Updated 2/1/07 - 1:55 pm
In Class Reflection #2 – Close Reading – Thurs. Jan. 25th
Considering what we have discussed in class and what you have read about Formalist Criticism, take a close look at the following two passages and then write at least two paragraphs explaining how FORM and CONTENT reflect each other in each paragraph. In addition to discussing Form and Content you should note any similarities or differences between the two paragraphs.
And, while Creole listened, Sonny moved, deep within, exactly like someone in torment. I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do.
(Baldwin 62)
So we drove along, between the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood. These streets hadn’t changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea. Most of the houses in which we had grown up had vanished, as had the stores from which we had stolen, the basements in which we had first tried sex, the rooftops from which we had hurled tin cans and bricks. But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster. (Baldwin 48)
Listed below are the Writing Assignments done in class for which ALL are responsible. If you miss a class, you should bring any outstanding assignments with you! All work is due upon return; if you have an extended (and documented) absence, please see me outside of class ASAP.
In Class Reflection #1 – Close Reading of “Sonny’s Blues” – Thurs. Jan. 25th
Please read the following except from “Sonny’s Blues” and consider it in the context of the entire story. Then, take about 10 minutes to write a reflection on the Narrator’s shift in perspective towards Sonny as illustrated by this quote from Baldwin’s short story:
She could tell, by watching him, what was happening with him. And what was happening was that they penetrated his cloud, they had reached him. Even if their fingers had been a thousand times more gentle than human fingers ever are, he could hardly help feeling that they had stripped him naked and were spitting on that nakedness. For he also had to see that his presence, that music, which was life or death to him, had been torture for them and that they had endured it, not at all for his sake, but only for mine. (Baldwin 55)
NOTE: Please double space your writing and write as clearly as possible as I, and your classmates, will be reading this!
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