Monthly Archives: March 2011

Discussion 11-14 Pennebaker, McCourt, Lewis

J11: Question One
Answer any one of these questions about Opening Up:

  • Answer after reading Chapters 7 & 8 of Opening Up: How does Pennebaker feel that writing helps us sort out our difficulties?  Why are cognitive or thinking words (cause, effect, reason, understand, realize, know) particularly useful in writing about negative experiences? What are the potential dangers in sharing our traumas?
  • In Chapter 9 of Opening Up, Pennebaker states “For both love and grief, people first enter a stage of intense emotional activation that lasts between 4 and six months” (Pennebaker 132). Do you agree with his theory about time in love and grief?  Do your experiences or those of the characters we have studied confirm or deny Pennebaker’s theories?
  • What danger does Pennebaker think can come from having an “inhibited personality”?

J11: Question Two
How can a memoir about poverty be a comedy? How can a memoir about starvation and death make readers laugh? What’s funny about Angela’s Ashes? Discuss the elements that make the memoir comic. Which characters are comic? Which situations are comic? How does McCourt’s use of language affect the reader?
J11: Question Three
The title of the memoir is Angela’s Ashes, but is Angela the central character in this work so far?
Journal 12
One question for everyone. From your reading for today in either McCourt or Pennebaker, describe an idea or incident to which you had a strong response.
Journal 13
* From your reading for today in either McCourt or Pennebaker, describe an idea or incident to which you had a strong response.
* If you wish, instead, you may pose a question for your classmates to answer.

What is the topic of your project, and how will you do it?

Journal 14

In A Grief Obseved, C.S. Lewis states: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” What does grief feel like to you? Have your experiences with grief been similar to or different from Lewis’s?

Journals 9 and 10 The Year of Magical Thinking

J9: Question One After reading Didion, Chapters 1-10 (3-120), discuss why you think Didion named her book,Year of Magical Thinking.

J9: Question Two Part of the strength and impact of Didion’s writing comes from her use of specific details, such as in the following passage:

Several years ago, walking east on Fifty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues on a bright fall day, I  had what I believed to be at the time to be an apprehension of death.  It was an effect of light: quick sunlight dappling, yellow leaves falling (but from what? were there even trees on West Fifty-seventh street?), a shower of gold, spangled, very fast, a falling of the bright. (Didion 76)

Pick another sentence or two, and notice specific details in it.  How do these details add to the intensity of the passage you have picked?

J9: Question Three How does Didion describe grief?  From your own experience, or from your observation of others, or from the representations of grief we have read in literature this semester, agree or disagree with Didion’s experience of grief.

J10: Respond to Didion

For this post, respond to the second half of Didion’s book. What did you find moving, compelling, or true? If you want, you can read some of the articles I’ve linked to about Didion.  Or you can consider whether Pennebaker and Didion have a similar point of view about writing and grief.  Or you can surprise us with your own original ideas about the book.  For this post, all of you can play in the same sandbox.  Remember to respond to each other.

Journal 8 Films and Pennebaker

J8: Question One
Discuss a scene that you thought was effective in the film version of Persuasion.
What did you find effective in this scene? Was it in the book? If so, was the scene similar or different from the scene in the book?
J8: Question Two
The film of All My Sons opens up the action of the drama by including scenes in Keller’s plant, dinner at a restaurant, a trip to see Mr. Deever in prison
Discuss one of these added scenes. Does it add to or detract from the effectiveness of the story? Why
J8: Question Three
After reading chapters 1-6 of Opening Up:The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions by James Pennebaker, discuss one of Pennebaker’s arguments. Why does he believe that “expressing emotions” leads to healing? What evidence does he have to back up his argument?