General Comments

High score (12–15)

An essay with high marks exhibits many or all of the following qualities:

• Clearly identifies what the concrete things are and the choice shows good potential for discussion about their abstract meanings

• Recognizes the irony in the juxtaposition and relationship between thing and non-thing

• Demonstrates clearly in its discussion the connection between each physical thing and its non-physical meaning

• Has a strong thesis which is stated from the out set

• Has meaningful, logical organization

• Makes thoughtful connections and/or distinctions between the things in the two texts

• Gives effective, well-supported interpretations rather than a summary of the texts involved

• Provides original insight and/or extends classroom discussion

Middle score (9–11)

• Clearly identifies the things to be discussed in the essay

• Has a sound thesis

• Has minor misinterpretations/misreadings of the texts

• Provides some substantiation of the points/claims made

Low score (0–8)

• Does not answer the question or mostly strays from the prompt

• Has major misinterpretation(s) of the works

• Provides mainly a summary and mis-summary of the works

• Writes about general ideas, not about the text

• Shows little close reading

• Gives poor support for points made or has no substantiation at all

202235 Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature

Second semester 2009

Quiz 1 (15 points)

Write your essay in the space below.

Things in the texts we have read are often about non-things.  Examine the use of concrete objects or entities in at least two works and show how particular material things acquire meanings beyond their physicality.

In literature, the use of concrete things representing more complicated or abstract idea is frequently seen because this use can convey meaning.  It's more artful than to state the idea separately.  It makes work valuable and urges the reader to ponder upon the hidden meaning of each entities.

To illustrate, I'll compare two works which demonstrate the living condition of soldiers in war, "The battle" and "The things they've carried."  In the former, the poem use the armor or ordinary stuff of soldier such as helmet, gun etc.  However, the reader does not see the real human.  We just see the particular things.  The one object that shows the sign of living is a cigarette.  The use of these objects shows that the soldiers may lose their personality and they are just the same: the soldiers who will fight, kill or die as they are ordered.

In contrast, the physical material in "The things they carried" that the soldiers carried shows the further meaning more than the things itself.  To illustrate, Lavender carries a lot of ammunition because he is fear or they carry dope to help them feel relaxed and escape from the war temporarily. Only the dope could illustrate the cruelty of war and the boredom or monotony soldiers have to face.

Moreover, the things soldiers carry also shows their personality. For example, a soldier carrying a Bible may be considered a religious person or a soldier who carries toothbrush might be a hygenic person.

Apart from personality, the point that I find greatly different in both work is "hope." The soldiers in "the things they carried" carry a lot of thing showing that they wish to survive and not be killed their. For example, they carry some superstitions object to protect them. These things cannot be found in "The Battle." Therefore, I imply that soldiers in "The Battle" may be like a machine. They have no hope no humour or the will to go back. They just wait the day pass and receive happiness from the cigarette, one source at hand for escaping.

To sum up, these two works are greatly different in terms of the personality and aspiration of characters mentioned. We can see this just by looking at the physical objects. There are hidden meanings in each physical things and to use the physical things to show non-physical things, the authors kill 2 birds with one stone.

202235 Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature

Second semester 2009

Quiz 1 (15 points)

Write your essay in the space below.

Things in the texts we have read are often about non-things.  Examine the use of concrete objects or entities in at least two works and show how particular material things acquire meanings beyond their physicality.

Things into Non-Things

Ted Lavender’s dope in O’Brien’s short story weighs less than its stated “six or seven ounces” and the raven in Poe’s poem is less than a bird.  In both “The Things They Carried” and “The Raven” a story is told where the physicality of these two things represents a non-physicality.  Usually we will read the dope as weighing more than its own physical weight, carrying also the burden of guilt, grief, and so forth, but the function of the dope is in fact, the unburdening of all these things.  Lavender needs his dope because it alleviates or takes away his fear.  Likewise, discussion of the raven often dwells on its multiple symbolic possibilities, each accumulated meaning adding more to the bird’s definition.  For the hopeful scholar-narrator of “The Raven,” however, the bird, the midnight visitor, or the voice all symbolize one thing: the possibility of physical (and mental) relief; he wishes for the “balm of Mecca.”

Lavender can carry more than everybody because the dope lessens his burden.  Always high on premium marijuana, he lives every soldier’s fantasy of weightlessness all the time.  The raven as nepenthe for the scholar, similarly, is a drug that means forgetfulness.  The dope and the raven, then, are things that represent the opposite of things.  In them are non-things such as being weight-free, being sorrowless.  Their significance is not in being but in non-being. 

The human heart is a fist-sized muscle weighing around ten ounces, and the human brain considerably more than that.  Yet to think about what is weighing on the heart and mind of the two characters, we come to terms with a much heavier weight.  To misquote Emily Dickinson, the brain is not only wider than the sky but also weightier than everything we carry because it can hold all these things and itself.  While Lavender and the scholar, by the end of the tale have different fates, the dope and the raven represent the same thing to them which is the freedom from all this weight, the relief from misery.  Under this priceless oblivion, Ted Lavender probably “didn’t feel a thing” when he was shot.  The scholar-narrator’s raven emblemize an enticing “nevermore.”

Both the dope and the raven are things that express non-things.  More specifically, they embody a non-body—the very absence of thingness.  For the fearful man and the grieving man, their thing is about a non-thing that gives them “nothing.”

202235 Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature

Second semester 2009

Quiz 1 (15 points)

Write your essay in the space below.

Things in the texts we have read are often about non-things.  Examine the use of concrete objects or entities in at least two works and show how particular material things acquire meanings beyond their physicality.

Text

202235 Reading and Analysis for the Study of English Literature

Second semester 2009

Quiz 1 (15 points)

Write your essay in the space below.

Things in the texts we have read are often about non-things.  Examine the use of concrete objects or entities in at least two works and show how particular material things acquire meanings beyond their physicality.

Text