Creative Response Q & A

1. I responded to the short story, How Far She Went by Mary Hood and the story I'm Your Horse in the Night by Luisa Valenzuela. I incorporated the theme of I'm Your Horse in the Night into the storyline of How Far She Went.

2. I incorporated the theme my group came up with for I'm Your Horse in the Night (you will go to great lengths to save those you hold dear) with the plot from How Far She Went  by telling the story from the point of view of the dog. I tried to follow the storyline of How Far She Went very closely, so I could accurately represent the theme of I'm Your Horse in the Night.

3. I wrote my story this way because I wanted to include both stories in my response, and it seemed like  a logical way to put them together-- to have the dog fiercely protecting the grandmother and the girl from the bikers.

4. I used 1st person POV throughout the whole story. In the beginning, I used 3rd person, omniscient.

5. I was going for several different tones. I was trying to convey a tone of happiness and joy, along with tones of sadness and fear.

6. The theme of my piece is people/animals will go to great lengths to protect those things/people they hold closest to them. There is also another theme in my story about how you do not know what you have until it is gone. This is expressed when the girl is saved by the grandmother, even though the girl has hated her throughout the entirety of the story. The girl comes to realize how much the grandmother cares for her. It is a secondary theme, and not that important.

7. When I was writing my story, my response was driven by the drowning of the dog by the grandmother at the end of the story so the grandmother and the girl are saved from the bikers attempting to kill them. I wanted to write from the view of the dog, and get across he was only there to help and protect them instead of putting them in danger by barking, as portrayed in How Far She Went.

8. I responded directly to the treatment of the dog in How Far She Went. I had to keep in mind the plot, because the plot of the story directly relates to how the dog was treated by the grandmother and the girl. I had to duplicate the specific sequence of events right to show the dog's side of the story. I did make a few changes, however.

9. I think my response "works". I believe I made the theme clear to the reader through the repetition of the line "I had a duty." However, there might be some details and dialogue that can be strengthened to better portray the characterization and plot sequence.

Blah Blah Blah (Caught'ya #27)

Caught’ya #27                  Monday, October 28, 2013

“Like you my friend, I swore I’d never marry. If it were Hero who would be my wife, though, I would succumb to Cupid’s arrows,” acceded Claudio.

            “Never in a million years!” vociferated Benedick. “Not I. I shall die a bachelor.”

·      Vociferate= to shout or yell loudly

·      Synonyms= ball, bellow, wail, cry

·      Antonyms= whisper, mumble, mutter

·      Etymology= circa 1600, from Latin word “vociferates”

·      The young girl vociferated her concerns at the teacher.

·      Acceded= to express approval, or give consent

·      Synonyms= agree, come around, concur

·      Antonyms= disagree, reject, dissent

·      Etymology= circa 15^th century, from Middle English word “accedere”

·      He acceded to the plan.

Blah Blah Blah (Caught'ya #26)

Blah Blah Blah

Connor’s sonnet today was a great example of how many interpretations can come out of one piece of writing. I had heard many stories of how sexual his sonnet was from kids in choir, so I came into class today with that premonition of his sonnet, which was not good, because I felt his poem was not very sexual at all. It all comes down to what experiences the reader brings to the story and the meaning they get out of the text. It is a real life example of the reader response perspective.

Today, I was extremely frustrated. Due to my injury, I was very limited to what I could do. It is so difficult to completely switch how you go about your life. I am forced to reinvent every action I make with a clumsy clump of gauze stuck to my hand. It is the biggest pain in the rear I have ever experienced. This injury and subsequent recovery relates directly to the underlying message in the short story, How Far She Went, I read for the creative response last week. The girl in the story hates her grandmother and it took a life-threatening experience to make her realize what she had. Although, I did not have a brush with death, I have realized how much I use my dominant hand, and how much I have to adjust when I cannot use it. From simple tasks like washing my hands to more complicated things like driving, I have to adapt. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I used the backspace button in this post! I now realize how important and essential hands are to the human being, and I can only begin to sympathize with those that live life with no hands. It seems everything I encounter in life can be related back to AP Lit!

How Far She Went

            As promised, here is my group’s analysis of How Far She Went by Mary Hood. We believed the underlying theme to be you never know what you have or what you appreciate until is ripped away from you. In How Far She Went, Hood introduces us to two strikingly opposite characters, the girl and her granny. The girl is currently living with the grandmother. The girl hates it there. She hates everything about it as shown by the quote, “”I could turn this whole house over, dump it! Leave you slobbering over that stinking jealous dog in the dust!” The girl trembled with the vision, with the strength it gave her.” This quote highlights the girl’s burning hatred for her grandmother but also the shows the helpless feeling of being stuck there.

            As an act of rebellion, the girl runs off and finds a group of motorcyclists, who then come back and taunt the granny as they show off the girl on the back of the motorcycle. After circling the granny, they take off. The grandmother takes off as well, determined to get her granddaughter back. She chases them down in her car, corners them, and forces the girl to come back with her. She does and the two head back home, but then a chase ensues. The granny high tails the car into the woods, but soon gets the car stuck in the mud and the girl and the granny take off on foot into the woods. They come to a lake and hide underneath a dock and eventually escape the bikers chasing them with the intention of killing them.

            It is at this juncture where my group really focused in on the use of symbolism by Hood. All awhile the bikers are chasing the two women, the granny’s dog tails right behind them. He does not want to be left out of the action. When the two hide under the dock, the dos is continuously barking which forced the grandmother to drown the dog in order to save them both. The quote, “The dog wouldn’t hush, even then; never had yet, and there wasn’t time to teach him. When the woman realized that, she did what she had to do. She grabbed him whimpering; held him; held him under till the struggle ceased and the bubbles rose silver from his fur,” shows how desperate their situation was. We believed the drowning of the dog represented the end of the girl’s disrespect, loathing, and general dislike of the grandmother. When the girl see how much her grandmother actually cares about her – the grandmother risked her life to save her—, she realizes how grateful she should be for all her grandmother does for her. It took a high-speed death chase for the girl to realize that, but at least she came to that conclusion!

            

I'm Your Horse in the Night (Caught'ya #25)

I'm Your Horse in the Night

            Last week we were asked to get into small groups and read two short stories from the text book: one our group would choose to read, and the second would be a story that another group chose to read. Our group chose to look at the short work I’m Your Horse in the Night by Luis Valenzuela and we then switched and read How Far She Went by Mary Hood. Both were very intriguing and I enjoyed each immensely. I was impressed by how much meaning each author crammed in to just a few short pages, especially Luis Valenzuela considering I’m Your Horse in the Night is only two pages! Once we read each story, Mr. Delacruz instructed us to decipher each story’s theme, as we would be required to write a creative response to the theme of our choosing.

            I’m Your Horse in the Night is very brief, yet packed with action and meaning. Valenzuela depicts the scene of a woman, Chiquita, who is finally reunited with the criminal named Beto for a night of love- making. It is a very emotional rendezvous, as the two have not seen each other in a lengthy time due to Beto’s villainous status. The next morning, Beto is gone and the police storm Chiquita’s apartment demanding she divulge where he is. Chiquita describes the occurrence the previous night to the police as a dream as shown by the quote, “My only real possession was a dream and the can’t deprive me of my dreams just like that. My dream the night before, when Beto was there with me and we loved each other.” In this quote, Chiquita describes her experience with Beto as merely a dream and not reality, as described earlier in the story.

This was the part in I’m Your Horse in the Night where my group became confused. We were unsure if Chiquita and Beto actually engaged in sexual activity or if it was all a dream! It took us awhile to interpret that out of her endearing love for Beto, Chiquita morphed her memories of real experiences into dreams. Chiquita didn’t allow herself to give Beto’s whereabouts to the police. She essentially bended her own perception of reality to protect the person she cared for deeply. She even endured torture for him! The passge, “(Go ahead, burn me with your cigarettes, kick me all you wish, threaten, go ahead, stick a mouse in me so it’ll eat my insides out, pull my nails out, do as you please,” shows Chiquita’s unrelenting determination to keep Beto safe.

Based off this realization, my group mates and I concurred the message in I’m Your Horse in the Night to be that humans will go to extraordinary lengths to protect things or people from harm, even if they are criminals. In hindsight, my group sorted through the part of the story that puzzled us and figured out the author, Valenzuela, intentionally inserted the part of Chiquita telling the police Beto was a dream to confuse the reader and ultimately produce the theme of the story – that is if the reader could figure it out as such. I’m Your Horse in the Night is a masterpiece because it tells a riveting story with a deep meaning in only two pages! Valenzuela is a genius! Tune in to my next blog to hear what my group came up with for the theme of How Far She Went by Mary Hood. 

The Bright Side (Caught'ya #23 & #24)

The Bright Side

            Due to today’s status as a Monday, Mr. Delacruz gave us a heartfelt MOMO —motivational Monday— based off his own experiences in the past year. Mr. Delacruz elaborated how negative he was last year and how that really made it hard to him to enjoy life. Mr. Delacruz argued that it is human nature to look at the negative angle of things instead of the positive side. He struggled for a long time to change his way of thinking. He found it hard to change his habit of pessimism to exude rays of sunshine and positivity. I couldn’t agree more with what he said about it is crucial for people to systematically alter how they look at things.

            A great example of how I must change my own thoughts towards certain situations can be found in this past Homecoming. There were many things that upset me along the way, more specifically the abrasive encounters I had with Mr. Wade and Mr. Mckean during the Powder Puff game and the dance. We had clashing opinions and I felt they were extremely standoffish and hard to work with. I felt they undermined the operations of Student Government all throughout Homecoming. They were being spitting civets! Due to these confrontations and the bitterness produced from it, I only focused on how awful they were being and how they had ruined everything instead of looking at the fact they were able to ruin something in the first place. In other terms, I should’ve celebrated the fact the events happened and they were successful instead of dwelling on the negative. As hard as it is to do constantly look at the positive, it is necessary to be a happier human being.

            Another real life example could be the recent government shutdown. While the entirety of America was mad like a swarm of angry bees about the progress of Congress —as well they should be—, it might have been helpful to step back and be thankful we have a political system that allows for two sides of an issue to argue valiantly for their viewpoint. We should realize people in other countries, such as China, do not have the luxury to voice their opinions and fight for the ideas. Even though it was ridiculous, it is something we shouldn’t take for granted. Look at the positive!