Respond specifically to these questions:
What is the author's vantage point in this essay?
How does this perspective affect the narrative prose?
You can respond and comment on what another student has already posted, or you can post your initial thoughts.
Please ensure that you do this by the deadline date.
Thanks, Dylan
The writer is talking from her own point of view. This allows close, first-person observations of the family as a whole and particularly, her mother.
ReplyDeleteThe additional fact that the writer in this story is a child makes her perspective more interesting. Describing how she felt she was doomed and would never see her friends again, or how she was afraid of getting left behind at a gas station, the writer effectively conveys her mother's eccentricity.
Also, since the writer mentions her brother David almost every time she talks about her feelings, attitudes or observations about her mother, it's like she has a witness/companion to lend validity or add strength to her statements.
The author is mainly writing about his own mother, introducing her as an innocent, optimistic, and entertaining woman. These kind of judgements are made by him in present, as a grown up looking back on his old childhood days. So he feels very intimate to his mother while narrating the story, which makes his perspective very subjective.
ReplyDeleteBecause the author,as a son, wrote about his 'own' little episodes with his mother, I could feel the love he had toward his mother and it felt very sweet to me. Also, it gave me a chance to look back on my own childhood, my own mother.
2008-10318 Kwon Hyunjee
She’s looking back her interesting childhood related with her mother. And when showing her trip with the family, her point of view is usually very close to her family’s humorous conversations, and at that moment she’s in her own childhood views. But I think her point of view is getting outside of their past conversations when she’s explaining their journey. She even wrote in her mother’s point of view at paragraph 6. By using the mother’s view, readers may little more understand her weird mother. So we can understand her character and imagine an energetic and warm hearted person more easily. If she didn’t tell like this, people who read this essay will see her mother from only outside.
ReplyDelete2011-13378
ReplyDeleteChae Won Jae
Yeun lee quite pointed out well of the vintage point of a daughter and a child- first, effectively telling about the family and second, giving readers fun to read the view of innocent whild.
However, I think having considered one more thing-the vintage point of an adult- would have made the comment even perfect. This essay is a recollecting process of an adult, as seen from the first and last paragraph: 'I had an interesting childhood' and 'Looking back on that long-past family vacation', etc.
From an adult's point of view, readers could encounter her mother's quite eccentric behavior in mature way. A child might have seen her mother as 'exasperating', 'absent-minded', and 'genuine eccentric'. On the other hand, as the writer has grown up, she could recall her mother that her mother had taught how to view the world in a surprising and optimistic manner.
The main character in this essay is the author's mother. The author introduces her mother by telling readers about her family trip. Her mother is very childlike, innocent, and optimistic woman. These characters are decribed in the series of accidents like insisting the idea of finding a house with a backyard and asking them to pitch the tent there.
ReplyDeleteLike this, the author mainly talks about her own mother but keeps the tone objectively by describing the accidents related with the mother rather than describing the mother's character itself. I think this is because it's more helpful to understand the mother's character as a reader.
However, even in this tone, readers can feel how much the author loves her mother and readers also can catch that the author who thought that her mother was often too childlike for her age(in the third paragraph, the mother is described as 'a frequently exasperating wife')wants to live a life in her mother's view.
2008-10395 dahui park
Moon Ye-won
ReplyDeleteIn this essay, narrator 'I' talks about her mother's zaniness as a third person observer. Though 'I' is not a main character, she is very close to the action since she is the member of her family which she talks mainly about and the one who was directly influenced by her mother who is the main character of this essay. As to the point of time, she looks back on the past at the point of presentn. We can know this by her future assess about her mom's personality and of the value of the experience. By this perspective we can read the story both from the point of a pure, innocent child, and from the point of an already grown up writer.
Lim, Hyung Jun
ReplyDelete2007-10538
After reading this essay I suddenly thought about American TV series ‘BigBang Theory’. It is about 4 scientific geniuses and episodes around their friends and neighbors. In this drama, the most distinguishing character is the one called “Sheldon”. All the other friends are enduring his weird, strange and in some way crazy behaviors. When I first started watching first season’s episode I couldn’t understand why all the other guys are putting up with Sheldon’s eccentricity. But as episode proceeds, I could find out Sheldon’s unique attractiveness.
In a similar way, I could understand why the writer didn’t take any significant measures to fix current situation (of course I know that it is almost ‘impossible’ to change mom, it’s not like changing roommate) and it was amazing that writer could express somewhat ‘unfortunate’ childhood in a delightful way. He is writing about his mom and he is the one who can observe her from the closest perspective. Several everyday life examples that he described made me feel as if I am one of his family members. Also, this essay is based on his past experience and he is recalling childhood memories after he has already grown up so I could sense the change of his attitude and feelings toward his mother.
After reading "A Vacation with my Mother" and read some of the responses that were given by the classmates, I pretty much thought that the essay contained much of a subjective voice. I think some people may think that this essay is very objective since the author is rather nonchalant to his mother's eccentricity, rendering a tone of indifference. However, I think the fact that he is indifferent is what makes the whole essay subjective. In the eyes of others, author's mother is an odd woman who seems to be out of control. Nevertheless, to the author, the zany mother is perfectly normal to him, thereby conveying how the author actually expresses his own subjective perspective on his own mother.
ReplyDeleteThe vantage point of the writer in the essay 'A vacation with my mother' is subjective. I think the subjectiveness is the most prominent trait. It is also calm voice. It does not show any extreme emotions. Furthermore, the time distance is quite far. The distancebetween the time when the writer is writing and the time in the story is quite far. I think the positive perspective of the writer affected the narrative prose to be written in this kind of way.
ReplyDelete2010-12742 Kuk Hye-su