Open Prompt #3 Revised

2001. One definition of madness is "mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it." But Emily Dickinson wrote

    Much madness is divinest Sense-

    To a discerning Eye-

Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a "discerning Eye." Select a novel or play in which a character's apparent madness or irrational behavior plays an important role. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the "madness" to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

           

            Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller has a classic example of a character that goes through eccentric behavior. Willy, the main character, is a salesman, father, and husband. He has reached the point in his life where everything seems to be falling apart, which is when this play takes place.

            It is mentioned throughout the novel that the rest of the business world thinks Willy has officially gone crazy. When other characters in the story see him, they see a man who mumbles and talks to himself. However, as the reader, we know that it’s more than that. Willy is actually having hallucinations and sees images of people like his brother Ben, whom he thinks he is talking to. He has flashbacks of memories from the olden days, when everything was going right for him, and he imagines himself there talking to the people. His wife Linda explains at one point in the story that Willy talks to himself because he is tired of all the disappointment in his life. Everything that he had looked forward to had failed him; he lost his job, he didn’t strike it rich in Alaska like his brother, he lost his relationship with Biff, and he blames himself for Biff’s failures. With all these negative events and thoughts in his life, it makes sense that Willy tries to remember the times when things were going well and there was still hope for being rich.

            Willy’s mad behavior is important to the play because it’s what the entire play revolves around. He switches back and forth from reality, to a flashback/hallucination, and then back to reality again. As the reader, we get an inside view of the madness going on inside of Willy’s head and we can see how the other characters react to him while he is going through that episode. The boys are initially cold to their father but as they see the struggle he goes through daily to make a living, they realize they should support him. They try to help him overcome his hallucinations by attempting to bring success to their own lives, which is all Willy wanted in the first place, especially for Biff. This is why Biff tries to make a big sports deal. Willy’s mad behavior is essentially what threatens to tear the family apart but then ends up bringing the family back together right before his untimely death. 

Ceremony Summary and Analysis

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

-         She is part Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and Anglo American, which are the three cultures she mentions in her novel.

-         She says she identifies with her Native American culture the most, as does the main character in her novel.

Setting:

-         Jungles in the Philippines

-         Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico

Plot:

            -Tayo returns home to the reservation from WWII and has PTSD like many of his friends who also served. He feels guilty because he cursed the rains in the Philippines and now there is a drought in Laguna.  

            -His cousin Rocky had died in the war, and his uncle Josiah had died while he was away. Those were the two people he was closest to, so he’s struggling to get over that. (Josiah has a Mexican girlfriend, Night Swan, which was also disapproved of.)

            -He lives with his Auntie, Uncle Robert, and Grandmother. Tayo is half white, which is a disgrace in the community, so he has a hard time fitting in anywhere because he is unwanted by the Indian community and the white community.

            -He tries to get over his disorder and the deaths by turning to alcoholism.

            -Grandmother calls in the medicine man Ku’oosh, to help him return back to normal.

            -Ku’oosh does an ancient ceremony for him, for those soldiers coming back from the war and who have killed others and it helps Tayo, but he isn’t completely cured. Ku’oosh thinks it’s time for change, and that the old ceremony isn’t enough for Tayo.

            -Ku’oosh sends him to another medicine man, Betonie, who has more to do with the blending of Native American and white cultures. Betonie decides they have to invent and complete a new ceremony for Tayo to be healed. He tells Tayo a story about his Grandfather and the beginning of the ceremony to stop the destruction the whites are doing to the world.

            -Betonie tells him to look for Josiah’s cattle that were lost since Josiah died, and that will be the start of the new ceremony.

            -Tayo starts his journey by following the stars as Betonie had said, and finds a woman, Ts’eh. They spend the night together, and then Tayo leaves.

            -Tayo finds the cattle fenced in on a white man’s ranch. Tayo breaks the fence and frees the cattle, but then is caught by the patrolmen. However, a mountain lion’s tracks distract them and they free Tayo.

            -Tayo then runs into a hunter, who takes him back to his house. It turns out, the hunter lives with Ts’eh. Ts’eh has caught all the cattle for Tayo and had them waiting there for him.

            -Tayo leaves and comes back with Robert, to bring the cattle home, but the house is empty and Ts’eh and the Hunter are gone.

            -Tayo now feels cured, but there is still a drought so he knows the ceremony isn’t done. 

            -Tayo goes to the family ranch, to look after the cattle. He meets Ts’eh there and they spend the summer together. However, at the end of the summer she tells him that Emo and the white police are coming to get him. She leaves.

            -He follows her advice and escapes the police. He’s still running from Emo, when his friends Harley and Leroy find him. He realizes that they have joined Emo and he escapes. He ends up hiding in a uranium mine.

            -Emo arrives and tortures Harley to death in front of Tayo’s hiding spot. Hiding in the mine was the last part of the ceremony because it joins white culture and Indian culture.

            -Tayo returns to Ku’oosh and tells him the story of his ceremony. Ku;oosh says that Ks’eh was A’moo’ooh who is a sacred person in Native American culture, Yellow Woman. Since she appeared, she has given her blessing to Tayo and the ceremony.

            -Tayo spends the night at Ku’oosh’s and then leaves. The ceremony is complete.

Significant Characters:

-         Tayo: Half Laguna, half white main character who comes home from the war with PTSD

-         Rocky: Tayo’s cousin, who is as close a brother, dies in the war, star student

-         Josiah: Tayo’s uncle whom Tayo really looked up to, died while Tayo was away

-         Auntie: Tayo’s mother’s sister, who raised him, but made clear that she did not approve of his half-breed status

-         Robert: Auntie’s husband

-         Grandmother: wise character, refers Tayo to the medicine man

-         Emo: Tayo’s enemy, “witch”

-         Ts’eh: Yellow Woman

-         Hunter: shape shifter, Ka’tsina

-         Harley and Leroy: Tayo’s old friends

-         Night Swan: Josiah’s Mexican girlfriend

Author Style:

            -Written with long sentences and lots of imagery and description.

- Supposed to be in the form of the Native American oral tradition.

- There is a lot of use of figurative language and color words.

- There is also a big emphasis on where, and not when.

- The story has a 3^rd person narrator that follows Tayo around, but occasionally it shifts perspective and follows another character’s events.

-There are poems about Native American culture that are dispersed throughout the story that provide a parallel story that goes along with the main story.  

Quotes: 

1.)    “Nothing was all good or all bad either; it all depended.” This quote is a realization that Tayo comes to. It’s something Josiah said to him. Nothing is simple enough to immediately put in one category of “good” or “bad.” There are different sides to everything, so we need to look at all sides of something before we classify it.

2.)   “Old Grandma shook her head slowly, and closed her cloudy eyes again.  ‘I guess I must be getting old, ‘ she said, ‘because these goings-on around Laguna don't get me excited anymore.’ She sighed, and laid her head back on the chair. ‘It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different.’”  This quote makes reference to the fact that Laguna people believe that the world progresses in a loop, that future events are similar to old ones, so nothing is new. Everything goes back to something that’s happened.

Theme:

            -No matter where you go and what you do, it’s always important to remember who you are and where you come from.

            -In the novel, Tayo went off to war and forgot all about Laguna culture. He came back home with PTSD, it took getting back to his culture to cure him.

            -The title is called Ceremony, and that refers to the ceremony Tayo has to go through in order to be cured, and in that ceremony, he gives up his “white” ways and goes back to the way he grew up, with the Indian culture.

            -The constant use of figurative language, imagery, and the style the story is written in, the oral tradition way of the Native Americans, all are reaffirming the Native American culture.  

Response to Course Materials 4/14/13

            We just finished reading our first novel and I really enjoyed it (reading it… not annotating it). It was really interesting to get a chance to compare a novel to the plays we have read. My first interpretation of Ceremony was so much different that my interpretation after our discussion in class. There was so much symbolism in the novel and lots of Native American culture that I missed in my initial reading. It was only after discussing it with the class, and reading that article from Ms. Holmes did I understand things like the fact that the hunter was the mountain lion. So I’m really glad we take the time and discuss the book after our first reading. Understanding the book will definitely help when writing an essay for it on the AP exam.

            We just started reading Fifth Business and so far it’s a pretty easy read. It’s straightforward, which is a change from the other books we’ve read because the other ones required a bit of deciphering. So I think this one will probably be easier to understand and a plus side is that we don’t have to annotate it! J I hope these two books will come in handy when writing an essay on the AP Exam, because the books from the beginning of the year are starting to get a bit hazy in my mind.

Open Prompt #2 Revised

2005, Form B. One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel or a drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.

            A power struggle is a common reoccurring event in literature, whether it is a character trying to escape someone else’s power, gain power for themselves, or both. Macbeth from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is one such character. Macbeth’s struggle to gain power is the main focus of the play and the event that defines his character.

            The first instance when Macbeth shows his intent for power is when he and his wife plot to kill the present King of Scotland, King Duncan, so that Macbeth can be king. They invite the King to their house and Macbeth stabs him to death that night and frames the servants, who he then also kills to make sure his original bloody act of killing the King remains a secret.  Now that Macbeth is King and has gained all the power, one would think that he would stop the murderous acts. However, now that he has power, he is so paranoid about losing it, that he continues with the murdering.

            In order to maintain his power, he wants to kill everyone who could potentially take his throne away from him. The power has gone to his head so much that he orders his best friend Banquo and Banquo’s son Fleance to be killed. He doesn’t stop there, he finds out that Macduff, a Scottish noble, is against him and orders Macduff and his entire family to be killed. However, Macduff is gone when the hitmen arrive, so he survives but his entire family is killed. Now Macbeth is committing cruel acts that don’t have anything to do with maintaining power. For instance, there was no need to kill Macduff’s family, but Macbeth goes through with it anyway, to show his power over Macduff.

            This constant struggle for Macbeth’s power enhances the meaning of the work, because every time Macbeth commits an act that has to do with maintaining or increasing his power, we can see the effect it has on him and his wife. Macbeth goes through an internal struggle each time that situation comes along, battling between his conscious and his actions. Every time it comes to committing a murder, he feels guilty before and very nearly talks himself out of it; however, in the end he can’t stop himself from committing the murder, showing that his hunger for power triumphs all. The entire play is based on the how the effects of his greed lead to his downfall. The cruel acts cause his wife, Lady Macbeth, who initially was shown to be a woman of steel, to go insane with guilt and kill herself, which causes Macbeth to go insane as well and eventually be defeated and beheaded.

            Overall, Macbeth’s struggle for power is what defines his character and leads to his eventual death. Since this was the main focus of the play, it seems to show that nothing good can come of greed for power. 

Summary and Analysis of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

·         The author is this play is Tom Stoppard. He is a British playwright who left Czechoslovakia as a child refugee and then settled in Britain.

·         The setting of the story is the same as Hamlet, because this story is intertwined with that one. It’s following Ros and Guil’s perspective through the story of Hamlet. So it takes place in a forest at first, while Ros and Guil are on their way to Elsinore. Then at Elsinore, then finally ends in England.

·         Plot:

o   Ros and Guil are in the wilderness travelling, although they have forgotten why.

o    They flip coins and are questioning the laws of probability because all the coins end up heads.

o   They meet a group of actors travelling, and the actors start to put on a play for them, but Ros and Guil leave.

o   The scene changes and Ros and Guil are suddenly at Elsinore. They talk to the King and are told to spy on their friend Hamlet to see why he has gone crazy. So now, Ros and Guil are just watching scenes that we have already read in Hamlet, such Hamlet and Ophelia’s scene where she tries to return his belongings, and when Hamlet stabs Polonius.

o   After Hamlet kills Polonius, he is put on a ship to England with Ros and Guil. The two friends are supposed to turn Hamlet over to the King of England with a letter given to them by the King of Denmark. However, when they are sleeping, Hamlet switches the letter, so that instead of saying that they are turning Hamlet over, they say they are turning themselves over.

o    The Tragedians (actors from before) turn up on the ship too.

o   Pirates attack the ship and Hamlet flees.

o   The Tragedians act out different types of death, and then Ros and Guil realize they are going to die soon. They “exit” and then the final scene of this play is the final scene of Hamlet where Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, and Laertes are all dead and Horatio gives a final speech.

·         Main Characters:

o   Rosencrantz: the dumber one of the two, one of the friends that betrays Hamlet, has no original thoughts, dies at end, represents “everyman”

o   Guildenstern: the sharper of the two, still always confused with Ros by others, isn’t as knowledgeable as he thinks so his dialogue has a malapropism of ideas, opposite of Ros, dies at end, represents “everyman”

o   Player: surrounded by an air of mystery and uncertainty, it’s as if he knows more than Ros and Guil on what’s going on, as if he has the answers and knows what’s going to happen in the future

·         Since this is a play, there isn’t much to say about author style or narrative voice because each character has their own style of talking. Many of the actions are given in the stage directions.

·         Symbols:

o   The coins represent randomness and chance.

o   The boat represents living life, and how we can’t control it, it’s on a predetermined track.

·         Quotes:

o   “Life is a gamble, at terrible odds—if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.” This quote is said by the Player and it’s really quite sad because he’s saying that life is a risk and there isn’t a big chance that you will win. It seems like he’s speaking from experience, like he finally got this realization of this harsh reality of the real world.

o   “Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.” This is yet another witty, deep thought by the Player, however this time, it’s an optimistic thought. This is the same idea as the common saying that if one door closes, another door opens. It’s similar in that the Player is saying opportunities will always come.

·         Theme: Life is unexpected and impossible to completely understand.

o   The unexpectedness is shown by the symbol of the coin and how it represents randomness and the Pirates suddenly attacking the ship when everything seemed to be winding down.  

o   It’s impossible to understand because Ros and Guil never know what’s going on.  They are always caught up in something they don’t know started. They often times forget their names and don’t know why things are happening. 

Response to Course Materials 3/10/13

            In the last few weeks, we have finished reading the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and watched the movie. I think this play was really quite interesting, because it seemed so simple initially, with the modern English and the simple activities Rosencrantz and Guildenstern went through, such as flipping a coin many times. However, analyzing further and discussing it with the class, I began to see the hidden meanings that the author, Stoppard wanted us to see, like the “play within a play within a play” idea about how everything is a play and Ros and Guil are just actors. I like having class discussions, because it clears up ideas I was confused about and lets me see the ideas of other people in the class.

            We also did some practice writing essays for prompts, like we would have to for the AP exam, and I am really glad we did! I definitely needed the practice, and am so glad we went over the basics for how to write an essay that will get a high score on the test. I hadn’t realized I was so rusty with the structure of how to write a good essay for a closed prompt. With the AP Exam coming up quickly, I think my writing is what needs the most work.

            

Open Prompt #1 Revised

1980. A recurring theme in literature is the classic war between a passion and responsibility. For instance, a personal cause, a love, a desire for revenge, a determination to redress a wrong, or some other emotion or drive may conflict with moral duty. Choose a literary work in which a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with his or her responsibilities. In a well-written essay show clearly the nature of the conflict, its effects upon the character, and its significance to the work.

            Shakespeare’s characters Romeo and Juliet in his play Romeo and Juliet both face the internal war of deciding between passion for each other or responsibility to their family.  Romeo’s family, the Montagues, and Juliet’s family, the Capulets, have been in a long standing feud that affects the entire city of Verona because of the constant duels and deaths between the families. It is in this atmosphere that Romeo and Juliet’s secret forbidden love begins to blossom and the war between passion and responsibility begins. The war has many battles in that there are many situations where both Romeo and Juliet have to decide which side to take, passion or family responsibility?

            Once Romeo and Juliet realize they are in love with someone from the house of their family’s enemy, they both are incredibly shocked and upset. It causes both of the characters distress to have gone against their family and they are both conflicted with what to do. This is the first time they face the decision of choosing passion over their responsibility to family. At this point, passion wins out, and Romeo and Juliet secretly get married, complicating the plot even more due to the secrecy. It starts to build suspense in the audience, making them wonder if next time a conflict comes up between passion or responsibility, if passion will continue to win.

Soon, Tybalt and Romeo meet and Tybalt wants to fight causing Romeo to again have to make a decision between passion and responsibility. Tybalt is now Romeo’s family member, although it isn’t known to anyone yet. According to the Montague’s expectations, Romeo needs to fight Tybalt because he is part of the enemy family. But, if he did fight Tybalt, it would hurt Juliet’s feelings because that is her family. Again, passion wins out and Romeo tries to avoid a fight with his new relative Tybalt. The audience breathes a sigh of relief, and waits in anticipation for the next battle in the war of passion and responsibility, to see which wins next time.  

Juliet hears later that Romeo has killed one of her family members and has to decide between her love for Romeo or her family. If she picks love, she would forgive Romeo, but if she picks her responsibility to her family, she would leave him for committing this act against her family. Passion wins out yet again as Juliet makes the difficult decision and picks Romeo and therefore decides to forgive him. Situations like this, where the characters have to choose between passion and responsibility create emotional climaxes within the play. 

As the play goes on, the two characters continue to face many situations where they have to decide whether to choose their love for one another or their family. Each time, passion wins out.  Having the characters go through this type of internal conflict time and time again builds up suspense in the audience as they are watching the play, making them wonder if the characters will continue to choose passion over responsibility, or if they finally had enough. Also, it constantly reminds the audience of the difficult decision and the sacrifices Romeo and Juliet had to face in order to make their marriage and love work and it really emphasizes their love for each other. In conclusion, the famous tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet go through the war between passion and responsibility found in many classical pieces of literature.