The first few chapters of this book, Fathers, Sons, & Brothers, were basically an account of things that happened during Brett Lott's childhood. At first Lott talked about his garage in California. This at first seemed insignificant, but I later realized why he chose to write about this. I think this was kind of his place. Its where him and his brothers spent a lot of their time and where they really expanded their relationship.
He then talks about his move to Phoenix Arizona. When he gets to Arizona there are no garages there. I think this is kind of a metaphor for what would happen to his relation ship with his brothers. He uses the garage to show how without their own space, him and his brothers grew apart. He then talks about his paper route in Arizona. And he mentions that his mother would drive him if it was raining just so he could get it done. This seemed to be something he was proud of and enjoyed.
Overall this book is faster to read than The Liar's Club, mostly because there are fewer words per page. Although much like The Liar's Club, Brett Lott likes to switch time frames to present and past like Mary Karr did. The further into the book this becomes more evident and more difficult to follow. Sometime it is hard to determine if he is talking about his childhood or his sons. To me a lot of this story is kind of choppy and hard to follow. I don't know if this was Lott having a difficult time gathering his thoughts to put in order or whether it’s intended to be this multitude of smaller thoughts and stories pieced into one. I am hoping we will find out as we go on whether this was intentional or not.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Personal Image List
-The first time i flew solo; it was a cold january day at bolton airfield on the southwest side of columbus. i had ben flying for a little over a year and it was tiem for me to fly solo. this is a milestone in anyones flight training. I remember very vividly the way i felt on this flight. I think this would make a great memory to write about
-Similar to the book The Liars' Club my family has had to deal with alcoholism along with sickness. My dad has gone through a 10 year bout with chrones disease that has pushed our family to the limit. along with that my dad also battled with alcoholism. this would also make a good, very personal memory.
-My snowboarding crash; it was in my first national competition last year. during my 2nd run i crashed hard and injured my hip. when i say hurt myself i mean i ended up in the hospital for 9 days with internal bleeding. this was a vivd and painful memory.
-Similar to the book The Liars' Club my family has had to deal with alcoholism along with sickness. My dad has gone through a 10 year bout with chrones disease that has pushed our family to the limit. along with that my dad also battled with alcoholism. this would also make a good, very personal memory.
-My snowboarding crash; it was in my first national competition last year. during my 2nd run i crashed hard and injured my hip. when i say hurt myself i mean i ended up in the hospital for 9 days with internal bleeding. this was a vivd and painful memory.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Karr's Hidden Themes
Throughout the book The liar’s club Author Mary Karr undoubtedly uses many writing techniques to gain reader interest and strengthen her points, but I think she cleverly uses more than one technique to discretely show her feelings about events that will come. I think Mary Karr cleverly combines foreshadowing and explicitly graphic description to implant her thoughts and fears from childhood atrocities that she experienced.
From the very first sentence of the story Karr uses graphic and misleading description to foreshadow multiple events later on in the story.
“He wore a yellow golf shirt unbuttoned so that sprouts of hair showed in a V shape on his chest. I had never seen him in anything but a white starched shirt and a gray tie. The changed unnerved me. He was pulling at the hem of my favorite nightgown” (3)
This image right away makes your mind wonder what is going on. Whether a defense reaction or inquisitiveness many people automatically assume this is an image of sexual assault. While we quickly find out this is not what is happening at all, in fact the man described above is the family doctor and he is there to help Karr not to hurt her. This instance has nothing to do with sexual assault, but subconsciously you gather a feeling that Karr has experienced some event in her life that would make her describe the situation as she did. I feel the way she wrote this was intended to make you feel suspicious of the doctor and for the readers to question the intentions of the doctor in this situation.
To support my earlier claim of foreshadowing throughout the book, I bring up a disturbingly graphic situation played out in chapter three.
“It was going dark when he got hold of me under God knows what pretext. He took me into somebody’s garage. He unbuttoned my white shirt and told me I was getting breast” (65).
This is the first instance in the book where Mary Karr is actually sexually abused. From both these images drawn in the book you can draw many similarities that show Karr was thinking of this instance when she earlier described the doctor. The first thing that sticks out to me is Karr’s sense of detachment. While it is obvious Karr knows the doctor in the first scene she never refers to him as his name, she always uses “he” or “his”. She again uses this technique later on in the book when describing the rape scene she calls him “the big boy” or simply uses “he” or “his” again. Now we find out she doesn’t know her attacker very well ,she must have drawn similarities between the rape and of the doctor attempting to examine her later on, because of her obvious detachment during the period of trauma. This shows that Karr uses the image of the doctor to foreshadow what will happen later in the book.
The last foreshadowed instance of sexual abuse shows up toward the end of the book. This again shows the detachment similarity shown in the last two quotes, but this image uses disturbingly graphic imagery, imagery that is to description and vulgar for me to comfortably repeat on here, in order to create a culmination of Karr’s feelings on these assaults
“This whole scene rushing through my head when the babysitter’s zipper hits bottom. His hand fishes into that zipper and farther, into the shadow of his shorts” (243).
This quote alone portrays a deeply disturbing situation unfolding, and also the only image from this part that I was comfortable repeating publicly. This again shows Karr’s detachment and change of tone when she recalls these instances of abuse. This also uses Karr’s extensive description which quite honestly sickened me and deterred me from blogging about this particular issue, but in the end I decided this was defiantly a very important, but underlying issue throughout the book.
I think Mary Karr cleverly combines foreshadowing and explicitly graphic description to implant her thoughts and fears from childhood atrocities that she experienced. While this book uses a multitude of different writing techniques. Karr is indisputably a master at implanting small underlying themes within The Liar’s Club to foreshadow events that shaped her writing and her thoughts, but along with that she uses description to immerse the reader in the moment. Be it happy, sad, or quite frankly, disturbing, Karr unarguably has and many traumatic experiences that have shaped who she is and how she portrays that in her writings today.
From the very first sentence of the story Karr uses graphic and misleading description to foreshadow multiple events later on in the story.
“He wore a yellow golf shirt unbuttoned so that sprouts of hair showed in a V shape on his chest. I had never seen him in anything but a white starched shirt and a gray tie. The changed unnerved me. He was pulling at the hem of my favorite nightgown” (3)
This image right away makes your mind wonder what is going on. Whether a defense reaction or inquisitiveness many people automatically assume this is an image of sexual assault. While we quickly find out this is not what is happening at all, in fact the man described above is the family doctor and he is there to help Karr not to hurt her. This instance has nothing to do with sexual assault, but subconsciously you gather a feeling that Karr has experienced some event in her life that would make her describe the situation as she did. I feel the way she wrote this was intended to make you feel suspicious of the doctor and for the readers to question the intentions of the doctor in this situation.
To support my earlier claim of foreshadowing throughout the book, I bring up a disturbingly graphic situation played out in chapter three.
“It was going dark when he got hold of me under God knows what pretext. He took me into somebody’s garage. He unbuttoned my white shirt and told me I was getting breast” (65).
This is the first instance in the book where Mary Karr is actually sexually abused. From both these images drawn in the book you can draw many similarities that show Karr was thinking of this instance when she earlier described the doctor. The first thing that sticks out to me is Karr’s sense of detachment. While it is obvious Karr knows the doctor in the first scene she never refers to him as his name, she always uses “he” or “his”. She again uses this technique later on in the book when describing the rape scene she calls him “the big boy” or simply uses “he” or “his” again. Now we find out she doesn’t know her attacker very well ,she must have drawn similarities between the rape and of the doctor attempting to examine her later on, because of her obvious detachment during the period of trauma. This shows that Karr uses the image of the doctor to foreshadow what will happen later in the book.
The last foreshadowed instance of sexual abuse shows up toward the end of the book. This again shows the detachment similarity shown in the last two quotes, but this image uses disturbingly graphic imagery, imagery that is to description and vulgar for me to comfortably repeat on here, in order to create a culmination of Karr’s feelings on these assaults
“This whole scene rushing through my head when the babysitter’s zipper hits bottom. His hand fishes into that zipper and farther, into the shadow of his shorts” (243).
This quote alone portrays a deeply disturbing situation unfolding, and also the only image from this part that I was comfortable repeating publicly. This again shows Karr’s detachment and change of tone when she recalls these instances of abuse. This also uses Karr’s extensive description which quite honestly sickened me and deterred me from blogging about this particular issue, but in the end I decided this was defiantly a very important, but underlying issue throughout the book.
I think Mary Karr cleverly combines foreshadowing and explicitly graphic description to implant her thoughts and fears from childhood atrocities that she experienced. While this book uses a multitude of different writing techniques. Karr is indisputably a master at implanting small underlying themes within The Liar’s Club to foreshadow events that shaped her writing and her thoughts, but along with that she uses description to immerse the reader in the moment. Be it happy, sad, or quite frankly, disturbing, Karr unarguably has and many traumatic experiences that have shaped who she is and how she portrays that in her writings today.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
8 Images
1) "Through the observation window, they watched the gray wall of water twenty feet high move up the canal toward town" (97). This image paints a picture of the two men alone in the tower watching the giant storm move in.
2)"the kind of dodge people later likened to a fast quarterback barely scooting around some bullnecked lineman"(98). I think its obvious the picture this paints and i think it is used perfectly to show the behavior of the storm.
3)"with it cam a low humming in my head-a sound like a crazy cello player sawing the same note over and over, or like a zillion bees coming up from the ground"(103). This shows a vivid image of how Mary feels when she suffers from insomnia.
4)"She was carrying a sketch pad the size of a small card table, like she was planning to draw the fisherman, but I knew with cold certainty while I stood there in that lukewarm water that she was climbing up there to get drunk" (109). This quote is not the most descriptive but i think it creates a good image of Mary's ill feelings toward her mothers increasing use of alcohol.
5)"The head's a translucent globe about the size of a softball and full of air, so it floats on top of the water, clear in places, but full of sunset-type colors in others-royal blue and red-violet, the colors bleeding into each other"(112). This literally is descriptive enough to give u a mental image of what the man-o-war would have looked like lying there on the beach.
6)"and I remember a few times dancing around the kitchen in my nightgown with my bare feet on his steel-toed boots, both of us sliding around in the yummy cloud of whiskey he was breathing"(126). this shows the while Mary's dad may have been absent and a drinker, he did love his daughter and was somewhere within himself a good guy.
7)"Then she would bawl like a sick cat, hanging her head in her hands, blowing her nose on toilet paper, and saying that we didn't understand, and that it wasn't our fault she was crying"(132). This shows a very sad depressed mother that is completely overwhelmed by her life and combats this with massive amounts of alcohol.
8)"Then mother breaks loose from daddy to stamp her foot at the group of kids, and they scatter like buckshot into their own dark yards. and that's it, that's what i remember about my birthday"(139). You can really feel like your watching this happen. You can see the intoxicated mother, the father trying to control her, and Mary realizing that her birthday was not what she had hoped which is reminiscent of her life.
2)"the kind of dodge people later likened to a fast quarterback barely scooting around some bullnecked lineman"(98). I think its obvious the picture this paints and i think it is used perfectly to show the behavior of the storm.
3)"with it cam a low humming in my head-a sound like a crazy cello player sawing the same note over and over, or like a zillion bees coming up from the ground"(103). This shows a vivid image of how Mary feels when she suffers from insomnia.
4)"She was carrying a sketch pad the size of a small card table, like she was planning to draw the fisherman, but I knew with cold certainty while I stood there in that lukewarm water that she was climbing up there to get drunk" (109). This quote is not the most descriptive but i think it creates a good image of Mary's ill feelings toward her mothers increasing use of alcohol.
5)"The head's a translucent globe about the size of a softball and full of air, so it floats on top of the water, clear in places, but full of sunset-type colors in others-royal blue and red-violet, the colors bleeding into each other"(112). This literally is descriptive enough to give u a mental image of what the man-o-war would have looked like lying there on the beach.
6)"and I remember a few times dancing around the kitchen in my nightgown with my bare feet on his steel-toed boots, both of us sliding around in the yummy cloud of whiskey he was breathing"(126). this shows the while Mary's dad may have been absent and a drinker, he did love his daughter and was somewhere within himself a good guy.
7)"Then she would bawl like a sick cat, hanging her head in her hands, blowing her nose on toilet paper, and saying that we didn't understand, and that it wasn't our fault she was crying"(132). This shows a very sad depressed mother that is completely overwhelmed by her life and combats this with massive amounts of alcohol.
8)"Then mother breaks loose from daddy to stamp her foot at the group of kids, and they scatter like buckshot into their own dark yards. and that's it, that's what i remember about my birthday"(139). You can really feel like your watching this happen. You can see the intoxicated mother, the father trying to control her, and Mary realizing that her birthday was not what she had hoped which is reminiscent of her life.
Monday, January 12, 2009
New Central Image
One image that sticks out in my mind is a vivid memory of my family driving through a tornado in Oklahoma. The snapshot that i see most clearly is that of a thin white funnel cloud diving quickly out of the ominously black sky and colliding with the ground. We watched mystified through the back window of our car as the funnel threw earth straight into the air like a small leak in a high pressure hose. The clarity in which i still today recall this natural phenomenon is remarkable considering if i had blinked, even for a millisecond to take in what was happening, I would have completely missed the whole ordeal. Though somehow such a lightning fast image is burned into my head and is something i will never forget.
Quiz #1
A. Mary has a dislike for her grandmother. I think that these felling increased when her grandmother came to live with them. This is shown immediately when she says "maybe its wrong to blame the arrival of Grandma Moore for much of the worst hurt in my family, but she was such a ring-tailed bitch that i do"(41). The first thing her grandmother did was change a lot of the habits that Mary had grown accustomed to. Such as they were no longer permitted to eat dinner on the parents bed, or change into pj's at any time in the day after they were done playing. Also she made them take a bath every night which by her tone, I could tell Mary was not fond of. Mary's feeling toward her grandmother show when she talks about her grandmother's cancer as if it does not affect her at all, Mainly shown by her lack of response when she finds her grandma dead. Grandma Moore does not think too highly of Mary either. She talks about her grandmothers dislike for her look and her dark complexion resembling the native American genes from her father. And finally Grandma revealed to Mary that her mother had two other children from a previous marriage.
B. They run from Leechfield in order to escape hurricane Carla. On the bridge her mother crashed the car. She describes it as a 360 spin that ended up on the pedestrian walkway, Yet her mother simply asked if everyone was alright and drove away.
B. They run from Leechfield in order to escape hurricane Carla. On the bridge her mother crashed the car. She describes it as a 360 spin that ended up on the pedestrian walkway, Yet her mother simply asked if everyone was alright and drove away.
Liars Club Chapters 2-4 and Family Image
Hello again, This time i have selected a specific part of the story to write about for the first part of this assignment. The part i chose was early on in the 2nd chapter when Mary, Lecia, and her mother were driving to her grandmothers house in lubbock texas. The reason i chose this part is because of its remarkable similarity to my own image that i will explain in the 2nd part of this assignment. The first thing that i find interesting is the talk about the weather. They repeatedly mention the large thunderstorms that produce tornadoes. I thought this part was very descriptive and accurate to the real thing. This detailed description is shown by quotes such as "I could still hear the concrete post torn out of the ground like some giant buttons getting popped off"(24). i think it was detail like this and a smoother process of events that made these chapters much easier to read. Another description i find interesting was the way Mary described the sky being larger in Texas than anywhere else. While i only lived in Texas for a few years i have revisited many times and this illusion is very true. Aside from the natural references, I like how she describes there game of jewelry store. I think this reference, and some others further on in the book, makes you remember how silly some of the games you created as a little kid used to be. So overall these chapters were much easier to read and her vivid description continues on through this chapter.
My own family image, in many ways relates very closely to the image i chose from the book. This event occurred a few years ago while we were driving to Texas to visit family. Now we weren't quite in Texas, we were driving through Oklahoma, when that abnormally large sky turned violently black and out of the back window we saw a large funnel cloud dive from the sky. Even though the storm was at a safe distance behind us you could hear the roar and see the wake that the storm was leaving behind. You can easily see why i chose this memory not only for its resemblance to the book but also the impression it left on me.
My own family image, in many ways relates very closely to the image i chose from the book. This event occurred a few years ago while we were driving to Texas to visit family. Now we weren't quite in Texas, we were driving through Oklahoma, when that abnormally large sky turned violently black and out of the back window we saw a large funnel cloud dive from the sky. Even though the storm was at a safe distance behind us you could hear the roar and see the wake that the storm was leaving behind. You can easily see why i chose this memory not only for its resemblance to the book but also the impression it left on me.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Liars Club 3-22 & Memoir 1-10
Hello again, another assignment and time to blog about our first reading. In The Liars Club the author/ narrarator starts off describing to you a vivid memory from her childhood. She describes the doctor, police officer, and firefighters that were there on the night. While she never explains exactly what happens you get a feeling it leaves her and her sister orphaned. I came to this conclusion because of her discussion about and her sister staying with numerous other families and her descriptions of which she would like to stay with and those she wouldn't. Then she told us about her mother who was "nervous", I figured out his to be a polite way of saying crazy. Next the narrorator further described the extent of the term "nervous" when she described her neighbor Mr. Thibodaux. To elaborate on the typical behavior of "nervous" people she told about how he had murdered his entire family then proceeded to light his house on fire. Even though this story is a memoir this to me seems like foreshadowing as to what may have really happened that night she described earlier.
From here the story moves on to describing her father. The main thing they talk about is his good work ethic and his devotion to his labor union. Further more she talked about his relationship with her mother they have been twice married, and he is just two of 7 weddings her mother has had starting as early as when she was 15. It makes you wonder why such a well rounded man would marry a woman with such questionable moral strength, as exemplified by her willingness to marry mostly for sexual purposes. Now while they predominantly show her father in a good light they do hint at some character flaws such as a tendency to chronically lie while telling stories as well as a harsh temper on a short fuse. Even though the book is kind of dry and not easy to read I am curious to find out what happened that night and what becomes of all the characters.
The memoir and the memoirist is a completely different opening than pretty much any other book I have ever read. It almost feels like an informational book more so than a memoir, but he does express a lot of his feeling in the first chapter. Not only about the class he was teaching and the people in it he also talks about his family and some of their relationships. All in all I think there was less interesting material covered in the first chapter compared to The Liars Club. I think this is a much easier read, but leaves less desire to continue reading after you have fulfilled the requirement.
From here the story moves on to describing her father. The main thing they talk about is his good work ethic and his devotion to his labor union. Further more she talked about his relationship with her mother they have been twice married, and he is just two of 7 weddings her mother has had starting as early as when she was 15. It makes you wonder why such a well rounded man would marry a woman with such questionable moral strength, as exemplified by her willingness to marry mostly for sexual purposes. Now while they predominantly show her father in a good light they do hint at some character flaws such as a tendency to chronically lie while telling stories as well as a harsh temper on a short fuse. Even though the book is kind of dry and not easy to read I am curious to find out what happened that night and what becomes of all the characters.
The memoir and the memoirist is a completely different opening than pretty much any other book I have ever read. It almost feels like an informational book more so than a memoir, but he does express a lot of his feeling in the first chapter. Not only about the class he was teaching and the people in it he also talks about his family and some of their relationships. All in all I think there was less interesting material covered in the first chapter compared to The Liars Club. I think this is a much easier read, but leaves less desire to continue reading after you have fulfilled the requirement.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Hello
Hello, This is my first experience trying to write a blog and i find it difficult to think of what to say. The assignment is to write about my past English experience, so i guess that is what i will do. Like most people i have only a normal English background consisting of high school classes. I did take some journalism classes in high school which were English credits, so i am considering that as part of my English history. Other than that i don't have very many exciting stories about English classes.
Another part of this assignment was to talk about what i hope to get out of this class. I guess other than fulfilling the requirement and getting the credits, i hope to get a better understanding of how people respond to your writing and how to respond to other people's writing. Originally i was not looking forward to this class because of the small size and reputation for being just like a high school English class. and while i was correct about the size of the class feeling like high school. The way the class sounds like its run by using blog format instead of traditional papers, i think could be very interesting.
So now that i think i have completed the assignment ill talk a little about myself. I am an aviation major and have been flying since i was 15. I'm originally from Plano Texas, but grew up in Gahanna Ohio. Along with my parents Noel and Gary, i have a younger sister Grace. I guess you will be reading somewhat about them as well because the class is based around family. Well i think I'm done for this assignment.
Another part of this assignment was to talk about what i hope to get out of this class. I guess other than fulfilling the requirement and getting the credits, i hope to get a better understanding of how people respond to your writing and how to respond to other people's writing. Originally i was not looking forward to this class because of the small size and reputation for being just like a high school English class. and while i was correct about the size of the class feeling like high school. The way the class sounds like its run by using blog format instead of traditional papers, i think could be very interesting.
So now that i think i have completed the assignment ill talk a little about myself. I am an aviation major and have been flying since i was 15. I'm originally from Plano Texas, but grew up in Gahanna Ohio. Along with my parents Noel and Gary, i have a younger sister Grace. I guess you will be reading somewhat about them as well because the class is based around family. Well i think I'm done for this assignment.
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