Flashing Back to Your Past

A flashback is a break in a narrative sequence that takes the reader back to a prior event to provide background on a character or a conflict.  Book IX, the first book of The Odyssey that we'll read, starts with a  flashback where Odysseus shares his life since the Trojan War.  Record this definition and example on your reading guide.

Now, in a comment on this post, flash back to an event or a series of events from your past you feel define(s) you.  If you met a stranger and he asked you to tell a story that captured who you are, what would you say?

Here's what I would say.  Use my example below as a model to your flashback story in terms of its length and tone.

Several years ago, I sat at my kitchen table reading Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" on a Saturday evening.  As a twenty-something, I should have been out with my friends or then-boyfriend (now husband); instead, I delighted in Poe's every word, thinking I could reach into my kitchen drawer for a fork and knife, carving out words your "ephemeral" and "epiphany" and eating them they were so delicious.  In this moment, like Roderick, I had an epiphany of my own: I wanted to go back to graduate school.  So began an adventure that came to include many hours or studying, much of it subjects I wasn't interested in and material I found inconsequential, but I continued to apply myself, seeing that end goal in my mind's eye.  After toiling for months, I received a letter saying I wasn't accepted.  The university to which I'd applied was overwhelmed with applicants and underwhelmed with funding, limiting the acceptancies to a mere twelve of its over 100 applicants. I wasn't one of those twelve.  Then, I contemplated my hours of study, tearing up at what felt like wasted effort. Now, I still see that goal in my mind's eye, and slowly the energy toward that goal rekindles.  You see, I love to learn and I'm willing to work hard.  I'm resilient and unwavering in my understanding that if I reach out long enough for long enough, that I'll reach that goal. 

That's my flashback.  Now you go.

Your Beast: childhood fears and Lord of the Flies

A motif in this text is the beast.  Often, people ask what this beast really is as, for many chapters, we don't find out.  Let's use this writing response to consider what this motif represents and to frontload our reading..

Respond to the questions below in 1 cohesive paragraph.  Employ effective writing skills, beginning with a topic sentence, supoprting your thinking, etc.

• When you were little, what irrational fears did you have?
• Where did this fear come from?
• How did that irrantional fear look?  For example, if it was amonster under your bed, when you closed your eyes, how did you imagine that monster looking?
• What fears have replaced it?  Why?

I'll start.

When I was little, I had an irrational fear of sharks in the ocean because I lived by the shore.  Particularly, I used to dream of my house filling with water, and sharks who swam to the Jaws theme song travelled up my stairs in into my bedroom in herd, chomping at me as I helplessly clung to my covers in the hopes they'd save me. 
Now that I've gotten older, I hold on to this fear of sharks and have added some other fears as well.  I am still terrified of the ocean, and won't swim in deep water.  I would say, though, that my most pervasive fear is something happening to someone I love.  Every time my husband is out without me, I'm worried he'll get in a car accident on the way home.  Every time a family member feels sick or go to the doctor, I'm afraid they have cancer.  Though I know some of these fears are a result of my personal experiences, others are inexplicable; I have been lucky enough, for example, to not have known anyone who died in a car crash. I think they simply come from shifting values.

Happy Posting!