Vogel: Discussion Points on Charles Kingsley’s My Winter Gardens (Exam 2, Passage 1)

*how many things is the prompt asking you to do?

Two!: 1) Compare/contrast author’s attitude toward life (easy). 2) analyze use of language in conveying this

*part 1 – what can we say about dude as a young man?

used to want to explore foreign countries; now he’s content to look at the grass on his lawn; thought of a home in England as prison; now thinks of it as a palace; regards his youthful self as foolish (and all youth? (he says desire for adventure “ought to be in all at 21”)), unwholesome, undesirable; one prizes the things that one must do (or looks more favorably upon them); describes wanderlust as tyrannous; what changed him seems to be “heaven’s help” (“the golden lesson of the old Collect” - one must accept one’s earthly lot and desire only the salvation to come)

*part 2 – how does he describe his feelings as a young man?

many contrasting metaphors: prison/palace; dove/eagle who fly/swoop to nest/land & sea. Focus of paragraph could be FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. Also, bison, bear, mustang, big-horn sheep, Blackfoot and Pawnee symbolized exotic lure of other lands

*part 2 – more on how he expresses his seeming bitterness as a young man

using anaphora, rhetorical questions, imagery, epistrophe - lines 12-14: others went ... others rambled (anaphora); why should not I (rhetorical question/epistrophe); imagery of Italian museums, palaces, the Alps

*part 2 – how would you describe the language he uses to describe his attitude as an old (40 years old!!!) man?

much less figurative language when he describes life past 40 (like going from dreams to reality); instead, a list of REAL ailments (can’t jump, sprains, bruises, soiling oneself, catching cold easily, etc); MAKES A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY – makes something good out of something bad. Has taught himself to appreciate the little things close at hand – a nice lawn and creek in the nearby park

*part 2 – more on how he describes his attitude

prose and poetry: what’s great/small is all relative – just gotta be creative. Once you get good, you can make a tiny fly seem more interesting than highly praised and much larger structures like Stonehenge contrasting metaphors (fly and stonehenge)

*misc: concession at beginning of paragraph so he doesn’t appear as a totally uninteresting person; tone is more conversational than preachy (use of “you”, “friend”, “our”, rhetorical questions