Welcome back, guys! I hope everyone had exactly the kind of spring break they hoped for, filled with adventure, fun, rest, or a combination of all three. Now we're back at it, at the exact halfway point in our curriculum. For us, a little time I like to call the time of conflict. Because that's where our literary focus will be. This blog post covers:
Thoughts on the Unit 2 Research Paper Final DraftsThe first thing we'll do in class on Monday is devote a few minutes for you to read and digest the feedback on your research papers. As in all writing, I encourage you to look back and think about what you did. If you decide you would like to revise once again, do it! Come see me during my Monday/Wednesday office hours during Huddle Time in the College Center, and we'll talk about your goals for revision and ways to accomplish them. One of the things we aimed to learn on this paper were the particulars of the research paper genre. For college students across disciplines, the research paper is the paper that will follow you into every class and possibly make up part of every grade in your ultimate GPA as it did for me. Even my math instructor had us do independent research. ACC asks that we rehearse and improve our research skills in Comp 1 and Comp 2. Our third (and in some ways last) essay will once again be a research essay. In other words, I really, really encourage to learn everything you can from your writing and my feedback, especially as it applies to research. Because we are immediately going to exercise that knowledge again, right now. An Overview of Unit 3: ConflictAs we read our literature in these next couple of weeks, you have an extra quest. In addition to locating quotes, taking them through the ladder of abstraction on your dialectical journals, and writing analytical paragraphs, you will be practicing asking questions. Then for Week 3, you adopt on of these questions as your research question. In other words, you are 100% directing your own research this time around. I'm especially excited about our short stories this Unit. Since we are looking at conflict, they are both properly crazy pants stories: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman Perkins. Then, you will each choose your own third short story to read, analyze, and share with the class via a short presentation. The Importance of the QuestionI'm pretty sure at some point, all the science in the world began as a question. Curiosity has always been a major driver of knowledge. For this next paper, you have complete control over your question. The only requirement from my end is that it stem from one of our short stories from the Unit, either one of the two that I chose, or the one that you selected. Once you've thought of your question, the question will direct your research. As you learn more, your question changes. It becomes more specific, more concrete. Then, at some magical point, you are able to answer your question. The answer to your question becomes your thesis. Here's a menu of questions to get you started off. These questions are optional, here to help you get the wheels turning. If one of them really speaks to you, feel free to apply to one of our stories and adopt it as your own.
Quick Musical Conflict PrimerDepending on who you ask, there are up to seven (at least) formal types of conflict. For our purposes, I want to focus on the most interesting and common sources of conflict, which also happen to connect to the literary elements we've studied so far: three about people and one about setting.
This conflict occurs within the character's mind. It often involves the character grappling with their own beliefs, choices, desires, or fears. In my opinion, all valuable literature contains an element of internal conflict. "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. Music Video Lyrics
This type involves conflict between two characters, often stemming from opposing desires, beliefs, or actions. "The Boy Is Mine" by Brandy and Monica Lyrics
Here, the character is in conflict with societal norms, laws, or expectations. This can involve fighting against social injustice, challenging cultural norms, or resisting oppressive systems. "I'm Just a Girl" by No Doubt Lyrics
This conflict pits the character against natural forces, highlighting the struggle for survival or the impact of the environment on human activities. "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" by Travis Lyrics *Note: Other, less widely applicable types of conflict are Person vs. Technology, Person vs. Supernatural, and Person vs. Fate Welcome to our second week of class! This week we're going to cover a very important and exciting (for me at least:)) concept: S. I. Hayakawa's Ladder of Abstraction. This week's post will cover:
"A Clean Well-Lighted Place"I'm so curious to hear your thoughts about Hemingway's short story. Ernest Hemingway is a heavy-hitter of American literature. At the University where I studied in France, the American Literature classes generally featured him and his contemporary, F. Scott Fitzgerald. These guys lived in the generation that experienced both World Wars, and Hemingway's prose is famous for being sparse and very, very grounded in concrete details. I first experienced this story as a junior or senior in high school. It wasn't part of the curriculum—I just found it in a random magazine one day and read it. For whatever reason, this one story really did a number on me. I thought about every night when I worked the night shift at a Waffle House in Mississippi to help me pay for college. I thought about it when I mopped the floor of the bagel shop I worked later. The I thought about it in another way when I found my own clean well-lighted places to study in and read in when I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night. (Side note: In the same magazine, I read a translation of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." Stayed tuned for this story.) Debriefing Your First Literature ResponsesGuys, I was impressed. We are a class of critical thinkers. You guys are thinking about the world, and you are framing your thoughts in language. And that's what we want. Since writing is a skill, though, we can always get stronger. This goes for all of us, professor included. I think the next step for us is to look at ways to clarify and sharpen our relationship with the concrete and abstract dimensions of language. In order to that, you are going to learn about the ladder of abstraction. Then, for your Monday/Tuesday homework, you are going to immediately put this concept to use in your dialectical journal and analytical paragraph response to the short story "Puppy" by George Saunders and "Thank you, Ma'am" by Langston Hughes. Saunders is a different kind of heavy hitting literary figure—he's still alive, for one thing. And he was born in Amarillo, for another. And Langston Hughes was an important writer (and one of my favorites) of the Harlem Renaissance. We'll speak a little more about each of them in class. Introducing the Ladder of AbstractionI loved my university library. I used to browse the different stories and gather different random books that happened to catch my eye. It was in just such a dusty book browsing sessions that I first came across S. I. Hayakawa's book Language in Thought and Action. Even if this book had been the only thing I took away from college, it alone would have made all the investment of money and time worthwhile. It changed the way I understood the world. Hayakawa talks about abstract and concrete in his chapter "How We Know What We Know." He presents a concept called the ladder of abstraction, because like so many other things in life, a thing is never simply "abstract" or "concrete:" it's a spectrum. Below is a page from Hayakawa's book depicting an example of the ladder of abstraction with Bessie the cow. On the right are pairs of words, abstract and concrete. Although, what we now know because of Hayakawa is that the concrete words are actually just more concrete than abstract words, and vice versa. Compared to a mile of land, the concept of "Texas" is abstract. All the levels of abstraction on the ladder are important. The ability to move up and down the ladder is the hallmark of meaningful language. On page 93, Hayakawa says, "A preacher, a professor, a journalist, or a politician whose high-level abstractions can systematically and surely be referred to lower-level abstractions is not only talking but saying something." Take a politician, for example, who is always talking about "freedom." The concept of freedom is a pretty high-level abstraction. The key between meaningful and meaningless language is whether the politician can move down the levels of abstraction successfully without contradicting reality. Maybe the politician moves down the ladder by defining freedom as the freedom to get help when you're sick, no matter what. Or maybe they define freedom as the freedom of a landowner to shoot someone who walks on their property. In my experience, politicians often never bother with the lower (more concrete) levels of abstraction at all. So, how does this help us? Well, for one thing, it gives us a shared vocabulary that we will be using for the rest of our class. While we are analyzing literature, our concrete will mostly take the form of quotes from the text, but not always. When you draw conclusions, make assertions, or write a thesis statement, you are abstracting. WEDNESDAY BONUS: Structure of an Analysis ParagraphLet's look a little more closely at how to turn the elements of your dialectical journal into a paragraph. For now, please adopt the paragraph skeleton below for this week's paragraphs and the body paragraphs of your first draft (due next week).
To help you figure out an abstract character attribute (stated below as ABSTRACTION OF THE NATURE OF THE CHARACTER), here is a link to a random, but hopefully helpful list of character attributes. Something that are true about a paragraph crafted from the sentence skeleton below:
BLUE: abstract conclusion RED: concrete evidence from the text In [NAME OF SHORT STORY], [CHARACTER NAME] [ABSTRACTION OF THE NATURE OF THE CHARACTER]. For example, when faced with [CONTEXT OF THE QUOTE YOU NOTICED], [CHARACTER NAME] [QUOTE]. Her [WORDS/ACTIONS/THOUGHTS] illustrate [SOMEHOW CONNECT THE NATURE OF THE CHARACTER FROM THE FIRST SENTENCE TO THE QUOTE]. Later, when [CONTEXT OF SECOND QUOTE], [CHARACTER NAME] [SAYS/DOES] [SECOND QUOTE]. Here, the [CHARACTER NAME] reveals [CONNECT THE SECOND QUOTE TO THE NATURE OF THE CHARACTER IN YOUR FIRST SENTENCE]. [ONE SENTENCE ELABORATING ON THE EFFECT OF THE CHARACTER'S ON THE STORY AS A WHOLE]. |
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