From the beginning of the excerpt, Erdrich describes the children when arriving in North Dakota as, "their lips were violet and their feet were so numb that when they jumped out of the box car, they stumbled." This selection of detail shows how cold and miserable the kids were in the new environment. Then, looking ahead in the passage, the kids pass by a tree, and Erdrich describes the girl, Mary, as "trudging solidly forward, hardly glancing at it" while Karl stopped because the tree drew him in with its delicate perfume" and "his cheeks went pink." At the beginning of the passage, Mary and Karl were both described as having purple lips and being numbed by the cold. Then, once the kids pass the tree, it's implied that Mary is not impacted by the tree because she walks past it without a second glance. However, the fact that the tree brought some pink to Karl's face shows that he was impacted by the tree. Erdrich continues to describe Karl's interaction with the tree when she writes, "he stretched out his arms like a sleepwalker and in one long transfixed motion, he floated to the tree and burried his face in the white petals." This use of imagery really helps the reader see how the environment changed Karl, but didn't really have an effect on Mary, because it shows how Karl can appreciate the new envirnonment despite its differences from their home.
The author's point of view also helps to depict the impact the environment has on the children. From the beginning, Karl is described as "hunched with his sudden growth and very pale. His mouth was sweetly curved and his skin fine and girlish," while Mary is described as, "only eleven years old, but already she was so short and ordinary that it was obvious she would be this way her entire life." Again, this selection of detail really helps differentiate between the two kids, as well as the point of view. Since the story is being told from the author's point of view, they can describe the children without any bias descriptions. Because of this, the reader can better understand why the tree has different impacts on the children later in the story. The fact that the author uses more specific details to describe Karl, and describes Mary as extremely ordinary, helps the reader understand why Karl embraced the tree while Mary was too ordinary to appreciate the tree's beauty.
In order for the reader to pick up on this, the point of view being told from the author as well as imagery and selection to detail must work together to paint these imges in the reader's mind how the environment impacts the two children differently.
Reflection:
After writing The Beet Queen essay, I acknowledge that although I understood what the prompt was asking me and used textual references throughout the essay, I failed to analyze the tonal shifts used by Erdrich as well as had a less convinving analysis of how Erdrich depicts the effect of the envirnonment on the children. After discussing the components of high, medium, and low scoring essays and having the opportunity to read an example essay of each score, what I can take away, especially from the 9 essay example, is what I noticed as a reader of the prompt but didn't necessarily argue it persuasively. Something I could do to help myself with this in the future would be to potentially use skills from AP Comp for persuasive writing to get my score up to the 8-9 range. I also realized that I never addressed the tonal shift Erdrich used, so next time I need to be sure to address all parts of the prompt. Although my essay lacked these components, I belive I had a fairly convincing analysis of the literary devices used by the author, as my analysis of the imagery used was similar to that of the "I" essay whcih recieved a score of 9. Based on these factors, I would score myself a 5-6.
Peer Reflection: Alex Grant (http://grantalexanderapenglish2015.blogspot.com/)
I think you may be scoring yourself a little harder than you need to be! I do agree that your analysis was not very persuasive. I don't think it's that you did not understand the prompt, but rather that the analysis was not as detailed and complex as it could've been. Your essay definitley has potential! Altough you didn't address the selection to detail and tonal shifts, you did a nice job recognizing why the author used third person point of view. The fact that you recognized the author's choice of point of view allowed for a "very descriptive and implement parts of the story that would otherwise be ignored" shows that you did understand what the prompt was asking. Also, although you could've gone into depth a little more, your analysis on the imagery was still good! You still used textual evidence to support it. Based on these aspects, I would probably score your essay as a 5.
I agree with your own scoring. This essay definitely reflects a scoring of a 6. You used descriptive details when describing the differences between the two children, Karl and Mary. By further understanding the differences between the two children, you can definitely see how the environment effected them differently. You have further expanded on this by using the example of the "tree", and by showing how they were described at the beginning of the passage. Very well done in my opinion. The only thing I would have you add is how the environment effected them on a deeper level, not just the weather, but something more. Overall though, great job as it was very interesting to read. Well done.
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