The following interchange, excerpted from an 1852 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, occurs when two characters who have been living on the Blithedale farm-a community designed to promote an ideal of equality achieved through communal rural living are about to part ways. Read the passage carefully. In a well-written essay, analyze how Hawthorne portrays the narrator's attitude towards Zenobia through the use of literary techniques.
Original Essay:
The narrators attitude towards Zenobia in an 1852 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne is of hate and jealousy. This is shown through the diction and shifts.
The attitude of the narrator's toward Zenobia is of hate and jealousy because he says things like, "she was too powerful." When he says this he shows how he is full of jealousy of how much power Zenobia has and he doesn't. He feels like she has more control over what happens in his life than himself. And that leads him to be jealous of her state of having power and he begins to resent her, which we read about later in he passage. He even comes to a point where he even doubts her as a person, like is she even acting like her true self or is this all fake. He starts to doubt her whole being, showing the depth of his resentment and jealousy.
Also the narrators attitude is revealed through the shifts of his hate/jealousy. In the beginning, in lines 30 and 40, the narrator begins to really resent her and he develops deep jealousy. Then later in lines 56 and 64 he further tells about his resentment towards Zenobia and how her true self should be shown to him because he knows she is acting And then finally in lines 67-80, the narrator finally breaks Zenobia with his clever skills and truly shows how his hate has took over him. He broke Zenobia to fulfill his hate, resentment, and jealousy.
Thus, the narrator's attitude is revealed through the use of diction and shifts. The diction helped show the depth of hate and the shifts helped show how the narrator finally gets all his hate/jealousy out on Zenobia.
Reflection:
Description- I was asked to analyze how the author, Hawthorne, portrays the narrator's attitude towards Zenobia through the use of literary techniques. The complex attitude of the author is being examined.
Scores- I would give myself a 4 because my essay responds to the assigned task. My analysis is not that detailed and sort of oversimplified but my analysis does give some examples to back it up. I use specific lines from the essay instead of paraphrasing. But I should have developed my ideas more because I have inadequate development of my ideas.
My teacher also gave me a 4 because she also thought that I lacked complexity and oversimplified. Thus, I should have developed my ideas more because I have inadequate development of my ideas
My teacher also gave me a 4 because she also thought that I lacked complexity and oversimplified. Thus, I should have developed my ideas more because I have inadequate development of my ideas
Interpretation- The most useful or important thing about this task was it helped me gain experience in analyzing a writer's complex attitude through the use of literary techniques. It can be explained with theory by the way it logically follows the prose essay and interprets the words of the poem. This was similar to the poetry essay we wrote because this essay can also be analyzed by shifts in the essay and it is similar to essays we wrote in AP Comp because we write timed essays in that class too.
Outcome- I learned from this how to analyze the attitude of a writer through their use of literary techniques. I can improve my performance on future tasks by analyzing the poem in depth by really focusing on the complexities the author uses. I can also use the techniques I learned from doing the shift charts and the three-sentence thesis.
