Close Reading #3 -Nov.18- "New Hope on Immigration"

"New Hope on Immigration" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/new-hope-on-immigration.html?ref=editorials&_r=0 

In the article "New Hope on Immigration, according to the author, Obama had promised that he would deal with immigration in his first term and failed to do so. The author believes that now that Obama has been reelected, he has a second chance to work with immigration laws, and now it's even better since the Republicans are now on board. The author of the article uses the literary techniques diction, details, and syntax to  try to show the audience that President Obama has an opportune moment to reform, and that many are now in favor of reform, including some that may have previously been against it.

In the first paragraph of the article, the diction used shows the audience how the Republicans were strongly against unauthorized immigrants and thought of them poorly, but are now allowing some change. The author writes "unauthorized immigrants are an invading army of job stealers, welfare moochers and criminals whose only acceptable destiny is to be caught and deported". The words "stealers", "moochers" and "criminals" are normally used to describe people that take from others, giving off a negative feeling. This makes the audience believe that the Republicans thought that all illegal immigrants were no good. The author also writes "Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who once bravely supported bipartisan reform but slunk away late in the last Bush administration, are scratching at the door again, as if the last five years never happened". When the author uses the word "slunk" it gives of an impression of shying or quietly slipping away, as if McCain and Graham slowly dropped their support despite what they previously thought. The use of the word "Scratching" gives off the feeling of eagerness, showing the audience how McCain and Graham were glad to be able to support reform, forgetting about their 5 years of silence.

The details that were put into the article show how Obama has a good opportunity for reform. The author writes "All it took was an election in which millions of Latino voters — many of them the wives and husbands, sons, daughters, grandchildren, cousins, co-workers and friends of those despised “illegals” — overwhelmingly chose President Obama over the man who promised to be deporter in chief. They rejected Mitt Romney by 3 to 1, according to exit polls. Asian-Americans did, too. Republicans looked at a changing America, saw a future of decline and irrelevance for the party, and concluded that immigrants weren’t so bad after all.". By adding the detail about how Obama has strong support by many, including the Republican party, the author shows the audience that the idea of reform is a popular among a large amount of the population, and so Obama wouldn't meet much resistance when trying to work with immigration laws. Another set of details that were added to the article show how useless immigration enforcement is. The author writes "Illegal border crossings and arrests at the border have fallen to the lowest levels in decades.". Through this detail, the author shows the audience that because the number of illegal immigrants have fallen, we don't need to waste money on unnecessary enforcement.

Lastly, the syntax in the article gives of a feeling of accusation. The author writes "The hard-liners against reform — including the white-culture alarmists and the closet racists — have not gone away.". By adding the groups against reform in the middle of the sentence, the audience feels as if the author is accusing them of not wanting change. It's as if the author has to stop mid-sentence just to turn and state the groups through his teeth. Same goes for the sentence: "Now he needs to think bigger and better, and look to the large constituency behind reform — student activists, business groups, farmers, labor unions, Catholic bishops, evangelical churches, African-Americans, civil-liberties organizations and regular American citizens who support legalization — to press the case.". The author emphasizes the large amount support by listing all supporters in the middle of the sentence. This shows to the audience the opposing amounts of supporters and those that are resistant.

Overall, the author shows the audience that reform is popular among many, and Obama is now in a great position to begin making changes through their use of literary techniques. It's clear in the article that the author believes that Obama should work on immigration reform, and many even be trying to get the audience to believe that as well.

Open Prompt #3 -Nov. 11-

1986. Some works of literature use the element to time in a distinct way. The chronological  sequence of  events may be altered, or time may be suspended or accelerated. Choose a novel, an epic, or a play of recognized literary merit and show how the author's manipulation of time contributes to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. 

The novel Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris is written so that the story is not exactly told in chronological order. Rather than having the story written straight through, Harris writes in two different perspectives that take place in two different times and switch constantly back and forth. One comes from one of the teachers, Roy Straitley, at St. Oswalds school (which is one of the main settings of the story). The other comes from someone who goes by the name Snyde (The identity of the second isn't revealed until later in the book), who sneaks into St. Oswalds and pretends to be one of the students. Straitley's perspective comes from the present, unlike Snyde's, which comes from the past. The alternation between the two time periods greatly contributes to the novel, allowing for a more detailed back story and clarity, despite the constant switch between the two speakers. 

The switches between the two time periods allow for the reader to have a more detailed back story to the main conflict in the book. Since it's constantly switching, it allows for both stories to have an equal amount of time to play out. Through this, you are able to see elements of Snyde's past that ultimately effects them in the future. For example, the abuse they faced as a child from their father who would care for them on minute and then would be beating them the next. Another example would be the love they felt for Leon Mitchell. They had fallen for Leon, but he had a girlfriend. Yet, once Leon found out that Snyde was a girl (he had originally thought that she was a boy because she had been dressing up as one) he freaked out, leaving Snyde with a feeling of betrayal. The detailed back story allows the reader to understand certain things that come up in the present perspective. 

The switches also make the story clearer, Snyde's story from the past explains what's going on the in the future. For example,  the story explains why Snyde is out to ruin St. Oswalds. In the past perspective, it shows that Snyde was the reason why Leon Mitchell fell off of the roof of St. Oswalds. It explains that Snyde blames this accident on St. Oswalds, and so shows why the events in the present are happening. Another example shows why Snyde targets Straitley in the present. According to the past perspective, Straitley was the one that scared Leon and Snyde, forcing them to jump the gap that killed Leon. This explains why Snyde messes with Straitley in the persent, they force him to think that students steal his stuff and makes him look like he dislikes Jewish people. 

Overall, the alteration of events chronologically helps contribute to the effective Gentlemen & Players. It adds more to the story as well as helps explain many elements of the story to the reader, despite the continuous switching between time periods.

Response to Course Material #3 -Nov.4-

Due to my terrible memory, I'm having trouble remembering all that has been going on the past few weeks, so i'll try my best to remember as much as I can. Death of a Salesman, watching the movie was fun, though since I was in Canada I missed a good chunk of it (and I plan on making up for that in the reading). But from what I saw, Willy is a salesman who believes he deserves a job in New York. He's married to a woman named Linda and has two sons, Biff and Happy. I think it was Biff who walked in on Willy while he was cheating on Linda while he was away on business. Willy also gave the woman his wife's stockings (according to Biff anyway), which may or may not have some significance to the rest of the story. Originally in the end, I though Willy killed himself, but after a bit of discussion, apparently he went chasing after Biff when he left the house and ended up crashing. Which reminds me of the discussion about Willy's two cars. From what I remember we had talked about how one's really beat up, and the other is really nice, but Willy takes more care of the beat up one (I think...). I know we had mentioned symbolism within the cars, and the idea of the car's being something like his past and present, and Willy hangs on to his past, so takes care of the older car more may have been brought up. There was also the days where we learned how to answer multiple choice questions. There were the distracting answers such as opposite, too broad, correct but doesn't answer the question, etc.. When going through the questions, I was able to see a few examples of these in the choices.While going through the questions I had some trouble with some of the vocabulary used in the questions and the answers. Which brings me to terms test #2... that test was evil. I thought I was going to do a lot better than my first test, since I studied harder for this one. That was a lie. A complete lie.