!987 Exam Essay Responses

Question #1

                                                      

          The old and the new, the change of time all making life different from how we know it. In this passage George Eliot expresses her opinions on to how the times have changed leisure. How the way people used to live has now been overwhelmed with all this new rush of life. The curiosty in people that has rised and their wanting to get to know the world more instead of just sitting around as life passed by. She talks about not judging old leisure who had a free conscious and never let anything get in the way of what he wanted to do. Using different tactics she explains how the old used to be and how you can not compare the fast moving leisure of todays day to what used to be at the time when leisure used to be completely diffferent.

            Using things like personification George Eliot gets her description of old leisure across to state her point. She compares old leisure to an old man who does things very relaxed and in his own way. Who is not scared to be blunt about what he does and does not do. She also seems to tie in the image of irresponsibilty and carelessness to the image she is creating and portraying to her audience. She does speak about the difference between the old and the new thoguh which set the tone to the contast in the short passage given here. She is using leisure to explain and kind of show the good and bad sides of leisure as it used to be but it also makes you think of how times are now and how there is no way you can be like things where then. I think its all part of change in life and there is no way to change that.

            Using personification and making leisure a person George Eliot expresses her feelings by contrast of her current life. How she feels maybe things work a little too fast in the mdoern day and we have no real time to get the appropriate time to just sit back and be able to take in life one day at a time. How now we are always on the run or trying to fit way to much into one day. A very interesting piece as to how someone expresses their ideas about change and puts it into a passage with much thought like the one we read for this essay.

Question 2

          In the Grapes of Wrath the world came to know the real story behind the depression in the US. The wrongs that people had to live through and the suffering they all had to encounter. Using an American family with different age groups and relationships I think was one of the aspects that made the audience connect with the story. Also using the stories in detail of what they had to live through in the conditions they lived in and all the bad they had to encounter really influences the reader to think about how these people where really and truly miserable. Wanting to modify the lives these people had and show the world the author had to establish certain connections and this is how she did it.

            When you find a character in the story that you can connect with it really changes your point of view on how you read the story. You don't have to go through the situation that the person is living but you do know what it feels like to be a teen or a girl and how hard it would be to go through the situations the characters are living through. I believe this is what made the Grapes of Wrath a very influential story on young and old alike because there were the connections established from the beginning.

            I think the explicit details of the situations that the family was stuck in also made a big contribution on the connection of the audience in the story. Feeling sympathy and sorrow for another person or people is what bring you more attatched to them and I think the author of this book used that tactic very well when writing this book. Wanting nothing but the best to come out of this situation as well for the family is a sign at attatchment and connection to the book as well. I am sure when someone not aware of the situation who reads this would be willing to have changed it at the time if they could of. Making this a very persuasive tactic.

            This was definetly not a satire story which many authors use when they want change or to make something better but this definetely made the strong connections with the audience to want to change the situation of something so great like the great depression which the family was in. Making and establishing those connections through the authors persuasive manners really made this a great book to connect to and a great example of writing on how to let someone know what you don't like and not only make them become aware but want to take action as well.