Blog #2: Prose Passage Benchmark Essay

Draft 1
In the opening passage of Edward P. Jones's The Known World, Jones introduces Moses's character as hard-working, close to nature, and slightly distant. He does this by writing from Moses's perspective, presenting selection details about Moses, and the heavily nature-focused imagery.

Moses appears to be hard-working because he's the last to leave the fields—"he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults" and he's been in the field for 15 hours. Furthermore, we learn that he's the only man to taste the dirt, to check the health of the field. These details tell us what Moses is too humble to tell us in his own narration.

While written from Moses's point of view, the narration is largely objective. We only receive small glimpses into Moses's mind—most of the attention is focused outward. But this choice is purposeful, in itself reflective of his personality. Moses focuses on his environment and is not really an introspective man. We see that Moses is a simple man who appreciates the world around him. The author tells us that soil ties him to "the only thing in his small world" that he valued as much as his own life.

In fact, Moses has a "relationship" with the dirt, tasting it at different times of year to notice how the plants affected the taste. With his Biblical name, it's not so strange for the author to present the image of Moses disrobing and lying down in his barren muddy field, being cleansed by the rain. Moses "[loses] himself completely" in the rain—unlike most people, Moses feels completely at one with nature, perhaps because the water and dirt purify him.

But perhaps his closeness to nature comes at the price of distance from people. Jones provides us certain plaintive details, offered matter-of-factly: his wife and son never wait for him to come and eat with them, and Moses often doesn't return to the cabin to sleep, instead sleeping in the fields.

Essentially, Jones uses Moses's spare point-of-view, selects details that give us insight into Moses's relationships with others, and images of Moses absorbed by nature to illustrate that Moses is a solitary man ,who feels more at home outside than in his own cabin.

Score:4










Revision:

In The Known World, Edward P. Jones bridges contrasting ideas like freedom and bondage through Moses’s connection to nature and his responsibilities. Moses himself discusses his “relationship” with the soil, and while Moses understands the shackles that chain both his mind and body, he embraces the very land that enslaves him. Jones depicts Moses as a man seeking spiritual freedom through his connection to nature with rich imagery and shifts from objectivity to far more emotional and powerful tones.

The first line of the novel establishes Moses's characteristic diligence by showing how Moses continues to work "well after he ended the day for the other adults" even though "his master died" (ll.1-2). Because Moses would have technically been freed by the death of his master, his continuation of slave work portrays him as a man who is hardworking and persistent, never willing to submit to pain or fatigue. Here, the tone is objective due to the lack of adjectives: he discusses the death of his master without emotion, and doesn’t complain about working late.We see that the narration is fairly aloof, leaving us to draw our own conclusions about Moses’s character.

The tone grows more introspective, however, as the imagery shifts the focus to nature. Jones writes, "July dirt tasted even more like sweetened metal than the dirt of June or May" (l. 33-34). Indeed, Moses seems to appreciate his bondage for it has created not just a learning opportunity, but an even stronger bond to the world around him. In other words, Moses has learned to distinguish the flavor of the very dirt he has worked in over the years, hinting that he has a unique understanding of the world that has been cultivated by his work as a slave. By describing Moses’s appreciation of the "sour moldiness" of the environment with the coming of fall and winter and the end of his relationship with the soil, Jones further conveys Moses’s keen sense of taste and his unusual connection with the dirt. He also crafts an unusual tone of intimacy by choosing to use the word relationship. (l. 48) Relationship are generally reserved for the connection between two or more people to suggest a bond of love or hate, and the choice of diction truly emphasizes Moses bond with nature over anyone else.

But as the subject of Moses’s thoughts becomes more melancholy, Jones returns to a matter-of-fact tone, perhaps hinting that Moses doesn’t want to dwell on sadness. The focus shifts to Moses’s family life, where we learn that “his wife knew enough now not to wait for him to come and eat with them.” (ll. 55-56). We learn nothing about his wife or son; the fact that Moses often doesn’t return home at night, but ventures into a field is infinitely more telling about his distant relationship with his family. While most farmers toil impartially at their fields, Moses’s relationship is unusually emotional, the kind of closeness that most people save for others of their kind.

The end of the passage offers yet another shift to a rather reverent tone. Jones employs an interesting metaphor through the use of water. Moses seems to have a particular attraction to water. In fact, he eventually washes his face with rainwater and strips down naked to allow the water to envelop his body (ll. 81-82). Jones is painting Moses as man aware of the four humors, and especially aware of one of the most crucial elements of human life--water. The rainfall symbolically frees Moses of the dirt which he himself had consumed and essentially covered himself with. While he accepts his role as a slave and caters it to his own will during the day, Moses truly wants to be free to experience the world through a new lens. That is the very reason why he would "blame the chains on evenings such as these" (5); he wants to be washed of his bondage, and sitting in the rain allows him to do that.

It’s clear that the nature of Moses’s relationship with the earth he slaves over is complex. Jones clearly depicts Moses as appreciative of the world around him. Ironically, the freedom Moses desires and the shackles that keep him from it have the same source -- nature.

Score: 24/25





Reflection:

My first draft was very rough—it rambled, lacked specific details or textual support, and a clear thesis. I suspect that this was a result of my not reading the prompt well—I didn't take much time trying to understand the nuances of it, just read it through once or twice and started writing, afraid that I'd run out of time. I realize now, having read College Board's benchmark essays, that for the prose passage questions, it's imperative that I work through the text very carefully. I missed out on many details—that Moses was a slave!—that definitely would've improved my essay.

For this second draft, my group took Nihar's original essay as our basis. We then rewrote his thesis, and added paragraphs to develop imagery and tone as our literary techniques. I had struggled to organize my first draft—I tried to subvert the 5 paragraph essay structure, but wasn't sure how. Using the tone shifts to organize our essay definitely helped the writing flow better, and provided a natural way for us to incorporate analysis of tone. Plus, identifying the irony of Moses's situation (being enslaved by nature but also turning to it for emotional release) helped us write a more complex essay.

In future, I will definitely spend more time analyzing the passage I'm given, looking specifically for the binary opposites, the tone shifts, and the author's word choice. I'll develop a more complex thesis that addresses the big picture (what is this passage really about?) instead of narrowly answering the prompt.

Blog #1: Open Question Benchmark Essay

Draft 1:
In Mo Yan's Frog, the narrator Tadpole tells the story of his aunt, Gugu, a doctor during the Communist Revolution. Much of the work revolves around her heading the Party's family-planning committee, which limits each family to one child (even if that child is a girl). As part of her work, Gugu seizes pregnant women and forces women to have abortions.

At first well-loved by everyone in the village, Gugu becomes despised by the women for her total adherence to the law. She aborts babies at any point in the pregnancy, considering her cause lost only when the baby is born. Her cruelty, as perceived by the villagers, is merely Gugu's stubborn loyalty to the party. She's very good at her job, and this keeps her in a position of leadership in the Communist Party, rare for older women.

But even the author seems to tell us that Gugu has gone too far. When Tadpole's wife, Renmei, becomes pregnant with an illegal second child, Gugu roots her out of where she's hiding in her parents' home. She stands in the yard with a loudspeaker and claims that if Renmei isn't produced, she will tear down all of the property of the Wang's neighbors until she gets to their home, which she will tear down last. This is perhaps Gugu's most cruel moment--she could just tear down Renmei's house and be done with it, but she decides to turn the neighbors against the family first. (She actually tears down nearby Chen's ancestral tree, thus creating a profound resentment between the two families that would last for many years to come.) And when Renmei does come out, and receives her abortion procedure, she dies. Gugu apologizes profusely, but she doesn't think that she made a mistake, only that she was unlucky.

Thus, Gugu is presented as a role model of the Chinese Communist Party: she's resilient, headstrong and loyal to the party. Yet through her work she ages immensely, gains weight, and loses her friends. Mo Yan demonstrates that her acts of cruelty, no matter how necessary to her, makes her lose almost everyone around her.

But Gugu's undying loyalty to the Communist Party is a surprise, given that they've treated her so poorly. The Party holds a public shaming event. Gugu's coworker and longtime nemesis Qiuya accuses her (falsely) of adultery with a capitalist, a businessman. Gugu and the man are forced down on a stage and beaten, but Gugu refuses to confess to the false claims. She literally fights, so viciously that several Red Guards struggle to take her down. We learn that no matter how loyal Gugu is to the Party, she still won't sacrifice her honesty and dignity to please party leaders. By the end of the fight, blood streams from Gugu's head where hair has been pulled, and the businessman confesses to the adultery.

Essentially, cruelty in "Frog" serves to show how people act under pressure, how they change when either they are cruelly treated, or they must treat someone with cruelty, a test to see how far people go when they are desperate. The Communist Revolution was a time of great upheaval and poverty, and the people in the village are often vulnerable and confused. Thus, they easily turn against each other and the Party. It's hard to decipher who Mo Yan believes is right--Gugu and her unbending family planning tactics, or the villagers' equally stubborn desire to have male children so that they can pass their family name down. This conflict generates cruelty in both directions and provides insight into the turbulent time period.
Score: 5.5
3*3: 

Section of Text	Subject	Verb	Direct Object	Hero’s Journey	APT & SPECIFIC quotation support. Use MLA style.
First Third (The Ordinary World)	The Party	Tortures	Gugu	Supreme Ordeal	When Gugu’s boyfriend flies to Taiwan and becomes a turncoat, handbills are sent that depict him holding a very attractive woman, essentially showing him as an example of a successful rebel. Gugu’s coworker and longtime nemesis Huang Qiuya seizes the handbill and gives an “icy laugh...with a sinister, smug look.” (Yan 54-50). At a public shaming ritual on the lake, Gugu is wrongfully accused of adultery and dragged onto the stage to be shamed. When she refuses to confess to the allegations, the Red Guards pull her hair to keep her head down— “[shaking] her head like a wild horse tossing its mane. Gugu’s head started to bleed—she still has a pair of coin-sized scars there…” (Yan 86)
Second Third (The Special World)	Gugu	Disciplines	Wang RenMei	Crossing the Threshold	Wang Renmei, the narrator’s wife, hides in her parents’ home after becoming pregnant again illegally (she already has a daughter). Gugu drives to her home with a bullhorn and a tractor and promises that she will tear down all of the houses and the trees surrounding their home until she tears their roof off to make Renmei come out. She turns the Wang’s neighbors against them.
Last Third (The Ordinary World)	Han Dashou	saves	Gugu	Resurrection	The novel is titled “Frog”, and Gugu and her family consistently refuse to eat frogs—in their mind, it’s cruel. At the end, Gugu claims that once at night frogs attached themselves at her and she ran, screaming, until she was saved by Han DaShou, who she later married.

3 Sentence Thesis:
 In Frog by Mo Yan, cruelty explores the effects of cruelty on desperate people, and the extent that people would go to to prove their loyalty to their country and party during the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Because the Communist party attempts to strictly regulate the lives of China’s common people, party members are often driven to behave cruelly in order to keep order. The Communist Party tests Gugu’s loyalty by requiring her to head the family planning committee; she goes to extreme measures to fulfill her duties.

 Yan’s examination of Chinese society illustrates his mixed sympathy and admiration for the diehard members of the Communist party. While the narrator, Tadpole, expresses admiration for his aunt Gugu, it’s clear that the author doesn’t quite agree.

Revision

In Frog, Mo Yan explores the effect of cruelty on desperate villagers in Post-Mao China, and the lengths people go to in order to prove their loyalty to their country and party. Because the Communist party strictly regulates the lives of China’s common people, party members are often driven to behave cruelly in order to keep order. The Communist Party tests Gugu’s loyalty by requiring her to head the family planning committee; she goes to extreme measures to fulfill her duties as a matter of pride.  While the narrator, Tadpole, expresses admiration for his aunt Gugu, Yan’s feelings about the hardline Communists are mixed: his storytelling makes us both pity and respect Gugu. 

At the start of the novel, Gugu and her family refuse to eat frogs, considering it cruel to eat something so close to human nature. (Tadpoles resemble human sperm, frog fetuses resemble human fetuses, and the crying noises of babies resemble a frog’s croaking). Gugu is well-loved, delivering all of the village’s babies. But when Gugu’s boyfriend flies to Taiwan and becomes a turncoat, the Communist party turns against Gugu. At a public shaming ritual on the lake, Gugu is wrongfully accused of adultery and dragged onto the stage to be shamed. When she refuses to confess to the allegations, the Red Guards pull her hair to keep her head down— “[shaking] her head like a wild horse tossing its mane...” (Yan 86). We learn that no matter how loyal Gugu is to the Party, she still won't sacrifice her honesty and dignity to please party leaders. At the same time, we see how ruthlessly the Party treats its own--Gugu is expendable, even if she doesn’t want to believe it. But instead of turning her against the party, Gugu slits her wrists and vows her loyalty to the party in blood. 

When the narrator’s wife, Wang Renmei, hides in her parents’ home after becoming pregnant again illegally (she already has a daughter), Gugu drives to her home with a bullhorn and a tractor and promises that she will tear down the property surrounding them until she tears their roof off to make Renmei come out. “Not just your tree...When it’s down, we’re going to pull down your gate arch, and then your house...” (Yan 150). This is perhaps Gugu's most cruel moment--she could just tear down Renmei's house and be done with it, but she decides to turn the neighbors against the family first. (She actually tears down nearby Chen's ancestral tree, thus creating a profound resentment between the two families that would last for many years to come.) And when Renmei does come out, and receives her abortion procedure, she dies. Gugu apologizes profusely, but she doesn't think that she made a mistake, only that she was unlucky.

Gugu’s cruelty for the Party abounds: she forces all men to be castrated, and even chases a pregnant woman down a river on a boat, only considering her cause lost when a baby is born.  Gugu has become hard-hearted and unsympathetic and quickly loses the people around her.

After she retires, a boy shocks Gugu with a bullfrog. Later, she runs through a swamp and frogs latch onto her— “two attached to her ears like suckling infants nearly took some of the skin...when she pulled them off” (Yan 251). Suddenly, her acts of cruelty catch up to her: what she once protected (the mothers, the babies) now turn against her because she’s mistreated them. She’s eventually saved by Han Dashou, a doll-maker, and she spends the rest of her life making dolls that resemble the fetuses she aborted. Yan shows us that cruelty truly takes its toll on the perpetrators—Gugu spends the rest of her life guilty and forlorn. 

The Communist Revolution was a time of great upheaval and poverty, and the people in the village are often vulnerable and confused. Thus, they easily turned against each other and the Party. It's hard to decipher who Mo Yan believes is right--Gugu and her unbending family planning tactics, or the villagers' equally stubborn desire to have male children so that they can pass their family name down. This conflict generates cruelty in both directions and provides insight into the turbulence of the times.
Score: 8

Reflection
I wrote a first draft in around 45 minutes in response to the 2015 College Board Open Question about cruelty. I received a 5.5/9 for this initial essay (seen above, as Draft 1) primarily because my analysis was not deep enough and I overused plot summary. In addition, I didn't actually notice the part of the prompt about discussing how cruelty functioned in the work as a whole until I was nearly done writing (hence its sudden appearance at the end of my first essay and my lack of a thesis). Having received feedback, I learned to read the prompt more carefully,  to break my essay out of a 5 paragraph structure, and to gather specific quotes. I also learned to cut down on plot summary and create a cohesive three sentence thesis. More effective composition choices are also something I need to work on, but for now I'll focus on improving my content. 

Star Wars/Archetypal Hero Party

For today's Star Wars party, I tried to replicate Rey's hair (the triple buns). I watched a few videos and practiced, but the varying hair lengths made it difficult and hair kept coming out as a result. (Also, the triple buns made driving to school difficult because I kept my head jutted out a little so the buns wouldn't get flattened by my seat). Also, Rey must've worn a lot of hairspray in the movie, because there's no way this style would've held up if I'd sprinted anywhere.

I also wore my red Star Wars Stormtrooper socks, which I wore to the premiere of The Force Awakens in December. 

In addition, I made some Yoda Guacamole, inspired by Pinterest. I purchased some guacamole and tortilla chips at Abuelo's, then shaped the guacamole into the shape of a Yoda head in the morning (so the guacamole wouldn't oxidize and make Yoda look darker than he is). It's hard to see Yoda's head unless you're looking from directly above, however. Then, I surrounded Yoda's head with tortilla chips. I created a tag with Star Wars dingbats and fonts from dafont.com and put it all together in GIMP.