AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA

1) A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, recounts the psychological or moral development of its protagonist from youth to maturity, when this character recognizes his or her place in the world. Select a single pivotal moment in the psychological or moral development of the protagonist of a bildungsroman. Then write a well-organized essay that analyzes how that single moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole. (http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/apcentral/ap13_frq_eng_lit.pdf)

2) A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot: Siddhartha - river. (http://jneff.wikispaces.com/file/view/Open+Question+Practice+Activity.doc)

3) What did Siddhartha learn from the Buddha? Use one quote from the text to support your response. (http://ecals.weebly.com/ap-english-literature.html)

4) Siddhartha's last exchange with his friend Govinda could best be described as:
a) humorous b) hyperbolic c) self-indulgent d) sarcastic e) indifferent
(http://www.learnerator.com/ap-english-literature/q/1041/siddhartha-and-govinda)

5) In order to experience the entirety of birth, life, death, and decay, one technique that Siddhartha uses is:
a) starvation b) astral projection c) meditation d) studying e) concentration
(http://www.learnerator.com/ap-english-literature/q/1041/siddhartha-and-govinda)

All of these questions, first of all, provide me with enough proof the importance of Siddhartha and its literary techniques used along with its unique theme and tone. Even though I have personal experience with being a Brahmin, I'm also expected to better understand the passage through its depth. Also, the multiple choice questions are extremely specific and detailed. So along with paying attention with my reading, another technique that can be used for MCQs is to try and find for the answer through skimming and not waste my time reading. My goal is to be able to better at understanding the techniques used in a literary work.

SIDDHARTHA: NOTES

According to me, the theme is self discovery against individuality.
The tone is anxious, nervous, overwhelmed, and towards the end transforms to excited and confident.
Brahmins are the highest level of class in India: the most religious, mannered, and holiest.
Think of family before self.
Encouraged against asking questions and being curious.
Snake symbolized the evil of the new world and evil of following your heart and leaving your identity and loved ones behind.
The author described Indian culture and the confusion faced by the youth of Brahmins. 

HACKING MY EDUCATION

Last semester was a blurb in my memory. There was so much going on that I wasn't able to grab a moment to stop or think: it was go time. But if last semester was go time, this semester is showtime. My expectation for senior year was to enjoy the last year in high school. Even though I was socially very happy and able to enjoy myself, academically I was equally busy and stressed. My goal for this semester is to manage my academics and my senior year experience with smoothness and without anxiety. This winter break changed me and made me an action taking individual with looking at the future and thinking forward.

BACK FROM WINTER BREAK: CONVERSATION WITH JISU

Even though Jisu and I are collaborating on our masterpiece and doing it together, I thought I should still create a blog post about our conversation and ideas. Jisu and I met up over winter break and began to write a song. At first, I wanted to compose my own music to the lyrics but when we talked, we both agreed to make our masterpiece more of a remix and choose a melody that creates a mood and an environment that fits the theme of our song.

Next, for the writing, we initially created a "pre-write" where we took notes on what was important first: the point of view of the song, the theme of the song, target audience, etc. After this, we both, individually wrote lines that we felt would describe our tone towards our topic, which resulted in similar tone for both of us.

Even though, the lyrics to our song are not completely finished yet, it is definitely a work in progress. Along with writing lyrics, we both discussed a novel for the Literature Analysis, hence the same book. I also felt that we opened up even more than we already were and it was a great experience to be jotted down in senior year memory book!

BACK FROM WINTER BREAK: LITERATURE ANALYSIS: THE LAST SONG BY NICHOLAS SPARKS

1) Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read according to elements of plot that you've learned in the past courses. Explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose.
a) Introduction/Exposition: The novel begins with Ronnie sitting in a room looking around and gathering the memories. She is then joined by her mother and it is revealed about the pain that Ronnie has been going through for the pas couple months. Ronnie then begins to tell her mom the story of her life changing summer at her dad's house.
b) Rising Action: The relationship between Ronnie and Steve (her father) is not the most traditional and expected one. They have their differences, mostly Ronnie - who likes to stay isolated in her own world. Ronnie meets this handsome boy at the beach, Will. Then her journey begins about truly discovering the meaning of relationships.
c) Conflict: There could be two conflicts possible: one could be Ronnie being unable to forgive her father and taking decisions solely based on her naive opinions; second could be Ronnie and her brother, Jonah, discovering their father's cancer.
d) Climax: First: After her father forgives and believes her that she did not shoplift, Ronnie began to realize that she might be wrong about who her father truly is. Second: the moment when Steve dies.
e) Falling Action: Ronnie decides to stay with her father until the end, until his death.
f) Resolution: Ronnie finally plays "The Last Song" by her dad on the piano and decides to take her career forward in music.

The author's third person omniscient point of view allows him to develop the characters and transform them along the way. He shows the gradual transformation of a typical high-school-graduate-teenager to a determined-career-seeker, something that all the readers have gone through sometime during their lives are are going through currently. His narration opened his characters and story up for the readers to analyze.

2) Succinctly describe the theme of the novel.
The theme of the novel, to me, is complexity of life and relationships. The necessity of love, faith, forgiveness, mistakes, are all too important to miss. Life is all about taking chances, staying true to yourself while doing so, letting go in life (forgiving), and most importantly - appreciate and love all that you have before it's too late. It is also about the transformation from a rebellious daughter to a mature and patient and positive one.

3) Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrates your points.
The author's tone was straightforward and completely non-biased. He was the kind of author who would present his facts to the audience with minute detail and then let them interpret it openly.

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.
1) Foreshadowing: "Thankfully, the pain in his stomach had lessened since the morning, but he'd been nervous for days, and he knew it would come back. He'd always had a weak stomach." (Pg: 13) 
2) Allusion: "'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'" "Was that before or after you claimed to have read Tolstoy?" (Pg: 128)
3) Imagery: " The paint was peeling, the roof was missing numerous shingles, and the porch was rotting." (Pg: 15)
4) Irony: "Inside, the walls were painted cheery colors, and a vase of fresh flowers stood on the dining room table." (Pg: 89) [Describing Blaze's house, who's a goth herself.]
5) Flashback: "Ronnie hesitated; then, with a sigh, she began to tell a story that still felt utterly senseless to her, even with the benefit of hindsight." (Pg: 4)
6) Onomatopoeia: "Behind him, he could hear the steady beep of the heart monitor." (Pg: 80)
7) Metaphor: "Just off the bridge, summer traffic had slowed the line of cars to a crawl." (Pg: 7)
8) Simile:"He bent and kissed Ronnie gently on the cheek, feeling again the undertow of his love for her, a joy as intense as pain." (Pg: 168)
9) Characterization: "He was forty-eight years old. His marriage had ended, his daughter avoided him, and his son was growing up without him." (Pg: 14)
10) Point of View: "Ronnie slouched in the front seat of her car, wondering why on earth her mom and dad hated her so much." (Pg: 5) [Ronnie is the main protagonist of the novel]

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?
"But right now, Ronnie had no choice in the matter. Because she was still seventeen. Because of a trick of the calendar." - Direct Characterization. "They were both thin and pretty, with blindingly white teeth, and obviously used to being the center of attention and having boys drool all over them." - Direct Characterization.

"I don't want a Nemo shirt, okay?"
"Nemo's cool."
"Maybe if you're six," Ronnie retorted.
"Suit yourself." - Indirect Characterization.

"'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,'" he quoted, pointing to her book."It's the first line in your book. I always thought there was a lot of truth in that. Or maybe that's what my English teacher said. I can't really remember. I read it last semester." - Indirect Characterization.

The author approaches both direct and indirect characterization to appeal to the readers and have the characters seem more understandable and relatable. I believe that the author uses both in such a manner and to such an end that I knew about the characters like I would with my family or friends. Sparks took his time to deliver the past of the characters so well that the reactions of the characters seemed natural, expected, and able to analyze it.

2) Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character? How? Example(s)?
The syntax doesn't majorly change because of the point of view that Sparks uses. This point of view almost seems like an outsider, not playing part in the story whatsoever but still knows every detail of it, is narrating it. Since it's only one "narrator" of the story, there is no point (in fact, it wouldn't make sense) for the author to change syntax and diction when s/he focuses on one character.

3) Is the protagonist static or dynamic? Flat or round? Explain.
The protagonist(s) is/are dynamic and round. It might not be exaggeration if it were to be said that these are one of the most dynamic characters ever written by a writer. He achieves this because he portrays a third person omniscient point of view but provides different perspectives of the same incident through different characters' interpretation. This novel (kind of) becomes like a diary where readers have three-four main characters have their inner feelings and emotions revealed for readers to analyze. Even though a lot of dialogue does take place, the author takes his time to, extremely, gradually develop each character with a detailed description about their past, present, and hopes, goals, and wishes for the future. Sparks gives the words and pages a character and the readers truly need to grasp the reason behind a character's actions, thoughts, and feelings.

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.
After reading the book, I truly did feel that I had met a person but not just anyone - myself. I feel as though it would be extremely hard (and almost impossible) to find one textual evidence that summarizes my feelings. The kind of character that Ronnie is, caring but not able to show it or honest and expecting loyalty and honesty in return and many more, makes me feel like I am looking in a mirror. The character might not be a genetically identical copy of me in terms of dressing style or behavior or look, but the emotions that she felt throughout the book and the hardships and emotional obstacles that she went through, I knew who and what she was.

BACK FROM WINTER BREAK: MY MASTERPIECE

All this time, I imagined myself glued to my computer doing research for my masterpiece and giving a boring presentation in front of the classroom while what I really wanted to do was not even remotely close to that. My topic, as of now, is to connect the two most important aspects of my life that define who I am - writing and music. Both of these complete me in ways that's completely unexplainable through words. I'm someone who's not so willing to describe myself and my emotions to anyone and open myself up and so to express my emotions, I take the median of music and writing, hence this topic for my masterpiece. By combining these two, I'm not only enriching learning experience for my classmates, but also remixing the two most powerful median in media now and producing an output that every individual can relate to with different interpretations with their various experiences. This topic requires the very most important fields, connecting them directly and/or indirectly. For example, it takes calculation and planning to write a song; it takes skill and knowledge about rhythm and music to remix another work with our own writing; it takes some relation with psychology to write about a theme that all individuals must've experienced sometime during their lifetime; and finally, it takes writing skill to pour emotions on paper. I have written many poems but I haven't written as many songs to get the experience of it and write it with easiness. So as of now, the only plan I have is to communicate with Jisu and collaborate about our possible melody and lyrics and how we want the audience to feel when we do present. Along with the song, I want to have a one-on-one with our audience and get their perspective, opinions, questions, and comments about our song and its process. Personally, I think the only resource we both need is our thinking ability! But if we do have an option of meeting somebody, I would like to get an experience to meet someone who has had an experience with all three: music, writing, and presentation. I would like some background as to how to present ourselves in terms of body language, range of voice, and attitude. I think, for me, it would be extremely cool to make a kind of music video where there's only one or two individuals singing but the facial expressions or physical actions of many other individuals incorporating the lyrics with their own interpretation of it as the actual video. Also, first, I would like to show the video mute, then just the audio, and then both of them together and then ask the audience which one they could connect with the most and why. I will be collaborating with both Jisu and Dr. Preston (maybe even the class) and see what, how, and if I will be able to achieve this goal!

SOCRATIC SEMINAR NOTES

• Eliot uses a lot of symbolism: such as the yellow fog/ smog.
• Both Hamlet and Peufrock are similar in the manner that they can't bring their decisions to actions.
• But both are different in that one knows what to do but struggles and the other struggles to decide what to do.
• Prufrock's inability to take action makes him depressed and lonely.
• The poem is called Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock not because it's romantic or lovey-dovey (in fact, it's mourning and depressing). It's called that because of the possibility of Prufrock's life if he were to take action.
• Was Prufrock suicidal?
• Prufrock imagining himself "bald" and old proves his fear for his inability.
• The women coming and going could represent their status in society.