ENGL 5970, The Coming of Age Narrative

Daily Journal Response Assignment Sheet

Dr. Tarbox

Summer II 2010

Goal

At the beginning of almost every class period, you’ll have 15-20 minutes to write a 1-2 page response to a question regarding the reading for that day or pertaining to a previous class discussion.

Rationale

Writing these responses gives you the opportunity to reflect on the subject matter of the course and to prepare yourself to engage in class discussion. It gives me the chance to respond to your writing on a regular basis.

Evaluation

I will respond to your daily journal responseswith a week of receiving them. At the end of the semester, I will drop the two lowest grades and calculate your journal entry grade based upon the remainder of the responses. For instance, if the class wrote 12 journal entries, I would calculate your grade using the 10 highest grades. You cannot make up missed journal entries.

Sample Journal Questions Taken from a Previous Course

Sample One

I’ve copied two significant passages from the first chapter of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Choose ONE of them and write a short response of 2-3 paragraphs in which you consider why the passage might be significant to the text as a whole (or at least up to Chapter 14).

Choose ONE:

“’Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.’

‘Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.’

Game, my ass. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game all right – I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game” (8).

OR

“Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms…. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river” (16).

Sample Two

In Frank Portman’s King Dork (2006), Tom Henderson (aka King Dork; aka Chi-Mo; aka Moe) is portrayed as a young man who has issues with adult authority. Write a brief response in which you discuss some of the reasons that Tom seems to distrust or to lack respect for adult authority. Be sure to back up your ideas with evidence from the text.

Sample Three

In Fifteen (1956), Cleary’s portrayal of the teenagers’ trip to San Francisco brings up some very interesting issues and ideas. Keep in mind that authors have an entire set of choices in front of them as they write. Cleary purposefully inserted the Chinatown interlude into her text. Why do you feel that she might have made that choice, and what does her text reflect about 1950s attitudes to cultural difference?

Sample Response, Taken from a Previous Course

  1. Some of the most popular books for young children feature animal protagonists (a protagonist is the main character in a story). Why do you think authors use animal protagonists? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?

When I was a child, my favorite books featured animal protagonists. I remember reading Steig’s Dominic, a fantasy novel in which Dominic the dog leaves home in search of adventure and, by taking chances and helping others, ends up happily married and wealthy. Like many kids, I also enjoyed White’s Charlotte’s Web, another fantasy, in which Wilbur the pig learns to cope with life’s realities, such as death and sacrifice, by interacting with a wise spider named Charlotte.

One of the reasons I liked stories that featured animal protagonists was that the idea of talking animals, especially ones that wore clothes and lived in houses, really appealed to me. When I read such a story, I could really lose myself in the fantasy, and I didn’t spend lots of time comparing myself and my situation to that of the animals. On the other hand, I was always a bit annoyed by fairy tales that featured golden-haired, beautiful princesses. My hair was brown, and I was no beauty. When I read about Paddington Bear or Mrs. Frisby, I could escape all of the social conflicts that were part of my life as a scrawny girl growing up poor in a small Midwestern town. The complete fantasy aspect of animal stories seems to be an advantage; these stories enable a child to focus on the plot or the message, without always having to compare him or herself to the main characters. I am sure that this is one compelling reason that so many authors use animal protagonists.

My aunt, who is a middle school teacher, once pointed out what she saw to be a disadvantage to those stories that featured animal protagonists. She felt that they gave children an unrealistic view of animals’ actual behaviors, abilities, and relationships with humans. For the most part, I do understand her main concern – that children might overlook some of the interesting facts about animals or come to believe incorrect things about them. When I attended a model UN Conference a few years back, one of the attendees, a girl from New York City, couldn’t believe it when I told her that a chipmunk was a tiny little animal. She was a big fan of Alvin and the Chipmunks, who thought that the cartoon was realistically drawn – that chipmunks were at least two feet tall! However, I don’t think that she was harmed by this information, and it was certainly good for a laugh.

One of my high school English teachers told me that some authors use animals as protagonists because they feel that readers will respond positively to controversial ideas if they come from a seemingly non-threatening source. She noted that Orwell’s Animal Farm, which is critical of both capitalism and communism, might not have been as popular if the author had chosen humans as the main characters. By using farm animals, Orwell created an allegory that was easier for people to accept. I think that this is what White does with Charlotte’s Web, because if you asked most parents, they probably wouldn’t want their 3rd grader reading a book in which human children sat around talking about death – but they would buy their child a book that dealt with the adventures of a pig and a spider, thinking that it wouldn’t contain such serious subjects or that such subjects would be confined to the animal realm.

Discussion of Sample Response

This student does a good job of answering the question in a concise and interesting manner. Note that the first paragraph provides the reader with background information on the topic and gives the reader a sense for the author’s taste in literature.

The second paragraph addresses a particular advantage of the use of animal protagonists. The author provides an example from her own experience to back up her assertion that animal fantasy allows young readers to escape from their ordinary lives.

The third paragraph introduces a possible disadvantage to the use of animal protagonists. The author provides the opinion of an expert in children’s literature, her aunt, who teaches middle school English. She also illustrates her aunt’s objection with a story from her experience. Even though we get the sense that the author disagrees with her aunt, she doesn’t use inflammatory language.

In the fourth paragraph, the student provides a second example of why using animal protagonists might be a useful strategy for an author. Again, she quotes an expert, this time her high school English teacher, and she puts forward the point that authors might use animals to convey controversial ideas. Her example from Animal Farm is very compelling, and her decision to relate this idea to Charlotte’s Web, adds weight to her argument regarding children’s literature authors.