Notes

Introduction of both writers and their poems. Thesis: Emily Dickinson's pattern of her poem is the use figurative language to make all abtract concepts concrete, and the special way to reach the climax like climbing stairs, while Naomi Shihab Nye often constructs her poem in chronological order or uses flash back which makes her poem more similar to stories. 

Emily Dickinson-"Hope" is the thing with feather/I dwell in possibility
#1. Use of Figurative language to make abstract concepts more concrete: metaphor & personification
       hope-bird
       (possibility-house)
#2. The way to reach the climax
      Increasing in complexity as it advances until reaching a climax
      The first stanza is most easily for readers to read and comprehend-flow like music
      The second is more meaningful, more dashes, more pause, tine becomes depper
      The third stanza become complicated, difficult to articulate fastly-needs more thoughts
      1+2 have repetition of "and" while 3 only has a "yet"

Naomi Shihab Nye-My father and the figtree/Blood
#1. Chronological order or flash back-like telling a story to readers with her experience and how her understanding of the world change(understand the meaning of figtree)
#2. Free verse-like stories
      does not have certain rhyme, 
      many enjambment allows idea to continue&reinforce idea more strongly&requires reader to continue thinking about the same idea
      alliteration of F

Paper 2 practice essay

Is hope a steady notion which always encourage and lead people's way or is hope vague and never be able to reach? The poem"'Hope' Is a Thing With Feathers" written by Emily Dickinson has left space for readers to reach their own interpretation of the meaning of hope at the end of the poem. 

For the entire poem, Dickinson similized hope as a little bird which sings beautiful tunes in all conditions. In the first stanza, Dickinson depicts the power and inspiration of hope by saying hope as "a thing with feather that perches in the sole", indicating that hope is attracting people's true heart and always influence people's minds. The next two lines "And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all" suggests that hope is continuously encouraging, leading people with the purest tune which is so powerful that does not even need to include any word. However, the second stanza describes the vulnerability of hope. Although hope can lead people with the "sweetest" encouragement when people feel disappointed or perplexed, "Sore" in life such as pain or burden could easily destroyed people's hope, just like the ocean submerge the sound of a bird and even itself. The third stanza, the writer uses simile to leave a mystery for the readers on whether hope is reachable or not. "I've heard it in the chillest land and on the strangest sea" suggests that when suffering difficulties in life like being trapped "in the chillest land and on the strangest sea", people do hear the tune of hope. However, Dickinson uses a "Yet" to transit her tone, saying that the bird, which is hope, never "asked a crumb" or never reaches her at all. Thus, what does the "asked a crumb" mean? Does it mean that hope never ask for any return but just stays selflessly to encourage people? Or does it mean that people can never get closer or achieve their hopes?

The structure also follows the contents of the content of this poem.  The first two stanzas have the same rhymes scheme of "ABCB", implying that they are parallel and talking about the similar, or contrast things-characteristics (strength and vulnerability) of hope. The flow and tone of these two stanzas are steady and light, just like a tune singing by the bird of hope. Nevertheless, the third stanza has a totally different rhyme scheme of "ABBB", indicating that there are emphasizes on these words. " Extremity" and "me" are closely connected and contrasted that the poet personally stated that when she is facing difficulties, hope does not get closer to her. This stanza has a deeper tone , which created a sense for readers to think deeply by themselves about the true meaning of hope. Moreover, the"Yet" also contrasted with five "Ands" in the sentences above, showing that there are a transition which needed to be noticed.

"Nature" is what we see

"Nature" is what  we see  is a relatively short poem with only one stanza. However, the poem can in fact be divided into three parts, each starts with "nature is what we see/hear/know". The rhyme is basically an "ee" sound, which makes the poem more fluent like music. However, the third part has only on "ee" sound at the end, which actually emphasizes this word and indicate the difference of the last part: the previous two parts with at least two "ee" sounds are mostly talking about material substances while the characters in the third part become abstract. The emotion in the first two parts is light, like a young girl dancing in the nature and singing out all the names of substances around her. Nevertheless, in the third part, she seems to stop and think more about the environment, the nature which contains her. 

The poem is comparing material with abstract, minute with significant in the nature. In the first and second parts, hill, afternoon, sea and thunder are  enormous objects in the nature while Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble bee, bobolink and cricket are really insignificant substances. Nevertheless, all these very different notions match perfectly and form the illusory but fine heaven and harmony. In the third part, she contrasts human wisdom with nature's complicity, indicating that although human can see and hear nature, we still cannot fully understand the magnificent nature and how it is constructed. In conclusion, nature, which contains and hugs all kind of contrast and differences, not only produces heaven and melody, but also stays intangible and mysterious for human. 

Curious incident of the technology in the afternoon time

“This novel could never be transformed into a movie since too many mental activities are required to be presented!” When I first read the novel Curious incident of …see, I could not even present its name correctly, how could I image to transform it into a movie? And DRAMA? That is ridiculous! No one can ever design a play to show a journey of a person who has myriad mental struggles and personal narration! Unfortunately, I was asked to read the script later. The chaos of mind, the adventure in the train station, the complicated routes to find mother: how could one be able to stage all these scenes? Just making the protagonist turning around and yelling out numbers? This seemed to be an impossible mission for me. Until, we went to Broadway.

Like a Connecticut farmer who first travelled to the fancy New York City, I was totally attracted by the digital projection and magic cubes. The digital projection was like the brain of Christopher, connecting all the sparks in his mind together and building a map of his experience. From the projection, lighting and sound effect, we could understand the similar but different world from Christopher’s perspective. These effects were really impressive for me, especially the escalator part. Before I could figure out what was going on, the stairs suddenly showed up and carried excited Christopher to have some new experience. Which genius designed all these stages, props, and facilities! The magic cubes, which played a significant role in the play, also surprised me a lot. All those white cubes seemed to be normal seats at first. However, each of them contained a brand new world which was full of mysteries.  

This play offered me a new definition of DRAMA for me, which once seemed to be an old fashion. In fact, a drama could be more technologically and artistically advanced than any other form of performances as long as it has great designers and actors. It is true that human minds are infinite. No matter what we think of, we can make it come true. So is drama.

Poetry themes.

1)families: this poet writes a lot about her warm familie, her experience with them and how reluctant she is to separate with them, which illustrates her love to those family members.

"It is possible we will not meet again on earth. To think this make a throat with dust"

2)details in life: she focuses on many details in life which make her feel happy and impressive using rhetorical languages.

"The coffee was the center of flower"

3)childhood:she expresses that she misses her hometown and the family(grandmother) through detailed descriptions of childhood and rhetorical languages.

"In the evening he sat by my bed weaving folktales like vivid little scarves." 

Stage proposal

'“Then let everyone live, and let the partnership between land and sea, whales and all humankind, also remain.”

This sentence indicates one of the most important themes in this novel: relationship between environment and human, past and future. Throughout the novel, Koro is always trying to find someone who can maintain the relationship and inherit cultural heritage. He regards this as his mission, which is even more important than family. Although Koro seems to be cruel to little Kahu, he represents the type of people who preserves precious tangible and intangible cultural heritage in our world to the top of their bent.

Therefore, for this play, I plan to emphasize the conflict between tradition culture and modern development. Similar to my last play, I will transform the whales as the narrators and gods of the sea. The main plot would be how Kahu learn from Koro’s love to nature and follows his step to become a patron of cultural heritage.

The play will start with Kahu standing in the middle of an art exhibition, and digital projection will display several pictures about old-growth forest with tigers, prairie with elephants, desert with antelopes (or some special culture from various countries, not sure yet)  and eventually stops at the ocean with whales right in front of Kahu. When Kahu is facing the whales and they seem to be communicating, the narrator will explain what Kahu has done these years to protect precious animal from being poaching and rebuild relationship with them. The light would gradually fade out as the narrating continues, and a backdrop with ocean and beach and small village painted on it will come down as the background.

The first scene will then turn back to Kahu’s childhood. At the stage left which is higher than the stage right, and Koro is telling Kahu his story about the ocean; at the stage right, the god of sea is talking about his old human friends. Their descriptions connect together to form the whole story. Koro is concern about the health of the ocean, and the sea god really misses the harmonious days with human. Gradually, Kahu get closer and closer to the ocean, trying to find the god of sea and rebuild the faint connection between human and ocean. Meanwhile, sea god gets more and more desperate because of sea pollution. He feels that human development has abandoned ocean and decides to commit suicide. Kahu of course, take the risk of her life to save the sea gold who has an appearance of whale, and gives him hope to still guard the ocean. After this experience, Kahu feels that it is her fate to communicate and protect gods (animals) of each area, and thus involves herself in all kinds of volunteering program to protect those creatures that have been forgotten or hurt. Moreover, she spreads out this notion around the world to urge others join her and gets huge success. 

Sound effects and lighting will be used a lot to express the mood of the sea god, who should absolutely in blue. I hope that I can figure out an effective way to change the color of costume from light blue to dark blue, representing the emotional change of sea god. Kahu should be in both blue and white to show her connection between ocean and human. 

I hope that this adaptation could somehow inspire people to focus on cultural heritage(I need some suggestions about how to show this) and environment. 

This is an exhibition about what Kahu has done to protect the animals(cultural heritage) in danger. While a narrator is explaining the real information and how Kahu protect them, the digital projection will display all the pictures and ends at the whale. Then the light gradually fades out, leaving Kahu alone facing the whale and recalling her child hood memories.

Costume: white dress

Light: bright

Music: soft

The backdrop contains the ocean at the right, mountain and beach at the left. Koro is telling stories about whales at the stage right and sea gods in telling stories about human at the stage left. 

Costume: Kahu white, Koro brown, sea gods blue

Light: bright like sunshine

Music: soft and light

This scene contains a lot of sound effect including ships, yelling, groaning, thunder...A huge ship should be added on the stage to indicate how it influence the whale and how depressed they are. Kahu and Koko are both worried about the whales and trying to save them.

Light: dark and scary

Regarded as the chief, Kahu not only protect the whales and culture in her village, she also involve in other volunteer work to preserving more animals(culture). She makes presentation everywhere,appealing to the masses to join her.
Light: bright
Music:strong