5.1: My Father’s Brain
The story, “My Father’s Brain” by Jonathan Frazen is an interesting story that can be interpreted as depressing as well as demeaning. I would say it is depressing because the whole story is the progress of how Jonathan’s father died. Jonathan’s point of view made it seem as if the process of his father’s death started off long and hard on his father and easy for the family; then it became easy on his father and really hard on the family. With his father losing all of his basic knowledge and becoming a figurative one-year-old made the family take it really hard. Demeaning is a word that doesn’t seem like it would fit in the situation of a death rather than fitting well in the situation of a murder. The reason it is a good word is because the author made it seem at the beginning as if seeing his father was a chore; and now that his father was slowly diminishing, he needed to see his father. This made the author’s father’s death demeaning because it humiliated the author to first have to go and then he wanted to go.
The beginning of the recognition that the author’s father has Alzheimer’s was the plea that senility comes with old age. The stereotype that older people are less understanding of basic things was taken into thought. This is how Jonathan’s family all responded to his father becoming senile. They figured it was his old age coming into effect. It was the worst for Jonathan’s mother. His mother was getting blamed for everything by his father, and was getting annoyed. Her attitude towards her husband became unable to compare with. She became unable to handle the verbal abuse anymore so they ended up putting her husband in a home. This is when they realized he had Alzheimer’s.
The brain of someone who has no mental defects or the ‘normal’ brain is much different than the brain of someone with Alzheimer’s. The brain of someone who has Alzheimer’s acts differently because Alzheimer’s first causes some short term memory loss, and then causes long term memory loss. It was troublesome for Jonathan because his father had already struggled with memory, not even being able to remember Jonathan’s birthday. Finding out he had Alzheimer’s made it condonable that he had never been able to remember the author’s birthday. The brain of a normal person obviously has flaws but is over all able to easily obtain a lot of information.
The author seemed as if toward the end of the story he was very broad but yet still very, very emotional, unlike his mother who was very specific and to the point. In his father’s final hours the author showed so much emotion in the direction of his father. He couldn’t understand why his father just wouldn’t pass away but realized his father’s brain was fighting for all it had. His mother and he were talking with the nurse in the doorway of his father’s hospital room and as the power flickered on, he noticed his father draw his hands toward his throat. As he did that, Jonathan cried, “I think something is happening” (98). His mother and he kissed his father goodbye and his mother stated that she understood when you’re dead you’re really dead. Although that seems broad, the meaning of that phrase is that no matter how much someone has diminished, he’s still not gone until he’s fully gone.
Frazen’s father never liked to show weakness, which is why he was always hard on his wife. He found that death was a sign for weakness which is the reason why he was fighting for his life. Mentioned before, the body will do everything in its will power to stay alive, but with the help of the person dying, the body can last that much longer. To Frazen’s father, dying was worse than suffering. Although the suffering for his father was very minimal, the experience that his family underwent was horrible. But to his father, showing that weakness meant exploiting his family’s pain watching him crumble to next to nothing.
The downward trend that the author’s father and his family went through seemed to be a difficult one to go through. His mother throughout her life had been hospitalized over thirty times, yet until he retired, the author’s father had never been in the hospital. Then upon his retirement, his father became senile and had to soon become hospitalized. They found out that his father had Alzheimer’s Disease and the family didn’t really know what to think. Then it spiraled out. His father became worse, but had less suffering, but the family suffered more.
The story of Jonathan Frazen’s father’s brain is not only a process, but it’s a struggle. To get through the pain of the initial disease had to have been hell for Frazen’s father. The pain in the end for Jonathan and his family could have been rated as even worse. The struggle was how to take care of his father because he could have died at any given time. It also became a difficult process because of his father’s lack of recollection. It became so far that he ended up having the intelligence of a one-year-old. Jonathan Frazen felt the need to tell his story because he finally needed to get it off his chest.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
4.4
4.4
Peter Ho Davies, author of “What You Know,” used many different moves in his story about a teacher and his fight. The teacher’s fight is how he can write a story in the eyes of a student, whose name is Clark, that committed homicide as well as suicide. The writing teacher decided the only way he could write this story through Clark’s eyes, was to put himself in Clark’s shoes. The way he did this for the homicide part, was by attending a gun range and shooting at a target. The series of targets represented the people Clark shot. It was most difficult for the teacher to comprehend how Clark shot himself. It just didn’t seem realistic to him. So the teacher tries, and puts an empty gun in his mouth to imagine and just couldn’t. With these images, Peter Ho Davies tried to create a visual every time the teacher would try something new, and he did it through his descriptions of these scenes.
The language Peter Ho Davies used was an interesting choice. It seemed as if he chose it to seem more educated than a student but not extremely difficult to understand to the common world. He also chose very descriptive words that open one’s eyes. Like the word vicious; having it italicized with the meaning behind it just made the story so much more intense. It kept the reader wanting to read. The way he illustrated his swear words was surprising. He didn’t use them in an angry tone, he would use them in common conversation when the teacher would be talking to himself.
The style Ho Davies used was also very appealing. He would submit arguments between the teacher and the students in order for the reader to see what was going on. When one of the students used the word knoll, the teacher then corrected him saying knell. Providing support for his argument the student convinced the teacher that his saying knoll rather than knell was better word usage. They had the class vote, and they voted in favor of the student. The way he would compare things like shooting and video games was different because you would never think to relate the two, but his style made it perfect.
Peter Ho Davies also used wrong forms of words. He would say dear instead of deer, or the escape goat rather than the scapegoat. He insisted on doing this to act as if he were a student writing a fiction story like the students were required to do for the teacher. As the teacher stated on numerous occasions that the students didn’t care because, “The good ones were bad, and the bad ones were tragic.” So he was making it seem as if he were writing as a student rather than as a professional writer.
I specifically liked the way Ho Davies developed the word suicide throughout the entire story. He at first made it seem as if suicide was boring and didn’t do anything in writing, but later had the teacher putting his life into a student’s to figure out how to write the perfect suicide story. So it was at first mere and by the end, it took over the entire story. The way he developed it though was great. He started off as boring, then completely dropped the subject to talk about homicide, then made it seem as if the kid did it so he could write his paper about suicide. It messed with the teacher’s head. He had no idea what to think anymore.
I was not a huge fan of the whole conflict at the shooting range between the teacher and his neighboring shooter. I felt it was unnecessary to mention and a waste of time to both read and write. It put the story as a whole at a stand-still because it had no relevance. It was like a deleted scene in a movie that just didn’t get deleted. It just made the story so much more confusing than it needed to be.
Overall, although I thought the storyline was a little messed up, Peter Ho Davies used some pretty good moves to progress the story along. His language, style, use of wrong forms of words, and development of the word suicide all helped make the story an easy read and easily understandable. On the other hand, with his insertion of the encounter between the teacher and his neighbor, it was very difficult to keep reading and made some parts confusing when they didn’t need to be. Generally, I like the way Peter Ho Davies writes, he just needs to be careful on losing the reader in confusing context.
Peter Ho Davies, author of “What You Know,” used many different moves in his story about a teacher and his fight. The teacher’s fight is how he can write a story in the eyes of a student, whose name is Clark, that committed homicide as well as suicide. The writing teacher decided the only way he could write this story through Clark’s eyes, was to put himself in Clark’s shoes. The way he did this for the homicide part, was by attending a gun range and shooting at a target. The series of targets represented the people Clark shot. It was most difficult for the teacher to comprehend how Clark shot himself. It just didn’t seem realistic to him. So the teacher tries, and puts an empty gun in his mouth to imagine and just couldn’t. With these images, Peter Ho Davies tried to create a visual every time the teacher would try something new, and he did it through his descriptions of these scenes.
The language Peter Ho Davies used was an interesting choice. It seemed as if he chose it to seem more educated than a student but not extremely difficult to understand to the common world. He also chose very descriptive words that open one’s eyes. Like the word vicious; having it italicized with the meaning behind it just made the story so much more intense. It kept the reader wanting to read. The way he illustrated his swear words was surprising. He didn’t use them in an angry tone, he would use them in common conversation when the teacher would be talking to himself.
The style Ho Davies used was also very appealing. He would submit arguments between the teacher and the students in order for the reader to see what was going on. When one of the students used the word knoll, the teacher then corrected him saying knell. Providing support for his argument the student convinced the teacher that his saying knoll rather than knell was better word usage. They had the class vote, and they voted in favor of the student. The way he would compare things like shooting and video games was different because you would never think to relate the two, but his style made it perfect.
Peter Ho Davies also used wrong forms of words. He would say dear instead of deer, or the escape goat rather than the scapegoat. He insisted on doing this to act as if he were a student writing a fiction story like the students were required to do for the teacher. As the teacher stated on numerous occasions that the students didn’t care because, “The good ones were bad, and the bad ones were tragic.” So he was making it seem as if he were writing as a student rather than as a professional writer.
I specifically liked the way Ho Davies developed the word suicide throughout the entire story. He at first made it seem as if suicide was boring and didn’t do anything in writing, but later had the teacher putting his life into a student’s to figure out how to write the perfect suicide story. So it was at first mere and by the end, it took over the entire story. The way he developed it though was great. He started off as boring, then completely dropped the subject to talk about homicide, then made it seem as if the kid did it so he could write his paper about suicide. It messed with the teacher’s head. He had no idea what to think anymore.
I was not a huge fan of the whole conflict at the shooting range between the teacher and his neighboring shooter. I felt it was unnecessary to mention and a waste of time to both read and write. It put the story as a whole at a stand-still because it had no relevance. It was like a deleted scene in a movie that just didn’t get deleted. It just made the story so much more confusing than it needed to be.
Overall, although I thought the storyline was a little messed up, Peter Ho Davies used some pretty good moves to progress the story along. His language, style, use of wrong forms of words, and development of the word suicide all helped make the story an easy read and easily understandable. On the other hand, with his insertion of the encounter between the teacher and his neighbor, it was very difficult to keep reading and made some parts confusing when they didn’t need to be. Generally, I like the way Peter Ho Davies writes, he just needs to be careful on losing the reader in confusing context.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
4.2
4.2
Peter Ho Davies, author of “What You Know,” used many different moves in his story about a teacher and his fight. The teacher’s fight is how he can write a story in the eyes of a student, whose name is Clark, that committed homicide as well as suicide. The writing teacher decided the only way he could write this story through Clark’s eyes, was to put himself in Clark’s shoes. The way he did this was by attending a gun range and shooting at a target. The target represented the people Clark shot. What was most difficult for the teacher to comprehend was how Clark shot himself. It just didn’t seem realistic. So the teacher put an empty gun in his mouth to imagine and just couldn’t. Ho Davies tried to create a visual every time the teacher would try something new, and he did it through his writing.
The language Peter Ho Davies used was an interesting choice. It seemed as if he chose it to seem more educated than a student but not extremely difficult to understand to the common world. He also chose very descriptive words that open one’s eyes. Like the word vicious; having it italicized with the meaning behind it just made the story so much more intense. It kept the reader wanting to read. The way he illustrated his swear words was surprising. He didn’t use them in an angry tone, he would use them in common conversation when the teacher would be talking to himself.
The style Ho Davies used was also very appealing. He would submit arguments between the teacher and the students in order for the reader to see what was going on. When one of the students used the word knoll, the teacher then corrected him saying knell. Providing support for his argument the student convinced the teacher that his saying knoll rather than knell was better word usage. They had the class vote, and they voted in favor of the student. The way he would compare things like shooting and video games was different because you would never think to relate the two, but his style made it perfect.
Peter Ho Davies also used wrong forms of words. He would say dear instead of deer, or the escape goat rather than the scapegoat. He insisted on doing this to act as if he were a student writing a fiction story like the students were required to do for the teacher. As the teacher stated on numerous occasions that the students didn’t care because, “The good ones were bad, and the bad ones were tragic.” So he was making it seem as if he were writing as a student rather than as a professional writer.
I specifically liked the way Ho Davies developed the word suicide throughout the entire story. He at first made it seem as if suicide was boring and didn’t do anything in writing, but later had the teacher putting his life into a student’s to figure out how to write the perfect suicide story. So it was at first mere and by the end, it took over the entire story. The way he developed it though was great. He started off as boring, then completely dropped the subject to talk about homicide, then made it seem as if the kid did it so he could write his paper about suicide. It messed with the teacher’s head. He had no idea what to think anymore.
I was not a huge fan of the whole conflict at the shooting range between the teacher and his neighboring shooter. I felt it was unnecessary to mention and a waste of time to both read and write. It put the story as a whole at a stand-still because it had no relevance. It was like a deleted scene in a movie that just didn’t get deleted. It just made the story so much more confusing than it needed to be.
Overall, although I thought the storyline was a little messed up, Peter Ho Davies used some pretty good moves to progress the story along. His language, style, use of wrong forms of words, and development of the word suicide all helped make the story an easy read and easily understandable. On the other hand, with his insertion of the encounter between the teacher and his neighbor, it was very difficult to keep reading and made some parts confusing when they didn’t need to be. Generally, I like the way Peter Ho Davies writes, he just needs to be careful on losing the reader in confusing context.
Peter Ho Davies, author of “What You Know,” used many different moves in his story about a teacher and his fight. The teacher’s fight is how he can write a story in the eyes of a student, whose name is Clark, that committed homicide as well as suicide. The writing teacher decided the only way he could write this story through Clark’s eyes, was to put himself in Clark’s shoes. The way he did this was by attending a gun range and shooting at a target. The target represented the people Clark shot. What was most difficult for the teacher to comprehend was how Clark shot himself. It just didn’t seem realistic. So the teacher put an empty gun in his mouth to imagine and just couldn’t. Ho Davies tried to create a visual every time the teacher would try something new, and he did it through his writing.
The language Peter Ho Davies used was an interesting choice. It seemed as if he chose it to seem more educated than a student but not extremely difficult to understand to the common world. He also chose very descriptive words that open one’s eyes. Like the word vicious; having it italicized with the meaning behind it just made the story so much more intense. It kept the reader wanting to read. The way he illustrated his swear words was surprising. He didn’t use them in an angry tone, he would use them in common conversation when the teacher would be talking to himself.
The style Ho Davies used was also very appealing. He would submit arguments between the teacher and the students in order for the reader to see what was going on. When one of the students used the word knoll, the teacher then corrected him saying knell. Providing support for his argument the student convinced the teacher that his saying knoll rather than knell was better word usage. They had the class vote, and they voted in favor of the student. The way he would compare things like shooting and video games was different because you would never think to relate the two, but his style made it perfect.
Peter Ho Davies also used wrong forms of words. He would say dear instead of deer, or the escape goat rather than the scapegoat. He insisted on doing this to act as if he were a student writing a fiction story like the students were required to do for the teacher. As the teacher stated on numerous occasions that the students didn’t care because, “The good ones were bad, and the bad ones were tragic.” So he was making it seem as if he were writing as a student rather than as a professional writer.
I specifically liked the way Ho Davies developed the word suicide throughout the entire story. He at first made it seem as if suicide was boring and didn’t do anything in writing, but later had the teacher putting his life into a student’s to figure out how to write the perfect suicide story. So it was at first mere and by the end, it took over the entire story. The way he developed it though was great. He started off as boring, then completely dropped the subject to talk about homicide, then made it seem as if the kid did it so he could write his paper about suicide. It messed with the teacher’s head. He had no idea what to think anymore.
I was not a huge fan of the whole conflict at the shooting range between the teacher and his neighboring shooter. I felt it was unnecessary to mention and a waste of time to both read and write. It put the story as a whole at a stand-still because it had no relevance. It was like a deleted scene in a movie that just didn’t get deleted. It just made the story so much more confusing than it needed to be.
Overall, although I thought the storyline was a little messed up, Peter Ho Davies used some pretty good moves to progress the story along. His language, style, use of wrong forms of words, and development of the word suicide all helped make the story an easy read and easily understandable. On the other hand, with his insertion of the encounter between the teacher and his neighbor, it was very difficult to keep reading and made some parts confusing when they didn’t need to be. Generally, I like the way Peter Ho Davies writes, he just needs to be careful on losing the reader in confusing context.
4.1
4.1
Peter Ho Davies, the author of, “What You Know,” has many interesting perspectives. First of all, his purpose of writing this is to show how kids are when they are fifteen and how they evolve. Ho Davies wanted to show his belief of the American youth today and find out how others view it. He is trying to provoke that teenagers are more mature than they seem, and they know less than they demonstrate. I think this works because people will really think is this what other people think; and they will really voice their opinions about something the next time. I think Davies’ audience in mind was late twenties early thirties because he wants the middle aged people to see how it will be like raising a kid at that age. I think this all realtes to his past experiences being a ‘bad boy’ in school and not doing what the teacher wanted.
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