09.17 - Tone and Diction in Night

Today we talked about the use of tone and diction in Night and how these elements help serve Elie Wiesel's purpose in writing the book. The notes from our discussion are below.

Blue Text = purpose

Green text = tone

Black text = diction and other elements that show that tone

 

(click to enlarge image)

 

We then returned to our game of "Creeper or Keeper" from yesterday where we were looking at the song "Dilate" by Ani Difranco. We recapped that this was more of a song about a break up (like "Don't Stand So Close to Me") and therefore had to be looked at from the perspective of how emotionally mature and respectful the speaker appears to be in the song. 

Instead of having people come up individually and point out specific parts of the song to help us come to a conclusion, people read out their responses explaining why the speaker was a creeper or a keeper. While people read their responses, I annotated the song covering their main points. These notes are included below.

Green Text = Evidence for a keeper

Red Text = Evidence for a creeper

(click image to enlarge)

We did note in this discussion that the line "and you're mine" at the end of the first stanza refers to the previous line which says "and everyone has a skeleton & a closet to keep it in." We talked about how "having a skeleton in your closet" means you have a big mistake or embarrassing secret hidden from everyone so "you're mine" means "you're my mistake" not "you're my true love."

After four people shared their analysis (there were two for and two against) we voted. Seven people voted for creeper and four people voted for keeper.

With the remaining time, we prepared for the next song which will focus more on experiences of young people in love. In their writing journal, everyone responded to the following question:

What is difficult about relationships when you are young? Explain your response.

In class we clarified that relationships can always be difficult, but tend to be difficult in different ways at different ages. We also decided that this question could apply to relationships with friends or romantic interests.

Homework:

Continue to read in Night according to the class reading schedule.