PAIRED PASSAGE ANALYSIS: Okefenokee Swamp

Objectives: To compare and contrast style (rhetorical strategies) To employ color marking and other notations in order to discern patterns that emerge

in a passage To connect style (rhetorical strategies) to purpose

PROMPT: Read the following two passages about Florida’s Okefenokee Swamp carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the distinctive style of each passage reveals the purpose of its writer. (AP English Language and Composition Exam Question 1, 1999)

PROMPT DECONSTRUCTION:1. BIG Question (meaning: often attitude, tone, purpose, position, view, etc.).

Express your answer in the form of an interrogative sentence.

2. Little Question (language: possibly style, rhetorical strategies or devices)Express your answer in the form of an imperative sentence. The little question can usually be copied directly from the prompt.

The BIG and Little questions create the focus for your reading of each passage. Approach the passages one at a time, following the directions below. Some examples will be provided for you. Paired passages provide an excellent opportunity to practice the skills of rhetorical analysis. Passages appear at the end of the lesson.

ANALYZING THE RHETORICAL SITUATION IN THE PASSAGE: Provide responses to the 5th slash (bullet) for the passage. You are making inferences here based on close reading of your passage. In identifying the speaker and audience, consider the source from which each passage may have been excerpted. Articulate purpose(s) with an infinitive (“to” + a verb that describes authorial purpose): WHAT DOES THE AUTHOR WANT YOU TO FEEL WHILE READING?

Passage 1 Passage 2

Speaker: Speaker:

Someone who knows the swamp well due to________________________________________

Audience:

Excerpted from material that might found in the _________ section of the bookstore or library

Audience:

Purpose:

To inform

Purpose:

PASSAGE MARKING- STEP ONE:(a) Highlight adjectives. Using a second color, highlight verbs.(b) Create a key at the bottom of your passage for the colors you’ve used.(c) Given the evidence you’ve collected from the marking you’ve done of adjectives and

verbs, comment below on the author’s overall diction. Some suggested vocabulary for describing diction: concrete, abstract, concise, objective, formal, informal, neutral, precise, literal, figurative, connotative, symbolic, picturesque, sensuous, literary, colloquial, slang, inexact, euphemistic, grotesque, jargon, emotional, scholarly. Use complete sentences, but avoid saying, “The author uses diction . . .”

(e) Important: one passage at a time!! And, add to the examples already provided!

Passage 1 Diction Passage 2 Diction

Interpretive adjectives (“unfathomable, unconquerable”) convey a sense of mystery and potential danger.

PASSAGE MARKING- STEP TWO:

(a) In the left margin, bracket lines in which the author is creating images (word pictures). Make a marginal notation of the sense(s) to which the image appeals.

(b) Given the evidence you’ve collected from the marking you’ve done, comment on the author’s imagery.

AP prompts often ask students to discuss the author’s imagery. The most successful student writers are able to categorize the images in a prose passage or poem. Such categorization may be articulated with precise adjectives like these: Gustatory (appealing to appetite, taste), olfactory (appealing to the sense of smell), tactile (appealing to the sense of touch), sensual, sacred, sexual, auditory (appealing to the sense of sound) , religious, animal, war/military, chaotic

Imagery may also be classified with nouns. Ex.: imagery of death, decay, decomposition. Note this example from the 2007 Language Exam: The primary imagery of the passage is that of (a) flight (b) creation (c) confinement (d) darkness (e) punishment

Passage 1 Passage 2

The author of Passage 1 creates primarily visual imagery appealing to the sense of sight ( “saucer-shaped depression,” “sandy ridges, “ Spanish moss”).

PASSAGE MARKING- STEP THREE:(a) Box three important details about the swamp that the author of your passage chose to include.(b) Given the evidence you’ve collected from the marking you’ve done, comment below

on the author’s selection of detail. Ask yourself why the author would choose to include those pieces of information

Passage 1 Passage 2

The author’s selection of detail is factual (location, size, bodies of water, vegetation, soil, wildlife).

PASSAGE MARKING- STEP FOUR:(a) Using a third color, highlight any figurative language that appears in your passage.

Make a marginal notation of the type of figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification, or hyperbole).

(b) Add this third color to the key you’ve created at the bottom of your passage.(c) Given the evidence you’ve collected from the marking you’ve done, comment below

on the author’s figurative language, including the extent to which he/she creates figurative language.

Passage 1 Passage 2

The author’s figurative language includes simile and alliteration (“sodden as a sponge”).

PASSAGE MARKING- STEP FIVE:

(a) Place an asterisk to the right of all lines in which the author’s sentence structure is parallel.(b) Use the space below to comment on the author’s syntax including sentence length,

sentence beginnings, deliberate fragments, dashes, and any other features of purposeful sentence construction. Also look for polysyndeton and/or asyndeton.

Passage 1 Passage 2

PASSAGE 1

Okefenokee Swamp, primitive swamp and wildlife refuge in southeastern Georgia and northern Florida, is a shallow, saucer-shaped depression approximately 25 mi wide and 40 mi long and covers an area of more than 600 sq mi. Lying about 50 mi inland from the Atlantic Coast, the swamp is bounded on the east by the low, sandy Trail Ridge, which prevents direct drainage into the Atlantic. The swamp is partially drained southward into the Atlantic by the Suwanee and St. Mary’s rivers. The Okefenokee Swamp includes low, sandy ridges, wet grassy savannas, small islands (called hummocks) surrounded by marshes, and extensive “prairies,” or dark water areas covered by undergrowth and trees. Vegetation is dense in the swamp and includes giant tupelo and bald cypress trees festooned with Spanish moss, brush, and vines; where sandy soil is above the water, pine trees predominate. Meandering channels of open water form an intricate maze. Exotic flowers, among them floating hearts, lilies, and rare orchids, abound. The swamp is populated with diverse and abundant wildlife, with about 175 species of birds and at least 40 species of mammals, which include raccoons, black bear, white-tail deer, bobcats, fox, and otter. Alligators are also present.

PASSAGE 2

Vast and primeval, unfathomable, unconquerable, bastion of cottonmouth, rattlesnake and leech, mother of vegetation, father of mosquito, soul of silt, the Okefenokee is the swamp archetypal, the swamp of legend, of racial memory, of Hollywood. It gives birth to two rivers, the St. Mary’ and the Suwanee, fanning out over 430,000 leaf-choked acres, every last one as sodden as a sponge. Four hundred and thirty thousand acres of stinging, biting and boring insects, of maiden cane and gum and cypress, of palmetto, slash pine and peat, of muck, mud, slime, and ooze. Things fester here, things cook down, decompose, deliquesce. The swamp is home to two hundred and twenty-five species of birds, forty-three of mammals, fifty-eight of reptiles, thirty-two of amphibians and thirty-four of fish – all variously equipped with beaks, talons, claws, teeth, stingers and fangs - not to mention the seething galaxies of gnats and deerflies and no-see-ums, the ticks, mites, hookworms and paramecia that exist only to compound the misery of life. There are alligators here, bears, puma, bobcats and bowfin, there are cooters and snappers, opossum, coon, and gar. They feed on one another, in the sludge and muck and on the floating mats of peat they bury eggs, they scratch and stink and sniff at themselves, caterwauling and screeching through every minute of every day and night till the place reverberates like some hellish zoo.

CONNECTING STYLE TO PURPOSE.(1) Choose a passage (# 1 or 2).(2) Using the data you have collected above, choose a purpose and an aspect of style.(3) Carefully compose a chunk that connects style to purpose. Follow the guidelines for

quotation sandwiches below.(4) Write your chunk in the space below the guidelines for quotation sandwiches.

The context in which a device appears in the text = the top slice of the quotation sandwich. Context provides the answers to the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, and why).The example of the device, strategy, or aspect of style = the filling of the quotation sandwich.The connection of the device to meaning = the bottom slice of the quotation sandwich. Think about what the device shows (rather than tells) the reader.

Avoid generic commentary. Examples: gets the reader’s attention, draws the reader in, puts a picture in the reader’s mind, shows the writer’s point, shows how the writer feels, etc.Use as models the two quotation sandwiches at the bottom of the page.

Passage: _________ Purpose: _______________________________________________________

Aspect of style: _____________________________________________________________________

QUOTATION SANDWICHES

TOP SLICE: Personification dominates the first two sentences of Passage 2 as the author begins his description of Okefenokee Swamp.

FILLLING: With phrases such as “mother of vegetation, father of mosquito” and “giving birth,” the author of Passage 2 creates a

BOTTOM: birth image that suggests that the swamp is a reflection of Earth at the beginning of time.

TOP SLICE: In describing the wildlife in passage 2,

FILLLING: the author highlights the many dangers that lurk within the swampincluding creatures “equipped with beaks, talons, claws, teeth, stingers, and fangs”

BOTTOM: in order to evoke a sense of menace.

TOP SLICE:

FILLING:

BOTTOM SLICE: