MAY11 English A1 HL P1

[KyleAdams]

I had "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July" too! I talked about the reference it kept making to the United States, and the authors use of stream of consciousness gave it a dream like quality. I concluded that this entire poem was about an "American Dream" the author had which was underscored by the use of the colors red, white and blue, references to Philidelphia and July, oh and there were also 13 stanzas like the 13 stripes on the American Flag and the way he made his "dream" appealing to the reader.

Wow that's cool! I hadn't noticed anything like that. I came up with completely different stuff than you, but I heard that there is no right answer, just a well supported answer that gets you points. I hope that's the case because I supported my answer well.

[sashaerin]

That's so interesting. I also talked about the stream of consciousness of the protagonist - with the uses enjambment and caesura - however i likened the narrator to a child in my conclusion due to the sudden shift in tone when he/she starts discussing the new painting. Lack of concentration common in children and all that. But everyone in my class had different essays...i liked how it was up to interpretation. However i had no idea whether the character was a boy or a girl? Any ideas?

[Dreamer94]

It was a lovely extract (The history one / TZ2) but there was a lot of interpretation involved. For example, my friend looked it up and it turned out that the narrator was Crick, something I didn't really know. So I don't know if they'll take off marks for not knowing that? In the end, my teacher kept emphasizing that it was all about interpretation and how well you backed up your argument.

[tjlarson]

I wrote for the poem on TZ1 as well. I was overjoyed after reading it once, recognizing instantly that I had written my TOK essay on this very subject: "Art is a lie..." I talked about the comical situation of how art is supposed to be "experience" like that of real life (living vicariously), but the speaker is creating a poem based on the "experience" of another piece of art, a painting! So his poem is separating from real living just that much more. I described the tone as honest and reflective as well, and discussed how much richer life is in art (more lines, longer sentences in the poem were dedicated to discussing the scene within the art), but also how so many words of probability and doubt ("almost" and "most likely" and such) conveyed that the speaker was himself skeptical of art qualifying as true and valid human experience. He was content to live in the second-rate world of art.