The aim of today’s lesson was to determine how Kurt Vonnugut Jr.s’ background and choice of literary devices provide greater insight and clarity to his work, “Harrison Bergeron”.
We started the class by discussing with our peers the extent of which our school pressures us to look or at “the same” as others depending on social media or fashion trends in society.
We came to the conclusion that societal norms subconsciously influence people to be similar to other people by doing similar behaviors or partaking in similar activities. Most people want to be their own person, but are afraid of being ostracized or are rather more interested/comfortable in following trends than starting their own. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, though.
Sometimes it’s nice to just go with the flow if that’s what you’re comfortable with.
Our school, SITHS, isn’t focused on pressuring the main student body to be the same. They’re more interested in success rates than appearances or sameness in the school population.
In addition, although the pressure isn’t coming from school directly, some pressure is coming from outside factors, within grade expectations from parents or family.
We then were introduced to the main writer we were to be studying on, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a satirical writer of dystopian fictions. He was born in 1922 and was exposed to public school environments—in comparison to his older siblings who had gone to private schools—because of his family’s financial priorities in the Great Depression. Below is a wonderfully low-quality picture of him from our slides:
Before we began to read Vonnegut’s dystopian story, “Harrison Bergeron”, we revisited direct and indirect characterization and how to determine between the two.
An example of direct characterization is shown here in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge is directly described through adjectives and negatively connotated words that convey his greediness and selfishness.
An example of indirect characterization is shown in Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130”, where the woman in the sonnet is described comparatively yet endearingly through the fact that she is completely different from features of nature.
We further examined ways to find indirect characterization through the STEAL chart, which shows common traits of indirect characterization in written media.
After that, we watched two clips and as a team we tried to figure out which type of characterization was being portrayed.
The first clip was from Pixar’s Toy Story 3, near the end where Andy donates his childhood toys to the new child protagonist, Bonnie. It was a tough analysis, but we ended up finding both direct and indirect characterization, one through Bonnie’s shyness when interacting with Andy, and direct characterization when Andy is describing the toys to Bonnie.
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/11D9AcpVMA5wsQXHtSfG7sTt_3AwQbbyc/view?usp=drivesdk)
The next clip was from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, when Hermoine was easily able to cast a spell to make a feather float on it’s own and Ron was struggling to do the same. Since there were no obvious in-your-face adjectives or traits being said, we concluded that the characterization was indirect, mainly through their actions, speech, and how they interacted with each other.
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1USBqVb_AzDZouIkIZtBsX5mgxwd3qsn2/view?usp=drivesdk)
After that, we finally started reading “Harrison Bergeron”, except we ran out of time in the period to finish it. So, for that, it’s…to be continued by whoever else is blogging next!
With the summary of today’s class out of the way, we can start gathering our thoughts and concluding what we learned in our reflection.
Today was mostly centered around a basis of social norms, pressure to be perceived as “normal”, and how to find certain traits in a character or person that accurately narrates who they are. I guess you could mesh that all together for the main idea of ‘People Affected by Stimuli in Society’. We learned this to refresh our memory on what we learned before. Plus, it was a good starting point for our unit on satirical writers such as Vonnegut. We can use what we’ve learned to further broaden our perspectives on characters we’re yet to meet in “Harrison Bergeron” and stories beyond that.
As for the real world, we can use direct and indirect characterization to find elements of literature in real people. Or example, I can use direct characterization to describe a family member or friend, and I can also clearly tell what kind of person someone is just by the way they behave or how they interact with the environment around them. Of course, you should never judge a book by its cover, but it’s a good skill to have to be able to accurately see how a person is perceived.
With that, my blog comes to a close. Feel free to give me 5 stars, or..whatever kind of rating system this blog website has. Also feel free to enjoy this smooth jazz while you’re at it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hRljfUGm61o&list=PLrvf1lDE32RB63jfGNHl8VTaqjldAGoKB&in dex=8
Cool peace out
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