It’s your choice! The details
Choose and read one memoir from the book list.
In your bound “composition” notebook, complete a dialecticaljournal (two-column notes) in which you discuss your author's language and style. ALL entries should be handwritten in blue or black ink.
Include at least twenty quotations in your journal notes. This handout has helpful information with a student-created journal sample to help with your written response.
What is it about the writing that stands out and makes the work distinctive? The important part is that you, the reader, are reading something and then responding with analysis. Have a conversation with the text and with yourself.
Dialectic: “The art or practice of arriving at the truth by using conversation involving question and answer.”
Dialectical Journal: A written conversation with yourself about a piece of literature.
How your Dialectical Journal Should be Formatted
Label the left side of each journal page “CD – Concrete Details” and label the right side of each journal page “CM – Commentary.”
The “CD” side is where you record examples: paraphrase, quotations, notes, direct quotes, summaries, evidence, support, images, etc. from the book. (Always accompany CD with page numbers.)
The “CM” side is where you record corresponding analysis: reactions, ideas, opinions, comments, inferences, insights, questions, etc. from your head.
How to Choose Quotations for Your Dialectical Journal
Select quotations: Choose at least twenty quotations that stand out in the text for their effect; find quotes that are significant to the theme of the work; select quotes that affect you as a reader.
Understand: Take some time to consider each quotation's relevance to both the section of the work in which it is found and its relevance to the work as a whole.
Identify: Now begin writing: note the context of the quotation (where/when does it appear in the text?) and categorize its status as a rhetorical or literary device.
Describe its significance: What makes this quote important? Stand out? What makes you, the reader, take notice? For each quotation, use the D-I-D-L-S method to guide your journal response.
What in the world is D-I-D-L-S??? (so glad you asked!)
How to Analyze Each Quotation’s Language and Style: D-I-D-L-S
Just as each of us has a particular, unique way of presenting ourselves, writers have unique ways of presenting themselves. Our personalities shine through the way we talk, the words we choose, the gestures we use, the clothes we wear. A writer has only language to express his/her personality. The qualities below are the basic elements of a writer's style.
Diction – The author’s choice of words and their connotations.
What words does the author choose? Consider his/her word choice compared to another. Why did the author choose that particular word? What are the connotations of that word choice? What effect do these words have on your mood as a reader? What do they seem to indicate about the author’s tone?
E.g. Author 1: Bill was unintelligent. (relatively neutral, as far as lack of intelligence goes)
E.g. Author 2: Bill was a zipperhead.(less of a low IQ, more like someone who acts like an idiot)
Images – The use of descriptions that appeal to sensory experience.
What images does the author use? What does he/she focus on in a sensory way? The kinds of images the author puts in or leaves out reflect his/her style? Are they vibrant? Prominent? Plain? What effect do these images have on your mood as a reader? What do they seem to indicate about the author’s tone? NOTE: Images differ from details in the degree to which they appeal to the senses.
Details – Facts that are included or those that are omitted.
What details are does the author choose to include? What do they imply? What does the author choose to exclude? What are the connotations of their choice of details? What effect do these included and excluded details have on your mood as a reader? What do these included and excluded details seem to indicate about the author’s tone? PLEASE NOTE: Details are facts or fact-lets. They differ from images in that they don’t have a strong sensory appeal.
E.g. An author describing a battlefield might include details about the stench of rotting bodies or he might not.
Language – Characteristics of the body of words used; terms like slang, formal, clinical, scholarly, and jargon denote language.
What is the overall impression of the language the author uses? Does it reflect education? A particular profession? Intelligence? Is it plain? Ornate? Simple? Clear? Figurative? Poetic? What effect does language have on your mood as a reader? What does language seem to indicate about the author’s tone?
E.g. This is the step I’m most apt to skip.
Sentence Structure – The fashion in which the sentences are constructed.
What are the sentences like? Are they simple with one or two clauses? Do they have multiple phrases? Are they choppy? Flowing? Sinuous like a snake? Is there antithesis, chiasmus, parallel construction? What emotional impression do they leave? If we are talking about poetry, what is the meter? Is there a rhyme scheme? What effect do these structures have on your mood as a reader? What do these structures to indicate about the author’s tone? PLEASE NOTE: Short = emotional or assertive; longer = reasonable or scholarly.
How Your Dialectical Journal will be Assessed
A = Detailed, meaningful passages, plot and quote selections; thoughtful interpretation and commentary about the text; includes comments about literary elements (like theme, diction, imagery, syntax, symbolism, etc.) and how these elements contribute to the meaning of the text; raises many thought-provoking, insightful observations; coverage of text is complete and thorough; journal is neat, organized and readable; student has followed ALL directions in the creation/organization of the journal.
B = Less detailed, but good selections; some intelligent commentary about the text; includes some comments about literary elements (like theme, diction, imagery, syntax, symbolism, etc.) but less than how these elements contribute to the meaning of the text; raises some thought-provoking, insightful observations; coverage of text is complete and thorough; journal is neat, organized and readable; student has followed ALL directions in the creation/organization of the journal.
C = A few good details about the text; most of the commentary is vague, unsupported or plot summary/paraphrase; some listing of literary elements, but perhaps inadequate discussion; raises few or obvious observations; addresses most of the reading assignment, but not very thoroughly; journal is relatively neat; student has perhaps not followed all directions in organizing and/or formatting the journal.
D = Hardly any good details from the text; all notes are plot summary or paraphrase; few literary elements, virtually no discussion on meaning; no good observations; limited coverage of text/too short; did not follow directions; difficult to read/follow.
F = No dialectical journal completed on day checked or collected.
Dialectical Journal Student Sample
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter 1 (p. 7) IMAGERY“…what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” / I found this sentence thought provoking and an interesting use of imagery. By using strong visual imagery, Fitzgerald allowed multiple interpretations of this sentence. “Foul dust” could possibly relate to laziness since that is the reason why dust exists, a lack of motivation to clean and tidy a room or place. Dust also suggests an idea of aged existence. “In the wake of his dreams” could allude to a funeral, which is possibly a harbinger for a death in the story of a main character. “Abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men” is a strong sentence to say “I don’t care.” The use of “abortive” could also relate to the sudden and unexpected death of a character.
Chapter 1 (p.10) DETAILS
“My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.” / Nick Carraway, a man from a prominent family, will not shame his family by living a “bad” life; he must make friends with the rich and become popular, which is the great American Dream. Under normal circumstances, one would not buy a housethat is an eye-sore, but the proximity to the affluent aids the decision. Pride is also present in the American Dream, and Nick can say that he lives with millionaires. In addition, Nick is new to New York, and living by millionaires is a great start to becoming a well-known man. The usage ofthe dash was very effective and emphasized the “privileges” Nick has compared to others. However, this urge to become popular with an upper class is destructive, for there is no limit to how popular one can be, so the hopes and dreams of people searching for an easy life can only be hopes and dreams.
Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir … Doris Kearns Goodwin
When historian Goodwin was six years old, her father taught her how to keep score for "their" team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. While this activity forged a lifelong bond between father and daughter, her mother formed an equally strong relationship with her through the shared love of reading. Goodwin recounts some wonderful stories in this coming-of-age tale about both her family and an era when baseball truly was the national pastime that brought whole communities together. From details of specific games to descriptions of players, including Jackie Robinson, a great deal of the narrative centers on the sport. Between games and seasons, Goodwin relates the impact of pivotal historical events, such as the Rosenberg trial. Her end of innocence follows with the destruction of Ebbets Field, her mother's death, and her father's lapse into despair. Goodwin gives readers reason to consider what each of us has retained of our childhood passions. A poignant but unsentimental journey for all adults and, of course, especially for baseball fans. (272 pages – Amazon.com)
Waiting for Snow in Havana … Carlos Eire
At the start of the nineteen-sixties, an operation called Pedro Pan flew more than fourteen thousand Cuban children out of the country, without their parents, and deposited them in Miami. Eire, now a professor of history and religion at Yale, was one of them. His deeply moving memoir describes his life before Castro, among the aristocracy of old Cuba—his father, a judge, believed himself to be the reincarnation of Louis XVI—and, later, in America, where he turned from a child of privilege into a Lost Boy. Eire's tone is so urgent and so vividly personal (he is even nostalgic about Havana's beautiful blue clouds of DDT) that his unsparing indictments of practically everyone concerned, including himself, seem all the more remarkable. (400 pages – Review from the New Yorker)
A Girl Named Zippy … Haven Kimmel
It's a cliché‚ to say that a good memoir reads like a well-crafted work of fiction, but Kimmel's smooth, impeccably humorous prose evokes her childhood as vividly as any novel. Born in 1965, she grew up in Mooreland, Ind., a place that by some "mysterious and powerful mathematical principle" perpetually retains a population of 300, a place where there's no point learning the street names because it's just as easy to say, "We live at the four-way stop sign." Hers is less a formal autobiography than a collection of vignettes comprising the things a small child would remember: sick birds, a new bike, reading comics at the drugstore, the mean old lady down the street. The truths of childhood are rendered in lush yet simple prose; here's Zippy describing a friend who hates wearing girls' clothes: "Julie in a dress was like the rest of us in quicksand." Over and over, we encounter pearls of third-grade wisdom revealed in a child's assured voice: "There are a finite number of times one can safely climb the same tree in a single day"; or, regarding Jesus, "Everyone around me was flat-out in love with him, and who wouldn't be? He was good with animals, he loved his mother, and he wasn't afraid of blind people." (282 pages – Amazon.com)
GlassCastle … Jeannette Walls
Starred Review. Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a Dumpster." Walls's parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were a matched pair of eccentrics, and raising four children didn't conventionalize either of them. Her father was a self-taught man, a would-be inventor who could stay longer at a poker table than at most jobs and had "a little bit of a drinking situation," as her mother put it. With a fantastic storytelling knack, Walls describes her artist mom's great gift for rationalizing. Apartment walls so thin they heard all their neighbors? What a bonus—they'd "pick up a little Spanish without even studying." Why feed their pets? They'd be helping them "by not allowing them to become dependent." While Walls's father's version of Christmas presents—walking each child into the Arizona desert at night and letting each one claim a star—was delightful, he wasn't so dear when he stole the kids' hard-earned savings to go on a bender. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. Buck-toothed Jeannette even tried making her own braces when she heard what orthodontia cost. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure." (288 pages – Review from Publishers Weekly)
‘Tis … Frank McCourt
The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela's Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth," has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and with the same dark humor that distinguished his first memoir: race prejudice, casual cruelty, and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New YorkUniversity, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at StuyvesantHigh School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can't help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events. (368 pages – Amazon.com)
If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home … Tim O’Brien
O'Brien's first account of the war, however, was written in the raw, unfiltered months following his return from Southeast Asia in 1969. If I Die in a Combat Zone has all of the eloquence and attention to language and detail that are a mark of the author's work; what is different about it is its straightforward, unembellished depiction of his personal experience of hell. O'Brien paints an unvarnished portrait of the infantry soldier's life that is at once mundane and terrifying--the endless days of patrolling punctuated by firefights that end as suddenly and inconclusively as they begin; the mind-numbing brutality of burned villages and trampled rice patties; the terror of tunnels, minefields, and the ever-present threat of death. Powerful as these scenes are, perhaps the most memorable chapter in the book concerns his decision to desert just a few weeks before he was sent to Vietnam. "The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn't.... I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn't bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run." Tim O'Brien went into the war opposing it and came out knowing exactly why. If I Die in a Combat Zone is more than just a memoir of a disastrous war; it is also a meditation on heroism and cowardice, on the mutability of truth and morality in a war zone and, most of all, on the simple, human capacity to endure the unendurable. (224 pages – Amazon.com)