AHWOSG - Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 quotes and analysis of relationships.
Question, Quote, Analysis

There is also a focus on relationships. We get an insight into how Beth and Dave are dealing with the situation they are in in different ways (p.88)

"Because Beth is always pulling out old photo albums, crying, asking how Toph feels, I feel I have to overcompensate by keeping us occupied. I am making our lives a music video, a game show on Nickelodeon."


Eggers feels like he has to keep Toph happy, trying not to look back but trying to move forward. This brings conflict between Beth and Dave as she is trying to reminisce about the negative past but Dave is trying to make sure Toph has a positive future and feels he has to "overcompensate" because those negative memories are holding them back. However this shows Eggers is very irresponsible / immature because it displays that he cannot face reality. "I am making our lives a video game" again there is a conflict between fantasy and reality. Beth is facing reality that their parents are dead and Dave is trying to block all of it out by playing the fantasy game, irresponsible fun, for Toph and even maybe for himself.

There is a hint of the role that Bill has in the family (p.77) 

"Even the large expenditures, those that require Bill's approval, are pushed through with little resistance" ... " we called Bill, hummed loudly through his mild objections, and finally bought ourselves a washer and dryer"

The fact Dave and Beth need Bill's "approval" when it comes to spending money, shows Bills authority role within the family. Him being the oldest, Beth and Dave feel as if they have to run things through him when in need of certain things. They "hummed loudly through his mild objections" shows how much care they have for Bill's approval, due to him never really being there, they seem to have little care for his objections towards the subject of them spending money. Bill seems like the most distant character/sibling, he is rarely mentioned within the beginning of the book, due to him being in D.C. working in economics privatization, so for his "approval" or opinion to even be considered is very rare. You can see within the relationship between Dave, Beth and him is very weak but they still respect him enough (because he's the oldest) to ask for his approval. 

We continue to get an insight into the conflict Dave feels about being a brother and a parent to Toph and the fact that he isn't a parent and that it is all pretend (p.83 & 90).

"Dear Ms. Richardson, i am sorry Chris is late this morning, i could make something up about an appointment or a sickness, but the fact is that we woke up late. Go figure. Best, Brother of Chris."...
" He has to do certain things for me because i am his parent... when i am called upon to do something, i don't want to do, i do not have to do it, because i am not, actually, his parent." 

In the letter given to Toph's teacher, shows Dave's irresponsibility. He writes the letter so informally like a brother; someone who doesn't care or knows how the school game works. A major part in the conflict of him being a parent and being his brother, is that when it comes to rules and chores and things that need doing, Dave is the parent. However when it comes to something he himself has to do, he then switches roles  back to being a brother. He describes their relationship as, with rules but, "wonderfully flexible" they have a very brotherly relationship, however when rules are tied in, Dave is the parent.

"there is a game that involves Toph pretending that he's the kid, while i pretend i'm a parent"
Dave lives in a life of pretend and fantasy. This fictionalized visualization of his life, not facing reality, The fact they pretend to play a game where Toph's a child and Daves the parent, displays the reality of the situation and positions they play within the real world. Toph plays a typical child asking to do something that is not allowed and the dad (Dave) tells him he cannot do it, Toph leaves with a "i hate you" playing the typical parent/child relationship. However at the end of that Toph asks "was that good?" going back to their normal roles of brothers Dave responds "yeah, yeah... that was pretty good" coming out of the pretend world and back to their original positions within the book,

AHWOSG - Structure and discourse.

AHWOSG - Structure and discourse.

Playing with time – paragraphs show the passing of time, his internal thoughts
and imaginings, some refer to the past, some refer to particular minutes in a
day. Why in particular does he use the time section?
- Eggers plays around with the use of time in chapter 3. In small periods of time he talks about a topic in great detail, prolonging the short amount of time, and then with other topics he doesn't go into much detail and shortens the amount of time he's meant to talk about it. He's created a distorted time frame, by giving the illusion of time going slower than it really is. He does this in Chapter 1, with the prolonged nose bleed lasted until the end of the chapter, but then spoke about his fathers death in-between the story of the nosebleed, for short amounts of time. As if his fathers death was just quick and short. In Chapter 2, he does the same, during the car journey. The car journey takes up the whole chapter and when talking about the car journey, it is prolonged in detail, however there are little snippets about where they live and what life is like now they've moved. This illusion of time relates to his memory and what he can remember, as he remembers his past some bits come to him in more detail and others don't. However he does challenge the genre, where he states in the preface that many of his writing has been fictionalized and with the use of this hyperbolic detail. Use of time; focuses on the minutes passing we get a sense of the chaos and panic.






Use of the diagram of the house – what does this do? What does it remind the
reader of?


- use of the diagram of the house, challenges the genre of the book. As it is an autobiography, it is unusual to have diagrams of objects. He adds in diagrams to give the audience an insight into what he is thinking and what he sees, visualization, detailed description and then the diagram allowing us to visualise. He also uses this diagram in chapter 2, explaining how him and Toph would sock-slide across the house, so the use of it in chapter 3 relates to the immaturity and silliness that occurs in their house. Sock sliding = sense of freedom and fun. Giving Toph a childhood, there's a conflict between whether he is responsible enough to look after Toph.




The food section – why does he use different font etc? What is he trying to
replicate? What does this suggest about how they approach eating and food?
- relates it to a restaurants menu with the titles and meals; ironic, humour. Playing with the genre. Menu = him manipulating the truth. Representing him being something he's not. Fictionalized. The notes section, mocking the style of a menu, showing the real chaos.


Use of the playscript form – where does this happen? Why does Eggers do
this? What does this suggest about how he views the situation they are in?
Where is he placed in the dialogue? What could have influence this?
- As if it is rehearsed. He challenges the genre and in the script he changes it to the third person and by creating a script shows it is not real, for him life has this unreal quality to it. Same responses, when asked what happened? how ? and why ? Fictional life he is living. Stage directs allow him to comment on his feelings so audience knows how he feels. End line, are they in a fantasy world,  fantasy reaction. "crowd stomps" makes him feel like he's doing a good job but in reality we know he is struggling, its debatable whether he is doing a good job or not.  

Genre.

The exemplar romance genre.

• The narrative is in the third person - restricted narrative voice.
• From the female point of view, her thoughts and feelings are focused on.
• Colour - description of red, associated with love, danger, dark and sexy. She is marked out as different (everyone is in black).
• Red lips - confidence, attention seeking, drama, sexual (connotations of red)
• Sentences structures: various lengths and types. Shows control.
• Idealised body descriptions - superficial - lexical choices to associate perfection "flawless body", "custom-made suit" - wealthy & power, attractive.
• Mask = mysteriousness
• Narrative voice - because we are seeing it from her pov, we don't know who is it, the mask is the narrator.
• Secrecy - "hidden", "masks"
• feeling very conscious; narrative female voice, stereotype of women being self-conscious.
• Details of backstory drop in.
• Connotations - erotic.
• New York fitting in with the theme of glamour, power, wealth. - City living.
• Cliché & stereotypes.
• Superficial - she and the man are objects.
• Connecting - story is about.
• innuendo - sexual connotations, interpreted in other ways.  

AHWOSG - Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers:

- Mother is the star of the story in the beginning; he mainly focused on her and her illness.
- Parents both died of cancer, his mother died first then 32 days later his dad died.
- Cared for his 8 year old brother, at the age of 21 becomes his brothers keeper.
- Being his brothers keeper led to his story.
- Themes of death and responsibility.
- He had appeared four times since 1998 and his work is not pure non-fiction, it is fictionalized.
- He has been acknowledged for his limitations (autobiography)
- Him and his brother move from Chicago to California.
- He tried to get into Television, MTV and documented his auditions and turns them into postmodern commentaries on his own self-conscious self-promotion.
- Themes of Self-awareness.
- He could of become a book reviewer.
- Without his tragedy he could've become a novelist.
- The beginning of the autobiography starts with his mother, talking of his relationship with his mother and her illness.
- Describes to MTV what is was like to grow up in Lake Forest in Chicago.
- Part of generation X
- Title is described as "hyperbolic"

AHWOSG - Extract from page 3/4

Page 3/4

This extract is about Dave Eggers' mother and her illness, "they took my mothers stomach out about six months ago..." suggesting she is seriously, terminally ill. Eggers' plays with various tenses and speaks of this as if it was literally six months ago, this shows his memory of his mother and her illness is very raw and it is still there, clear. Eggers states "there wasn't a lot left to remove" this shows his mother has had her stomach removed gradually to get rid of the illness. "They tied the [something] to the [something], hoped that they had removed the offending portion" the use of the parentheses, shows he hasn't got the language to described explicitly what the medial terms are because he does not care for them, he is less interested in the scientific side of it and is more interested in the literary side. Eggers' mother goes onto chemotherapy and later finds out the doctors didn't remove all of the cancer and unfortunately it had grown and spread across her body. "It had grown, it had come back, it had laid eggs" the use of repetition triad "it had", describes the process of the cancer growing and Eggers' refers the cancer to an alien "it was stuck to the side of the spaceship." Eggers talks of his mothers progress during cancer and how she wore wigs while her hair began to grow back, as if she is getting better however "six months later she began to have the pain again" he asked "was it indigestion?" this shows Eggers' hope that his mother is not getting worse again, he knows the cancers back however he uses indigestion as a way of hope.

KEY THEMES: death, family relationships and change.

AHWOSG - Structure of sentences:

Sentence types and function

Minor: "bump."
Simple: "I went to Tesco."
Compound: "I went to Tesco but forgot my shopping list."
Complex: "I went to Tesco. In order to get there, I had to drive."
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Page 14 - "I have plans for them... i'll run them over with my car."

• Various declaratives - to show what he would like to do to his neighbours and people who are looking in and know there situation.
• Hyphens used with embedded clauses - punctuation used relating to his state of mind (wild)
• Exclamatory sentences used to exaggerate his imagination of the people he hurts are saying.
• "I'll run them over with my car." - simple sentence, only one used within the paragraph. Sums up his emotion, of anger, scared, upset.
• Mainly a lot of on-going complex sentences to link to the complexity of the ways in which he wants to hurt these people who know his situation.
• "nosy", "inquisitive", "pitying" - lexis used linking to grief or an after death situation; also the italics of the neighbours speaking are related to these words. "I hear she's" (nosy); "what will happen to that little poor bo-" (inquisitive); "Jesus Christ I'm sorry" (pity).
• A lot of the complex sentences and description relates to his continuous anger towards these people who are gossiping; and it also adds to his detail to his fantasy of killing everyone who knows.
• The detail when he explains what he is going to do to those people; show his wild imagination/fantasy and also show his emotions.
• brief psychopathic moment; led on by a family walking by- which leads to him being paranoid and fantasising what he is going to do to those who knows.
• "I have plans for them" - he's thought about it a lot, obsession with death due to his situation.
• These fantasy's occur while mother is having a nosebleed - distracting mechanism.
• Emotional state - fragmented broken mind, like the embedded clauses. First time in the book displaying his real emotion; imaginative life he has, he is a dreamer.
• Punctuation used to show what his state of mind was like during that time.
• The detail of the pain "I pull out hearts and intestines" - symbolises his mother and her pain. He wants them to feel his mothers pain.
• Violence - normality, choice of verbs he uses to show his violence. Violent imagery.
• interrogative "can't you see it?" to interrupt his own narrative; to check if the reader is following his train of thought.

The History Boys- interview scene.

At the beginning of page 84, the conversation on society’s negative attitudes towards women is continued. Timms states “it’s not our fault, miss. It’s just the way it is”, the use of the inclusive pronoun “our” places Timms as a voice for all men, stating a reason that men don’t take responsibility for how women are negatively portrayed. The use of the declarative sentence “it’s just the way it is” shows Timms is accepting of how women are treated and is not willing to change this view.  Lockwood adds a quote from a famous philosopher “the world is everything that is the case” then he states “Wittgenstein, miss” this shows arrogance when he talks of the status quo and is very patronising towards Mrs Lintott, as if she isn’t smart enough to know who Wittgenstein is. Mrs Lintott becomes very dismissive and replies with “I know its Wittgenstein, thank you”. Lockwood has tried to challenge her power and now her being dismissive shows her trying to maintain that power. Mrs Lintott uses a euphemism to reply to Lockwood “did he travel on the other bus?” She creates inappropriate humour here, a coded way of stating Wittgenstein is gay, then humour is added when Hector is lost within the conversation, the repetition of “bus?” shows he doesn’t understand Mrs Lintott’s euphemism. Mrs Lintott begins to speak her mind and states “’the world is everything that is the case’ seem actually rather a feminine approach to things… a real man would be trickier ‘the world is everything that can be made to seem the case’” Mrs Lintott changes the quote and adds “made” and “seem” implying men manipulate the situation, life and society to be on top. This links to Irwin as a man, he manipulates the situation to be on top. She is the opposition to Irwin when it comes to History and gender issues. Mrs Lintott uses polysyllabic lexis such as “dispiriting” and “masculine ineptitude” to describe men in history and in general as useless. 

Within this paragraph she uses a lot of interrogatives like “can you?” and “why do you think?” to question the boys on how women are treated negatively. Timms starts to add humour by rudely replying to Mrs Lintott’s question “no tits?” and Hector adds to this by saying “hit that boy”. The men add humour because they love to play games; they see all of it as a game. This takes the focus off of Mrs Lintott however she regains control of the conversation by being very assertive within her speech “I’ll tell you why.” In her speech you can see Mrs Lintott has strong views about how women have been written out, these may be Bennett's views but are shown through Mrs Lintott, as she is the only female character. The use of the adjective “bow-wow” and the verb “frolic” creates imagery of a puppy dog and shows she believes the reason why women are not historians is because women don’t act like little puppy dogs. She is derogative about men, as she feels they get carried away with things and she uses more negative lexis about men “continuous incapability’s of men” within her speech; she is very dismissive to the whole subject. Mrs Lintott continues to focus on women using feminine lexis such as “flowers”, “frolic”, “gracefully”, she also states how “they never get round the conference table” this quote has connotations of discussion, male power, decision making and meetings, something women are never involved in. Most people in power are men, and back in the 80’s to now women are still being written out. Mrs Lintott uses imagery when saying “history is women following behind with the bucket” it states a clear picture of how women pick up the pieces of men’s mistakes.