Thomas Friedman, opinionated yet reasonable, clear and to-the-point, and intelligent. In his editorial, Cut Here. Invest There, all his trademark styles and techniques shine through. Friedman opens with a clear stance, a strong backing of the President’s position and an intent to dismantle the GOP’s position with his methodical arguments.
He sets the tone with the biting, almost satirical, statement, “The country, we are told, is now in a better mood, seeing our two parties work together.” He then confirms the direction of the article by saying “I, alas, am not in a better mood.” His voice is blunt and his tone reflects his mood.
Friedman uses bitter language to shape his voice, introducing his grievances by saying, “I’ll be in a better mood when I see our two parties cooperating to do something hard. Borrowing billions more from China to give ourselves more tax cuts does not qualify.” If this sentence came from someone else I would think it was a comedic attempt but it is clear Friedman is serious. This somberness makes the reader afraid. This is what Friedman wants, he, all too often, instills fear and then offers the light, the way out.
Friedman reaches his main point after giving the reader adequate background. Being as clear and as forceful as possible he puts the issue to the reader, “We are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people. And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people.” Friedman’s voice, as an intellect, is definitely elevated; not on the level of Shakespeare or Tennyson, but more elevated than the rest of the NY Times.
Friedman continues his blunt style and with almost comedic voice states, “Everyone knows the first rule of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging. But people often forget the second rule of holes: You can only grow your way out. You can’t borrow your way out.” The way he simply proves his point makes his argument soundproof. Because of this water tight argument, this essay would be perfect as an AP essay. He lays out his claims and then systematically proves them with solid evidence backing them up. In relation to his voice- as usual it is very opinionated but not enough to be detrimental to his writing.
A well written persuasive essay using multiple techniques to create a strong and methodical voice.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Notes: 3/7 - 3/18
Last notes ever!
MODERNISM
..and that's the end.
MODERNISM
- "Make it new" was the moto of the times
- New universal truth
- Began with WWI, ends with WWII
- New form of narrative consisting of...
- unreliable narrators
- multiple narrators
- minor characters as 1st person narrators
- and stream of consciousness
POST-MODERNISM
- TV - spread of post modernism
- Post Modernism = Modernism - universal truth + irony
- There was a blending of high & low culture
- Self reference - tiger blood and such
- The Simulacrum - basically fiction becomes more real than reality.
SURREALISM
- between WWI and WWII.
- Uses unexpected juxtapositions in way intended to activate subconscious associations that highlight truths hidden from us when we are trapped in linear patterns of thought.
- joins the world of dreams and fantasy to reality to create a larger reality- 'sur-realism'
- Salvador Dali and the other guys..
..and that's the end.
Outside Reading: Book Review
Ron Carlson’s What the Dog Saw is an enlightening review of Scott Spencer’s book, Man In the Woods. Carlson focuses not on plot or style or genre but rather the philosophical message the book is trying to convey.
Carlson introduces us to Will, Paul, and Kate, Spencer’s main characters. He then recites a brief overview of what occurs. Will is the man in the woods, Paul catches him beating his dog, their “exchange escalates to violence” and Carlson does not even have to tell us that murder transpires; this links to Carlson’s insistence that it is not the plot that is the important literary concept. Carlson elaborates that the plot is not similar to most murder novels, it is no a who-done-it but rather an analysis of the question, “What if you killed a stranger who had few ties to the world — a person no one might miss?” Carlson rarely has to come out and state the obvious for the reader to undertand what he wishes to say about the novel. When he says “the murder doesn’t operate as a motor for the action” we become aware that it is the actions and psychology of the characters, stating that the murder “glows like something toxic in the daily lives of the characters”, leading us back to Carlson’s first question, which is undoubtedly answered, to the best of Spencer’s abilities, in the novel.
I got the impression that Carlson wanted to compare this work with a Shakespearean tragedy but, once again, he would not outwardly make this connection. The criminal act is not important, but the trouble it causes the protagonist is the center of the novel. Introduced as “a good old-fashioned guy and a superlative woodworker”, Paul could easily be our tragic hero, perhaps there is even a biblical reference in Carlson’s description. He certainly has everything to loose, including his good-natured sanity. Spencer is addressing the question; can an ordinary man get aware with murder? Can he escape society? But more importantly, can he escape himself? This is similar to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian tests and pushes the boundaries of what he can do. However Dorian’s portrait sees all, as does Will’s dog. What about that dog? Taken form Will’s ex-girlfriend, beaten by Will, taken from Will’s dead body, and entrusted with all the dirty secrets that haunt the characters. What is the significance? Carlson seemed to think it was important but he continues his vague, implying tone, and recommends one reads the novel.
Carlson introduces us to Will, Paul, and Kate, Spencer’s main characters. He then recites a brief overview of what occurs. Will is the man in the woods, Paul catches him beating his dog, their “exchange escalates to violence” and Carlson does not even have to tell us that murder transpires; this links to Carlson’s insistence that it is not the plot that is the important literary concept. Carlson elaborates that the plot is not similar to most murder novels, it is no a who-done-it but rather an analysis of the question, “What if you killed a stranger who had few ties to the world — a person no one might miss?” Carlson rarely has to come out and state the obvious for the reader to undertand what he wishes to say about the novel. When he says “the murder doesn’t operate as a motor for the action” we become aware that it is the actions and psychology of the characters, stating that the murder “glows like something toxic in the daily lives of the characters”, leading us back to Carlson’s first question, which is undoubtedly answered, to the best of Spencer’s abilities, in the novel.
I got the impression that Carlson wanted to compare this work with a Shakespearean tragedy but, once again, he would not outwardly make this connection. The criminal act is not important, but the trouble it causes the protagonist is the center of the novel. Introduced as “a good old-fashioned guy and a superlative woodworker”, Paul could easily be our tragic hero, perhaps there is even a biblical reference in Carlson’s description. He certainly has everything to loose, including his good-natured sanity. Spencer is addressing the question; can an ordinary man get aware with murder? Can he escape society? But more importantly, can he escape himself? This is similar to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian tests and pushes the boundaries of what he can do. However Dorian’s portrait sees all, as does Will’s dog. What about that dog? Taken form Will’s ex-girlfriend, beaten by Will, taken from Will’s dead body, and entrusted with all the dirty secrets that haunt the characters. What is the significance? Carlson seemed to think it was important but he continues his vague, implying tone, and recommends one reads the novel.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Outside Reading: Reflective Essay
Jonathan Franzen uses his personal experiences, written with humor, regret, and lessons learnt to explain a decision he has made, a code to live his life by. In his reflective essay for the New Yorker, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, he tells of how he decided to live within his means.
Franzen opens with an anecdote, common in reflective essays. Franzen makes it clear that the force behind all his actions is his poor wealth, as an almost desperate writer, this plays a part in the lessons learnt from his reflection. The essay takes place in the past; opening with “In the early nineties,” however, Franzen avoids any passive tense. Through a series of stories Franzen tells of his poor experiences house-sitting. “The first house I sat belonged to a professor at my alma mater”, immediately he saw all the outweighing downside to his new occupation, realizing “it’s in the nature of a borrowed house that its closets will be hung with someone else’s bathrobes, its refrigerator glutted with someone else’s condiments, its shower drain plugged with someone else’s hair.” The point of the reflection was not, however, that it is an uncomfortable situation to live in someone else’s home. Though, this was all necessary to develop Franzen’s light-hearted tone and disappointed voice. The precedent that house sitting is bad must also be set. Only after Franzen had grown tired of living in another’s home was he told “This is my house, Jonathan.”
At the next house, “the grand stucco house of two older friends, Ken and Joan, in Media, Pennsylvania”, Franzen reasserts, almost as an excuse, that he had “less than no money at all”. Continuing with the comic tone he mocks his hosts “Ken gently chided Joan for having “bruised” with melting ice”, and states “The only thing I had to do to earn my keep in Media was mow Ken and Joan’s extensive lawn. Mowing lawns has always seemed to me among the most despair-inducing of human activities.” The most valuable thing stated by his hosts was that they always live beyond their means. Franzen takes this as advice. Implementing this advice comically, “by way of following Ken’s example of living beyond one’s means, I delayed the first mowing until the grass was so long that I had to stop and empty the clippings bag every five minutes” however perhaps seemingly comic, this turned out to be the catalyst for the change and revelation in Franzen’s life. “I delayed the second mowing even longer. By the time I got around to it, the lawn had been colonized by a large clan of earth-burrowing hornets”; the following anecdote contains the essay’s message. “Ken told me that I needed to visit the hornet homes one by one after dark, when the inhabitants were sleeping, and pour gasoline into the burrows and set them on fire.” With this advice Franzen almost burnt himself out of house and home, and he reflects “and the home wasn’t even mine”. The terrifying experience jolted Franzen. After much anticipation Franzen tells us what was learnt in punch-line-like format he concludes, “However modest my means were, it was seeming preferable, after all, to live within them.” Using short sentences, he bluntly ends with “I never house-sat again.” Lesson learnt.
Franzen opens with an anecdote, common in reflective essays. Franzen makes it clear that the force behind all his actions is his poor wealth, as an almost desperate writer, this plays a part in the lessons learnt from his reflection. The essay takes place in the past; opening with “In the early nineties,” however, Franzen avoids any passive tense. Through a series of stories Franzen tells of his poor experiences house-sitting. “The first house I sat belonged to a professor at my alma mater”, immediately he saw all the outweighing downside to his new occupation, realizing “it’s in the nature of a borrowed house that its closets will be hung with someone else’s bathrobes, its refrigerator glutted with someone else’s condiments, its shower drain plugged with someone else’s hair.” The point of the reflection was not, however, that it is an uncomfortable situation to live in someone else’s home. Though, this was all necessary to develop Franzen’s light-hearted tone and disappointed voice. The precedent that house sitting is bad must also be set. Only after Franzen had grown tired of living in another’s home was he told “This is my house, Jonathan.”
At the next house, “the grand stucco house of two older friends, Ken and Joan, in Media, Pennsylvania”, Franzen reasserts, almost as an excuse, that he had “less than no money at all”. Continuing with the comic tone he mocks his hosts “Ken gently chided Joan for having “bruised” with melting ice”, and states “The only thing I had to do to earn my keep in Media was mow Ken and Joan’s extensive lawn. Mowing lawns has always seemed to me among the most despair-inducing of human activities.” The most valuable thing stated by his hosts was that they always live beyond their means. Franzen takes this as advice. Implementing this advice comically, “by way of following Ken’s example of living beyond one’s means, I delayed the first mowing until the grass was so long that I had to stop and empty the clippings bag every five minutes” however perhaps seemingly comic, this turned out to be the catalyst for the change and revelation in Franzen’s life. “I delayed the second mowing even longer. By the time I got around to it, the lawn had been colonized by a large clan of earth-burrowing hornets”; the following anecdote contains the essay’s message. “Ken told me that I needed to visit the hornet homes one by one after dark, when the inhabitants were sleeping, and pour gasoline into the burrows and set them on fire.” With this advice Franzen almost burnt himself out of house and home, and he reflects “and the home wasn’t even mine”. The terrifying experience jolted Franzen. After much anticipation Franzen tells us what was learnt in punch-line-like format he concludes, “However modest my means were, it was seeming preferable, after all, to live within them.” Using short sentences, he bluntly ends with “I never house-sat again.” Lesson learnt.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Notes: 2/21 - 3/4
Comedy!!!!
Low Comedy: lacks seriousness of purpose and doesn't appeal to the intellect.
High Comedy: Pure or serious comedy—appeals to the intellect. Social
Burlesque: Form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion.
Farce: A light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot, exaggerated character, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.
Lampoon: A broad satirical piece that uses ridicule to attack a person or group
Parody: A composition imitating or burlesquing another, usually serious, piece of work. i.e. caricature.
Satire: Holding up to ridicule the follies and vices of a people or time
Slapstick: Boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes
Travesty: Presents a serious (often religious) subject frivolously.
*NOTE—All are on that one sheet..
Litotes: A form of understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite.
Malapropism: An inappropriateness of speech resulting from the use of one word for another which resembles it.
Non-sequitur: Inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premise or evidence.
Oxymoron: A group of apparently contradictory terms suggesting a paradox
Paradox: A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but contains some degree of truth
Parody: A work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect and/or ridicule
Pun (Zeugma): A play on words based on the similarity of sound between two words with different meanings
Sarcasm: An exaggerated form of verbal irony; bitter, caustic language that is meant to hurt or ridicule someone or something. The term came from the Greek word “sarkazein” which means “to tear flesh.”
Stereotyping: A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.
Understatement: when the literal sense of what is said falls detectably short of he magnitude of what is being said
Wit: This term has more specific uses in Renaissance and 17th century, but for modern works it generally refers to clever uses of language to provoke laughter
Colloquialism: Use of slang or informal language—includes regional dialect
Deflation: An object either assumes elevated status and then is treated such that estimation of the object decreases.
Disparagement: To speak of in a slighting way; belittle; reduce in rank or esteem
Euphemism: a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept
Hyperbole: Exaggeration or overstatement.
Incongruity: A surprising contrast occurring through situation, image, allusion, character, diction...
Invective: Harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause
Irony: And we've done this a thousand times.
Different Types of Comedy
Comedy of Ideas
· Characters argue about ideas like politics, religion, sex, marriage;
· Characters use their wit and their clever language to mock their opponent in an argument;
· Subtle way to satirize people and institutions like political parties, governments, religion and such.
Comedy of Manners
· affairs of the upper classes
· Focus on witty language, clever speech;
· Society is often made up of cliques that are exclusive with certain groups as the in-crowd.
Farce
· Plot is full of coincidences, mistimings, mistaken identities;
· Characters are puppets of fate
Low Comedy
· Dirty jokes, dirty gestures, sex and elimination are subjects of the humor;
· Slapstick, pratfalls, loud noises, physical mishap
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Notes: 2/7 - 2/18
Heart of Darkness
Apocalypse Now:
- Geography
- Inner station and outer station- Dante's circles of Hell.
- Hell v. Paradise
- River as a serpant
- Women in Heart of Darkness:
- Fates - two women knitting
- Marlow's Aunt - intelligent? Marlow (and maybe Conrad) want to deny it.
- Kurtz's betrothed. Marlow's lie.
- Man in patches
- Joseph??
- or court jester
- ..both of which mean Kurtz = evil king?
- Frame story
- Can we trust either narrator? The frame story make it more reliable
- sitting on the Thames telling story - parallels the Congo? This setting wouldn't be there if there wasn't a frame story.
- The story also wouldn't have Marlow's reflection.
- Kurtz's mistress?
- She's never called his mistress, we just presumed. And why does Marlow never learn anything about her? What accounts for her power? Why the mystery?
- The Intended:
- why does Marlow lie to her, especially when he no longer thought so highly of Kurtz and we know he abhors lies, why???
- In conclusion:
- Irony or Romance? I think irony. The fact that Marlow is setting out on a similar journey points at irony. It only makes more ironic that Marlow learned stuff and is still blindly continuing...stupid guy
Apocalypse Now:
- Based off Heart of Darkness but lacks the merit.
- Set in Vietnam
- Poor representation of Kurtz
- Different ending- it implies Marlow/Willard does not escape the jungle
Outside Reading: Editorial
Donna Dubinsky opens her essay Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance with the blunt explanation that her article is not “the story of a poor family with a mother who has a dreadful disease that bankrupts them” nor is it a lamenting tale of “a child who has to go without vital medicines”, this clarification sets the tone not as a heartfelt emotional plea but an unbiased serious critique of a government policy. She does show that she is willing to play with emotions, with a subtle stab at the system, “Unlike many others, my family can afford medical care, with or without insurance.”
Dubinsky takes a short paragraph to state her point clearly, namely “how broken the market for health insurance is, even for those who are healthy and who are willing and able to pay for it.” Short and to the point.
She goes on to criticize the lawmakers who wish to complicate the recently reformed system. Dubinsky uses short but flowing sentences to explain the problem and offer a solution. “The truth is that individual health insurance is not easy to get. I found this out the hard way. Six years ago, my company was acquired. Since my husband had retired a few years earlier, we found ourselves without an employer and thus without health insurance.” Using a personal story brings the reader closer to her. She continues, “An insurance broker helped me sort through the options. I settled on a high-deductible plan, and filled out the long application. I diligently listed the various minor complaints for which we had been seen over the years, knowing that these might turn up later and be a basis for revoking coverage if they were not disclosed.”
Dubinsky utilizes rhetorical questions to lead her argument “Why did we even need insurance?” followed by rational, and “Why were we denied?” followed by not-so-rational explanation that proves her point even more so.
Taking on an informal tone, Dubinsky relates her woes with insurance company denying her coverage and hours spent applying her family, individually, she addresses the reader and one almost gets the feeling she is writing a guidebook on how to get covered. She wants the reader to learn from her mistakes. Unfortunately this means she must spend a good portion of her essay listing off said mistakes.
Besides the colloquial language this essay would be adequate for an AP essay, the arguments can be too informal and personal at times but they are delivered well, with plenty of detail and evidence to back up claims.
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