Emily Chiavelli
AP Lit
Mr. Gallagher
8 October 2008
Meta-Cognitive
I chose to turn a Faulkner story into a stylistically Hemingway piece mostly because I vastly prefer Hemingway as a writer. I liked “A Rose for Emily” very much however, and I thought it would be interesting and challenging to convert because it doesn’t seem as typically “Faulkner” as some of his other pieces are.
When I did this I first aimed to cut out a lot of what I deemed to be unnecessary information and detail that Faulkner included. In doing this it allowed I was able to make the story structurally much more simplistic and use fewer complex sentences than were in the original version; I also shifted the focus of the story more toward dialogue rather than internal monologue. This, I believe, is how I conveyed Hemingway’s writing style.
I did change my story pretty significantly in accordance with the suggestions I received during the work-shopping process. One of the main flaws my group found in my piece was that the two sections of the story I attempted to recreate didn’t flow with one another. I realized when they said this that I needed to change the entire chronology of the story in order to make it more derivative of Hemingway’s writing style. Instead of using the framed perspective as Faulkner did, I reversed the order and wrote the story sequentially.
I think I could have used to put a little more effort into this assignment, truthfully. At first I was really excited about the paper, but when I sat down to write it I was having trouble coming up with ideas and all but gave up. I think while I pretty much captured Hemingway’s writing style and fulfilled the requirements for the paper, I took it especially literally and therefore it didn’t turn out to be terribly interesting.