Introduce: Denver
In the story Beloved Denver comes off as a shelter person very antisocial, sad, depressed and soft spoken. Throughout the story you watch how Denver character change for the better.
Quote:
Sethe took two swift steps to the stove, but before she could yank Denver’s collar, the girl leaned forward and began to 9cry.
“What is the matter with you? I never knew you to behave this way.”
“Leave her be,” said Paul D. “I’m a stranger to her.”
“That’s just it. She got no cause to act up with a stranger. Oh baby, what is it? Did something happen?”
But Denver was shaking now and sobbing so she could not speak.
The tears she had not shed for nine years wetting her far too womanly breasts.
“I can’t no more. I can’t no more.”
“Can’t what? What can’t you?”
“I can’t live here. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I can’t live here. Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by.
Boys don’t like me. Girls don’t either.”
“Honey, honey.”
“What’s she talking ’bout nobody speaks to you?” asked Paul D.
“It’s the house. People don’t–”
“It’s not! It’s not the house. It’s us! And it’s you!”
“Denver!”
“Leave off, Sethe. It’s hard for a young girl living in a haunted house. That can’t be easy.”
Interpret: Denver was very sad to the point where she broke down in tears in front of a stranger she doesn’t know. This shows that she is overwhelmed with the way she was forced to live. Sethe lifestyle affects Denver a lot. She felt isolated or held hostage because she’s the only child her mother had left. She wasn’t able to have a regular life as other people her age would.
Analyze: The Author started of the paragraph with: Sethe took two swift steps to the stove, but before she could yank Denver’s collar…..
Denver had a build up of emotion which was let out by her mother action when they were cooking. She expressed how she felt right there and then.
Apply: In the story Beloved, Denver comes off very jealous and shy in the beginning. She dealt with jealously when it comes to Paul D and Sethe. She also dealt with jealously when it came to Beloved and Sethe. Denver played an important role through the book she knew who beloved was before Sethe. When Sethe got sick she looked for work gained a job and cooked for her mother. She was a changed person by the end of the book from the shy girl who won’t say much and was shelter in the house. She learned her way around she became more confident and independent.
In class, we talked about how the “Introduce” section isn’t the essay’s introduction, but is instead the way you introduce your quotation in the paragraph. It could be more of a way to situate the quotation, providing the context from the novel, or introducing what the quotation’s role is in your argument.
We can think of the difference between interpreting and analyzing as this: interpreting is like translating the words into our own shared language, keeping in mind who the audience for our writing is; analyzing is the part when you show what you make of the quotation–this is the part that lets you put your own ideas into conversation with the quotation.
In class, we talked about how if we were writing about Sethe’s maternal relationship with Beloved, we might choose as an example the moment when she has such a strong urge to urinate that she can’t make it all the way to the outhouse. In our interpretation, we would put the passage into language we know our audience would understand, so we would say urine instead water. In the analysis section, we would make a claim that the release of urine, or “water” was like the water breaking before giving birth. Do you see how one is more of a translation, and the other in an analytical view of the material presented?
The applying section lets you show your audience how the work you’ve just done applies to the argument you’re making in your essay, the one you’ve identified in your thesis statement.
I hope this helps, loveisabel and anyone else who missed class.
Also, this is a long quotation. In class, we talked about breaking very long passages into sections so that you can quote and write about specific parts and go into depth rather than quoting all of it at once and losing focus or order. You can then quote snippets of the quotation as you want to refer back to specific language, like saying that Sethe releases her “water” much as a woman in labor would. You could even do this technique to allow you to bring in key words from previous examples as you write about the next.
If anyone has questions about these ideas, feel free to ask!