1. I began session #4 by asking if any of you had questions about the Invisible Man web assignment. Then I framed our discussion of Wide Sargasso Sea with the following questions: how does the way the book is written -- with two different very subjective, sometimes contradictory, often ambiguous narrators -- affect the reader's experience of the book and the meaning the reader makes while reading? & speaking of meaning, what does the book suggest about the relationship between identity formation and one's family and cultural experiences? We spent most of the rest of the session exploring these questions through the lens of quotations you pulled out of the book. Along the way we also explored possible comparisons with identity formation and environment in Invisible Man and other books and films. In the end we developed an assignment to show our understanding of the meaningful similarities and differences between Invisible Man and Wide Sargasso Sea.
2. Post-session assignment: Write a sentence or two expressing five meaningful, insightful, supportable ways that IM and WSS are similar and/or different.
Examples that do not meet expectations for the college level:
In both books the narrators move from one place to another.
In both books the narrators are secluded.
In both books the authors refer to dreams.
Examples that do meet expectations for the college-level:
Although the narrators in both novels move from home (the American South for the Invisible Man and the Caribbean for Antoinette) to a strange new place (New York for the Invisible Man and England for Antoinette), the Invisible Man is ultimately able to understand himself in relationship to his environment whereas Antoinette is never able to construct a new identity that can function successfully in her new environment.
Or,
The Invisible Man chooses seclusion in his apartment whereas Antoinette is forced into seclusion. The Invisible Man is therefore free to use his chosen seclusion to better understand himself in relation to society, and then free to choose when to re-enter society, whereas Antoinette is imprisoned in a dream-like, distorted reality from which she can only break free with self-destructive violence.
Or,
Jean Rhys and Ralph Ellison both construct real scenes that are experienced by the protagonist as dreams in order to expose the absurdity of the world's in which the protagonist's must live. In both novels the absurdity raises the question: is it the protagonists who are insane or is it the environments that are insane?
Your five statements will be due by Thursday, September 2. That next week we will, in class, begin constructing giant Venn diagrams out of your statements.
3. Reminders: as part of the school-wide summer reading program, you need to complete a quotation response journal on something else -- anything else -- that you have read this summer. Have fun with this. I am not grading this assignment; I will simply make sure you have met the basic requirements. If you turn write down ten quotations with ten responses of several sentences each you will get full credit.
Check the side bar of this blog for all the assignments.
You will receive a zero for any summer work that is not turned in by the end of the school day on Thursday, September 2. (For very practical purposes I need to have it all before the Labor Day weekend so I have a chance to look at it all and organize it all before the real onslaught of the school year begins after Labor Day.)
Jacklyn Lisnky
ReplyDeleteBlock F
Charlotte Bronte uses different styles of diction to differentiate characters in the book and it also shows the type of person they are. When Jane is speaking she speaks in a literary form. This shows that she is smart, but also shows that she is reserved with her language. This also reflects Jane’s background because she has learned to speak this way at her school and she has become comfortable in that standard and is unwilling to change. The contrast shows greatly upon the meeting of Mr. Rochester who speaks in a colloquial manner that borders on slang and taboo. Though Mr. Rochester is a higher class than Jane it also shows a double standard. The fact that if a woman, such as, Jane was to swear , she would encounter scorn from people of upper classes. Mr. Rochester also shows that he is not as highly educated as Jane because he speech is not as refined and literary as hers. The servants use a standard form while in the company of their fellow servants. By the servants using a standard form of diction it shows that they are the least educated people in the book. However , Mrs. Reed also uses a colloquial form of speaking, but there is a harsher undertone when she is talking that is not present when Mr. Rochester is speaking. This also shows that Bronte is trying to show that though diction helps to explain a character that the undertone in which they speak shows most of the character’s true intentions and motives. Helen Burns and Mr. Broklehurst use a similar form of diction, though their characters are completely different it showed that they were at a similar intelligence level. With Jane being exposed to all of these dictions it shows that she remains true to herself as her diction remains the same thus far in the novel. The structure also varies with different characters. Jane uses a more abrupt sentence which shows that she likes to get her point across without trying to sound to intelligent. There are at some points however that she does in fact use a longer sentence and that is when she wishes to convey a thought that others would not understand, so once again it shows she is the most intelligent of the people around her. Mr. Rochester uses a lengthy sentence structure because he explains himself in more detail unlike Jane. It also because he is not as intelligent as Jane, which causes him to sometimes have to use more words to describe himself than Jane does.