Class Notes 5-2

Class Notes

March 7^th – March 18^th

Topic 1 Modernism (WW1-WW2)

• Disillusionment following WW1—many expatriates

             -Stein “Lost Generation”

             -New narrative techniques

• “Make it new!!!”—comes from the feeling of betrayal

• New forms of narrative

             -unreliable narrators

             -multiple narrators

             -minor characters as 1^st person narrators

             -non-linear narrative

             -stream of consciousness

Topic 2 Post-modernism (In States: End of WW2 / In Britain: Early 20’s)

• Television jump starts post-modernism. “All truth is local.”

• Post-modernism = Modernism – Universal truth + Irony

• Blending of high and low culture

• Self-reference

• The simulacrum

Topic 3 Surrealism

• A movement in the arts(visual, musical, dramatic, and literary) b/t WW1 and WW2

• Uses unexpected juxtapositions in ways intended to activate subconscious associations that highlight truths hidden from us when we are trapped in linear, “logical” patterns of thoughts.

• Uses juxtapositions—of images, works, etc—determined by psychological “thought processes” rather than logical thought processes.

• Attempts to join the words of dreams and fantasy to “reality” to create a larger reality—a “surreality.”

• dreamlike, playful, sometimes eerie or bizarre

• influenced by the work of Freud and Jung

Outside Reading 5-3

Date: Mar 21st

Title: Oprah Magazine's Adventures in Poetry

Author: David Orr

Type of reading: Reflective essay

The author of the article has adopted a tone that is informal and natural but at the same time pretty sarcastic and witty. And by using different dictions, syntax and details the author indicates his sarcasm towards the Oprah magazine’s celebration of National Poetry Month.

In the first paragraph, there is a line like this: ““Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.” Yes. Spring Fashion. Modeled. By rising young poets.” The unique and grammatically incorrect syntax shows the sarcasm of the writer. Even though the sentence says “yes,” which is usually used to show an agreement, the line is delivering more of disbelief and doubt. And the gap between the actual meaning of the word and the author’s intended use of it created the sarcastic and comic effect.

Also some diction makes the author sound sarcastic. There are some lines like these: “……including interviews with “all-star readers” like Bono, Ashton Kutcher, the gossip columnist Liz Smith and someone named James Franco, who is apparently an actor……,” and ““Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.” The words are heart-sinking.” In the first line, it was the ironic contrast between “all-star readers” and “someone” made the author sound slightly sarcastic and in the second line, it was the use of the term “heart-sinking” evidenced that the author does not like the idea of Oprah magazine’s idea.

By the end of the essay, the author has quoted the ending part of Anna Moschovakis’ poem “Untitled.” And the author has put somethings in brackets from time to time like this: “All poets and their readers can do is stare half-longingly, half-fearfully across that great divide at the golden palace of mass culture(portcullis, Fendi, $4,500)and sigh. Oh, Oprah. Oh, poetry.” These two details have amplified the effect of sarcasm and also have made the essay for witty.

As I said in the beginning, the tone of voice of the writer is too informal and too witty. Therefore it does not seem very appropriate for an AP essay because AP essays are required to be academic and concise.

Outside Reading 5-2

Date: Mar 21st

Title: A Love Triangle From Brazil to Brooklyn

Author: Leland de la Durantaye

Type of reading: Book review

             Leland de la Durantaye’s review for Thomas Pletzinger’s Funeral for Dog has made me want to read the book within the first paragraph. The syntax of the very first line “Thomas Pletzinger’s first novel, “Funeral for a Dog” is about sex, love, Brazil, a form of ménage-a-trois, children’s books, Finland, dogs, Ping-Pong, New York—in short, the good things” was very interesting first of all, it listed all the words that are related to the book and in the last it condenses into two simple but attractive words: good things. And the following line has a parallelism: “a Brazilian police dog loses a leg, a German-Finnish love triangle loses a member, a boy loses his friend, a woman loses her baby, an ethnologist loses his calling, a journalist loses his way.” These paralleled sentences do not only sound interesting but also clearly indicates the contents of the novel. There was another obvious parallelism appeared in the following paragraph: “It is relatively rare for contemporary German fiction to be translated into English, and unreservedly rare for a novel by a young and largely unknown German writer to be published with such fanfare.” The term “rare” is repetitively used twice in this sentence, and the use has clearly shown how rare such case is and that amplifies the readers’ curiosity towards the actual novel. Also, by using diction like “unreservedly,” the reviewer triggers the readers’ curiosity even more. Talking about diction, in the third paragraph the author talks about the overall plot of the novel, which is “strange but realistic” and says “after a thoroughly confusing first few pages.” The use of diction “thoroughly” has shown the degree of the strangeness of the novel well and also triggers more curiosity about how could a story be so strange and realistic at the same time.

            

Outside Reading 5-1

Date: Mar 21st

Title: How to Combat Senioritis

Type of reading: Newspaper piece

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1191831,00.html

As I was reading through the article, I wasn’t sure if the author was intended to be serious or funny. No matter what the author’s intention was, I found the article very amusing in its way of using dictions. First of all, the author called senioritis a “disease.” The diction has shown the seriousness of the phenomenon, but also has made people laugh by making it sound a little too serious. The very first part of the first paragraph goes like this: “Early symptoms of the disease--lethargy, lack of focus, difficulty making decisions--often appear in the fall. By spring the average, healthy high school senior may have completely succumbed. Senioritis attacks high-achieving, average and struggling students alike.” Some dictions like “symptom,” “succumbed” and “attack” make senioritis sound like a disease that “average, healthy high school seniors” are most likely get by the time of fall. Later in the article, the author says “the best cure for some cases of senioritis is a strong dose of reality,” and by using two dictions “cure” and “dose” the author has made senioritis sounds like a disease once again.

Even though I had to laugh while reading it, the message was strong. The author has well used many realistic details to alert the readers of senioritis. For example, the author has written a line like this: “……high schools and colleges have begun experimenting with ways to keep students more engaged during the period between homecoming weekend and the senior prom.” In this line, the author has made it specific when the high school seniors usually get affected from senioritis and caused readers to pay more attention.

Moreover, the author has compared the senior year as a “stepping stone.” By using this simile, the author has well developed the argument that the senior year is the connection between the high school and the college and therefore students should try to take the advantage of the last year in high school and train themselves into a college student.

             The author has a voice that is quite formal and clear. I believe the voice would be appropriate for AP essays, however in AP essays I think it would be better to avoid the amusing elements this article has.

Class Notes 5-1

Class Notes

Feb 21^st – March 4^th

Topic 1 Humor and Comedy!

1.   “Theories of Humor and Comedy”

• Comedy causes people to express the spirit of carnival that is a time of pleasure subverting the normal social rules of the hegemony through laughter and chaos.

• Comedy is not always funny; its real view of life is not optimistic

• Comedy and Tragedy: In tragedy the individual retains integrity even in death; in comedy the individual is made to conform.

• Six elements that are required for something to be humorous (all six of them should be fulfilled at one time):

1)      It must appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions;

2)      It must be mechanical;

3)      It must be inherently human, with the capacity of reminding us of humanity;

4)      There must be a set of established societal norms with which the observer is familiar, either through everyday life or through the author providing it in expository material, or both;

5)      The situation and its component parts(the actions performed and the dialogue spoken) must be inconsistent or unsuitable to the surrounding or associations(i.e., the societal norms);

6)      It must be perceived by the observer as harmless or painless to the participants.

• Five theories of humor:

1)      Intellectual theories

• Think of ethnic humor

2)      Superiority theories

• Humor derives from our feeling of superiority over those we laugh at. According to this view, all humor is derisive.

• Thomas Hobbes: “Laughter, is a kind of sudden glory.”

• Alexander Bain: “All humor involves the degradation of something.” Bain expands Hobbes in two main directions—one, we need not be directly conscious of our own superiority (i.e. we may laugh sympathetically with another who scores off an adversary); two, it need not be a person that is derided.

• Aristotle: “distorted but painless (i.e. it is funny when someone slips on the ice and falls: people laugh—until they realize that the person broke his leg)”

• One important criterion for comedy would be mechanical and inherently human.

• Henri Bergson: “The typical comic character is someone with an obsession or idée fixe.” That type of comic character would not adapt to the change in situation and continues to sit in a mechanical fashion.

• An extension of Bergson’s theory: Comedy is inherently human. The audience may laugh at the antics of an animal, such as chimpanzees, but only direct proportion to the animal’s capability of reminding the audience of something human.

• The criticism of the superiority theory is that, by itself, it is also too narrow to cover every type of humor. It leaves out one very important element in humor: incongruity.

3)      Incongruity theories

• Incongruity: the unexpected with the expected, the unusual with the usual, the misfit.

• Immanuel Kant: Humor arises “from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.” Incongruity theory is often identified with “frustrated expectation.”

• Internal norms are those that the author has provided in the text. External norms are those which exist in the society for shich the text was written.

• Three aspects of incongruity

① Literalization: In literalization the joke comes form taking a figure of speech and then performing it literally.

② Reversal: Reversal is simply reversing the normal, taking what is normal and expected and doing or saying the people.

③ Exaggeration: An exaggeration is taking what is normal and blowing it out of proportion.

• The greatest incongruity is the violating of societal taboos.

4)      Relief theories

• The central element in humor is neither a feeling of intelligence, superiority, nor the awareness of incongruity, but, instead, the feeling of relief that comes from the removal of restraint.

• Sigmund Freud

5)      Humor is ambivalence

2.   Comedy

• Types of Comedy

1)      Low Comedy: lacks seriousness and intellectual appeal

2)      High Comedy: pure or serious comedy

3)      Burlesque: form of comedy characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion.

4)      Farce: A light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot, exaggerated character, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.

5)      Lampoon: satirical piece used to ridicule people

6)      Parody: A composition imitating or burlesquing another, usually serious, piece of work.

7)      Satire

8)      Slapstick: characterized by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes

9)      Travesty: presents a serious (often religion) subject frivolously—reduces everything to its lowest level.

**Note—Travesty, Burlesque and Parody are similar, but travesty always makes a mockery of a serious subject, whereas burlesque and parody may do the reverse.

             • “The Comedy Ladder”

1)      Comedy of Ideas

2)      Comedy of Manners

3)      Farce

4)      Low Comedy

Class Notes 4-2

Class Notes

Feb 7^th – Feb 17^th

HOD discussions + Apocalypse Now

• The jungle is the Garden of Eden that is corrupted

• The river is Stix, which flows through the hell

• As Marlow was going into the jungle, he was going through the different levels of hell; that was a reference to Dante’s Inferno

• Crone(?) Figure is the knitting old women; wool was called African hair, and the old women knitting wool in the office of the company symbolized that the company was trying to rule over the fate of the world by controlling the African people

• The multi-colored coat of the Russian guy was an allusion of Joseph in Bible, who received a colorful coat from his father

• Kurtz could be an allusion to Pharaoh

• Anima figure, which is a personified spirit, is the African woman; she is the Congo itself.

Outside Reading 4-3

Date: Feb 19^th

Title: Egypt Cuts Off Most Internet and Cell Service

Author: Matt Richtel

Type of reading: Newspaper piece

You can find the actual article I read from the web site below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html

I believe that a very important point of the newspaper articles is to inform the readers about the recent happenings around the nation and the world in the most clear, most concise and the most unbiased writings. And some of the dictions in this article, I believe, have increased the clarity of the information. For example, the words “only,” “handful” and “a few” from the line “Egypt has only a handful of major Internet access providers, so it would take just a few phone calls to get them to stop the flow of traffic.” None of those three dictions is a big vocabulary. Rather, all three of them are the most basic terms ever. However, by using those terms in the sentence, the sentence most clearly carried out its meaning that the autocratic government in Egypt did not have any difficulty violating people’s rights to access the Internet. The Internet, however, is more than just an Internet; it is the global network in this society, and it is the only window for free speech of people who are oppressed and trampled.

The overall organization of information and the transitions between different interviews, which should be categorized as a detail of this article, are very clear. As a newspaper article, I believe that is a very nice thing, because not only the information would be more easily understood by the readers but also the readers would be more easily persuaded by the article for the article would appear more formal. For example, proper use of transitions such as “As a result” and “By contrast” made the idea to flow more smoothly and especially “by contrast” well clarified which side the following point lies upon.

The author creates a strong voice by listing out facts, such as interviews and numerical data. Those details not only strengthen the voice, but also increase the reality of the article and therefore make the article far more persuasive to the readers. In AP essays, it would not be a bad idea to have a stronger voice for a point of AP essays is to analyze the literature from individuals’ points of view, however, it would not be very useful to list out numbers and facts in AP essays. Also, few test-takers would have enough knowledge to do that.

Outside Reading 4-2

Date: Feb 17^th

Title: Doctor Speaks
Author: Robert Isenberg
Type of reading: Reflective Essay
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/doctor/1doctor.html

The essay was written by an actor who acts at Medical Interview classes as a patient. The author has acted many different patients with different diseases and backgrounds, but this time he had to act a patient who had warts around his rectum. He was so unwilling to act such a person, because it is simply so embarrassing. There are many evidences showing how unhappy he was acting such a patient: when he was asked where the warts were, he hesitated like "They're... around my..." and then he answered in “a gravelly mumble.” By the way, I liked the diction of “gravelly.” By saying “gravelly,” it made me to think that the author’s voice at the moment would have been very “dry,” which I think is very appropriate for he is not at all interested. He said to himself “Let this end. Please let this end. I hate this fucking case,” not only the repetition but also the colloquialism shows how much he did not want to do that. Following was his list of diseases and pains that he had acted before, and he says: “But anal warts are by far the most annoying.” The syntax of those sentences, which can be characterized by its lengthy continuity, also shows his hostility towards the job.

             The tone of the author was an ordinary narrative for the most part. However, the conversations between med students and the author added some comic effects to it. Also one thing about the tone that stood out for me was that the author had a little bit of sarcasm in it. The author did not directly mention how much he thinks the Medical Interview classes or the med students are stupid, but rather he used some quoted terms and italicized words to create the effect. For example like "showing empathy" and "maintaining eye-contact" and “What kind of question is that?” obviously reflects the author’s sarcasm. Therefore, the tone would not be the most appropriate for AP essays, because it is sarcastic, and also the tone is a little too informal for an academic essay.

Outside Reading 4-1

Date: February 15th
Title: Once on This Island
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Type of Reading: Book Review
Found from New York Times


           The extraordinary title of the book “When the Killing’s Done” has indicated that the story is going to be a unique one. And even this review of the book does not seem quite ordinary. This book review starts with two very weird questions: “Who could love a rat?” and “What could possess a man to sail to an uninhabited island, in defiance of law, and throw out vitamin K pellets as an antidote to a government-sponsored rat-poisoning program?” The questions do not only catch readers’ attentions, but also reveal that the story is going to be somehow related to a guy, an island and rates. An island? The title of the article is called “Once on This Island,” and the readers may think here, “What island?” The writer quickly answers the question in the following paragraph. The author tells us that the island in this novel is an “impassioned portrait of a real place, the Channel Islands of California.” Through the organization of the information, which can be seen as a detail of the article, the reviewer relates the novel to the reality for the readers, the author may have amplified the curiosity of the readers of the review, and may have reached closer to one of the review’s purposes: advertisement.

The writer calls the island “an isolated cradle” and “the doorsill of extinction.” Using these two dictions, the writer has smoothly introduced the two main characters who despise each other unconditionally: Alma Takesue, the “habitat-restorer” and Dave LaJoy, the “animal-lover.” The introduction of these two characters and the contradiction of those two are very interestingly written in the review. The author calls Takesue “the saner half of this moral face-off” and described LaJoy as “a fanatic decked out in dreadlocks and vegetarian zeal.” The dictions that the author used are not formal but very lively and humorous. Moreover, the author also called the island “pre-human Eden” —which is obviously an allusion from the Bible—that is shown the “dramatic mercy” of human beings. By saying Eden, it should be meaning that the island was beautiful like a paradise when it was left untouched, but the author sarcastically wrote that it was touched by human with “dramatic mercy” that has destroyed the paradise completely.

The argument between Takesue and LaJoy is caused by the declaration of government that made the Channel Islands a national park. There were not so many rats on the island before, but somehow the rats got on to the island, and they started to reproduce uncontrollably. Takesue wants to protect the ecosystem by killing the rats, but LaJoy opposes it and tries to save it. That seems to be the basic plot of the book. No one can really determine which of them is right and which of them is wrong. The article starts with two confusing questions and ends without any answer for anything. However, the article closes with one line like this: “When will the killing be finished? Never.” Here the author gives out the only clear answer in the entire piece of writing, and this may be indicating that the author has the same perspective with LaJoy, who is the animal lover.

Class Notes 4-1

Class Notes

Jan 24^th - Feb 4^th

Topic 1 Medievalism and Allegory

1.      Trends in The History of Western Literature

(Classical Literature -> Medieval Literature -> Renaissance Literature -> Romantic/ Victorian/ Realist Era -> Modernist Era -> Postmodernist Era )

• Who is worthy of being a literary protagonist?

God, Nobility -> Nobility, Pilgrims -> Nobles, Lords, Everyman -> Lower class, Nobles, Lovers, Everyman -> Poor, Minority, Everyman -> Every”thing”, Everyman

• What themes and motifs does literature primarily focus on?

Fate, Mortality -> Morality, Religion -> Love, Loyalty, Family, Tragedy -> Nature v. City, Corruption of Society -> Rejection of society, Individualism -> Everything

• Who or what motivates the events in the plot?

Gods, Fate -> Religion, Chivalry -> Lover, Supernatural -> Love, Supernatural, Social status -> Self-discovery, Meaning of life -> Self-discovery, Meaning of life, No dividing force

• What are the acceptable forms of literature?

Oral, Drama, Poem -> Play, Essay -> Play, Poem -> Poem, Essays -> Novel -> Novel

• What narrative techniques are most in favor?

3^rd person omniscient narrative (epic tone, elevated) -> Indirect characterization, narrator is no longer so “God-like” or judgmental -> ? -> Object voice, like news report, 1^st person narrative -> 1^st person narrative (sometimes the narrator is not even the main character) -> 1^st person narrative (sometimes the narrator is not even the main character), Non-linear narrator, Multiple narrators, Stream of conciousness

2.      Allegory and Medieval allegory

• Allegory: a technique used to externally validate a text

• Medieval allegory: allegories are the hallmark of medieval literature

              Ex) TSTL(Too Stupid To Live) heroines

Topic 2 Everyman

• Everyman figure: the character is unnamed or given vague and general personal characteristics, especially when the setting seems somehow “mythic” or has a fairytale quality or is otherwise somehow “outside” of time

• Example of the type of Medieval drama known as the morality play

• Morality play v. Mystery play = composed individually v. in cycles

• Employed allegory to dramatize the moral struggle Christianity envisions universal in every individual

• The play shows the hero’s progression from despair and fear of death to a “Christian resignation that is the prelude to redemption”

• The play makes its grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given

Topic 3 Divine Comedy

• Written by Dante Alghieri

• Three-part epic: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso

• Written in Terza rima, and interlocked series of rhymed lines in sets of three

• Allegorical vision of Christian afterlife

• Beatrice, Dante’s “ideal woman,” whom Dante admired from afar in the then-fashionable tradition of courtly love

• Considered to be both emblematic of the medieval worldview and one of the greatest works of Western literature

Class Notes 3-2

Class Notes  

12/13/10 – 01/07/11

Lecture on Stoppard

Dramatic Horizons of Significance

• "Horizon of significance" is a world ordered by certain normative understandings which, even if they are not ours, enable us to understand what is going on as a coherent and accessible vision.

• The horizon of significance comes to us through what the characters believe and how the story establishes for us a sense of moral meaning.

Theatre of the Absurd

• It has become, in a word, absurd, without logic and without the comfortable reminders of a logical structure: a confidence about time and space and memory.

• It has no reliable meaning. Often, it is featureless.

• This, however, is not the only important criterion of this literary style. The other essential component is that the protagonists' attempts to deal with the world also register as absurd.

• Existential action will not bring us happiness; it will, however, confer human dignity upon us. The Theatre of the Absurd takes from us that dignity.

• Most of the major attention in Absurdist Theatre focuses upon how the protagonists try to cope.

• The emphasis on verbal humor is one of the major attractions of Absurdist Theatre. To acknowledge that these plays are often very funny does not mean that we should miss the desperation underneath the humor.

The Prufrock Connection

• Connection between Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Stoppard's play: reliance on romantic irony throughout

• Romantic irony: the procedure by which apparently significant gestures or assertions or decisions are made only immediately to collapse. (A great deal of the humour in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead emerges from this technique.)

• At the end of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the persona acknowledges that he is, in effect, already dead to all intents and purposes. And in a sense we might, considering the title of Stoppard's play, say much the same about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern throughout the course of the action. In the world in which they inhabit, there doesn't seem to be a very firm line drawn between life and death; the latter is merely an exit, casual, unexciting, as insignificant as the details of the lives they live (far less dramatic than death in a fictional performance).

• In a very real sense, Vladimir, Estragon, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Prufrock are all extreme examples of what Nietzsche calls the "last men," the living dead, as inauthentic and non-human as it is possible to get.

A Reservation: The Question of Friendship

• Stoppard's play contains at least one very important element missing in Waiting for Godot and in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": friendship between the two protagonists

• Vladimir and Estragon have been together a long time, and yet they do not seem to express any particular friendship for each other. They need each other and are petrified at the thought of being alone. So their relationship is based upon a deep individual anxiety rather than upon anything expressing a positive value, such as friendship.

• Prufrock gives us no indication that he has any friends.

• With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, however, the emphasis is different (certainly in the film this is brought out). There is a sense of comradeship about them, a genuine affection and closeness (which is occasionally physical).

• Beyond this point, there is also a sense that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have more of a specific identity than, say, Vladimir and Estragon. They are Elizabethans, with a certain amount of money. So there is something of a historical identity, and the similarity between them and the people they encounter suggests something like a common cultural basis. In Beckett's play, by contrast, the characters have names which suggest that they have nothing in common (Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo, Lucky, the Boy), and their clothes tell us very little about their specific origins, least of all that they share some common historical or cultural milieu.

Outside Reading 3-3

Date: Jan. 9^th
Title: Teacher Training, Taught by Students
Author: Winnie Hu
Type of reading: Newspaper piece
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/nyregion/15metjournal.html?ref=education

Editorial columns, features, and other magazine and newspaper pieces with clear points of view and strong voices—how does the author craft a narrative persona and a “voice” here, and how do these elements impact your response to the content of the piece? If this piece were AP essay, would the speaker be appropriate? Why or why not?

             I really liked the title of this article; it was really heart-warming to me somehow.

             When I was reading the article, at first I thought that there was no clear voice in this article. However, I thought if so the article was saying something, then there should be a voice. And I found out that the author was creating the voice through other people. By “through others,” I mean that the author is not expressing his or her own opinion. Most of this article is about how people reflected to this issue and what actually people said about the issue, and through those the author is telling us how people felt about the new way of teacher training.

In AP essays, it is good to have some references to support our own opinions. However, the point of AP essays is to appeal our own thoughts about the literary works, so this kind of voice would not be appropriate.

As a fellow writer, to talk about the writing of this article, I felt it was a well organized article. Above everything, the opening line of the article arouses the reader’s interest in the first place. The readers would wonder when they read the line, why teenagers are so sleepy in the classes. And then they would keep reading to find the answer. And then it is transited into its real topic smoothly by indicating that the teacher, Ms. O’Bryant, found the answer for the wonder from her student. Followed by the “informal” introduction, the author “formally” introduces this new teacher training program and shares how the program is being spread out and how people feel about it. The organization of the information is logical and straightforward and I think it helped forming the voice. If the passage was not as organized, then the voice could have been unclear.

From a rhetorical point of view, the author’s quotation of actual speech of people increased the credibility of the information; the concise and grammatically perfect sentences made the article more readable but also more formal at the same time; author’s use of parentheses, quotation marks, dashes and rhetorical questions gave the readers more fun reading the article, but the author also limited the use of those “special” punctuations so the article would not lose its formality.

The language, not the voice, of the author, in my opinion, is applicable to AP essays for it is formal but not as hard to read through and also does not cause loss of interest of the readers.