Literature Analysis #1: The Fault in our Stars

 GENERAL
1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read, and explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).

Hazel, a 17 year old girl with terrible lung cancer, is at the beginning of the book, very depressed because of her situation. She finds no need to have friends and only lives to read. An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten is her favorite book but she has some questions for Van Houten as to how the story ends. She meets Augustus, a boy who lost his leg to cancer but is now cancer free. They hit it off and Hazel gets Augustus hooked on Van Houten's novel which leads to him emailing the author. Hazel also emails him and he says he will tell her the secrets of the book if she went to Amsterdam to meet with him. Augustus uses his Make a Wish Foundation Wish and they head to Amsterdam. Van Houten turns out to be a total jerk and that's all I've read. I don't want to spoil it by looking up the ending online because I really like this book but I will update this post when I am finished reading.

2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.

Love triumphs over all...joking, how cliche would that theme be,  although it is one of the themes. I'd like to choose sacrifice as one of the most important themes in this book. A mother's sacrifice, a lover's sacrifice and a personal sacrifice all characterize how the each character uses the theme in their interdependence. The mother of Hazel sacrifices her time in order to care for her daughter in her illness and although Hazel is annoyed by the constant watchful eye of her mother, she needs it. A lover's sacrifice is evident when Augustus gives up his Wish for Hazel or as Hazel states it, she "hijacked his Wish" as she had already used hers. Personal sacrifice is shown in how Hazel secludes herself from others so when she dies, they do not feel as much pain. She sacrifices her personal pain so as to not cause pain in others when she passes.



3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).

Hazel narrates the novel and her tone is funny, friendly and has a touch of sophistication. She narrates as if she would be talking to a close friend.

4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.)

Colloquialism:

Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”
Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”
Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”
Mom: “Television is a passivity.”
Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”
Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”
Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”
Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”
Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”
Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”
Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”
Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.”

Symbolism: 

“Why? Why would you even like me? Haven’t you put yourself through enough of this?” I asked, thinking of Caroline Mathers.
Gus didn’t answer. He just held on to me, his fingers strong against my left arm. “We gotta do something about this frigging swing set,” he said. “I’m
telling you, it’s ninety percent of the problem.”

The swing set is a symbol for childhood and many times Hazel is attracted to play on it again but Gus tells her she needs to find it a new home. Just as she can't go back to her childhood, something stops her from going and playing again on the swing set. She finally lets go of that dream and faces reality, as she gives away the swing set.

Foil: 

He wiped his sopping face with a sleeve. Behind his glasses, Isaac’s eyes seemed so big that everything else on his face kind of disappeared and it
was just these disembodied floating eyes staring at me—one real, one glass. “It’s unacceptable,” he told me. “It’s totally unacceptable.”
“Well, to be fair,” I said, “I mean, she probably can’t handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn’t have to handle it. And you do.”
“I kept saying ‘always’ to her today, ‘always always always,’ and she just kept talking over me and not saying it back. It was like I was already gone,
you know? ‘Always’ was a promise! How can you just break the promise?”
“Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said.
Isaac shot me a look. “Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don’t you
believe in true love?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
“Well, I believe in true love,” Isaac said. “And I love her. And she promised. She promised me always.” He stood and took a step toward me. I pushed
myself up, thinking he wanted a hug or something, but then he just spun around, like he couldn’t remember why he’d stood up in the first place, and then
Augustus and I both saw this rage settle into his face.

The relationship between Issac and Monica serves as a foil for the relationship between Hazel and Gus. Issac and Monica where exaggerated and their love was somewhat of a cliche teenage love that no one takes seriously. They broke up because they didn't understand each other but mostly because Issac went fully blind which Monica, a healthy teenager, can't relate to. This relationship makes Hazel and Gus' seem much more mature. They also both have/had cancer and therefore understand each other.

Flashback:

Even though it was a geographic inconvenience, I really liked Holliday Park. When I was a little kid, I would wade in the White River with my dad and
there was always this great moment when he would throw me up in the air, just toss me away from him, and I would reach out my arms as I flew and he
would reach out his arms, and then we would both see that our arms were not going to touch and no one was going to catch me, and it would kind of scare
the shit out of both of us in the best possible way, and then I would legs-flailingly hit the water and then come up for air uninjured and the current would
bring me back to him as I said again, Daddy, again.

This flashback serves to comfort Hazel just for only a second by reminding her that she had a life before cancer. It comforts but then stings once she realizes how her reality truely is.

Aphorism:

“That's the thing about pain...it demands to be felt.” 

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.” 

 “What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”

 “The marks humans leave are too often scars.”

The author sneeks in theses great qoutes about life the aspects of life that I just can't get out of my head.

Motif:
Water is present throughout the novel. In Hazel's lungs, in Gus' last name, in Amsterdam, rainwater and in other metaphors. This is what John Green had to say about water.

"Well, for Hazel and for a lot of people (and also a lot of places), water is both a creator and destroyer of life.
So let’s look at this from the perspective of a person, Hazel, and a place, Amsterdam.
Water makes life possible for Hazel, but the fluid in her lungs (which she refers to as water) is killing her.
Amsterdam would never have become a great city if it weren’t surrounded by water, but the city—which has benefited so much from its geography—is also drowning, and at constant risk of disaster from flooding.
I am of course not the first person to make this observation; the Latin phrase quod me nutrit, me destruit (that which nourishes me destroys me) goes way back. But I wanted to write a novel about the things that make life possible (and valuable) and how many of those things are also what makes life painful and temporary.
Water seemed like a good metaphor for getting into some of that stuff. (Plus water does all kinds of other convenient things, like follow the path of least resistance.) But you shouldn’t feel like you’re not doing a good job of reading the novel if you’re not conscious of that kind of stuff when you’re reading. There are many good ways to read a book, and if the metaphors work, you don’t need to be overly aware of them for them to move you and make you think."

Soliloquy:

“Hazel Grace, like so many children before you—and I say this with great affection—you spent your Wish hastily, with little care for the consequences.

The Grim Reaper was staring you in the face and the fear of dying with your Wish still in your proverbial pocket, ungranted, led you to rush toward the first

Wish you could think of, and you, like so many others, chose the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park.”

“I actually had a great time on that trip. I met Goofy and Minn—”

“I am in the midst of a soliloquy! I wrote this out and memorized it and if you interrupt me I will completely screw it up,” Augustus interrupted. “Please

to be eating your sandwich and listening.” (The sandwich was inedibly dry, but I smiled and took a bite anyway.) “Okay, where was I?”

“The artificial pleasures.”

He returned the cigarette to its pack. “Right, the cold and artificial pleasures of the theme park. But let me submit that the real heroes of the Wish

Factory are the young men and women who wait like Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot and good Christian girls wait for marriage. These young

heroes wait stoically and without complaint for their one true Wish to come along. Sure, it may never come along, but at least they can rest easily in the

grave knowing that they’ve done their little part to preserve the integrity of the Wish as an idea.

“But then again, maybe it will come along: Maybe you’ll realize that your one true Wish is to visit the brilliant Peter Van Houten in his Amsterdamian

exile, and you will be glad indeed to have saved your Wish.”

Metaphor

Metonymy:

“Okay,” he said after forever. “Maybe okay will be our always.”
“Okay,” I said.
It was Augustus who finally hung up.

The word "okay" is given a completely different meaning and "always" has it's name changed into okay. This is how they connect and show affection by hiding it in secret ways and as opposed to Issac and Monica, their relationship is as private as possible

Personification:

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?” 

Giving the universe a personality and needs is strange but very impactful. Suddenly, the thought of the universe having feelings and desires is extremely poetic and touching.

CHARACTERIZATION
1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of indirect characterization.  Why does the author use both approaches, and to what end (i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a result)?

Direct:
2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?
3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic?  Flat or round?  Explain.
4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a person or read a character?  Analyze one textual example that illustrates your reaction.

YES! I hated putting the book down and having to deal with reality.

Tale of Two Cities Lecture Notes

-Third city: Manchester
-Background on how Dicken's inspiration for TTC
-Summary: history of Rev, Paris, London and his reaction.
-Self sacrifice of the play transferred to TTC
-He explains how Dicken's was inspired by real people to make characters in TTC
-doubleness of character DC, CD and Charles Dickens.
-London: where he found his creativity, He loved it but disliked it, extremes of wealth and poverty.
-Paris: Charming and immense impression, perfectly distinct and unique character. He was overwhelmed by its secret character and how well the city expressed it. Very impressed by Paris although half the size of London, lacked the craziness of London.
-End of TTC: reminds readers of the old Paris with a bastil.
-ChD would visit Paris all the time for lengthy visits. Paris was a brilliant, modernizing city.
-Fascinated by the dark side of Paris, attracted to visit the morgue
-Describes Paris' character with detail of the people and the places.
-TTC moves between French history of 1789 but Dickens uses the years 1757-1793
-Dickens wasn't a Rebel, he had a horror of mob rule but TTC was about it.
-Came out in weekly parts as a series.
-"Unprepossessing"
-Dickens thought everything out when selling
-Crazy how people would treat his series like TV series. And how popular this was.
-Demands of weekly series, Cliffhanger endings, contrasting installment, wrote as he went along, and he was pleased with the novel.
-thought it was the best story he had ever written.

What's the story?!

"What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people's hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you're playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack." -Keith Richards


Why did Charles Dickens write the novel you're reading/reviewing? What in your analysis of literary techniques led you to this conclusion? (Make sure to include textual support illustrating Dickens' use of at least three techniques we've studied/discussed this year.)

Charles Dickens wrote the novel in order to share his views about society with society. The use of foil, symbolism, and characters allow him to do so. Through foils, Dickens can show the reader that people are bad in their own way, some sin differently than others but all of us sin. With the use of bugs as symbols emphasize how decayed something is. Characters all are influenced by traits that people in this society have like Pip with his idealism and Estella with her desires to break men's hearts. These characters comment on the people of today's society and will continue to comment on future societies.

Dicken's Map

 1) your reading schedule to complete your reading/review of the book by Monday, Feb. 4
Because I will be gone for a week, I intend to read the remainder of  the book on the plane ride on the way to and from my destination, as well as on car rides. 

 2) five AP questions (with source URLs) that you intend to be able to answer by the time you finish.
Found the first two here.

Essay Question 1:In the original ending of Great Expectations, Pip sees Estella in London in the company of her husband and her children. Dickens was advised by a close friend that this was not how readers would want the story to end, so the ending was changed to the now published ending. Evaluate the purpose behind Charles Dickens' original ending. Which ending completes the story more fully? Which ending makes the most sense to you as the reader, and which ending most efficiently potrays the key themes of the novel? Use the text to support your response.

Essay Question 2:Miss Havisham is heart broken and left in a disarry on her wedding day when her fiance leaves her at the alter.  Coincidently this "fience" is none other than Compeyson.  In her rage at this situation Miss Havisham adopts Estella to use her to get back at men.  Do you think that this justifies how Estella acts or is her manner just naturally how she is? Do you believe that Miss Havisham has the right to corrupt someone elses life and use them for her own selfish purposes?


Essay Question 3: is here on page 4. 

Essay Question 4:  Evaluate Dickens’s portrayal of Pip. In your opinion, is Pip a believable character? Does he behave in ways that a real child in similar circumstances might behave? Support your opinion with evidence from the novel.

 3) how you think you should be tested on these ideas, and/or how you intend to demonstrate your expertise on your blog. 

While I was trying to find AP questions of the novel online, I came across last year's blogs and I saw what they did with Great Expectations which was cool to look at but then I realized that anyone could actually get the answers of the questions online so I thought that having a discussion with a group about both books or just one and then uploading the video or voice recording would be more authentic and enriching. 

Literature Terms 31-56

Dialect:
A particular language spoken in a particular region, race, or social group.

Dialectics:
A rationale or dialectic materialism based through on change through conflict or opposing forces.

Dichotomy:
Split between two opposing things.

Diction:
One's style of speaking or writing.


Didactic:
Having to do with the transmission of information.

Dogmatic:
Rigid in beliefs and principles.

Elegy:
A mournful, melancholy, poem especially a funeral song or lament for the dead, sometimes contains
general reflections on death, often with rural or pastoral setting.

Epic:
A long narrative poem unified by the hero who reflects the customs, mores, aspiraitions, of his nation of race as he makes his way through legendary an historic exploits over long periods of time.

Epigram:
Witty aphorism.

“

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience deceptive, judgment difficult.

”

Epitaph:
Any brief inscription or prose in verse on a tombstone; a short formal poem of commemoration.

Epithet:
A short, descriptive name or phrase, that may insult someone's character.


Euphemism:
The use of indirect, wild or vague word or expression for one thought to be coarse,  offensive, or blunt.

Exposition:
Beginning of a story that sets forth facts and ideas.

In The Faults in our Stars, Hazel introduces her life as a young girl who has cancer and who is very depressed, she gives us more information as the beginning progresses. 

Expressionism:
Movement in art, literature, or music consisting of unrealistic representation of an inner idea or feelings.

Fable:
A short, simple, story usually with animals as characters, designed to teach a moral truth.

Fallacy:
From the Latin word, "to deceive", a false or misleading notion, belief, or argument; any kind of erroneous reasoning that makes arguments unsound.

Falling Action:
Part of narrative or drama after the climax.

Farce:
A boisterous comedy involving ludicrous language and dialogue.

Figurative Language:
Apt and imaginative language characterized by figures of speech.

Flashback:
A narrative device that flashes back to prior events.

Foil:
A person or thing that, by contrast, makes another seem better or more prominent.

In Jane Erye, Bertha is Jane's Foil.  

Folk Tale:
Story passed one by word of mouth.

Foreshadowing:
In fiction and drama, a device to prepare the reader for the outcome of the action; "planning" to make the outcome convincing, though not to give it away.

Free Verse:
Verse without conventional metrical pattern, with irregular pattern or rhyme.

Genre:
A category or class of artistic endeavor having a particular form, technique, or form

Education these days...

Made this Prezi in junior year with Feli, Sarah Kallies, and Ryunhee. :)
It's cool because I logged into my Prezi account and it felt like I was looking at an old photo album!

SMART GOAL....S

Although I have yet to choose a certain path with which I will shape my career, I have narrowed it down to becoming a professional in the field of Psychology or a professional in graphic design. Both paths, although dramatically different, will acquire from me the same tools of success to get there. Internships, mentors, work experience, and study of the craft are all tools that are very necessary during and after graduating college. Internships will give me work experience in the field and connections. Mentors will be excellent advisors because they have been in my shoes once and know the ins and outs of the profession. Studying the craft will allow me to become a true professional in the path I choose to pursue. Another goal I have is to work hard in order to relive my father’s tired hands. I would like to work so he can finally relax after almost 30 years of hard manual labor. My parents have both worked very hard to give my siblings and me a better life. I plan to pay them back for their hard work and loving hearts with my own hard work and my own loving heart. These two goals will only be attainable with not only hard work but smart work. The tools of internships, mentors and work experience will allow me to settle into a career and become the professional I see myself becoming. 

Quote of the week!

Lit Terms 6-25

6. Antithesis: a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness. 

7. Aphorism: a terse, pointed statement expressing some wise or clever observation about life.

8.  Apologia: a defense or justification for doctrine, piece of writing, cause, or action; also apology.

9. Apostrophe: a figure of speech in which an absent or dead perosn, an abstract quality, or something inanimate or nonhuman is addressed directly.

      
10. Argument(action): the process of convincing a reader by proving either the truth or the falsity of an idea or proposition; also, the thesis or proposition itself.

picture credit to Ming. 

11. Assumption: the act of supposing, or taking for granted that a thing is truth.

12. Audience: the intended listener or listeners.

13. Characterization: the means by which a writer reveals a character's personality.        

14. Chiasmus: a reversal in the order off words so that the second half of a statement balances the first half in inverted word order.

15. Circumlocution: a roundabout or evasive speech or writing, in which many words are used but a few would have served.

16. Classicism: art, literature, and music reflecting the principles of ancient Greece and Rome; tradition, reason, clarity, order, and balance.

17. Cliché: a phrase or situation overused within society.

18. Climax: the decisive point in a narrative or drama; the point of greatest intensity or interest at which plot question is answered or resolved.

19. Colloquialism: folksy speech, slang words or phrases usually used in informal conversation.

   

20. Comedy: originally a nondramatic literary piece of work that was marked by happy ending; now a term to describe a ludicrous, farcical, or amusing event designed provide enjoyment or produce smiles and laughter

21. Conflict: struggle or problem in a story causing tension.

22. Connotation: implicit meaning, going beyond dictionary definition.

23. Contrast: a rhetorical device by which one element(idea or object) is thrown into opposition to another for the sake of emphasis or clarity.

24. Denotation: plain dictionary definition.

25. Denouement(pronounced day-new-mahn): loose ends tied up in a story after the climax, closure, conclusion.

Poetry Analysis

1. " The Happy Couple" (Death Poem)- Alysia Harris

This poem is about two lovers in the after life and the purpose is to describe a sort of heaven.
The speaker is very passionate when she speaks and her tone increasingly becomes more forceful until she reaches the climax of the poem and then quiets down.

2. Our Whole Life by Adrienne Rich


Our whole life a translation
the permissible fibs

and now a knot of lies
eating at itself to get undone

Words bitten thru words

meanings burnt-off like paint
under the blowtorch

All those dead letters
rendered into the oppressor's language

Trying to tell the doctor where it hurts
like the Algerian
who waled form his village, burning

his whole body a could of pain
and there are no words for this

except himself

The authors tone is very dark and meaningful. She incorrectly spells "through" to maybe shorten the sentence in order to make it a little bit more snappy and quick. The theme is in my eyes that our life is a lie, not what it seems, or very controlled and short.

3. The Second Coming
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This poem's tone is dark and intense. The speaker paints a picture in the readers mind with every line because of his use of imagery metaphors and similes. He does not add grammatical errors but he does add a question mark to the end, to leave the reader with a question.

4.Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

BY DYLAN THOMAS

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,   

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The theme of this poem is death. The speaker means to teach the reader to keep fighting until the end. The tone is sad and depressed. 

5. Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

This poem is about a father-son relationship and how the father does so much but the son is ungrateful and unknowing of all the work. The speaker talks about the past and this allows him to add in what he knows now about his father and it shows that now he is grateful for the things his father did for him.

Lit Terms 1-5

1. Allegory

2. Alliteration

3. Allusion

Yoda in the movie E.T.

4. Ambiguity

Old lady or young lady?

5. Anachronism

AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA

1. According to E.M. Forster, a "round" character is dynamic and changing, and may even be contradictory.  A "flat" character is familiar and unchanging.  Choose a supporting or secondary character from Siddhartha and write a well-organized and textually supported post in which you show the character to be round or flat.

2.A foil is a character in literature who highlights certain traits of the main character by contrasting them.  For example, a coward helps to show the hero's bravery in a stronger light.  Choose either Govinda or Kamala to write a well-developed and textually supported post in which you show how he or she serves in the novel as a foil for Siddhartha.

Avoid plot summary.

I found these questions here http://laneyaplit.blogspot.com/?m=1

3)Discuss the significance of the title Siddhartha to the theme of the novel.

4)Choose a character other than Siddhartha, and discuss how the character supports the theme of Hesse's novel. (Characters to choose from are Govinda, Vasudeva, Kamala, Kamaswami, the Son, or the River)

5)The parable The Precious Present shares a common idea or theme with Siddhartharelating to the
past, present and future. What is that idea? What events in Siddhartha show this idea?

I found these here 

1) Siddhartha has an epiphany moment and is reborn again. He has been changed into a dynamic character as of that moment and goes on to grow in his different path. 

2) Govinda serves as a foil for Siddhartha because Siddhartha chose a different path, maybe a better path than Govinda. In the passage, Govinda is said to be part of a huge group where as Siddhartha is very alone but through this loneliness, he finds who he is.

3)The title being simple Siddhartha is just as Siddhartha is, just himself. It's simple yet so dynamic because of the book and its themes.

4) I don't remember the characters and therefore I cannot answer the question.

5) I don't remember this either. I need to know more about the themes of the book in order to go more in depth. 

I found this interesting. Jason Silva