to read it once before trying to figure out the meaning. I also don't really look at titles of poems. But the titles usually have some meaning. The rhyme and rhythm of a poem can also help you understand the poem better and I get so caught up in reading between the lines that I don't pay attention to that. The setting and narrator have a big role in the meaning of a poem and if you miss that, the poem can have a completely different meaning.

Diagnostic Test

After taking this test, I was a little concernced about the poetry. I am not the best when it comes to analyizing, especailly poetry. I wasn't at all suprised by the amount of anayzing in this test. I mean, pretty much, that's what I see literature as. The essay portion was something I also wasn't suprised about. I have always had to read part of a book, and then reflect upon it and look for literary elements.  For the most part, nothing really surprised me about this test. It is just a regular literature test. The only thing different is that it's timed.