Rowan Dobranski's Blog
Books, words, and anything regarding language!
Category: Uncategorized
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Today in class I focused on the idea of decay in Giovanni’s Room. We began by talking about the description of David’s mother and the word “putrescent,” (10) and how he views her as a sort of zombie. She persists in his life despite her death, haunting him and “ruling” over him as a child.…
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Today we had a test to wrap up our unit on the Harlem Renaissance. We were given a new poem we had never seen before, which was “America” by Claude McKay. Here is a link to the poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44691/america-56d223e1ac025 We had 45 minutes to answer two questions, 1) What does “America” mean to McKay? and…
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We spent class today looking for quotes to support an argument after receiving five prompts to choose from to write our next essay on. I chose the prompt that invited analysis of the message conveyed by the novel regarding dreams, hopes, or idealizations. By the end of the period, I had a pretty decent idea…
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This is another excerpt from my in-class essay on Passing, by Nella Larsen, which I wrote across three class periods. Just for reference, here is my thesis again: Irene’s desire, especially that for Clare, in the novel relates ideas of race and sexuality to authenticity, and conveys the idea that to be authentic to yourself…
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Here is an excerpt from my recent essay on Passing. We were given five prompts to choose from, and I chose to write about Irene’s desire for Clare in relation to race and sexuality. We were given two 45 minute class periods and 20 additional minutes to write our essays, and we were told to…
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I was recently talking about my upcoming English midterm with my father when I had a thought I found rather interesting. I was thinking about how diction can determine how an idea is conveyed in a novel, and whether it comes from the narrator or the character and how that affects the reader’s understanding of…
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We have been reading Passing by Nella Larsen in class recently, and today we had a very insightful discussion. Passing is the story of Irene Redfield, who is a black woman living in New York. Clare Kendry, an old childhood friend, butts her way back into Irene’s life and disrupts many of Irene’s ideas about…
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