Here's the schedule you came up with:
- 11/16 First Section Blog Posts Due pg.1-106 by midnight
- 11/21 Second Section Blog Posts Due pg.106-224 by midnight
- 11/25 Last Section Blog Post Due pg.224-331 by midnight
- 11/30 Fall of the House of Usher Blog Post Due
This is a 100 point homework assignment.
- You need to make 9 posts in total. (Your book should be broken up into three sections, and for each section you should post three times.)
- Please title your posts Post 1-3, Parts A, B, C etc.
Part A: Post your reaction to something specific and thought provoking in the book (though this is not a minimum, each post should be around 400-500 words.) Feel free to ask questions in this section as well, since everyone will be reading these posts.
Part B: You should also respond by elaborating on another comment in the stream (about the same length--).
Part C: You should continue to respond by elaborating on another comment in the stream (about the same length--).
You will be graded on the
Malden High School Open Response Rubric.The above prompts are vague because it is up to you as a group to start to develop your own focus. You can feel free to bring in outside research etc, just make sure you cite or give a link to your sources—but I’m most interested in your “philosophical” discussions about specifics in the books and your ability to discuss the writer’s technique and how he or she affects meaning.
Here’s a links to a solid discussion from two years ago: Madame Bovary. The requirements were a bit vague for the postings and there is a variety of effort and insight in these posts, but on the whole I thought it was quite nice to read.
21 comments:
The book is coming along quite quickly. I guess I’ll start before page 35, because that’s 1/3 of 106, and since we need three posts per section, that’s where I figure we should start. I’ll post something as early as possible, so in case either of you aren’t at page 35 yet, it won’t be too spoiled.
I would like to point out the relationship that Augusten has with his family, his mother specifically, and how this affects his life. Because he worships his mother so much, he’s missing school and other various activities, and she lets him. He’s practically her assistant, but he loves and indulges in it. When she’s not there and he pretends to be her, does anyone else find that related to his sexuality? (I’ll consider it common knowledge that Augusten Burroughs is gay.)
Finch was also introduced in these opening pages. He seems to have his quirky things when we first meet him, like his desire for a bologna sandwich with horseradish and a plain hot dog. He doesn’t seem too strange, until a little later. Just the chapter title, “The Masturbatorium” definitely brings out the more… interesting side to Dr. Finch. His daughter Hope seems completely normal, though, where it is interesting to see the contrast.
One of my major questions here is: How is Augusten still a completely competent person, as you can tell by his tone, with his parents at their throats and a crazy psychiatrist running around?
Part A:
Like Sampy, I found that the feels like a quick read. I attribute this to Burroughs’ writing style, it’s quirky and intriguing. He drew me in with his descriptions of his psychotic mother and the dysfunctional nature of his family situation and the atmosphere and character of Dr. Finch.
To begin my post I wanted to point to a part on pg.79, in which Augusten talks about how he adopted the habit of bible-dipping, “At first, I, too, was mortified by all the bible-dipping that went on in this house. But like everything else, I quickly got used to it…It was like being able to turn to the back of the book and look at the answers. Or it was like asking a parent.” The extreme changes occurring in Augusten’s life become prominent at this moment. Prior to being abandoned by his mother at the Finch’s he was completely dependent on her, which I feel resulted from his lack of friends. He felt like an outcast and I think this was due to the confusion he felt over his sexuality as well as the circumstances under which he was living under. His focus on his appearance stemmed from the lack of control he had in his own house due to his parent’s volatile marriage.
Augusten’s forced maturity seems to be the basis of the book thus far. His mother and her mental problems seem to allow him to shed light on this time of discovery for him. The bible-dipping seemed to give him a sense that there was security, which was provided to him by the answers he got from the bible.
Moving away from Burroughs’s self discovery, I want to bring attention to the dynamic that the Finch’s provide. They are crazy, to put it lightly, from eating dog food to their house of clutter. They are at first the complete opposite of him, they are everything he is terrified of and hates. Does anyone else feel that being abandoned by his mother at the Finch’s is, like his mother said, the best for him?
Part B:
First I want to refer back to Sampy’s first question about Augusten’s sexuality resulting in the relationship he has with his mother. I don’t think it has to do directly with him being gay, I think it is the fact that he clings to her because he has no body else to depend on. He had no stability whatsoever. He was in the middle of one of the most volatile marriages I have ever seen. He clung to my mother because he needed someone to have some sense of security. I think that he being gay also had an effect of his relationship with his mother. I think he felt like an outcast because he wasn’t comfortable with whom he was and that’s why he didn’t make friends. His mother provided an escape for him, even with her mental problems.
I also want to look closer at his compulsive behavior. He was obsessed with being perfect, his clothes, his hair, everything had to be perfect. I feel that it stemmed from the major imperfections of his mother and the marriage between his mother and father. I feel like he depended on looking perfect because it was the only thing he could control. He created a whole life inside of his head in order to escape from the problems that were going on around him.
Finally, answering Sampy’s final question. I don’t think that Augusten is a completely competent person. I feel he does have a vast amount of problems, but they are not as evident as his mother’s. I think he has a very disassociated with what he is recounting. He looks back on it without much emotion. I think he is the most sane, but I think we also have to remember that it is a story of self-discovery so he is looking back on it with a competent tone, but that doesn’t mean he was competent when it was occurring.
Post 2:
Part A:
Some pivotal moments in this book are life changing for Augusten. The moment that he walks in on his mother and Fern, the minister’s wife, forces him to come to terms with his mother’s newfound sexuality. “I went outside onto the porch and just stood there. I felt like, ick. But also like laughing.” (89) Augusten’s mother’s antics at this point barely phase him. He knows how important it is to understand his mother’s changed sexuality, and the impact it must have on her mental health, but after everything he has gone through at this point at the Finch’s and through his parents’ divorce, it has hardly any major effect on him.
Part B:
Sam J – To answer your question, I think that his mother dropping him off at the Finch’s was actually better for him (let me know if I’m misunderstanding the question), because look at everything that he learns to accept and be accepting of. He opens his mind to new ideas – eating dog food, dating a 30 year old man, and watching small boys poop in the middle of the room. His mother’s abandonment hurt him at first, but then after a while, she started to hurt him by being there, and as a result he starts spending more and more time at the Finch’s. His relationship with Bookman also draws attention away from his mother and his over-intense life at the Finch’s house.
What do you think about his unorthodox relationship with Bookman?
Part A:
First off, my apologies for the late post, it was hard for me to find the time and a computer.
I'd like to start with a few lines from page 95 that caught my attention: " Fern refuses to leave her family, even though they're all old enough to take care of themselves. I mean, her youngest daughter is almost your age." Isn't he himself only twelve at this point? This is a perfect scene to pick to show us who his mother really is. We already know that she is heavily medicated most of the time, but it seems to me that this has been her outlook all along. Even at the beginning, before the therapy, she was not very concerned with him. She let him stay home from school way too often, as Sampy pointed out. She let him stay home alone with his drunk, physically violent father. (Note: I know he was abusive towards the mother but I am not sure if he was the same to Augusten) So my question is, do you think most of the trouble is to blame on the meds at this point, or that she is just deep down a bad parent?
I know this seems like one of the "theories posed as questions" that Mr. Gallagher warns us against, and it kind of is. I think she is just genuinely a bad parent, but I'd like to see if you all feel the same. His mother is very self centered, right from the get-go, and cannot let go of herself long enough to push Augusten in the right direction. She acts like a drama queen and fights with his dad over petty drama, with little regard to how he feels about this (except when mentioning that he's there can help her side of things and make the father seem like a bad guy). How do you feel, and do you think she is solely to blame for how Augusten ended up, or that it was out of her control?
Part B:
As you could probably tell from my previous post, I do not approve of his mother at all. So naturally, I do believe that you are right Sampy in your response to Sam J's question. I think that it was definitely the best thing for him to live with the Finch "family" instead of with his mother. Considering he was so attached to her, the crazy life there is much better for him than having to live with his new mother. It does seem a little too free, but he wouldn't have ended up going to school if you think about it, even if he was with his mom. She couldn't make him go before this anyway. And he lost his nervous habits like shining everything and being super tedious with his hair, which he even said were side effects of his parents' fighting, giving him something to control. He didn't need those habits anymore. Overall, I think this is much better for him, no matter how it seems at face value, when you compare it to what he might have had.
Sampy - I might need a little clarification on your question. At this point in the story, just up to page 106, his relationship doesn't seem at all unorthodox to me. Or do you mean their relationship as it has developed in the next section of reading? That's the only way I could see it as unorthodox. In the first section, their relationship seems completely normal. Bookman presents himself as a guiding figure. Augusten didn't have anyone to talk to about his sexuality growing up, and Bookman was, as he said, the first other gay man he ever met. It appears in this section that Bookman will be there to help Augusten understand himself, and that is a very healthy relationship to have, especially for someone as young as he is who has had little to no guidance in anything his whole life.
SamP1—
Good start—doing very well to set up ‘analysis’ of characters in this memoir.
Samantha J—
Also doing well. I was really intrigued by your focus on the author’s style. This could be something that you could show us by thinking (or writing) aloud for us about specifically what you are seeing and its effect. I think this would be a great thing to do for all of you.
Jess—
Also doing well with character[s] analysis & questions for your reading group—
("theories posed as questions": I’m not against these—only at specific times when I want clarifying questions! Theory-based questions are important for deep conversations.)
P.S.—if you need computer access, I have plenty & I get here early and stay late and you can use during any of your directed studies if you check in with me ahead of time; it will aid your group if you can keep up with them.
To you all: Really enjoyed the beginning of this discussion and you are all showing engagement with the text—now you want to show it by lengthening your posts (don’t forget to label). In order to really investigate some of these interesting ideas, you may just need to write a bit more. Writing’s not all about length, but sometimes forcing yourself to think aloud in words can get you more depth & insight as well.
Hey guys. I think I’ll just start with the second section, pp.107-224.
Post 1:
Part A:
I’ve noticed that Bookman and Augusten have reached the more…ahem…physical part of their relationship. Jess, my previous question was, in fact, based around a little further in the reading, and that was my mistake. Now that we’ve reached this point in the reading, the beginning of the chapter “The Joy of Sex (Preteen Edition)”, is really very graphic and for me, a little disturbing. He was practically raped, and I don’t think Bookman originally saw the damage he was doing. Later, he does realize what he did, and Augusten mentions that Bookman went slower, because he was falling in love with him.
Part B:
Jess, I want to make a comment about your second post, and how you mentioned that he lost his nervous habits. I think that was a great point to pick up on, because I hadn’t noticed it before. The loss of his intense need for everything to be spic and span was a major point of character development for Augusten. His change of environment led to a change in attitude and even in personality. He becomes more carefree in his adventures with Natalie (like singing in the nursing home) and more accepting of the Finch’s more exotic lifestyle (Bible dipping, signs from God through bowel movements). On the whole, Augusten’s lifestyle changed what he liked, accepted, and even loved (Bookman).
Post 3
Part A:
I wanted to start my posts on the second section like Sampy and focus on the relationship between Augusten and Bookman, it seems like a large part of this first section and I think it really needs to be looks into. There was a specific quote starting on page 196 in my version of the book, “I liked his attention. But I also felt like there was something sick and wrong about it. Like it might make me sick later.” Burroughs then goes on to compare it to eating a whole back of cookies because his grandmother allowed him to, “But I always ended up feeling extremely sick afterwards.” Augusten seems to be in the habit of forming unhealthy dependent relationships with adults. The first relationship was with his mother and he moved his feeling of dependence from her to Bookman. In my opinion I think that he needs to feel loved and his mother was unable to give that to him due to her mental illness and self centeredness. He is using Bookman because he needs to feel wanted and Bookman loves him, in a very scary and unhealthy manner. Bookman is obviously not stable and the relationship between the two is very disturbing to me.
Does anyone else feel that Augusten is using Bookman, or do u think Bookman is the one using Augusten?
I next wanted to touch upon the tone Burroughs uses in the memoir, I feel like it is very disconnected. I started talking about it in the first section, but I think it needs to be further explored. He puts people into two classes, the insane and the sane and to himself he is sane. It becomes evident when he is talking to Natalie about Hope, “I meant, she had a good heart and she wasn’t insane.” He looks down upon who he considers insane, which must stem from his feelings towards his mother’s mental illness. This is the only insight we have to his feelings, other than that he seems to be only an observer. He doesn’t connect to anyone and even when he discusses his feelings towards Bookman, it doesn’t seem like he actually cares.
Why do u feel Augusten won’t let himself truly get close to anybody, not even the reader?
Post 2
Part B:
Sampy and Jess-
Continuing the discussion on Jess’s post about Augusten’s nervous habits, I don’t think they were nervous habits, but more of a coping mechanism. I don’t feel like he lost this habit, but instead picked up new ones to take its place. He isn’t cleaning anymore and focusing on perfection, but he seems to be using other, more unhealthy methods, to cope with what is going on around him. Now he is focusing on his obsession with hair, smoking, and getting involved with Bookman. These are all ways for him to avoid what is really going on in his life. I want to point to a quote on 155, which comes in the beginning of a journal entry, “NO HAIR EMPIRE FOR ME.” He focuses on this instead of focusing on the reasons why he is upset. In this case it was the problems with his mother. The only way he knows how to deal with his problems is by focusing his attention to something else, it used to be cleaning and now it is hair.
Jess-
I guess I will continue with Jess’s questions from the first section and focus them in terms of the second section. I think it is obvious at this point that she was to blame for who Augusten is now. Our parents have a large effect on who we are, it while it might be argued that they only have an effect if we allow them to, I think they are one of the key reasons we grow up to be who we are as adults. His mother’s mental illness certainly had an effect on his, which I talked about in my first post. She focused on herself and never gave him the love and attention that he craved. He then began to look for that love in other places, which led him to Bookman. Even when he does go to live at the Finch’s, her effect on him is still evident and it is also shown that he is unable to deal with his feelings towards her. There is a lot of confusion in his mind when it comes to the subject of his mother, does he love her or hate her for who she is. I think as he discovers how he truly feels about his mother and how she treated him we will see how he developed into such a level headed person.
Finally, I don’t think we can make a decision on whether it was the meds or if she was just a bad parent. Burroughs doesn’t go into detail about his mother before her mental problems, but I think that it had a lot to do with her mental state.
Part A:
With all this point of view talk we've been having in class, the idea of point of view was really fresh in my mind while I was reading. I noticed in section two that the people who Augusten associates with being not mentally unstable- Hope and his brother- appear to be to us. When it comes to his brother, he spent an entire chapter about how average his brother was, and how he wanted nothing to do with the Finch's and didnt really care that much about their involvement in his family's lives. Then, he reveals that his brother also has autism, so he literally not as mentally stable as everyone else, but he seems moreso. Also, there is Hope. Hope has been continually characterized as the only sane on in the Finch house, but in this section, we can see that she is secretly just as crazy as the rest of them, just in denial about it. But Augusten does not find either of them different. In fact, he finds them normal, while we know they are not. His brother has an actual illness, and Hope thought she could speak to a cat.
So really what I'm getting, even though it took me a while, is that I am conflicted as to whether or not Augusten is a reliable narrator. It seems like he is for the most part, but at times similar to the situations previously stated, I'm not so sure. I guess it all boils down to how one defines mental instability, and what has affected the definition. What do you guys think?
Part B:
Sam J, I believe that both Augusten and Bookman are using each other, but for different reasons. Augusten has said multiple times that he likes the attention he gets from Bookman, who treats him like a God. Someone who pays attention to him that much is really what he's wanted all along. Not only did he have parents who were too interested in fighting to really spend much time with him, but he has always dreamed of being famous. He needs the attention and the sense of control he has over Bookman. I'm not sure if theres anything deeper to Bookman's needs of Augusten other than sexual. He is completely infatuated with him but he also hates him at the same time. Yet both continue to stay together.
Section 3:
Part A:
A lot of this story is very reliant on point of view. The last section of the book would be completely different if narrated by anyone else, and it wouldn't have the same effect. From our narrator Augusten, we don't get a real answer. We never really know if his mother is telling the truth about Dr. Finch over-medicating her to take advantage of her, or if she is still just crazy. Augusten himself is being pulled towards believing his mom, but there are still doubts because he knows that she is mentally unstable. Also, the amount of time he has spent with the Finches has had an added effect on his opinions of his mother. He is a completely different person than he was before.
Do you guys think that Dr. Finch really was taking advantage of Augusten's mom, or that she is plain crazy? How do you think Augusten's point of view and narration influenced you to decide one way or the other?
Jess - I agree with your idea about Point of View. To bring in a bit of background information, when the book was published, the family that the Finch family was based on pressed charges for deformation of character and categorizing the book as a memoir, because it is inaccurate. Without Augusten's view, you never know what's real and what's false. According to Burroughs, he "has the truth on [his] side". (Wikipedia)
As far as Augusten's mother is concerned, I don't think that it happened. On one hand, Finch was a gross old man and that's what people would expect, and if you think about it, despite all of the disgusting things that she did to Augusten, she never lied to him.
On the other, his mother influenced the dysfunctional life that he led, and the Finch family was his only go-to for some sort of sanity, in an insane sort of way. They never did anything negative to him. The argument could go either way, and it's left to your interpretation, but not because the author wants you to think, but because he doesn't know either.
At the end, in the epilogue, Augusten notes that he and his mother are estranged. I'm not sure why this is, but it seems as though even if he did believe his mother, he never really supported her on it, and continued to be rather distant. Either that, or he could never reconnect with her after the entire ordeal.
In the last chapter, he says "But, roll of the eyes, what can you do? Shrug." and basically says that he just ignored what had happened and moved on. While it's good that he didn't let the difficulties get in the way of his path, it also shows that he was still weak enough to unconsciously switch to the default numbness when it comes to his mother, which tends to happen when she's having a psychotic episode. So while it seems from what he said that he sided with his mother, from his personality shown through the narration we can tell that he is still conflicted, and it keeps the situation complex for the reader as well.
To conclude our discussion, let me bring up the events in The Fall of the House of Usher. To connect - Both take place in a specific house full of insanity/disease. The House of Usher is full of a vile... thing? that causes pain and illness to everyone in the house, much like Finch's ability to convert most of his family into his own strange school of thought.
To focus more on The House of Usher, though, the fact that all of the Usher clan but one dies (until the very end), is very suspicious when concerning the people of the house.
They get sick, and what is in the house that makes them so? Any ideas? It could be completely logical and there is some sort of mold spore in the nasty old house that makes you fatally sick, or it could be something spooky and supernatural that has cursed the Usher family. My favorite theory, though, is that there is some genetic psychosis within the family that causes them all to go insane and become fatally ill, resulting in death of the family.
What do you think, my friends?
I think that's a great link between the two texts Sampy. The way I see it is that in both stories, they become "sick" not from any real disease, but because of the situations they find themselves in. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick believes it is the house itself that is controlling him and that it is a threat, and thats why he was always too afraid to leave. And in Running with Scissors, you can never really tell if any of the Finches, or Augusten's mother, are really crazy, or if it was just the environment created by Dr. Finch. The environment of the house itself. Augusten himself feels that in all his freedom from living at the Finch house, he feels inescapably trapped, similar to Roderick's sense of entrapment. You can't tell in either case if there is any real illness in the house.
Section 3
Part A
I hate to bring the discussion back to the 3rd section of the book, but before I comment on The House of Usher I feel it necessary to go back and do my posts for the section. I want to start with a quote, which I feel reflects the consequences of Burroughs’ upbringing. On page 309 Burroughs describes his inability to write checks, “It’s not that I can’t afford the bills-I can-it’s that I panic when faced with responsibility.” One for the main themes in the book was mental unstableness and I feel that until now it wasn’t seen how his upbringing would affect him in the long run. We see now that he isn’t as stable as we thought due to his tone throughout the book. Through his tone it is obvious that he has significantly changed through the years. As he writes him memoir he is composed and direct with what he is trying to get across. He writes what he knows and does not get caught up in what he could not possibly know, such as what was actually going on inside his mother’s head.
Burroughs would not be the person he is today without the influence of mental illness in his life, but would he have been better off if he had grown up in the normal family he often wished for?
Section 3
Part B:
Jess-
I’ll start be addressing the first aspect of the question. I don’t feel like we can make a decision for ourselves whether Finch took advantage of her or not. Like you said, the memoir is dependent on point of view and we are only allowed the information that Burroughs provides us. I don’t feel comfortable forming an opinion on the subject because we depend on him to tell us the truth, but it is obviously biased to what he believes. Since he leans towards believing his mother, we are thus influenced by this and in turn it affects our resulting decision. The whole thing comes back to whether we can trust Burroughs as an author and that all depends on your opinion.
Finally, addressing your second post, I think that his estrangement from his mother was inevitable. Throughout his life he was always pushing away from her due to his need for her attention. He pulled away from her because she would not give him the attention he needed.
Fall of the House of Usher
Post B:
I want to continue to touch upon the influence of one’s situation on the mental state of a person. I also find the connecting theme between the two stories to be the significance of a house. I didn’t realize it before reading Fall of the House of Usher, but the house in Running With Scissors did have an effect of those who lived there. It reflected the mental state of those who lived there and it is also the same in Fall of the House of Usher. Both books are able to reflect how environment is a key aspect of who we are and how we develop. When brought up in a house full of gloom and despair it holds a negative effect of a person, in extreme circumstance leading to death.
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