Paired Texts

It may be helpful to print out the paired texts.  Highlighting and annotating the passages may aid your paragraph development!

We will be doing two paired text analysis pieces in class this week,so if you are uncomfortable with writing your responses now, then wait until Wednesday.  

There will be graphic organizers to help you. 

Wk. 4: Option A

Use what you have learned from reading these pieces to write a paragraph that provides an analysis of how the theme of family and its blessings and curses is depicted in the two pieces, addressing the writers’ use of style and diction.

As a starting point, you may want to consider what is emphasized, absent, or different in the two texts.

Develop your paragraph by providing textual evidence from both texts.

Use the provided lined paper to compose your response.

 

You must IDENTIFY the grammatical, literary, and syntactical terms (from this sheet in the middle column) WITHIN your paragraph.   Do not simply summarize and quote. Remember that this paragraph is about the writing, not an assessment of the characters' growth throughout the book.

Reading A: “The Secret Life of Bees” excerpt by Sue Monk Kidd (pg. 176)

Reading B: “The People Who Love You When No One Else Will”  by Cecile Gilmer

I wandered back to my room and at on my cot.  Heat radiated from the window.  I considered getting up to turn on the fan but only sat there staring through the panes at the milky-blue sky, a sad, ragged feeling catching hold inside. I could hear music coming from the truck radio, Sam Cooke singing “Another Saturday Night,” then May calling across the yard to Rosaleen, something about getting the sheets off the clothesline.  And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.  I couldn’t go on biding my time like there as no end of it, no end to this summer.  I felt tears spring up.  I would have to come clean.  Whatever happened… well, it would just happen. I went over to the sink and washed my face.  Taking a deep breath, I stuffed my mother’s black Mary picture and her photograph into my pocket and started toward the pink house to find August. I thought we would sit down on the end of her bed, or out in the lawn chairs if the mosquitoes weren’t bad.  I imagined August would say,” What’s on your mind, Lily?  Are we finally gonna have our talk?”  I would pull out the wooden picture and tell her every last thing, and then she would explain about my mother.

When her biological family fell apart, Cecile Gilmer found a new family. She believes the love and kindness these chosen “relatives” gave her allowed her to become an open and loving person. I believe that families are not only blood relatives, but sometimes just people that show up and love you when no one else will. In May 1977, I lived in a Howard Johnson’s motel off of Interstate 10 in Houston. My dad and I shared a room with two double beds and a bathroom way too small for a modest 15-year-old girl and her father. Dad’s second marriage was in trouble and my stepmother had kicked us both out of the house the previous week. Dad had no idea what to do with me. And that’s when my other family showed up. Barbara and Roland Beach took me into their home because their only daughter, Su, my best friend, asked them to. I lived with them for the next seven years. Barb starched my drill team skirts same as Su’s. She made sure I had lunch money, doctors’ appointments, help with homework, Jordache jeans, puka shell necklaces and nightly hugs. Barbara and Roland attended every football game where Su and I marched, every drama performance I was in even when I had no speaking lines. As far as I could tell, for the Beaches, there was no difference between Su and me: I was their daughter, too. When Su and I left for rival colleges, they kept my room the same for the entire four years I attended school. Recently, Barb presented me with an insurance policy they bought when I first moved in with them and had continued to pay on for 23 years. The Beaches knew all about me when they took me in. When I was seven, my mother died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and from then on my father relied on other people to raise his kids. By the time I went to live with the Beaches, I believed that life was entirely unfair and that love was tenuous and untrustworthy. I believed that the only person who would take care of me was me. Without the Beaches, I would have become a bitter, cynical woman. They gave me a home that allowed me to grow and change. They kept me from being paralyzed by my past, and gave me the confidence to open my heart. I believe in family. For me, it wasn’t the family that was there on the day I was born, but the one that was there for me when I was living in a Howard Johnson’s on Interstate 10. Cecile Gilmer has moved 26 times since her birth in San Antonio in 1962. She now lives with her cat and dog in Logan, Utah, where she is an events planner. Gilmer is still close to her friends Su and the Beaches, having recently joined them for a family reunion.

Week 4: Option F Black Like Me

When completing open-ended responses, remember to use RATE.

Prompt:

Going from her “all-white” world into the world with the Boatwrights presented many revelations for Lily. Read this short bit about John Griffin’s experience as a white man AND as an African American man. 

Lee Harper wrote the famous line, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it” in the hugely famous To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960. 

Less than a year earlier, John Howard Griffin, a white journalist, literally walked around in the skin of a Southern African American. For a year, Griffin experienced the South’s African American and white reactions to his skin color, mannerisms, and stereotypes.

At the age of 39, Griffin had already undertaken similar experiments. Once, he became temporarily blind and lived in New Orleans. When offered this new skin pigmentation experiment as a reaction to the alarmingly high suicidal tendencies among the Southern African American population, Griffin jumped on the unique opportunity.

After five days of skin pigmentation and exposure to sun lamps, Griffin was shocked at the results. After looking in the mirror for the first time he wrote, “The completeness of this transformation appalled me. It was unlike anything I had imagined. I became two men, the observing one and the one who panicked, who felt Negroid even into the depths of his entrails. I felt the beginnings of great loneliness, not because I was a Negro, but because the man I had been, the self I knew, was hidden in the flesh of another.”

Having walked through the New Orleans streets and ridden the bus as a white man and an African American man, Griffin experienced a variety of emotions. From the shoe shiner to the very same man who served him coffee, Griffin realized “the real story is the universal story of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men for reasons neither really understands.”

Thanks to his column and his book, Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin opened the world’s eyes to the racism that surrounds us all. 

 Response Requirement:

•       How did this article about John Griffin open your eyes to the experience of racism?

•       Consider this unit title “Cultural Chasms to Cross”—what “chasms” has Lily crossed in her life?

Wk. 4: Option C

Use what you have learned from reading these pieces to write a paragraph that provides an analysis of how the theme of loss is depicted in the two pieces, addressing the writers’ use of style and diction.

As a starting point, you may want to consider what is emphasized, absent, or different in the two texts.

Develop your paragraph by providing textual evidence from both texts.

Use the provided lined paper to compose your response.

 

You must IDENTIFY the grammatical, literary, and syntactical terms (from this sheet in the middle column) WITHIN your paragraph.   Do not simply summarize and quote. Remember that this paragraph is about the writing, not an assessment of the characters' growth throughout the book.

Reading A: excerpt from “The Secret Life of Bees” By: Sue Monk Kidd Pgs. 193

Reading B: “my lost father” By: Lucille Clifton

The only parts of her not submerged were her hands.  They floated, her palms little ragged cups bobbing on the surface, the water weaving in and out of her fingers.  Even now that’s the picture that will me up in the night, not May’s eyes, open and staring, or the stone resting on her like a grave slab.  Her hands. June came thrashing into the water.  When she reached May, she stood beside August, panting, her arms dangling beside her body.  “Oh, May,” she whispered and looked away, squeezing her eyes closed. Glancing towards the bank, I saw Rosaleen standing ankle deep in the river, her whole body shaking. August knelt down in the water and shoved the stone off May’s chest.  Grabbing May by the shoulders,  she pulled her up.  Her body made an awful sucking sound as it broke the surface.  Her head rolled back, and I saw that her mouth partially open and her teeth were rimmed with mud.  River reeds clung to her hair braids.  I looked away.  I knew then.  May was dead. August knew, too, but she put her ear to May’s chest, listening.  After a minute, though, she drew back and pulled May’s head to her breast, and it almost seemed like she wanted May to listen now for HER heart. “We’ve lost her,” August said.  … June and August, sopping wet, stooped on either side of her, while mosquitoes sang in our ears and the river went on about its business, coiling off into the darkness.  I was sure they’d pictured May’s last moments, too, but I did not see the horror on their faces now, just a heartbroken acceptance.  This had been the thing they’d been waiting for half their lives without even realizing it.

see where he moves he leaves a wake of tears see in the path of his going the banners of regret see just about him the cloud of welcome        see him rise see him enter the company of husbands       fathers                 sons

Wk. 4: Option D

Use what you have learned from reading these pieces to write a paragraph that provides an analysis of how the theme of the power of silence is depicted in the two pieces, addressing the writers’ use of style and diction.

As a starting point, you may want to consider what is emphasized, absent, or different in the two texts.

Develop your paragraph by providing textual evidence from both texts.

Use the provided lined paper to compose your response.

 

You must IDENTIFY the grammatical, literary, and syntactical terms (from this sheet in the middle column) WITHIN your paragraph.   Do not simply summarize and quote. Remember that this paragraph is about the writing, not an assessment of the characters' growth throughout the book.

Reading Passage A: “The Secret Life of Bees” By: Sue Monk Kidd Excerpt from pgs. 192, 196, 199

Reading Passage B: I Feel It All By: Leslie Feist

The light swept across the surface, making a spatter of ink gold splotches before it stopped, abruptly.  May lay in the river, just beneath the surface.  Her eyes were open and unblinking, and the skirt of her dress fanned out and swayed in the current. (192) May lay in two feet of water with a huge river stone on top of her chest.  It weighted her whole body, holding it to the bottom.  Looking at her, I thought, She will get up now.  August will roll away the stone, and May will come up for air, and we will go back to the house and get her dry.  I wanted to reach down and touch her, shake her shoulder a little.  She couldn’t have died out here in the river.  That would be impossible. (192) I imagined how May had rolled the rock from the bank out into the river, then lay down, pulling it on top of her.  She had held it tight like a baby, and waited for her lungs to fill.  I wondered if she had flailed and jerked toward the surface at the last second, or did she go without fighting, embracing the rock, letting it up soak up all the pain she felt?  I wondered about the creatures that had swum by while she died. (196) Mostly, I saw the blaze of anguish and love that had so often come into her face. In the end it had burned her up. (199)

I feel it all, I feel it all I feel it all, I feel it all The wings are wide, the wings are wide Wild card in sight, wild card in sight Oh I’ll be the one who'll break my heart I'll be the one to hope Can I know more than I knew before I know more than I knew before I didn't rest, I didn't stop Did we fight or did we talk Oh I’ll be the one who'll break my heart I'll be the one to hope Can I love you more I love you more I don't know what I knew before But now I know I want to win the war No one likes to take a test Sometimes we don't pull or flex Put your weight against the door Kick-drum on the basement floor Stranded in the thought of woods Looking like the winter bird On my head the water pours Cops stream through the open door Fly away Fly away the one who want to make I feel it all I feel it all The wings are wide Wild card in sight, wild card in sight Oh I’ll be the one who'll break my heart I'll be the one who'll break my heart I'll be the one who'll break my heart I'll end it, though you started it The truth, the lies The truth, the lies

Wk. 4: Option E

When completing open-ended responses, remember to use RATE.

Prompt:

Read the following poem and make connections to Secret Life of Bees.

  

4 daughters

Lucille Clifton

i am the sieve*

she strains from

little by little

everyday.

i am the rind**

she is discarding.

i am the riddle

she is trying to answer.

something is moving

in the water.

she is the hook.

i am the line.

*sieve=a strainer used to separate a liquid and a solid

**rind= outer shell or peel of fruit

 Response Requirement:

• Dissect this poem and apply it to Lily’s life.
• Dissect this poem and apply it to August, June, and May’s lives.

Fun!

http://play.magneticpoetry.com/poem/Original/kit/

A Pretty Perfect Open-ended response (in case you're not reading the responses on the blog to compare)

The gun goes off with a bang, and it vibrates throughout the walls in the house, through her frail bones, shaking even her insides. Lily’s mother was dead. The quote is extremely relevant to the first chapter because of its connections to Lily. A beehive is like it’s own little utopia; simply a small world living within a much larger one. The queen plays a similar role to a mother in the hive, just like we might say “Mother Nature” is Earth’s queen (or of course, mother!) The Queen Bee is the one who looks over all the other bees in the hive, like a mother looks over her children. A loving, caring mother is important to all developing living things and their well being. “She would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame. She would tell me this for the first ten thousand years.” Those were Lily’s thoughts on what she’d e doing with her mother if they were reunited together in Heaven. She’s noticed the “queenlessness.” She’s noticed the lack of warm arms to run into.

Lily’s small frame bashed into the wall of the hallway, and she fell, first onto bruised knees, and next onto shaky wrists, like a house of cards falling to pieces. Pictures on the walls seemed to stare, accusing, accusing. When her mother was gone, she was left in the “care” of an abusive father. “My daddy—who I called T. Ray because ‘Daddy’ never fit him…” One of the biggest challenges for Lily that came along with the absence of her mother was dealing with her poor excuse for a father. She had Rosaleen, of course, but how could she truly fill the empty hole in Lily’s life? An abused child, or a child that grows up without genuinely knowing the idea of love, will undoubtedly have severe problems later on in life. Mental problems and disorders, lack of trust, constant emotional pain, and the list goes on. Will Lily really be able to pull through without her mother by her side? Will Rosaleen’s fill-in be enough in the end?