Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Blog 4: Open Question Essay

       Lord of the flies by .... has it's story completely focused around a sense of cruelty. Cruelty is played off as a huge social factor to the young boys as they begin to split off into separate groups. The group of hunters and the other group of more social rules and marite.
        Throughout the entire novel death seems to plague the group of boys as they aim to survive in the woods. As the novel begins to progress however, the boys deaths become more cruel and harsh. Society seems to build around them but as it does it's molding around the idea that being cruel to others is okay. The contch becomes like a crown and who ever controls it is in charge. Both the cruel and fair leader, Sam and George want it which begins a battle that can't be won.
        Cruelty can bring out horrible things in a person whether they are comitting it or are the victim. The hunters found that they enjoyed the feeling of hurting others. In a way the group became like pirates they would attack the group down by the beach and try to steal their treasure (the contch). All the social standerds left them being naked and painted, clean, and well-mannered went out the window. The first kill, a pig was what made them believe that this was okay murder was a good thing. With that in mind the victims began to feel very isolated and afraid. The hunter's cruelty began to make them question if what they were doing was right if they should leave their sense of self and fight back. Breaking points happen and when a person is pushed for far to long they begin to change. ... was aiming to show the world with this novel the bullying and non-stop harassment much of what was being portrayed in the book with always bring the bad in a person. Piggy the right hand man to George suvered the most out of anybody. At the end the relentless teasing and pushing about his weight got the best of him. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time resulting in his cruel death. But death wouldn't be the right word as much as murder would be.
           A social standard of cruelty comes with many ways of afflection on how the theme portrays it and the way the characters are effected.



My Reflection; I would give myself a three in my open question essay. My analysis was not clear nor was it organized in a way that the reader could understand the points I was trying to make. My writing is very choppy and lacks a sense of formatting, my points are spread all over and don't stick to one topic but rather jumps idea to idea and back. My support was very limited as I had no textual references to help clearly identify how cruelty was being shown in this particular piece of writing. I would like to see my writing become more precise and be able to clearly analysis a piece by the time we have to write another essay. My essays have become stronger over the last week or so but they still need a ton of improvement and that is why I believe I had a low three.

Reflection on Ashley; I would have to agree with Ashely's reflection on herself and give her essay a 5. She responds to the prompt yet sticks the summarizing the plot and adding things here and there bringing it back to what the prompt is asking. This is creating a very superficial feel to the essay as a whole. She is able to bring some support to help back her up throughout the text but it is very bland making it seem very simple. She had very few if any grammatical errors and was able to still make it so the prompt was effectively answered. She should just work on making it less of a summary and continue with her analysis well also bring a little more support to the table. Overall I believe Ashley did an amazing job for writing her first open question prompt in this class and should keep up the good work!

Revision:
 Lord of the Flies by William Golding contains a story of cruelty based around the way it affects boys who have yet to fully mature and understand right from wrong. The sense of cruelty creates an eire as well as a feeling of being unsafe throughout the whole piece. Its turned into a major social factor for the young group of boys as they begin to split off into separate groups.  

Throughout the entire novel death seems to plague the group of boys as they aim to survive in the woods. As the novel begins to progress however, the boys deaths become more cruel and harsh. Society seems to build around them but as it does it's molding around the idea that being cruel to others is an everyday social norm. The conch becomes like a crown and whoever controls it is in charge the remaining boys. Both the cruel and fair leader, Jack and Ralph want it which begins a battle that can't be won.

Cruelty can bring out horrible things in a person whether they are committing it or are the victim. The hunters found that they enjoyed the feeling of hurting others. In a way the group became like pirates they would attack the group down by the beach and try to steal their treasure (the conch). All the social standards left them being naked and painted was the new cool norm well being clean and well-mannered went out the window. The first kill, a pig was what made them believe that this was okay, creating the idea in the young boys minds that spilling a person or things blood was the right thing to do. With that in mind the victims of the Hunter’s terror began to feel very isolated and afraid. The hunter's cruelty began to make the group question if sticking to what they believed was the right thing to or to become more like them. Breaking points happen and when a person is pushed for far too long they begin to change. Williams was aiming to show the world with this novel the bullying and non-stop harassment much of what was being portrayed in the book with always bring the bad in a person. Piggy the right hand man to Ralph  suffered the most out of anybody. At the end the relentless teasing and pushing about his weight got the best of him. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time resulting in his cruel death. But death wouldn't be the right word as much as murder would be. The more bloodshed the easier and funnier it became for the hunting group making it something that they wanted to do everyday. It wasn’t just what Piggy said but the fact that the power from being cruel to others had brainwashed them into thinking killing was okay essentially changing the way they looked at human nature.  
  A social standard of cruelty comes with many ways of affliction on how the theme portrays it and the way the characters are affected.

2 comments:

  1. I disagree with your score of a 3, and instead give this essay a 4. I would qualify this analysis as adequate because you still analyzed how the boys portrayed cruelty as a social norm, as well has how it became a social factor, and you explained how it was the main point to the book. As someone who has never read Lord of the Flies, I felt like I understood the point you were making because you provided a good amount of summary. The essay could have had more quotes as support, and it might have been helpful to know the authors name, but these are all easily fixable things. Overall, I felt as though you understood the prompt and used a good book to support your statements.

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  2. Hey Ainsley! Great essay, here are just a few thing I think you could work on:

    Ainsley responded to the 2015 AP English Literature Open Prompt by discussing Lord of the Flies. Unfortunately, she forgot the author of the novel (William Golding), which could be a significant drawback on the AP Exam; any AP reader could easily argue that if a student can't remember the author of a literary work, they can hardly be capable of providing a thorough and significant analysis of the work that is much more than just plot summary. In my personal opinion, Ainsley was still able to provide a few pieces of apt reference to the text that included specific and accurate evidence, which restored some of the ethos that was lost in the very beginning. Although there were a few pieces of specific, supporting evidence, Ainsley's essay relied heavily upon plot summary to support her thesis. This immediately pulls her essay down to a five, even without taking any other factors into consideration. Her third paragraph was pretty bulky, and she could have easily made the information here more concise. Though there is this room for improvement, with the essay as it sits, the chunky and unstructured paragraph is an organization distraction and disrupts the essay's flow of logic. Ainsley's essay falls somewhere in the three to four range, but I feel that her essay is far from demonstrating inept writing, and there weren't necessarily any errors with misreading, so a four would be a more appropriate score. Once Ainsley sets a few measurable goals, she will be on the right track to take another swing at the Open Essay. One goal I might suggest she set is to find five novels that she is comfortable writing about. Building a bank of knowledge regarding these texts, including Themes, Characters, Motifs, and Author Names, would help her to establish more credibility in her writing. Overall, this essay may not have scored very high on the one-to-nine scale, but there is a lot Ainsley can take from just having the opportunity to write an Open Essay, something she is totally new to - something we all are totally new to.

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