Begin by reading the following excerpt from an A.P. guide:
Passage One: Richard Wright's "Between the World and Me"
One of the rewards of looking for passages for a new edition of our AP book is the discovery of wonderful but obscure pieces such as "Between the World and Me." Wright, whose representation in high school syllabi usually consists of either his poignant autobiography Black Boy or his powerful novel Native Son, is seldom anthologized as a poet. However, as this haunting poem attests, his powers in this genre were equally impressive. "Between the World and Me" describes how a Thoreau-or-Frost-like foray into the woods does not always yield a pacific experience. In this case the speaker stumbles upon a gruesome site-the remains of a scene of horrific violence. The evidence that remains-a skeleton, blood-soaked articles of clothing, a pile of ashes, and an empty liquor flask among other things-is all dormant, a fact reflected by the tranquil diction such as "slumbering" (line 4), "cushion" (line 4), "vacant" (line 7), and "empty" (line 7). Still, the aura of the place of execution, particularly the "Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline" (line 9), brings the experience powerfully to life in both the speaker's and the reader's imaginations. Though the speaker comes upon the site in the morning, just as "the sun poured yellow surprise into the eye sockets of a stony skull" (line 10), he feels the ground grip his feet and his heart being "circled by icy walls of fear-" (line 12). Those readers familiar with Toni Morrison's Beloved may recognize this experience as similar to what Sethe calls her "rememory," a powerful association of a particular place with the actions associated with it. While pondering the skull and the remnants of that tragic night, the speaker is transported back to that awful moment. In his dark reverie he imaginatively becomes the unfortunate victim: shivering in the cold of the night wind, hearing the yelps of the pursuing hounds, surrounded by the crowd of cruel faces, bloodied and tortured by callous and inhumane hands. The ignominies he vicariously suffers-beating, sexual humiliation, tarring-and-feathering, and incineration-drive home the horrors of the actual African-American experience in a shockingly immediate way. Lines 18-25, which climactically juxtapose images of violence, religion, and childhood innocence, are brilliantly contrasted by the understated ending in which speaker and skeleton quietly become one. For some this poem may be too powerful, but as classroom teachers we have always felt it our moral duty to situate students in the real world. One reads Night or watches Schindler's List with the same purpose: to recognize the human capacity for evil, to be appalled by its callous manifestations, and to promote the necessary vigilance to deter such horrible episodes from ever happening again.As literature, Wright's poem is a powerful pedagogical tool, providing insight into a sordid historical epoch and a window into one African-American's response to it.
Your assignment:
Read the following student writing samples A, B, C & D. For each sample, provide:
1. A general assessment/impression
2. A comment on clarity of purpose (thesis statement) & whether or not you have a clear sense of where the writer was going to go in his/her body paragraphs.
3. A compliment (something the writer did well)
4. A concern/suggestion (something missing, over or under-developed, off-track, vague, wordy, grammatical flaws, formatting issues, etc.)
Sample A:
In Richard Wright's "Between the World and Me" the narrator stumbles across the scene of a long-gone lynching. This discovery shocks him to his core, and part of the poem was him just reeling from the blow dealt by the sight. The narrator changes throughout the piece, representing the author's feeling as time progressed, and how it affects him. Wright also uses powerful imagery to illustrate his emotions, altogether making a powerful piece of literature.
*Effects of imagery
*Effects of Point of view
*Author's emotions at the scene
Sample B:
The speakers uses of varied imagery helps to show the reader exactly how he felt in a descriptive and memorable way. As the speaker stumbles over the body there is disbelief of what eh sees. Toward the beginning he spoke about how seeing this body affected both him and the world but as he starts to get focused on the "scattered traces of tar, restless array of feathers, and lingering smell of gasoline" he started to see himself in the actual situation. The more the imagery is filled with details the more personal the scene feels to him.
*What he found and how the varied imagery made it more personal to him.
*How his attitude changed based on the varied imagery.
Sample C:
Throughout "Between the World and Me," by Richard Wright, the author uses imagery to communicate his attitude toward what he found in the woods. Towards the start of the poem, he is surprised by the scene of destruction that he finds in an otherwise peaceful forrest. As he examines the scene, he begins to feel the emotions that the victim of the scene would have felt. His fear transitions into almost a flashback of what happened as his viewpoint shifts to that of the skull he finds at the scene. However, at the conclusion of the poem, the narrator brings his feelings together with those of the skull through repetition of the imagery.
*The imagery in the second stanza- compares the forest to a human, then showing a human- "tiny veins of burnt leaves" & "charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky"
*Description of his feeling "icy walls of fear"
*The flashback
*Repetition of "yellow surprise at the sun"
Sample D:
The poem "between the world and me" written by richard wright gives great examples of imagery and similes/metaphores such as the metaphore in line 6, "There was a torn tree....of greasy hemp." This metaphore is comparing this torn tree with the narrator himself. When he is referring to the "torn tree" he is basically saying that the narrator is torn from the inside. Throughout this poem the narrator is constantly shifting his POV, point of view. he goes from first person point of view to 3rd person pov, when he was revealing how torn up he is, by saying, "yellow suprise into the eye sockets of the stony skull," when he was referring to himself.
*shifting POV
