Outside Reading: Reflective Essay

It's a Lot Harder to Fly a Plane Using the Force Than Star Wars Would Suggest.
By: Jordy Greenblatt

Jordy Greenblatt writes a comical reflective essay on the history of him piloting aircraft with his eyes closed. He has the most emergency stops and most deaths of any of the other pilots. He uses simple diction to make it so that the reader does not spend any time looking at the words but can concentrate on what he is actually saying. The syntax that is used is repetitive, he uses yes and no to start sentences to hammer home the ridiculous things he is saying. He does a similar thing when he starts his sentences with “you”, it is to show that he is directly addressing the reader when he is speaker, later in the account the reader finds out why he is addressing them so obviously, he is the pilot of the plane the readers on. Oh crap.
The strength of this essay is the strong shock value at the end when the reader realizes they are on the plane with this crazy pilot. The weakness though is that it lacks depth to this story, it is limited to what is explicitly said.
The uses a comical tone, saying things like, “but the first time I tried it they really chewed me out”. These short sentences with common joking and funny phrases lead the reader to think that he is kidding and it is perfectly reasonable to look at everything he says as ridiculous
His tone is not appropriate for an AP exam at all because the joking manner in an AP essay would allow for the audience to ignore what the writer has to say because by taking that tone the writer can no longer be seen as a trustworthy source of information.

Outside Reading: Column

Based On A Few Primitive Lego Assemblies I Am Confident In Proclaiming that My Toddler Will Become America's Next Great Architect
By: Coleman Larkin

In this column, Larkin uses humor, and plenty of it. He creates this using different techniques, but most notably his diction and sarcastic tone. The diction he uses is strikingly different than the reader is expecting from a parent discussing his two and a half year old son. He uses technical terms related to architecture to exaggerate the apparent intelligence of his toddler. This along with the sarcastic tone creates a narrative persona that is one of a untrustworthy, jaded parent looking at every creation of his Childs through 'love goggles'. He expands upon this by quoting a famous architect and claiming that is son said that as his first words.
For a column I think that this definitely improved my response to the piece because it made me laugh, and made it much more engaging than an accurate description of his sons "skills". If he had chosen to be accurate it would have been one of those moments where the parents honestly thinks that the thing there kid did was the coolest thing they had ever seen, when really it was not, but i think we will all go through that.
For an AP essay I would say that this is not an effective means to convince the graders of your point, by the sake of the persona, the writers not a reliable source of information. And I would think that obvious exaggeration should also be avoided.

Outside Reading: Book Review

How Gandhi became Gandhi
By: Geoffrey C. Ward

In this book review of "Great Sole" by Joseph LeLyveld, ward discusses how this book is not an entire biography, but it is written by a well qualified author, Lelyveld, who reported from India in the sixties and has worked covering Southern India in the eighties. In this review, ward praises the complexity of the book, and how some knowledge of Gandhi's life is expected for a comprehensive reading.
Ward uses a lot of detail about the book itself and how it corresponded to Gandhi's life, or how he responded to the book. At times this review veers away from the book and back onto Gandhi's life and what he accomplished, using mostly quotes directly from Gandhi, ignoring the text that he is reviewing
This is a definite weakness of the piece as it is almost as if he never answered the question of how the actual book, making it seem to the reader as though he was somehow bored of it, or at least uninterested. Along the same lines is one of the strengths though, this way of including gave more information about Gandhi to the reader than the go in thinking. This is nice, but unexpected and at the end It feels more like a piece on Gandhi referencing "Great Sole" instead of a book review.
Unless it was a open prompt the usage of mostly detail would not be good for an AP essay. The roundabout way that he does not get to the point would also be destructive in an AP essay, because it would sound as though the reader were trying to BS the answer.

Class Notes (3/07- 3/21)

Modernism
-disillusionment after WWI

• many expatriots
• stein "lost generation"
• new narrative techniques

-"le crie de couer" creates a "make it new" mentality
-believe the arts play a critical role
-exist in limbo between whether arts reinforce culture or culture has no goal to reinforce
-suspicious of the tools of art
-old era was a flawed contract:

• artist too manipulative
• audience too submissive

-new forms of narrative:

• unreliable narrators
• multiple narrators
• minor characters as 1st person narrators
• nonlinear narrative
• stream of consciousness

-superimposition, multiple layer; intersection = truth
-television drives the rise of postmodernism

• after WWII in USA
• 60's in England

Post-modernism: response to the "failure" of modernism
-television makes it clear that everyone thinks differently

• modernism the loses the aspect of universal truth and gains "all truth is local"
• incredibly ironic
• blending of high and low culture; Elvis opera
• self reverence: references other media; Daily Show
• the simulcrum: Jean blahblah, copies or the simulated world becomes more real than the original, original is lost, the copy  IS reality then

Surrealism
-cultural rules govern though
-unexpected juxtaposition breaks through those rules; + reality or -reality
-dreamlike, playful, sometimes eerie or bizarre
-freud and jung

Class Notes (2/21-3/4)

Comedy

-six necessities of comedy

• it must appeal to the intellect, not emotion
• must be mechanical
• inherently human, to remind us of our humanity
• must be relevant to the set of societal norms, where the readers is familiar with them
• the situation and its parts must be inconflict with those norms
• must be percieved as harmless or painless

Types of Comedy

-low comedy: lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal quarreling, fighting, noisy singing, buffoonery, drunkenness...blah blah etc.

-high comedy: pure or serious comedy, appeals to the intellect and arouses laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of human nature and displaying the follies of social manners

-burlesque: characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion, switching expectation serious turned frivolous, frivolous made serious

-farce: light dramatic work in which a highly improbable plot, exaggerated character, and slapstick elements are used for humorous effect

-lampoon: broad satirical piece that uses ridicule to attack a person or group, a more pointed or aimed satire

-parody: parody is to literature as caricature is to art, making fun of a well known and/or original work 

-satire: holding up to ridicule the follies and vices of a people or time

-slapstick: boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes

-travesty: presents a serious subject frivolously and reduces everything to its lowest level, always serious where as burlesque and parody don't need to be

The Comedic Ladder

-Comedy of Ideas

• characters argue about ideas like politics, religion, sex, marriage
• characters use their wit and clever language to mock their opponent in an argument
• subtle way to satirize people and institutions like political parties, governments, churches, war, marriage 

-Comedy of Manners

• amorous intrigues among the upper classes
• focus is on witty language, clever speech, put downs are traded by the characters, ie: my lunch table 
• society is often made up of cliques (exclusive) in crowd; everyone else, not incrowd

-Farce

• plot is full of coincidences, mistiming, mistaken identities
• characters are puppets of fate
• loss of identity because of birth, fate or accident
• sometimes they are twins separated unaware of their double; Twelfth Night

Low Comedy

• dirty jokes, dirty gestures, and sex are subjects of humor
• exaggeration or understatements are the extremes with a focus on physical - long noses, cross eyes, humped back
• slapstick, pratfalls, loud noises, physical mishaps, collisions, etc  

Techniques of Comedy

-caricature: representation in which the subject's distinctive features are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic effect

-colloquialism: use of slang or informal language; regional dialects included 

-deflation: an object assumes or is given elevated status and then is treated in such a way that the estimation of the object decreases

-disparagement: to speak of in a slighting way; some teachers.

-euphemism: a less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word; escort vs. hooker

-hyperbole: exaggeration or overstatement

-incongruity: surprising contrast that occurs through situation, image, allusion, character, diction, anachronism

-invective: harsh abusive language directed against a person or cause; bitterist of satire; tool of anger

-irony

• verbal - discrepancy between what is actually stated and what is really meant
• situational - discrepancy between what is expected and reality
• dramatic - discrepancy between what the reader or audience knows and the character knows

-knaves & fools:  only rogues (knaves)  and suckers (fools) in comedy

-litotes: understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite

-malapropism: an improper use of a word in which one word is replaced by another which resembles it (different meaning)

-non-sequitur: inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premise or evidence

-oxymoron: a group of contradictory terms suggesting a paradox; jumbo shrimp 

-paradox: a statement that seems self-contradictory which upon further thought contains some degree of truth

-parody: a work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect or ridicule

-pun (zeugma): play on words based on the similarity of sound

-sarcasm: bitter language meant to hurt or ridicule something

-stereotyping:conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image

-understatement: when what is said falls short of the magnitude of whats being talked about

-wit: now often refers to clever uses of language to arouse laughter

Outside Reading: Reflective Essay

Mano A Mano
By: Susan Schorn

In this reflective essay Schorn recounts an encounter she had with a magazine subscription seller who had scars he was showing her, with a story behind them, but also her take on violence. She takes a relaxed friend to friend kind of tone that works very well to convey her ideas because they are the kinds of things that you complain about to a friend. She creates this tone using conversational syntax and every day diction. She uses comas frequently in her sentences which makes it feel like she is taking a breath or pausing for effect in a conversation. The diction that she uses never extends far beyond the smaller group of words that tend to be uses everyday, using typical verbs, never getting technical or using flowery specific words. this makes it easier for the reader to connect to her as a reliable source or atleast someone with a thought through position. Her tone shifts to one that is still friend to friend but more heated in her opinion as she discusses her opinion on Bush. It shifts because Schorn uses more sarcastic diction.
Personally, this tone made my response to this piece more on the side of humor. It was funny but I think that if she had used a different tone it would have been harder for my to connect to the content. On the other hand this wouldn't be the best tone to strike on an AP exam because it does not portray the author as a reliable source, more like an opinionated friend.

Outside Reading: Column

Ten Ways to Jump-start Your Finances
By: Alison Rosen

In this column, Rosen uses different techniques to create a funny column. She makes rediculous claims of her ways to "jump-start your finances". Rosen creates a narratives persona that makes it clear that she is not to be taken seriously, using diction and details along with asking unanswerable questions of the audience. She uses diction that one usually uses when they are joking around, for instance she says things like "don", "suacy", "pluck". The most obvious example of how she uses detail is in the common, sometimes cliche way she words her final sentences and the expressions people use when tryink to get you to do something crazy, ""live a little", "play the odds", "best if what you love is embezzling".
This definitely influenced my response to the piece, if it was not obviously meant to be a piece of humor I would have read it and thought that she was crazy and let it slip from my mind. Since it was funny though, I imagined myself in those situations and it made it a more enjoyabe read.
Appropriate for an AP? No. For sure not, the humor that Rosen uses would be looked at with a definite negative light by the AP graders, either thinking that the writer was not taking it seriously, or was trying to mock them. A serious more authoritative voice would be a much better appraoch for the AP.