zBlogging the Literary Life - AP College English

In Class Essay

What is everyone's plan for the in-class essay on Monday? I was thinking about writing an outline for each of the prompts to be ready for any of them, but that seems like it will be a lot of work. Does anyone have any good ideas on how to prepare yourself for the essay, other than having a very good understanding of the book?

16. Some of the most significant events in literature are often mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. Explain how these sorts of events are the pivotal and vital ones for characters in this work.

17. In some works of literature a character struggles to come to terms with past events. Explain how such a character is found in this work. Explain the nature of the struggle and how the character’s response to the past is a source of meaning in the work.

18. Some leading characters conform to the pattern of life expected of them; others rebel against this pattern. Select a character from this work and demonstrate the nature of the character’s conformity or rebellion and explain how it is important to the theme or some other important aspect of the work as a whole.

Why Listening?

Why does Roth tell Ira's story via Murry, through spoken word? Why is listening so important for Nathan? What makes the actual opening of the ears so alluring?

I think that a lot of it comes from the actual thinking that occurs when one actually listens. Its a basic difference between Ira and Nathan. Ira speaks, he is constantly giving speeches and talking of the progressive party but he never sits down to listen to the other side, whereas Nathan only listens. By listening Nathan gets more of the big picture, he gets the two sides. There comes a kind of greater comprehension, understanding when he listens because he doesn't have to think about anything else but what is being said. He gets lost in the words, lost in thought, and can maybe come to some sort of understanding. I would like to know what other people think about Nathan's mentors and what you think he has learned from their speeches as well as why people think Roth constructed the book the way he did. Thoughts?

Irate Ira: Good guy, bad guy?

So, onto Ira.  Someone brought up in class yesterday that Ira is a good guy, who is unfairly mocked.  I'd like to challenge that definition.  When Ira and Nathan are at Goldstine's house, Nathan hears a lot of Ira's sordid history.  Ira, long ago, had told Nathan that he had been beat up by guys in the army who called him a "Jew bastard" (48).  Nathan and we the readers had felt bad for Ira.  Here's a passage from chapter one:

"Hours later Ira got ambushed in the dark and wound up in the hospital.  At best he could diagnose the pains that began to develop while he was working at the record factory, they were from the damage caused by that savage beating.  Now he was always pulling a muscle or spraining a joint - his ankle, his wrist, his knee, his neck - and often as not from doing virtually nothing, no more than stepping off the bus coming home or reaching across the counter for the sugar bowl in the diner where he went to eat" (49).

From this passage, we all sympathize with Ira.  But then, we learn Ira didn't tell the whole story.  The reason the army men beat up Ira is because he tried to drown one of their comrades and then almost killed another who tried to save him.  Yes, the man, called "Butts" came at Ira with a knife, but then Ira went crazy and tried to kill him, way after the threat was over, and then wouldn't let others save Butts when obviously Butts had learned his lesson.  It's not OK to kill a man just because they wronged you.  Goldstine calls Ira a "crazy fucking homicidal nut" (98).

Later on, in another passage, more is revealed about Ira's dangerous side:  "Ira knew his own nature.  He knew that he was physically way out of scale and that this made him a dangerous man.  He had the rage in him, and the violence, and standing six and a half feet tall, he had the means.  He knew he needed his Ira-tamers - knew he needed all his teachers, knew he needed a kid like you [Nathan] ... But after I Married a Communist appeared, he shed the finishing school education, and he reclaimed the Ira you never saw, who beat the shit out of guys in the army, the Ira who, as a boy starting out on his own, used the shovel he dug with to protect himself against those Italian guys.  Wielded his work tool as a weapon.  His whole life was a struggle not to pick up that shovel.  But after her book, Ira set out to become his own uncorrected first self" (123).

How do you explain these different versions of Ira?  Is he the good, misunderstood, unfairly criticized man we all originally thought him to be?  Or are some of the plights in his life of his own making, and he is not necessarily the hero we thought him to be?  Or, is he a product of his environment, and of the teachers he has had over the years? Is he really his own self?

Contradicting

I think Eve Frame is such a weird character.  She has this intense disgust for Jewish people, like on Page 53 where Murray tells Nathan "It was a sickness, that aversion she had for the Jew who was insufficiently disguised."  However she has no problem with the Jewish people who are actors, or famous, or rich.  She only hates the Jewish people she thinks are "common", the ones who also tend to be her biggest fans.   If she hates Jewish people how can she marry Ira, who is also Jewish?  I just don't why she is so specific on the Jewish people she hates and why she even hates them so much to begin with.