Reflective Essay #3 (1/10//10)

Reflective Essay

The Value of College

Published on September 25^th 2007

Andrew Hardin

http://essay.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/the-value-of-college/

This essay describes why it is important for American students to attend colleges. It explains the benefits of attending colleges and consequences of dropping out of colleges. In addition, it explains why attending colleges for some people will result in a chaos.  

The tone of this essay seems to be mixed with sympathy and anger. He expresses praise toward highly educated people who pursue their degrees in colleges rather than those who only go to colleges for parties and their friends. He states that those who go to colleges for educational purpose will “obtain a successful career, and live a wealthy life.” In addition, he wrote that those who pursue degrees on colleges will be “the future of our country”. The diction choices that Hardin used such as successful and future create positive feelings for readers toward people who attend colleges for their educational purposes. This seems to create sympathy tone in this reading. This seems to be the strength of this essay, by using technique such as diction support author’s position in this reading, thus makes his stand clearer to understand.

Then he uses strong diction such as using active voice to produce anger tone. For example, one of the quotes that he used, state that “[Those] people attend college because their friends or girlfriend go there” should not be attending colleges at all.  He uses party as a verb, thus making reader feel negative toward the parties in colleges. He also expresses this by describing history .He states that in 1950s, most people attend colleges solely for their futures and jobs that they could get after graduation of college. Now he criticizes that most students’ priorities for going to college are for parties, not because of learning in college. He also uses static data. He declares that more than 30% of freshman in the famous school, Brown, dropped from college, thus saying that our future is not depend on them. However, this seems to be the weakness of this reading since he creates the anger in his tone by using some of static data and history rather than using diction or syntax. Those seem to create the negative feeling or anger toward those who go to colleges for parties or those who drop out of colleges.

Because of his use of tone, I feel sympathy towards people who go colleges for graduation and their educational needs and feel pity and anger toward other who drop out of colleges or go to colleges just for their friends. His use of tone makes this reading enjoyable to read since it describes them efficiently.

                                                                                              

The tone of this essay seems to be appropriate for AP free response. He creates the tone well by using diction. In addition, it is formal and readers can relate themselves to this article. For those, I laud Hardin.

Outside Reading #3: 1/10/10

Book Review

Conversation across centuries with the father of all bloggers

Patricia Cohen.

Published on December 17^th, 2010

Book: How to live by Sarah Bakewell

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/books/18montaigne.html

This essay is about the Sarah Bakewell’s life and her book, “How to live”, which explains the nonfictional character, Montaigne.

Cohen lauds the book that Bakewell wrote by using several literary terms. For example, she praises the book as “a form of a delightful conversation”. She also states the book as a “superb, spirited introduction to the master”. In addition, she stated that the book got a “rare review” from Britain. Those dictions are positive, convincing readers to feel sympathy toward Bakewell’s How to live. Those dictions seem to be the strengths of this essay since it reinforces the praise that Cohen wants to make readers feel the same way as she does.

The critical perspective of this work seems to be New Historian since it Cohen focuses more on the Bakewell’s life rather than the book. For instance, Patricia discussed about Bakewell decided to write when she was living in London. Patricia rarely comments on the choices of the Bakewell had made such as syntax, diction, imagery, figurative language, and so on. This seems to be the weakness of this essay since Cohen rarely focuses on the book, thus readers have no idea why Cohen is praising the book for. Cohen should have listed the techniques that Bakewell have used such as diction and imagery in her book so that reads can have ideas of what the book looks like.

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The connection between this work and other course material is the similarity between Bakewell’s nonfictional person, Montaigne and Edgar Allen Poe. I have heard about Edgar Allen Poe on 8^th grade year English class. My teacher declared him as the eccentric horror fiction writer ever lived. Edgar Allen Poe’s life was eccentric, indeed. He was orphan at young age when his mother died and that his dad abandoned him. He married his 13 years old cousin. Cohen describes Montaigne’s life as eccentric, also. His dad forced him to speak only Latin, even though his native language was French. Even though their lives were harsh and unusual, they both had been able to produce great literary works that other people look up to.

For her conclusion, Cohen states that Montane, the nonfictional person in Bakewell’s book, did not accumulate the fact that he was lonely and not exposed to other people’s works. Bakewell proposed that he should have followed other people’s works, “which was all he really wanted to do.” Maybe that is how to live people’s lives, by following at other people’s works and try to make their works interesting.

Core Concept #3 (12/13/10-1/10/11)

Core Concepts (12/13/10-1/10/11)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

Information from “Lecture on Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”:

l       Traditional drama has action goes through conflicts as characters try to solve this problem and in the end, conflictions resolved in the end. It also has this idea of “horizon of significance” which is a

l       Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, however, is completely different than the traditional play. It has conflicts that are not resolved in the conclusion; does not have “horizon of significance”, and it is mostly dominant from the confusions that are created throughout the play.

l       Theatre of the Absurd:

 -Does not have any horizon significance

  -Does not have logic nor confidence about memory and space and time. Sometimes, even characters are not sure of their own identities.

  -Characters cannot understand the world.

-Characters trying to deal with this world are also absurd.

-Often, the emphasis on verbal humor is one of the major attractions of Absurdist Theatre.

-Another example of this is “The love song of J. Alfred Prufock” by Eliot. The speaker in this poem is confused about the romance

Connection: Simpson episode often include verbal humor that is funny; homer and Margie are great example of it. They often don’t understand each other, Margie being the one who is intelligent and Homer the one who seems to be confused about everything.

Death of a Salesman:

In class, we have discussed several things about this play. Few of the things that we have discussed were…

l        The difference between “being loved” and “being well-liked”

l        Willy being a kid even though he is old enough to be a grandfather.

Connections: Peter Griffin, one of the main characters in the TV show called “Family Guy”, often acts like a kid even though he is a father of three kids. For example, he acts immature around his daughter by pulling pranks and joking about her new boyfriend.

l        Is Linda actually a “parent” model for Willy rather than a wife?

l        Relationship between father and son

Connections: Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, plays that we have read doing the class, also stresses the relationship between father and son; the passing of knowledge or power to sons.

l        Willy and his American Dream: Willy wanted to be a successful salesman even though he was good with hands such as planting a garden and fixing house. His unachievable American Dream may have caused his downfall.

Connections: Last year, in American Literature class, I learned the Romanticism, which stresses nature over city, urban areas, human. Since Willy was good with hands and that he kept complaining about his apartment being small, big tree being gone, and not being able to see the sky because of huge apartments suggest the aspect of Romanticism.

Assignments:

l        Annotate and finish reading the Death of a Salesman due Jan 3^rd.

l        Core Concepts and Outside Reading due Jan 10th

l        Comment 3 times on “Father” forum due Jan 10^th.

l        Comment 3 times on “Tragedy” forum

l        “Lecture on Stoppard” reading due on December 14^th.