In Richard Blanco’s poem “Shaving,” published in 1998, the speaker writes about the act of shaving. Read the poem carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Blanco uses literary elements and techniques to develop the speaker’s complex associations with the ritual of shaving. In your response you should do the following:
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Shaving
I am not shaving, I’m writing about it. And I conjure the most elaborate idea-- how my beard is a creation of silent labor like ocean steam rising to form clouds, or the bloom of spiderwebs each morning; (5) the discrete mystery of how whiskers grow, like the drink roses take from the vase, or the fall of fresh rain, becoming a river, and then rain again, so silently. I think of all these slow and silent forces (10) and how quietly my father’s life passed us by. I think of those mornings, when I am shaving, and remember him in a masquerade of foam, then, as if it was his beard I took the blade to, 15 the memory of him in tiny snips of black whiskers swirling in the drain—dead pieces of the self from the face that never taught me how to shave. His legacy of whiskers that grow like black seeds sown over my cheek and chin, my own flesh. I am not shaving, but I will tell you about the mornings (20) with a full beard and the blade in my hand, when my eyes don’t recognize themselves in a mirror echoed with a hundred faces I have washed and shaved—it is in that split second, when perhaps the roses drink and the clouds form, (25) when perhaps the spider spins and rain transforms, that I most understand the invisibility of life and the intensity of vanishing, like steam at the slick edges of the mirror, without a trace. “Shaving” from City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco, © 1998. |
Analyze the Prompt
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One of the first places students can (and do) go wrong is in failing to analyze the prompt for the command and conquer.
To find the C and C, let's take a look at the prompt again:
Some questions students MUST answer before they begin to write include the following:
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Where Students Go Wrong With the Prompt
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Although students generally understand the poem, the places they go wrong with the prompt generally fall under the heading of "Not fully developing answers to the claim and conquer before launching into the essay."
Some BASIC common issues include...
Students who are having one or more of those issues are pretty much looking at a lower-level score because they don't answer the question. Some HIGHER-LEVEL common issues include...
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The "Never Use These Words" List
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"The Author Uses Diction"
One of the frustrating elements of student sentences like the classic "The author uses diction" is that the student writer thinks that dropping a lit term in the sentence equals analyzing. A simple solution is this: Take away the lit terms. Instead, require students to explain the function of the lit term: what is it DOING? Another element is the vagueness of the word "author," the word "uses," and the word "diction." Uses how? To do what? Another simple solution: Take away the vague words. Instead, require students to NAME the author, DEFINE the use, DESCRIBE the diction--and never lean on passive voice. To that end, I give students the following list of words they're simply not allowed to use, along with some alternatives. |
Instead of...
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Try these!
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Instead of
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Try...
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Just Stop Using These
This link is a great resource of verbs to analyze literature! |
Just Stop Using These Also
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No Passive Voice Verbs
Note: I know you may not be able to eliminate ALL of these...but try. Try very hard. |
No Fake Question Words
For example, you do NOT want to write a sentence like "Blanco shows how he feels about his father because of what he's doing and why he's doing it. No Wordy-Words
Note: Again, I realize you may not be able to eliminate all items, but TRY HARD. You do not want a sentence such as "The author of the words in the lines of the poem by Richard Blanco is using a simile...."when you could simply say, "Richard Blanco compares..." |
The Deliberately Bad Essay
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Overview
The essay that follows is a kind of compilation "hit list" of all the terrible elements of ineffective writing put together in a convenient package. Students will work individually or in groups to identify and rewrite the sentences to make them more effective. NOTE: The sentences appear in essay form mostly so that you can identify the job they're supposed to be doing. They really have to be fixed individually, on a sentence-by-sentence basis, because it's unnecessarily nightmarish to rewrite the whole essay using only these ineffective sentences. TL'dr: Just fix the sentences one by one. Directions for Students
Fix This Essay
In the author’s poem “Shaving,” the uses of diction as well as metaphors is provided by the author in order to show descriptive wording providing in-detail steps to create a complex relationship between shaving and the author’s relationship with his father who has passed. He does this to shows that as bad and negative memories are washed away a happier life can be achieved by people. He also does this to show that life moves forward while our past fades away. In line 4, the author uses a simile to refer to his beard. This literary element demonstrates how the author relates these silent forces with how silently his father’s life passed. A parallel is drawn by the author. Imagery is again used by the author of the poem. He initially does this by comparing said facial hair to processes such as steam becoming clouds. Each of these things are what he considers to be a “creation of silent labor” (Blanco line 3). The author uses tone and enforces the comparison of the 2 similar actions. “Ocean steam” (stanza 1 line 4). He then connects this to his father, showing the similarity. Blanco uses metaphors to say that while he has the blade in his hand he explains when his “eyes don’t recognize themselves” (Richard Blanco line 22, 23) when the mirror is filled with hundreds of faces in split seconds while others vanish and or transform. The climax occurs in the last three lines when the importance of life is understood. The speaker’s descriptive wording of the complex associations made with shaving provides the reader with a more in-depth image and a negative connotation. Due to his metaphors, readers can believe that the reason he understands the reason Blanco is choosing not to shave is that he understands the work that was put into his beard.The author is highlighting the importance of the process that goes into having a beard. A Helpful Checklist
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