Our Town

--- Act 1 and Act 2 the characters in the play live as society does today. They all have daily routines, all have a plan for their futures, and live up to traits started a long time ago by ancestors. In society today people live and act the same way as the characters did when this play took place in the early 1900's. It's signifying time may change but people don't. Act 1 and Act 2 are used to set up and be used as examples for Wilder's main theme which is described through Act 3.

--- Act 3 was meant to be the conclusion of the play and to display and share the theme, or message, expressed in this play. The stage manager is the character who portrays and controls the time in this play. Time is important because it relates to the theme. The stage manager changes the time multiple times throughout the play. "This time nine years have gone by, friends--summer, 1913." Each part the stage manager expresses a new time, the characters act the same and the story could pick back up as if it was never interrupted. Each example of time used in this play relates to the theme, as time changes, people don't.

Free Reading Response 2

Vanishing Acts
Page 32
Jodi Picoult has given a lot of background information to the characters introduced so far. The setting is in New Hampshire and tells the story of Delia. The reading has told what is happening in present day with each character and also somewhat of a past with four of the five characters mentioned. We’ve found out about how the main character, Delia, feels about her husband Eric. Eric puts his drinking as a priority and has ever since high school. Delia has been emotional about their relationship and in a way blind to what their reality is as a couple. She got pregnant with Eric’s child and felt as if she couldn’t raise it alone. Ignoring her feelings and becoming blind to reality again she decides to engage him and is in the process of planning the wedding. The book also switches narrator into different characters. Right now, Eric is the narrator and we know the thoughts and feelings of him instead of Delia. This puts a change in setting and effects how aspects of reality are told.

Book Response 1

Vanishing Acts
Jodi Picoult
Page 6

From reading the prologue it tells about this girl and her father. Her father is a magician and uses her as his partner because his actual assistant is out sick. Being apart of the act she realizes magic isn't real. In magic acts nothing truly disappears, your attention is just directed somewhere else. In the beginning of chapter one it starts out in the forest and her and a policeman are looking for something. It's very mysterious as to what they are looking for, the only clue given is that it has to something to do with a four year old.

The main character is a girl who's intelligent, strong, and independent. Not much is known about her yet but she's going to play a major role in this story.

Collage Response

http://http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/16/nyregion/l-a-mother-s-perspective-on-family-values-629600.html?src=pm

This article is about a mother expressing the values of herself and family. Her youngest son is forbidden to get marry due to laws on gay marriage. She believes it's hypocritical and disrespectful for society to determine a humans future and love life. She gets angry when told that her son and his partner are dangerous to family values. She believes there are other real threats out there such as alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, etc.

This article relates to my collage because it shows a strong love and respect spread between a family. It also shows that the family passes no judgement to their loved one no matter how society looks at them.

Collage - Family Values

Honesty is shown through the little girl talking to her mom. Many families encourage and live by honesty.

Respect is another value families treasure. Respect not only members of your famiy but your peers, neighbors, elders, etc.

Religion is a big value and belief shared commonly throughout the entire family.

Having trust through your loved ones creates all values stronger such as respect and honesty. Parents at some point in time, have to put trust into their children.

Love and care is needed in all families. Love makes a family strong and lets them be close and pass no judgement through eachother.

Response 2

1. If I could rewrite my paper, I would expand the examples I chose and use more parts of the story instead of focusing on one main part of the overall story.

2. One of my biggest strengths was word choice and the content. I wrote good examples and had a strongly written third topic. My ideas stayed consistant throughout the paper. My weaknesses would be transitioning my sentences and making the paper flow.

3. The prewriting and brainstorming helped me the most when writing this paper. It helped me organize my information, and was a reference I went back to continously in order to write my paper.

Response 1

Reality and truth are two different things. This quote is an example of their differences. The bee is told it can't fly but in reality bees do fly. As people we got told we can't do or participate in certain things, but if we keep attempting in reality we figure out that we are able too. There has been many examples of that in our world. The quote compares to "The Leap" because the bee is told what to do, and so are the citizens when it comes to the lottery.