Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon
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CHAPTER ONESusan Sontag
The Making of an Icon
By CARL ROLLYSON and LISA PADDOCK
W. W. Norton & CompanyParagraph 2 0
Mar 20Florentina Narchet Florentina Narchet : Many find it difficult to remember something as little as 4 years old, it's not impossible if the memory is fundamental. Sometimes we can't remember what happened yesterday or last week but do remember what happened as young as 4. The mind is powerful.
Mar 21Nia Bolling Nia Bolling : I was thinking the exact same thing. I barely could remember things from middle school, so this child definitely impressed me.Mar 21Nia Bolling Nia Bolling : Also, not just the fact that she remembered this at a young age isn't the only thing that's shocking. The content of what she remembered is just as impressive. The vocabulary used in the memory were extremely advanced for a 4 year old to remember morewith words such as “high-strung” and “interesting.” It makes you wonder if she even understands what those words mean. And if she didn’t understand, then why did this particular sentence stick with her in memory?
Mar 27Lets keep in mind that everything is probably made up about the four year old girl.
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Mar 17This might be an off topic question, but what was it like writing this with someone else? How does the process work?
Mar 19Alison Ng Alison Ng : In addition to this question, why did you decide to work with someone else?
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Mar 19Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : My wife is a wonderful writer and editor. And she is also a lawyer, and especially in this case I needed a lawyer.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 27I am really impressed with your writing Professor! You are talented. So being that the story is based on a real person, it is okay to add things into the story that are completely made up? I know that is kind of a dumb question, but isn’t that a fabrication issue, or can’t people get into trouble for adding things that are not true. Maybe I am comparing writing to reporting in a literal sense.
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Mar 28Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Nothing in the Sontag book is made up, and to make up things as a biographer or nonfiction writer would destroy your credibility. This is a biography, not a story made up about a real person.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
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Mar 19Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : I wrote most of the book and my wife rewrote and edited it.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 21You both have a great deal of knowledge of each other which means she understands your writing styles, frame of reference, habits (both good and bad) which only leads to better and more efficient editing.
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Mar 21Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : But you have to be able to take criticism and the criticism has to be given.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 27Do you ever question your wife when she edits your work. Let me restate that. Do you guys ever bicker over what should and should not be included?
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Mar 28Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : If an editor says your words are unclear, then they are unclear most of the time. We don't bicker. We're professionals and both understand the importance of a good editor.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
My Desert Childhood
Paragraph 3 0Mar 17This is a terrific title, given that a desert is a lonely place where living conditions are bad. It mirrors the experience of her childhood of her being cared for by nannies, relatives, and grandparents instead of her parents. It also is pun on the word deserted.
1933-1945
One of her earliest memories—she is about four—is set in a park. She listens to her Irish nanny talking to another giant in a starched white uniform: "Susan is very high-strung." Susan thinks: "That's an interesting word. Is it true?"
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : What does the first paragraph tell you about Sontag? What is the reader being prepared for?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : The first paragraph shows that Sontag thinks and questions things. moreThe reader is prepared to see that Sontag was misunderstood as a child, as she was called “high-strung” although she was someone who questioned her surroundings and thoughts rather than simply accept them.
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Oct 16Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : And what about the reference to "interesting word"?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 16Jason Javaherian Jason Javaherian : The author is attempting to begin a conversation. Interesting in this context is used to examine who this woman really was. Is the nanny's opinion accurate? We shall see.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : What does it say about Sontag?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : It says that Sontag was always questioning what was around her. She can be defined as someone never satisfied just accepting what was around her; she wanted to learn and discover more.
Oct 17Student Michelle Gontar Student Michelle Gontar : This shows that Susan even at the early age of 4 was able to question those around her, it prepares the reader to expect many other questions through the progression of her life.
Oct 17Andrey Buslov Andrey Buslov : I believe the author begins the story with story to show the reader of Susans curiosity of life and her surroundings. And how she was misrepresented in her life. Even at such an early age.
Oct 17Sebastian Lema Sebastian Lema : it's hinting to her analytical skills. she was able to question and critically think about things at an early age. the reader will begin to see if this is an accurate opinion of Susan.
Oct 17Julia Howe Julia Howe : It's a great way to first introduce a character. A small anecdote from their childhood is so telling of their true, natural character. A toddlers personality is still their own. As a reader I look forward it learning more about her.
Oct 24Stephanie Bieniek Stephanie Bieniek : The first paragraph gives you a feel of Susan's personality. It prepares the reader for related events that would further illustrate her "high-strung" personality.
Feb 12Anthony Califano Anthony Califano : This paragraph sets the scene for the rest of the biography. It prepares the reader and introduces him or her to a young girl who is not just like any other ordinary little girl. Because of this, it makes the reader wants to read more and discover more.
Feb 12Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) : She is four years old, In that age is when kids explore, she doesn't understand what her nanny met, but she like to know what it is. Like any other kid.
Feb 12Alicea Ulmer Alicea Ulmer : The flashback described in the paragraph suggests that her parents had very busy lives, leaving her with a nanny. Sontag was a young child and misunderstood. It prepares the reader to understand what shaped the person she grew into
Feb 13gabriela ramirez gabriela ramirez : the fist paragraph tells us how she questions and analyzes the way other people express about herself.
Feb 13samiyha jimenez samiyha jimenez : The reader is prepared to realize that Sontag questioned everything in her surroundings. I feel that as a child Sontag was misunderstood.
Feb 13M. Hiraiwa M. Hiraiwa : It tells you that Susan questioned things around her; she was meticulous for her age. She was just four years old, but she thought like an adult. This introduction makes the reader want to know more about her to see if she is high-strung.
Mar 16This prepares the reader for character development on who “she” is and whether or not she trusts her nanny’s judgements of others. It shows how Sontag questions the world around her and doesn’t automatically trust a caretaker or higher authority.
Mar 17It shows that Sotang is a curious child. She right away questions what she hears, in this case being the word “high-stung.” It also shows that for her age she is smart, as she uses the word “interesting” in her thoughts. Usually, the average four year old does not have that word in their vocabulary yet!
Mar 18Philip Segal Philip Segal : I think the first paragraph introduces Sontag as a woman, who even the age of four, is unusually curious. How many words does a four year old know, a lot of words must sound interesting to a toddler. moreI also thought it was interesting that her Irish nanny is in her earliest memory and not her parents. I think maybe the writer is trying to get across to readers what it might be like with ‘out of the picture’ parents.
Mar 19When I read that she had a nanny, I immediately thought about the absence of her parents. I also concluded that her parents/guardians had some money, since they could afford a nanny.
In addition, the first paragraph notes Sontag’s age (four) and her ability to think critically, since she is questioning a word used by her nanny. The sentences imply that Sontag is intelligent, since most children do not think like that.
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Mar 19Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : You need to be careful. Before World War II servants were incredibly cheap. You did not have to be wealthy to have a nanny or maid. It was quite common in middle class life.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 19I feel that this tells me Susan’s curiosity with with what was around her and also, what is being said in her presence.I think it also shows her curiosity and interest with words and their meaning. The reader could possibly be prepared for numerous flashbacks of Susan’s life that reflects her curiosity and wisdom.
Mar 19Stephen Herman Stephen Herman : Already you get the sense that we are dealing with a veryvery attentive & curious personality which prepares the reader for an interesting read.
Mar 20Annie Paul Annie Paul : She is a child who has exercised her perceptive abilities from a very young age. moreit shows how perceptive she really is. She hears grown ups talking, and is always open to new experiences, new vocabulary, and has been very in tune with her intellect from her youth.
Mar 21The first paragraph exemplifies Susan’s curiosity and introspection at a young age. It prepares us to expect how this affected her growing up and a possible explanation for why she was like this.
Nov 18MR. Darrell Morrison MR. Darrell Morrison : It is preparing to experience a story about Susan. We may learn what her being high strung is really all about.She is "remembering" an event that occurred circa 1937, an event she describes in her Paris Review interview of 1995. The park is in New York City, the nanny's name is Rose McNulty, and she is illiterate. It is Susan's impression that Rose does not know what to make of her temperamental charge. Sontag will spend her first five years in New York living with her grandparents and being cared for by relatives.
Paragraph 6 0Nov 18MR. Darrell Morrison MR. Darrell Morrison : It is in quotation marks being the author wants to let it be known that this happen so long ago.Paragraph 6, Sentence 1 0A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Why is "remembering" in quotation marks?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : Its how Sontag perceives and is recanting it, though its doesn't necessarily have to be accurate.
Oct 16Hmayak (Mike) Aghajanov Hmayak (Mike) Aghajanov : A four-year old cannot actually remember an event because of unformed consciousness. She rather recalls by connecting visual fragments. Thus, quotation marks are stressing the figurative way of the given word.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Probably true although some people claim to remember as early as four, including me.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Dec 15Mr. Kishan Singh Mr. Kishan Singh : That is true. But remembering something that minor, seems extraordinary.Oct 16Student Michelle Gontar Student Michelle Gontar : As a four year old it is very hard to have an accurate or complete memory, so what she is remembering is more than likely minimally true and mostly filled in with imagined details.Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : For Sontag "remembering" may hold different and more vivid meaning than it does for most. She seems to not just remember events, but remember these perceptions and questions that were constantly being asked about these eventsOct 17Andrey Buslov Andrey Buslov : I believe it's in quotations because she and the author are not really sure of how it exactly happened, because she was still just a really young child.
Oct 17Recalling memories at age 4 is difficult.
Oct 17Sebastian Lema Sebastian Lema : Such an early memory may not be too accurate that's why it is in quotation.Feb 12Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) : Remember she was four years, For a adult to remember that age is like trying to solve a puzzle.
Feb 13Aaron Ferrer Aaron Ferrer : It's in quotations to almost tell the reader that what she says about this event from when she was 4 may or not be fully accurate. It almost discredits her in a way so that the writer doesn't lose their own credibility incase her information is false.Feb 13M. Hiraiwa M. Hiraiwa : The event happened 58 years ago when she was just four years old. So "remembering" is used to give her the benefit of the doubt. [Edited]Mar 16In my perspective, as a reader, I don’t think she’s actually remembering the event completely accurately. It is already difficult to remember things from such a young age, and humans tend to fill in memory gaps with what they think happened or imagined happening. It makes us question how true the memory is.
Mar 17She is only four, so It informs the reader that the “remembering” she does can possibly be skewed or not true. If I am correct words are sometimes put in quotes for this purpose?
Mar 18Philip Segal Philip Segal : I think that remembering is in quotes because it is about something that happened so long ago. moreMaybe using the quotation marks hints to readers that the statement is a recollection not a report of fact.
Mar 19It questions the authenticity of her memory. The text mentions that the event happened around 1937, which means the date of her recollection is not exact. And if the date is not exact, the details memory could also be an approximation.
Mar 19Sophia Williams Sophia Williams : it's in quotes as she didn't or couldn't really remember very clearly the event took place.Mar 20Sean Reeder Sean Reeder : After reading the entire piece, the use of quotation marks around "remembering" seems to be due to Sontag's natural inclination to dramatize. Her remembrance of the event might be tinged with fiction as it was her nature to be imaginative.
Mar 20While you did mention that some people have memories that are as sharp as a tac, even at the age of four, an event that is remembered is never the entirety of what actually happened. It poses that the Irish nanny may “remember” events quite differently.
Mar 23I think because she was trying hard to remember. A if she was squeezing the memories out of her head.
What Sontag wants to tell us is that she felt alone at a very early age, bored with her environment, and that her inner life—the only one she had control over—became paramount. Already at four, she claims, she was engaging in critical analysis, wondering about that word "high-strung." Sontag has preferred to use the word "restless" to describe her child self, one who felt that "childhood was a terrible waste of time."
Paragraph 7 0Nov 18MR. Darrell Morrison MR. Darrell Morrison : The effect a reader might experience is that this is what the author want to drive a point home because she believe that Sontag was telling to say something.Paragraph 7, Sentence 1 0A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : What is the effect of "What Sontag wants to tell us"?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : Although Sontag's intentions are understood, there is much more room for interpretation of her life.Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : As stated before, her views can be interpreted different ways. She clearly grew up trying to grasp at different concepts, including simple terms such as "high strung." We have to ask ourselves if she's lonely or just in search of new discoveries.
Oct 17By using this statement, it enables the writer to convey a much larger idea. Instead of simply quoting Sontag, or saying “Sontag wondered what high strung meant,” the writer now has more room to further detail her early age curiosity.
Feb 12Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) : In spite of the fact that Sontag's expectations remain to be seen, there is significantly more space for understanding of her life.Mar 16When the author says that this is what Sontag wants to tell us, the author is putting words into Sontag’s mouth. So, what she wants to tell us is in accordance to the author’s interpretation. As the reader, our interest is heightened and now we want to know WHY and HOW she feels alone. We are being reeled in.
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Mar 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : I don't follow. What words are put in Sontag's mouth? Isn't it the other way around?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 18Well, I feel that the author is creating Sontag’s character here by saying “what she wants to tell us.” When I read this part, although I feel curious as to why Sontag feels this way, I feel skeptical because there is no direct quote or information from Sontag saying that this is what she was trying to tell us. The only relation the reader receives to confirm that this is “what Sontag wants to tell us” is a “claim” she had from age four, which I am also skeptical of. To me, I feel that this paragraph is shaping Sontag’s character without legitimate evidence.
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Mar 19Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : The evidence is in the notes, which you don't have access to but that is in the book. It is also legitimate for biographers to speculate.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 17That there is more to the story, that perhaps there is something she does not wan’t to tell us as well.
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Mar 18Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Yes, holding back something, trying to control the story.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 21Her control over the story is a reflection of the only control she had over her inner life, since her outer life was so dissatisfying and unwanted.
Mar 18Philip Segal Philip Segal : She is different from everyone else, maybe the current society norms, an outcast. moreBeing bored at an early age of her environment and inner life, I think shows a little ambition. I have an image of a young Susan Sontag eager to enter adulthood.
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Mar 19Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Your image is correct.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 21I also foreshadow some regrets for Sontag for wanted to grow up so soon. But I will read on.
Mar 19Sophia Williams Sophia Williams : There is much more for us to get to know about Sontag. A lot of it, I feel we may never imagine or be able to comprehend fully.Mar 19Stephen Herman Stephen Herman : This phrase suggests that the writerwriter/s are making am assumption of what they think she is trying to say. It suggests what is about to he told to the reader is the interpretion of the writer. It doesn't seem false, but can seem corrupted.Mar 20This piece starts off fairly innocently—a four year old girl interacts with her nanny, and wonders about what it means to be high strung. Here, the writer dives into an interpretation of what the events mean. Sontag is lonely—her only friend so far is her illiterate nanny—but she is also curious. She wants to learn, she wants to understand, and she wants to know: “Is it true?”
Mar 21Is it possible that watching and growing up with an illiterate nanny is the reason for her desire curiosity of such truths and wants to explore such knowledge? Seeing someone in close proximity to you suffer on a daily basis by lack of knowledge can be a huge motivating factor.
Mar 20“What Sontag wants to tell us” serves the purpose of letting the reader know that there is room for interpretation when analyzing her actions and thoughts.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 21Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Yes, separating the biographers from their subject and also inviting the reader to think about the kind of story that is being told.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 23She was alone because she was in the world of discoveries. She gives the example within the paragraph, at four she "was engaging in critical analysis, wondering about that word ‘high strung.’ "
Where were her parents? In China most of the time. Jack Rosenblatt had a fur-trading business, the Kung Chen Fur Corporation. When Susan was born, on January 16, 1933, in Woman's Hospital in Manhattan, her parents had a residence at 200 West Eighty-sixth Street. She was their first child. Mildred had been nervous about giving birth overseas, but not long after Susan was safely delivered, Mildred returned to China to be with her husband. Another pregnancy brought her back to Manhattan, where she gave birth to a second daughter, Judith, on February 27, 1936, in New York Hospital. By this time, the family had a home in Great Neck, Long Island.
Paragraph 8 0Nov 18MR. Darrell Morrison MR. Darrell Morrison : This paragraph starts with a questions because the author is trying to provoke some form of cation in the reader.Paragraph 8, Sentence 1 0A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Why does the paragraph begin with a question?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : Its what the reader was thinking by that point and it is placed there to effectively show that the author knows and agrees.Oct 16Student Michelle Gontar Student Michelle Gontar : To get the reader to think more deeply into her life as it was previously stated that Susan was with her nanny, no mention of parents.Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : It presents to us the question that may have been in the back of our minds the whole time. When we think of a child who feels alone we question where their parents may be in their life. moreAfter getting into her mindset, it’s the question every reader wants answered.
Oct 17Andrey Buslov Andrey Buslov : To have the readers focus on the story by having the reader question and think about it.Oct 17It emphasizes her loneliness
Oct 17Sebastian Lema Sebastian Lema : We've been hearing about nannys and grandparents so the author is addressing a question we would naturally have.Feb 12Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) Junior Martinez (JRN 3900) : Sontag was mostly with her nanny in the beginning of the story, Now it is time for us to understand why she is "high-strung" as her nanny recalled.Feb 13M. Hiraiwa M. Hiraiwa : Because "she felt alone at a very early age." It is unusual since, normally, a girl of her age is supposed to be taken care of well, and being loved by her parents. [Edited]
Mar 16The question is a good transition into the new paragraph that pulls the reader along, intrigued, wanting to know the answer. Sontag is a lonely child who is being cared for by relatives. The parent question is what the reader has been pondering since paragraph six.
Mar 16I truly think that it is a way to shift the spotlight on to her parents, who are crucial characters to how Sontag became who she is. By using a question, the reader goes straight to pondering where her parents were.
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Mar 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : But not necessarily an explanation of what Sontag became.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 19The earlier paragraphs detail her parent’s absence, but do not explain where they are. It is the first question the reader wants answered.
Mar 19Sophia Williams Sophia Williams : Paragraph begins with a sentence to entice the reader and get/keep the reader interested in knowing more about Susan's background.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 20Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Background information can sometimes seem dull, so you have to find a way to introduce it in an engaging way.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 19Stephen Herman Stephen Herman : It brings attention to the proceeding paragraph about her boredom at an early age and her loneliness. It comes off with an accusatory connotation, placing blame on her absent parents who are causing herher to feel such a way at such an early age.
Mar 20Jailain Hollon Jailain Hollon : The author presents the question to the reader as a strategy to keep them engaged. The author also does this to put the readers in the perspective of someone that felt abandon, therefore emphasizing their loneliness.Mar 20Sean Reeder Sean Reeder : The sentence could simply read "Her parents were in China most of the time" and still convey the same information, but it would feel very different. The use of posing a rhetorical question that is followed by its answer subtly shakes things up. moreThe reader most likely has this question already posed from the start and its appearance here, as a question, feels familiar and natural.
Mar 20Katherine Pangilinan Katherine Pangilinan : Brings to the forefront what the reader has been wondering for 7 paragraphs now. moreShe has a nanny who cares for her. She has grandparents who care for her. She has relatives who care for her. What about the parents?
Mar 20it reiterates a question that the reader was probably thinking (I know I was), while simultaneously suggesting that it will address this question soon.
Mar 21I think the reference of the mother all the way down in the 4th paragraph is great for several reasons. It could have been addressed during the first lonely reference but instead the author chooses to build the characters up more before the mothers introduction.By giving such insight on Sontag and Rose, it erases not only the mothers role in her life but the mothers being in total and replaces that mother figure with that of the nanny’s. The question in graph 4 is a quick and somewhat needed reminder for readers to pull that question of the actual mother from the back of their minds. This experience may not seem true for all readers but it can be a possibility.
Dec 15Mr. Kishan Singh Mr. Kishan Singh : She is of an upper class family. It is confirmed in the next paragraph.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Dec 16Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : You're quite mistaken. It was not an upper class family. Middle class. It was ot that unusual to hve a servant then. Servants were paid very little.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Susan's parents had money, they were young, and they were very much involved in their business. Jack was only twenty-eight, and his wife Mildred, née Jacobson, only twenty-six, when Susan was born. On the company's books Mildred is listed as president-treasurer. Jack, or Jasky (as he was named on his birth certificate), had come a long way from 721 East Sixth Street in lower Manhattan, where his father, Samuel, and his mother, Gussie, née Kessler, both Jews from Austria, had begun a fur business and raised five children, two daughters and three sons. Mildred's family, Jews from Russian-occupied Poland, were also involved in the clothing trades. Her father, Isaac, a tailor, and his wife, Dora, née Glasskovitz, raised seven children. Mildred, born at home (139 Cook Street), was the second-youngest child and the only girl. She and Jack met at Grossinger's, a resort in the Catskills where Mildred had a waitressing job.
On October 19, 1938, just before midnight, Jack Rosenblatt died of pulmonary tuberculosis in the German American Hospital in Tientsin, China. He was not quite thirty-five. Mildred, staying at the Astor House Hotel in Tientsin, telegraphed his father and brother Aaron the next day, and she made arrangements to begin the journey back to New York a week later.
Sontag remembers that her mother waited several months to tell her that her father had died, and then was brief, saying only that he had died of pneumonia.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Why is this paragraph so short? What does it say about narrative management?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 16Jason Javaherian Jason Javaherian : It's fitting because it describes a loss, and like her mother's version is also brief. It shows how you can be creative with paragraph length, and relate it to the topic. The less words in this short paragraph also gives them more weight.Oct 16Student Michelle Gontar Student Michelle Gontar : It describes a part of Sontag's life and gives background but is not the most important piece of information to learn so it is kept short.Oct 17It is a reflection to her explanation of her brief description of her father’s death
Oct 24Stephanie Bieniek Stephanie Bieniek : The shortness of the paragraph emphasizes how brief and and short Susan's mother was with her on her father's death. It indirectly says that Susan lacked emotional nourishment from her mother.Mar 16The mother is unsure how to tell her daughter. She wants to avoid the subject. Simply a quick explanation and then left alone. But the authors quickly move to her asthma trauma, the struggle. Although, later we see that Sontag tries to escape her reality, creating her own world. She wants to know more about her father while trying to fill an emptiness, the pain of his absence. All she has are remnants of the man, things kept. She finds solace in literature such as Poe.
Mar 16The paragraph reflects the content of the story itself. Her father’s death was short and brief, as is the paragraph. There is no need to discuss the details of her father’s death here, so the author follows through with that idea by keeping this just as short.
Mar 18Philip Segal Philip Segal : The news from her mother was short but powerful. I think that the short paragraph is used to portray the same effect on the reader.Mar 19The paragraph is not only informing the reader about Sontag’s experience, it is also visually visually copying it. Sontag’s mother only spoke briefly about the father’s death; the paragraph follows by also being brief.
Mar 19Sophia Williams Sophia Williams : I think it is short because of its emotional impact. About the narrative management: it states that a paragraph that is brief usually makes a huge impact and says a lot about the matter.Mar 19Stephen Herman Stephen Herman : It makes it more dramatic; making the reader focus on the what's being said. Plus it feels harsh. Just how the paragraph says what it needs to & aburtly ends, I imagine that's how her mother delivered the news to her & how she must have felt. It hits hardMar 20Jailain Hollon Jailain Hollon : Like the mother the author is short and to the point, it's like the author is paralleling the mother's decision to leave out the unnecessary aspects of the father's death.Mar 20The news of the death, the delayed delivery of the information, and the brevity of the explanation are epitomized by the shortness of this paragraph. What it says about narrative management is that the less you say, the more it hits the reader.
Mar 23The paragraph is brief just like the brief statement from her mom in regards to her father’s passing.
Then five-year-old Susan experienced her first asthma attack. Asthma is an alarming disease for anyone but is especially frightening in children. Coughing attacks usually occur at night, between the early hours of two and six; the child gasps for air and sometimes regurgitates a sticky mucus.
In 1939 Mildred decided to remove her small family from New York in search of a better climate for Susan, and a doctor recommended Miami. Recalling her family's brief residence in that city for an interviewer, Sontag presented brief vignettes: a house with coconut palms. She is in the front yard with a hammer and screwdriver trying to open the tropical fruit. An obese black cook takes her to a park and Susan notices a bench marked "For Whites Only." She turns to the cook and says, "We'll go sit over there and you can sit on my lap." It all seemed so nineteenth-century, Sontag told the interviewer. The city's humidity only made Susan's asthma worse, and after a few months the family left Miami.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Why is an interviewer mentioned here--at this point in the narrative? [Edited]A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : Its a reminder that the information we are reading came from what Sontag wants us to know.Oct 16Student Michelle Gontar Student Michelle Gontar : It shows that this is purely Sontag's point of view, gives credibility to the dialogue.Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : We have to remember that this is not an authors view of Sontag, this is her view of herself. The author is reminding us that we need to make our own interpretations or conclusions of Sontag, remember who the source of the information is.Mar 16Here is a detailed image of Sontag’s life in Miami as a child. Her stay is short lived but the reader gets a glimpse of that time. Sontag enjoys the cook’s company. She notices the “For Whites Only” bench but, as with “high-strung,” is unsure of its meaning. She wants to sit there with the black cook, oblivious to segregation. This recollection gives us further insight into her character, a time that she perceives as “nineteenth-century,” perhaps expressing her views on that aspect of history, segregation as something archaic for that time.
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Mar 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : It wasn't archaic then. It was the law.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 18The nineteenth century description gave me an impression that she felt that segregation should have been archaic, something that should have been stopped long before.
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Mar 19Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : nineteenth century description? I don't follow.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 20I was referring to the sentence, “It all seemed so nineteenth-century, Sontag told the interviewer.” Not completely sure what she meant but this followed after the whites only bench. I was thinking of 1800’s slavery, emancipation, and on to segregation.
Mar 17This simply gives credibility and allows the reader to trust the author more.
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Mar 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : authors. What exactly "gives credibility"?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 18The credibility is coming directly from Sontag’s own voice, so the reader knows that the information provided is coming directly from her. It’s not only the author’s words anymore. At this point, readers experience Sontag’s own expression.
Mar 19The mention is reminding the reader that everything told is genuine. These events are really Sontag’s experiences.
The reader is kind of like the interviewer. Although the reader isn’t answering questions, he/she is reading Sontag’s answers. The reader and the interviewer are taking in information, which Sontag is given to us.
Mar 20Jailain Hollon Jailain Hollon : The interviewer is mentioned here to give the dialogue a source of credibility. Furthermore, the author mentions the interviewer to give Sontag her own personal point of view, and so the reader can make their own interpretations from her quote.Mar 20Katherine Pangilinan Katherine Pangilinan : This appears to be a biography, so how would the author know all of these small details? moreIntroducing an interviewer at this point gives credibility to the intimate events that the author describes. It’s coming straight from Sontag.
Mar 23So the reader may know that it is Sontag’s point of view.
Mar 27This is one of the moments in your story where I could vividly imagine a little girl sitting on an interviewers lap with a coconut in one hand and a hammer in the other.
Mildred was only thirty-one when she moved her family to Tucson. In interviews, Susan portrays Mildred as a vain, self-absorbed woman who did not know how to act like a mother, who worried instead about growing old and losing her looks. Mildred told Susan not to call her "Mother" in public because she did not want anyone to know she was old enough to have a child. Susan, puzzled, wondered what her mother did with her time, for even after Jack Rosenblatt's death Mildred would be absent from home for long periods, "parking" Susan and Judith with relatives.
It is likely that Mildred was depressed throughout Susan's earliest years. The massive change in lifestyle that accompanies mothering had to be especially hard on the peripatetic Mildred. Not only had she lost a husband, she had lost the income from their business, her employment, independence, and status—all of which were replaced by the insatiable demands of young children. Alcohol provided temporary relief, a cushion, perhaps even an elevation of feeling, although the image Sontag presents is of a phlegmatic mother, too drowsy or listless to read or comment on her child's all-A report cards. It is a familiar scene, repeated in the lives of many writers who begin writing as children, like the writer Anne Rice, moping at her alcoholic mother's bedside.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Why is "likely" used rather than "perhaps"?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : "Perhaps" would be much less effective here. "Perhaps" would be more of a "maybe" and wouldn't have the reader really consider the possibility that Mildred was depressed.Oct 16Student Michelle Gontar Student Michelle Gontar : Though it was not certain it suggests to be more powerful of a word than perhaps, really emphasizes the possibility rather than questioningOct 17Student Vince Brigante Student Vince Brigante : I think likely implies something more definitive, whereas perhaps would seem to question the factuality of it.Oct 17It is an assumption, as are a lot of facts about Mildred are not proven throughout the reading. EX: where Mildred taught
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Oct 18Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : An assumption or a conclusion?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 16Mildred seems to be most likely depressed at that time by what she was going through and her indifference toward her children, such as being unresponsive to the “all-A report cards.” “Likely” is more confident a word than “perhaps” to describe if Mildred was depressed, determined through in-depth research.
Mar 17Perhaps is more of a “maybe,” saying we might know or not know, therefore it’s pointless to put in the story in the first place. There is no trust in “perhaps” or “maybe”. Writing “likely” points the reader’s attention in a certain direction and makes them follow the story through that likeliness, whether the reader realizes they are interpreting it that way or not, they end up following the author’s view. It is a much stronger word.
Mar 19‘Perhaps’ is a question. The word ‘likely’ is used to show the writers have made their own conclusions based on information they know. ‘Likely’ is more certain.
Mar 20Jailain Hollon Jailain Hollon : It's all about the right choice of words, "perhaps" implies a passive yet small amount of doubt on Mildred's depression. Whereas "likely" places an emphasis on certainty, which implies that Mildred was actually depressed.Mar 20Perhaps is polite. Perhaps poses either or. Likely leans more towards a definitive stance.
Mar 23Likely is used because it is not certain why Mildred was depressed, rather a presumption was made.
Mar 27Likely is less passive than perhaps. Due to the pattern of her lifestyle in the story and the reoccurring depressing moments in Mildred’s life, Likely is more fitting. Likely is used to express a pattern of occurrence, specifically in Mildred’s behavior.
Paragraph 15, Sentence 2 0Oct 17Peripatetic: traveling from place to place, especially working or based in various places for relatively short periods.
just a note.
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Oct 18Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Right.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 16Dustin Coker Dustin Coker : I honestly had to look it up myself as well as phlegmatic in the same paragraph. Mildred never seemed to show much emotion, not excited, angry, or happy.Mar 16A good word to express depression, more questioning, an interesting way to describe the condition than using a more direct word such as despondent.
Mar 19I had to look up this definition too since peripatetic is not a word I am familiar with. I learned something new today.
Mar 20It was an interesting word for the author to use, though I personally feel that it is a little disruptive to the flow of the narrative.
Sontag has said little about her upbringing in Tucson, although she remembers that as a young child she walked along the old Spanish Trail toward the Tanque Verde foothills, where she examined the "fiercest saguaros and prickly pears." She searched for arrowheads and snakes and pocketed pretty rocks. She imagined herself the last Indian, a lone ranger. Tucson in the late 1930s occupied nine square miles of broad desert valley, with rolling foothills, unusual colors, and stunning mountains with jagged peaks. The desert is no endless sea of sand dunes. There are thorny bushes and weeds, spiny saguaros, and other trees with bright red fruits and flaming orange, spiky flower buds. When it rains, the desert blooms, the sky spreads wide with double rainbows, and the landscape looks freshly scrubbed. The British writer J. B. Priestley, visiting Arizona in 1937, just two years before Mildred and Susan arrived, never forgot its haunting beauty: "Voices, faces, blue birds and scarlet birds, cactus and pine, mountains dissolving in the morning mirage or glowing like jewels in the sunset, the sweet clear air, the blaze of stars at midnight."
In 1939 these desert delights were close to home. The city had a population of less than forty thousand, although it was rapidly growing as a tourist and military site. It had only two radio stations. Walking down a street, residents heard the same radio programs coming from open windows in almost every house. There were five motion picture theaters, and a few combination book and stationery stores. There was a symphony orchestra, a little theater, music and art programs at the university, a state museum, and a Carnegie library. The pace was leisurely. The city attracted outdoor types and health seekers, with about thirty hospitals and sanitariums catering to sufferers of various respiratory illnesses. Susan's asthma improved in Tucson. She grew into a sturdily built, surprisingly sociable girl.
In September 1939 the school year began with a cloud of dust, and in this haze Susan started the first grade. In retrospect, it seemed a joke: "I was put in 1A on Monday when I was 6 years old. Then 1B on Tuesday. 2A on Wednesday. 2B on Thursday, and by the end of the week they had skipped me to third grade because I could do the work." There were no classes for gifted children then. Susan studied the same subjects as everyone else: writing, spelling, reading, music, art, arithmetic, social studies, health and physical education, and elementary science. Classmates accepted her. "I was born into a culturally democratic situation. It didn't occur to me that I could influence the way these kids were," Sontag later realized. She could always find common ground, saying things like "Gosh, your hair looks great today," or "Gee, those are nice loafers."
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Why the reference to the "cloud of dust"? What does such a phrase contribute to the narrative?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Stephanie Kotsikonas Stephanie Kotsikonas : The "cloud of dust" reference alludes to her move to the desert and may also serve as a metaphor of her hazy childhood.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 16Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Good point.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 19Stephen Herman Stephen Herman : I agree with Stephanie. Its tying in her moving to the desert while emphasizing how hazy and cloudy her childhood had been to her. Great use of visual imagery.Mar 23I completely agree with Stephanie. A “cloud of dust” can also mean negativity, but as we know clouds move, so it could be a metaphor for moving problems. I don’t know if that made sense.
Oct 17This evokes a lot of images. In this case it seems like a confusing and perhaps mind jostling time for her. It gives the reader the sense that it wasn’t a usual, clear and concise introduction to grade school.
Mar 17Not only does this describe the world around her, but it gives texture to what her life had been until that point. It was a blur, a fog that was difficult to be in and see through.
Mar 20Jailain Hollon Jailain Hollon : The phrase "cloud of dust" is a metaphor filled with imagery. The "cloud of dust" references the literal aspect of moving into a desert like setting, whereas it also describes the clout of uncertainty interfering with her childhood.Mar 20The desert is dusty, so it allows the reader to imagine the setting. At the same time, it references the psychological haze of this period of her life.
Even at the age of six, however, Susan felt a need to dramatize her sense of separation from the other students, telling them that she had been born in China. She wanted to make an impression and to establish her connection with faraway places, and China seemed, she later remarked, "as far as anyone can go."
Already, at seven, Sontag had established a lifelong habit of reading through an author's body of work. To begin with, there was Alfred Payson Terhune: Caleb Conover, Railroader (1907), A Dog Named Chips (1931), The Critter and Other Dogs (1936). Perhaps his most famous series focuses on Lad and his exploits in rural New Jersey. Terhune's themes touch on right and wrong and the abuse of authority, as in Further Adventures of Lad (1922), in which an ignorant, overbearing sheriff threatens to shoot Lad, whose adventures usually involve redressing injustice. Anger at the unfairness and insensitivity of the adult world has often stimulated young writers and readers, and it is what drew nine-year-old Susan to more substantial novels such as Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, which she read in her mother's six-volume set. The chapter in which Fantine sells her hair made the young Susan a socialist, she would later declare.
Even more important, however, was Susan's discovery of the travel writer Richard Halliburton. One only needs to look at his frontispiece photographs to understand why: in The Royal Road to Romance (1925), he stands in front of the Taj Mahal, turbaned, arms akimbo, his legs at ease, and a broad smile on his face; in The Flying Carpet (1932) he sits atop his two-seater plane, poised for adventure; in Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels(1937), a photograph of the handsome, thirtyish-looking author is set next to a letter to the reader explaining how as a boy his favorite book was filled with pictures of the "world's most wonderful cities and mountains and temples." He loved that book because it carried him away to "strange and romantic lands."
Asked what books had changed her life, Sontag later gave Halliburton pride of first place. He showed her how "privileged" a writer's life could be, full of "endless curiosity and energy and expressiveness, and countless enthusiasms." Halliburton described climbing Etna and Popocatépetl and Fujiyama and Olympus. He descended the Grand Canyon and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge when it was still under construction. He visited Lenin's tomb in Moscow and the Great Wall of China. "Halliburton made me lustfully aware that the world was very big and very old; that its seeable wonders and its learnable stories were innumerable; and that I might see these wonders myself and learn the stories attached to them," Sontag recalled.
This remembrance evokes something of the excitement Susan felt as a seven-year-old, realizing how much larger the world was than Tucson—and how small-minded it was of her playmates, teachers, and other adults not to yearn for that larger world. Why were adults so cautious? Susan wondered. "When I grow up I've got to be careful that they don't stop me from flying through open doors," she thought.
Reading made much of the life around Susan shrink in size. She read about the war and about modern life. She had no place in her imagination for, say, Tucson's Pima Indians: "The folklore of the Southwest was static; picturesque even to the people who lived there," she later said.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : How does this sentence build on the previous paragraphs and sum them up?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 16This sentence builds on the previous paragraphs because the previous paragraphs let us know that she loved books and that even though her life was not a fairy tale and she did not have a mother that knew her role or should I say wanted to acknowledge her role. Susan began to let books take her away from the current world she was in.
Mar 19Stephen Herman Stephen Herman : It gives off the sense that time shrunk because she read so much. She had no time to live her real life. It also feels like what she read was better than her real life and made it smaller to her. Reading was a much bigger world she wanted to be in.Mar 20The previous paragraphs were a build up to this very sentence. Tucson is physically larger than any of her beloved books, but the worlds she was able to explore through reading completely eclipse her life in Tucson.
Mar 21It was a way to escape the insatiable life she’s had and it brought her excitement. She began to own the stories she read and made those experiences as her own.
Mar 23Reading becomes the center of her attention. The previous paragraph describes her love for reading, and the next paragraph connects reading to her life. This connection between paragraphs may be portraying her life and her only connection, to books, because she is not connected to anything else.
If you were a small kid discovering George Eliot or Thackeray or Balzac or the great Russian novels, little Indian dolls with turquoise beads sure couldn't hold a candle to the nineteenth century novel—as far as being an experience which could blast you out of your narrow framework. If you're looking for something to take you somewhere, to expand your consciousness it's going to be a great world culture.
In her love of Halliburton, Sontag speaks as an enthusiast who sees a world of marvels. She longed for just that kind of companionable parent-writer—but instead, Mildred told her articulate daughter: "In China, children don't talk." Mildred might, in the right mood, reminisce, telling Susan that in China "burping at the table is a polite way of showing appreciation," but that did not mean Susan had permission to burp.
So much of Susan's early life seemed fragmented. In those early years in Tucson, before Susan reached the age of ten, Mildred moved her family several times and Susan attended several schools. What had gone before quickly disappeared.
In 1943 Mildred moved her two daughters to a neat, compact four-room stucco bungalow at 2409 East Drachman, then a dirt road. Sontag implies that her mother, pressed for money, had auctioned off many of her Chinese mementos. The house still stands, on one edge of the University of Arizona, looking exactly the same as it does in the photograph taken of it in 1943, when it was brand-new—except that now the road is paved. Susan, her sister, and her mother were its first occupants. How Mildred managed to afford the rent, support herself and her family, and pay for household help is not clear. Perhaps there was still money left from Jack Rosenblatt's business. Sontag has said her mother taught. There is no record of Mildred teaching in the Tucson public schools, though she may have been employed in one of the city's numerous private institutions.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Note the shift from past to present? Why?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 16Maybe the writer once visited this place and wanted to paint the picture for the reader to get a glimpse of where Susan once lived with her mother. It seemed to me as a piece of evidence that her and her family actually lived there based on Susan’s description.
Oct 16I believe she was the writer. This was a narrative of herself. She mentioned the present looks of the home she once lived in as a memoir to the reader letting them know that this place had not changed a bit.
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Oct 17Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Yes. Such a visit was made.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 17Shannon Jones Shannon Jones : In the previous paragraph it is mentioned "what had gone before quickly disappeared" however, this house exists in present day and is a sort of relic of Sontag's childhood. It hasn't disappeared.Mar 23The shift changed from past to present to paint a vivid description of Susan’s memory to the readers. Also I believe since the building still stands today, that idea wanted to be made clear.
In her backyard, Susan dug a hole with the suspiciously exact dimensions of six feet by six feet by six feet. "What are you trying to do," a maid asked, "dig all the way to China?" No, Susan replied, she only wanted "a place to sit in." She laid eight-foot-long planks over the backyard hole to keep out the intense sun. The landlord complained, saying it posed a hazard for anyone walking across the yard. Susan showed him the boards, and the entrance that she could just barely squeeze through. Inside she had dug a niche for a candle, but it was too dark to read, and she got a mouthful of dirt that came in through the cracks in her makeshift ceiling. The landlord told Mildred the hole had to be filled in within twenty-four hours, and Susan complied with the help of the maid. Three months later she dug another hole in the same spot. Taking her cue from Tom Sawyer, who got the neighborhood kids to do a chore for him—whitewash a fence—she conned three playmates into helping her, promising they could use the hole whenever she was not there.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : What is the effect of the allusion to Tom Sawyer. What contribution does such an allusion make to the narrative?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : It gives the reader a familiar character to relate some of Sontag's characteristics to. We all are familiar of Tom Sawyer's sense of adventure and we are able to realize these same qualities in Sontag and relate to them better.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 18Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : More than just Tom Sawyer's sense of adventure. What else?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Dec 23Chris Zumtobel Chris Zumtobel : his conniving and manipulative personality. He was a leader who mades things happened and sometimes this meant taking advantage of people.Mar 23Gives the reader a better understanding of her personality when compared Tom Sawyer. In a way his vindictive, childish, conniving, and manipulative character is being referenced.
Susan's hole was her hiding place, her miniature world. Her crude dugout also marked the border between "the scary and the safe," as she later put it in an article about grottoes. Her cave was the equivalent of the world elsewhere, of the China where her father had died. All Susan had of her father was a ring with JR on the signet, a white silk scarf with his initials embroidered in black silk, and a pigskin wallet with Jack Rosenblatt stamped in small gold letters. His record, in short, remained unwritten, an "unfinished pain" in her imagination. For this kind of pain, extroverted writers like Halliburton had no cure.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : What is the effect of linking her childhood to her later writing on the narrative?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : It shows the narrative as a complete work. Why else would the reader care about the author's past if it didn't have an impact on all her work, early or late?Mar 23Our experiences make us the people who we become. Childhood has a very strong impact on a person and their development. Knowing Sontag’s childhood could explain her decisions in life or could help the reader understand her personality better.
Fortunately, Sontag found her first literary father early on, before her tenth year. Sontag discovered Edgar Allan Poe. Like Halliburton, Poe conjured up a world of marvels. He wrote detective stories, hoaxes about trips to the moon and about other fantastic voyages of exploration—like The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. But Poe also gave Susan her "first vision of inwardness, of melancholy, of obsessiveness, of the thrill of ratiocination, of morbidity, of a recklessly self-conscious temperament—another span of nascent avidities." Poe's writing is both adventurous and intellectual; his narrators are self-conscious and enclosed in their own worlds. Like the adult Sontag, his characters are devotees, metaphorically speaking, of grottoes—those caverns of the mind. As the narrator of "Berenice" confesses, "My passions always were of the mind."
Poe, like Sontag, is an American writer who sought his inspiration in Europe and in literature itself, and like her, he was obsessed with wasting diseases and death. It is not easy to catch your breath in Poe's Gothic tales, for the sense of doom is as unrelenting as his alliteration. "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year ..."—these sonorous, mesmerizing words in "The Fall of the House of Usher" are a literary narcotic. Poe's fiction confirmed what the therapeutic climate of Tucson tried to deny: the inescapable fact of mortality. If that seems like a morbid discovery, it was also a godsend to a child who sensed what those around her were denying.
If Richard Halliburton spoke to the extroverted pleasure of roaming the world and taking from it what you liked, Poe did the same for the introvert, demonstrating that literature could be a vehicle of transportation to other worlds, and—even better—that literature could be a destination in itself. He taught her to rely on her own sensibility, excluding whatever nonliterary environment she encountered.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : This paragraph is an example of synthesis. What is being synthesized?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 17Synthesis is a written discussion that draws on one or more sources. The ideals of Halliburton and Poe are being synthesized to define Sontag’s inspiration. Here Richard Halliburton is used to mention the inspiration of roaming the world and taking what you want from it, and Poe is used to mention that literature is way of learning about other worlds.
What neither Poe nor Halliburton could give Sontag, though, was a sense of career—an important concept for a child who thought of herself as on her own and who had come to regard herself as her own authority, a common enough feeling in children who suffer from what has been variously called "father-thirst" and "father-hunger." She found her sense of mission in two books that have electrified many generations of young girls: Madame Curie: A Biography and Little Women.
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : How does this paragraph mark a new stage in the narrative?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 15Mr. Douglas Cosgriff Mr. Douglas Cosgriff : Its no longer about the negative effects that later affected her work, but what got motivated her to have future work at all.Mar 21She is beginning to realize some truths about the relationships in her life that is giving her a more positive perspective.
By the age of ten, Susan had read Eve Curie's moving book about her mother. The first sentence of the biography's introduction is captivating: "The life of Marie Curie contains prodigies in such number that one would like to tell her story like a legend." Here is the complete Curie paradigm related in Eve's ecstatic version, a version that provides nearly a perfect blueprint for the arc of Sontag's life to come: Marie spends many years of poverty and solitude in the backwater of Poland. She is fired with a desire to "adore something very high and very great." Eve asks: "How is one to imagine the fervor of this girl of seventeen?" Marie becomes involved in Polish nationalism and socialism, desiring to free her country from Russian occupation and to build a better, a more just society. She aspires to an education in France, the seat of learning and liberty. She writes to her sister, "I dreamed of Paris as of redemption." When Marie's opportunity comes, Eve observes: "How young one felt in Paris, how powerful, trembling, and swelling with hope!" In Paris, Marie studied to a state of near exhaustion, living in spartan quarters, guided by her "will of iron." She attracts the attention of a great scientist, Pierre Curie. Like a novelist, Marie searches for new subjects of research, Together Marie and Pierre give birth to a "new science and a new philosophy." They become joint authors, embodying the "superior alliance of man and woman, the exchange was equal." They have children, and Marie is nearly as passionate about motherhood as she is about science. Her husband dies, and Marie dedicates herself to a "kind of perpetual giving," nursing the wounded in World War I and opening herself up to people around the world. She is excited by the world's mysteries and marvels that she must plumb. Above all, Marie has a sense of destiny. As Eve observes: "We must believe we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained." She persisted with a "superhuman obstinacy." As Marie matured, she saw the need for an international culture and relied upon her "innate refusal of all vulgarity."
Curie's is a noble story as well, because Marie would, in her daughter's words, treat her honors with "indifference," with an "immovable structure of a character" and the "stubborn effort of an intelligence." Eve quotes Einstein's remark that "Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted."
It is not just that Sontag wanted to be like Marie Curie, or that she built a backyard chemistry laboratory, or that she decided she would try to combine careers as a writer and doctor like Chekhov. Imagining herself finding cures, discovering a new element like radium that would be used to treat diseases, was no stretch for Susan. More important is Eve's evocation of a selfless career—so selfless that Marie did not look upon it as a career but as a vocation. This Marie Curie resembled a mythic goddess, a figure of such austere purity that she seemed invulnerable, "intact, natural and very nearly unaware of her astounding destiny."
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Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : Discuss this paragraph as an example of the role analysis plays in narrative.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Dec 23Chris Zumtobel Chris Zumtobel : We are analyzing the drive behind the interest Sontag placed in these different people. What it was about them that Sontag saw and latched onto, ingraining it in her own personality.
Mar 18Hayley Bifulco Hayley Bifulco Hayley Bifulco Hayley Bifulco : Analysis in this narrative allows the biographer to characterize Sontag and her way of thinking. Sontag admires Curie to want to "emulate" her. Sontag wants to be selfless and in love with her career so much, as Curie did. moreThis analysis derives from what Sontag shared about her love for Curie. The biographer took his knowledge about the type of person Sontag is, one who imagines herself doing great things, and what Sontag has told him, about admiration for Curie, and connected them.
Mar 23Analysis gives the character more descriptions. For instance Sontag’s analysis of Marie gave a more clearer view of Sontag’s mind and her thought process.
Susan strove to emulate the ideal Curie, the scientist who painstakingly stood over hot, heavy cauldrons refining ore and making her Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough. When Sontag later spoke of her writing, it would be in terms of agonizing labor, a concentration only on the work itself—not on the honors that might accrue, not on the machinery of self-promotion which she could have patented—and she reacted with hostility to any vulgar suggestion of careerism.
Paragraph 38 0No paragraph-level conversations. Start one.Paragraph 38, Sentence 1 0A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : A phrase like "the ideal Curie" turns Marie Curie into what for Sontag?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Oct 17Tristan Bolano Tristan Bolano : It turns Marie Curie into Sontag's complete inspiration of what she would want to be. The "ideal" Marie Curie, is not just a person, but almost a higher being that Sontag strives to be like.Feb 13M. Hiraiwa M. Hiraiwa : It turns Marie Curie into Sontag's role model who doesn't care much about honor and career, but dedicated to work.Mar 17It turns Marie Curie into her inspiration.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 18Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : What kind of inspiration?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 18Hayley Bifulco Hayley Bifulco Hayley Bifulco Hayley Bifulco : "The ideal Curie" is what Sontag wants to be. By achieving a selflessness and a true, deep love for her career, making it like a "vocation," Sontag will have been fully satisfied.Mar 21Nia Bolling Nia Bolling : Someone she looks up to and wants to be like. Someone who is more focused on the art than the honor received. [Edited]Susan would not entirely give up the idea of a medical/scientific career until she began college, but the idea of creating literature already beckoned to her. "What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer's life seemed the most inclusive," she later said. The writer is free to invent and reinvent herself in a way the scientist or doctor cannot.
Susan fell in love not just with reading and writing but with the idea, the role of the writer. It was part of her self-consciousness project not merely to write but to be seen as a writer: "I did think of being published. In fact, I really thought that that's what being a writer was." The impulse to write was an act of emulation and homage to the great writers she had read: "People usually say they want to become a writer to express themselves or because they have something to say. For me it was a way of being. It was like enlisting in an army of saints.... I didn't think I was expressing myself. I felt that I was becoming something, taking part in a noble activity."
Where would a ten-year-old girl come upon the idea of a publishing world? From two novels: Little Women and Martin Eden. She identified with Louisa May Alcott's budding writer, Jo, although Sontag is quick to add that she did not want to write anything like Jo's sentimental, melodramatic stories. Rather, it is Jo's avidity that captures Susan: "I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what. I'm on the watch for it. I mean to astonish you all some day." Significantly, Jo's sense of greatness is connected to Europe: "Don't I wish I'd been there!" Jo cries. "Have you been to Paris?" Jo rejects Laurie, her childhood companion, for Professor Bhaer, an older European who welcomes her writing rather than seeing it as an eccentric tic. Susan surely spotted Jo's alienation from her family and community—in spite of all the talk of family togetherness. Sontag probably saw the David Selznick production of Little Women, in which Katharine Hepburn glamorized Jo's role. To be Jo, to be a writer, was to be a star.
There is more to Little Women than adolescent fantasies of becoming a writer. Jo becomes confused when she begins changing her stories to suit her family. The futility of trying to please and of expecting a consensus among readers is pointed up by reviewers' contradictory reactions to Jo's work. When Jo prostitutes her talent to produce a cheap magazine piece, her father scolds her: "You can do better than this. Aim for the highest and never mind the money." Indeed, Alcott could have been writing for all budding artists, demonstrating how the writer must find her own voice and integrity.
Even more directly, Jack London's Martin Eden presents a fable of the writer's life, a naturalist's grim yet exhilarating study of individual aspiration that appealed to Sontag's somber but determined sensibility. Eden forges his own identity largely through his reading of books, which are treated almost literally as the building blocks of his personality. They have a tangible, tactile, erotic appeal for him. He does not merely handle books; he caresses them.
Like Martin Eden, Susan wanted her writing to make some kind of impression on the world, no matter how indifferent that world seems to be. London's novel is still valuable as a kind of handbook for the freelance writer; it contains pages and pages describing Martin's feverish efforts to publish, constantly sending out manuscripts in self-addressed envelopes and constantly receiving rejections, and then sending out the stories and articles over and over again until something is accepted. The ratio of rejections to acceptances is daunting: for every piece that is accepted, dozens and dozens are rejected. Yet Martin persists.
What Martin cannot control, of course, is the means of production. Sontag tried to solve this problem at the age of nine or ten, as she later told students at the University of South Carolina, by starting her own four-page monthly newspaper, produced on a hectograph:
The cheapest way of reproducing anything: you need a stencil, a tray, and gelatin. You just put the stencil face down on the gelatin, after putting the ink on the stencil. You can then put about 20 pieces of paper onto the gelatin. It reproduces the stencil. It's wonderful to use in closets. At 10 I made a literary magazine of my own and sold it to neighbors for 5 cents.
Sontag smiled telling this story, recalling how this act of publishing emancipated her. She wrote poems, stories, and at least two plays, one inspired by Karel Capek's R.U.R., and another by Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo. Throughout the war she wrote articles on battles such as Midway and Stalingrad, condensing what she read in the newspapers.
By the age of twelve, she was simply biding her time, serving out what she calls in her essay-memoir "Pilgrimage" the "prison sentence" of her childhood. It was an ordeal, but she was a good actress, a good dissembler.
Then a disturbing event intruded into Susan's world. Her mother remarried. Mildred, still morose, but also still beautiful, had attracted a new mate. Susan quietly rejected him. But he did provide a new name that fit her emerging identity as a writer; and he brought with him the prospect of travel—away from the desert of her childhood and into the land of dreams: California.
Paragraph 49 0A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Aug 25Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : How does the last paragraph prepare for what is coming next in the narrative?A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Dec 23Chris Zumtobel Chris Zumtobel : The last paragraph introduces two new influencers in Sontag's life. A new adult / parent and a new home: two of the most important things in a 12 year old's life.A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Dec 24Professor Carl RollysonProfessor Carl Rollyson : CorrectA University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
Mar 21Nia Bolling Nia Bolling : To add, these two new factors will be integrated into Susan's writing life. She quickly notes the benefits of having a new name/identity to fit her emerging writing lifestyle. Also, the benefit of his perspective on travel can influence her writing.Feb 12Anthony Califano Anthony Califano : This paragraph introduces yet another change that is thrown at Sontag where she will either adapt or struggle with the new change. The reader will only find out by reading the next narrative.Mar 17It introduces the theme of dramatic change. Susan is getting a new father, and she is moving, something that can leave a prolonged dramatic effect on an adolescent.
Mar 23The last paragraph is preparing the reader for a transitional phase in Susan’s life. With her mother’s new husband, and away from “the desert of her childhood and into the land of dreams: California” Susan’s life was about to change.
(C) 2000 Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-393-04928-0
General Document Comments 0
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
This especially occurs in paragraph 7 when it is stated: “What Sontag wants to tell us …” Here we get a sense of doubt or uncertainty in Sontag’s speech. As readers, we can fill in the blanks ourselves and try to imagine how her life might have been like at that time in her childhood.
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
A University of Toronto Ph.D, Rollyson has published more … (more)
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