**Remember - creativity and originality count in order to receive full credit for each response! Your response should not be similar to any others posted by your classmates!**
First, list your novel’s title and the motif on which you will focus. Then, select words, lines, and phrases from the novel that you think project strong images and relate specifically to the chosen motif. Arrange these lines and phrases into a "found" poem that is at least ten lines long.
EXAMPLE: from Spite Fences by Trudy Krisher (1994, Delacorte):
Fist slammed into George Hardy’s face
Glasses slid to his chin
Shattered into a spider’s web.
River of red blood
Running from his nose.
It was the red color of the fence
The red color of the earth
on which I stood
It was red
The color of my life this summer
The color of Kinship.
Alfredo Flores
ResponderEliminarMrs. Gracesqui
World Literature
07 August 2013
Poetic Pondering… Response Five
The chosen book for this summer reading is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and the motif of “Hope among Despair” will be analyzed for this response.
In the dark, in the freezing cold
A thin, treacherous breeze was creeping in
You loose the power of speech
Can a man who's warm
Understand one who's freezing?
There were shouts from the crowd
Bastard. Dog vomit. Dirtbag
The zeks dressed up in all their rags
Lost to the world. Waiting for the foremen to yell
It was still dark
Although a greenish light was brightening in the east
Tsezar gave him a little smile
No, no. Eat yourself, Ivan Denisovich
Timothy Seo, "One Day" by Solzhenitsyn.
ResponderEliminarThe motif I will focus on is the greyness that the reader perceives while reading the detailed description of Shukov's day.
The hammer banged.
Time to get up.
The bunk swayed and trembled
…forty below
“Unbutton your shirts!”
march in rows
in fives! …First!
or: go to the hole
“Hands behind you!”
“Close up!”
Gang 82
was blocking the stove
Mortar. Cinder blocks
“Get the place fixed…!”
“Mortar!” echoes Shukov
while it’s being mixed
Cristina Chiang
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The chosen motif is the cold weather that acts as an obstacle during Shukov’s day. It is a recurring element during his day and at times it is even personified as character.
It was hard starting a day’s work
In the dark, in the freezing cold, with a hungry belly.
But that was all you had to do
It was that or perish.
The cold was fierce
Nowhere to go for warmth
Nothing but bare white snow.
Cold food
Icy cell block
Dressed up in all their rags and tatters
Twenty-seven below, with a mean wind blowing, no shelter, and no hope of a warm!
Can a man who’s warm understand one who’s freezing?
Jae Ha, Cho
ResponderEliminarSo long a letter
The motif is Feminism where Ramatoulaye realizes that she was obeying and depending on her husband and following the societal norms and urges all the other woman to unite and be independent of a man that doesn't appreciate a woman.
She gives up her personality
Her dignity
Becoming a thing in the service of the man
Sunday, I aquiesced under the drop of poison
Betrayed, wasted, served the man
But, She could not betray or divorce
She did not divorce, she was abandoned
Nothing such as Female minister
Only rasing man to power
She is still a femenist
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarRosa Lee
ResponderEliminarAll Quiet on the Western Front-
The selected motif is the Mixture of Emotions, depicting the struggle that Paul endures, and the confusion Paul goes through. He is stuck in the middle of two emotions, he does not know which way to go.
Only eighty strong men are left
but at least the plate is full
men die and their goods are taken
it now seems reasonable
I go home but home isn't home
Mother's in pain, i wish to die with her
This war has corrupted the mindsets
making soldiers follow animal instinct
I strike a french man madly
the guilt pierces me like a shot in the chest
I wish this war to be over, i wish to be quiet and calm.
Claudia Rubio
ResponderEliminarThe House of the Spirits
The chosen motif was poverty. Poverty is shown throughout the book, such as in the peasant of Tres Marias, as is wealth. The contrast between the two is a theme in the story.
Peasants
Poorer than ever
Work without rest
Bare necessities to keep from starving
Shoulder blades were jutting through open wounds
Starving to death
Worst abandonment
Murderous hatred
Wasteland
Rocks and vultures
Endless lines
Solemn poor
Javier Lopez
ResponderEliminarAll Quiet on the Western Front
The chosen motif is the fear that Paul had throughout the war and what he had to see daily.
Our thoughts are devastated,
Bombardment, mines, gas
Men without faces
Men with their skulls blown open
Sharp, downy, dead faces
Nights become quiet
The dead lie unburied
We are lost
Mysterious mist that trails over the dead
Life is at an end.
Maria Jose Ulloa
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The chosen motif is the inhuman treatment given to Shukhov during his day in the labor camp.
A day of work starting at five o'clock in the morning
With nagging pains all over his body
Dreaming of being ill, bad enough to lie in bed
Strictly obeying orders and keeping up to his rank
Chilled to the bone, freezing like a dog
Overworked like a horse and a belly calling out
Guards wouldnt treat him as a human being
The authorities always yelled at him
He was hurt. Punished. Weakened.
Every nerve strained to a breaking point
And the only cure doctors knew was
Putting him in his grave.
Jarnes Mustafa
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The chosen motif is his day in his sentence, which would seem like a horrible day, but is a good day for Ivan.
A Terrible, but Almost a Happy one
The hammer banged reveille.... at 5 o clock as always
Time to get up, the jangling stopped
Escaped Prisoner? Nazi Spies more like
Thank you, citizen warder! I'll never sleep again
Remember the two extra portions of gruel
The blocks weren't at all the same, yet Shukhov made no mistakes
You might at least give him a smoke
The end of an unclouded day, almost a happy one
He had many strokes of luck that day
Just one of the 3653 days of his sentence
He no longer knew if he wanted to be free or not
Because he was glad to be in prison
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
ResponderEliminarMotif: A Horrible Way of Life
S854, three days penalty with work
Eight years of imprisonment
The cold stung, murky fog wrapped around Shukhov and made him cough painfully
Lash out at someone's neck
Shukhov's back was giving him hell
The small of his back ached, and so did the rest of it
That nagging pain had now moved down to his legs
Shukhov's fingers were numb with cold under his worn mittens
His hands, big and cracked and blackened
Just one of the three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days of his sentence
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
ResponderEliminarMotif: Injustice
Nobody else around
Why so late?
Clinic in the morning?
Wheres the pain?
Number of thermometers
Nothing for five whole minutes
No way of getting any rest
Patients got no peace
Work, what horses die of
Thirty-seven point two
I’d go to work if I were you
Left without a word or a nod
But how can a man who’s warm
Understand one who’s freezing
Jose Lorenzo Fermin
ResponderEliminarAll Quiet on The Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque
The motif I chose for the construction of this poem is war.
I am in the front lines
Rationing what little I have left
Batteries fire our own
As I groan and pray
A shell bursts in my ears
Machine guns rattle
As I recover myself
A man has seen so many dead
No more anguish over an individual
His face was quite calm.
Response 3
ResponderEliminarCarlos Gomez
The book I chose is One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the theme I chose was Unjust Treatment.
The hammer banged
At five o’clock as always
I was scared even of the battalion commander
People are getting their throats cut in bed
Who decreed that?
The Soviet government
Even after eight years on general duties
He was no scrounger
His eyes were studying the wall,
The façade of the Power Station
The camp commander had given strict orders
Pick up stragglers and shove them in the hole
You can turn a man upside down,
Inside out, any way you like
Suah An
ResponderEliminarAll Quite on the Western Front
I chose the motif for this response is a horrible war goes through to Paul and his friends.
We have to go up on wiring fatigue
A fair-headed recruit in utter terror
Shells, gas clouds, and flotillas of tanks—shattering, corroding, death
The shelling can be heard distinctly
The shelling is stronger than everything
Cries are heard between the explosions
The earth itself raging
In the branches dead man are hanging
The abdominal and spine cases and double amputations
The stain I am under, the uncertainty, the hunger, the danger
Joan Manuel Reyes
ResponderEliminarSo long a letter by Mariama Bâ
The mitifs chose for this poem are the unfaithfulness and inconsideration of Modou with his wife Ramatoulaye.
A man that was loved by his wife
She, the one who gave him thirty years of her life,
Twelve children of his she gave birth
She honored him since the day that they met
But this was not enough to change Modou’s desire.
Being blinded by the beauty of another girl
Modou chose to leave his family without even tell
How unfaithfull was this man with his wife?
How were his children going to face the problems of life?
The day when Modou got married his wife became a widow
Now his past was burned morally and materially.
Karla Abreu
ResponderEliminarThe House of the Spirits
Theme: Cycle of Evil
The cycle of evil begins
One life is scarred and many are changed
All by a man who is mentally deranged
The lives around him changed by sin
Esteban Trueba began the chain
He did wrong and did not repent
His son his life and all was torment
He did things that produced no gain
Alba was the pure innocent child
She was tortured and hurt
Everything was torn, even her shirt
Esteban Garcia was wild
The cycle began
The cycle must end
The law of karma for no one will bend
It started with one man with another it will end
Ina Yoo
ResponderEliminarOne day in the life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Hopeless
Writing letters now was like throwing stones into a bottomless pool.
They sank without a trace.
Nowadays you had more to say to Kildigs, the Latvian, than to the folks at home.
Work was like a stick.
It had two ends.
The only time a prisoner lives for himself is ten minutes in the morning at breakfast, five minutes over dinner, and five at supper.
What had he to be happy about?
If you were stubborn they broke you
The stars fall down now and then.
He had less and less cause to remember Temgenovo and his home there.
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarRandy Dominguez
ResponderEliminarOne Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Motif : Frosty Temperatures
The habitually cycle happens nearly everyday
Fog coming out from their mouths
As if they're were smoking
Red, pink noses
To the point it seemed like if it was bleeding red
Breakfest, Lunch, and Dinner
Although the time that was given was tiny
Nearly all eyes became the color of spring
Filled with happiness and cheer
Other than that period of time
The blue eyes most of them had
became as if it was just another icy winter
The blue is the color most of them could be defined as
because thats exactly how they felt to be a prisoner
Gabriel Fernandez
ResponderEliminarAll Quiet on the Western Front
Fear
Darkness blacker than the night rush on us
There is no escape.
We lie in utter terror;
We have become instant human animals.
The dark goes mad
With a crash something black bears down on us.
I feel I am suffocating.
A recruit has his hip covered with blood
He whimpers like a child,
Don't go away...
Rosia Bermudez
ResponderEliminarOne day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
Motif: Coldness
Looking at the sun made all of us happy
A smile in our face
Why smile in a place like this?
Fog takes over the sky
Days filled with dark clouds
Violent cold winds blew around
Freezing lips, red nose
How can someone who's warm understand someone who's cold
Dark fog covered me, making me cough painfully
Temperature outside was -17
Got to fight harder
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarAll Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
ResponderEliminarWar is the motif chosen for this response as a general overview of the novel and an analysis of what readers and characters think of it.
Not the mind but the boot brush
Not intelligence but the system
Not freedom but drill
We will kill
Monotonously the lorries sway
Rifles and bombs are aimed
Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire,
Mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades,
Trenches, hospitals, the common grave
Words, words, words,
But they hold the horror of the world
The war has ruined us for everything
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarCamila Hahn Ceara
ResponderEliminarThe chosen book for the summer reading is All Quiet In The Western Front by Erich Remarque. The chosen motif is the brutal impact of war on the soldiers. How war affected them and what they became because of it.
We believe in war
These are words, but what they signify
I believe we are lost
It is senseless
We are insensible, dead men
Able to run and kill
We want to live at any price
We have become wild beasts
Thick-skinned, human animals
All at once it seems to be confused and helpless
We are cut from striving
The war has ruined us forever.
Angelica Ortiz
ResponderEliminarSo long a letter
Motif: Unfaithfulness
His most intimate secret
His abandonment of his first family,
He rejected us.
I measure the extent of Modou’s betrayal.
Was it madness, weakness, irresistible love?
What inner confusion led Modou Fall to marry Binetou?
Heartless or irresistible love?
In loving someone else,
He dares to commit such an act of disavowal.
If you can procreate without loving,
Then I find you despicable.
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarGabriela Fabian
ResponderEliminarSo long a letter
Motif: Death
Faster! Faster! Faster still! My throat is dry.
At last I am at the hospital
A train of tearful people, known and unknown.
There is a rigid lump in my chest.
I don’t know where to look
I don’t know who to speak to.
My mind tells me his still alive.
Even though my heart speaks truth.
Suddenly, I see the endless corridor.
The corridor, which will answer my doubt.
At the end I see a room, in the room a bed.
In the bed there lay Modu, stretched out.
With no more life in him.
Alexandra Rodriguez
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Motif : cold, alone , hope
Kept hoping morning would never come
Some hope of getting warm with a thick scab of ice on the windows
At that very moment the hand of the authority,
Whipped [my] jerkin and blanket away
Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing
The mist of the frosty air took your breath away
Keep strictly to your column on the march
One step to the right or left,
And the guards will open fire
A convicts thoughts are no freer than he is
They always come back to the same place
Just one of the 3563 days of [my] sentence
-Charles Medina -One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich -Motif:despair, loneliness,imprisonment -The thoughts of a prisoner -their not free either -it awakens deeply buried memories -and touches deep chords of guilt and despair -such was a prisoner life -they sank without a trace -the dark watch towers and sharp-tipped poles -blackening the sky -no one would care if a prisoner froze to death -but to them, it was a matter of life or death to them
ResponderEliminarMichael Jeon
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Motif: The Cold. Cold depicts a lot to darkness, coldness, hopelessness. Pointing to Stalin's dictatorship and hardships given to gulag prisoners.
Russia.
Everybody knows it as cold land.
Darkness and cold hits the land.
Light, is perceived as a rarity.
Warmth, is felt only to the rich.
The walls are very old. Dusty. Cold.
Bread, plastics, sandals.
Trust in scrounging abilities.
Survival of the fittest.
Truly, the cold brings down the great.
I can't see the warmth.
I can't see the light.
But I sure do see Alyoshka.
Telling me to see light,
in a place where light is invisible.
Telling me to feel warmth,
when all I'm feeling is pain and ice.
I am stuck in this cold wasteland.
I hate this. I hate this.
There is no light.
But is there?
Laura Santos
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Motif: Working hard
Shukhov never overslept.
He was always up at the call.
Shukhov always got up at once.
Shukhov had a job to do.
Shukhov wiped the floorboards,
Leaving no dry patches.
Shukhov, then was busy with his
Two hundred grams, while the
Rest of Gang 104 made themselves
Comfortable.
Laura Asencio
ResponderEliminarHouse of the Spirits
Motif: Hope
Curled up in the darkness
Visualize the happiest moments
Breathed a sigh of relief
Overcome by fear
Don’t worry
Survive
Keep her thoughts occupied
Stop feeling sorry
Heart knows no limit
Risk her life
Forgive me
Rescue me
Pooled their efforts
Saving my life
Courage
Magdaline Hurtado
ResponderEliminarSo Long a Letter- Mariama Bâ
Motif: separation
A break.
I will not yield to it.
I cannot.
No union of bodies
Without the heart's acceptance.
Tumbled from the
Highest rung....
I find you despicable.
Draw a line.
None of his acts is pure.
None is pure.
I am stripping.
I am stripping myself of
Your love.
Goodbye.
Mabelle Sanchez
ResponderEliminarHouse of the spirits
Motif: Failing Love
Madly in love as an adolescent
Sooner or later she would come to love him
His love for her had grown to become an obsession
But reality was different
She seemed to be flying in an airplane
she was distracted; relaxed and simple, but absent
His exaggerated love for her
Was without doubt the most powerful emotion of his life
She came to fear him, and she came to despise him.
The more distant she became, the more he needed her love.
But He did what He could to get close to her.
She was neither affectionate nor seductive with him.
He was of age when you need help and tenderness to make love
He was old. He vented his rage on her.
He lost control and struck her face.
crying and begging her forgiveness
She never spoke to her husband again.
Emely Taveras
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The motif I chose is the freezing cold when the prisoners are working.
It's cold and I'm sick
I have no choice,
there is no better way to heat myself.
Hard job may heat me
and probably make me forget my pain.
Temperature freezes my fingers
like hard cold stones.
This is the best part of the day
the cold is forgotten
and time flies while working.
Back into the bunks,
along the heat,
all the memories from home come again.
May I resist them one more day
and wait until my sentence is over?
I know I will see my dear family again
for, at least, One Day.
Carmen A. Perez
ResponderEliminarOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Motif: The motif is the cold weather where Shukov often suffered throughout the development of the novel.
There wouldn't be a warm corner for the whole month.
Windows iced over
Freezing lips, red nose
In the dark, in the freezing cold, with a hungry belly
Fingers were numb.
The mist of the frosty air took your breath away.
White cobwebs of frost all along the huge barracks
The cold was fierce.
Where would you get warm in a place like this?
How? Where?
Let your work warm you up, that was the only salvation.
Elvis Sahad, "One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Motifs: Coldness, Loneliness, Work.
ResponderEliminarSurviving the bitter cold
penetrating breezes that goes through your body
sorrounds you on itself, makes you feel empty
embrace the warmth that you see ahead
it's way too far, it's only a dream
separated by a precipice called work
I can't hold myself, It's all cold
The cold stings my body
makes me feel one with it
like it's part of my body
freezing on the inside
the coldest point of the night
can even be seen with my eyes
the keener cold
open the door, let the light come in
and with it, the cold
like twins coming to you
work is your only hope
Surviving the bitter cold.
Marlene Rodriguez
ResponderEliminarThe novel I chose was All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich M. Remarque. The motif i chose for this found poem is animal qualities showing how during the war, the soldiers have to become so numb and insenstive that their qualities turn animal-like.
We reach the zone where the front begins
And become on the instant human animals
Meyer is dead,
Max is dead,
Beyer is dead,
Hammerling is dead .
It is a damnable business,
But what has it to do with us now—we live.
We can not burden ourselves with feelings which are out of place here.
We want to live at any price
We turn into animals when we go up to the line.
By the animal instinct that is awakened in us
We are led and protected.