Blog Post #3: "The Flowers" Timed Essay & Reflection

Essay:

"It seemed...that the days had never been as beautiful as these." The story starts as innocent and unassuming - a little girl skipping about on a lazy summer day. However, Alice Walker quickly unfolds the story layer by layer to very clearly foreshadow the ending for the reader. The gradual acceleration of her narrative pace through shorter and shorter sentences gives a sense of urgency leading to Myop's discovery of the hanged man, and the darker words used to describe nature changes the mood from a lighthearted and innocent one to something more sinister.

Walker's prose is meandering at first, with long, complex sentences filled with beautiful imagery to prolong the story's beginning. She colors her sentences with a frivolous background on Myop as well - "She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song...and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment." This sentence is slightly foreboding with the use of the words "nothing existed for her but" to convey Myop's innocence. The syntax becomes more varied after that sentence, with short, simple ones thrown in for emphasis."The air was damp, the silence close on deep," Walker writes just before Myop literally stumbles upon the hanged man - stepping "smack into his eyes." These words are sharp and crisp and grab the attention of the reader. The description of the dead man is just as crisp and to the point; perhaps conveying Myop's acute sense of observation. The short story ends with Myop's long thought process and sudden realization that this man had, in fact, been hanged. And with that, her innocence was gone, "and the summer was over."

Walker more explicitly hints at her ending by completely changing the tone with her word choice. She begins with bright and positively connotated words to describe Myop's innocent summer frolicking. Gradually, darker words are inserted to make the setting less comfortable. "The tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil." Walker also uses words such as "strange" and "gloomy" to make the atmosphere seem more dangerous, unwelcoming. She expertly weaves description of death and decay with the lush beauty of nature. Once Myop discovers the dead man, she tries to make sense of what has happens, and once she realizes that the man was hanged, she lays down her flowers. This action represents her loss of innocence, as a ten year old girl unlucky enough to find a dead man.

With well-controlled narration and a wide range of word choice, author Alice Walker creates a eerily realistic scene of a young girl losing her sense of naivete in a deadly world.

Reflection:

Something I've learned throughout the years is that adequacy at creative writing does not equate adequacy with analytical writing. Of course, this doesn’t hold true for all analytical writing (there have been times where I’ve scored 100%s on my papers), but I’m pretty sure my prose passage essay would not merit a 9. Not even close.

                I guess there were some things I did well. I laughed when I began reading the high ranking sample student essay because I used the same quote to start my own. Like the writer of the good student essay, I did grasp that this was a “loss of innocence” short story, and I mentioned diction and imagery as tools Walker used to hint at the ending.

                However, I failed to thoroughly explore contrasts and present unique insights into the underlying theme. My essay was straightforward, methodical, and predictable. The sad thing is, while annotating the essay, I wrote “archetypal downfall?” and “racial prejudice?” in the margins (showing that I did notice these more complex ideas in the text), but did not incorporate (or even mention!) either in my final essay. Also, in general, I found that my essay made some factual statements, but failed to analyze further. For example, I wrote, “She begins with bright and positively connotated words to describe Myop's innocent summer frolicking. Gradually, darker words are inserted to make the setting less comfortable. ‘The tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil.’” Then I abruptly moved on. My writing was choppy, at times too verbose, and weakly pieced together. I will definitely have to make significant changes to improve the quality of later essays.

                Here’s my game plan. First, I aim to allot time before I write to map out my essay and after I write to proofread and edit. I’ll admit – I was a bit confused in class when Ms. Wilson just let us loose. I thought we were only annotating, so I kind of fidgeted in my seat for a few minutes before realizing that we were actually supposed to write the essay too. In a moment of panic, I just put pencil to paper and let the (flowery) words flow. My rushing probably led to my talking in circles. In the future, I will follow5 Steps’ advice and spend 10 or fewer minutes to plan my essay. Also, to limit repeating myself, I will leave 2-3 minutes at the end of 40 minutes to review my writing. I hope to cut all extraneous words and make my essay more concise. I will work on this by very strictly timing myself while writing, either with my watch or the classroom clock.

                Second, I hope to focus more on the deeper meaning and subtler themes of passages (and actually mention them in my essay.) This will require more active reading during the first and second read-throughs of the passage, and a sharp mind to catch all of the hints an author may give. This may be difficult to concretely measure improvement on, but hopefully the increased quality in future essays that do mention complexities will be obvious.

                Lastly, I will make a conscious effort to do more than just state facts. Basically, I will make my essay more analytical and argumentative, so it is AP Literature (and not seventh grade Language Arts) quality. Like my second goal, this might be hard to accurately measure improvement on, but I will rely on my intuition and the critiques of my peers on future essays.

                I will implement all of these strategies starting on the next prose passage essay I write. Hopefully I’ll become a fabulous essayist by the end of first semester.