Category Archives: CR Post# 2

ALBD, CR Post# 2, Group D

A Lesson Before Dying Close Reading.

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The book starts off with Jefferson speaking.  Jefferson stated “I was not there, yet I was there.  No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be.  Still, I was there.  I was there as much as anyone else was there.” (Gaines, 3).  Jefferson was a young African American man who had no rights and his life was taken from him.  Although he wasn’t killed during the robbery at the liquor store, the law and society stripped him from the world.  Jefferson was sitting in jail awaiting for the day he would be placed in an electric chair for a crime he did not commit.  It made no sense for Jefferson to try to “fight” for his justice because it would be pointless.  No matter how much he would say or do, he would still be blamed for the crime.  There were other people at the crime scene who were killed, except for Jefferson.  Everyone assumed and made it clear that he was in the wrong, when he wasn’t even given any time to speak up for himself.  Not only as a man but also being a human Jefferson had no real placement in society because of the color of his skin.  He could not change who he was, he could not alter his skin color, or his race.  All he had left was time left to adapt to his current predicament.

Jefferson was already limited and held back from being a normal human outside of jail.  But now that he was physically confined in jail, it was slowly destroying his mentality.  It gave him time to continuously think about his day coming.  How many days he had left before he’d be gone forever.  This time in Jefferson’s life caused the people that loved him the most to support him and be by his side.  But in Jefferson’s eyes it didn’t mean much because he would soon be killed.  Should Jefferson have felt some type of love and specialty since everybody came to him and everything was being brought to him?  It seemed like he was receiving attention and the right love from people at the wrong time.

All his life Jefferson wanted things that he was never able to have.  Now that he was in jail, the fact that everyone amongst him is asking him what he wants, only made him feel worst.  Jefferson expressed “The kind of day I want?” he said.  “The kind of day I want?  I never got nothing I wanted in my whole life.  Now I’m go’n get a whole day?” (Gaines, 170).  Now that his last days are coming up and he has nothing to live for people are asking him what he wants.  He gets to choose the weather, he gets to have a whole day focused on him, is he supposed to be happy about this?

Grants task was to make Jefferson into a man before he was placed in the chair.  It was up to Grant to break the cycle of feeling worthless and useless as a black man in society.  There was no real set way of how to turn Jefferson into a man.  But I believe it was more of allowing him to leave this world feeling like somebody.  Not leaving this world feeling like a hog and whatever else society compared him to.  Although the circumstances were no way near good, Jefferson still had time to feel and tell himself that he was somebody, no matter how much society down played him.

Manhood is supposed to be a time in life that is appreciated and valued.  It gives a man a chance to reveal his intelligence, strength, and worth to the world.  One group of men that never get to fully experience being a man are African American men.  Being a black man in society is a reason of always having it harder, not being able to move forward, and having that purpose of living taken away from them.

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Group D: Final Project , Shatavia, Jeleah, Kye, Angel

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What:  For our group project we are going to create a scrapbook.  A scrapbook is a book of blank pages for sticking clippings, drawings, or pictures in.  The scrapbook is going to be designed exactly how we think Jefferson, Grant, or a character from the book would create it.  We will be filling up the scrapbook with Jefferson’s important memories, moments, recipes, and his time in jail.  In order to do this, we will be looking for symbols in magazines, things from the internet, clippings in newspapers and physical objects.  Being in jail and confined to one place causes a person to use their imagination.  Similar to Jefferson and Grant they are both trapped in situations that cause them to do a lot of imagining and thinking.  Something our group will be doing in order to create the perfect scrapbook that represents “A Lesson Before Dying”.

 

Why: In the book “A Lesson before Dying” a lot of the book has to do with symbols and teaching.  Jefferson is being taught a lesson by being sentenced to death.  Grants job as a teacher is to teach and he is also asked to teach Jefferson how to become a man.  Since teaching plays a huge role in this book, the scrap book will be created to teach others about our insights, thoughts, and main ideas about the book.  We all thought it would be a good gesture to create a visual.  This way our imagination and how we views things from the book can be brought to life.

CR Post# 2

Close Reading on Frankenstein

In her work Frankenstein, Author Mary Shelly perfectly illustrates the human tendency to destroy a resemblance of innocence through the depiction of Frankenstein’s Monster’s first hostile encounter with villagers. In Chapter 11 we find the beginning Monster’s progression in both life and self-consciousness, from his horrid infancy to his current deadly and monstrous adolescence, Here the monster tells of an encounter with villagers, where his bewilderment of his expanding knowledge and subjective universe is immediately overtaken by the fear he now felt of the world after the inhabitants expelled him. One can see that, prior to the attack, the monster saw his new reality with fresh and eager eyes. The monster recounts, “it was noon when I awoke, and allured by the warmth of the sun, which shone brightly on the white ground, I determined to recommence my travels” (Shelly). The phrase, “allured by the warmth of the sun” signifies how excited the monster felt by seeing an invitation by the sun to act the first moment he awakes. Also, in describing the ground as white, not only can one take it as a description of the time of day at noon, but also an illuminated path that the monster sees to continue traveling. The monster remarks in wonder at the culture the villagers have with the phrase, “How miraculous did this appear” (Shelly)! The monster’s choices of description at this point show a thing that views the world as a mainly optimistic; after the monster’s sudden attack however, we see a noticeable change in tone. When he says, “I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village” (Shelly), the use of “escape” and “refuge” show how at this moment the monster realizes a negative force exists in his universe that sought an end to his being. The paragraph concludes with the monster describing a makeshift shack he builds for himself as “an agreeable asylum from the snow and rain” (Shelly). From the sudden alteration of tone in the Monster’s voice one can see how the Monster’s perception of himself shifts from one of optimism and then to one of sad self-awareness about his circumstance. The monster, whom at this encounter but is a child, quickly loses its innocence of knowing hatred against him in the world exists. In this one finds a better understanding of the Monster’s backstory to show how it took humanity to corrupt him before the world could. It is this mistrust in humans that provides the capability of taking human lives at his present stage. In his case it was not any biological impulse that created the savagery in him, but his inability to become self-realized as an equal being through the villagers created the monster within him.

CR Post# 2, Frankenstein, Group E

Frankenstein

A reoccurring theme for the first couple of chapters in Frankenstein seems to be death. While it does not seem obvious at first, it is hinted at as being the inevitable. Victor had a free and blissful childhood, much due to the allowance of his parents. However, Victor’s open mind leads him to question everything, specifically things in regards to nature and its cause. His happiest thoughts happen when he is young. As he gets older, at the end of every wonder regarding natural mystery, the recurring answer is demise. The deeper Victor is in his personal studies, he subtly lets the reader know that he is aware of his fate. Victor states, “I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”

The death of Victor’s mother reaffirmed what he already knew about destiny. This ultimately led Victor to slightly shift his direction of interest. He was still fascinated with nature, but more so it’s relation to mortality.

The unknown and the secret are scary. The outcome for the unknown is death, both literally and symbolically. To be dead is to lose your humanity. Victory loses his humanity the more he indulges in the science. The more he focuses on creating the monster, the more out of touch he becomes with society.

To further assert the idea that the unknown is scary. The monster goes to make friends in chapter fifteen, hoping that they will look past his physical features. Instead, he was attacked and ran off.

I believe one of the ideas the author is trying to convey is that, what is unknown will get deserted and left to their own fate. “Monsters” in our society are those that do not fit the norm. The norm is created by the popular; heterosexual, able-bodied, white male. If you do not fit in any of those groups, you are considered a monster. If you do not fit in ALL of those groups, you are DEFINITELY a monster.