Week Three

Rich For One Day

small amount of money

sleep

simple art - making it

Movies

Happiness

The out-of-doors

Life itself

Self - peace of mind - alone time - sense of well-being

Can we derive some conclusions about her psychology/thinking from this list?

There's something admirable about her, but she seems very in her own little world, and may appear to lack motive.

She seems a bit flaky and “like a hippie”

Pierced to have a kind of childish mindset although she's probably in her 20s.

Why do we have these judgments?

CONTEXT

We live in a culture where we are driven by many outer “needs” that may actually not be that important or valuable.

Maybe it is the societal definitions that are the problem.

Hey, why not be made happy by simple things? Why not be easily amused? Why not be satisfied by simple obvious easily accessible activities?

Our culture schools us to be much more dissatisfied - unhappy people will do almost anything to fix it - especially BUY THINGS

What is Rich? What is value? What is happiness? What is a good life? 

Many of us set a “line” and we think “if I cross this line then something will happen - i.e. Will be happy, I'll be satisfied, and I will know that I've “made it”, etc

The truth is you keep seeing a new line in front of you and create the idea of the goal – The happiness or whatever – forever on the other side of that line, that keeps getting further away

What do I really want?

How do I get it?

What will it do to me if I do get it?

The Boat, page 261 Echoes

Summative

Group assignment

Come up with an analysis of the story that can be presented in some format like Prezi, Keynote, PowerPoint, whatever.

Each group will generate a plan for analysis, which will then be broken into parts and assigned to different group members.

You have a complex short story, it is very long, it has many parts, and you need to figure out how best to analyze it for meeting.

Then you need to present your findings in a format that makes sense to show your deeper thinking.

Plot, setting, character, theme

Symbolism - kind of dealt with this more indirectly - one thing means something much bigger

Context

Universal ideas

Personal interpretation

Archetypes

Marking

Check listing those elements above:

Evaluating presentation skills 

Evaluating “showing your thinking” - the reasoning is on the page

Digging deeper than simple surface meaning

Applying the elements we discussed in class, and that way of thinking to this new story - ASSOCIATIONS

Synesthesia

The brain has different areas that focus on different elements of perception

Perceiving something involves many parts of the brain working in concert

See a dog - know things about dogs - hear sounds, linked to dogs - remember a dog that you had - Focus on details about this dog makes it different, etc

Or do you just see a dog and know that it's a dog and not think about it anymore?

Synesthesia is a mixing of these different elements

Colors may have sounds, smells, tastes.

This shouldn't seem too weird because it's the same brain, getting messages, firing different parts at different times

Things are interesting to us might be things that are different and make the brain fire in different ways

novelty might = good - you might get more happy brain chemicals - endorphins, dopamine

This mixing of “brain part excitement” (different parts of the brain all firing in concert) is probably also good

This process literally creates your brain when you're a baby

HARRISON (light) - CURTIS (donut)

The exposure to a world and all the perceptions thereof literally create the pathways of the brain - forming the brain, the person, the self (in combination with the in-built elements)

Those brain pathways ARE YOU!

Novelty is CRITICAL! 

Exposure to new things literally creates new pathways literally creating new brain area

Mr. Lobb is not a neuroscientist and this is all reductionist and ridiculously simple and later you will laugh because this all so stupid

What can we learn from this?

Problems are good

All experiences are good experiences (within reason)

Why is Selena laughing?

The difference between expectation and outcome. 

incongruity - “Huh? Oh! Right!”

You want to think about this when you're building description

You want to think about this when you're analyzing something

Trying to get past the obvious.

We're trying to have more complex and interesting associations

•  How does the plot structure work in The Boat?
• Exposition: The “present” story of the narrator, seems to be setting “the scene” for something larger, clues to a past - why are these things happening? Why does he get up so early? Why does he hear these noises? 
• Inciting Incident: What begins the story or problem? tug of war between family & future, jumps back to youth and stark contrast to the present
• Rising Action: 

Alistar MacLeod’s, “The Boat” 

ASSIGNMENT: Due Tuesday, September 29 

Working in a group you will focus on one aspect of the story to analyse and break it out into some kind of presentation - audio, visual, pictorial, Prezi, musical, artistic in some way. 

• Each person in the group will take on an element of story story analysis and “dig deeper” into one element of their topic
• Plot
• Setting
• Character Analysis
• Theme(s)
• Deeper thinking
• you could focus on mood and tone, or information, or it could be a combination 
• it could answer a why, a how, or it could be a creative reaction to some aspect of the story

PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF YOUR THINKING…

In your answers or responses you need to show me a line of reasoning and logic that led you to your answer. => THE THESIS

MAIN ARGUMENT (is supported by) Reasoning A, B, and C. 

Symbolic Elements

Character Arc of the POV character

Character Analysis of the two parents

Use of imagery to create mood and atmosphere. 

Closer Look/Analysis: 

Characters

Mother vs. Father

• what do the physical spaces these characters live in, tell you about their relationship?

Mother - doesn’t “like” what father does 

              doesn’t approve of outsiders; daughters working at the restaurant and marrying “city               boys”

              tough on he children; physical abuse, not appreciating gifts from children - coming                   from the outside 

              her space in the house is orderly, clean tidy - all accept the father’s room

Father - likes to come home and read 

wearing rubber boots (as with every other fisherman), full body underwear, brass chain bracelets

smokes and rolls his own cigarette

his room - the only space he has - messy, dirty, books, mother refuses to go into room, has  not entered since the birth of last son (narrator) 

Significant “Props"

The Boat

Salt: “Salt of the Earth” - refers to blue collar men/women, dedicated, hard working, gruff/tough

        cleansing properties - used on wounds to heal/treat (i.e.. rinse mouth with salt water to cure cankers) 

• father’s reaction to the salt water
• the sea water is what keeps the family “afloat” 
• ultimately the sea wins the battle 

Bracelets: become the “hand cuffs” to the sea

• long story about women and necklaces… being “collared and tagged”

Rubber Boots: “galumphing” they are used solely on the boats

• boots/feet are the things that connect us to the physical earth and also to the boat
• become the only “connector” between the two worlds

Books

Ocean 

“Our Earnest Hemingway” 

 

Second week

Wings chips shows us a new focus character - a father - an archetype of a father character

The fact that this takes place in Quebec in the past. This means we should also think about and focus on the setting

We are always looking for context that informs our learning

Quebec

This setting helps us understand and come to the theme

Internalization

What does the place mean?

What does the time period mean?

How might that affect the characters?

How might that affect the way people think?

What are the cultural ideas of meaning in that time and in that place?

Another level of context

When was this created?

What was the time and the place and the cultural structure that influenced the creation?

Who is the creator and what does that add or give us to contribute to overall meeting?

Start googling

Next up

Read The Lottery Ticket

Write about your dad - same as the mom piece

Plot

The series of events that make up a story

The lottery ticket is an interesting story to study because it's plot is so limited

But that maybe tells us something about plots

The plot is not necessarily the most important part of some stories

In this one it is only a way of getting to the theme and digging into the characters

The way these characters think is the point of the story

A plot needs complexity from characters and setting and themes in order to be powerful

Many people don't like movies that are simple in plot and underserved with character

In the story where looking at characters who are thinking about what might happen

This is a very common, universal human problem

It is the source of many many issues

Money is the root of all evil - is this true?

Plot is what happens

Plot is also what a character does in response to what happened

This means that plots are push-pull activities that face characters

Consider the causal relationship

Hegelian dialectics

Thesis + antithesis = synthesis

This is the root of plot movement in a story

This is a metaphor for our own lives

In this way plots in stories are very important to us because they allow us to experience and play with things that may be scary and/or interesting and/or terrible changes

One way to analyze plot is to consider the realism

Another way is to think about what it tells us about people

How does the plot fit into our own lives and experiences

Does the plot touch on universal concepts that all people can understand and relate to

Character driven - characters decisions become the key thing we can look at

Fate driven - characters reactions become the key thing we can look at

Read Twins

1. Consider the plot of the story.  How does it influence, or give us a way of looking at, the characters?

2.   How does a twist fit into the ideas of plot we discussed yesterday?

Twist

The (original) Planet of the Apes

The Sixth Sense

Fight Club

A twist plays with the reader’s expectations and predictions.

A twist relies on the fact that the reader has a set series of expectations based on what they've read, what they know, what their lives have been like, and the context under which they’ve been brought up.

Most plots are easy to figure out because we've been exposed to so many stories

Most plots are basically modeled on human lives and experiences

Most plots are simple because that's not the most important thing for us to focus on - theme, character, deeper meanings, etc.

Twist is a plot maneuver that messes around with all this.

Therefore a twist tells us something else about the story, about the characters, about those themes - it can be a comment on some aspect of the story

It changes the way we look at the rest of the story

3. Evaluate the twist in Twins. Do you see evidence that it's coming? Are there clues to the surprise?

Setting - 

Mood and atmosphere - this is created by descriptive language used to build the setting in our minds

This is all about the five senses

The setting and mood of lord of the rings - the setting and mood of game of thrones

Thursday - Sept 17

Killing is something we all have inside?

You shouldn't judge one by his/her appearance.

Karma is a bitch - there's a female component here that is not very nice - however, this actually fits the story very well

All of a sudden, we see that there is a male/female theme - this kind of material adds a great deal to thematic thinking

Combine some of the above ideas and you have some commentary about males and females and they're into relationships

Power inversions, male and female response to stress, male and female use of violence, etc.

Playing on the double standard

The twist is for the audience, who has been brought up to expect that the wife is the victim

This gives us a key to thinking about the themes above

Above,  is called following associations

When we are in doubt, we can think about some common areas to find associations:

Male female relations and gender roles

Race and cultural identity and immigration

Parent child relations and family stuff

Social structures and clashes between groups (ie social status, etc)

In general, whenever there are groups that are different that are brought together in one story, there might be some thematic material there

verisimilitude

Read the blues merchant Page 254 Echoes

Write one paragraph description of a place - ANY place that has mood/atmosphere

Informed by the short story

Language and description

The Blues Merchant

context - 

setting is in a prison, but it was written by a guy in a prison

versimilitude - can contribute to the language and description being effective - knowledge of a place and time can give many good details

the feel of the story is different - also comes from context

In this story he writes a little bit like he talks - “black” this might seem to be or feel a little racist, but it's an observation, not a judgment

Jazz influenced - the music of the time influences the feel of the language

50s jazz - cool cats - black culture - blues

Does this time period give us anything else?

ENORMOUS SOCIAL CHANGE - Emmett Till

Syntax - the use of phrasing, sentences and structure to create a certain feel to flow of words

Assonance - similar vowel sounds in subsequent words - e.g. Rude Loom - this is musical to your ear

Consonance - similar consonant sounds in subsequent words - Rattle Cats

Alliteration - similar starting sounds in subsequent words

Simile - something is like something else - that intensifies imagery in your head - Tom eats like a pig - this is much more evocative then Tom is a messy eater - your brain does more

Metaphor - one thing IS another thing - description by substitution of an idea with a very clear evocative thing - Tom is a pig. This greatly increases all the associations that come with the substitution

Elision - the mix between subsequent words - Nance travels in Normandy - Lyle smiles as Phil smells Will’s wheels

The rhythm of different syllables working together - this is a huge part of god language and descriptive writing

Adjectives - A red dog A hairy red dog A slavering mutt with drooling fangs

Caveat: getting too crazy with adjectives just looks phony

Good descriptive adjectives that aren't clichés and are not overused

Nice - this is a very bad word to use

Adverbs - words that modify action words - run quickly - shouts loudly - it's way too easy to overuse these

Which noun and which verb do I use? Word choice!

Consider the relative value of different nouns and verbs. 

Swear words become easy shortcuts here - the F word

Word choice is the challenge for the descriptive paragraph

The dark (gloomy) cemetery haunted (plagued) by lonely trees (the broken stumps of trees).

Word choice is thoughtful! - evidence of thought on the page

Creativity - avoiding clichés and finding fresh ways to say the same things

Friday, Sept 11, 2015

We read The Leap from Echoes

We discussed archetypes

We focused on the mother archetype and took some notes on that character

The symbols are of this archetype are the Virgin Mary; sometimes one’s own mother; a divine female; an old or ageless woman; the Earth; a blue grotto; the sea; a whale; a cave, a tree. Whatever the image it often contains great religious feeling or spiritual uplift. After all, our mother was the most powerful being in our early world. ‘Did she admire hunters; then we would kill dragons and cleanse the world. Did she feel the weight of the world; then we would be the peace maker and bring her joy.’ (W.V. Caldwell).

Mother - first human contact - Setting a pattern for the rest of our lives

Gaia - 

Think this from a personal context