Dear Uncle Andy,
Good yakkin’ with ya
again on the phone (man you’ve got to get on Facebook so we can save money on
phone calls.) Anyway, I thought for a
bit about what you said you were doing with your English 10 class. I did okay in English in high school, so I
thought i’d write a letter -- you know,
a letter to your class about how to write one of these literary
paragraphs. Maybe it’ll help coming from
me and not some stupid textbook (not that you wouldn’t do an EXCELLENT job,
Uncle Andy, just that . . . oh, I dunno.
Here’s the letter. Use it if you
want. You just read “I am a Rock”
right?)
Dennis
Waddup?
Hey guys. My uncle Andy called the
other night (he’s a bit too . . . um . . . well let’s just say he thinks Snapchat
was one of the Spice Girls). Anyway, he
called and mentioned, among other things, that he’s trying to get his grade
10’s (that’s you) to write a literary paragraph. I hope he hasn’t been too mean to you. My dad and him are brothers but they’re
nothing alike: my dad’s a badass
construction superintendent and, I imagine, my uncle is a suit and tie kinda
guy. Anyway, let’s get on with it.
Now I know there’s a lot of important lessons to be learned in life: how to make your room look clean enough so
that your parents let you go out this weekend; how to get out of shoveling snow;
and how to pass my uncle’s English class.
Here’s a lesson on how to write a good literary paragraph (a paragraph
about literature you are studying). At
least this helped me a bunch when I was in school a couple years ago
Let’s Get Ready to
Rumble!
Let’s begin by lookin’ at a paragraph topic: Discuss
the use of imagery in the poem “I Am a Rock.”
Don’t Start at the
Beginning; Start Before That
Well, there’s the topic there -- right above, so you can just start
writing, right? Wrong. Writing a literary paragraph is a little more
detailed than that. So what do you do
first? Easy.
Here is Your Brain - Here
is Your Brain on English
The first thing you do (when my favourite uncle gives you a literary
paragraph to do) is this: think and write down your ideas. You will always get a better mark if you organize and plan out your ideas before you
write them (at least that’s what I found
in high school in Calgary).
Storm the Brain
So let’s see . . . imagery in the poem “I am a Rock”
Let’s start by listing the images and what feeling they mean or
convey to the reader. Don’t worry about full sentences or anything like that
just yet.
Image 1
“winter’s day/In a deep and dark December” -- a sense of quiet and cold
detachment is established -- no spring lovers in this poem! Darkness reinforces that image.
Image 2
“freshly-fallen, silent shroud of snow” -- this CAN be a beautiful image
but not here. In this poem the snow
covers and isolates things. The snow
mutes the things or people it covers.
The word shroud is kinda cool -- that’s the name for the cloth they used to wrap dead people
in.
Image 3
“Fortress Steep and mighty” -- this image of a castle is there to show, not
his power, but the dude in the poem’s isolation. He’s cut himself off from others --
purposefully, put himself in his own emotional fortress. Remember, this image is a metaphor. Buddy here in this poem, isn’t actually in a
castle -- well maybe an emotional castle you could say.
Image 4
“I am a rock” -- the title of the poem and a central image. A rock can suggest someone who is steadfast
(that means someone who doesn’t change their mind much). Maybe the speaker thinks that himself, but
you and I know the REAL idea this image conveys. It shows that the speaker is an emotionless
person, without many feelings at all.
He’s not vulnerable -- nobody’s gonna be able to smack this fella
around, true, but sadly that means he doesn’t have the you know what’s to fall
in love. Ouch.
Nuff ideas, don’tcha think? Anyway,
there’s a bunch of images and what they mean.
Now how the heck do you write a literary paragraph for Uncle Andy and
not sound like a boring old list?
Slap on the Adhesive
Thesis
Here’s my first big tip: pick a
unifying idea (a theme or something) that can weave its way through your
paragraph and sorta be the glue that
holds your ideas together. Uncle
Andy. . . I guess that’s Mr. Pfeiffer to you, would call this the thesis
statement (just a fancy word for topic sentence).
Don’t Start this Way
Here’s a topic sentence that sucks: “images are important in the poem” (too general -- ask yourself why
are they important). Saying something is
‘important’, btw, is mostly a bad idea in a literary essay. Mr. Pfeiffer’ll recognize the BS right away.
This is Better
To try and get a unifying idea or thesis statement, think about the
whole theme of the poem (or message).
In this poem the dude’s all like, “I’m cool ‘cuz I’m not gonna be hurt
again and I’m like okay with the fact that I’m all emotionally cold and
stuff.” He’s really messed? We know, though, that the message is that
when a person shuts themselves up, and withdraws from those around them, that that only hurts them and doesn’t
begin to help heal any wounds. Sure it
sucks to get dumped by a hot guy (or girl) or to get hurt by your friends, but
you’ll ruin your life if you don’t deal with the problem, learn from it, and
move on.
The Lightbulb Just Turned
On
Hey, there’s an idea (a theme) right there!
The guy thinks he’s okay with everything, but really he’s just avoiding
problems.
Cool! Listen to this: all the images I mentioned are like that too
-- the images CAN be taken in positive or beautiful ways (that’s how the guy
would take them), but you and I know that the images are actually negative
images showing how cold this guy is.
Okay . . . cool . . . We’ve got
something here. We’re going to
discuss imagery and link it to the
idea that the images reflect the attitude of the speaker (and his attitudes
are that he’s fine with everything -- but we know that he’s in bad shape --
this dude’s in some hard-core denial).
So I think we can start.
Finally!
Oh, yeah, another thing. If my uncle
is like any of my teachers in Calgary,
he gets all excited about writing all formally and stuff. So don’t use words like ‘kinda’ or
‘sorta.’ And you can’t use ‘dude’
either. Actually, even words like ‘guy’
and ‘okay’ should be replaced with more correct Englishy words. Just pretend you’re from England, that’s
what I do then, I can write all formal and stuff.
A Good Start
Here let me see if I can crank out an opening sentence:
· “In the poem
“I am a Rock” by Paul Simon, the author has a lot of images that show everybody
that he needs help but at the same time they are images that he thinks make him
look good.”
Check it out! Not bad IMO. Actually, now that i look at it, it’s okay
and all, but I think I can change a few things.
‘Authors’ write books -- this dude’s a poet. The word ‘good’ is waaaay too simple of a
word to use in any ‘good’ writing (lol).
I also don’t like the word ‘everybody’.
Also, the word ‘show’ is a bit too visual -- I’ll use the word ‘prove’
or ‘convey’. The words “a lot” suck pretty bad too.
A Better Start
Let me take another stab at it:
“In the poem ‘I am a
Rock” by Paul Simon, the poet uses images effectively to convey his troubled
state of mind, but at the same time those same images are used by the speaker
of the poem to prove to himself that he is a strong, steadfast person.”
SUHWEET! I’ve got a fairly decent
okay first sentence or thesis statement.
Gotta go. I’m binge-watching the Walking Dead.
Zombie Baby!
Okay, I’m back. Man that show’s so
awful it’s awesome. I can’t believe what
just happened to Rick’s wife. Gross. Anyway, where were we. Oh, yeah, the paragraph. Here’s the rest of my paragraph.
· In the poem ‘I am a Rock” by Paul Simon, the poet uses
images effectively to convey the speaker’s troubled state of mind. At the same time, though, those same images
are used by the speaker of the poem to prove to himself that he is a strong,
steadfast person. In the very fist lines
of the poem the image of a “winter’s day/In a deep and dark December” is
presented which quickly gives the impression of the somber and even sorrowful
mood to the poem. Specific describing
words like ‘dark’ and ‘deep’ set the tone of despair and anguish. Further imagery in the poem helps to show the
reader’s isolation: “On a
freshly-fallen, silent shroud of snow.”
With words such as ‘silent’ and ‘shroud’ used to describe the snow, once again the speaker of the poem
reveals that he is living a quiet, lonely life all because of his choice to be
an emotional “fortress steep and mighty” rather than being the type of person
who allowed themselves to be vulnerable.
Interestingly enough, the speaker believes that what he is doing is fine
and one could argue that all of the above images, the winter, the snow, the
fortress, are images that speaker believes represent that he is, in fact, not a
person who needs help. He refers to
himself as “a rock” which he believes proves that he is strong and
steadfast. As readers, though, we know
he must be a bit delusional to think that what he is doing is fine. It is clear
that the imagery in the poem is used to effectively show the speaker’s
self-imposed emotional exile: he is a
rock, just not the kind of rock that anybody should want to be.
Did You Notice. . .
· I referred to
the dude IN the poem as “the speaker.” Make sure you remember that ‘the speaker’ is
different from ‘the poet’. Paul
Simon, the poet, isn’t the guy he describes in the poem.
· I introduced
my quotations two different ways: once
with a colon, and the other times I made the quotation flow right into the
sentence. Proper punctuation, here, will
get my uncle all excited.
· I tried to
sound like a dude from England, avoiding words like ‘a lot’ and ‘sorta’.
· I tried not to
use the 14 deadly, simple words that you should never use in your writing
(well almost never): big, small, sad, little, happy, glad, nice, large, huge.
mad, good, ‘like’. I know that’s only
twelve; the other two are the two simple words you, yourself, use too much so
you’ll have to decide which ones they are.
Well, anyway, there you go. I hope
that helped. I don’t even know if my
uncle will show this to you but if he does, I hope this helped. Someone once explained it to me in this same
sorta way and it helped. Good luck, Go
Flames Go, and don’t miss the season
premier of the OTH ‘cuz I won’t.
Dennis Pfeiffer (Mr. Pfeiffer’s nephew)
Read the poem “Warren
Pryor” from the textbook Sightlines 10.
Your task is to do the
following: referring back to the notes
on how to write a literary pargraph, write a literary paragraph in which you
discuss the imagery in the poem “Warren Pryor.”
