1/24/2019 0 Comments Janet FrameJanet frame:
Dates Alive- August 28, 1924 - January 29, 2004 Location-Born in Dunedin, New Zealand and stayed there until she was 32 because she was emitted into the local hospital's psychiatric ward to Seacliff Lunatic Asylum and then she moved to Europe based in London, seven years later she moved back to New Zealand and traveled to Europe occasionally and North America. Major Works: Novels:
Major Themes from Janet Frame: Don’t allow your problems or limitations hold you from doing things you want to do No matter how optimistic you are things still may not turn out as expected Don’t always do things that you think are expected of you Novel Choice Plot Summary: My book is called Towards Another Summer. In my book the main character Grace Cleave is an extraordinary author from New Zealand who has a writer's block and is trying to get a book finished by her deadline. One day an interviewer by the name of Philip Thirkettle comes to her house to ask her some questions, usually this wouldn’t be a problem for a regular author, but Grace isn’t regular, she has trouble in social situations like talking to people and getting into conversations. The interview happens and Grace could barley answer a question so Philip invites her to his house to meet his wife Anne, kids and father up north of London. Grace politely accepts the offer and takes the train up to his house a few months later. This may not seem like a huge deal but Grace isn’t good in social situations, so the constant presence of people makes her feel uneasy. When Grace arrives at the train station to be picked up for the awful weekend she keeps thinking in her head “there is still time to escape”. This is because Grace knows she has problems talking to people and she knows that the weekend will be a disaster. Grace arrives and meets the kind family and struggles to have a conversation with them. She eats dinner then goes up to her room so she doesn’t have to talk with the family. The next morning, it's the same thing Grace makes awkward conversation with the family then uses another excuse to get out and unpack her belongings. Since Grace took a very long time in her room after breakfast trying to avoid conversation she went downstairs and said she was going for a walk to try to get out of talking once again. This happens again and again Grace making up excuses to not have to really form a bond with the family so she doesn’t really have to talk with them unless they’re eating or something. Eventually, Grace said that she had to leave early because she was homesick of her typewriter, Philip tried to convince her to stay by offering her to use his but the typewriter isn’t the reason she wants to leave it’s the human interaction, so Philip drives her to the train station and she was off. Analysis of Main Characters: Grace is a complex character with many problems, she is not only a stuck writer, but she is also a social disaster. In the book Grace tries her best to get into the least amount of conversations as possible while at the Thirkettle household. She uses many different excuses throughout the book to not have to engage into discussions. A few examples of this is one time, she said that she was tired and wanted to get some rest the first night of staying at Phillips house to get out of having to be around Philip and Anne. Another excuse used to get out of conversations is that she said she was going for a walk after breakfast and tried to stay out as long as possible until she thought lunch would be ready. Philip and Anne Thirkettle are sort of side characters in the book with no particular characteristics rather than them being there to show the flaws of Grace and how she is socially awkward in situations with people. They were shown and represented as kind hosts to Grace but eventually Grace couldn’t handle the company of people so she left early. Theme: The most clear theme in Towards Another Summer is that you shouldn’t let your self given limitations keep you from doing things that you can do. The theme of not letting your limitations hold you back is present because the whole time she was there she wanted to leave and not be there but she powered through even though she left early she stayed with them even though it was a very awkward experience for her. How did the author’s life influence her writing in this novel? (2-3 paragraphs) Many of Janet Frames pieces of work are very clearly based off of her life and on some of the things and situations she has gone through, this is one of those stories. There are two ways that this book relates to Janets life one clear way that this is related to her is from the mental illness perspective. First of all this relates to both character because Janet was in the hospital for months seeking treatment for a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia. Like how in the story Grace Cleave clearly had some sort of mental issues. Janet had to go through about 200 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. This shows that Grace and Janet are very similar because they both suffered from mental illness if they had it or not. The second more hidden but yet more clear relation between this Grace Cleave and Janet Frame is that this whole story is basically a short memoir, because this basically happened to Janet. She was invited to the house of an journalist, in real life Philip is the writer Geoffrey Moorhouse who has a wife Kiwi and kids. It was assumed that Frame chose to not publish the book while she was still alive to keep the family's privacy safe. Also, just like Frame, Grace also has red curly hair, lives in london, and was born in New Zealand. Works Cited Cooke, Rachel. “Review: Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 28 June 2008, www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/29/fiction.reviews. Crispin, Jessa, and Janet Frame. “'Towards Another Summer,' An Outsider Looks In.” NPR, NPR, 14 May 2009, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104064695. Mantel, Hilary. “Review: Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 July 2008, www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/12/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview15. By: Ty Ty C.
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1/24/2019 4 Comments Robert Louis StevensonAuthor’s Name - Robert Louis Stevenson
Dates Alive - November 13, 1850 - December 3, 1894 Location - Scotland most of his life Major Works: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / Treasure island / Kidnapped / and A Child's Garden of Verses Major Themes: Victorian / Science fiction / Adventure Novel Choice Plot Summary: The overall plot of A Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is from the view of Mr. Utterson a lawyer and friend of Dr. Jekyll and over time he hears many disturbing thing done by a new person named Mr. Hyde. Eventually Mr. Utterson opens a letter from Dr. Jekyll that contains his will and it said to leave everything to Mr. Hyde, with this discovery Mr. Utterson went to see who Mr. Hyde is and later Dr. Jekyll about his will and ask him who Mr. Hyde is and how they know each other. Dr. jekyll assured Mr. Utterson everything was ok and wants to stop talking about it. Mr. Utterson later hears about a brutal murder believed to be done by Mr. Hyde. Mr. Utterson arrives at Dr. Jekyll house and is told again that Dr. Jekyll is done with Mr. Hyde and his business. After the murder of Sir. Danvers Dr, Jekyll came out of seclusion for 2 months due to the disappearance of Mr. Hyde but eventually he went back into seclusion and when Mr. Utterson realized this he went to Dr. Lanyon another good friend who said he was tired of what Jekyll has been doing. Many days later as Mr. Utterson is walking he came across Dr. Jekyll by a window looking sickly and talked with him. After find that Jekyll wasn't feeling good he went to see him to find that he locked himself in his laboratory and was requesting strange chemicals. Eventually Utterson and Jekyll's butlers broke into the lab to find Mr. Hyde dead and a note. Before the end we get some background info about a letter received by Lanyon describing a strange task that Jekyll want Lanyon to do. The last chapter was from the perspective of Jekyll and his take on the situation. You find out that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person and that when Jekyll turns into Hyde due to a chemical he ingested at the beginning of the story he uses that different body to kill or harm for fun without threat of discovery. You later find that the chemicals that are needed to control transformation are running out and he was losing control and in order to save himself and others he kills himself, and that is the body they find. Analysis of Main Characters: Mr. Utterson is a lawyer and friend of Mr. Lanyon and Dr. Jekyll / most of the book is in his perspective Mr. Lanyon is a friend of both utterson and Jekyll / performs a task for Jekyll Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde the main character of the story / a rich doctor who developed a chemical to change forms, later uses it to kill/harm people. Theme: Even good people can be bad / Don't judge a book by its cover How did the author’s life influence his writing in this novel? (2-3 paragraphs) There are many inspirations from Robert Louis Stevenson's life that come through in the book. For example the town he lived in and one of the people in it, as well as the story's his family's nurse told him when he was sick as a child. The city that Robert lived in when he wrote the book was probably a major inspiration because the city had two sides one was a wealthy side that was grand and beautiful and another that was industrial that had many problems with crime and disease. This is represented by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde one being good and the other bad. Within the city there was also a man who became famous for building doors by day and using tricks he put in them to steal from houses at night also represented by Jekyll and Hyde. Another inspiration was all the stories the Stevenson family nurse told him when he was young. While Robert was a child he was very sick for most of it, no believed to be caused by some form of bronchitis or other lung issue, while sick the nurse would tell him stories to keep him entertained. Many of these stories adventure and science fiction as well as victorian writing, sparking his interest in these topics, eventually writing stories such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Treasure Island. Works Cited: “Robert Louis Stevenson.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Teaching Guide.” Scholastic.com, www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plans/teaching-content/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-storia-teaching-guide/. By: Matt P. |