#25! Week 12 Characters Tlk Themselves Alive Through Speech and Action pg.887-888

Summary

Characters come alive through their actions and speeches. To comprehend characters, the audience and readers must watch, listen see how other characters speak about them and understand how they react to their surroundings, other characters and circumstances. Drama is made to bring out an engaged characters reactions to conflicts in their lives. Characters are separated into protagonist characters (lead struggler), and antagonist characters (character who struggles against the lead): these characters usually have conflicts with each other. Like fiction drama has round, dynamic, developing, growing, flat, static, fixed, unchanging, realistic, and nonrealistic characters. Drama also has stereotype or stock characters, some of the most popular include: stubborn father, clever male, shrewish wife, trickster, private eye, corrupt politician and stupid aristocrat. There are also ancillary characters, or characters that antagonize the main characters and also provide inside action about the main character. There are three types of these ancillary characters, which include choric figure, foil and commentator, all of which can be symbolic to the story or characters of a play.

Reader Response      

I knew that the point of drama was to bring characters alive, by using their actions and words. I also knew that there were protagonists, antagonists, flat and round characters in drama, in any literature actually. I also knew that drama more often than not uses stereotypes either to prove points, create a new view of them or to symbolize different meanings by the authors. And of course I knew that there is usually a character that medals in the main characters life, either to create more ciaos, drama, or help the main character. It is because of these things that make readers like me interested in dramas and keeps me coming back for more, this writing can even make people want there fore create more drama in their lives.

#24 Week 12 "The Dramatic Vision: an overview" pg.886-887

Summary

Drama focuses on many or one main character that face defeats or triumphs when dealing with other characters or challenges trough out a story. Drama develops situations through speech and action, they also often have poetic forms, and Drama is meant to resemble real life language as much as possible. Drama is also designed to be played by people for people (by actors for audiences).  Drama is an interesting genre because it can be discussed as three things: literature, drama and as a performance. Drama can be written in poetic forms by using rhyme and meter. Dialog, monologue and stage directions are important parts of writing Drama plays. Dialog gives the characters conversation, while monologue is spoken by a single character alone on stage and stage direction gives the performer’s instructions about what to do with their faces, voices, gestures, movements and actions. Language also allows Drama plays to give their characters depth, characters use language to reveal details about themselves and their lives. Drama writers use broad words and metaphors that can have a double meaning and different connotations.  Writers also take special consideration to the time period their characters where written in, thus also making sure there language matches up with that period.

Reader Response      

I did not know that Drama had so many similarities with fiction. I did know however, that many Drama plays, like the ones written by Shakespeare, are written like poetry. Although I did not realize, until I read this, that Drama is meant to resemble real life language (which looking back makes a lot of sense). Because of real life language plays can become more relatable to the audience and readers.    I also knew that dialog and language that a writer uses is meant to tell more about the characters, and must match up with the time period it is set in. I personally love the genre of  Drama, because it makes life interesting, in the plays at least. Ha! J

#23 Week 11 "La Migra" by Pat Mora pg.647-648

Summary

A narrator is telling someone to play a game with her. In the first stanza the narrator explains a different side of a story of border patrol agents using their authority.  She explains that because they have guns and Jeeps and power, they can abuse Mexican women. Since they cannot speak Spanish they don’t answer questions and sexually abuse women because they have the strength to overpower them and have their way with them. The narrator describes it as a sort of cat-and mouse game the border patrol plays with Mexican Immigrants saying “Get ready, get set, run”. In the second stanza the narrator reverses roles and says that because the border patrol agents don’t know Spanish and the land on which their vehicles trot that they cannot find the Mexican immigrants easily and all they hear is immigrants laughing and teasing them in the breeze. The narrator teases the agents by saying “get ready” perhaps for the revenge of her people against the corrupt agents.

Reader Response      

That was depressing, Ms. Ramirez! It was dark and told the other sides of the story, so to speak, about Mexican immigrants who are miss treated by American officers of the law. The first stanza was easier to follow than the second stanza, I think. But after you re-read it the message becomes clear, the narrator wants her revenge. I think after reviewing it, it was a good poem with a strong message and a firm tone. It tried to play off of a child game, making what the agents do seem even more corrupt. It had a creepy vibe to it but I think it had good imagery, I imagined right away a lonely desert where no one can hear the cries of Mexican women being rapped. It was a very powerful poem, to say the least.

#22 Week 11 "Homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton pg.636

Summary

This poem talks about hips, but just the narrator’s hips and not hips in general. The narrator describes the size of her hips and the room needed for them to get around. The narrator pokes fun at thinner hips calling the places those hips fit “petty”. She also describes her hips as having a mind of their own, free to roam where they please. The narrator clearly loves her assets and says that they can attract men from time to time, and put men under a sort of spell or trance.   

Reader Response      

Laugh, out, loud! Ha ha, this was a funny poem! I loved it; it was short, sweet and simple.  I liked how it had such a girl power attitude to it. I also enjoyed how it encouraged women to love their bodies no matter what. I also liked that it mentioned that having large assets, in this case hips, can attract men so easily. I think it was also pretty cool how in the mist of describing her hips the narrator mentions that they had “never been enslaved” telling her readers of her decent. Really good poem! Also makes the cut of one of my new favorites.

#21 Week 11 "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson pg.535

Summary

“Richard Cory” is told from the point of view of a beggar, or at least what the reader interoperates as a beggar. Richard was a soft spoken, gentlemen who was very polite to everyone around him, he would greet them daily. The way he spoke, made people around him get chills (the good kind) because he had a smooth, suave voice. Cory was a very wealthy man, who had more money than the king, and was well educated; he was such a great man, that he was the envy of other men. Cory worked until daybreak and did not eat meat and heated bread. One random evening, during the summer Richard Cory went home and committed suicide.

Reader Response      

This was a really good poem; I liked the voice it had. I again liked how it rhymed and told a great story by using such simple words. The message was clear, that even when you have everything and are a good person, wealth and the pressure of the world can just destroy you as a person and take a heavy toll on your life. I liked that Cory was an all-around mans-man, everyone wanted to be him because he was so kind and rich and smart. But I think there was a bit of irony because everyone wanted to be Cory, but when he ended up dead I think no one wanted to trade spaces with him anymore. Over all was well written and an awesome poem, probably a new favorite of mine.

#20 Week 11 "Sir Patrick Spens"-Anonymous pg.483-484

Summary

A king is looking for a Sailor to brave a trip for him across the sea. An old knight tells the king of a great sailor Sir Patrick Spens. When the king summons the sailor with a note, the sailor laughs at the request. Sir Patrick thinks the king must be kidding wanting to send him and his crew out on the open seas in such horrible weather: a storm was coming in. Never the less, Sir Patrick gathers his crew and obeys the kings orders of leaving in the morning. Sir Patrick knows the fait he and his men are about to face, the narrator describes what the sailors will face in a tone of voice that does not alarm the reader. The final part of the poem talks about what the sailors’ families will have to deal with and how the sailors will die and who they will go see (their gods). And in the last stanza talks about Sir Patrick and how he lies at peace with the sea and goes to his Scottish God’s feet.

Reader Response      

I am a little lost on who the narrator was, I think it was told in third person but I also think it could be the king or Sir Patrick. I think the beginning is told in third person and the second half of the poem is told by Sir Patrick. I liked the poem over all, it was well written and it rhymed which I love! I tend to enjoy and pay more attention to poems that rhyme because they just sound a lot better when they are being read, in my opinion. I thought Sir Patrick was kind of stupid for sailing out when he knew he shouldn’t, I think he should have at least told the king that the weather was not right or asked to post pone the trip. The poem was dark but with a light tone to it, it was kind of weird.

#19 Week 11 "Here a Pretty Baby Lies" by Robert Herrick pg.479

Summary

The narrator describes a normal setting and infant in the first three lines. The narrator lets the reader believe that the baby is healthy, normal, and is merely taking a nap: since he asks the reader to be quiet. However the last line completely alters the entire poem, the narrator reveals that the baby girl is dead and is being put to rest in the earth. The reader now interoperates the poem differently. When the narrator says the child is lying down, he means in a coffin. When he says lullabies are being sung he means the death march or perhaps the “ring-around-the-rosie” song which is ironic, since it has become a child’s song. And when he says to pray and be quiet, he means pray for the poor child’s soul and to stay quiet so that she and her family may be in peace. And the last line is describing (briefly) that her coffin is being buried and covered with dirt.

Reader Response      

At first I thought this was going to be a silly little poem about a beautiful baby, and the poem was completely normal then I got to the last line. I did not know how to intemperate it at first, I obviously understood that the baby was dead but I had to go back and re-read the poem to fully understand the true meaning of the poem. After reviewing it, I was stunned. It is crazy how words can be twisted and manipulated so easily and can have so many different means and connotations.  I liked the poem up until the last line, over all the poem is depressing and I didn’t really like it as a whole. It is too sad for my taste and too dark, I like dark like Edgar Allen Poe, but this is a whole other level of dark.