Thursday, December 9, 2010

Tone

Tone is a fairly important tool that poets and author’s utilize to convey emotion, setting, and meaning. Often times, tone emphasizes the word choice and meaning of the piece and is useful in this regard. For example, in Out Out by Robert Frost, Frost uses tone and tone shifts to shock the reader and to put the reader through a series of different emotions. Whilst Frost begins the poem with a lighthearted look at a family preparing dinner whilst a boy is out sawing wood. However, the tone of the poem radically shifts halfway through as the boy’s hand is cut off by the saw and eventually he dies. Without tone and tone shifts, the poem would be very static and the boy’s death would have no emotional weight on the reader. Consequently, tone is one of the most important characteristics for defining a work’s emotion and meaning. Tone is the trait the engages the reader in the work, and contains the emotion that play is trying to portray.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Blog #6: Imagery

Imagery is a particularly powerful tool that poets utilize to make their works more vivid and lively. Particularly, imagery can be done through a variety of means such as personification. Personification is the giving of human traits and actions to nonhuman objects. For instance, in Ozymandias, Shelly uses personification to paint a vivid image of the stone remains of a statue. Shelly describes the statue as having a "sneer of cold command", an image that gives a vivid image of the king described before his eventual death.

Blog #5: Sound

Sound in poetry is effective tool in conveying emotion and tone. Similar to how a movie uses a soundtrack to emphasized how emotion an emotion conveyed in a scene, poetry uses the sound of words and phrases in order to effectively convey emotion and imagery. For example, in Out Out Robert Frost uses sound and alliteration to convey the grim emotion of the. Using words with an "s" sound like saw and supper, Frost effectively conveys an image a saw buzzing. This sound makes the reader rightfully uneasy as the boy later meets a grim death at the blade of a buzz saw.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Blog #4: Symbolism

Symbolism is a key element in conveying a theme in a story and thus is effective in evoking emotion within the reader. One way in which symbolism does this is by reducing the amount of exposition in conveying an idea or premise. For example in the poem Ozymandias,  the poet is able to convey emotion and theme without being obvious and direct like exposition. Symbols can convey ideas and emotions in an artistic and poetic manner that enhances the story without being condescending to the reader.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Essay Review for Hamlet

Overall I felt like I did alright with this essay but there are definitely a lot of improvements I can make to strengthen this type of writing. First and foremost, my quotes tended to be strong but I didn't give nearly enough specific analysis about them with quotes of specific words and phrases. I give a general overview and analysis of the quote but my essay would be much better if I chose to hone in and take apart the quote by quote. Part of the reason I didn't do this was because of my second problem. My quotes were most definitely too long and drawn out. I need to pick particular sentence or phrase out of the quote and give more analysis on it rather than putting overbearing amounts of quoted material into my paper. Overall, the largest pressing problem with my writing is that I pick broad quotes and as a result give broad analysis of them. I need to focus in and pick a small section to pick apart and truly analysis in depth.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Ozymandias and 'As I Walked Out One Evening'

Both Ozymandias and 'As I Walked Out One Evening' paint different images of how time should be percieved and acknowledged. The two poems agree about the enevidability of time itself however Ozymandias gives a grimmer image of time while 'As I Walked Out One Evening' looks fairly positively at the passage of time. In Ozymandias, the poet describes the ruins of a statue in the desert that crumbles and decays. On it's pedestol it is written "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair."(Line 10-11) The message of the poem is that while humans may think that thier accomplishments mean something, they will all eventually be destroyed by time itself, left to rumble and ruin.

'As I Walked Out One Evening'  puts a different spin on this idea. Poet notes that nothing lasts forever in the flow of time but the emotions left behind will continue after we depart from this Earth and our bodies wither into nothing. Even while everything will break and decay, time keeps moving forward and there is no use wasting time in the present. Thus "And the deep river ran on,"(Line 60) serves to say that life will continue onward, regardless.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Acting Notes

When acting out Shakespeare, it is critical to convey exactly the emotion and tone of the line in order to give a better understanding of the complex dialog. Especially now when Shakespeare language is archaic and overly verbose. For example, an actor in Act II Scene II (pg 755) might choose to play Polonius as a dumbfounded, oblivious old fool who does not understand that Hamlet is playing word games with him. This would play juxtaposition to the hidden intelligence of Hamlet. Another interpretation might cast Polonius as a quick witted old man who plays along with Hamlet who would be played as a mad man.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Questions 7 and 9

Diction and figurative language are strong aspects of Shakespeare writing that truly develop and craft characters of depth and personality. For example in Act II Scene VI, figurative language really gives a view into who Hamlet is and what drives his revenge. It also serves to force the reader to question the rationality and state of mind of Hamlet. For instance, Hamlet speaks very strongly in describing his revenge like a "beast". He gives bloody and gruesome images of the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother. These grotesque images set the stage for Hamlet's further actions and paint a more vivid picture of who Hamlet is.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Hamlet, I am your Father: Analysis of Claudius' Speech Patterns

Often the struggle for an individual who obtains power illegitimately is to convince the public that it is legitimate. In the classic Shakespeare work Hamlet, the character Claudius attempts to do just that. After acquiring power by killing Hamlet's father and taking the royal seat of Denmark, King Claudius attempts to prove the legitimacy of his power through his outward appearance to his loyal subjects. Claudius puts up a rouse, pretending to very objective towards the death of the former King and even goes as far as to marry the old queen to solidify his position as the new King. All of King Claudius' speeches and relations with other characters in the play identify Claudius as a man desperate to conceal a dark past in order to guarantee autocracy in the state of Denmark.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Collins- The Nightmare

Mr. Collins, while he is portrayed as a funny and comical, is a woman's worst nightmare. Not only is he stupid and foolish but he is a great humiliation to everyone around him. For example, his proposal was both foolish and a large horror to Elizabeth Bennet. Upon his inital denial, Mr. Collins does not understand that Elizabeth does not want to marry him nor has she had any inclination to do so. His relentless pursuit of the Bennet girls and the idea that such a supercillious man could become one of thier husbands is a nightmare for the Bennet family. In fact, this nightmare would be made worse if Collins was the one to inherit all of the Bennet's land. Collins is an obvious satire for the foolishness of upper class aristocracy in her time.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

My Essay

Well, at least I can say my first essay is out of the way. And I managed to get a 92 on it as well. However, with a hindsight bias, there are several things I would've corrected/changed to make this paper better. One major problem was the length of my quotes. If given the option, I would go back and make those smaller and more focused. That way I could do more of a word by word analysis instead of a general analysis. This would help the scope of my paper even more.

I definitely should have proofread my paper more before turning it in. In fact, I should have also had someone else look over my paper to peer edit it. I left way too many grammatical errors in my paper. While they may be very small (like verb tense or missing words), my paper would have been significantly stronger. For example, in my paper I used the phrase "having to dance the undesirable Mr. Darcy". I'm not quite sure how you "dance" a person.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Friday, September 10, 2010

Contrasting Personalities: The Source of Prejudice

By utilizing the human nature of prejudice through the tendency of people to compare and contrast personalities, Jane Austen is effective in shaping the reader’s view of characters like Mr. Darcy, effectively concealing their true nature behind a veil of gossip and bias.