CLOSED PROMPT 2: PROSE 2

Exam: 2009 Free-Response Questions
Question 2: "The following selection is the opening of Ann Petry’s 1946 novel, The Street. Read the selection carefully and then write an essay analyzing how Petry establishes Lutie Johnson’s relationship to the urban setting through the use of such literary devices as imagery, personification, selection of detail, and figurative language."

     In The Street, the chilling and forbidding atmosphere of Lutie Johnson's world is established.  Through the personification, selection of detail, and the characterization of the protagonist, Anne Petry illustrates Lutie Johnson's determination to prevent the tormenting environment from hindering her ambitions.

    Anne Petry portrays Lutie's struggles that have resulted from an unpleasant environment by personifying the harsh winds. Petry's chooses verbs that are generally used for humans as seen in fragments like "found all the dirt and dust," and "grabbed their hats." By doing this, Petry is able to bring the wind to life as an antagonist. It seems as if the wind has "wrapped newspaper around their feet" or "pried their scarves from around their necks" on purpose. Petry depicts the wind as consciously creating obstacles for the urban dwellers, including Lutie Johnson. By using figurative language to make the wind almost human-like, Petry portrays the setting as even more ferocious than it would've been otherwise. The wind is portrayed as a character whose forces are set on preventing Lutie from finishing a task as basic as reading a sign. Lutie's ability to accomplish this despite the living, tormenting wind highlights Lutie Johnson's determination against the unforgiving setting.

     By choosing to describe certain elements in the passage in rich detail, Petry depicts the Lutie's perseverance in an unwelcoming situation. Petry spends much of her writing elaborating on the litter scattered around. Instead of simply stating its presence, Anne Petry describes the trash as “theater throwaways, announcements of dances," "old envelopes, newspapers," and "chicken bones and pork-chop bones." This exhibits the importance of not the only the trash, but its variety. This emphasizes the many struggles Lutie Johnson faces. There are many tough obstacles rather than one simple obstacle. These various obstacles are present when Lutie struggles to read the sign but she reads the sign despite them. This illustrates Lutie's struggles and even more so her greater persistence against the urban setting.

     Furthermore, Lutie's unwavering strength in an unfavorable conditions is seen when Petry describes the main character in sharp contrast to the setting. The unforgiving setting is depicted by pedestrians trying to limit their "exposed surface to its [the wind's] violent assault." In contrast, Lutie shivers when "the cold fingers of the wind touched the back of her neck" which shows how unprepared Lutie is for the cold atmosphere. Petry continues by her description as the wind intrudes on Lutie's hair that "had been resting softly and warmly against her skin." The adjectives "softy" and "warmly" elicit comforting and pleasant feelings. Combined with the wind, the chilling weather makes the setting even less ideal for Lutie. However, when Lutie thinks that sign offering her a place of shelter is reasonable, it signals to readers that Lutie is determined to stay and not let the hostile environment cripple her goals.

    Anne Petry develops a determined protagonist, Lutie Johnson, who does all in her willpower to prevent the urban setting from impeding on her goals. Petry employs various writing techniques such as personification, selection of detail, and characterization to successfully do so.

RESPONSE TO COURSE MATERIAL 1

     I've never really understood the point of analyzing literature. I struggled seeing how small minor details or objects could be a symbol adding the profound meaning of a story. Does it matter if the shoes are blue? Is the weather even that important? Did the author actually intend for that or is my english teacher overanalyzing this? I couldn't grasp how everyone could make these overarching connections and I started to blindly follow them. When reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, my thought process changed.

Since proof is nearly impossible, discussions of the writer’s intentions are not especially profitable. Instead let’s restrict ourselves to what he did do and, more important, what we readers can discover in his work.

     Rather than obsessing on the author's intentions and what message they were conveying, I realized that it was more about how I perceived the writing. My focus should've been how the writings and symbols affected my view of the author's message/theme. The book provided a lot of great examples for symbolism, intertextuality, and writing techniques. It made a lot of connections that I recognized but never consciously thought about. How to Read like A Professor was the perfect guide for analyzing literature. It provided for me the opportunity to branch off and explore literature on my own.

     After I grasped how to analyze literature, we read how to read The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing which changed how I viewed writing. I learned that the “pompous style” wasn’t always the way to go. Though I was so used to writing formally and using thesaurus.com way almost religiously, being concise was the way to go. The novel definitely clarified how to properly use punctuation and essay structure.

     Now that we could closely read and write about our analysis on literature, we started to learn about DIDLS in class. Though I already knew much about that, reading “I Hear America Singing” and “I, Too, Sing America” helped solidify that. While it was easy for me to see how everything else could add to a story's meaning/ theme, I couldn't see that in syntax. I could identify short sentences from long ones. I could see if interrupters were used. I recognized where conjunctions or what punctuation marks were used. How did any of that affect the story and even then how did it add to the theme? All of that clicked for me when I read the syntax as style and we did the activities in class. After reading Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," I could see how syntax added to the story. Longer sentences that became shorter sentences toward the end signified the loss of rationality and sanity the narrator felt as he slowly began to feel the weight of the murder. The use of interrupters depicted how the scattered the narrator's mind was and how he was losing grasp on reality. I learned that syntax can affect tone, mood, imagery, and many more techniques which in turn adds to the meaning/theme. I realized that syntax is best looked at when its interconnected with other devices rather than looking at it individually.

    Throughout the course, we worked with literary terms, textbook activities, and close reading. These are extremely helpful for essays and how authors use many devices to get their point across. After reading “A Jury of Her Peers,” “The Bet,” and “A Supermarket in California, I realized how every author can create a unique message with even with similar techniques. The games were very fun and definitely allowed me to bond with other people (Rachel messed up our Quizlet Live game every time so Sean, Jamie, and I had a good laugh over that). The terms and the textbook reading helped illustrate how broad the realm of literature. There are so many types of proses and poems. There's different types of sentence and plot structures. They aided me in understandering how vast and different every author's work is.