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Douglass/ Response I
Collect Response I
Introduce Narration as a Genre: Essay I
Read and Discuss "Momma's Encounter"
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Read the following pages from WOW Chapter 5:
84-85
90-95 (“Road Trip”)
103-113
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Critical Reading Cont.
Response 1 is an exercise designed to develop your critical reading/thinking skills.
Critical reading (WOW pg. 65)
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understanding the author's purpose
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drawing inferences from the text
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evaluating the evidence and logic of an author's assertions
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extending ideas beyond the text
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examining an author's bias
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connecting ideas in one text to ideas in another text (synthesis)
How does Response 1 illustrate the characteristics of critical reading?
Response 1: Frederick Douglass
excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (pgs. 79-81)
Later in his narrative, Douglass writes, "I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing."
What does Douglass mean by this statement?
How is his view of reading shaped by the rhetorical situation in 1845?
Can you think of any modern-day situations or examples in which Douglass's view of reading is still valid, or is the ability to read and write (our access to knowledge and information) always a blessing?
Your response should be a carefully crafted paragraph in which you relate your position and draw on specific examples from the text in order to support it. Make sure that you respond to all aspects of the prompt.
Your response should be formal and typed double-spaced.
Volunteers to Share Ideas from Response 1: Show us your critical thinking skills
Narration as a Rhetorical Strategy (a rhetorical choice)
(page 73 in Handbook--uses "Patterns of Paragraph Development")
Narrative means storytelling.
- Some stories are fictional--they deal with characters and events that the writer has created from imagination.
- Some stories are nonfiction; they recreate events which happened to real people.
RHETORICAL STRATEGIES:
- For us, then, Rhetorical Strategies are the "means" Aristotle speaks of, the methods for "finding all the available arguments" (Bk. I, Ch.2) on a particular issue,
- those methods that allow us to convey most convincingly our point on a given topic.
- So, how is narration a rhetorical strategy?
- How does Douglass's narrative function as rhetoric? (as well as the slave narrative in general)
- Think about their purpose (the slave narrative=story)
- As a narrative (story) is Douglass's primary purpose to entertain?
- Other examples of narratives (fiction or non-fiction) that function as pieces of rhetoric?
- How do we use stories to persuade?
Think about how other genres of writing employ narrative strategies.
Other Common Rhetorical Strategies
(pages 73-78 in Handbook)
There are several rhetorical strategies you can use to make your writing more powerful. It is often a good idea to use several of these strategies in combination, although not every strategy will be applicable to every essay or topic you are discussing.
- Exemplification (74): Provide examples or cases in point. Are there examples - facts, statistics, cases in point, personal experiences, interview quotations - that you could add to help you achieve the purpose of your essay?
- Description (73): Detail sensory perceptions of a person, place, or thing. Does a person, place, or object play a prominent role in your essay? Would the tone, pacing, or overall purpose of your essay benefit from sensory details?
- Narration (73): Recount an event. Are you trying to report or recount an anecdote, an experience, or an event? Does any part of your essay include the telling of a story (either something that happened to you or to a person you include in your essay)?
- Process analysis(74): Explain how to do something or how something happens. Would any portion of your essay be more clear if you included concrete directions about a certain process? Are there any processes that readers would like to understand better? Are you evaluating any processes?
- Comparison and contrast (76): Discuss similarities and differences. Does your essay contain two or more related subjects? Are you evaluating or analyzing two or more people, places, processes, events, or things? Do you need to establish the similarities and differences between two or more elements?
- Division and classification (76): Divide a whole into parts or sort related items into categories. Are you trying to explain a broad and complicated subject? Would it benefit your essay to reduce this subject to more manageable parts to focus your discussion?
- Definition (77): Provide the meaning of terms you use. Who is your audience? Does your essay focus on any abstract, specialized, or new terms that need further explanation so your readers understand your point? Does any important word in your essay have many meanings and need to be need to be clarified?
- Cause and effect analysis (75): Analyze why something happens and describe the consequences of a string of events. Are you examining past events or their outcomes? Is your purpose to inform, speculate, or argue about why an identifiable fact happens the way it does?
- Argumentation: Convince others through reasoning. Are you trying to explain aspects of a particular subject, and are you trying to advocate a specific opinion on this subject or issue in your essay?
Narrative As a Genre: Essay I
Exploring An Event: WOW ch. 5
"It isn't necessarily what happens that is momentous--it's what happens as a result of the event. What did you learn? How did you change?" (85)
"Perhaps the event gave you insight into the type of person you want to be. It might have enlightened you intellectually, or it might have made you stronger. Some events change us immediately, while others affect us more gradually" (85).
Discuss Essay I instructions and
Conventions of a Narrative
In the next few weeks, we will read different types of narratives with different purposes, audiences, style, structure, etc.
As we continue to learn about narratives, make sure you pay attention to the way narratives are written--what they do and how they do it.
That way, you'll be able to decide what genre best fits your style, topic, and purpose.
Maya Angelou's "Momma's Encounter," published in 1970
Who is the audience?
What is the rhetorical situation? Historical context: 1930s rural Stamps Arkansas/ publication context- 1970
Rhetorical Situation (WOW page 32)
-an appreciation of the social circumstances that call rhetorical events into being and that orchestrate the course of those events
-each act of communication is anything but self-contained
-each communication is a response to other communications and other social practices
-communications, and social practices more generally, are considered to reflect the attitudes and values of the communities that sustain them
Describe the tone and style
Understanding the Structure of the Narrative
All narratives have similar components; they may be arranged differently.
Identify the following areas of the narrative:
I. Introduction: 2 main threads/ideas
Paragraph 1
What are the two themes that are presented in the intro?
II. Background information (the back story to the coming event)
What paragraphs provide background information?
What purpose do these paragraphs serve?
Think about the 2 themes/threads that were developed in the intro. How are these background paragraphs organized to fit with these 2 themes?
Are these paragraphs necessary to the narrative? Why doesn't Angelou just start with the main event?
III. The main event of the narrative
In what paragraph does the main event begin?
In that paragraph, how does Angelou tie the main event with the background paragraphs?
How does she use foreshadowing here?
IV. Rising Action
Which paragraphs develop the rising action of the narrative?
How does this action connect with the 2 themes offered in the beginning?
What is Angelou thinking/what emotions is she experiencing? Why can't Angelou verbalize her thoughts to her grandmother?
In paragraph 22, Angelou writes, "...but I knew I was as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles." What does Angelou mean here? Critical analysis. (using reflection throughout the narrative vs. only including it at the end)
IV. Climax
V. Falling Action
Significance of washing face and raking the yard
VI. Conclusion
no reflection
just ends with final action
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