Take the number passage I've assigned you below. Re-read the passage, and write about it in a blog post. Consider:
-How does it link to the themes we've discussed so far?
-What new themes are in your passage?
-How does it tie into other parts of the book, or the book as a whole so far?
-What words, metaphors or images are particularly evocative here?
Write for 5-10 minutes.
Start your blog post with the number of your passage. When you've posted, read the other person's post on this passage (as well as the other classmates').
1. pp 76-77: "Twists..." to "blast furnaces."
Lilia and Elizabeth
2. p 79: "The worker" to "are like?"
Sofia and Andrew
3. p 80: "Right and left" to "see them?"
Kyla and Whit
4. 81-82: "Singing!" to "the rest of us."
Hugh and Keil
5. 84-85: "And I lean over" to "what laughter can do."
Sam and McKain
Samuel
ReplyDeletethis quote is showing how McMurphy is being the hero in the story, because he is making fun of the black boys working in the asylem and they represent the system. the chief remebers a story of his father doing the same thing to white people when he was younger and he believes that by making fun of the "man" or the system it is a way of overcoming it
This passage is kind of disturbing. He's talking about cutting someones head open, yet there is not blood, but rust falling from the cut. Then a machine opens up, like a monster (a machinery-type of God), and inhales a human body, disposing of the consciousness.
ReplyDeleteBromeden thinks about going to tell the others, but he is too afraid that they will do the same to him as they did to Blastic.
The death reminds me of judgement, and the machines and underground area remind me of hell and the Devil. It all seems like a very cynical point of view. It also makes me question why they put Bromden in the institution in the first place. He may seems crazy, but what were the grounds?
5. The major theme of this passage is laughter. Bromden is remembering his fathers humor and the benefits of laughter, which relates back to McMurphy's humor and the laughter hes bringing into the ward. Bromden sees laughter as a kind of savior, both then and now, and he has missed it all these years in the ward.
ReplyDeleteThe passage really links to the theme of machines controlling the patients, and even some of the workers. Also it talks about how some of the things that he is seeing are almost goofy, like in a cartoon that you would laugh about, but these things are actually happening. This passage brings up the theme of dreams and reality when he says, "but if they don't exist, how can a man see them?" I think that that line is the most evokative because it questions what is real and what is not. I think that metaphorically, the machines represent the nurse, and how she asserts her power over the patients and the black boys that work for her.
ReplyDeletepage 76-77
ReplyDeleteIn these passages, it refers a lot back to the idea of machines, which is a major theme in this book. One of the connections I made was silence, "the machinery-probably a cog and track affair at each corner of the shaft-is greased silent as death." this is a connection between machinery, silence, and death. Also, Bromden notes a "drumming under us getting louder the farther down we go...all of a sudden it's because that drumming's gradually got so loud i can't hear anything." this reminds me of a tribal indian dance or something similar.
This shows how the acutes are some kind of scarier mentally insane group. They can do things but they still frighten the people that take care of them. And they probably thrive on this little bit of power. It all shows more about Bromden's crazy thoughts when he describes the new guy there and what he probably did before he came there.
ReplyDeleteThis dream that Bromden is having is full of fear and uncertainty, which he lives in on a normal day. Machines play a key role in this dream. They are secret and hidden, and there are people behind the walls working on them, where nobody else can see. He has been subject to to the dark and has lost his path to the light, which is the way many of the patients in this hospital feel about their lives. They are never going to be healed again, beacause the tunnel to light is so far out of reach. The silence that Bromden lives in is now being reflected on the machinery, "The machinery-....- is greased silent as death.". The is an oxymoron, because machines are naturally loud, but in this case they are silent as death. And why does Bromden refer to death as being silent?
ReplyDeleteThe difference between mcmurphy and the others is that hes carefree and all of the other people take their afflictions seriously and would never sing about it. The reason they have never heard singing before on the ward is because no one has ever tried. This connects into steppenwolf with the theme of not taking yourself too seriously and stuff
ReplyDelete