Directions: Please compose an essay using one of the following Q3 prompts and the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison as your work of choice. You may use your book, notes, blogs, etc. The essay should be typed and sent to Turnitin.com when completed. It is due by the end of the block.
Good luck!!
Prompts:
1988. Choose a distinguished novel or play in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize the plot.
1977. In some novels and plays certain parallel or recurring events prove to be significant. In an essay, describe the major similarities and differences in a sequence of parallel or recurring events in a novel or play and discuss the significance of such events on the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
2008. In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas or behavior of a minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or play in which a minor character serves as a foil for the main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work. Do not merely summarize the plot.
A.P. Rubric:
9-8
A score of 9 is the top score, but there is very little difference between a 9 and 8, both being scores for excellent papers which combine adherence to the topic with excellent organization, content, and insight facile use of language, and mastery of mechanics. 9 essays demonstrate uncommon skill and sometimes put a cultural/historical frame around the subject. Descriptors that come to mind while reading include mastery, sophisticated, complex, specific, consistent, and well supported.
7
The 7 is a thinner version of the excellent paper, still impressive, cogent, convincing, but less well handled in terms of organization, insight or vocabulary. Descriptors that come to mind while reading include clear understanding, less precise, less well supported, and maturing; this writer has potential, but hasn't quite got to it all.
6
The 6 is an above average paper, but it may be deficient in one of the essentials mentioned above. It may be less mature in thought or less well handled in terms of organization, syntax, or mechanics. Descriptors might include less mature, some difficulties, but just above average.
5
The 5 paper is the thinner version of the 6. Readers prefer to separate essays into top half or bottom half. The five defies that process. Descriptors might include superficial, meager, irrelevant, and insufficient.
4-3
The 4 is an average to below average paper which maintains the general idea of the writing assignment, shows some sense of organization, but is weak in content, maturity of thought, language facility, and/or mechanics. It may distort the topic or fail to deal adequately with the one important aspect of the topic. The 3 essay compounds the weaknesses of the 4. Some descriptors that come to mind include incomplete, oversimplified, meager, irrelevant, and insufficient.
2
The 2 is a score assigned to a paper that makes an attempt to deal with the topic but demonstrates serious weaknesses in content and coherence and/or syntax and mechanics. It is an unacceptable grade. Descriptors include serious misreading, unacceptably brief, and/or poorly written.
1
The 1 is a score given to any on-topic response that has very little redeeming quality. It may be brief or very long, but will scarcely coherent, usually full of mechanical errors or completely missed the focus of the prompt. Descriptors include vacuous, inexact, and mechanically unsound.
0
The 0 is given to a response with no more than a reference to the task.
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Most novels, poems, or works of literature have a moment of excitement or climatic effect that is monumental to the conclusion of that piece. Beloved by Toni Morrison allows readers to feel this excitement over and over again, as the detailed and suspenseful plot of the story looms over our heads. Beloved is a mysterious, young girl who has found refuge at 124. The dramatic irony seen throughout the first half of the novel is that as readers we are aware that Beloved, the creature, easily could align with Beloved, Sethe’s dead daughter. This connection is built up with evidence and anecdotes to convince the audience of this connection although her true identity is never revealed.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the audience, this realization is not a reality for Sethe until late in the story. After Paul D has been banished, Sethe and her daughter Denver, as well as Beloved, escaped to the frozen pond for a day of ice skating and fun. They were giggling, playing and laughing, a rare occurrence in this household, until Sethe overheard a melody that latched on to her memories. It was Beloved humming and it was when she finished “that Sethe recalled the click- the setting of pieces into places designed and made especially for them” (207). Amidst their day of skating and fun, the mood suddenly shifted as Sethe’s mind began to consider the possibilities of what this meant. “I made that song up,” said Sethe. “I made it up and sang it to my children. Nobody knows that song but me and my children.”(207). Until this point, Sethe is still unaware that Beloved is a reincarnation of her daughter, and learning that a stranger knows the melody to her childhood lullaby is startling. Despite this confusion, Beloved responds in her typical, mysterious way, simply saying “I know [the song]” (207). This moment sparks the beginning of the end in this novel, as it is the first time Sethe realizes the possibility that a strange girl who showed up on her doorstep, could be her dead daughter. This shifts the entire dynamic of the novel as Sethe continues to become skeptical of Beloved and her power, ultimately resulting in Beloved’s eternal disappearance from 124.
Toni Morrison purposefully creates this spectacle around Beloved throughout the novel to convince us that she is Sethe’s daughter. By connecting clues and phrases, from an outside perspective, it is easy to see the connection. However, Morrison doesn’t allow Sethe to discover this until later, to build suspense and thrill in the novel. In turn, this creates the climactic moment that Sethe eventually grasps the truth, causing a realization within Beloved, and herself. As seen in this story, and in own our lives, climatic moments can completely shift our mindset and life choices. Although they may not always be pleasant, in literature it is a common tool to create excitement and keep the audience interested. Toni Morrison uses this realization of Beloved’s identity through Sethe to connect each of the character’s background within the story and excite readers to continue begging for a conclusion of this twisted tale.
ReplyDeleteToni Morrison’s Beloved is an unconventional text in many regards, including the use of recognizing a ghost as a central component of the plot. Despite the reader often knowing less than the characters, for the majority of the book Morrison builds gripping dramatic irony as the reader waits for Sethe, the protagonist, to unlock her repressed memories and identify Beloved, a mysterious visitor taken in by Sethe, as the incarnation of her daughter’s ghost.
Another unique aspect of the book was the retrospective nature of most of the plot, which centered around the aforementioned realization. For the first two hundred pages or so, the plot mainly focuses on the reveal of backstory that the various characters had shut out of their minds, the biggest reveal being that Sethe had attempted to mercy-kill her children so that they may escape recapture into slavery. However, the book made a switch from past oriented to the present when Sethe recognized Beloved as her daughter. Events began to happen in the present, such as Denver getting a job, when she had previously devoted her life to watching the yard, due to the past encounter with a Sethe’s former owner that drove her to attempt murdering her children. There is also a more subtle switch in the imagery of the text. For example, during the beginning of the book the ghost of beloved was a prominent fixture of 124, the house Sethe inhabits, but nearing the end, Beloved’s apparent pregnancy represents new life oppose to haunting memories. This complete reversal of the texts makes it abundantly clear the significance of this realization.
While thematic and plot switches are useful in retrospect, when reading the book for the first time, it is the mounting body of clues to Beloved’s true nature that builds the proper sense of anticipation. Beloved’s arrival is prefaced with an ongoing haunting by Sethe’s daughter, Beloved, who is chased out of 124 with the visit of Paul D, an old friend of Sethe’s. This established, Morrison makes quite clear the intended path of interpretation when the mysterious girl who showed up at 124 is named Beloved. From there, smaller hits, such as the disappearance of the dog Here Boy on the, which is of note as he made sure to avoid the ghost. Additionally, Beloved seems to ask questions about Sethe’s earrings, which she had lost when Beloved was still alive. This build up may not leave the reader waiting for the point when they can peace it all together, like in a crime novel, but awaiting the tipping point of undeniable evidence when Sethe makes the connection produces the same sense of expectation. Making sense of the layered and complex imagery Morrison employes through the text also is a major contributor to the tension, as confirmation from Sethe that this is her daughter would vindicate most readers’ explanation of the text thus far. Sethe’s deteriorating relationship with Paul D. also gives a sense of urgency to the immediate buildup to the reveal and emphasizes the mental effect it will have on Sethe. The cumulative product of these factors is a sense of impending and extreme change, no less intense than if that change were to come from an alien robot invasion or a heroic charge across a battlefield.
On page 207, buried eight pages into a chapter and seven paragraphs down is the fulcrum of the book; “The click has clicked; things were where they ought to be or poised and ready to glide in.” This line marks the culmination of countless subtle hints, reader speculation, and the thematic turning point of the entire text. I carries the weight of a tank, anticipation of a time bomb, and the gravity of saving the planet, and it all takes place within Sethe’s mind.