Blog #4: Summer Reading Prompted Writing

	Definition	Quote Example from Summer Reading	Effect of this Literary device?	Effect of this literary device in my summer reading passage
Tone And Mood	Tone: Reflects the speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the work. Mood: The feeling the reader experiences as a result of the tone.	“Mom-pell-ion!” she screamed the word as a crake cries, from some deep place within her from which human voices are not usually drawn.” (257)	The way a person feels about an idea, event, or another person can be quickly determined through facial expressions, gestures and in the tone of voice used.	Whenever there seems to be good fortune for the characters, something that haunted them in the past always comes back to bite them on the butt.
Diction	The choice and use of words and phrases in speech and writing; the style of enunciation in speaking or singing.	“Elinor, by his side, was also clad in white: a simple gown…There were delicate pink mallow flowers, and blue larkspur, deep-throated lilies, and sprays of fragrant roses…”She looks like a bride,” I thought. But funerals, too, have flowers, and winding sheets are white.” (256)		The choice of the word funeral in the quotation creates a negative mood/tone. Even though everyone is well-dressed and Elinor holds a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and Mompellion wants the town to move on to a better future, this book still holds a feeling of negativity after the chaos of the plague.
Figurative Language	Language that uses figures of speech; non-literal language usually evoking strong images.	“…the large miner’s knife she had pulled with such effort the decaying sinews of my father’s hand. Her other arm was occupied, clutching the maggoty remnant of her daughter’s corpse…”(256-257)	The writer allows all readers to come up with many different meanings for the words in the novel.	When someone has succumbed to their madness, you would expect them to burst in a calm scene (example diction quote) with a weapon in hand, what I didn’t expect was for Aphra to drag her last child’s corpse, which is already decaying, to the scene as well.
Imagery	The verbal expression of a sensory experience and can appeal to any of the senses.	“The shriek that answered him was a raw, ragged thing, a piercing sound that rent the air and echoed around…” (256)	Imagery helps use words/phrases to describe an event or thing, so that the reader can visualize a picture of what the author is trying to describe.	As I read this line in the passage, it gives me Goosebumps to think what could sound so ragged, like nails on a chalkboard or even worse.
Syntax	The arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences.	“Any one of us could have stopped Aphra. I could have done it. The ravages of her madness had thinned her down to a wisp.” (256)	Syntax in literature gives the sum of the words meaning in a way that simply listing words never would.	Aphra’s life and family are in ruins, and if this happened to anyone else, they become just a body of rage and madness that doesn’t care who dies to seek justice in their own psychotic way.

                                                                                                                                                         


First Draft:

After reading, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, the book the passage I read reflects the novel as whole. The passage is told what happened after the plague finally began to die down and the villagers were about to be released form their oaths so they could leave and seek out any loved one that may have survived. The book started with the current time after the plague, where some might not understand what has caused some of the characters to be so depressed and gloomy.

 In the passage you find the rest of the uninfected in a Church service that would release them from oath to remain in the village and keep the disease from spreading, so they could journey out to find any loved ones who were not in the village at the time. Aphra Bont, who lost her whole family and succumbed to her madness and use of witchcraft to keep her remaining family, "alive", yet she ignored her last child's death and hanged her up like a string puppet and began to use charms and rely on witchcraft to keep her family alive. As we begin the scene where the Rector asked for them to give thanks "...the shriek that answered him was a raw, ragged thing..."For whaaaaat?" 

Final Draft:
After reading, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, the book the passage I read reflects the
novel as whole. The passage is told what happened after the plague finally began to die down and the villagers were about to be released form their oaths so they could leave and seek out any loved one that may have survived. The book started with the current time after the plague, where some might not understand what has caused some of the characters to be so depressed and gloomy.

 In the passage you find the rest of the uninfected in a Church service that would release them from oath to remain in the village and keep the disease from spreading, so they could journey out to find any loved ones who were not in the village at the time. Aphra Bont, who lost her whole family and succumbed to her madness and use of witchcraft to keep her remaining family, "alive", yet she ignored her last child's death and hanged her up like a string puppet and began to use charms and rely on witchcraft to keep her family alive. As we begin the scene where the Rector asked for them to give thanks "...the shriek that answered him was a raw, ragged thing..."For whaaaaat?" Clearly her madness got the best of her which became anger and then hate. She wanted to take Mompellion's life,“Any one of us could have stopped Aphra. I could have done it. The ravages of her madness had thinned her down to a wisp.”  Before she could, his wife, Elinor, took the killing blow. As they held the last of the funerals for the newly deceased, "It was Mr. Stanley who prayed at the graveside, for Michael Mompellion was not capable to do it. He had expended the last of his strength in the Delf, fighting those who tried, finally, to lead him away from Elinor's body." Michael was crushed and fell into a deep depression afterwards that even his caretaker, Anna Frith, had trouble of raising his spirits. The passage then started back up at the current time as Anna Frith reflected all that has happened to her and her friends.

This passage has worked its way up from the beginning of Anna Frith's life before the plague to the current time after Elinor's death in the passage. Aphra's actions resulted from the plague, though no one knew the cause, except Anna and her friend who was among the first to die was because of the flea infested cloth from London. Ignorant as the people were at the time, ignored the warnings to burn the material and helped spread it.  First Aphra's husband, Josiah, died for his crimes of greed and attempted murder, raised her insanity, and as one by one her children, minus Anna perished, she went ballistic and needed take the rage out on someone, and that was Mompellion as he was the judge for Josiah's crime and had her shunned for pretending to be a ghost of an alleged witch and sell charms to make extra money to keep her family going. Our actions can have consequences and those consequences can be reasonable or unreasonable. Aphra's actions had the biggest impact as result of the story and the resulting feeling of depression and gloom since she lost everything because of the plague and she couldn't do anything to save her family and took the life of a respected individual as result and killed herself.

 

Blog Post #3.5: "The Black Walnut Tree" Performance

Blog Post #3: "The Black Walnut Tree" Performance Activity Group Work

The Black Walnut Tree

Group: Ben Lazarus, Luke Gurekovich, Peter Kociba, Kris Pento

Thesis: In the poem “The Black Walnut Tree,” written by Mary Oliver, there is a large representation about the downside of focusing on dreams of the future rather than the present, as the black walnut tree keeps bringing pain and misery to the family, yet they keep it anyway, since the black walnut tree is a reminder of the dream they could achieve if they looked to the future.

My mother and I debate:

we could sell

   the black walnut tree

to the lumberman,          

and pay off the mortgage.

Likely some storm anyway(The Black WalnutTree is either to be sold to help pay the mortgage or kept and risk causing damage to the home)

will churn down its dark boughs, (tree branch)

smashing the house. We talk

slowly, two women trying

in a difficult time to be wise. (rhyme scheme)

Roots in the cellar drains,

I say, and she replies 

   that the leaves are getting heavier

every year, and the fruit

harder to gather away.(It’s getting tougher to take care of the tree)

But something brighter than money (metaphor)

moves in our blood–an edge

sharp and quick as a trowel (tool)

that wants us to dig and sow.

So we talk, but we don't do

anything. That night I dream

of my fathers out of Bohemia (country)

filling the blue fields

of fresh and generous Ohio

with leaves and vines and orchards.

What my mother and I both know

is that we'd crawl with shame

in the emptiness we'd made

in our own and our fathers' backyard.

So the black walnut tree

swings through another year

   of sun and leaping winds,

of leaves and bounding fruit, and, month after month, the whip-
crack of the mortgage.The tree gets to stay another year, and another year of labor to keep it healthy(Irony)

Where am I?

• I am in Ohio, in the Autumn season.
• We are outside, looking over the black walnut tree and I am in an argument with my mother on what we should do with it. They could either ”...sell the black walnut tree to the lumberman, and pay off the mortgage.” or leave it as is; “Likely some storm anyway will churn down its dark boughs, smashing the house.”

Who am I?

• I am a teenager who is probably in her 20’s-30’s. 
• We are not sure what she is wearing, but probably work clothes like an old pair of jeans, shoes, and shirt.
• I am afraid that if we cut down the tree, we would lose a piece of ourselves. “That night I dream of my fathers out of Bohemia filling the blue of fields of fresh and generous Ohio with leaves and vines and orchards. What my mother and I both know is that we'd crawl with shame in the emptiness we'd made in our own and our fathers' backyard.”
• My mother is also with me overlooking the black walnut tree, but we can’t reach an agreement because the tree reminds me of our family members from our past and our connection to nature. 

What do I want?

• I want to keep the tree because there are so many memories that tree has given us and my dream reminded me of this. “...I dream of my fathers out of Bohemia filling the blue of fields of fresh and generous Ohio with leaves and vines and orchards. What my mother and I both know is that we'd crawl with shame in the emptiness we'd made in our own and our fathers' backyard.”
• The poem is about the struggle of achieving our dreams where we live, and the black walnut tree shows us our struggle, from the care of the tree and troubles the tree can cause. Yet we keep it anyway, since the black walnut tree is a reminder of the dream we could achieve if we looked to the future.

1. WHAT IMPRESSION WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONVEY? WHY? WRITE ONE CHUNKY PARAGRAPH JUSTIFYING THIS, USING LINES FROM THE TEXT.

The impression we want to convey of this poem is the sadness of the poem. The reason we chose sadness is because as we stated in our thesis, “The Black Walnut Tree” represents the downside of focusing on dreams of the future rather than the present. The black walnut tree keeps bringing trouble to the family and risks damaging their home, “...some storm anyway will churn down its dark boughs, smashing the house.” Yet, they keep the tree anyway, since it is a reminder of the dream they could achieve if they looked to the future.
“What my mother and I both know is that we'd crawl with shame in the emptiness we'd made in our own and our fathers' backyard. So the black walnut tree swings through another year of sun and leaping winds, of leaves..., month after month, the whip-crack of the mortgage.” They could have sold the tree to help pay off the mortgage, but chose not to, because the backyard would then be empty and as a result give the mother and child an empty feeling as well.

 

2.  WHICH PROPS AND COSTUMING WILL BE USED? WHAT KIND OF LIGHTING WOULD YOU USE? WHY? WRITE ONE CHUNKY PARAGRAPH JUSTIFYING THIS, USING LINES FROM THE TEXT.

To make the Black Walnut Tree realistic, one of us will be wearing black and holding tree branches/sticks that hang loosely,“Likely some storm anyway will churn down its dark boughs, smashing the house.” We will use green construction paper marked with dollar signs to mark “...we could sell the black walnut tree to the lumberman, and pay off the mortgage.”

 

3. WILL YOU DRAW ATTENTION TO CERTAIN PHRASES OR WORDS? WHY ARE THESE WORDS (OR WORD) IMPORTANT? WHY DOES THE REPETITION OF THIS WORD/THESE WORDS REINFORCE THE MEANING OF THE POEM AS A WHOLE. WRITE ONE CHUNKY PARAGRAPH JUSTIFYING THIS, USING LINES FROM THE TEXT.

 “The Black Walnut Tree” contains some very key words, and without these words, the poem may lose a lot of what makes it particularly ironic. For example, the metaphor “brighter than money” in the poem, is an interesting word choice for the poem. The phrase can be taken literally as well as metaphorically, where the ‘something’ that drives them is literally ‘brighter than money’ with money representing the mortgage, or the phrase can be taken as metaphorical, where the thing that drives them is so important to them that it represents much more than money. In both cases, the phrase is ironic, as the same thing that drives them to look towards the future is the same thing that is leading all of their problems.