Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Trasformation of Beahs Friends
In this blog I wanted to talk about Beahs friends. In this response I want to talk about the two lines that I believe Beah transformed to not only being alone sometimes but also wanting to be alone to realizing the best thing to do is to stick with his friends or the people that became his friends during these harsh times. The first line is “I would sometimes go for walks by myself in the late evening. The sight of women preparing dinner always reminded me of the times I used to watch my mother cook”. To me this is a happy moment in his childhood. To me his childhood is over because he was forced into the middle of this war that he was also forced to understand it also. He still is very young in this part of the story though. He is recalling this happy moment in his childhood in his time of being alone so to me he seems happy thinking about happy moments. The second line is “being in a group of six boys was not to our advantage. But we needed to stay together because we had a better chance of escaping the day-to-day troubles that we faced”. In this line I think Beah realizes that sticking together was not to their advantage as people but it was the best thing to do as a group. In time of a war like this people do not know what a group of boys this age are going to do. They were feared by some so some people left them alone. Beah realized that the best thing to do was to stick in a group because there is strength in numbers.
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Kyle,
ReplyDeleteLose the filler statements such as "In this blog I wanted to talk about Beahs friends." This is an interesting thing young writers do too much, starting off with the obvious statement. If you can simply go directly into topic rather than saying, "I am going to talk about this...," you have more space to actually talk about your subject.
These statements put too much awareness on the writer, and not the subject the writer is writing on! The same goes with phrases in writing like "I guess" and "I feel." These phrases generally are implied by the act of writing.
As far as the content of your response, it would have been nice for you to show his transformation by using paragraphs. Have content marry the form -- if you are writing about his transformation use one paragraph to show one way he is, and then another paragraph for another way he is, and so on....
You also have to make sure to better contextualize time, place, plot. When you say, "To me this is a happy moment in his childhood," we don't know where he is at in the story, in the war. Your job is to build around that time. What is happening while he is reflecting? You picked a great scene/line because is already undergoing a change, and you could explain this using context.
I also like what your discussing how the group of boys scared those around them while they first thought it helped them. That double-edged sword of being in a group.
Lastly, how do these two different moments go together, in the end? You lead us into it, but you need to develop that statement of wanting to be alone after feeling alone.
Grade: 19/25
Check the class blog for updates, and contact me about any questions. There's only four weeks left, but plenty of time to pass the class.
ReplyDeleteThere's plenty of work to be done, and with no class Thursday, it's imperative that you show some initiative if you do in fact not want to re-take ICW.