Week Three Response - Comment Under This Post

Reminders:
Wednesday, Midnight Deadline
250 word limit.

See the Comment Format & Sample Below

ABC Active Reading
A Title - Jot down two or three titles that come to mind as you study, then select the best oneor make a composite of them.
Basic Passage – Choose the passage, sentence or lines (no more than three) which include thecentral meaning or is the key to the contents of the passage. This passage should connect withthe title.

Correlate - Write out the passage in your own words, that is, paraphrase. Then write outhow the passage, sentence or lines apply to you, to someone you know, to a group or to society.
Here are some questions that might help you. See what connections you can make and explore:

Are there any passages in the reading that you, because of your life experience, are especially able to understand and appreciate? Write about one of those passages and show how it relates to your experience.

Have you experienced or witnessed anything that the character or persona doesn’t take into account? Write about one or more of those events, and tell how to change the character’s knowledge to take them into account.

Choose a passage from the reading, and tell what it helps explain about an experience you have known. After you have said as much as you can, consider this: does the passage exhaust the meaning of the experience, account for the experience you have in mind?

Would a person who accepted this character’s ideas choose the same paths in life that you have chosen or that you have seen others choose? How would the ideas for this reading alter your life or the life of someone you know well?

Are the writer’s or character’s ideas useful to a person in certain lifestyle or profession? What difference would these ideas make for someone living that lifestyle or practicing that profession?




Use the following headings in your response:
· A Title
· Basic Passage
· Correlate



Sample Response



On Death and Beauty
No reading does a better job of conveying the war experience than Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story. O’Brien tells of a man named Rat Kiley who has to write a letter to his best friend’s sister. The description given by Kiley to Lemon’s sister doesn’t match her perception of her brother prior to departing for Vietnam. Kiley tells her of Lemon’s practice of fishing with “a whole damn crate of hand grenades,” and of him having “steel balls.” One recollection of Lemon’s death describes him as being lifted up by the blast, like a beam of light. It’s quite a beautiful description, given the violent nature of what had taken place.
I’ve always been compelled by this literature of survival, literature about people thrown into extremeconditions that simultaneously conveys a beauty and violence. When Esquire published a special issue on survival in July of 2004, I snatched it up. The issue features articles with titles like, “Ten Tough Bastards,” and “Classic Survival.” It also featured an excerpt from Senator John McCain’s account of his five years as a POW of the Vietnam War. That too played to a kind of romanticized, beautified vision.
Hemingway’s description of death and his use of figurative language in “Snows of Kilimanjaro” also serve to romanticize war.
Basic Passage
Because, just then, death had come and rested its head on the foot of the cot andhe could smell its breath. [...] “Tell it to go away.” It did not go away but moved a littlecloser. “You’ve got a hell of a breath,” he told it. “You stinking bastard.”
Truman Capote, in a critique of Hemingway, attempted to pull the cover away from this romantic view of the war hero/survivalist by calling him a “queen…a man who he presumes “pretended to be a hearty, courageous person.” Capote challenges the image of heroism and war created by American culture.








Note: This response was written a few years ago, before the 300 word limit was imposed. It contains 250 words – still close to what you should produce weekly.
Also, note that most of the writer’s correlation is above the basic passage. The lesson: you can move parts around, just be sure every part is there: A title, Basic Passage, Correlation.