Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Group 3 Answers (Michelle, Valentina, Jenny and Lien)

Put your answers as comments to this post. Identify the question by Scene and Question number only. No need to rewrite.
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10 comments:

Michelle said...

I will answer the second question of Scene 1:
The most obvious conflict in Scene One is the conflict between Tom and his mother. When the family has dinner together, Amanda keeps telling Tom how to eat the “well-cooked meal”. She asks Tom to “chew” his food and takes animal’s digestion as an example. The result is that Tom can’t enjoy “one bit of” the dinner. Amanda’s “hawklike attention” makes Tom “rush through meals” and go out for a cigarette. Then Amanda starts to complain Tom smokes “too much”. Amanda pays much more attention to Tom in order to show her love and concern to Tom. However, Tom thinks he doesn’t have freedom and his life is limited. All the things make Tom want to escape from his family. The conflict between Tom and Amanda is important for Scene One, because the following scenes are all around this conflict to develop. Tom wants to escape from his mom, so he promises his mom to bring a caller for Laura. This conflict leads to the happening of caller’s visiting. If there is not a conflict between Tom and his mother, the whole play will not develop. That is the reason why this conflict should be present in Scene One.

May 10, 2007 at 1:08 AM
Valentina said...

My answer is for question two of scene 4.

In the scene 4, when Tom comes home after going to a big stage show, he gives Laura a shimmering rainbow – coloured scarf. He says, “You wave it over a canary cage and you get a bowl of goldfish. You wave it over the goldfish bowl and they fly away canaries.” This magic scarf is associated with Tom’s enormous desire to escape from his unhappy life and hateful job. He lives like in a canary cage, dreaming to turn into a canary with help of a magical trick of the colourful scarf to fly away to change his life. He can’t stand it anymore. “There is so much in my heart that I can’t describe to you,” he has to admit to his mother. He seems dreamy, but he is fully aware of his real problematic life. He knows, even a magic scarf is unable to perform a miracle.

-149 words

May 10, 2007 at 8:46 PM
Lien said...

I answer the second question of scene 7.

William uses the unicorn to sympolize Laura's feeling of being different from people. The unicorn is like Laura, who is delicate, pretty and easy to get hurt. As Laura says to Jim, "If you breathe, it breaks! Hold him over the light! You see how the light shines him". When Jim asks Laura if Unicorns were extinct in the mordern world. It implies that only Laura is "an old fashion type of girl". Her thinking doesn't change and adapt in the present environment. She is completely different from people. However, Jim's sucessful convicing to Laura's thinking is represented in the breaking unicorn's horn, which Jim breaks by accident. She states, "It doesn't matter. Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don't have horns". It means she is going to be as normal and sensible as other people. Also, she doesn't look weird and feel comfortable when being around people. When Jim leaves, Laura gives him the unicorn as a souvenir, and it also a promise that she'll change as he advises. As I see the unicorn is really a potent symbol in scene seven. It is symbolic of significant meanings about Laura's unique firgure and personality.

May 11, 2007 at 2:01 AM
Jenny said...

• Tom invites Jim to visit his family hoping to create some peaceful time at home and also to introduce a friend for his sister Luara. Knowning life is too short to be constantly arguing with Amanda, his nagging mother, Tom plans to join the Union of Merchan Seamen, having paid his dues instead of paying the light bill. However, he is worried about Laura’s predicament which could get worse if he were to leave home. During Jim’s visit, the lights go out because the power was cut off; however, Amanda’s happiness hasn’t diminished, that is, until Jim informs the family, as he is leaving, that he has a fiancee. Amanda becomes hostile with Tom again, blaming him for inviting the wrong gentleman caller and embarrassing the family. Tom goes out to avoid the argument, to rethink his situation, and he realizes that his love for Laura demands that he stay home to ensure that Laura is taken care of.

May 11, 2007 at 10:33 AM
Kaisa said...

Scene 4 Question 2:

We liked the idea that you connected the scarf as a symbol to Tom’s dream.

The quotation you used doesn’t seem to fit the explanation provided.
It seems like when Tom mentions the canary, he wants to show Laura something wonderful, not to indicate his desire to escape from home.


If we changed the symbol to the coffin magic trick, it would seem to fit more with the explanation. The quotation that we could use here would be “There is a trick that would come in handy for me—get me out of this two-by-four situation!” This magic is associated with Tom’s enormous desire to escape from his unhappy life.

May 11, 2007 at 2:29 PM
Michelle said...

I respond to Tien’s paragraph. (Scene Two, Question #2)
Tien gives her topic sentence at the very beginning in the paragraph. The topic sentence presents her general opinions about the two important symbols and mentions how these symbols work for her. It answers the question exactly. However, the paragraph seems a little bit subjective, because Tien doesn’t quote any words or sentences in her paragraph. I disagree with two points of her comments. One is Tien thinks “The glass menagerie is pretty and shiny but fragile, so does the real life”. Real life is not pretty and shiny. The glass menagerie stands for Laura and her spiritual world, but not real life. The other one is Tien thinks “the rare blue roses represent Laura: innocent, sweet, and sensitive”. The blue roses represent Laura, but they mean abnormal, unusual, and different from others. Then, the conclusion doesn’t match the topic sentence. The topic sentence mentions the two symbols symbolize Laura’s fragility and struggle. However, the conclusion said: “her fondness of solitude is most important characteristic”. There is a wrong spelling: “fodness” should be “fondness”. And the sentence “The glass menagerie is pretty and shiny but fragile, so do the real life” should be “so does the real life”. The usage of “yet” in the sentence “Life is beautiful yet full of contests tragedy” is not feasible. My suggestion is “yet” should be changed into “but”. Generally speaking, this paragraph answered the question and explained writer’s opinions.

May 11, 2007 at 4:58 PM
Phoebe said...

A response to Question 3 in Scene 5,

According to this question, we supposed to receive an answer, which would either support Tom’s action of inviting a gentleman caller or disapprove his decision. However it is quite difficult to tell Jenny’s attitude to Tom’s action. In the topic sentence, we see the contradictory ideas. At first she describes Tom’s motive as “hoping to create some peaceful time at home”. It seems to say that Tom is selfish. Meanwhile, another reason for Tom’s invitation is to “introduce a friend for his sister”. This explanation gives us an opposite feeling that Tom is an altruist. These two ideas contradict to each other and confuse audience. If Jenny used some quotations to support her idea, we might have understood it better.

Comment on grammar:
Some incorrect spellings were noticed: “Luara” and “Merchan”. In second sentence, there are two independent clauses.

In our group discussion, we approve Tom’s action. He simply wants to please his mother, yet he does not like to hurt Laura. What happens in the end of this play is not his fault. He even gives Amanda a little warning that Jim, the gentle man, has no idea about Laura. He tries to poke Amanda’s bubbles: “Mother, you mustn’t expect too much of Laura.” He reminds his mother to “face facts” more than once, because he knows that” Laura is very different from other girls.” As a result, we believe that Tom makes this arrangement for Amanda, not for Laura. That is why he invites Jim, an engaged man, regardless of knowing him little. He makes the mistake unwittingly, for he cares his sister, and knows that “she’s terribly shy” very well. If he were aware of the situation that Laura has admired Jim for a long time, he might have done some more investigation before making an appointment.

May 14, 2007 at 10:09 PM
Valentina said...

Scene 6, queston 3
The topic sentence is very clear; it fits to the given queston. Althought the student hasn't used quotes at all, the answer successfully explains "the most realistic character". We like this writing because it is completely readable and words are used correctly. Supporting sentences are well organized and there are not any spelling errors. Well done!

May 14, 2007 at 11:21 PM
Kaisa said...

When reading Michelle's answer, she makes a clear topic sentence, and follows with her details in a clear form.

The question asked for one conflict between Tom and his mother. Michelle mentioned two. The answer may have been more effective if she stuck to the one conflict, and elaborated on that, rather than trying to add another one in

Her answer portrays a very good image of the relationship that Tom and his mother have. She is always pestering him and Michelle makes this clear throughout her answer.

When reading the answer, I noticed too many quotation marks, especially around single words, this kind of distracts the reader thinking that its something very important.

Overall the answer is very well written with no major spelling or grammar mistakes.

May 14, 2007 at 11:26 PM
Brad said...

Answer from Emilia for Lien's question:

For the second question of the scene seven the answer have a good topic sentence, however our group have a different opinion.

In mythology, where it comes from, the unicorn symbolizes the hope of good luck. Williams use the symbol with the same meaning: all Laura's dreams are smashed when Tom broke the horn of unicorn. Without his horn the unicorn become a regular horse (the myth become a boring, usual story. When she decided to give the unicorn she realized that there is no hope for her.

The unicorn it is a symbol for Laura but with a different meaning in our perspective.

May 17, 2007 at 8:22 AM

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