Word with Bowne, or That Dude who Teaches English

Audio version of Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums. Background music: Kevin MacLeod's "Sad Trio." Heartfelt Melodies 2006

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this famous "gothic" short stort in 1892, two years before "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. The stories from women writers offer insight into the plight and loneliness and isolation of women. Such isolation is often equated with madness. Let's take a quick look at this story and a short summary of Gilman's biography.

Walter Bowne reads from the back of his Sorento during Covid this tale of power and domination.  When is the use of force necessary? Was it necessary in this story? 

Let's take an intimate look at the characterization of Tom Buchanano: a vile, powerful, wealthy, hypocritical, and racist character by picking at the words that Fitzgerald uses to describe such a man who existed in numerous manifgestiations in the eugenics of the 1920s and 1930s, leading up to World War II and The Holocaust. 

Eugenics: "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups."

Walter Bowne analyzes the first few pages of The Great Gatsby where Fitzgerald establishes the credibility and morality of the teller of his tale. 

William Bradford, John Smith, Ben Franklin, and Frederick Douglass: all famous for personal narratives; all written for a specific purpose and auidence; consider how the past impacts the present; what can we learn from these writers? Can we believe everything they write? Why not? What type of persona are they crafting? What is the danger of believing what may be fictionalized as being passed off as truth. Think about writing a "conversational essay" where you address a topic from one or more of these narratives in an informal manner: divergent, digressive, pulling in current events and personal story, to create an essay that's interesting, engaging, and insightful. 

Walter Bowne reviews the following with examples from the short fiction unit. 1) Symbol 2) Foreshadowing 3) Conflict: Internal and External Conflict 4) Plot, linear narrative verses nolinear narrative narrative 5) Characterization 6) Setting 7) Theme: think about authorial intention. 8) Tone/ Mood

Walter Bowne describes the Art of the First-Person Literary Narrative. 

Must by:

Arcadia by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3377-arcadia

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This essay is all about effective descrition. Use imagery when writing. Concrete details. Concrete nouns and active verbs. Metaphor. Simile. Analogy.