Dec. 11 Close Prompt

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/05/080505fa_fact_sedaris?currentPage=4


The narrator is initially opposed to smoking, and his voice shows it. At the beginning of the essay, the reader sees him as a boy who thinks of the smoke as "the smell of neglect," instead of his preferred scent of "anticipation." This is an interesting view for anyone to take, much less a person in his early teens. Sedaris uses this unusual viewpoint as a meaningful detail; after reading it early on and connecting with the narrator, the reader is then disappointed on a personal level when the narrator takes up smoking in his early twenties.



In one paragraph, Sedaris uses the sentence's syntax to draw the reader's attention to the narrator's desire to be his own person."The ones I’d smoked earlier had been Ronnie’s—Pall Malls, I think—and though they tasted no better or worse than I thought they would, I felt that in the name of individuality I should find my own brand, something separate. Something me. " Of course, the irony is that he's joining a detrimental habit shared by millions. For the purposes of the essay, however, Sedaris doesn't come right out and say this. Instead, he follows the above line by listing various brands and what 'types' of people typically go for each brand, effectively destroying any sense of individuality through the use of subtle irony.


Sedaris also uses imagery as the narrator describes how wonderful smoking is: "For people like me, people who twitched and jerked and cried out in tiny voices, cigarettes were a godsend." This line gives the reader a sense of a smoker's self- perceived weakness, accompanied by a need to prop himself up on something like a cigarette. I doubt if most readers would feel a sense of empathy after this; speaking for myself, I found the diction and deliberate hyperbole amusing. It gives additional meaning to its paragraph by showing a smoker's dependancy on cigarettes.

Response to Course Material 5

The close readings of Ceremony have been, to say the least, quite in depth. I can't help but wonder what Silko would say if she knew the extent to which 5th hour literally dissects every sentence. There's a significant part of me that wonders if we're putting too much emphasis on what in reality might have been a subtle, unconscious voice within her head. That voice certainly produced a great work, but one does wonder if Sliko really crafted every line as purposely as an artist would add strokes of shading to a sea. The themes, symbolisms, and other techniques used in the novel are interesting to explore. After that, 5th hour needs to give it a rest for the sake of other classmate's sanity.

Response to Course Material 4

I appreciate the opportunity to read Ceremony. It is full of subtle inflections and deeper meanings, and I hope to get better at recognizing them as the year progresses.

One thing that I'm having a hard time with is all the superstition associated with the Native American culture. I'm a very rational person who likes proof before 'believing' in something; I'm becoming "hard-nosed, literal, precise and accurate," in the words of Tom Miller, a rather brilliant practitioner and instructor in rational psychology. These are great as personal qualities, but they don't help much in analyzing literature from someone else's standpoint when my brain is throwing a running commentary of "there's no proof," "how can someone believe that when this piece of science explicitly contradicts it," and so on. This is one of the reasons why I identify with Rocky, and yet this is not what the author of Ceremony intended, nor is it the point of the book.

I will use this as an opportunity to style-flex, ignoring what I consider irrationality and seeing it instead as a piece of culture unique to a certain viewpoint. Whether or not it's right is not the question. The question here is how the author uses culture in the meanings of a work.