This morning in class, we will reveiw “One Mississippi,” the student analysis that you read and annotated for today, and we will also examine excerpts from midterm reflections and possibly a second sample analysis: “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.”
Before we turn to “One Mississippi,” you will read and annotate three passages from midterm reflections, each of which includes the required quotation from Dan Rockmore’s essay “Should the Classroom Be More Like the Gym?” In your annotations, you will address these questions:
- Does the writer demonstrate the relevance of Rockmore’s words to his or her experience in English 1103?
- Does the writer provide sufficient context for the quotation?
- Do the words that follow the quotation logically connect Rockmore’s ideas to the writer’s own?
As you prepare to write your analysis reflection, which you will compose in class on Wednesday, ask similar questions of the reflection passage that you draft in your journal.
After our discussion of the midterm reflection excerpts, we will read the opening paragraphs of Michael Lewis‘s “Back Story” as a lead-in to our paragraph-by-paragraph study of the student analysis “One Mississippi.
Time permitting, we will examine “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec,” an analysis I wrote as a model for my students in a previous semester. If we do not have time to address that essay in class, read it on your own. Make note of where I turn from the summary to my thesis in the opening paragraph. Also, consider which of strategies for conclusions I employ in the last paragraph. (See the list below.)
Strategies for Conclusions
- Offer an insight about the text or an additional quotation
- Revisit the thesis without stating it verbatim
- Point to the broader implications of the analysis
Model Analysis
The October 1 class notes include the introduction and a body paragraph of an analysis of mine in progress. The full text of that analysis, which I completed over fall break, appears below.
Bots in Shining Armor
At first glance, the covers of the early editions of Isaac Asimov’s short story collection I, Robot seem to reveal nothing about “Runaround,” the story that introduces the Three Laws of Robotics. The landscapes of the book jackets could be any planets—no detail designates the setting as Mercury—and the robots that stand guard on the book jackets offer no inkling of the narrative that unfolds: An account of astronauts Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan finding their lives in jeopardy when the photo-cell banks on their life support shields begin to fail. To repair the shields, their robot, Speedy, must retrieve selenium from the planet’s Sunside, a place humans cannot withstand. But rather than completing his mission, Speedy circles the selenium pool, leaving Powell and Donovan in danger of burning alive. The covers illustrate none of that. Yet despite their apparent lack of connection to Speedy’s story, their mechanical men serve as meaningful representations of Asimov’s themes as figures that bear a striking resemblance to medieval knights. That design might seem a mere marketing ploy, drawing on a centuries-old figure evoking Arthurian legend to appeal to potential customers of science fiction. However, a close look at Asimov’s narrative uncovers a notable link between the Mercury mission and its Laws of Robotics and the quests of King Arthur’s knights and their chivalric code.
The word chivalry derives from the Old French word chevalerie (and French chevalier), meaning horse soldier or horseman, and notably, images of the astronauts as ersatz horsemen enter Asimov’s story after Powell summons one of the older robots, from the first Mercury expedition, to find Speedy. In reply, the machine says it cannot proceed with its mission yet because Powell “must mount first” (44). Donovan solidifies the analogy when he responds incredulously, “‘We got to ride him? Like a horse?’” (44). Asimov returns to the image of the chevalerie, or horseman, when Powell spots Speedy in the distance and urges his robot forward, saying, “‘Giddy-up!’” and “thump[ing] his heels spur fashion” (48).
As Powell and Donovan move closer to Speedy, the narration indicates Speedy’s own knight-like quality with a nod to Arthurian legend: “The distance between the men and the errant robot was being cut down momentarily—more by the efforts of Speedy than the slow plodding of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell” (48). The word errant, which Asimov uses to describe Speedy, figures frequently in Le Morte d’ Arthur as a descriptor of the knights who wander in search of opportunities to prove their chivalry. As Launcelot says to Sir Tristram, “I am a knight errant . . . that rideth to seek many adventures” (Malory, vol. 2, bk. 10, ch. 86).
For Speedy, Powell, and Donovan, the holy grail is the selenium essential to the astronauts’ survival. Speedy’s initial inability to secure the selenium is not a violation of his chivalric code (the Three Laws of Robotics), but rather the result of his unfailing fidelity to the two Laws in conflict: He cannot obey his orders and protect his existence with the looming danger of volcanic action.
The repeated image in Johannes Regn’s Doubleday cover for I, Robot (1963) seems to pay homage to Edd Cartier’s first-edition jacket (Gnome, Grossett & Dulap 1950) with its solitary robot gazing out from the cover. The silhouettes that span Regn’s cover, in alternating shades of lavender, lead to a pen-and-ink version of the machines at its side. From the indeterminate figures emerges a clearly defined image of the future that evokes soldiers of the past, seen both in the distant past of the Middle Ages and the then-recent past of I, Robot’s first book jackets. The metal body Cartier renders with his paintbrush accentuates the articulated joint guards of medieval armor—pauldrons at the shoulders, couters at the elbows, poleynes at the knees—details that define the iron and steel suits worn by mounted soldiers whose chivalric code informs Asimov’s fictional world. The similarities between the narratives of Arthurian legend and “Runaround”—seen both in the story itself and in Cartier and Regn’s covers—may speak to a basic need in the shadow of A.I. Lifting the visor of a knight’s helmet revealed the windows to the soul. When we examine artificial intelligence, we see no face in the cloud, no soldier in our service sworn to bring us no harm.
Works Cited
Asimov, Isaac. “Runaround.” I, Robot. 1950. Doubleday, 1963, pp. 40-58.
Malory, Thomas. Le Morte d’ Arthur. 1485. Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/1252/1252-h/1252-h.htm#chap88.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, you will compose a reflective essay that documents the process of planning, drafting, and revising your analysis. In your reflection, you will include one quotation, which you will introduce with a signal phrase and follow with a parenthetical citation.
To comply with the requirements for your reflection assignment, you will need to complete the planning exercise in tomorrow’s class notes. In class, you will not be permitted to refer to my blog or any other online resources. You will need to have all the necessary information written longhand in your journal.
