Blog #4: Selina Chen Period 9 ELA 10/1/21 SOPHOMORE 2022
Aim: How does Kurt Vonnugut Jr.s background and choice of literary devices provide greater insight and clarity to his work, “Harrison Bergeron”?
Do Now: For the Do now, we started off with a group discussion on how we thought students in our school feel about the pressure to be alike (dress, think, act the same as others), and whether we believe this pressure derives from outside forces or more of personal wants. Do you think being the same makes most people happy, or would they really prefer to act on their own?
In our class discussion, Ahmad says that no one really feels the pressure to feel the same when it comes to appearances such as hairstyles, but more so when it comes to academics such as grades, number of friends, and the amount of extracurriculars someone does. No one really thinks about it like oh they look different and I want to be like that. John said it’s because we’re too busy to care about conforming with everyone’s appearances, and we’re more likely to want to be unique and different. My group also says the same and thinks our school is rather unique and everyone has a right to be different and unique. The school doesn’t pressure us to look or do something that has to be the same as everyone else, and instead it encourages individuality. Wanting to be the same comes from someone else’s success and what seems to make their life “perfect”. Social media and their portrayal of someone’s flawless life can also make someone try to be like everyone else, in hopes they’ll achieve that sort of “perfection.” For the second part, Yanna said that sometimes, being the same makes some people have a sense of security if they fit into the crowd & included but deep inside they’d rather be themselves and not the copy of someone else. Someone else also said that sometimes people would rather follow someone else because they don’t have a strong sense of identity and aren’t really sure who they are.
Spirit Reading Introduction:
“Harrison Bergeron” was published in the October, 1961, issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This was his third publication in a science fiction genre magazine following the drying up of the once-lucrative weekly family magazine market where he had published more than twenty stories between 1950 and 1961. However, these stories didn’t actually receive critical attention until it showed in Vonnegut’s collection in 1968.
- He experienced the same thing many authors experienced; he put out a book that didn’t receive recognition/attraction until someone relatively well known comes along and says it’s the best thing ever, and then suddenly it becomes extremely popular. This directly follows into the Do Now, talking about individuality. No one liked the book, until someone famous says they liked it.
Autobiography (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
Kurt Vonnetgut Jr., was born in 1922 and the youngest out of 3 children of Edith & Kurt Vonnegut, in Indiana. His siblings all all attended private schools but the Great Depression resulted in financial difficulties, so he had to attend public schools. There, he gathered the basis of the ideas and thoughts on politics and social beliefs from his junior civics class. The experiences he had here, were the basis of his novels that he wrote later on. The novels that he writes are mostly social satires, which are books that raise questions about morality, freedom and values. He was held captive in the underground meat locker of a slaughter house in Germany, during WWII which inspired his most famous novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Here is a video of an interview of Kurt on his life and career (1983) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLwe-EFUF-A
Literary Focus:
Satire is any type of writing that uses humor, irony, exaggeration, and/or ridicule to expose/mock/make fun of, some weakness in society or some individual person. An example of this is Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Here is a video on satire, and a video example of a TV show using satire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io58hl1Z0TY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcgSSb8D7VI
Dystopian Story (Genre)
Dystopia comes from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, which is alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, cakotopi, or anti-utopia. This is the often futuristic imaginative vision of a state of society in which there is suffering or injustice and is often shown through poverty, oppression, war, violence and/or terror which leads to the widespread unhappiness, suffering and many other types of pain.
- Ex: Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games, Maze Runner and The Giver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a6kbU88wu0
(Here’s a video on how to recognize dystopia!)
Characterization: Direct vs. Indirect
- Characterization is the process of revealing the personality of a character in a story or novel. There are different ways a writer can reveal the character by. Some of these are, letting us hear the character speak, describing how they look and dress, allowing us to listen to their inner thoughts/feelings, revealing what other characters in the story think/say about the character, and showing us what the character does—how they act. They also can directly tell us what the character’s personality is like; cruel, sneaking, generous, etc. We will look at these while looking for characterization.
- What is the difference?
- Direct characterization: Writers telling us directly what the characters are like/their motives. An example we went over in class was from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; Oh, but he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! (Shows he is a scrooge, and does not depict him in a good way at all, which was exactly his intent) An example I found myself was, “The patient boy and quiet girl were both well mannered and did not disobey their mother.” The author here talks about how the boy was patient and the girl was quiet, which is a positive connotation and then continues to talk about how they listened to their mother, which confirms that they are good children.
- Indirect characterization: writers show us characters through speech, appearance, private thoughts, the reaction of other characters’ and actions, but they let us decide which perspective of the character to take on. The example we used for this in class was “Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare;
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
- After depicting the mistress as someone you would never want to date, he still loves her, stays with her, and still wants to be with her.
Here are ways to recognize indirect characterization through the STEAL method
When accessing indirect characterization, these are the questions we should be asking ourselves while reading.
Direct vs Indirect Using Movie Examples
We watched two videos and tried to identify the characterization. The first video is Toy Story 3: Woody- He’ll never give up on you (very very very emotional), and Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone Wingardium Leviosa (my personal favorite!).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11D9AcpVMA5wsQXHtSfG7sTt_3AwQbbyc/view
- This video shows Andy going away, and him giving away his toys to a little kid. He is describing his toys, and giving their names
- Uses a lot of adjectives to describe each toy to help the girl get to know each and every toy
- A good example of direct & indirect; girl hides behind mom, is very apprehensive, uses direct characterization to describe the toys. The girl starts to warm up and starts to play with the toys, which is an example of indirect characterization as the author doesn’t directly say it, but it is shown instead.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13N9FXCSLFqWlhD0fJEJ6I9pOcZRRo24F
- This video shows Harry Potter and his classmates in Charms class learning Wingardium Leviosa with trouble, Hermione tries to snobbily teach Ron the correct way instead of accidentally taking someone’s eye out. Ron responds with the same tone, doubting Hermione’s abilities and saying that if she’s so smart, she should show him it, which she does successfully. Her classmates are still having a lot of trouble.
- Indirect characterization: indirectly shows Ron as snobby and indignant when Hermione tries to help, and someone who has lots of trouble getting spells to work, indirectly shows Hermione as someone who’s protective, smart and a little sassy; “you’re going to take someone’s eye out.” The author does not say this directly but it is shown through the actions of the characters.
Begin Reading “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. {1-10}
Some questions to keep in mind while reading
- While reading the opening paragraph of the short story, consider what is funny, in a mocking, satirical or critical way & the implications of the opening sentence. We read the first paragraph: THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal in every which way. Nobody was smarter than any else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of the agents of the United States Handicapper General. Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
- First, we accessed the first lines of this paragraph “THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law”, this shows that the setting is in the future where everyone was equal, and the word finally shows satire as it shows that before this, it was not equal. The line “Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime” was also satirical as they showed a big deal over April driving people crazy by it not being springtime. The number of amendments also showed satire as it is impossible to have that many amendments.
2nd paragraph: “It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.”
- They start off by telling us that Hazel is of average intelligence, but us as the readers do not know what “average” intelligence means in 2081, is average intelligence the same as what is average for us now? Or is the average way down below what is average now? They specifically tell us that George is way above average intelligence so that everytime he has to wear a mental handicap radio in his ear so that when he has a thought that isn’t the same as everyone else’s, the transmitter will send out a noise that’s so piercingly painful that he can’t even remember what his original thought was. The government does this to make sure that everyone is equal and to ensure that he doesn’t take unfair advantage over HIS brain. Hazel doesn’t need this because she is “average”. You can’t make stupid, smart, so they had to make the smart down to stupid.
Here is an audiobook of Harrison Bergeron if needed:
Reflection:
Today’s lesson has taught me many things. Before, I never fully realized why people would want to be the same as someone else. Someone said that it was because some people don’t really have a strong sense of identity and that really made me understand why some people would rather choose to follow others, then to lead and that is okay (if everyone is a leader, then they won’t really be leaders). Wanting to be like someone else could also come from a place of jealousy of their, what seems to be perfect, life. I’ve come to realize that with the popularity of social media, people only see the most perfect part of someone’s life posted, and don’t realize that there’s definitely flaws in that person’s life because there’s no telling what they’re like from one post. I would get confused when someone would try really hard to dress or act like someone else, but now I understand their point of view even if I don’t agree. Learning about dystopia and the genre itself showed me a lot about how perfect someone tries to make society, it will never work. The more you force someone to be the same as the others, the more difficult everything will become, before someone starts to revolt and create chaos. As good as a “perfect” society sounds, I realize that there cannot be perfect equality in the world and this seemingly perfect idea is not so perfect. This was also shown in the novel “The Giver” when they made everyone the same and most of the things in our world didn’t exist there. The government had total control over everything and it made their life “perfect.” Of course, it really wasn’t and Jonas realizes how messed up it is in the end, and leaves, which causes a lot of disruption and chaos. To be honest, I never even realized the satire in some shows and I just found them “humorous.” I always connected satire with just sarcasm in everyday life and didn’t realize it could be a huge part of a novel or TV series. This helps me understand these types of things a lot more clearly. I also learnt that direct characterization is when the author directly tells us the motives/thoughts of the character(s) in the story, while indirect characterization shows it to us without directly stating it. We touched upon direct and indirect characterization last year but I never fully understood what they were. I knew the basis but this lesson helped me grasp the real concept and how to identify which one is which. I can now use the STEAL method to recognize indirect characterization. I’ve watched the Harry Potter series many many times but I never picked it apart and identifying the characterization also aids me in comprehending the scene better. Overall, this lesson was meaningful and helped me understand many concepts more in depth.
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