Prompt Revision #4

2008. In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas or behavior of a minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or play in which a minor character serves as a foil for the main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work.

In the play, Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, there are many contrasting characters. When comparing these characters, we see that they really bring out the good and bad qualities in one another. Without Miller juxtaposing certain characters, a lot of their flaws or good deeds would go unnoticed. The minor character that serves as a foil to one of the major characters, Biff, is Bernard. Miller used Bernard as a foil to Biff to show the reader how Biff should have ended up as an adult, and how Willy, Biff's father, dreamed of Biff to end up like. We see Bernard as a foil to Biff all throughout their high school and adult lives. 

One of the most obvious foils in this play is Biff and Bernard. Miller juxtaposes these two characters right from the beginning of the play. We see these two characters growing up together as high school friends, only Bernard is the "nerd" that focuses on his studies, and Biff is the popular athlete, that couldn't care less about school. Willy is fine with the fact that Biff doesn't care about school, because Willy thinks that the only thing that will get you far in life is being well-liked, and Biff was certainly well liked in high school. Bernard was not as well-liked, but he knows that what is really going to help him out in life is education, not popularity and this works out for him in the end. The differences in Biff and Bernards actual characters is seen here too. Biff is the typical jock character, and Bernard is the typical nerd, at the end of the food chain. Little did they know, that it would be the opposite in their adult lives. 

One key difference between Biff and Bernard is that Bernard becomes successful after high school, and Biff doesn't. Biff was too brainwashed by his father that everything was going to be great in his life as long as people liked him. This was probably the reason that he didn't do well in school, like failing math. Bernard on the other hand worked hard, because he knew that it didn't matter whether people liked him or not. He was not caught up in that. And ironically, Bernard turns out to be everything Willy wanted Biff to be. Willy made fun of Bernard for studying so much, but it turns out that they had the right idea all along. Bernard was studious, determined, and had a head on his shoulders, while Biff had his head in the clouds, thinking that he could get anywhere.

Towards the end of the play, Biff ends up lost, insecure and wondering how to be happy in life. Bernard, on the other hand, is happy, mature and adjusted to adult life. Biff says himself in the play that he has had many jobs after high school and he lost all of them, unsure of how to be happy with what he is doing. At this point in the play, Biff was finally starting to figure out what Bernard already knew about life. You need to find yourself first and do what makes you happy, instead of worrying about becoming the wealthiest man in the city, or being the most well-like man around. That is how Bernard being a foil to Biff illuminates the meaning of this entire play, as well. The whole play is focused on how being well-liked and wealthy gets you respect and happiness, when in all reality, you should find your place in the world and do what you were always meant to do.

Bernard being a foil to Biff is important to the play as a whole because it shows Bernard being the son that Willy always wanted. Even down to the smallest things, like Bernard being married with two sons of his own, something Willy had said that he wanted Biff to be. It all comes down to the fact that Willy won't be able to accept Biff for how he is. Bernard was made a foil to Biff to show how Willy would have wanted Biff to end up in life, and how they would all be happier if Biff really was like Bernard. 

Ceremony Summary and Analysis

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko
Setting: Most of the time, the novel is set in and around the Laguna Reservation, but there are also parts of the novel where it is set in the Philippines, a town called Gallup, and in the mountains.
Significant Characters:

• Tayo: The protagonist of the novel. He is also a veteran of the war in Philippines, and is suffering from PTSD as a result of this. He is half Indian and half white, which creates problems for him throughout the novel. He lives with his Auntie, Grandmother and Uncle Robert. Tayo often tries to drown out his feelings with beer with his friends, who are also veterans, at the bar. He eventually goes on a journey to complete the ceremony by having many encounters with animals and people that help him. 
• Betonie- an old wise medicine man, who helps Tayo on his journey. He has many stories to tell and knows a lot about spirits. He made the great point that the ceremonies are always changing as time goes on. 
• Auntie- Tayo's aunt who he lives with in the novel. She seems like a very negative character in the book. Auntie is very concerned about what people will think of her and her family, and always worries about gossip about her through her church. She is Rocky's mother and even though she took Tayo in, she views him as a burden. 
• Rocky- Tayo's cousin, but they are more like brothers because they basically grew up together. He died serving in the war with Tayo, and he was different from Tayo in the sense that Rocky seemed to want to conform to all of the white traditions that he had seen.
• Josiah- one of Tayo's father figures in the story, but Josiah is really Tayo's uncle. Him and Tayo often took care of the cattle together, and that is really how Tayo remembers him. 
• Emo- the antagonist in the book. He is a very negative character, and seems to bring out the worst in people. He is very influenced by the white people, and he tries to stop Tayo from completing the ceremony. 
• "The Woman"- otherwise known as the yellow woman in the novel. She represents all females and their power in society and she helps Tayo complete the ceremony. 
• Grandma- she knows all of the stories that have been told, including the one about Tayo and the ceremony at the end of the book.

Plot: The story goes back and forth between flashbacks of the present and past of Tayo's life. The book basically starts out with it being explained how Tayo had to kill these Japanese soldiers in the war, and this was an important event because when these soldiers were being killed, he saw them as his uncle Josiah and was very scared and traumatized because he thought he just saw Josiah die, but Rocky tries to assure him that he was just hallucinating because they have been outside for so long and they are tired, and that Josiah was thousands of miles away on the reservation. A short while after, Rocky is killed. Tayo seems to feel this tremendous amount of guilt for coming home without Rocky, Even though he promised everyone back at home, like Auntie, that he would bring Rocky home safe, even though it wasn't his fault. Tayo is sent to a hospital where the white doctors diagnose him with PTSD. All Tayo feels in this hospital is emptiness and all he sees is white everywhere. When he gets released from the hospital, he goes back to Auntie's house, where she takes care of him. She seems to resent him and continues to let him feel the distance between him and the rest of the family and how he is different from everyone because of his mother and how she put shame on the entire family. Grandma decides that she is going to call a medicine man, Ku'oosh to try to preform a ceremony to help cure Tayo, but this fails and we know why later; because it is always staying the same. Meanwhile, there are a lot of scenes about him with his friends at the bar and getting drunk, and there was also an incident where Tayo and Emo were in a fight and Tayo stabbed Emo, almost killing him. We also hear about the Night Swan, Josiah's girlfriend and how she is like Tayo in some ways. Tayo soon meets with Betonie, another medicine man, who helps Tayo on the journey to completing his ceremony. He tells Tayo that as time goes on, the ceremony is continuously changing, and they need to let this happen. Tayo learns many things from Betonie, and since he meets him, he encounters many people along the way that help him learn lessons and complete the ceremony. This includes the mountain lion that leads him to the lost cattle, and the yellow woman who helps him in the end. There is also a long poem that runs throughout the story and this runs parallel to the characters and their actions in the novel. At the end, when Tayo has finally finished the ceremony, he realizes that he didn't just do this for himself, but he was chosen to complete this to help all the men who went to war, and for all of his people who were affected by the mixing of these cultures and by the drought that has been there for many years. Tayo must also accept that loss is apart of life, and we see the book come to an end in a full circle when the novel ends with "sunrise" just like it started in the beginning.
Narrative Voice:
In this particular novel, I saw a lot of symbolism and imagery. The author described everything from the stories to the setting in such great detail, you could imagine it as if you were there. Some of the symbolism I saw was: 1. The woman, who represented the yellow woman, 2. Emo, who represented the gambler that was in the poems running throughout the novel, 3. The number four, this was in the book a lot mainly because of the four main directions and the directions were a huge part of the book. The author's style was interesting because the story went back and forth between different time periods in Tayo's life, and at times it could be hard to follow, but in the end you could see it all come together as part of one big story. I also found the poem that was running parallel to the novel very interesting and unique because I haven't seen this type of writing in any other book, and it was nice how it connected to the main characters in the book.
Quotes:
1. "I guess I must be getting old, " she said, "because these goings-on around Laguna don't get me excited any more." She sighed, and laid her head back on the chair. "It seems like I already heard these stories before—only thing is, the names sound different." -Grandma
 -This seems to be the quote that wraps up the entire novel. Basically what this means is that everything is connected, even though things might have different names and slightly different variations, they all came from the same place and connect. An example of this would be the poems running throughout the story, and how they connect to the story as a whole and the characters even though they have different names. This shows that everything is apart of a cycle.

2. "The word he chose to express "fragile" was filled with the intricacies of a continuing process, and with a strength inherent in spider webs woven across paths through sand hills where early in the morning the sun becomes entangled in each filament of web. It took a long time to explain the fragility and intricacy because no word exists alone, and the reason for choosing each word had to be explained with a story about why it must be said this certain way."
 - This ties into the idea of the spider woman and how important she is in this culture. It also shows how important story telling is and without it how there would be no traditions.

Theme:
Storytelling and tradition throughout the generations must be maintained.
-Storytelling is a long time Native American tradition that helps generations and generations of people understand the world and how it works. There is a lot of repetition in these stories, just like we can see first hand in the novel with the poems and what Grandma said in the end. There was even a part in the book where it was said that stories are needed to guide the people that are trying to accomplish the ceremony, like Tayo and the woman he met. Also, it seems like Tayo reenacted some of the stories that we heard in the poems, so it is essentially like a guide for him. Without the stories and tradition, everyone would be lost.

Response to Course Materials #8

In the last few weeks, we have done a lot in class. We finished up the book Ceremony, and we started a new book this week called Fifth Business. Ceremony was a good book, in my opinion. Although it took way too long to annotate, I was amazed at the amount of details and symbols the author put in the book to create a message. That really kept the book interesting, although I didn't fully understand all of the references until we had our class discussions. I also feel like I learned a lot of some of the Native American traditions, which was cool. We are reading Fifth Business now, and I'm not finished with it yet, but so far it seems like a good book.
Something that has been helpful in class that we've been doing more and more is practicing essays. I can definitely see that I need more work in this area before we take the AP exam, which is coming up way too fast. I think the after school help sessions with Mrs. Holmes would be a great time to get more help on these essays.