Eyes #4

Hi Mrs. Wecker. I wrote this up on paper because I was babysitting the night before it was due and you checked it off in class, so we're all good. Here's journal 4!

The first paragraph of chapter 8 is a marvelous example of Hurston's language manipulation in the following categories:

SYNTAX
"New thoughts had to be thought and new words said"(81).
Traditionally, Joe is the thinker and speaker of Eatonville.  Since he is incapacitated by his illness, he is no longer the figurehead of the community.  The parallel structure between new thoughts and new words foreshadows the change that is coming to the town after Joe's death.  With the passing of one leader, a new one has to step up.  Ergo, new thoughts and words.

WORD CHOICE
ex: Adressing Joe as "Jody" rather than "Joe".
From the end of chapter 7 on, the narrator calls Joe Starks "Jody".  The high amount of submission shown to him by Janie is gone because he falls ill and can no longer control her.  This makes Jody equal to, if not below, Janie at this point.  Choosing this change in name is Hurston's way of signifying Janie's change in attitude towards Joe.

TONE
ex: "He had crawled off the lick his wounds"(81).
Here, Joe is compared to an animal.  Hurston adopts a tone of disrespect towards Joe to change the reader's attitude about him.  Dehumanizing Joe takes him off the pedestal that tge people of Eatonville placed him on for 20 years and puts him far below them.  The Joe who was compared to a slave driver is heavily contrasted with the present Joe, who is old, ill, and animalistic.

SOUND
"But the stillness was in the sleep of swords"(81).
The "s" sound brings an ominous, slithery, creepy sound to the passage.  This could be a signal for Joe's death (note how death is later described as holding an "icy sword") or one for the impending conflict between Joe and Janie shortly prior to his death.

Eyes #8

1.  I think Zora Neale Hurston chose the title she did in order to draw the reader's attention to a certain theme in the book.  With the word "God" in the title, readers tend to be more apt to look for religious allusions within the text.  It is possible that Hurston chose such a title in order to put most of the attention on what she was trying to say about God and religion in her writing. It is also important to note that the title says "their eyes" and not only "her eyes".  Yes, the book is mainly about Janie, but the title lets the reader know that Hurston has something to sat about the human experience as a whole.

2. An alternative title may be, as mentioned before, "Her Eyes Were Watching God".  This may alter the reading experience by narrowing the reader's thinking to only encompass Janie or possible the females of the world.  Hurston does have a lot of things to say about the female experience in Eyes, so it's a definite possibility.

3.  I just now named my pastiche "The Only Thing She Could Ever Want".  It's like Hurston's title in that it's a line out of the text.  Mine is a little more specific as in who it's referring to.  The "she" is referring to one of my characters who feels trapped by her husbands very materialistic way of life (sound familiar?).  People who are materialistic want things, another word in the title, but in this case there is only one thing that the "she" in my title wants.  My pastiche is trying to highlight hurston's theme that Materialism is not a healthy basis for relationships (romantic or otherwise) with other people.  Using all your fancy stuff to make yourself better than everyone else isn't cool, man (Note: find a more eloquent way to say that later). I'm trying to highlight my theme with my title, and I feel like I do an OK job with it.

Eyes #7

"And that he spit in that gold-lookin' vase that that anybody else would have been glad to put on their front room table"(47).

Joe is proudly displaying his power over others by buying nice things, surprise! I put the spitoon under symbol, because it represents Joe's materialistic views and how he uses the things he gains to feel powerful.  Other symbols that fall under this category may include the house and/or the store.  By having things that are "better" than those around him, Joe puts himself up on a throne not unlike that of a king.  To top it all off, he spits in that pretty vase, proving that he is in a higher spot than those who wouldn't dare spit in such a fine decoration.  He tries to get Janie to do the same thing by buying her something similar.  It is never specified whether or not she uses it, and I wonder if Hurston does that on purpose.  I also made the connection to at the beginning of the book to when nanny was telling Janie that she didn't want any men making a spit cup out of her.  In Joe's situation, he's making a spit cup out of the whole town by parading his posessions around.  This doesn't get him any respect, and he ends up disliked by some for that reason.

"They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs.  It was mass cruelty"(2).

The sudden change from Hurston's usual flowing style full of complex sentences and imagery and other things of the like certainly draws the readers attention to the shorter sentences.  By using a short sentence, Hurston points out the importance of the situation by drawing the readers attention to something different.  This could also be used to point out a contrast, set up a different mood, or keep a reader awake.

"She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom"(11).

The repeated "s" sound in this super sentence creates a sense of calm simliar to that of the water flowing in and out at the beginning of the novel.  Outside under the trees, Janie feels a sense of happiness that the things her husbands give her can't necessarily bring.  The "s" could also be the whisper of the seeds floating through the air and sinking in to the soil.

Eyes Journal #6

Oh, revisions.  I'm still revising, and I probably will continue revising until the actial due date of this darn paper.  This is so much fun!

I took the charming letter that I recieved last class into much consideration while making changes to my paper.  Some suggestions were made about my chronology, word choice and literary techniques that I tried to add.  I changed the order of some things so that the chronology of the thing wasn't quite so confusing.  Some awkward sounding words were changes, paragraphs were moved around and/or deleted, and sentences were added.  Overall, I'm much happier with the flow of the paper and I think everything fits together more cohesively than it did before!  I still don't have an ending.  It would probably be good to get one of those soon.

Eyes #5

And Henry started to think of Love.  Love, the powerful being with forceful hands that lived on the breeze and in the air.  The great one who men stood in line to meet like a flock of girls at a Justin Beiber concert.  How does love obtain its power, and how does it force it upon others?  He waits in the light that touches all that inhabit the world.  Waits with his bow drawn, searching for a victim to strike from behind.  He stands with a mother, a neighbor, a friend.  He was likely to find an arrow jutting out from between his shoulder blades any day now.  He was frightened and sick to his stomach.  Oh Elizabeth! She ain't gots ta stand in the corner of that big ol' gym like that with nobody to dance wid.  He sent Mike in to ask if she wanted a dance, but Lizzy said no.  Dem wingmen wuz alright wid the sociable women, but Mike didn't know nuthin' 'bout a girl like her.  She'd be fine to dance after a glass of punch and a quick chat.  She was going to come out of her shell after all.  That was what she thought.  But Mike told him differently, so he knew.  And if he hadn't, by the end of the night he ought to know, for people began to disperse from the dance floor and walk out the doors into the outside world.  People who would have whiddled the night away at an after party simply slithered into their cars and left.  Just mosied on home and slept.  Fear, that coiled serpent, had stricken the night.      

I made the contrast between love and fear here because I feel like those two things are a prevalent part of Janie's experience.  At first, she fears marriage to Logan because she didn't know how to love.  She comes full circle with Tea Cake when at first she is afraid to canoodle with him because of his age and how the townspeople might percieve her differently so soon after Joe's death.  The scene is supposed to be at a school dance/club/wherever people party.  I chose that because it's more familiar than Florida in the mid-1900s.  Write about what you know, right?

Journal Number 3

Techniques that add to Hurston's style:

Dialect (Obviously)
ex: "'Oh, er, Pheoby, if youse ready to go, Ah could walk over dere wid you,' Mrs. Sumpkins volunteered. 'It's sort of duskin' down dark. De booger man might ketch yuh'"(Hurston, 4).

Similes
ex: "Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.  Dawn and doom was in the branches"(Hurston, 8).

Metaphors
ex: "'You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways'"(Hurston, 16).

With this quote I immediately saw the connection with the tree comparison made not that much earlier in the text.  If life is a tree, one would assume that it has a solid trunk as a foundation.  Janie, being a woman AND a person of color makes her tree a little bit less functional.  Being a branch without roots means that she will have to work harder to ultimately gain what she wants out of the tree of life because she doesn't have that strong foundation.  Things that make up said foundation could include money, being white, having friends in high places, coming from the "right" family, etc.  With this metaphor, Hurston is trying to communicate the struggles of being a black woman during her time period.

Alliteration
ex: "She often spoke to falling seeds and said..."(Hurston, 25).

The soft "s" sound communicates the fragility of new life as it sinks slowly to the soil.

Allusions, especially biblical references.
ex: "The town had a basketfull of feelings good and bad about Joe's positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him.  They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then afain he was all of these things because the town bowed down."

Being a mayor puts Joe in a very high position of power within the town.  Some might even call him God-like.  Hurston makes him appear that way through making her characters not oppose Joe in his rise to power, making Joe himself a well-respected leader in the community, and even making his speech more sophisticated and "white" than the other characters in the town he runs.  The above quote offers a more cynical take on Joe's, and also God's, power.  Hurston is expressing the belief that God only has as much power as he does over people because everybody is too afraid to question Him.  God has authority, to people submit to it.  At the same time, nobody is challenging that authority.  It is for this reason he has so much power. 

Journal #2

I'm kiiind of trying to mimic the structure on page 31! Here it goes.

     Jonathan Barr wiped the thin layer of sweat from his brow and slowly tilted his head back .  If he hadn't known any better, he would have guessed she was a gobbling turkey.
     "Exyuse me, Mistuh Baw," drawled the blonde with enough hair to make a blanket for a small child, "Ah've beeyun noticin' that yew ain't really beeyun payin' me much mine durin' this heeyuh conversation.  Ah really wood lahk ta git these heeyuh paypuhs signed!"
     Mr. Barr slowly thumbed through the mountain of divorce papers that lay under a thin film of dust on his desk.  The glare of his client dug under the hair and skin on the top of his head, but he paid it no mind.  He deliberately took his time in finding the folder labeled "Gwendolyn Adams" before removing it from the stack and placing it in front of him.
    "Oh-kay Mrs. Adams, less see wha'I kin do foa ya taday! Kin I ask ya why yeh choosin' ta git a divorce?"
   "Weyull, mah previous husban' just stopped lovin' me! He tol' me that he didn' much cayuh fo' my hayur, the way Ah dreyus, o' the way I tawk! He reckoned that it was annoyin' o' somethin'!"
   "Oh deah Mrs. Adams, seems to me like we got us a real unfoartunate prablem on ah hands.  I would love to fix this up quickity-split foa ya! Tell me, ah the people in yoa community also oafferin' ya assistence?"
     "Oh why yes of coase! Everyone a' church, a' my church tha' ah used ta go to wid' mah husban', have been hayelpin me so much! Ah jus' moved heeyuh an' it's already lahk Ah'm part o' the family!"
     "Mrs. Adams, the people at yoa husband's church ah takin' yoa side?"
     "Mistuh
 Baw, if you love the lawd an' you talk real southen' an' yew brin' deezert when it's yo turn, people repect ya aroun' heeyuh!"
     Jonathan Barr looked up at Gwendolyn through his square, wire-rimmed glasses, and let out a long, deep sigh.


So my idea for this was a Jewish divorce attorney from New York and a nice lady from Alabama modeled after my darling aunt Lauren.  Here are the rules:

SOUTHERN ACCENT
I >>> Ah
Ar/Or at the and of a word >>> A/OW
ing >>> in'
you >>> yew
or >>> oa (pronounced more like O-wah)
nd >>> n' OR ne, depending on what the word ends with
Or (as a word) >>> o'
I like to add "y"s in the middle of some words to add that southern drawl.  I have to say it first and then write out what it sounds like...

JEWISH NEW YORKER
-ear >>> eah (pronounced EEyuh)
our (the word) >>> Ah (like our, but drop the R)
our in "your" or the word "or" >>> oa (Same as southern accent but more nasally)
a like in "can" >>> I like in "it"
the O sound in "you" >>> a

Journal #1

I really liked the activity we did about the first page of a book the other day, so I'm going to start talking about the narrator by only looking at the first page.  Most of chapter one is dialogue anyway, and one of the only huge chunks of narration is on page one. Hooray.

Right off the bat I can tell that this book is going to be largely about the female experience.  The very first paragraph of the novel is a statement about men.  That statement is followed with one about women, which offers great contrast.  This might be compared to the differences between the roles of males and females that are seen throughout the entire book, but all that fun stuff comes later.   One of Hurston's first statements in the novel is about women, and the first character introduced is a woman.  So far, and I definitely don't feel like I'm stating the obvious by saying so, this is a book about women.

This book is written in the 3rd person narrative.  As far as I can tell she (I'm calling the narrator a she because she likes to talk about women... oh and a woman wrote the book) is the omniscient type of narrator because she gives us a little bit of insight into the characters thoughts and feelings.  An example of this can be seen on page 2 when Hurston writes, "Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times"(Hurston, 2).  Correct me if I'm wrong on the type of narrator.  I'm thankful that I didn't have the opportunity to confuse all 2 billion of them on the literary terms quiz.

The narrator likes to use figurative language in her descriptions.  Hurston uses personification to say that words walk without masters on page 2.  When I read this I wondered if it was an allusion to slavery. My favorite bit in chapter one was on the first page when she compared the townspeople sitting on their porches to mules.  That would be a comparison, another literary term.  Learning is so great.

Based on her dialogue and other characters' reactions to her, I would make the judgement that Janie is a fairly grounded person who knows what she wants out of life.  She's at least 40 according to the nice folks on the porch, so it's safe for a first-time reader of this book to assume that she's had plenty of life experiences.  Money isn't a concern for Janie.  She makes this clear by saying, "...Ah ain't got nothing to make me happy no more where Ah was at"(Hurston, 7).  Janie has $900 dollars in the bank that she and Tea Cake had saved.  If she had wanted to, Janie could have made a very nice living for herself with that money.  My guess would be that her experiences with Joe ruined the concept of money for her and that she became less of a material person throughout the course of that relationship.

Post #4 - Quiz!

1) "The Beast with two backs"(Othello) is an example of a _____________.
2) In Brave New Worls, the word "Soma" has several different ___________ depending on the character.
3)"All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook."(Brave New World) This passage is an example of a ______________.
4)  "Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you." She scuffled up from her knees and fell heavily across the bed. A month later she was dead"(Eyes).  The _________ of the dialogue is part of the dialect.
5)In Farenheit 451 (I know we all love that book, right?) Mildred is the _____ of Clarice.

Post #3 - Satire

Satire is defined on Dictionary.com as "the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc."

What I take away from this definition is that satire is when you take a part of the human experience, be it a part of human nature, an idea, or a recent/ongoing event, and expose its flaws in a literary work.  I like to think of it as a sort of humorous criticism of the way society functions.  An older example I have of satire was a piece of writing (I don't remember the name of it) in which all the characters were somehow hindered so that their best qualities could not be expressed.  Attractive people had to wear ugly masks, star athletes were forced to wear weights around their ankles so they couldn't run, etc.  I believe this short story was written (Mr. Dessert can correct me if I'm wrong) to expose some of the flaws in the idea that everyone needed to have the exact same opportunities as everyone else.  If one's natural abilities are hindered, the world would become a significantly more boring, less opportune place.  That piece of writing tried to express that idea with satire.  

To me, Brave New World is a perfect example of satire.  In that novel, everything is backwards.  Marriage is frowned apon, people are doing drugs left and right, and the people that are normal to our society's standards are locked away on reservations.  In Brave New World, the common "rules" that our society follows are stomped on and left to die.  Things that are considered "normal" in our way of living are frowned apon in Brave New World.  The fact that everything is backwards is a perfect example of Satire.    

I even use satire myself in my spare time! As many of you know, I'm a nerd who likes to spend my Saturdays talking in front of audiences.  To close this post I'm going to copy and paste the first few lines of a satirical speech I wrote about female behavior.  Thinking of this speech helps me remember satire, but if you don't think it will help you then you should stop reading.  If you're a feminist, you should definately stop reading because you'll be offended if you continue.

"Ladies, sorry to break it to you, but we have a problem. Throughout history, we have thought ourselves to be superior to men, but with the coming of recent events that idea is no longer a reality.  What started out as honest work out on the farm turned into disasters like suffrage, and (Horrified) equal pay!"

Thanks for reading, I like your comments :) 

Alliteration!

I chose this term because while I was strolling down freshman hall today I saw a pair of lacy ladies lengerie laying on the ground. True story.

I define alliteration as the repetition of the same sound (some people just say consonant sounds, but others include vowels as well) at the beginning of a string of words.  It really is a fun and fanciful way to add a little spice, spirit, or stress to a sentence.  It could be utilized to add some umph to your utterences that makes people pay closer attention to what you have to say.  This is an adventageous advertizing approach in newspapers, magazines, and plastic playthings like Polly Pockets.  One couldn't help but read a headline that said "Rick Santorum Slipped on a Serpent".

The leading letter of a long or little word may hold its very own meaning in a short piece of writing like a poem.  Cultural connotations are given to some letters because they either sound "hard" or "soft" in different languages.  A harder sound like the one produced by the letter "k" can certainly cause a complaint.  Softer sounds like "s" offer a smooth and soothing sound that which our ears are eager to eavedrop apon.

I hope this helps people! I had a lot of fun writing it!  

Post #1

IB Junior English! How exciting!

My favorite out of the three books from the summer reading was Brave New World.  Whenever I read the word savage my brain jumped to Pocahontas and it made the reading experience a lot more enjoyable!  I did find it strange that everyone "belonged" to everyone else and that children were brainwashed in their sleep, but hey, it wouldn't be dystopian without a few issues here and there.

I don't know what was going on in the world when Brave New World was written or the types of drugs that were available during that time period.  It seemed to me that Soma would be the equivalent of today's hallucinogens that people take to escape from their problems.  Soma meant different things to different characters.  The savage's mother (her name escapes me) was dependent on it, while the people who were integrated into the dystopian society presented in the novel saw taking the drug as a leisure activity.

My least favorite book was The Stranger.  I thought the writing style was dry, overly simplistic, and boring to read.  The style the author chose probably meant something, but I was much too bored to pay a lot of attention to it.  I know the book was originally published in French, and I wonder if some of the richness of the novel was lost in translation.  I'm guessing not, because French isn't that hard to translate.

The narrator of The Stranger bothered me because he just didn't care about anything.  He may have loved his mother, but it didn't matter.  He only wanted to get married if Marie wanted to, but it didn't really matter to him.  He completely disreguarded, in my opinion, one of the biggest parts of the human experience: emotion.  Not to say that the author did that, he made up for Frenchie's lack of zeal by using colors and things like that.  That part of the book was one of the few I enjoyed, which is why I'm doing my IOP on it!

If I were to write an essay on Eyes, I think I would choose to focus on the motif of nature throughout the novel.  Several important events in the novel were brought about through natural means, such as the huge symbolic hurricane, Teacake getting rabies, ect.  Nature is often idealized as perfect and harmless, and I feel like Janie's changing view of it is an important part of her characterization.