- Select 1 passage from M. Butterfly. (The words passage and quotation are used interchangeably and mean the same thing.)
- Your passage may include an image since the images are part of the author’s writing. You may also piece together multiple passages using ellipses (…) in between.
- Be sure to include the page number(s) after the passage, like this (17-18).
- Write a short summary of the passage (1-2 sentences).
- this is just to get the summary out of your system and to be able to focus on an analysis
- Analyze the passage you have chosen (3-4 sentences).
- What does is show you as a reader?
- Can you apply the theoretical lenses to the passage? What does that reveal about the passage?
- What is your interpretation of the passage?
- remember to avoid summarizing the passage
- remember to avoid making overgeneralizations based on the text.
- See sample below.
- **Your post must be original and dissimilar to other students. This will be factored into earning points.
- Then, reply to two other students, commenting on their analysis and offering additional feedback.
- You should read through the discussion thread and create an original post. If your ideas are similar to another student that has posted before you, you should mention him/her and build on their comment in your post.**Evidence of reading though the discussion thread is factored into earning points.
Click on “Reply” to type your post.
Your post should look something like this: (Note: See the link “passage analysis” under the heading “Guidelines for Writing about Literature” in the “Course Resources” section of the course site.)
Passage: “Nan said to Tess, but projecting for the benefit of the front, ‘Truly, are we so superior as we think? I wonder little. When we first moved in at the mine, we did something at the house so stupid am still in pain. There were two pawpaw trees growing side by side by the house, one thriving with nice big pawpaws on it and the other sick-looking and leaf-less – dead looking. Well, we thought it was plain what we should do: take down the dead tree. So we hauled and pushed on the trunk of the poor tree and strained and pulled it over – uprooted it, Gareth and myself. It was his idea: we must just straight off do this, get it over. Then, with the crash, the servants come out. They had funny looks on. Dineo said, so quietly, ‘Oh, Mma, you have killed the male.’ We didn’t understand. It seems the pawpaw grow in pairs, couples, male and female. The male tree looks like a phallus – no foliage to it, really. The female needs the male in order to bear. They take years to reach the heights ours had. Then the female died. The staff had been eating pawpaws from our tree for years. It was a humiliation” ( Rush 21).
Summary: Nan is explaining to Tess how she and Gareth dug up a tree that looked like it was dead, but that they learned from the natives that they were all wrong about their interpretation of the tree. It looked dead but the other tree needed it for its survival.
Analysis: The pawpaw trees function as a symbol within the text. They symbolize the hierarchic relationship between the men and the women in the text as well as the hierarchic relationship between the whites and the blacks in the text. When Rush writes that they “uprooted” the tree, it brings to mind the appropriation of colonies and cultural upheaval.
Two students that I want you to replay:
1)Passage: Gallimard: Its heroine, Cio-Cio-San, also known as Butterfly, is a feminine ideal, beautiful and brave. And its hero, the man for who she gives up everything, is – not very good looking, not too bright, and pretty much a wimp: Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton of the U. S. Navy. As the curtain rises, he’s just closed on two great bargains: one on a house, the other on a woman-call it a package deal. (5)
Summary: Gallimard describes the Opera for the audience initially in case they are unaware of the story. The Opera is the story of a foreign masculine power overtaking the feminine power from the West.
Analysis: In this passage, Gallimard mentioned that part: Butterfly is a feminine ideal. From that, We could know he has a yearning for a woman who likes a butterfly. Also, he does not know what his future of marriage or life is. He described his marriage as not love. This is the two important factors that he fell in love with Song.
2)Passage: MAN 1 AND WOMAN 3: . . . it was dark . . .
MAN 1 AND WOMAN 1: . . . and she was very modest!
MAN 2: So—what? He never touched her with his hands?
WOMAN 1: Perhaps he did, and simply misidentified the equipment.
WOMAN 2: A compelling case for sex education in the schools.
WOMAN 3: To protect the national security!
MAN 1: Church can’t argue with that.
MAN 2: That’s impossible!
ALL: How could he not know?
MAN 1: Simple ignorance.
MAN 2: For twenty years?
WOMAN 2: Time flies when you’re being stupid.
WOMAN 3: Well, I thought the French were ladies’ men.
WOMAN 1: It seems Monsieur Gallimard was overly anxious to live up to his national reputation.
MAN 2: Instead, he’s become a national embarrassment.
WOMAN 2: A laughingstock.
MAN 1 AND MAN 2 : A fool.
WOMAN 3: Actually, I feel sorry for him.
WOMAN 1: A toast! To Monsieur Gallimard!
WOMAN 2 AND WOMAN 3: Yes! To Gallimard!
ALL: To Gallimard!
MAN 1: Vive la différence!
They toast, laughing. Lights down on them.
…Gallimard’s cell.
GALLIMARD: You see? They toast me. I’ve become patron saint of the socially inept. Can they really be so foolish? Men like that—they should be scratching at my door, begging to learn my secrets! For I, Rene Gallimard, you see, I have known, and been loved by . . . the Perfect Woman.
(Pause)
Alone in this cell, I sit night after night, watching our story play through my head, always searching for a new ending, one that redeems my honor, where she returns at last to my arms. And I imagine you—my ideal audience—who come to understand and even, perhaps just a little, to envy me. (16-18)
Summary: After observing from the cell a group of well-dressed men and women making conversations about and making fun of him, Gallimard expressed his feeling inside.
Analysis: Those well-dressed men and women behaved unseemly at an upper party making fun of someone else, which forms a strong contrast here to satirize the hypocrisy of some people from the upper class. In addition, the self-reflection of Gallimard himself to some extent reflects the bad ending of this character.
