Blogger #5, Huixin Chen (Tracy), Period 3, 10/4/2021
Aim: How does Kurt Vonnugut Jr.s’ background and his choice of literary devices provide greater insight and clarity to his work, “Harrison Bergeron”?
> House Keeping
At the beginning of today’s class, we are reminded of the importance of hard deadlines. Students are to keep in mind that it is our responsibility to remember what we have to get done and to inform the teacher if there are any issues.
> Do Now Discussion
Today’s lesson was a continuation of yesterday’s lesson where we were introduced to Kurt Vonnugut Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron.” The class started with a group discussion on the do-now question which was to create a possible alternate ending to the story.
My group specifically suggested that the main character, George Bergeron, might collaborate with his son, Harrison Bergeron to try to bypass the system and reform the way the current society works.
After the group discussion was over, the whole class gathered together to share our thoughts on the question. One group mentioned that the short story might end in a similar way that Fahrenheit 451 ended, where Harrison would say goodbye to his father and find other people who are heavily handicapped, just like him. Together, they might bring about a revolution, to change how the system works. They also mentioned an alternative ending where Harrison returns home to his supportive father and disappointed mother. His mother, who might not understand Harrison and George, might try to sound an alarm.
Another group respectfully disagreed and argued that Hazel, the mother, would not sound in alarm because she had previously suggested that her husband take off his handicap if it had bothered him.
>Lesson about Literary Terms
With this, the class moved onto spirit reading important literary terms. Beginning with the term ‘theme’, Ms Peterson reminds us that we have touched upon this term during our Freshman year.
Theme expresses a central idea/message of life through the usage of literary words.
Next up, we learned about dialects which is a spoken language used by a group of people. Ms Peterson provides us with the example of a New York dialect, and how people would speak fast while others would have trouble understanding. The pronunciation of dialects are different and it might appear offensive to people who are not used to it. Although dialects can also have a positive effect, as demonstrated by Ms. Peterson’s cheerleading example where people come from all over the country meet together.
Finally, we spirit read and learned about different types of conflict which Ms. Peterson emphasized is not the same as a problem. She supported her statement by mentioning how the Hurricane Sandy of 2012 was not a problem but a conflict.
Keeping this in mind, we got introduced to internal conflict and external conflict. An internal conflict is always a character’s internal battle or their struggle with themselves. It is also always referred to as character vs self. An external conflict is a character’s struggle with an external force.
> Team Conflict Challenge
Bearing in mind what we had just learned, we applied our new knowledge to examples in our media as a team challenge.
The first example was a clip from “The Wizard of Oz” and we all concluded that the shown conflict was an example of an external character vs character. The next example given was from “The Day After Tomorrow,” and it is an external character vs nature. An example of “Alice in Wonderland” was also presented and we decided that it was an internal character vs self conflict as the conflict was happening inside of Alice’s head. Finally, we ended off with a harder example of “A League of their Own.” The conflict was an external character vs society since the man is against everyone else. However, there are also multiple other conflicts in the clip, such as character vs character where the man was yelling at the girl.
>Reading “Harrison Bergernon”
Story -> https://bit.ly/3mo3RHx
After the discussions, we dove right back into where we left off in the short story. By using the spirit reading method, we finished the satire and we conversed over the nature of the ending. Closing with the idea that the story ended with how we started, where there are no reforms in the current society and no ‘happily ever after’ was granted. This proves to be an example of situational irony because the opposite of what we assumed would happen, happened. In the end, Harrison would die and the mother, Hazel, would not even remember anything about it. In this society, average intelligence refers to intelligence that is below average. “Average intelligence” is anyone who is not smart enough to question the current ways of society.
>Reflection:
The main focus of today’s lesson was learning how to recognize different types of literary devices in both the media we study as well as in everyday life. Conflict, for instance, plays an important role in the everyday life of our characters and ourselves. It is important to recognize the conflict that we and the characters are facing. As we have mentioned during class, there is a multitude of types of conflicts that people can face. These conflicts can be both internal (such as person vs self) and external (person vs person, person vs nature, person vs society.) By cultivating our skills in recognizing all types of conflict, we are able to reach the root of the struggle. When we understand the full scale of the struggle, it would be easier to find a solution to the ‘problem.’ For this exact reason, the skill in finding conflict is important in the real world as well. Additionally, we also have to understand that acknowledging our’ and the characters’ conflicts is vital. When people ignore their struggles, it doesn’t go away. Conflict would continue to develop proving that it only gets worse if ignored. When we learn to recognize conflict, we ‘accept’ and recognize it. In recognizing it, we can learn to resolve the conflict and in turn, learn to grow.
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