Literature Analysis #4

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

1. The Joy Luck Club is about a club Suyuan Woo creates during the Chinese war. The club is established during the war but continues in America long after all the warring has stopped. The joy luck club, consists of four Chinese women and their daughters as members. At these meetings they talk, eat, and gamble. The women grow old together until Suyuan the founder dies. Her daughter June Woo 37 at the time struggles with the idea of replacing the place a mother should hold. All of the girls struggle with their relationships with there mothers. Eventually June discovers that her mother had more children in china and that her sisters have been found, the book concludes with the other girls sending June to meet her sisters.
   
    2. The general theme of this novel is the relationship between mother and daughter and the ultimate sacrifice a mother will make for her own. In the novel all the daughters struggle with their overall relationship and emotional connections with their mothers, feeling of sadness, joy, and discovery.
   
   3. Tan's tone through out the novel is very serious which is appropriate considering the topics that are being addressed. There are even times where the tone and mood of the book are slow moving and depressing.
   “Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”
    “Now you see,' said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, 'why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”
     “Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
   
   4. Tan takes advantage of many literary devices when writing the novel The Joy Luck Club, some of which are foreshadowing, simile, metaphor, allusion, rhetorical questions, theme, motifs, symbolism, tone, and symbolism.
    "Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine."
    "Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain."
    "After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person."
    "And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood."
    "Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?"
    "I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?"
   "In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow."
    "That bad crab, only you tried to take it. Everybody else want best quality. You, your thinking different. Waverly took best-quality crab. You took worst, because you have best-quality heart. You have style no one can teach. Must be born this way. I see you."
    “Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?”
    “And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over."
    “So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
    “In two years' time, my scar became pale and shiny and I had no memory of my mother. That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain."
    “A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away. ”
    “There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying.
   Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.”
   
   Characterization:
   1.Tan uses a combination of both indirect and direct characterization to add a higher quality to her characters. An example of indirect characterization would he the way the other girls react to the things that are shared at their club meetings or when the story telling is in play. And some examples of when she uses direct characterization would be when she reveals June's true feelings and struggles she faces when approaching her relationship with her mother or in other words the lack of one.
   2. Tan's syntax and diction does change when switching the focus from character to character and this is because the characters speak in first person throughout the novel when they give their testimonies to the reader therefore they must in order for it to make sense, because each girl is different and facing different struggles and situations. 
   3. The protagonist of the story, June, is dynamic in my eyes because after she discovers her sisters in china she has a whole new look on life and is much less bitter about her situation. She is also a round character because she has many qualities about her.
   4. Overall when looking back on my reading of the book I feel like I have been able to really meet these people and feel their heart break and pain.

Super 5

My resources that I think will be helpful are 1. My sister who has been living on her own for three years 2. Teachers at righetti they have all been through the process of becoming a teacher and know what it is like 3. Fellow students to find out what they want to know about being independent 4. My group 5. My parents they will be very insightful on what it is like to live on your own

My Team

My team is Sarah Stevens, Micaela Hellman and Caroline Mantura. As a group we are going to create a website for people around our age to go to find information on college, budgeting money, time management, decorating, fashion and any other important thing that people our age might need to know to become successful.

Launch

My launch program is all about being independent. I want to learn how to be independent and then share what I have found to be helpful or resourceful with other people who are starting college as well. This website will have a mixture of all things not only for my major but also for the majors of my group.

Brave New World Essay

Topic: Describe the elements of our real time world that you think relates or doesn't to Huxley's Brave New World.


Our real time world and Huxley's Brave New World have elements that are related and that are not related. The way that our world is related to the Brave New one is how we rate people in our society, ways that the two worlds are different are the control that the government system has over the people in Brave New World the other way the two worlds differ is that fact that children in our real time world are free.
Both worlds place value on how a person is rated or ranked in society, although our real time world does not go to some of the extremes the brave new one does both have a way a demoralizing people based on society. In our real time world we rank people on clothes, cars and how big our houses are all these things are merely superficial things that do not place any type of value on how a person's character is. In the Brave New world children are separated before they are even born into different classes of people, they are not given the chance to break free from the class they are placed into. Both world have a fixation on appearance the color you wear defines the level you are in Brave new world and the brand of clothes you wear in our real time one defines what social class you fit into.
The worlds differ in two main ways, the government system in the Brave New world is prominent in the everyday life of the citizens, in our real time world our government is an invisible had that is meant to guide the citizens and not interfere with the everyday life. Our real time lives are meant to have struggles and we are suppose to fix our own problems with our turning to an over seeing government for help. The Brave New world government is there to control every aspect of citizens lives. The second way that our worlds differ greatly is that our real time world we let our children be free, by this I mean we encourage our children to get as much education as possible. In the Brave New world children are told that history is not a good thing to learn and only certain children get to learn things others are sent straight to work. As a free society we also encourage our children to be curios and ask questions we do not shock them for trying to touch a new thing, as a society we need our youth to become educated for our society to continue to work.
Our real time world is meant to be one that makes people feel like they are free to do what they want and to live life how they chose no one person is stuck doing something they do not enjoy unlike the brave new world which chooses what each person will do and makes them be the same type of person so that their society will stay in the same state they want it to.

Brave New World Essay Topic

Was the future society created in the novel Brave New World actually brave?

Brave New World Prompt

Was the future society created in the novel Brave New World actually brave?

I Am Here

Through out the first part of this class is was skeptical on how all of this would really help me in what I wanted to do. But as time as passed I have found these skills to help me with my own blog about DIY projects. I am not going to lie keeping up with the blog has not been easy but I have been trying my best to do it. This blog connects to my senior project because it allows me to work on my explaining skills which will help me when I am a teacher, it takes patience to explain things to people and to find the right words to get my point across through text has been even harder. I also was excited to hear Dr. Preston talk about a group he is going to start for prospective teachers. That is something I am very interested in dedicating my time towards because it is something that will help me out later in life.

Lit term #6

Simile: comparing two things using the word "like" or "as"

Soliloquy: a long speech given by a character in a play to the audience that reveals their thoughts

Spiritual: a folk song, usually on a religious theme

Speaker: the person who is speaker; narrator
  
Stereotype: a fixed idea of a character/idea which does not allow for any individual prejudices

Stream of consciousness: a style of writing that portrays the inner workings of a character's mind

Structure: framework of a work of literature

Style: the distinctive way in which a writer uses language; use of diction, tone, syntax

Subordination: words, phrases, and clauses that make one element of a sentence dependent on another

Surrealism: movement that replaces conventional realism with the full expression of the unconscious mind

Suspension of disbelief: suspended not believing in order to enjoy it

Symbol: a person, place, thing or event that had meaning in itself and also stands for something more than itself

Synesthesia: to present ideas, characters, or places in such a manner that they appeal to more than one senses like hearing, seeing, smell, at the same time

Synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole

Syntax: the way an author chooses to join word into phrases, clauses, and sentences

Theme: the insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work

Thesis: the sentence or group of sentences that directly express the author's opinion, purpose, or meaning

Tone: the attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience

Tongue in cheek: cleverly amusing in tone

Tragedy: any literary composition dealing with a somber theme

Understatement: the ironic minimizing of fact; presents something as less significant than it is

Vernacular: everyday language; slang

Voice: the author's style that makes his or her writing unique and conveys the author's attitude, personality, and character

Zeitgeist: the general cultural, intellectual, or spiritual climate within a nation or even a group 

Hafta/Wanna

My life while I am in high school and my life next year when I am off doing my own thing will be different in so many ways. First I won't have my family around me all the time to hang out with, I will most likely be spending a lot of time alone studying or with new friends that I am going to have to make. Second I will have a lot of time to myself I will not have to worry about picking up my sister and getting her where she needs to go, I will actually be able to have time to do my own thing. Parts that will be similar are that I am still going to be me, thinking my same thoughts about people and other things, I will still have the same work ethic, I will however be able to broaden my thinking meeting new people and going new places. I think that there will be a really big difference between my life in high school and my life next year out of it. I don't think people will magically transform after we graduate, I know of people that graduated three years ago that are still acting the same way they did in high school, for the most part people might change but it will not be a magical transformation of every student. The way I balance what I have to do and what I want to do is by first crying a little bit because I am always so high stress, then I plan my time out. I always do what I have to do first so that I do not have to worry about it while I am doing what I want to do. Making a solid plan is always a good idea. My expectations of the world around me are not very high, I try not to think to much of other people and what they might do for me, I know that if I want something done it is easier to do it myself then to rely on another person. I will always apply that to my life as I move forward in it.

Lit terms #5

Parallelism: the principle in sentence structure that states elements of equal function should have equal form.
Parody:  an imitation of mimicking of a composition or of the style of a well-known artist.
Pathos:  the ability in literature to call forth feelings of pity, compassion, and/or sadness.
Pedantry: a display of learning for its own sake.
Personification: a figure of speech attributing human qualities to inanimate objects or  abstract ideas.
Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose.
Poignant:  eliciting sorrow or sentiment.
Point of View: the attitude unifying any oral or written argumentation; in description, the physical point from which the observer views what he is describing.
Postmodernism: literature characterized by experimentation, irony, nontraditional forms, multiple meanings, playfulness and a blurred boundary between real and imaginary.
Prose:  the ordinary form of spoken and written language; language that does not have a regular rhyme pattern.
Protagonist: the central character in a work of fiction; opposes antagonist.
Pun:  play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different meanings or applications.
Purpose: the intended result wished by an author.
Realism:  writing about the ordinary aspects of life in a straightforward manner to reflect life as it actually is.
Refrain:  a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a poem or song; chorus.
Requiem:  any chant, dirge, hymn, or musical service for the dead.
Resolution: point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out; denouement.
Restatement: idea repeated for emphasis.
Rhetoric: use of language, both written and verbal in order to persuade.
Rhetorical Question: question suggesting its own answer or not requiring an answer; used in argument or persuasion.
Rising Action: plot build up, caused by conflict and complications, advancement towards climax.
Romanticism:  movement in western culture beginning in the eighteenth and peaking in the nineteenth century as a revolt against Classicism; imagination was valued over reason and fact
Satire:  ridicules or condemns the weakness and wrong doings of individuals, groups, institutions, or humanity in general.
Scansion: the analysis of verse in terms of meter.
Setting: the time and place in which events in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem occur.