Aim: How does a writer create effects through the connotations of words and images?
Do Now: WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION
Describe an event in your life that at first seemed like fun, yet after the incident concluded you were ashamed or disappointed with yourself. Why do you believe you felt that way?
Everyone has a moment in their life where they do something childish and for fun until they realized how shameful and dumb it was. We had a class discussion where we shared some of our regretful times. For our discussion, Francisco started by saying that he used to run in the halls in 6th grade and raced to every class until he got caught. Another example was when Daniel played Pokémon Go and climbed the fence of a construction site to catch Pokémon. He and his friends were stuck there and were ashamed that they had to wait for their parents to pick them up at 7. My story was when I used to trespass into our neighbor’s properties with my friends. They then got caught but I wasn’t there so I dodged a bullet. Even though I wasn’t caught, I still felt regret going into other people’s backyards. After many of us shared some stories, Ms. Peterson told us her own shameful tale. When she was an infant, she once broke a flour jar in the kitchen, causing a huge mess that her mother and aunt had to clean up. She was then placed in the living room and proceeded to paint her mother’s black lacquer piano with nearby hot pink nail polish. Her mother saw and became enraged at her. After the incident, Ms. Peterson was forced to live in shame since she had to pass that ruined piano daily.
From this discussion, we learned and understood the theme of doing shameful things that we considered fun when we were young.
After the discussion, we hopped onto Kahoot! for a quiz on the short story ,“Marigolds”, that we were supposed to read and annotate for homework. I only got one question wrong but didn’t make it to the podium.
The short story, “Marigolds” can be found here.
Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition is the placement of two things together to bring out their striking differences. For example, if a groomed, pink leashed, and polite dog was walking next to a dirty, fat, spike-collared dog, it would be considered a juxtaposition.
Ms.Peterson also gave another example on how the day that 9/11 took place juxtaposed the fall of the Twin Towers. The day was sunny with some clouds and at the perfect temperature, but it contrasted with the ashy and destruction of the falling of the towers.
Placing Our Parent’s Image as God-Like
Ms. Peterson explained how as children, we would see our parents as tough and on the “god-like pedestal”. This meant that we saw them as perfect and the same way as they regularly act to us. In the story, “Marigolds”, the perfect image of Lizabeth’s parents are broken as she hears her father cry, showing that our parents have many sides to them and are never perfect. This goes for all of us since our parents may sometimes show a side that we never see them as.
Then, we started a team collaboration to answer some questions on the short story. We entered our breakout rooms as our teams and discussed the questions.
In Paragraph 22, why are the marigolds so important to Miss Lottie, and why do the children hate them?
a. What stands out about the imagery in paragraphs 22 and 27?
Francisco said that the marigolds contrasted the dust and dirt and no one had the nerve to destroy the flowers. He inferred this from the quote, ”Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry gray house, rose suddenly and shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous mounds, warm and passionate and sun-golden.” We concluded that the imagery in paragraph 22 highlights the deep contrast between the dust and flowers. My team also thought the children believed it was fun to destroy the flowers to make Ms. Lottie mad.
Describe the internal conflict occurring for the narrator, Lizabeth. Find “textual evidence” to support your statement.
Our team pointed out that the internal conflict for Lizabeth is the conflict between her childish and mature sides. Karis chose the quote “the child in me said... but the woman in me...” to show textual evidence of how Lizabeth’s childish side wanted to do fun things while her woman-like side wanted to regret the things she has done.
Lizabeth overhears her parents’ conversation. How does it make her feel? What is the consequence of her hearing this conversation?
Emily says that she felt overwhelmed and confused because her parents were acting differently. Lizabeth then went to smash Miss Lottie’s flowers as a consequence. I added that she had fear and chaos in her head after hearing her father cry. Karis says that the protagonist reveals a side of herself where she wants to be with someone and cry.
What can you infer from the text as to Lizabeth’s reasons for her final act of destruction?
I started the discussion by saying that the reasons for her destruction was that she wanted to let out her emotions and anger for her need for care and love, her family’s poverty, and her internal conflict between child and woman. Jack also includes that the flowers were too beautiful and didn’t match the mood of Lizabeth’s situation so she destroyed them.
Examine the diction and imagery and show your understanding of juxtaposition by identifying two images or words set up for comparison.
Karis started by reading the definition of “juxtaposition” provided. Francisco then answers that the first use of juxtaposition was when it was comparing Lizabeth’s aggression with the peaceful flowers. He used the quote, “leaped furiously into the mounds of marigolds and pulled madly, trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms.” I then added in to say that in paragraph 60, it compares the vision of Miss Lottie being an old witch to being an old feeble woman.
Consider the last sentence of the story...
“And I too have planted marigolds.”
...and make inferences about whether the narrator is speaking literally, figuratively, or both.
As a team, we said that it’s figuratively because she realizes that there is hope in the world and saw the world in a whole different way. When we came back to the main room, I realized that the quote could have meant both because she could have planted the flowers as a memory of Miss Lottie and her marigolds.
For our individual activity, we were asked to describe the narrator’s voice by mentioning her diction and imagery as well as other literary techniques that were used.
My response was:
The writer uses diction and imagery to vividly describe her memories of that day and her childhood. She uses imagery to describe the setting and Miss Lottie’s marigolds and her house. She uses first person point of view to also show her feelings and thoughts. The narrator also uses juxtaposition to compare the marigolds to the rest of the village by using different adjectives such as “dirty” to describe the setting but “perfect” and “bright” to describe the flowers.
Reflection
From today’s lesson, I learned that we can use specific words and vocabulary to create imagery or a certain emotion or feeling that helps the reader understand the situation deeply. Ms. Peterson also taught us what juxtaposition means with a very strong example. The do-now class discussion not only showed that everyone has regretful memories of their life but also that we tend to use negatively-connotated words to describe our story to bring out more dramatic effect. These learnings are important to understand how the author is able to create the perfect image of the story in your head and the right mood to fit the scene. In the short story, many negative-connotative words are used to describe the setting while bright words are used to describe the marigolds. Learning juxtaposition can also help us in showing and comprehending the deep contrast between two ideas or objects. I can use the things I have learned from this lesson to further analyze the imagery and connotations of the texts in any story. It would drastically improve my annotation skills in looking at the author’s diction. Overall, I believe the things that I have learned from today is important for me to analyze and understand the use of connotations and juxtaposition in any text.
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