This excerpt from Louise Erdrich's The Beat Queen describes the journey of two children into a new town and unfamiliar surroundings. Erdrich articulates the affect of the environment on the children through the use of literary devices such as tone, point of view, and imagery.
The tone throughout this excerpt is indicative of the narrator and characters' feelings and thoughts in response to their surroundings. The descriptive methods and elements used highlight this in examples such as "Mary trudged solidly forward" and "hunched with his sudden growth." In addition, the tone tends to be unusually sympathetic towards Mary, focusing on her distraught emotions towards the second half of the excerpt.
The point of view of this excerpt plays a vital role in setting the scene and introducing a new environment to the readers. The perspective used is third-person limited as the primary focus of this passage is the adaptation of Karl and Mary to the new location. However, the narrator tends to concentrate on Mary as an individual. This is seen when Karl is facing the dog and only Mary's fright is described.
Erdrich uses many instances of various imagery in this excerpt, such as the environmental and agricultural references she makes when writing the description of the setting. The first sentence begins the journey of setting the image in the readers' minds when the description starts with "before they planted beets." Prior to any information given about the setting, the readers already have an introduction to the upcoming natural imagery. Indeed this agricultural image is seen again in the middle of the second paragraph: "Wheat was the big crop then, and the topsoil was so newly tilled that it hadn't all blown off yet...". This intersection not only serves to set the location but also vaguely gives the readers an idea bout the time period the passage is set in through words such as "then", "newly tilled", and "yet". Additionally, the imagery in the third paragraph serves to describe the new location the children have arrived at. Phrases such as "dirt and planking", "false-front", "gilt letters", and "weathered gray or peeling paint" sets a dull and morose image in the minds of the readers. This also shows the impact that the environment has on the children.
Reflection
I would give my essay a 5 because of my fairly vague and faint analysis of the literary devices mentioned in the prompt. I only briefly discussed the role of the tone and point of view and did not connect my points about imagery with the impact of the environment on the two children. When I wrote the essay, I had to read the passage multiple times in order to understand some of its confusing parts, such as the second half where Karl begins to act bizarre. This took away time from my writing and hindered my ability to correctly analyze the passage because I still struggled to fully comprehend each part of the passage. I would like to improve upon my comprehension of prose by reading more literature outside of class. Additionally, I struggled to finish my essay off systematically by not including a conclusion. Therefore, when I read over my essay again two days after writing it, the ending seemed abrupt and the flow of the essay was disrupted. I will improve upon this aspect by managing my time more efficiently on the next assignment so I can keep the format of my essay consistent.
Feedback for Kara Lennon http://lennonkaraapenglish2015.blogspot.com
I agree with Kara's scoring of her essay. It possesses the quality of a strong 7, while being very close to an 8. I very much liked her analysis of the literary devices of tone, imagery, detail, and point of view, which she incorporated effectively throughout her essay, even providing multitudes of quotes and in-text references to support her arguments. She consistently maintained her high caliber of writing, thus adding to the nuance of the quality of her analysis. However, while each individual element was evaluated accurately, Kara would need to bring these separate interpretations together to form one primary focus in order to score in the 8-9 range. This fragmented analysis, along with the occasional deviation from the thesis, is fundamentally what kept her essay from receiving a higher score.
I would also score this essay at a 5 level. The analysis is plausible but could command a deeper understanding and interpretation. The prompt is addressed and the writer stays on topic. This essay has a clear thought process and a strong structure and organization. The text is referenced often for support. Working on describing complexities of the piece in the opening paragraph/ thesis would immediately make this work a lot stronger. Right now it is repetitive of the prompt, but clarification of the effects of the environment and specificity throughout the work would significantly improve this essay.
ReplyDelete