Ruined Thoughts (smile)
Ruined Topics
POETRY
Why one needs poetry in war times
Poetry as a symbol in Ruined
DEFINITION
What does it mean to be ruined?
RAPE as a metaphor for capitalism and neocolonialism, Western Cultures over consumption.
SOBRIETY
Why does Christian value his sobriety? What does the FANTA REPRESENT?
CHARACTER(S)
Character names: Christian, Fortune, Salima or Peace, Mama Nadi, Sophie (symbol of wisdom. Wisdom comes from suffering. Are Sophie and Mama Nadi two aspects of the same character or persona?
What about Salima and Josephine, are they aspects of the same composite character, a woman who is both victim and survivor in warfare? How does she survive? How does she transform the situation into a life which is while not opportune, somewhat bearable? )
SCENE
Scene: Eden turned in on itself. Congo is rich and deadly like the apple (Colton) can change one’s fortune forever
SYMBOLS
Colton—snake or is the snake or temptation greed
Love—how even in the worse situations there is love, there is a place for love and thus a place for hope
Fortune's iron pot.
BLOOD AS sacrifice, blood as cleansing, blood as renewal, blood as hope.
SOLDIER'S BOOT on Salima's chest, on her baby's skull and her comparison of it to something sweet (Nottage 46).
LANGUAGE
We looked at the language of the play and the dialogue. One can look more closely at how what is said doesn't always mirror what is done.
In Class Writing
Students spent a significant time exploring a topic, theirs or one of mine in an extended freewrite. No one wanted to do any collaborative writing (smile). Post your musings here for feedback. This is optional.
OUTLINE from the board
& Cyber-Assignment
1. Find a scholarly article connected to a theme you'd like to explore in your essay or connected to thematically to the play. Use the COA library database. Post a summary of the article here.
Read it and summarize it. When you have finished the summary, compare to the abstract. Where if at all do the two interpretations differ? How so?
Other HOMEWORK Outline continued
I gave a brief overview of the chapter on poetry. Students are to read it and bring in the text Tuesday.
2. Indivisible
3. Revisions (Look for mail from me re: essay revisions).
4. A Reading (Students are to look through their body of work for this semester and be prepared to share an essay next week: Short Fiction, the Novel, Grace Paley.) I shared a student essay, which got an A+.
5. Read Writing about Poems (82)
6. For Tuesday, bring in a thesis sentence you'd like to explore in an essay on Ruined and clear examples and ideas on how you plan to accomplish this task. Be prepared to write for half an hour in class, to finish the essay for Thursday.
We will also explore revision strategies (video).
7. I passed out a handout on Topical Invention. I want students to use one of each type of sentence in this essay on Ruined.
5 comments:
Adetona Adewale
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20 October 2011
Abstraction/ Summarization Comparison Analysis
Well I was searching academic search premier and I found a really cool article called, “Young Iraqis find solace in the symphony” and it is about how an Iraqi girl learns how to play classical music after witnessing a Japanese girl on television playing to the violin. The Iraqi girls name is Fatima and she started playing and learning at age six and by age twelve she was the youngest of the Iraqi national symphony orchestra trainees. She would play to escape the realities of war and find complete peace when performing. Her orchestra had to work around the hatred of anything western to play their music and sometimes they could not simply because they were in a certain western hating area. In addition, they had to contend with curfew because the war was so persistent and long lasting.
The abstract is exactly what it calls itself abstract meaning the abstraction does not delve into the meaty examples that my summarization of the article does because I was told to do a summary not an abstraction and a summary and an abstraction are not one in the same. My summary highlighted events in the article and the abstraction obviously did not because if it had done so that would have been giving too much away. The abstraction just gave you a tiny taste of what you were expected to see in throughout the article. Moreover, the main difference between the summarization and abstraction would have to be the length because summaries are much longer than abstraction because of what they provide the reader or readers.
Adetona Adewale
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20 October 2011
Abstraction/ Summarization Comparison Analysis
Well I was searching academic search premier and I found a really cool article called, “Young Iraqis find solace in the symphony” and it is about how an Iraqi girl learns how to play classical music after witnessing a Japanese girl on television playing to the violin. The Iraqi girls name is Fatima and she started playing and learning at age six and by age twelve she was the youngest of the Iraqi national symphony orchestra trainees. She would play to escape the realities of war and find complete peace when performing. Her orchestra had to work around the hatred of anything western to play their music and sometimes they could not simply play because they were in a certain western hating area. In addition, they had to contend with curfew because the war was so persistent and long lasting.
The abstract is exactly what it calls itself abstract meaning the abstraction does not delve into the meaty examples that my summarization of the article does because I was told to do a summary not an abstraction and a summary and an abstraction are not one in the same. My summary highlighted events in the article and the abstraction obviously did not because if it had done so that would have been giving too much away. The abstraction just gave you a tiny taste of what you were expected to see in throughout the article. Moreover, the main difference between the summarization and abstraction would have to be the length because summaries are much longer than abstractions because of what they provide the reader or readers.
Tia Gangopadhyay
Professor Sabir
English 1B
23 October 2011
"Ruined" Freewrite
I found an article on the sufferings of women in war and their newfound protection under an international humanitarian law. The article delved into the pains women face during warfare, often more than men, simply because of their gender. The sexual violence women suffer, including rape, forced prostitution and indecent assault is gender specific and places women in the center of the conflict. The article was very well written—reflecting on women’s sufferings in war and their role in peace and rebuilding communities after war.
An abstract and a summary are very similar but have a few distinct differences. For instance, a summary tells the overall story with relative details while an abstract tells the general concept of the story. While the abstract I read tells the general concept of women in war, when I read the article and wrote a summary on it, I basically used key points to re-tell the story.
Works Cited
International Committee of the Red Cross. “Women Protected Under International Humanitarian Law.” 11 March 2010. 23 October 2011. .
Nick Malecek
Professor Sabir
English 1B 9:00-10:50am T/Th
24 October 2011
“Ruined” Freewrite
Rape in “Ruined” could be thought of as representative of western society’s rape of African resources. While African women are literally getting raped daily, foreign companies are raping the land for valuable commodities such as diamonds and coltan, a mineral essential to the production of electronic equipment.
The arrogant utilization of Africa’s natural resources has caused substantial detrimental effects for the indigenous people. The foreign companies who take these resources care little about the people, as indicated by this quote from a report published in the “Peace Review”:
While believing that economic growth would increase food security and eventually improve the quality of life for Africans, [the foreign companies] were mainly concerned with the contributions African colonies were making to the economies of the colonizing nations. The effort devoted to economic development projects freed little time or money for improved health, education, and environmental projects in the African nations. (Hoag, 273)
This focus on economic development caused other aspects of life in Africa to decline. The companies profit while the people suffer.
The character Mama from the story carries a large diamond with her that she could easily sell for a great profit. This is an important insight to Mama’s character, because while she possibly could have just sold the diamond and lived her life in comfort for the rest of her life she instead gifted the diamond to Sophie to finance restorative surgery. This contrasts the actions of foreign companies who are active in the theft of African resources. Instead of keeping the benefits of the diamond for herself, Mama selflessly reinvests her wealth back to her people. Conversely, the foreign companies, who obviously do not act in the African people’s best interest, instead rape the African soil and extract all its God-given resources.
Works Cited
Hoag, Heather. "Who should decide the future of Africa's natural resources." Peace Review 15.3 (2003): 273. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 25 Oct. 2011.
Jacqueline Diulio
Professor Sabir
English 1B
20 October 2011
Article Analysis
During my search for an article on the play "Ruined" by Lynn Nottage, I found two summaries of the play that were very informational. While one article tells the real story of these women depicted in the play, the other article gives a scholarly overview. One article tells the story of how Lynn Nottage began writing this play, by visiting the refugee camps in Uganda and Kenya. These stories told by the women in the play were the stories of real refugees Nottage talked in the camps. A Congolese woman named Salima, tells her story of being captured by five soldiers and imprisoned, only to be raped, beaten, and tortured until she was able to bribe her way out of jail. When she returned back to her village she found her husband and two of her four children had been abducted. While this women was telling Nottage the story, Nottage says, “She related her story in such graphic detail that I remember wanting to cry out for her to stop, but I knew that she had a need to be heard" (Gener) These stories helped Nottage to write such a powerful and moving play.
The second article I found was a summary and review of the play. I found this article to be a better fit for my essay only because it supported my idea of Mama Nadi, one of the main characters, to be considered the hero of the play. This article states how “powerful and intense” the play was throughout the entire production (Armstrong). This review gives an accurate feel for the play in that it is for a mature audience only and is very moving and touching to hear the horrific stories told by these women.
Although Lynn did not use the actual stories told by some of these women, she did a great job of telling their stories in a way that was bearable to the audience. Most people cannot even begin to imagine the tragedies these women have suffered. Nottage does an exceptional job of making the people aware of the realities of war and the brutal pain women have suffered due to war. The rape of women is used as a weapon of war on a daily basis and its about time someone shed some light on the pain women go through because of other men’s problems.
Work Cited
Gener, Randy. "In Defense of 'Ruined.'." American Theatre 27.8 (2010): 118-122. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 28 Oct. 2011.
Armstrong, Linda. "'Ruined' is riveting, extraordinary theater." New York Amsterdam News 100.17 (2009): 26-27. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 28 Oct. 2011.
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