Close Reading 4

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/making-us-safer-one-ipad-at-a-time.html?ref=opinion

            The article “Making Us Safer, One IPad at a Time” by Steve Cohen uses diction, sentence structure, and detail to get across Cohen’s point that the methods of the justice system seem to be lacking. With this setting he sets the stage for his idea about IPads and how they should be used to improve the justice system.

            Cohen uses precise words to get across the point that he disagrees with the structure and organization of America’s justice system. For example, Cohen talks about how inefficient the use of handwriting paperwork is when it comes to logging cases. Cohen uses words like “scratch” to describe the handwriting and “decipher” to show how much trouble others have to go through to read it.

            For sentence structure he uses the dash to provide more information supporting his claims, about the unsatisfactory organization of the judicial system. For example, he says “One of the biggest sources of delay — and case dismissal — involves prosecutors’ getting signed statements from victims, witnesses and police officers. Last year, more than 58,000 cases — 15 percent of all misdemeanors — were dismissed or not pursued by the district attorney’s offices…” As shown here, he adds in extra tidbits of information to create more emphasis on his point, that many cases get overlooked because of the faulty system of logging information.

            His use of detail and description is what makes the piece interesting to read and easy to understand. He gives multiple comparisons to illustrate his point about the problems with using handwritten notes. For example, he says “It resembles the children’s game of telephone, with 7-year-olds whispering a phrase in turn to the person next to them and the resulting message getting distorted. That’s why I was only momentarily surprised to see an arrest report describing the defendant as 6’10” tall. His arrest record listed his height as 6’01.”” The comparison really makes it clearer for the reader to understand his point of view.

            After using these diction, sentence structure, and detail, Cohen has effectively established the situation he wants the reader to be in when he describes his idea about the policemen and other law enforcers using the IPads to record their information. That situation being that they understand the problems with the organization of the law enforcement and judicial system and that he has a solution. 

Open Prompt 4

2007. In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present activities, attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play in which a character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character's relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

            The past often plays a big part in the lives of many people. It’s hard to move on from the experiences that have already happened. A novel that shows how a person deals with their past personal experiences is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. The novel centers on the character Willy Loman and how his relationship with his past is so strong that it’s a daily struggle for him to say in the present. It’s through this constant reminder of the past that that we see what Willy has been through and how that relates to his eventual death.

            Willy’s past actions always haunt him, because he thinks they are the reason for his unhappiness now. His past memories are shown in the book as hallucinations, because Willy actually thinks it’s going on in the present. One particular memory that continues to haunt him is the memory of him cheating on his wife Linda and his son Biff walking in on it. In that moment, Biff loses all respect for his father and their strong relationship goes downhill. In this moment, not only does Willy feel guilt for cheating on his wife, which we see stills affects him, but also sadness and more guilt because he lost his relationship with Biff, causing Biff to not pass high school, setting him up for failure for the rest of his life. It’s through this memory that the audience understands the bitterness always exchanged between father and son throughout the story and their constant attempts to bridge that gap between them. It shows the importance of the reconciliation at the end, when Biff finally frees his father of the guilt, by taking responsibility for the failures in his life and not blaming them on Willy. Then, it seems that Willy kills himself because he is finally free of this memory and the guilt. He realizes Biff still loves him, so he kills himself so Biff can collect the insurance money. In a way, the past acted as a barrier against this sad end. Once he got over that particular memory, it seemed to push him towards killing himself.

            Willy Loman’s past haunted him every day and we see that he was negatively affected by it, by seeing his constant guilt. The novel uses flashbacks of his past to let the audience understand the character of Willy and his mindset better. We also see that the past was a barrier for Willy, because he couldn’t seem to move on from it, until the very end. Overall, the past was an important part of Willy’s present life and the novel.  

Summary and Analysis of Death of a Salesman

• Arthur Miller is a famous American playwright whose other works include The Crucible and All My Sons. He was married to Marilyn Monroe, but that marriage didn’t last.
• The setting of the play takes place in New York City, where their house is located. Their house doesn’t have any corners and seems to be run down, because things are always broken. Willy travels around to Boston and other big cities in New England for business.
• The story revolves around Willy and his visions of the past. He’s a salesman whose life is basically crumbling around him because he loses his job and is depressed about his son’s lack of success. Many of the characters call him “sport” or “kid,” even his sons and Linda’s attitude toward him is motherly towards him, so all together it creates a childish persona for him.
• Biff is Willy’s son and they had a falling out many years ago, when Biff caught Willy cheating on Linda. Biff was a football player in high school and it seemed like he was going to amount to a lot, but then he never amounted to any success because he didn’t pass high school.  He used to blame that on Willy, until the end, when he realizes that he, himself, is the actual reason behind his lack of success.
• Happy is Willy’s other son, and he’s meant to be like another version of Willy when he grows up. Even though he seems happy, he’s not, because he is neglected by his parents.
• Linda is Willy’s wife, and at first she seems like a really good character who puts up with a lot, she actually seems to control Willy, and he eventually blames her for his lack of success in the business field.
• Charley is their next door neighbor, who is rich and even though Willy doesn’t come out and say it, Willy is jealous of Charley because of Charley’s success and because of Charley’s son Bernard’s success.
• Bernard is Biff’s childhood friend who always let Biff cheat off him in school. He became a lawyer and very successful.
• Ben is Willy’s older brother and Willy idolizes him throughout the story. He is shown as a father figure to Willy and the way he appears, in all white and as a vision, makes him seem like a Jesus figure.
• Plot: It’s the last few days of Willy Loman’s life. He is a salesman disappointed with his life, because he was never as rich as he wanted to be. His kids are all grown up and moved out, but during this play they are back and staying in the house for the first time in a long time. The two boys, Biff and Happy, realize that their dad is going insane and try to bring up his spirits. Willy is having visions of the past combine with the present, so he’s shouting and raving at things that are just memories, as if they were happening now. Even though Biff and Willy’s relationship had been strained, to keep his dad from killing himself, Biff tries to make him happy and go into business. However, it doesn’t work out. In the end, Willy realizes that Biff actually does love him, so he is happy. Then Willy enter another crazed state of mind and thinks if he kills himself and it looks like an accident, his family will get $20000 and that will get Biff started in business. So he purposefully gets into a car accident and kills himself.
• There isn’t really a narrative voice. For the author’s style, he just seems to use normal English for all the dialogue.
• For imagery, all we see is what the characters tell us in their dialogue, which isn’t much, because in conversation, there isn’t a lot of lengthy description.
• There are multiple symbols throughout the story. The diamonds Willy wants to find in Africa represent tangible wealth. The stockings represent cheating and betrayal. The seeds represent planting and cultivating opportunity.
• The theme is a sad one in that, no matter how hard you try, sometimes things just don’t work out.
• The title seems to point to this too, because it implies that the character was never able to achieve a higher status than a salesman, and that he died as unsuccessful as he started.
• The plot shows the theme because the entire plot outlines Willy’s dream to be successful and it shows all his efforts as a salesman but then he gets fired and his life falls apart even more.
• “Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such –personal attractiveness, gets lost. And such a hard worker. There’s one thing about Biff –he’s not lazy” (6). This quote represents the initial idea that Willy had about how anybody that is a hard worker, should be able to be successful. This idea is not present at the end of the play.
• “Why boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich” (33). This is a quote by Uncle Ben and he makes it seem like being rich is so easily done, which is probably where Willy got that idea. 

Response to Course Materials 12/2/12

            This week we started the in class reading of Hamlet by Shakespeare. At first, when I saw the length of the play, I didn’t want to read the entire work out loud in class. Then on the first day we started, I was sick, so everybody already got assigned a part. While at first I was glad I didn’t have to read out loud in class, as the days went on, I began to want to.  Reading the play out loud I feel will help me understand the characters more, and overall the story. Even though at first I thought the play would take a really long time to read out loud, we’re going by pretty quickly. I actually appreciate that we’re reading it in class because the language is often times hard to understand, so I won’t really know what’s going on. Then Ms. Holmes steps in and explains the scene, and it begins to make more sense. It also makes annotating easier because we talk about techniques like irony and iambic pentameter that are being used and the significance of that. For any other story, I wouldn’t like to pause through it because I just want to finish reading, but for a play like this, I think it’s necessary and I’m glad we’re doing it. Hopefully I’ll be able to play a part later in the play.