A Whole New World of Literature

I zipped up my coat as a brisk wind danced and twirled around me. I turned my head so that the cool air would not nip at my nose and watched as an auburn leaf played at the tip of a bare limb and finally broke away and sank lightly down to join a crispy golden canvas of foliage on the dew drizzled grass.

Simply an observance of a seasonal prevalence? Or a symbolic message in a literary art form?
For me, I see this simple observance as a metaphor for days passing. As each leaf falls another sun rises, as each leaf joins the others on the ground another moon sets. Already a sixteenth of the leaves have fallen off the tree of my high school vocation.

So far, in ninth grade honors English the most important skill I have developed is the ability to analyze a literary work and be able to pick up and define the greater symbolic message or theme behind the writing. For example, when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird I read about a girl who lived an the racist town of Maycomb who’s father defended a black man against rape charges and who had an odd neighbor. After discussing the book in class I read the book a second time and this time I read the story of innocence being lost due to the harshness and evils of life in the world. I have also learned to analyze poetry and prose to get a very heartfelt deeper meaning expressed through tone developed by word choice and rhythm. Thus far we have done this with The Knife, Lobsters, and Shoulders in class.

I feel this tool will be obliging to me in the years to come of my high school career and much past my graduation as well. I hope to develop this skill into an art form so that when I read I don’t just see words on a page, instead I will see an image leaping out at me, a story telling itself to me, and a message creeping into me through my thoughts and emotions.

Shells of a Dream

During the class discussion on the poem “Lobsters” comment regarding the comparison between lobsters and humans came up. I am not sure as to who made this comparison or what the exact comment was, but I believe it was on the subject of how lobsters were related to humanly positions such as a philosopher, a victim, and a cadaver. Another idea from the poem that was brought up was the description of lobsters describing them as sleep walkers and “shells of a dream.”

I was thinking of these two comments and started thinking about how humans could too be compared to sleep walkers. If you were to watch our everyday lives we do nothing more urgent normally than a sleep walker would. We get up get dressed go to school and sit solitary for an hour. We then slowly we are shoved into the same hallway bumping into one another walking seemingly blindly to our next class, sit for another hour and repeat the cycle again and again and again. Then we go home and sit at home and do homework watch TV and go to bed. Yes, we do occasionally do something more active such as a sport but in totality we are, from a distance, no more than “shells of a dream.”

Paragraph Analysis

Over the past several weeks of school, we have been busy writing and critiquing 5 part paragraphs written on the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird. In doing so, there has been a pattern in the good and bad points each the paragraphs had as a whole. Good qualities most papers had were: word choice; commentary; concrete details; embedding of quotes; and strong theme statements. Things that most people needed to work on were: excessive plot summary; broad theme statements; commentary and concrete details not relating to the main the theme trying to be proven; and concluding sentences not serving the intended purpose. In writing the papers many people focused on small details such as word choice that enhances the paper rather than larger details such as the choice of CDs or meaningful commentary.

In my paragraph, I had some mistakes and some good qualities. I had two CDs for my first point and I had redundant word choice. High points in my paragraph were meaningful commentary, easy to follow and flowing sentences, and an insightful conclusion. I found that the things I did wrong and the things I did right did not follow the general trend of my classmates. In the writing of my next 5 part paragraph, I will be sure to check my CDs and analyze my word choice along with making sure I do the same things I did well this time well again.