Friday, February 24, 2012

I read Frost's After Apple Picking. My thoughts were mixed on the poem. He seemed to almost being using his poetry to whine about some kind of work that he himself had to do or wanted to connect to the readers that work in jobs that they dislike or don't enjoy.
 
 
How to Close Read a Poem

  1. How is the title of the poem working? What information is it giving? How would the poem be different with a different title?  The poem is talking about a man/woman whose job is picking apples and the title is letting you know that the poem takes place after a day of apple picking. If it was titled gold panning then the poem would be about gold panning instead that is the revolving point (work).
  2. List all of words you don’t know, or think you don’t know. Look them up in the dictionary. Write them down. Hoary:Greyish White.
  3. Read the poem out loud. What sounds do you notice in the poem? Is there rhyme? Are there any repeated sounds? Write down the sounds you hear at work in the poem.  I am noticing that there is ryhme within the poem in several spots and it also seems to take on the "sound" of apples falling out of the tree. Seemed like there was some kind of a massive amount of flow in the middle and slow amounts in the beginning and end.
  4. What is literally happening in the poem? Write a paragraph describing what is going on. Where is this happening? Who are the people in the poem?  There is one person in the poem and it is the apple picker. He/She is taking a break or is quitting for the day and proceeds to take a nap and think about how his/her feet hurt and ache. Then during the individuals sleep they begin to dream about barrels and buckets and cellars full of apples and the sound of them "rumbling".
  5. What are the images in the poem? List five images you see in detail. What do you know about them? How is the poem using imagery? Apples rumbling out of a cellar and I also see a woodchuck randomly just hanging out in the background. The apples are a dream being had by the main character and the woodchuck I have no clue.
  6. What do you know about the speaker? List ten facts you can infer (the If-Then game).  The speaker is a working person. Probably male, maybe female. Doesn't make much money. Has sore feet. Has a disgust towards apples. Person is tired. Person works alot. Speaker doesn't like the ladders that the apple farm provides. Speaker uses every last bit of each apple even if its bruised. Before the end of the day the Speaker did not finish there job because of the empty bucket by their ladder.
  7. Write a paragraph describing the tone of the poem. Remember, tone is the speaker’s attitude toward his/her subject. Most attitudes in poetry will be complex, i.e. more that one attitude. List 10 words you think helps set this tone.  The speaker is very negative towards their job. It almost seems like they are whining or crying because their feet hurt or they deal with to many apples.  Ache, I have had too much, over tired, no worth.
  8. Does the poem have a formal structure? If not, what effect does the lack of structure have? If so, what effect does the structure have on the meaning of the poem? There is no real structure it's more of a free verse poem than anything else. The lack of structure makes the reader more able to explore through the mind of the speaker freely without it being choppy.
  9. Where does the tension lie in the poem? Poetic tension can come in many forms. Is there any conflict in the plot/action of the poem? Do images form a tension? Does the speaker and/or tone create tension in the poem? List three poetic tensions you see at work. The tension lies as soon as the speaker begins to see all of the barrells and buckets of apples. They themselves begin to become tense and agitated as if it was like they were at work again. "I keep hearing from the cellar bin", "There were ten thousand fruit to touch", "My instep arch not only keeps the ache" 
  10. Are their any images, phrases, words, and sounds in the poem that you can't shake out of your head? List three that resonate with you.   Woodchuck, hoary grass, apples in the cellar piling out.
I understand this poem  a bit better and really enjoyed thinking deeper into in. Frost is literally talking about the working class of his time and how they go through hardships and disgust of what they do to put food on the table. It also almost seemed like he thought thats the way that life is supposed to be and that is what everyone goes through on a weekly basis. There still is one thing I have no idea what it is. THAT DAMN WOODCHUCK!!!!

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Essay

In my essay I am going to write about the irony in two of the stories. I am going to further examine the irony in Booker T. Washington's work and also I will jump deeper into Grandison and the multiple accounts of irony in that story.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Webbed Booker T.

I found Booker T. Washington much more conservative and also found that he really wanted to win over the white Southerners so that he could get his point across to them. W.E.B. Du Bois  seemed to be much more Northernized in his mannerisms towards slavery. He also seemed very hostile towards all racists. As for Washington in his language he almost wrote like there was a white man peeking over his shoulder making sure he didn't say anything to bad about white folk. Altough he didn't forget about his own "black pride" thats for sure. He definitely stood up for what he believed in and in my opinion was more convincing that W.E.B. Du Bois because he lived the slavery and the hatred day in and day out while he was a slave. Du Bois' language came off as being a black man that had "heard" of slavery but never experienced it. I almost thought that his approach was just written out of hatred and written out of the want to stand up for his own people. This quote that Du Bois says really portrays the fact that he had only heard/read about the harshness of slavery.

"The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home."

Booker T. Washington's subtleness makes him so much more admireable. Like this quote for instance.

"I do not believe that the Negro should cease voting, for a man cannot learn the exercise of self-government by ceasing to vote any more than a boy can learn to swim by keeping out of the water, but i do believe that in his voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence and character who are his next-door neighbours."

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Response to Kassie


Kassie's thoughts on Dick and his response to Charity's "request" in my opinion is some what wrong. Kassie (@ http://kassiehansen.blogspot.com/) say's that "Dick is the heir of his father’s estate, why does he need to free another man’s slave when his father owns so many and one day they will all belong to Dick. When that day come he could just set them all free, why does he need to steal another man’s slave when he will have them all one day". The response Dick had was a quick natured act of "love" that made him want to do anything to win Charity over. Your right in the fact that he needed to take a step back and think about it a little more but implied in the story is that Dick is lazy and laziness implies that the person doesn't neccesarily take steps back and think before he/she acts.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Grandison and His Irony

The Passing of Grandison
There are TONS of ironic points in this story. Chesnutt laid alot of racial aspect out on the line as well. The first ironic point that I noticed was a situational irony, the Yankee man went down south and took a slave to Canada to free him. Little did he know he sacrificed his own freedom for someone else's freedom. After taking the negro slave to Canada he was placed into a penitentiary and died later on. So in freeing one man he was then without freedom.

SITUATIONAL IRONY: ", a young white man from Ohio, moved by compassion for the sufferings of a certain bondman who happened to have a "hard master," essayed to help the slave to freedom. The attempt was discovered and frustrated; the abductor was tried and convicted for slave-stealing, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the penitentiary. His death, after the expiration of only a small part of the sentence, from cholera contracted while nursing stricken fellow prisoners"

As for the verbal irony it is plastered all over the short story. I have decided to highlight the verbal irony that arose at the end of the story. although technically it happened throughout the whole piece the reader didn't know it was irony until the end. Whenever Grandison said something along the lines of he would never want to be free or he just wants to go home that was verbally ironic. He is wanting to go home to retrieve his family them leave but that is something that he is choosing to not say to his master obviously which is what really makes it ironic.

VERBAL IRONY: ""Let's go back ober der ribber, Mars Dick. I's feared i'll lose you ovuh heah, an' den i won' hab no marster, an' won't nebber be able to git back home no mo'.""

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Response to Decker

"The boy represents not just childhood wonder and innocence, but rather the boy represents the South."
This is exactly what I saw, although I had a different way of portraying it and related it to a modern day theme. The sheer thought of the lack of innocence in the world is something that would lead to the eventual destruction of the human race. If there is no one left to think of the good things to happen in the future (innocence) then all that will be though of will be ideas of depression such as death, dying, and decay. Decker hit the idea of the time spot on which techincally the thought of innocence and the fear of losing it is always going to be around. The matter of its reality will differ from generation to generation though. In the Civil War Chickamauga is the depiction of the loss of innocence and in my eyes the loss of innocence is a meer zombie apocalypse.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Private History and Chickamauga

As for the post I know is a tad bit late but I thought I would much rather have read everything and actually have good input that just make something up for a grade.

Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce honestly brought tears to my eyes and a solid lump to my throat. At first I thought that it was a great short story and then the farther I read the more it related to two things in my mind. A terrific horrifying story about the scarring of a childs life that I don't want to hear/read, and a Zombie apocalypse storyline. The reason why I bring the zombie theme up is because in a way this is very similar to that theme. Bierce is technically describing the end of this childs world as well as the one thing that could make a deaf mute make any form of noise what so ever.



A Private History by Mark Twain was a very interesting story. I always wondered if there was a short story following the experiences of a Confederate soldier. There is one similarity that I am realizing not only with these two stories but with any realist writer that writes about the Civil War. They all write as if it is the end of the world. I understand why and they have a valid point because it is such a huge point in history and the death toll was exponentially greater than anything previously or for that matter later on too. (Other that the World Wars)