Hi class. I am truly enjoying your posts and I am so glad that you are enjoying the blog! It is working the way I had hoped, and I love the conversation that can happen after school hours. Anyway, the following is for your Wednesday night homework. For "The Bet" we did a character study. That is, we studied dynamic and static characters and their function in literature. Our next story is "Love Orange." This story will be a study of symbols, specifically the orange as a symbol.
Your assignment is to answer the following on the blog...
1. Analyze the main character. How would you characterize her? What shapes her behavior?
2. What is the girl's belief about the orange? What does it symbolize to her?
3. Re-read the final scene. What is so significant about the scene (the door slamming on the hand)? What is the symbolic significance of the hand being slammed in the door?
4. When you were a child what were things that you believed in that you later lost faith in? How did that loss affect you? What perspective does this give you on the main character?
You need to have your posts in by 6am on Thursday morning. Thanks!
REMINDER: Friday your vocabulary and you lit terms are due! :)
1. I would characterize the main character as dynamic and round. She is seen throughout the whole story, and has a change near the end when she realizes that the orange has no power and that love can't create miracles. We also learn a lot about her and her background and she has a very detailed personality.
ReplyDelete2. The girl's belief about the orange is that it represents love. she believes that love is like an orange in that you can take off pieces and give them to others. You can also keep it for yourself. When the orange is gone, the girl believes, your love is "exhausted."
3. I think the significance of the final scene is not so much the girl slamming her hand in the car door, I think its afterwards when she realizes that she doesn't feel anything. I think this symbolizes that she really did in a sense giver her grandmother her "whole orange." In other words, I think she gave her grandmother all her love when she last talked to her. Therefore, when she slams her hand in the door, she can't feel it because she can't really feel love anymore because she gave all her love to her grandmother.
4. When I was younger I believed in like Santa and the tooth fairy and all that stuff. Also, when I was younger and I saw the first Harry Potter movie I was terrified that Voldemort was gonna get me, almost like a monster under your bed or in your closet, except it was Voldemort. However, as I got older, I kind of just grew out of believing in those things. I never really had an experience or like one moment where I just had a sudden realization that these things weren't real. It was kind of just a natural thing where as I grew up I just didn't believe in them any more. Therefore, these losses didn't really affect me that much because it wasn't that traumatic for me. The perspective this gives me on the main character is that while I didn't have a sudden realization like she did where she realizes the orange doesn't mean anything and has no power, I still understand what its like to be a kid and to lose your innocence.
1. I characterize the main character as an introvert; she always keeps to herself. What shapes her behavior was an orange.
ReplyDelete2. Her beliefe in the orange was that it was like her love: finite and whole. She did not give pieces of it away because her love was jealous-guarded and she also couldn't share all her love with everyone she gave the orange to so she kept it whole.
3. The door slamming on the hands was significant due to the fact that when she gave up her love-orange, she felt nothing anymore. The hand being slammed on the door was that now her hand is empty and nothing could fill it anymore.
4. When I was a child, I lost faith in Santa Claus. It was Christmas Eve in 2004 and I went downstairs at midnight and there were presents in my parents' handwriting labeled "Santa Claus" and the cookies and milk were still there. I was sad and I cried for 2 minutes and went to sleep. This loss affected me because every Christmas, I believed that Santa came into my house and left presents there and Santa wasn't real. The perspective that this gives on the main character is that she believed that she would get the present she longed for but she got the dead end of the stick; like with me and Santa.
1. The main character is definitely a round character, but she is almost dynamic. She is a round character because she is written with a lot of detail, and there is a lot of background about her and her life. The main character is a dynamic character because in the beginning of the novel, she won't share the orange with anybody, she is too selfish. At the end of the story, she offers her entire orange to her grandma. This shows a great change in her.
ReplyDelete2. The orange symbolizes love to the girl. She believed that like love, and orange was a "fixed and sharply defined amount, limited, finite." In other words, she believed that an orange, like love, was endless and unlimited. She believed that each person had an unlimited amount of love that they could distribute as they wished. Finally, she believed that the more people that you have to love, then the amount that you can love each person will get smaller.
3. What is so significant about the final scene is that she can't feel anything after she slams her hand in the car door. I think that this symbolizes her giving what meant the most to her to her grandma, and nothing can replace her emptiness, not even pain. This is because in text it states, "And in leaving my grandmother's house, the dark tunnel of my childhood..." Since she left her orange (what meant the most to her and was with her throughout her childhood) with her grandma, she can no longer feel anything. It is as if though without the orange, nothing means anything to her.
4. When I was a child, I was a strong believer in the tooth fairy. Whenever I would lose a tooth, I would anxiously wait for the "tooth fairy" to slip money under my pillow when I was sleeping. I realized around the age of 7 that the tooth fairy wasn't real when I overheard my parents talking about putting money in my room once I had lost one of my teeth. This loss made me extremely upset because I realized that something that I had believed in for so long was unreal. The perspective that this gives me on the main character is that she reacted the same way that I did. The girl was shocked when the orange didn't allow her grandma to live. She felt the same exact way that I felt when I found out that the tooth fairy wasn't real. We both had faith in something and were let down when we found out the truth about it.
1. ***she is ALSO dynamic
ReplyDelete1) I would characterize the main character as a sad girl who keeps to herself. She is a dynamic character. I think this because in the biginning she doesn't want to give her love-orange to anyone in fear of the doll coming back to her. However, in the end she is confident about giving her entire orange to her grandma while she is lying on her deathbed.
ReplyDelete2) The girl believes that the love-orange protects her from the doll. It symbolizes love and how it is "a fixed and sharply defined amount, limited, finite."
3) I think her hand being slammed in the door is symbolic of shutting the doll completely out of her life. She knows that her orange is gone and that the doll could come back so she crushes her hand in order for the doll to be incapable of "crawling" into her hand.
4) Something that I used to believe in that affected me when I realized that it wasn't real was the tooth fairy. When I grew up and figured out that the fairy was really my mom, I was so dissapointed. For so many years I had tried to stay awake in hopes of catching the tooth fairy red-handed, but had always failed. It was a life-altering moment when I was told that the tooth fairy was only my mom.
P.s. - Ther perspective that this gives me on the main character is that she was also upset and dissapointed when her grandma didn't live because of the orange. She realized that everything she believed in when it came to the orange was all in her head.
ReplyDelete1. The character is both round and dynamic. She is seen througout the story and the reader is given details about her as well. She also makes a change toward the end of the story.
ReplyDelete2. The organge symbolized her perception of love and how she believed it was finite and not unlimited
i disagree with syd when she says she thinks the love is unlimited sry syd love ya! FSF hahahaha
3. The significance of the last scene with the slamming the hand in the door is that she was so upset and hurt that the pain didnt even matter and nothing could hurt more than the pain she felt when her mother made the comment to her
I really like everyones answers for # 3 especially syds its dank as shiz
4. When i was a child, i didnt think people/ adults had intercourse. My 5 year old brother told me and i was changed forever and even lost some of my innocence. I thought my parfents were the only ones who had intercourse i resented them for it. The perspective this gives me on the main charcter is it mades me understand her pain and dissapointment that what she believed for so long was not true afterall. I think we both feel angry and resentful and the world and at ourselfs and our family. It is a terrible feeling to be let down and disappointed
P.S I CANT BELIEVE VOACB AND LIT TERMS ARE DUE SO SOON THIS WEEK FLEW BY IM ABOUT TO START EVEN THOUGH IM SOOOO TIRED :( peace out
1. The main character in this story is definately a round character because the author gave a lot of details about her throughout the story. I would characterize her as quiet and passive because she kept many of her thoughts to herself. The orange shapes her behavior because many of the things that she does are because of the orange.
ReplyDelete2. The girl believed that love was like an orange, "a fixed and sharply defined amount of love to distribute as he may"
3. The significance of the main character slamming her finger in the door is that it shows that she gave all of her love to her grandmother and had no more feelings or emotions left.
4. When I was younger i believed in the tooth fairy. At about 7 years old, after losing a tooth, the "tooth fairy" left me a note with some money. I realized that the note was written by my dad and that day I was very mad at him. This gives me a good perspective on how the main character felt because I know how it feels to be let down after believing in something for a long time.
1. I would characterize the main character as round and dynamic. Like Max said, she is seen throughout the whole novel and as a reader you watch her grow and develop as a character. Additionally, the change occurs when she realizes that love doesn't make miracles (the orange) . You also learn about her background and her beliefs. The orange and the doll shape her behavior because everything she believed, throughout her whole life, was based off of her beliefs toward the doll and the orange. she made her decisions off of them.
ReplyDelete2. The girl believes that the orange is love. She says " Love, I thought, was like an orange, a fixed and sharply defined amount, limited, finite...If one had many people to love then the segments for each person would be smaller and eventually love, like patience, would be exhausted." It symbolizes love in all aspects. It also symbolizes the good part of life to her.
3. I think the significance of the door slamming of her hand is that because she "gave" the love-orange to her grandmother, she can no longer feel love. She based her whole life off of that orange and she just gave it away. She gave her love, life , and feelings all away.
4. Surprisingly, I never really believed in anything when I was younger that was unrealistic or that I have lost faith in. Therefore, I cannot really sympathize with the girl from the story. However, from hearing Max and Alex's old beliefs, I can understand how hard it must be when you have had faith in something for so long and so suddenly you realize you wasted all your time believing in something that doesn't exist.
HAHAHAHAHAAH SUNNY, love yaah
ReplyDeleteyour right though I just read over it and I thought it was unlimited for some reason but it is limited. woooops!!
She does believe that love is limited, just like the orange which is why she doesn't wanna let go of it.
1. I would characterize the main charcater as a dynamic character. She is in the entire story and you see her as an innocent girl who will pretty much make something up and believe in it. The girl thought of the orange as a love orange and thought that it could make miracles. However, you see the girl change at the end when she learned that her orange could not help her grandmother.
ReplyDelete2. To the girl, the orange symbolizes love. Like an orange, "a fixed and sharply defined amount, limited, finite." She thought that everyone a limited amount of love (orange) to give. Nobody was given an unlimited amount because it would be "exhausted" if one had a lot of people to love.
3. After the girl slammed the door on her hand and couldn't feel anything, you could see that she didn't have anymore love. The girl lost all of her love because she gave her grandmother the entire orange. When she said that she couldn't feel anything anymore, I feel like not only did she lose her love, but she also lost her hope and innocence.
4.When I was younger, I lost one of my teeth. Like many other kids, I was a strong believer of the tooth fairy. However, I did hear things from other kids that it did not exist, but I still had my faith. When I lost my tooth, I decided to keep it away from my parents and see if I would still get money in the morning. When I woke up, I saw that my tooth was still there. This really didn't make me that upset, but I was bummed that something I believed in was not real. From this experience, I can feel some sympathy for the girl because I know what it is like to believe in something and later find out that it is not true.
1. The main character is a round character, as well as a dynamic character. She is a round character because she is seen throughout the whole story and she is written about with much detail. She is a dynamic character because in the beginning, she does not share or orange with anyone, she is hesitant at times, but never ends up sharing it. In the end of the story, she finds the perfect person that she wants to give her orange to. Her behavior is shaped by an orange. It is not the actual orange that shapes her, but it is the idea behind the orange, love.
ReplyDelete2. To the girl, the orange symbolizes love, "a fixed and sharply defined amount, limited, finite." The girl believes that the orange slices, or love can only be distributed until the slices run out. She thinks that she can't share her love, or the orange with everyone, so she chooses carefully who she shares it with.
3. In the final scene, it's not so much the slamming of her hand in the door, but the fact that she gave her grandmother her entire orange and because she gave away all of her "love-orange", she no longer can feel, she has nothing left of her. She gave away everything that she had and she was left with no feeling.
4. As a child, I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. When i found out that both of them were not real, i was upset. I wondered why my parents had lied to me and I was very angry with them. I later realized that they were just trying to protect my feelings and didn't want me to get hurt, especially at such a young age. I also used to believe that there was a killer or someone that was going to hurt me behind the shower curtain in my bathroom. I always used to pull the shower curtain back and leave it open until my mom yelled at me to shut it. I no longer believe this because we got a new shower with a glass door, so I can see through it. Also, I still do not like going in my basement by myself for fear of what is lurking down there. There is a storage closet in the back that makes a lot of noise from the pipes and what not. It still scares me a bit to this day. This makes me sympathize for the main character. I feel her pain and I understand how important the orange was to her. The fact that her mother did not understand what her daughter was doing makes me realize how important things can be to someone, but how unimportant they are to someone who has no idea the true meaning behind it.
HAHAHHA LOVE YOU SYD AND EVEYRONE ELSE INCLUDING HEER I MISS YOU LIKE A BIOTCH
ReplyDelete1. The girl is a very depressing young lady. She is a dynamic character because she goes through a change in the end of the story. I think what shapes her behavior is her enviroment. She lives with her grandparents who arent the richest of people (poor), she doesn't have many friends (I wonder why...), and she's surrounded by death.
ReplyDelete2. "Love, I thought, was like an orange, a fixed and sharply defind amount, limited, finite." The girl thought you could distribute this love to anybody you please. However, she was very protective over her own orange and picky about the people she gave it to. "I had moments of indecision when I wanted to distribute the orange but each time I would grow afraid of the audacity of such commitment. Sometimes, in a moment of rare passion, I would extend the orange to the dog or my grandmother but would quickly withdraw my hand each time."
Oh and by the way, while i was reading the story I honestly had nooooo idea what the whole doll thing was about. But it says "For without looking I would feel in its palce the doll crawling into my hand and nestling there and I would run into the garden and be sick. I would see its face as it lay in the pink tissue of a shoebox tied with ribbons beside the stocking hanging on the bedpost and I would clutch my orange tighter, thinking that I had better save it for the day when occasions like this would arise again and I would need the entire orange to overcome the feelings which arose each time I thought of the doll." So I thinkkk the doll represents death and the girl is saying she is afraid to give out her love and in return recieve death. So instead she is saving her orange (love) for when death actually occurs, that way she can give her orange and possible heal them.
???????????
3. Okay I think a couple different things for this question. The girl was always afraid that if she reached out her hand to give away her orange that the doll would crawl into her hand. So maybe she is afraid that because she gave away her whole orange to her grandma that the doll is going to try and crawl into her hand.
OR
The pain of the realization that the orange does not work left her without feeling so when she slammed her hand in the door, it didnt hurt. She was numb.
OR OR OR..
She gave away all of her orange which she always held in her hand. Now that all the love is gone from her hand, she is left with nothing, and therefore does not feel anything when she slamms her hand in the door.
4. So for some reason when I found out that the tooth fairy and Santa Clause weren't real I wasn't that dissapointed. I don't know I was a weird child. In fact I took advantage of it. I used to take my brother and sisters teeth (that they had already lost) and pretend like I lost them just so I could get money(: but then I'd feel bad about it later and give it back. But so yea, anyway I used to believe that Dracula was in my basement and he would come up at night and wait outside my door. I wouldn't go to the bathroom at night just because I was so afraid that he was waiting for me. So I was sort of happy when I realized he wasn't real and that he wasn't in my basement/outside my door at night(:
However, I can relate to the girl in the sence that she felt nothing when she realized the orange did not work, and I felt nothing when I realized Santa and the tooth fairy weren't real.
1. The main character in this story is a round character and also a dynamic character. She is seen throughout the story as her viewpoints on life are the basis of the plot. In the beginning she is reluctant to give up her love orange, becuase the doll that she hated would come back to her arms. IN the end, she gave the love orange to the dead grandmpther, and her friend, but realizes that these were both pointless, as it would have been easier to simply say you love somebody instead of contemplating whether or not you love them, until it is too late, like the grandmother.
ReplyDelete2. She believes that the orange is all the love that she has to give, and to give some love, some of the orange must be cut out.
3. The door slamming on the hand is supposed to show whether or not the girl still has any love in her, as love is a feeling. However, becuase she did not have a feeling anymore, the porange was gone, not because she used it all up, but becuase she never used it, and it became rotten and unusable, creating the Girl to be a loveless person.
4. When I was little, I believed in the tooth fairy. After losing teeth, i got a 5, 20 or on very rare occasions a 20 dollar bill under my pillow. One day i lost both of my two front teeth. My Parents must not have had 40 dollars in bills, becuase under my pillow was a check from bank of America signed Madhu ANnadata and the reason was a lost tooth. For the firsst half hour I was in denial and thought my dad WAS the tooth fairy, but then i thought that a fairy has to be a girl, and that led to the fact that my dad gave me the money the whle time. I cried.
1. The main character is a very emotionally distraught and has seem to lost hope in humanity and the real meaning of life. She's a very dynamic character because we seem to know a lot about her with this little snippet of her life which doesn't seem to be a happy one.
ReplyDelete2. The girl believed that orange was her love and if she gave away the orange she would be giving away her love so she kept it very guarded. It symbolized her letting other people into her life and the idea of love which seemed to be a material object to her.
3. Slamming her hand in the door seemed to be final and only closure that the girl had to the death of her grandmother and her experience in that house. She finally let go of the "love" and was able to feel nothing because she had finally let her grandmother in and given her entire orange that has been holding her back from letting her guard down for those years she spent in her grandmother's care.
4. When I was little I always believed that there was something that was going to get me in my basement. Although I still frequently find myself speed walking up the stairs, I lost belief in that when I hit a certain age and realized that there was no such thing as monsters, or atleast monsters living in my basement. I was extremely relieved when I realized but I dont believe it was one specific event that made me realize but at some point you hit an age that you mature and realize these things aren't true.
cara mazor obviously
ReplyDelete1. The main character has a deeply rooted belief that the amount of love a person can give away comes in limited amounts. She uses the "orange" as a symbol for the amount of love she has to give away. Her whole life she has met people to whom she thought about giving a piece of her "orange" to, however she was so afraid of wasting her love that she was reluctant to give it to anyone no matter how close they were to her. This basic fear of "wasting" her love is what shapes her whole personality.
ReplyDelete2. The girl believes that every person has a limited amount of love to give away. She uses the orange as a symbol of the total amount of love a person has to give to others. She believed that the more people that you gave your love to, the less love each person got. Just like the more people you give a piece of the orange to, the smaller each piece is.
3. After the girl gave her grandmother the "orange" she didn't know what to say when her grandmother did not recognize what it meant. Her whole life the girl believed that the orange was the perfect symbol of her love and after she gave it to her grandmother, she realized that the gesture was wasted since the grandmother didn't know what the orange represented. When the girl crushed her fingers in the car door, she didn't feel anything because of the shock she felt at finally realizing that no one would ever understand her and her idea of love as an orange.
4. One thing that I believed in as a child was that you could dig down, through the Earth, all the way to China. I worked on a hole in my backyard for about a week and when my mom eventually got tired of cleaning up mud from the floor and my clothes, she and my uncle sat down and explained to me that there was a huge molten core in the center of the earth that would burn me to a crisp if i tried to get near it. For a while after that conversation I was afraid to get near any cracks or holes in the ground. The knowledge of there being a molten core half-way to china made me realize that all my work was for nothing. After the scene with the grandmother, the girl realized that her whole life of protecting her "orange" had been a waste because when she finally found the person to give it away to, they didn't understand what it really meant. This means that the girl just wasted her love which was what she had been so afraid of her whole life.
1. The beliefs about the orange and the change at the end made the girl a dynamic character. She showed depth in her emotions and character as she held onto the symbolism of the orange and love. The orange shapes her to be secluded and lonely as she refuses to get close to others and give away some of her orange.
ReplyDelete2. Her belief about the orange is that it symbolizes love. She believes that love is limited and that, like an orange, can only be given away so much until you have nothing left to give. So the orange symbolizes the love she has to give to other people she meets.
3. The significance of her hand being smushed in the door is that it is now empty and when it got slammed, it "closed over the breaking bones," and that she "felt nothing." This was symbolic in that she had lost her orange and thus the love she had to give. She had realized that by giving all of her orange to her grandmother, and she still dying, that love can't make miracles happen and that without it is just empty. She left the orange and love with her childhood at her grandmother's house when she gave away her orange.
4. I was a cynical child and I have always needed to prove things right or wrong before believing entirely in them. I always have picked things apart and taken them out to figure out how they work and then put them back together (I still do this, I love to do puzzles and take pens and other small trinkets apart and put them back together). So I was like cfeld (Carly?) in that I didn't really believe in anything completely as a child. The closest thing I had was unexplained mysteries (like the odd habit of street lamps suddenly turning off just as I walk under them, or people always having the absolute worst day of the year when I am having a bad day and my friends tend to come to me for advice, so I deal with their problems and not my own). I have always formulated theories in my head to cope with the random patterns, or lack thereof and make a pattern that probably isn't even there. So I know this isn't really the same, I know what it is like to have a theory disproved by a new twist in the pattern. So these things that I have observed since I was little (the different patterns have changed as I have gotten older, but my brain still automatically formulates patterns in subtleties) helped me to understand how she felt when she had to give up her idea of having the orange to cling to and thus having love. It helped me to see that this symbol, when taken away or disproven, makes her feel like all she has believed in has just crumbled and now she has to make a completely new outlook on life, different than what she had believed her entire childhood.
1)I would say that the character is round and dynamic. It gives you the background of her life and she shows a change from the beginning to the end of the story. She starts out the story sad and innocent putting all her hope into this orange that could "fix anything." Then by the end of the story she realized the orange really didn't do anything.
ReplyDelete2)The girl believes that the orange can save people. The orange symbolizes love she has for other people that has the ability to save them.
3) The final scene is so significant because it reveals the point of the story and shows the girl's great loss. I think her slamming the door on her hand symbolized how it felt when she realized love can't save people. It was a representation of her innocence being taken away.
4)When I was a kid I used to believe that my parents were almost perfect. I used to think that when adults did bad things it
was just things other kid's parents did. Then, I realized that my parents make the same mistakes I do. When, I realized this i was left with a feeling of disappointment and disbelief. This helps me to understand the main character's loss of her belief in love. When you hold something up on a pedestal, like she did with the orange(love), when it "falls from grace" your left feeling devastated.