Welcome to the class blog for ENGL 325:004 (Spring 2006).
You must register first before you can post to the blog. After you give yourself a username and submit your email address, a password will be emailed to you. Follow the directions in the email in order to log on to the blog.
You must post by 8 AM on the Thursday of your week (you can post as early as Monday if you want). You have four options: either post a reflection about some of the reading for Tuesday’s class; post a follow-up comment about Tuesday’s class or Tuesday’s readings; post a response to the Wednesday recitation; or post a reflection about some of the reading due for Thursday’s class.
Your post should be about 250 words. It’s often productive to begin with an aspect of the reading or recitation that you don’t quite understand. You may want to formulate an insightful question or two about the reading and then attempt to answer your own questions-this moves you into the realm of interpretation. You may also want to respond to another student’s post by building upon it, disagreeing with it, or re-thinking it.
Group B: Week 3: Cherrylog Road Response
Cherrylog Road is a poem that depicts a boy and a girl having sex in or around Georgia during the 1930s to 1940s. There are three main characters: a boy, a girl named Doris Holbrook and her father.
What makes this poem rather unusual is the importance of the setting and situation. The setting in the story takes place in an automobile junkyard. The boy in the story exquisitely describes the different types of vehicles and automobile parts throughout the poem. The boy also gives the reader an inclination of the current weather conditions when he states “… Like a mouse in the southern-state sun.†This gives a hint that it takes place during the peak of summer in the southern United States. The situation brings suspense to the story. The boy mentions Doris; the girl he is supposed to meet may not be able to make it if she cannot escape her father’s eye. In the middle part of the poem, the boy primarily ponders whether Doris will be able to make it to the junkyard. Next, Doris arrives; the setting and situation then come together. The boy and Doris not only have sex; they do so in a place that should be off-limits to kids and only if her father knew what she was doing.
Another interesting note to make is how the author contrast’s youth and the age. This occurs in the beginning of the poem when the boy is describing the old, torn up automobiles in a junkyard. The boy and the girl represent the youth in the story. The boy is then excited further knowing what is going to happen in particular because it is risqué. It is not as if he was in bed at his or her house at night; instead, it is at an old junkyard during daytime, which increases his excitement.
The last three lines sum up how this experience had affected his life. When the narrator states: “Drunk on the wind in my mouth, Wringing the handlebar for speed, Wild to be wreckage forever.†This shows the boy heading back home to his normal life; however, one may infer that he is changed forever.