Characterization is essential in the opening of any book, except perhaps the post-modern ones. Louise Erdich, in his 1986 novel, The Beet Queen, wastes no time in developing his two protagonists. Using a third person omniscient narrator with neutral tone, Erdich develops the Adares using the environment and the siblings reactions to it. With a neutral and unbiased third person narrator. Erdich characterizes Karl Adare as a romantic and Mary Adare as a pragmatist by the vivid imagery of the environment and the detail present in it.
Erdich uses a very neutral tone- the type associated with literary realism. Erdich never judges his characters- only describing the "cold spring mourning," the physical characteristics of the Adares, and the scene with the tree. As with the realist tone, the advantages this offers are that we can trust the narrator to be true and we can see the actions of the characters for what they are. Furthermore, it allows the author to wrap the implications and subtext behind a wall of frankness.
From the tone, third person omniscient is the other logical part of realism. This narrator is 100% reliable and can describe things with perfect accuracy. The same benefits as as the neutral tone. This allowed Erdich to mention the summer and spring following 1932. Either way, realism is simply a lens that allows Erdich to focus on the characters.
The centerpiece of the passage is the vivid images of Argus and the descriptions of the children. The town seems to be a timeless place- lacking the activity of the city. "Along the track... everything that made the town arrived. All that diminished the town departed by that route." This sense of "easy come, easy go" gives the town a sleepy, relaxed feel. The boy, with his "sweetly curved [mouth], his skin fine and girlish" is portrayed as the more romantic of the two, the girl "was square and practical." These images already inform us about the nature of the two characters.
His choice to include the detail of the flowers also highlights the romantic/practical divide. Mary walks by the flowers looking for Fritzie, but Karl stops to smell them and gets in trouble. What a pleasant thing to do, stop and smell the flowers. Mary choose to focus on the objective instead. Again at the end, where Mary runs to Fritzie away from the dog while Karl goes back to the train. Mary chooses to go to what they came to do while Karl runs to the train- someplace that feels like home. Erdich uses realism to better show how the environment, the scene with the tree, highlights the difference between Mary and Karl.
Reflection
We wrote an essay in response to the prose prompt about Louise Erdich's The Beet Queen. I would have given my essay a five. After typing it up, I realized that I paraphrased far too much. I needed textual evidence to support most of my fairly strong claims. Also, I felt I had a few good ideas but it wasn't focused enough. The part about literary realism was quite off topic- it doesn't really talk much about the environment. I should have tied realism to the reactions of the kids. My intro has a strange repetition of ideas when I should have just gave my thesis. I think that I didn't do so well because I was caught off guard by the prompt- I remember being unsure about how to proceed after reading it. Also, I didn't start off with a clear thesis which confused me down the line. Lastly, I didn't really annotate because I wasn't sure what to look for, This essay is a little different from the AP Comp essay. The AP Comp essays focused more on how the author crafts an argument while this looked at specific effect of the text. I think I can improve by annotating the essay, using more textual evidence, and studying more about the types of prompts.
Response
Austin Woodruff (woodruffaustinapenglishlit2016.blogspot.com)
Hi Austin! I thought that you had a solid essay. I also felt your reflection was quite good and I agree with the score you gave yourself. It was a reasonable analysis with strong supporting evidence but I felt was less thorough and perceptive than the upper tier. I felt that you were quite focused on the prompt, you consistently talked about the environment in relation to the siblings. Don't be afraid digress from the prompt, you're allowed a degree of deviation. I also felt that you needed more analysis of your citations. You used a lot of textual evidence, which is good, but you need more analysis with it. I also think your thesis needs to be more specific. I have the same problem, but it looks like your concluding statement offers a more focused thesis than the opening paragraph. Lastly, your writing feels very functional, but not very a command of the elements of effective composition. I don't quite understand your goal- what is one point every six points? Also, I think that your goals should be more focused than scoring better. I'd recommend adding writing a stronger thesis (demonstrable through a strong and clear thesis in following essays) and longer analysis (demonstrable through the ratio of analysis to evidence.) Overall, I think that you have a good handle on where you are and what to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment