Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Sarah Ganzenmuller AP Lit Summer Blog Post #3

Charming Billy: Blog 1

Sarah Ganzenmuller
Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Swiftly and effortlessly within the first couple of pages of Charming Billy Alice McDermott manages to grasp ahold of her readers by both toying with their curiosity and taking full advantage of suspension. She uses descriptive imagery and figurative language to eloquently describe the scene of the funeral which unfolds before your eyes as a sort of mystery due to the fact you are left in the dark for a considerable amount of time about who it is who actually died, and how. Her purpose is to fully engage her readers from the very first page, gaining their loyalty through her exquisite and detailed descriptions yet tactfully leave them wanting more so they read on. When she finally does give them something to hold on to, a name and a reason, Billy, who died because he was an alcoholic, she still leaves room for further explanation. This is necessary because rather than having the focal point of the book be towards the middle, she puts the climax at the beginning and works her way from there. She leaves you wanting to know more about Billy, his life, and the reasons behind his alcohol addiction. Her technique is particularly clear in the following quote on page 7, as the passage contributed immensely to the readers desire to learn more.

“And if you loved him, we all knew, you pleaded with him at some point. Or you drove him to AA, waited outside the church till the meeting was over, and drove him home again. Or you advanced him whatever you could afford so he could travel to Ireland to take the pledge. If you loved him, you took his car keys away, took his incoherent phone calls after midnight. You banished him from your house until he could show up sober. You saw the bloodied scraps of flesh he coughed up into his drinks. If you loved him you told him at some point that he was killing himself and felt the way his indifference ripped through your affection.”

            The most evident rhetorical strategy used here is parallelism. The whole entire paragraph consists of sentence similarly structured to give what McDermott is saying more power. Because she carries this parallelism throughout the quote it almost seems although it is more of a poem than a piece of writing. She does this through her repetition and progression of the start of each sentence which goes from  “if you loved him” to “or you”  followed by “you” and finally, looping back to the original beginning “if you loved him”.
           

            McDermott also successfully appeals to your emotions here, in a couple of different ways. By showing how people cared for Billy you in turn grow to care for him yourself, because you cant help but to feel if others went through all this trouble for him he must have been worth it. That is the very purpose of the many small sentences of the different things people did for him placed together. It has a lengthening effect making it seem like an extensive list, successfully gaining the readers sympathy and appreciation. The gruesome detail of the bloodied scraps of flesh Billy coughed up into his drinks also provides as a shocking appeal to ones emotions, but in a different way. This the readers would most likely find appalling, yet it gains sympathy for Billy once again. The final sentence to the quote is a killer. “If you loved him you told him at some point that he was killing himself and felt the way his indifference ripped through your affection.” Now that McDermott has got you hooked on Billy, convinced of his worthiness and wonderfulness, leaving you grieving over his troubles you are suddenly hit with the little fact that Billy didn’t care if he lived or died. This has the reader completely hooked, because now they need to figure out why. Why did death not fear Billy? What horrible things happened to him that allowed him to see death as a comfort rather than something to run from? These are questions McDermott leaves you wondering. These are the questions that propel you into the remainder of the book, hungry to understand.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Sarah Ganzenmuller AP Lit Summer Blog Post #2


The Scarlet Letter: Blog 2 
Sarah Ganzenmuller
Wednesday, July 16, 2014

           Motivations/Outcomes of Hester Prynne and its meaning:
Though I was at first tempted to examine and expose Roger Chillingworth's evil characters motives, I realized no matter how in depth one would try to interpret his actions they would find nothing but a cold hearted soul thirsty for revenge. His deformed body mirrors his distorted soul, and he is quite blatantly the antagonist of the story. In contrast to Chillingworth's consistently cruel character, Hester embodies a whole different characterization. Ones who's motives are not necessarily always clear, one who cannot be defined in one way due to her persona being more liquid than solid as she is constantly developing and changing throughout the story. 
           
Hester is described in the first scaffold scene when at trial for committing adultery as a young woman with a "figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, has the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes”(Hawthorne 46). Those who knew her previously who had expected and no doubt hoped out of jealousy to behold her dimmed and obscured by her misfortunes were astonished to find how her beauty shone out of the humiliation in which she was enveloped. Just in this first scene, Hawthorne manages with physical appearance alone to prove Hester different than most. She quite admirably accepts her fate and though ashamed of her sin goes about her dishonor with a sense of pride and dignity. This is verified when she refuses to announce who the perpetrator is, not revealing who she slept with. Despite having nothing to lose and maybe even something to gain from the unveiling of her fellow sinner, as he would prove company in exile, she burdens herself with loneliness and the secret.
       
  While it takes a great deal of courage to bear this kind of exile alone, one might also observe Hester’s refusal to expose Mr. Dimmesdale as an act of submissiveness. As the book takes place in the seventeenth-century puritan Massachusetts when women were considered inferior to men, it is very possible that Hester simply felt while she owed the man who abandoned her the world, while she owed herself nothing. I can’t help but to feel Hester should be infuriated with Mr. Dimmesdale for leaving her to face her sin alone, yet she remains indifferent. In fact, towards the end of the book she even flings herself at the minister’s feet crying, ”Thou shalt forgive me! Let god punish! Thou shalt forgive!” (161) This scene proves to be a shocking revelation to the reality of the situation. Mr. Dimmesdale should have been begging for her forgiveness, yet she begs it of him. This shows how weak she truly is despite the many years of humiliation, which up until this point had convincingly seemed to make her stronger. Her daughter Pearl is of a different nature. Wise beyond her years, and feeling no inferiority to men or anybody for that matter, she refuses to embrace Mr. Dimmesdale until he stands beside her and her mother. While she makes this claim a literal one, it can be taken symbolically as her urging him to confess his sin, and calling him out for not standing beside them sooner. 

 Pearl serves as a beacon of hope, and a light for Hester throughout the story, giving Hester’s tragic life a purpose. Pearls presence directly affects her mother, giving her the strength to carry on with integrity and good nature. In time people forget the sin committed by Hester, and instead they marvel at her many acts of goodwill. The A, standing for Adulterer that is supposed to dishonor Hester soon looses its significance, and even changes for some, “They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a women’s strength” (134). Pearls important role in her mother’s determination to do good by others becomes apparent in her response to Mistress Hibbins invitation to join a meeting of witches who praise the devil. Hester replied, “ I must tarry home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood!”(97) With these words it becomes clear that Hesters motivation is solely her beautiful daughter. Strangely enough, Hester never seems to worry too much about Gods perception of her and though tainted by others judgments is not concerned with impressing the townsfolk. She devotes her time to charity not for herself, not for her reputation, but for Pearl. “Hesters nature showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one” (133). In the end it is speculated that Pearl lived far from the town she grew up in with a husband and a happy family. Giving Pearl the fairytale ending her mother only dreamt about, Hawthorne makes two points. One is you are not defined by where you come from, even if it is sin. The other being dedication pays off, as Hester’s little Pearl gets everything she could have wanted for her and more.

When Hester grows old, she moves back to New England without Pearl. There she stays until her death. Her ending is a much happier one than that of both Mr. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. Those characters tragic outcomes prove as a warning given by Hawthorne to his readers. Revenge leaves you with nothing, and secrets eat you alive. Though I am sure Hester wished her sin wasn’t discovered at the time, this discovery is what ultimately saved her. While Hester claimed, “always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture”(72) this very symbol which inflicted so much pain, is what subsequently saved her soul. Instead of Hester’s sin manifesting itself in deep into her heart, as it did with Mr. Dimmesdale, poisoning him, she felt an outward pain, something more bearable, one much less destructive. Having the ability to prosper through her suffering, Hester becomes something of a legend in the colony of Boston. Even those put into the worst of circumstances can remember her legend and hope to see better days.
  

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Sarah Ganzenmuller AP Lit Summer Blog Post #1

The Scarlet Letter: Blog 1 

Sarah Ganzenmuller
Wednesday, July 2, 2014

                   The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, though published in the 1850's, takes place in seventeenth-century Puritan Massachusetts, and accurately depicts the morals of New England's society during the time period. It is considered to be one of the greatest American novels due to Hawthorne's exploration of such a foreboding subject as Adultery while simultaneously offering a unique style and language to exploit life during the century. Rather than concerning himself with describing the actual sin committed by the main character Hester, he focuses on the aftermath of it, conveying the intense emotions that arise out of the degrading of Hester and her child born of sin, and exposing the harsh and rigid views that allowed for such long-term unreasonable punishment. Chillingworth, the husband Hester cheated on, quickly adapts into becoming the embodiment of Puritan values. It is these very Puritan values which led the people of this time to their own digression of morals in acts inhumane, yet supposedly in the name of god, motivated by their own repressed sins of greed, lust, and envy.
The setting is quickly established in the very first sentence of the book. “A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and other bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes” (Hawthorne 41). This sets the stage for what is going to be a rather heavy and gloomy tale, one that unforgivingly reveals the ugliest sides of human nature but more specifically the social conditions and customs of New England in the seventeenth century. Known as rather dark time in our history, many people relied on religion to justify their actions. Their extreme beliefs often hindered their quest for actually doing right by one another, and as the story unravels this become extremely apparent. In one particular case the author gives you a snippet of a group of women’s conversation over Hester’s punishment, one exclaiming, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there no law for it? Truly there is, in both the scripture and the statue-book” (45). Her belief that Hester should face the death sentence clearly illustrates the extremity of the culture and its unhealthy relationship with religion. They sanctioned their harsh actions by the will of god. Upon arriving to town Chillingworth asks about Hester’s punishment and a commoner replies, “Truly, friend, and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people: as here in our godly New England”(53). This makes it clear that they believe punishing Hester is doing right by god, which is a crucial component to the readers understanding of the book. It is not necessarily by their own will, but rather they feel obligated to punish Hester severely under the eyes of the almighty. Women’s rights were rather nonexistent at this given time, and more often than not they were forced into marriages they weren’t necessarily happy with. Understanding this proves vital as occasionally Hester feels a sort of sympathy from some women she walks by. She senses that it is because they have committed Adultry themselves, which is very likely given many were not in happy marriages. Though Hester doesn’t have the excuse of a forced marriage, her husband did not come see her in town for years, and it is mentioned briefly that she made it clear to him their marriage wasn’t necessarily out of love.         
The customs and social conditions of the town also reflect themselves in Pearl, Hester’s child. Even Hester, the mother of Pearl who had most directly felt the wrongdoings of the townspeople and their rigid beliefs didn’t go unaffected by religious oppression. She herself feels guilt and the need to be punished even through her own daughter as she claims, “Pearl was born a outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem, and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants” (77). It is despicable that the towns people so vehemently insulted her to a point where she looks upon her own daughter as a sort of monster incapable of being around other children. Yet while this close affiliation with God during the time period is what brought Hester misery, it also manages to help her at one point. The people of the town once Pearl turned about three began to believe they should separate her and her mother for both of their own good. Yet for once Hester manages to spin Gods will in her favor, claiming that it was God who gave her the baby and therefore the baby shouldn’t be taken from her she sways their mind. The minister upon hearing her argument agrees saying, “This child of its father’s guilt and its mothers shame hath come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing in her life!” (95) And just like that she managed to use the time periods society which heavy relied on religion and Gods word to her advantage, where before it hung shame heavily on her shoulders.
From just the first half of The Scarlet Letter it is clear that setting includes much more than just a time and place due to the social conditions and customs of Massachusetts during the seventeenth-century thus far playing a huge role in the actions of the characters in the story. Having knowledge of the prominence of religion in civilian life, the lacking women rights, the impending witch trials and frequent lynching contribute to the overall understanding behind each characters motives and desires.