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Tips for IB English Oral Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Review Hamlet Review Carol Ann Duffy poems review
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Tips for the Oral (Taken straight from Mr. Swart’s packet)Introduce yourself and explain the poem
Place the poem in context
Set the scene
Give your thesis
Describe the narrator or persona
Discuss significance of the title
Go through poem line by line or chunk by chunk (Try to say something about every line if possible)
Make connections with other parts of the poem
Stick to literal level if you are unsure of interpretation
Point out poetic techniques and mention their significance
If you are not sure say, “It is possible” instead of “I don’t know”
Conclude commentary without saying “that’s all folks”
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK:
Topics of Interest:
Chapter 2: Seeing
In this chapter Dillard returns to her childhood habit of leaving pennies for other people to find. As a child, before you realize how little a penny is actually worth it is a big deal to find one.
However, as you age, you realize how meaningless it is and may not even stop to pick it up. When Dillard visits Tinker Creek, she is reminded of how a child sees the world. She begins to
obsess in seeing the world around her through a child’s eyes. What she means by this is how a child can see the value in everything, including a worthless penny. By viewing nature in this
light she is able to notice the smaller details below the surface. She discusses how people only see what they want to see and don't look further.
Chapter 11: Stalking
Chapter 6: The Present
Major theme: Duality: bad & good, beautiful & ugly, you aren't able to have one without the other.
Other Themes:
Isolation
Mortality
Consciousness
(Wo)Man vs Nature
Duality
Organization: Starts in winter and goes through all seasons, with some flashbacks
Conclusion: asking the question is more important than the answer.
Religion of Dillard: She was raised prebytarian, however as she aged she explored Catholicism and stuck more with the Catholic Church.
○ She quotes from all three major religious texts and finds the commonalities between all texts and religions, Quorum, Bible and Torah.
○ Even though god may be perceived differently by different people, there are commonalities between all Gods.
○ She questions the motivation of God, why would he create bad things if he has the power to make everything good?
○ Why would you do this instead of that?
○ If God creates horrible things, does that make God horrible?
○ She doesn't put value on anything, it just is. We may put value on beauty but nature doesn’t.
○ Nature can be beautiful and terrifying at the same time
○ Uses science to support religion as well as religion to support science.
○ They usually conflict eachother but she argues them together
○ Nature is too organized, and there is too much predictability in nature for it to be an accident
○ There’s too much diversity in nature, things we will never understand so we have to just accept that God played a part in nature and we aren’t supposed to understand it
because only God understands it.
○ She's trying to see if religion and science can go together
,Reflection: Why go to Tinker Creek in the first place?
○ Writes the book as if she's leading up to an idea or epiphany, however never reaches one.
Important Nature Interactions:
○ Puppy: living in the present
○ As soon as you think about a moment as you’re in the present, it’s lost
○ Old Tomcat: scratches up Dillard’s chest
○ Dillard reflects on this and thinks about how we wake up in mystery to whatever the universe deems fit
○ Each morning is a new life
○ Fecundity: nature’s ability to produce an abundance of offspring
○ Usually more offspring are produced than necessary since only a couple will survive
○ Inhumane and inefficient
○ Why produce millions of offspring only for a couple to survive when you could just produce a couple that all live?
○ Water BugWaterbug and Frog: the water bug killed the frog by liquifying its guts and sucking them out
○ Shows the cruelty of nature
○ Muskrat: you can’t predict what an individual muskrat’s path will be but you can predict what a muskrat would do
○ Similar to quantum physics where you can predict what electrons are gonna do but you can’t predict the path of an individual electron
○ Moth: Dillard’s elementary school teacher let a moth hatch inside a mason jar. Since the moth had no room to spread its wings, it came out deformed
○ Shows how humans interfere with the natural process of nature
Realizations:
If you want to live, you have to die
○ Connection to 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: the total entropy (disorder/randomness of a system) can never decrease; here, the system is defined as Earth
○ In order for a person to live, they also have to die (entropy therefore increases)
We are living in an amoral world and we’re the moral beings
○ However, the world is not a monster
○ Morality is irrelevant and it’s our emotions that deem nature as brutal
People live their lives with blinders over their eyes
○ People don’t pay close enough attention to the natural world around them
○ The more she thought about sight, the more she realized how limited her sight was and how much she can’t see
○ The blind perceive color patches and form them into objects
○ This abstract and dazed way was purely seeing
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK CHAPTER 2: Seeing
Summary: Dillard starts by describing one of her memories as a child when she would hide pennies along the sidewalks for people to find. She talks about how you have to look deeper in
order to truly see nature. She finds the book, The Mountains, by Stewart Edward White interesting when he talks about breaking down what you see to help find what you’re looking for.
She gets frustrated by thinking about how to see because she realizes how much she can’t see. Another book, Space and Sight by Marius von Senden, discusses seeing and how blind
people have no sense of space after being given the ability to see again. After reading this book, Dillard saw the world a new way, through patches of color.
Main Characters:
Annie Dillard - the main character throughout the novel. She is independent and separates herself from humans in order to expand her consciousness, and spends her time exploring
nature at Tinker Creek. “I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life to its free flow” (10.56).
Penny - Dillard recounts a time when she was younger and used to play with pennies. To her, they are a sign of good luck.
Marius von Senden - author of book Space and Sight, which is about cataract operations. He helped Annie see the world differently as she understands the true gift of sight.
Big Idea:
This chapter is about a new way of seeing, thinking and perceiving the world. Dillard focuses on teaching people how to appreciate the little things in life. Many things can stand in the way
of people’s sight. There can be physical obstacles as well as obstacles such as focusing on the wrong things and not allowing oneself to be completely present in the moment.
Literary Devices:
, Imagery- The usage of descriptive words to create a mood of peace and tranquility to demonstrate how important it is to appreciate and look deeper into nature and find satisfaction in
natural beauty rather than aiming our satisfaction to high standards based on artificial value such as large sums of money.
Symbolism- Pennies symbolize the small unappreciated gifts of nature. Early in the chapter, Annie Dillard presents pennies as an object whose value is not in currency but experience that
she used to love to give to strangers, however such acts were unappreciated. Confused on why the appreciation of a penny differs between her and the strangers, she compares it to the
other daily acts that go unnoticed. She then presents multiple natural anomalies that go unappreciated and compares them to pennies.
Flashback- Dillard uses her past experiences to further demonstrate the meaning of the penny to her. Her personal encounters help us better empathize with the perception of the penny
holding more value than just one cent.
Extended Metaphor- Annie Dillard uses extended metaphors through her novel by first describing encounters and experiences of nature and later connecting the experiences to Dillards
process of understanding life. For example her process of introducing the “Giant Water Bug”, then relating the bug to cruel animals and their process of hunting with no mercy, then
connecting the presence of these animals to the gift and reasoning of god and his obstacles.
Point Of View - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a novel written in the first person by Annie Dillard. This is very important because we see the authors process of debunking what may just
appear as a river, further extend this by describing her evaluation of every detail in the setting, then connecting the understanding of the natural system to everyday life and
understanding of life.
Run-On - Annie Dillard uses the process of running on her sentences, using comma splices, in between her long, descriptive sentences. The author uses this method to best describe her
aesthetic surroundings in great detail at a slow pace. Such as “A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my
brain.”
Style:
The tone of Dillard’s writing is very introspective. Annie spends the large majority of her time analyzing the world around her and seeing how it affects her. In this chapter, she remenices
her childhood, and taps into her inner self. She uses this ability to dive deeper into her understanding of nature, and write about intricate things as if everything leaves her awe struck.
Because of this, her style of writing is known to be extremely wordy, and has lots of lengthy sentences.
Key Passage:
“I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present. It's not that I'm observant; it's just that I talk too much.” (pg31)
Verbalization isn't always the key to understanding what you see, but it can be. It can also, however, be a giant distraction. Annies learn that a lot more can be said when you look into
yourself and write your thoughts before spewing them out outloud.
Important Symbols:
Black birds coming out of the tree: The blackbirds suddenly explode out of the tree. Dillard was able to hear them but was not able to see them until they flew away. This makes her
question how she was not able to see them and if people only see what they want to see and now actually what there is in life.
Pennies: She drops pennies on the sidewalk to see if anyone would notice them and if anyone is noticing the small details in life.
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK CHAPTER 11: Stalking
Summary: As July arrives, Dillard immediately starts talking about the Eskimos, whose lives fascinate her. In keeping with the chapter title, she focuses on their unique and sometimes
cruel hunting practices. She abruptly returns to her own life at the creek, complaining about the summer heat, but says she too is stalking. Unlike the Eskimos, however, she does not
chase her prey. She stands and waits in place, "emptied," in the via negativa.
Dillard recounts an incident at the bridge when, despite her smoking and making noise, a muskrat got within an arm's length of her. For 40 minutes they sat side by side, his unawareness
of her making her feel as if she didn't exist either. This lack of self-awareness happens to her as "second nature" now and is invigorating. For Dillard stalking is slowing down her
breathing, being still, and retreating not within but outside herself.
Then she moves to quantum mechanics, mentioning the German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg (1901–76) and his Principle of Indeterminacy: one can know the
location of a subatomic particle or the speed at which it is moving, but never both. Physicists have become mystics, Dillard says, and the physical world is more like the ever-changing
Tinker Creek than the seemingly imperturbable mountains behind it.
She also says in the Old Testament God tells Moses something similar. Moses can see God's face, or he can live; he cannot do both. Moses chooses to see God's "back parts" instead and live
with longing. Dillard interprets this concept to mean those who seek God are stalkers who forever will feel a sense of "denial." Nevertheless she will wait. Sometimes all she will be granted
is a fleeting vision of the creator's back parts. But perhaps her patience will be rewarded, as it was with the muskrats.
Main Characters:
Annie Dillard
Eskimos
Muskrats
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