vocabulary 15 is due next Monday June 4
In class: finishing up Catcher essay. If you have been absent, you must make it up during school. No take-home work.
Final exam material:
Final Exam
Parker English III Honors DUE FRIDAY JUNE 8
All work must be typed. Two parts: 50 points each
Part
1: college admissions essay. Please choose one of the topics below and write a
response between 475-500 words. You may not go over 500 words. Before starting, please read over the
accompanying advice list.
Option #1. Evaluate a significant experience,
achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its
impact on you.
Note
the key word here: evaluate. You aren't just describing something; the best
essays will explore the complexity of the issue. When you examine the
"impact on you," you need to show the depth of your critical thinking
abilities. Introspection, self-awareness and self-analysis are all important
here. And be careful with essays about the winning touchdown or tie-breaking
goal. These sometimes have an off-putting "look how great I am" tone
and very little self-evaluation.
Option
#2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern
and its importance to you.
Be
careful to keep the "importance to you" at the heart of your essay.
It's easy to get off track with this essay topic and start ranting about global
warming, Darfur, or abortion. The admissions folks want to discover your
character, passions and abilities in the essay; they want more than a political
lecture.
Option
#3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe
that influence.
Be
careful with "describe that
influence." A good essay on this topic does more than
"describe." Dig deep and "analyze." And handle a
"hero" essay with care. Your readers have probably seen a lot of
essays talking about what a great role model Mom or Dad or Sis is. Also realize
that the "influence" of this person doesn't need to be positive.
Option
#4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work
(as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain
that influence.
Here
as in #3, be careful of that word "describe." You should really be
"analyzing" this character or creative work. What makes it so
powerful and influential?
Option
#5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences
adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an
experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college
community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to
you.
Realize
that this question defines "diversity" in broad terms. It's not
specifically about race or ethnicity (although it can be). Ideally, the
admissions folks want every student they admit to contribute to the richness
and breadth of the campus community. How do you contribute?
Part II: analysis
of the short story The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Catherine Ann Porter.
Details: MLA heading, 500 words- typed, of
course-naturally include textual evidence.
Your question: Granny
represents everyone. After all, everyone struggles against loss--the loss of
faith, hope, love, respect, self-esteem, prestige, loyalty, power, money,
mental health, physical health, and even trivial objects such as car keys. The
trick is to persevere. Discuss some of loses Granny Weatherall recollects as
she lies on her death bed and how she coped. In your conclusion, do not forget
her greatest loss.
Nearly all colleges rate application essays
as either important or very important in their admissions process. A poorly
executed essay can cause a stellar student to get rejected. On the flip side,
exceptional application essays can help students with marginal scores get into
the schools of their dreams.
Avoid the List
Many college applicants make the mistake of trying to
include all of their accomplishments and activities in their application
essays. Such essays read like what they are: tedious lists. Other parts of the
application provide plenty of space for you to list extracurricular activities,
so save your lists for the places where they belong.
The most engaging and compelling essays tell a story and
have a clear focus. Through carefully chosen detail, your writing should reveal
your passions and expose your personality. A thoughtful and detailed narration
of a difficult time in your life tells far more about you than a list of
competitions won and honors achieved. Your grades and scores show that you’re
smart. Use your essay to show that you’re thoughtful and mature, that your
personality has depth.
A Touch of Humor (but just a touch)
While it's important to be thoughtful and mature, you
don't want your college application essay to be too heavy. Try to lighten up
the essay with a clever metaphor, a well-placed witticism, or a little
self-deprecating humor. But don't overdo it. The essay that is filled with bad
puns or off-color jokes will often end up in the rejection pile. Also, humor
isn't a substitute for substance. Your primary task is to answer the essay
prompt thoughtfully; the smile you bring to your reader's lips is just a bonus
(and a tear can sometimes be effective too). Many students have been rejected
for failing to take the prompt seriously and writing essays that end up being
more foolish than clever.
Tone, Tone, Tone
Not just humor, but the overall tone of your application
essay is remarkably important. It's also difficult to get right. When you are
asked to write about your accomplishments, those 750 words on how great you are
can make you sound like a braggart. Be careful to balance your pride in your
achievements with humility and generosity towards others. You also want to
avoid sounding like a whiner -- use your essay to show off your skills, not to
explain the injustices that lead to your low math score or failure to graduate
#1 in your class.
Reveal Your Character
Along with the essay, most colleges rate "character
and personal qualities" as extremely important in their admissions
decisions. Your character shows up in three places on the application: the
interview (if you have one), your involvement in extracurricular activities,
and your essay. Of the three, the essay is the most immediate and illuminating
to the admissions folks as they read through thousands of applications.
Remember, colleges aren’t looking solely for straight "A"s and high
SAT scores. They are looking for good citizens for their campus communities.
Mechanics Matter
Grammatical problems, punctuation errors, and spelling
mistakes can hurt your chance of being accepted. When excessive, these errors
are distracting and make your application essay difficult to understand. Even a
few errors, however, can be a strike against you. They show a lack of care and
quality control in your written work, and your success in college partly
depends upon strong writing skills.
If English isn't your greatest strength, seek help. Ask a
favorite teacher to go over the essay with you, or find a friend with strong
editorial skills. If you can't find expert help, there are many on-line essay
services that can provide a careful critique of your writing.
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
By Katherine Anne Porter
(1930)
She flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor
Harry’s pudgy careful fingers and pulled the sheet up to her chin. The brat
ought to be in knee breeches. Doctoring around the country with spectacles on
his nose! “Get along now. Take your schoolbooks and go. There’s nothing wrong
with me.”
Doctor Harry spread a warm paw like a
cushion on her forehead where the forked green vein danced and made her eyelids
twitch. “Now, now, be a good girl, and we’ll have you up in no time.”
“That’s no way to speak to a woman nearly
eighty years old just because she’s down. I’d have you respect your elders,
young man.”
“Well, Missy, excuse me.” Doctor Harry
patted her cheek. “But I’ve got to warn you, haven’t I? You’re a marvel, but
you must be careful or you’re going to be good and sorry.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m going to be. I’m on
my feet now, morally speaking. It’s Cornelia. I had to go to bed to get rid of
her.”
Her bones felt loose, and floated around in
her skin, and Doctor Harry floated like a balloon around the foot of the bed.
He floated and pulled down his waistcoat, and swung his glasses on a cord.
“Well, stay where you are, it certainly can’t hurt you.”
“Get along and doctor your sick,” said
Granny Weatherall. “Leave a well woman alone. I’ll call for you when I want
you…Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk-leg and double
pneumonia? You weren’t even born. Don’t let Cornelia lead you on,” she shouted,
because Doctor Harry appeared to float up to the ceiling and out. “I pay my own
bills, and I don’t throw my money away on nonsense!”
She meant to wave good-by, but it was too
much trouble. Her eyes closed of themselves, it was like a dark curtain drawn
around the bed. The pillow rose and floated under her, pleasant as a hammock in
a light wind. She listened to the leaves rustling outside the window. No,
somebody was swishing newspapers: no, Cornelia and Doctor Harry were whispering
together. She leaped broad awake, thinking they whispered in her ear.
“She was never like this, never like
this!” “Well, what can we expect?” “Yes, eighty years old…”
Well, and what if she was? She still had
ears. It was like Cornelia to whisper around doors. She always kept things secret
in such a public way. She was always being tactful and kind. Cornelia was
dutiful; that was the trouble with her. Dutiful and good: “So good and
dutiful,” said Granny, “that I’d like to spank her.” She saw herself spanking
Cornelia and making a fine job of it.
“What’d you say, mother?”
Granny felt her face tying up in hard knots.
“Can’t a body think, I’d like to know?”
“I thought you might like something.”
“I do. I want a lot of things. First off, go
away and don’t whisper.”
She lay and drowsed, hoping in her sleep
that the children would keep out and let her rest a minute. It had been a long
day. Not that she was tired. It was always pleasant to snatch a minute now and
then. There was always so much to be done, let me see: tomorrow.
Tomorrow was far away and there was nothing
to trouble about. Things were finished somehow when the time came; thank God
there was always a little margin over for peace: then a person could spread out
the plan of life and tuck in the edges orderly. It was good to have everything
clean and folded away, with the hair brushes and tonic bottles sitting straight
on the white, embroidered linen: the day started without fuss and the pantry
shelves laid out with rows of jelly glasses and brown jugs and white stone-china
jars with blue whirligigs and words painted on them: coffee, tea, sugar,
ginger, cinnamon, allspice: and the bronze clock with the lion on top nicely
dusted off. The dust that lion could collect in twenty-four hours! The box in
the attic with all those letters tied up, well, she’d have to go through that
tomorrow. All those letters – George’s letters and John’s letters and her
letters to them both – lying around for the children to find afterwards made
her uneasy. Yes, that would be tomorrow’s business. No use to let them know how
silly she had been once.
While she was rummaging around she found
death in her mind and it felt clammy and unfamiliar. She had spent so much time
preparing for death there was no need for bringing it up again. Let it take
care of itself for now. When she was sixty she had felt very old, finished, and
went around making farewell trips to see her children and grandchildren, with a
secret in her mind: This was the very last of your mother, children! Then she
made her will and came down with a long fever. That was all just a notion like
a lot of other things, but it was lucky too, for she had once and for all got
over the idea of dying for a long time. Now she couldn’t be worried. She hoped
she had better sense now. Her father had lived to be one hundred and two years
old and had drunk a noggin of strong hot toddy on his last birthday. He told
the reporters it was his daily habit, and he owed his long life to that. He had
made quite a scandal and was very pleased about it. She believed she’d just
plague Cornelia a little.
“Cornelia! Cornelia!” No footsteps, but a
sudden hand on her cheek. “Bless you, where have you been?”
“Here, Mother.”
“Well, Cornelia, I want a noggin of hot
toddy.”
“Are you cold, darling?”
“I’m chilly, Cornelia.” Lying in bed stops
the circulation. I must have told you a thousand times.”
Well, she could just hear Cornelia telling
her husband that Mother was getting a little childish and they’d have to humor
her. The thing that most annoyed her was
that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb, and blind. Little hasty
glances and tiny gestures tossed around here and over her head saying, “Don’t
cross her, let her have her way, she’s eighty years old,” and she sitting there
as if she lived in a thin glass cage. Sometimes granny almost made up her mind
to pack up and move back to her own house where nobody could remind her every
minute that she was old. Wait, wait, Cornelia, till your own children whisper
behind your back!
In her day she had kept a better house and
had got more work done. She wasn’t too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty
miles for advice when one of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still
dropped in and talked things over: “Now, Mammy, you’ve a good business head, I
want to know what you think of this?…” Old. Cornelia couldn’t change the
furniture around without asking . Little things, little things! They had been
so sweet when they were little. Granny wished the old days were back again with
the children young and everything to be done over. It had been a hard pull, but
not too much for her. When she thought of all the food she had cooked, and all
the clothes she had cut and sewed, and all the gardens she had made – well, the
children showed it. There they were, made out of her, and they couldn’t get
away from that. Sometimes she wanted to see John again and point to them and
say, Well, I didn’t do so badly, did I? But that would have to wait. That was
for tomorrow. She used to think of him as a man, but now all the children were
older than their father, and he would be a child beside her if she saw him now.
It seemed strange and there was something wrong in the idea. Why, he couldn’t
possibly recognize her. She had fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the
post holes herself and clamping the wires with just a negro boy to help. That
changed a woman. John would be looking for a young woman with a peaked Spanish
comb in her hair and the painted fan. Digging post holes changed a woman.
Riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies was another thing: sitting up nights with
sick horses and sick negroes and sick
children and hardly ever losing one. John, I hardly ever lost one of them! John
would see that in a minute, that would be something he could understand, she
wouldn’t have to explain anything!
It made her feel like rolling up her sleeves
and putting the whole place to rights again. No matter if Cornelia was
determined to be everywhere at once, there were a great many things left undone
on this place. She would start tomorrow and do them. It was good to be strong
enough for everything, even if all you made melted and changed and slipped
under your hands, so that by the time you finished you almost forgot what you
were working for. What was it I set out to do? She asked herself intently, but
she could not remember. A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching across
the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts.
Soon it would be at the near edge of the orchard, and then it was time to go in
and light the lamps. Come in, children, don’t stay out in the night air.
Lighting the lamps had been beautiful. The
children huddled up to her and breathed like little calves waiting at the bars
in the twilight. Their eyes followed the match and watched the flame rise and
settle in a blue curve, then they moved away from her. The lamp was lit, they
didn’t have to be scared and hang on to mother any more. Never, never, never
more. God, for all my life, I thank Thee. Without Thee, my God, I could never
have done it. Hail, Mary, full of grace.
I want you to pick all the fruit this year
and see nothing is wasted. There’s always someone who can use it. Don’t let
good things rot for want of using. You waste life when you waste good food.
Don’t let things get lost. It’s bitter to lose things. Now, don’t let me get to
thinking, not when I’m tired and taking a little nap before supper….
The pillow rose about her shoulders and
pressed against her heart and the memory was being squeezed out of it: oh, push
down the pillow, somebody: it would smother her if she tried to hold it. Such a
fresh breeze blowing and such a green day with no threats in it. But he had not
come, just the same. What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and
set out the white cake for a man and he doesn’t come? She tried to remember.
No, I swear he never harmed me but in that. He never harmed me but in that…and
what if he did? There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and
covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was
planted so carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell when she saw
it. For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against losing
her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the two things were mingled in one
and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her
head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a minute.
Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don’t let
your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You
were kilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it. Her eyelids wavered and let in
streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her eyes. She must get up
and pull the shades down or she’d never sleep. She was in bed again and the
shades were not down. How could that happen? Better turn over, hide from the
light, sleeping in the light gave you nightmares. “Mother, how do you feel
now?” and a stinging wetness on her forehead. But I don’t like having my face
washed in cold water!
Hapsy? George? Lydia? Jimmy? No, Cornelia and her
features were swollen and full of little puddles. “They’re coming, darling,
they’ll all be here soon.” Go wash your face, child, you look funny.
Instead of obeying, Cornelia knelt down and
put her head on the pillow. She seemed to be talking but there was no sound.
“Well, are you tongue-tied? Whose birthday is it? Are you going to give a
party?”
Cornelia’s mouth moved urgently in strange
shapes. “Don’t do that, you bother me, daughter.”
“Oh no, Mother. Oh, no…”
Nonsense. It was
strange about children. They disputed your every word. “No what, Cornelia?”
“Here’s Doctor Harry.”
“I won’t see that boy again. He left just
five minutes ago.”
“That was this morning, Mother. It’s night
now. Here’s the nurse.”
“This is Doctor Harry, Mrs. Weatherall. I
never saw you look so young and happy!”
“Ah, I’ll never be young again – but I’d be
happy if they’d let me lie in peace and get rested.”
She thought she spoke up loudly, but no one
answered. A warm weight on her forehead, a warm bracelet on her wrist, and a
breeze went on whispering, trying to tell her something. A shuffle of leaves in
the everlasting hand of God, He blew on them and they danced and rattled.
“Mother, don’t mind, we’re going to give you a little hypodermic.” “Look here,
daughter, how do ants get in this bed? I saw sugar ants yesterday.” Did you
send for Hapsy too?
It was Hapsy she really wanted. She had to
go a long way back through a great many rooms to find Hapsy standing with a
baby on her arm. She seemed to herself to be Hapsy also, and the baby on
Hapsy’s arm was Hapsy and himself and herself, all at once, and there was no
surprise in the meeting. Then Hapsy melted from within and turned flimsy as
gray gauze and the baby was a gauzy shadow, and Hapsy came up close and said,
“I thought you’d never come,” and looked at her very searchingly and said, “You
haven’t changed a bit!” They leaned forward to kiss, when Cornelia began
whispering from a long way off, “Oh, is there anything you want to tell me? Is
there anything I can do for you?”
Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty
years and she would like to see George. I want you to find George. Find him and
be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my husband just the
same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a
good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I had hoped
for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no,
oh, God, no, there was something else besides the house and the man and the
children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back…
Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening
shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was
unbelievable: Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, the time has come.
When this one was born it should be the
last. The last. It should have been born first, for it was the one she had
truly wanted. Everything came in good time. Nothing left out, left over. She
was strong, in three days she would be as well as ever. Better. A woman needed
milk in her to have her full health.
“Mother, do you hear me?”
“I’ve been telling you – “
“Mother, Father Connolly’s here.”
“I went to Holy Communion only last week.
Tell him I’m not so sinful as all that.”
“Father just wants to speak with you.”
He could speak as much as he pleased. It was
like him to drop in and inquire about her soul as if it were a teething baby,
and then stay on for a cup of tea and a round of cards and gossip. He always
had a funny story of some sort, usually about an Irishman who made his little
mistakes and confessed them, and the point lay in some absurd thing he would
blurt out in the confessional showing his struggles between native piety and
original sin. Granny felt easy about her soul. Cornelia, where are your
manners? Give Father Connolly a chair. She had her secret comfortable
understanding with a few favorite saints who cleared a straight road to God for
her. All as surely signed and sealed as the papers for the new forty acres.
Forever…heirs and assigns forever. Since the day the wedding cake was not cut,
but thrown out and wasted. The whole bottom of the world dropped out, and there
she was blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling
away. His hand had caught her under the breast, she had not fallen, there was
the freshly polished floor with the green rug on it, just as before. He had
cursed like a sailor’s parrot and said, “I’ll kill him for you.” Don’t lay a
hand on him, for my sake leave something to God. “Now, Ellen, you must believe
what I tell you….”
So there was nothing, nothing to worry about
anymore, except sometimes in the night one of the children screamed in a
nightmare, and they both hustled out and hunting for the matches and calling,
“There, wait a minute, here we are!” John, get the doctor now, Hapsy’s time has
come. But there was Hapsy standing by the bed in a white cap. “Cornelia, tell
Hapsy to take off her cap. I can’t see her plain.”
Her eyes opened very wide and the room stood
out like a picture she had seen somewhere. Dark colors with the shadows rising
towards the ceiling in long angles. The tall black dresser gleamed with nothing
on it but John’s picture, enlarged from a little one, with John’s eyes very
black when they should have been blue. You never saw him, so how do you know
how he looked? But the man insisted the copy was perfect, it was very rich and
handsome. For a picture, yes, but it’s not my husband. The table by the bed had
a linen cover and a candle and a crucifix. The light was blue from Cornelia’s
silk lampshades. No sort of light at all, just frippery. You had to live forty
years with kerosene lamps to appreciate honest electricity. She felt very
strong and she saw Doctor Harry with a rosy nimbus around him.
“You look like a saint, Doctor Harry, and I
vow that’s as near as you’ll ever come to it.”
“She’s saying something.”
“I heard you Cornelia. What’s all this
carrying on?”
“Father Connolly’s saying – “
Cornelia’s voice staggered and jumped like a
cart in a bad road. It rounded corners and turned back again and arrived
nowhere. Granny stepped up in the cart very lightly and reached for the reins,
but a man sat beside her and she knew him by his hands, driving the cart. She
did not look in his face, for she knew without seeing, but looked instead down
the road where the trees leaned over and bowed to each other and a thousand
birds were singing a Mass.
She felt like singing too, but she put her hand in the bosom of her dress and
pulled out a rosary, and Father Connolly murmured Latin in a very solemn voice
and tickled her feet. My God, will you stop that nonsense? I’m a married woman.
What if he did run away and leave me to face the priest by myself? I found
another a whole world better. I wouldn’t have exchanged my husband for anybody
except St. Michael himself, and you may tell him that for me with a thank you
in the bargain.
Light flashed on her closed eyelids, and a
deep roaring shook her. Cornelia, is that lightning? I hear thunder. There’s
going to be a storm. Close all the windows. Call the children in… “Mother, here
we are, all of us.” “Is that you Hapsy?” “Oh, no, I’m Lydia We drove as fast as
we could.” Their faces drifted above her, drifted away. The rosary fell out of
her hands and Lydia
put it back. Jimmy tried to help, their hands fumbled together, and granny
closed two fingers around Jimmy’s thumb. Beads wouldn’t do, it must be
something alive. She was so amazed her thoughts ran round and round. So, my
dear Lord, this is my death and I wasn’t even thinking about it. My children
have come to see me die. But I can’t, it’s not time. Oh, I always hated
surprises. I wanted to give Cornelia the amethyst set – Cornelia, you’re to
have the amethyst set, but Hapsy’s to wear it when she wants, and, Doctor
Harry, do shut up. Nobody sent for you. Oh, my dear Lord, do wait a minute. I meant
to do something about the Forty Acres, Jimmy doesn’t need it and Lydia will
later on, with that worthless husband of hers. I meant to finish the alter
cloth and send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia for her dyspepsia. I want
to send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia, Father Connolly, now don’t let me
forget.
Cornelia’s voice made short turns and tilted
over and crashed. “Oh, mother, oh, mother, oh, mother….”
“I’m not going, Cornelia. I’m taken by
surprise. I can’t go.”
You’ll see Hapsy again. What bothered her?
“I thought you’d never come.” Granny made a long journey outward, looking for
Hapsy. What if I don’t find her? What then? Her heart sank down and down, there
was no bottom to death, she couldn’t come to the end of it. The blue light from
Cornelia’s lampshade drew into a tiny point in the center of her brain, it
flickered and winked like an eye, quietly it fluttered and dwindled. Granny
laid curled down within herself, amazed and watchful, staring at the point of
light that was herself; her body was now only a deeper mass of shadow in an
endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and swallow it
up. God, give a sign!
For a second time there was no sign. Again
no bridegroom and the priest in the house. She could not remember any other
sorrow because this grief wiped them all away. Oh, no, there’s nothing more
cruel than this – I’ll never forgive it. She stretched herself with a deep
breath and blew out the light.
