AP--For Tuesday September 2

Find a brief passage in Pride and Prejudice, not from the opening chapter, which illustrates a significant principle of Jane Austen's style and which contains a theme or idea important to the novel. Annotate your passage in your copy of the novel and come to class prepared to share your discussion of the passage, both its relationship to Austen's style and its significance to some principle of form in the novel as a whole.

Revising a blog

FROM BLOG TO ESSAY IN FIVE EASY STEPS

1. Look at the blog entry you’ve chosen for the idea that you can develop into an essay of several paragraphs. It may or may not be the topic most addressed in the blog, but it should be one which forms a considerable part of your blog discussion and which you think you can develop further in essay form.

2. Rewrite the current opening statement or write a new, brief opening paragraph. Keep your opening concise, identify the focus of the essay, and, at the end of the paragraph, make a clear, specifically worded statement of thesis, the interpretive idea whose validity you wish to prove in the essay.

3. Look at the middle paragraphs of your blog entry. Are they too long? Too short? If they don’t already begin with sentences that state ideas rather than facts, add clear topic sentences that relate to your thesis. Check within each of those middle paragraphs for a balance between specific textual evidence, preferably both examples and brief quotations, and your own commentary designed to identify the significance of your evidence and fully develop the depth of each paragraph. Finally, make sure each of these middle paragraphs helps support the validity of your thesis.

4. Check your final paragraph. Make sure it does not simply repeat what you have already stated. Draw a conclusion from the evidence you’ve presented. Save your most important idea, the one everything else in your essay leads up to, for last.

5. Last but certainly not least, read all your sentences out loud for clarity and clutter. Have you expressed your biggest ideas in simple words? Have you taken out who, which, and that whenever possible? Are you varying the length of your sentences, alternating complex and compound sentences with simple ones? Does the punctuation of your sentences help make them clearer and more meaningful? Have you caught the spelling mistakes spellcheck won’t catch?

English IV Assignments weeks 1-3

English IV—World Literature
Mr. Coon, Mr. Campbell, Ms. Decker
Schedule of Assignments
August—Sep, 2008

Note: Assignments are DUE on the day indicated.

Week 1: August 25—29
Day 1. First day—welcome, syllabus, blog intro, assignments
Day 2. Set up account with Google Reader (see “how to start a blog,”); write the letter indicated in the instructions after you establish your blog; vocabulary intro (bring books)—
Day 3. Print blog entry, bring to class for discussions and workshop (blog to essay in five easy steps); begin peer review
Day 4. Continue peer review; begin revision and re-writing of draft 2

Week 2: September 2—5—No classes Monday (Labor Day)
Day 1. Essays due, both hard copy and turnitin.com; introduction to tragedy
Day 2. Read Antigone, pp. 14 to 32 (to line 593 “enter Ismene”)
Day 3. Antigone, pp. 32-44, to line 1034; vocab quiz 1, lessons 1-3 (quiz for section 1 only)
Day 4. (Campbell/Decker only)—vocab quiz 1, lessons 1-3 + Antigone activity (TBA)

Week 3: September 8—12
1. Antigone, finish reading to page 57
2. Read “Torn Lace,” pp. 73--77
3. Read “War,” pp. 79-82
4. Writing activity TBA; bring vocab books to preview lessons 4, 5, & 6

AP--August-October assignments

English IV—Advanced Placement World Literature
Mr. Coon
Schedule of Assignments
August—October, 2008

Note: All assignments are DUE for the class day listed.

Week 1: August 25—29
Day 1: First day—welcome, syllabus, blog intro, assignments
Day 2: Set up account with Google Reader (see “how to start a blog,” on mrcoonsenglish.blogspot.com; write the letter indicated in the instructions after you establish your blog; vocabulary intro (bring books); Introduction to close reading
Day 3: Bring Pride & Prejudice; continue introduction to close reading
Day 4: Quiz 1—Multiple choice (15 minutes); close reading exercise

Week 2: September 2—5—No classes Monday (Labor Day)
Day 1: Discussion of passages
Day 2: Discussion of Pride and Prejudice; introduce short story presentations & roles
Day 3: Essay due on Pride and Prejudice; vocab quiz 1 (lessons 1-3)

Week 3: September 8—12
1: "A Rose For Emily" (28) (passage and essay-LCC; no commenters)
2: "Everyday Use" (p.443)
3: "Teenage Wasteland" (35)
4: "Interpreter of Maladies" (p. 579); Multiple choice quiz 2

Week 4: September 15—19
1: "A & P" (p. 14); blogs due
2: "Revelation" (368)
3: "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (p.358)
4: "Cathedral" (p. 98); Vocab quiz 2 (lessons 4-6)

Week 5: September 22—26
1: "The Five Forty-Eight" (p. 503); blogs due
2: "Battle Royal" (p. 526)
3. "Shiloh" (p. 604)
4: "The Yellow Wallpaper" (p. 424); Multiple choice quiz 3

Week 6: September 29—October 3
1: "Greasy Lake "(p. 129); blogs due
2: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (p. 613)
3. "I Stand Here Ironing" (p. 637);
4: "The Things They Carried" (p. 625); vocab quiz 3 (lessons 7-9)

Week 7: October 6—9—No school Friday (Fall Break)
1: Drafts of papers due in class; no blogs due
2. Peer editing of short story papers
WED: Papers due for selected short stories; no quiz

Headings, formats, and style tips

HEADINGS FOR PAPERS—Always head your papers with the following information:

• Your name,
• Course and section number (AP -3, for example)
• Turnitin receipt number,
• Word count (your word processing program should perform this last task for you automatically).

FORMATTING:

• Use 12-point font
• Choose a font with serifs (Times New Roman, for example)
• Set 1 inch margins all round
• Give your paper a title which indicates its subject; when writing about literature, give more than just the name of the text you are writing about.
• Double space text
• For quotations of FIVE lines or longer, block the passage with one and one-half inch margins and single spacing.
• Remember to put novel and play titles in italics, poem and short story titles in quotation marks, and to give your paper a title different from the literary work it discusses.

STYLE

• Use American spelling and usage: double quotation marks, not single; toward, not towards; judgment, not judgement; gray, not grey; honor, not honour, and so on.
• Avoid "naked" pronouns: this, that, which.
• Whenever possible, omit who, which, and that--make the relative clause either the main clause or a participial phrase.
• Simplify your language; use everyday words to express important ideas.
• Omit unnecessary words from your sentences, unnecessary sentences from your paragraphs, unnecessary paragraphs from your essays. Be studious of brevity.
  
• Whenever you face a choice between a general term and a specific word, opt for the latter.
  

How to Start a Blog 2008

Go to www.blogger.com. You should be automatically directed to their start page. Follow the "three easy steps" :
--Create your account using your PCDS e-mail account and password (use the same account and password for your turnitin.com account). Since your blog will only be read by me and by your classmates, please use your first and last name as your display name; that way I always know whose blog I'm reading and you get credit for having written it.
--Name your blog. Whatever you like, but it's a school assignment, so be appropriate, please. For your blog's url, use firstname-lastname so that we may find each other's blogs easily during the year.
--Select a template for your blog. Pick whichever one you like, with one condition. My eyes are getting older and I can't read black or dark backgrounds, so please don't choose one of those templates.

After you create your template, click "start posting" to go to the editing page of your blog. From there, you have one more crucial task. Click the Settings tab, then the e-mail tab. Type my e-mail address in the box marked "BlogSend": (lance.coon@pcds.org). After I have an RSS feed for your blog, I’ll ask you to turn this setting off. But to get started you need to include this step or you may not receive credit for your blog entries. (Be sure to click "Save Settings" before closing this tab.)

When you have completed these steps, click the "Posting" tab and create your first blog entry.

For AP English: Write your first blog about the reading you did this summer. I’m interested not only in the books you chose from my recommendations but also any books you read on your own. Include a list of any books you have read since the beginning of June, both titles and authors, and then write a short piece about ONE of the titles you read. Pick the one that made the strongest impression on you, or the one you enjoyed the most, or the one that stayed with you the longest after you read it. Here is a link to such a piece, one I wrote last summer after I read Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. As you write, remember to be as specific as you can in your language, your reasons, your examples.

For English IV: Write a blog about the book you chose from the grade 12 Summer Reading List. If you read more than one title from the list, choose the one that made the strongest impression on you. In your blog (500 words or so), identify which aspects of the novel are most prominent, which ones go the furthest to explain the impression the book made on you. Was it an idea, a character who seemed particularly lifelike, a relationship, the ambiguity of the book's ending or meaning, something about the writer's style? Your blog will serve as the first draft of a paper to be turned in next week, so give some thought to identifying and discussing those elements of the book which are most notable.

I recommend that you write, edit, spell-check, and word-count your letter on a word document then paste it into the box on the posting page of your blog. When you're done, give it a title, click the orange button marked "publish post," and voila!—you have created your first blog entry (436).

Syllabus 2008--English IV & AP

English IV Syllabus
Mr. Coon; Fall, 2008

I. Goals

In the courses which comprise English IV, we seek to expose members of the senior class to significant pieces of literature from the world tradition. The required semester selection of world authors includes pieces from the classical Mediterranean world, Asia, Africa, South America, and Continental Europe. Canonical authors such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Kafka, Tolstoy, Achebe, and Solzhenitsyn provide depth and balance to the assigned material. Authors and works are chosen with an eye toward providing significant intellectual, esthetic, moral, and literary challenges to readers. Each course asks students to read and think carefully, to listen and discuss, and to develop their language skills, especially in writing, critical reading, vocabulary, and English usage.

II. Readings

World Literature (first semester)
1. World Literature , Donna Rosenberg (editor)
2. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
3. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
4. selected novel(s) for summer reading

Advanced Placement World Literature (two semesters)
1. Literature: An Introduction, (10th edition) X. J. Kennedy & Dana Gioia, editors
2. Waiting for the Barbarians, J. M. Coetzee
3. The Sound and the Fury , William Faulkner
4. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (summer reading)
6. selected novels for summer reading and 2 additional papers

African-American Literature (second semester)
1. Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America, James Oliver Horton & Lois E. Horton
2. Black Boy, Richard Wright
3. Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
4. Fences, August Wilson
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

Shakespeare (second semester); team taught with Mr. Burns
1. Hamlet
2. As You Like It
3. The Merchant of Venice

III. Additional texts
1. Vocabulary for Achievement, 6th course
2. Write with Pride—Abandon Prejudice: A Style Manual for English IV (available online at mrcoonsenglish.blogspot.com)

IV. Written work
The primary forum for written work is your blog. You are required to post weekly blog entries relating to the literature studied in the classroom. Your blogs will receive a grade, accounting for 30% of each quarter’s grade. Blog entries should be approximately 500 words in length (please indicate word count in parentheses at the end of each entry). I will not, however, grade by length alone; rather, quantity will be one of four criteria, along with regularity of entries, style, and originality of content. Instructions about creating and posting blog entries may be found on my blog at mrcoonsenglish.blogspot.com.
Occasionally I will ask you to respond to particular prompts or questions on my blog, but often there is no set topic for your weekly entries. Rather, I ask you to find an element of the assigned reading that interests you and discuss it thoughtfully. This comment may take many forms, a few of which are suggested here:
• Discuss a character’s actions, words, personality, moral values, or humanity.
• Comment on the writer’s style, use of language, tone, irony, or imagery.
• Consider a topic or idea raised in class discussion, trying to go beyond what has already been stated.
• Raise and discuss a question about the text under consideration.
• Discuss the importance or meaning of a key passage or scene from the reading.
• For longer works, show how a scene or passage develops a theme or pattern identified in class.
• Make a comparison between a scene, character, or idea from the literature and something from another source or from your own experience
• Use an idea from my blog or from that of one of your classmates as a point of departure for your response.
• Locate relevant research material on the web, post a link to the site on your blog, and discuss your choice.

In all cases, your goals are to demonstrate close, careful reading of assigned texts, challenge yourself to creative, original thinking, and develop your fluency as a writer. In addition to blog entries, several times each semester, I will assign papers, either revisions of blog entries or interpretations of asigned novels, plays, poems, or stories. Your papers will account for another 30% of your grade.

IMPORTANT: HEADINGS FOR PAPERS—Always head your papers with the following information: your name, date, turnitin receipt number, and word count (your word processing program should perform this last task for you automatically).


V. Turnitin.com
In addition to submitting hard copies of your papers this year, you are required to submit electronic copies of all papers to turnitin.com. These instructions will help you submit your papers. Use the same e-mail address and password for turnitin.com that you use for your account at blogger.com.
• On your web browser, go to turnitin.com. Register as a new user or login to the personal home page you created last year. You must give your e-mail address and a personal password which contains both letters and numbers to register. Click “student” as your user type. Give whatever other information may be necessary as you move through the required fields.
• When you reach your personal home page, click “join new class.” Then enter a class ID and a class enrollment password. For AP students, the class ID is 1598905 and the password pcdsap; for World Literature students (non-AP) the class ID is 1875359 and the password is pcdswl. Click “submit” when you finish. N.B: You only need to complete this step once.
• Then submit your paper. When you click on the class title, you will go to the class history page. Click on the word “submit” in the middle navigation bar. Enter the title of your paper and select the assignment with the correct date from the pull down menu. Assignments are listed by the title of the work and the date an assignment is due.

• After entering your title and selecting the correct assignment, paste your essay into the box marked “main text.” (In my experience, the copy and paste method works better than the upload method. You may, of course, find otherwise). You may ignore the boxes marked abstract and bibliography unless otherwise instructed. When your paper has been pasted into the “main text” box, click “submit.”
• Remember to put your digital receipt number on the assignment before you give it to me. Otherwise your assignment will be marked late and penalized accordingly.

VI. Participation and attendance
• Class discussion is a crucial part of the course. Therefore, it is imperative that we all treat one another with respect and behave in such a way as to contribute to, not disrupt, an atmosphere conducive to maximum learning.
• Participation in class is mandatory. I understand that the introverts have difficulty speaking in front of your peers and me; nevertheless, I expect you to contribute meaningfully to class activities and discussions. You must come to class having done the reading assigned and be prepared to discuss the material, answer questions, venture informed opinions, and articulate personal responses.
• Participation grades are assigned as follows and account for 20% of your grade in the class: "A" students are fully engaged, on time with the necessary books and supplies. They display obvious enthusiasm for the tasks of the class: reading, talking, listening, working in a group, thinking about a problem. "B" students' engagement varies slightly, sometimes at "A" level, sometimes not. "C" students are generally involved but with noticeable lapses. They may arrive late to class or frequently forget materials. They spend time on things other than the work at hand: chatting with friends, doing homework for another class, catching up on sleep, or staring off in space. "D" students exhibit these behaviors to an even greater degree, becoming a distraction to the work of the class, having a negative impact on the group's ability to get its work done, regularly coming to class unprepared.
• The first six excused absences each semester, not including those for School business (athletic competitions, class trips, performances, field trips, etc) will not be penalized. The seventh, ninth, and eleventh absences will result in a one-third letter grade penalty in your participation and attendance grade, and the thirteenth will result in a participation grade no higher than D for the semester. Latenesses to class, including leaving the room to find a book or go to the restroom, will result in penalties on weekly quizzes.

VII. Vocabulary
• Three new lessons in the vocabulary book are assigned every other week. We will look briefly at the new words during the first class of the week, so please bring your books to that session. Quizzes will take place the first 10 minutes of class on alternate Fridays unless otherwise notified.
• For first semester, we will cover lessons 1-18; for the second, lessons 19-30. Quizzes will contain all 30 words from the three lessons.
• Missed vocabulary quizzes must be made up at your earliest possible convenience. After one week, barring extraordinary circumstances, missing scores will be entered as zeroes.



VIII. Grading policy

• Grades are determined on a point system in which each assignment is weighted by the number of points it contains. Points will be totaled at the end of each quarter and semester and grades determined in accordance with the percentages contained in your student handbook.
• Grades from individual assignments are then weighted into categories as follows: blogs (30%), papers (30%), vocabulary and quizzes (20%), participation and attendance (20%).
• Assignments are due at the beginning of class. Work turned in during or after class is considered late and will be penalized. Late work is eligible for a score no higher than 75%, depending on the quality of the assignment and the degree of lateness. If you are absent the day an assignment is due, either have a classmate turn it in or fax the assignment to the Upper School office (602-224-6177).
• Students who miss quizzes or tests because of excused absence must make arrangements for make-up immediately upon returning to school. Missing work (quizzes or assignments never turned in or made up) will result in an incomplete grade for the quarter or semester.
• Any student who establishes a clear pattern of failing to complete the assigned reading according to the prescribed schedule will receive a semester grade of D or F, regardless of that student’s scores on other assignments. Repeated missing or poor written work, failed quizzes or tests, or the inability to supply basic factual information in class will be taken as signs of not reading.
• All assignments must be completed in accordance with the school’s honesty policy. See your handbook for details and be certain you know the difference between plagiarism and acceptable use of source material.



X. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Group 1—Questions to which the answer is “yes” (often because you asked):
• Will this assignment be graded?
• Will this be on the test?
• Does this count very much?
• Do we need to know this?
• Was I supposed to send this to turnitin.com?
• Do we need our books today?
• May I go to a college meeting during class period tomorrow?

Group 2—Questions to which the answer is “no” (generally as a matter of policy):
• Is it OK if I’m a few minutes late to class today?
• May I use the restroom?
• Should I go get my book from my car?
• I didn’t get a chance to read last night. Is it all right if I turn this in tomorrow?
• May I go to a college meeting today?

Group 3—Other questions
• What’s the best way for me to improve my grade in this class? (A: Spend more time on your blog and on your papers AFTER you write them.)
• Will you look at my college essay? (A: Yes, but I need 24 hours to get it back to you)
• I’m a very quiet person by nature. How can I improve my participation? (A: When something comes up that interests you or that you thought about while you were reading, make a point to say something brief. Keep doing that. Over time it will get easier as you expand your comfort zone.)
• What kind of people do best in English class? (A: Those who like to read, those who can write clearly, those who think about the meaning of what they read, those who stay on top of their day-to-day responsibilities, those who come to class prepared, those who volunteer information and ideas during class discussions.)

XI. Contact information
• In person—room 311. Stop by to talk or ask a question anytime I’m free. My schedule is posted on the door of my classroom. To make up a quiz, go over an assignment, a speech draft, or a college essay, please make an appointment first.
• By voice-mail—602-956-0253 x4296
• By fax—602-224-6177
• By e-mail—Lance.Coon@pcds.org

Solzhenitsyn obituary

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the best-known and most important literary figures of the past half-century, died in Moscow in early August. Since we are reading his first and most famous novel this semester, I wanted to include a link to a lengthy but informative obituary from the New York Times. Please read this tribute to a great writer's career and bring your questions and observations to class.

AP poetry and novel papers

1. Please submit both your poetry presentation and your novel papers to turnitin.com this week.
   
2. I've noticed that several of you have done either biographical or interpretive research on your poems and poets. While it was not my intention that you do so, it is an acceptable practice PROVIDED you document the source of any information in your presentation that did not come from either your own knowledge or your own interpretation of the poem. For example, if you looked up the poet's life on wikipedia, you must include that as a source (parenthetical is fine) in your final draft. Otherwise you could be guilty of using material inappropriately.
   
3. Same goes for your novel papers. The in-text citations should be parenthetical, including the author's last name and the page number where the information or quotation occurs. The last page of your essay should be a Works Cited page, listing the complete citations for all the references in your paper, including the novel itself.
4. Remember that I have suggested two methods to incorporate criticism into your paper: either summarize, in your opening page, key points from the research you did, then identify your thesis and go on to develop it; or, write a briefer introduction and use references from your critical articles in the body of your essay to develop individual topics related to your thesis.
5. See me with any questions.
   

This week's Shakespeare blog

WHAT: Write a full-length blog entry (approximately 800-1000 words) discussing and evaluating Shakespeare’s presentation of the character of Shylock and the extent to which that presentation either endorses or subverts prevailing Elizabethan anti-Semitism.

WHEN: Entries are to be posted no later than Friday, May 2.

HOW: Begin by reading the resources available at Prof. Grant Stirling’s web site. You should also identify some other relevant resources, but this site will serve as an introduction to the issues and evidence of this debate. In your entry, show your understanding, both of the topic and of the play, by evaluating the evidence on both sides and presenting your own conclusions.

Since this essay involves some research, be certain both to document your sources and to give credit for ideas as well as direct quotations. Use act, scene, and line numbers for quotations from the play, and put other sources in parenthetical citations. You may also, if it serves your purposes, refer to Michael Radford’s film version of the play.

SUGGESTIONS: Read all the available information, paying special attention to what you find most persuasive. Give fair treatment to the different sides of the question. In your evaluation, state which ideas you believe are strongest and why. Support your reasons by referring to the play itself.

Shakespeare Assignments for April

Choose one of the following three choices. For choices 2 & 3, essays should be approximately three pages in length. For option 1, obviously, they will be somewhat longer. Assignments are due Thursday, April 10, both in print and to turnitin.com (Richard III essay). Late assignments in either form will be penalized. (ALSO, this semester’s final vocabulary quiz, on lessons 28-30, will take place Friday April 11.)

1. Select a scene or portion of a scene of approximately 200 lines in length. No teeny-weenie scenes please. Study your scene carefully and add director’s notes clarifying and making explicit the subtext (motives, thoughts, feelings, and hidden agendas), stage directions (movements, gestures, expressions), and adverbs denoting tone of voice. Be certain to make your notes easy to distinguish from the text of the scene by putting them in a different type face (bold, italics, etc).

The play may be found on the M.I.T. web site (google Shakespeare + MIT)

2. Compare the speeches delivered by Richmond and Richard prior to the final battle at Bosworth Field. (Act 5, scene 3, lines 250-285 and 332-363, pages 291 & 297 in the Folger Library Edition). In your essay, examine the rhetoric of the two speeches as examples of persuasive language. Show how the language, style, and methods of persuasion reveal the differences between the two leaders at this critical moment. To what does each appeal in order to exhort his troops to victory? How do the speeches reveal not only their characters but also the themes of the play? Refer generously to the two speeches in your discussion.

3 Write a critique of the Richard III video viewed in class. Discuss the merits of adapting a Shakespearean script in such an unusual way. Consider some of the following questions. How successfully and how meaningfully does Loncraine's film update the play Richard III? What is gained, or lost, of the play's meaning by changing the setting from the 1480's to the 1930's? Do the changes made to Shakespeare's script make the play more or less accessible to modern audiences? Does the imagery of the film accurately depict both the glamour and the corruption of the Plantagenet royal court? Which actors' performances are most true to Shakespeare's original conception of the characters? Does this film lend credence to the often-stated belief that Shakespeare's plays are timeless? Discuss whichever of these issues allow you to develop your understanding of both play and movie. Above all, focus on those elements of the film that allow you to assess both the validity and desirability of modernizing Shakespeare's play.

Shakespeare--visiting author workshop

Google Jennifer Lee Carrell before tomorrow's writer's workshop (I could post the links myself but I'd rather you find them). In five to ten minutes, you should be able to find answers to the following questions:

When was Interred With Their Bones published?

Where does the title come from?

What is Ms. Carrell's academic background?

With what bestseller has the novel been compared?

What work of non-fiction has she also written?

What is one question you would like to ask her, based on what you know about her?

Poetry presentations

AP English
April, 2008
Schedule

1. Each day we will discuss one or two of the poems listed below. Each will be "presented" by me or one of you. Presentations include a memorized recital of the poem, a brief discussion of its meaning and use of the elements of poetry, and a 600-700 word essay on the poem, posted on blogs. Presentations will begin Wednesday, April 9 and continue through Friday, April 25.
2. See my blog post for specific instructions about the content of the essay which comprises the single largest part of your presentation.
3. Poems--all page numbers refer to Literature, 10th ed.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers 664--LCC The World is Too Much With Us 912
My Last Duchess 668--LCC One Hundred Love Sonnets 973
My Papa's Waltz 674 Traveling Through the Dark 991
The Unknown Citizen 690 Dover Beach 1078
Dulce et Decorum Est 698 Quinceañera 940
Batter My Heart… 709 Anorexic 1088
Metaphors 771--LCC Kubla Khan 1096--LCC
The Silken Tent 780 A Valediction… 1102
Since There's No Help… 858 Digging 1118
Swan and Shadow 885 Death Be Not Proud 1101
Neutral Tones 897 To An Athlete Dying Young 1124
White Lies 680 When I Have Fears 1129
Her Kind 687 When I Consider… 1142
The Red Wheel Barrow 688--LCC That Time of Year… 1183
America 938 Daddy 1150
Below Zero 982 A Description of the Morning 1171
One Art 998 The Writer 1181
Theme for English B 1035 When You Are Old 1190

Also, this reminder, that for Friday, April 11 you will post the first of 3 blog entries containing your clear and specific first thoughts about your selected novel. What do you observe about the characters, the author’s style, and the way the subject matter is presented in the early chapters, having read the first 50 to 75 pages of the novel. Additional blogs are due April 17 (with bibliography) and April 25.

AP--Reading poetry

A. How to read a poem:

There is no single way. The best advice I can give you is to sit by yourself in a quiet place and read aloud slowly, several times, paying attention to the images, ideas, and feelings the words call into your mind, imagination, and heart. Poetry can be magical stuff, but it can't compete with ipods and cell phones, tv's and texting. Give it a chance to get inside you and stretch out.


B. Questions to ask of individual poems:

1. Who is the speaker of the poem? What qualities of personality does the poet provide? What kind of language does the speaker use? How does the speaker's mind work? What hints of personal history are given? Are there any specific facts about the speaker's identity?

2. What is the situation of the poem? Is there a social, cultural, historical, or familial context given? Does the poem refer to any specific events? Does it contain an account of an incident? Imagine the poem as a dramatic utterance—what scene is being portrayed?

3. What is the tone of the poem? Are there words that describe the attitude of the speaker toward the subject of the poem as a whole? Does the tone change as the poem develops? If so, where are those "turns" (shifts of tone or subject)? What is the tone of individual lines or sections of the poem?

4. How would you paraphrase the poem into a series of prose sentences. What clarity is gained from paraphrasing? What essential qualities are lost?

5. Does the poem have a basic meter? What is it? How does it either advance the musicality of the poem or provide emphasis to certain words and ideas? Where does the meter change?

6. What devices or poetic techniques does the poet employ? How does the poet use strong diction, concrete detail, sensory images, irony, or figurative language? How do these devices help us better understand some element of the poem's meaning? How does the use of language strengthen both the idea of the poem and its emotional content?


C. Define and be able to identify examples of each of the following terms:


FORMS
sonnet (Elizabethan, Petrarchan)
villanelle
sestina
dramatic monologue
quatrain
couplet
stanza
closed form
open form
terza rima
heroic couplet
blank verse
free verse
ballad stanza

STYLE
diction
imagery
detail
repetition
speaker
connotation
denotation
tone

DEVICES
apostrophe
personification
irony
rhetorical question
simile
metaphor
metonymy/synecdoche
allusion
symbol & allegory

SOUND
masculine rhyme
feminine rhyme
approximate (slant)
rhyme
alliteration
consonance
assonance
end-stopped lines
enjambement
caesura



METER
iambic/ anapestic
dactylic
trimeter
tetrameter
pentameter
trochees
spondees


TONE (apply to poems)
audacious
awestruck
baffled
bemused
bitter
bleak
complacent
confident
critical
desperate
discouraged
disheartened
disturbed
dreamy
ecstatic
envious
euphoric
exuberant
fearful
gentle
giddy
humble
humorous
hypnotic
ironic
lethargic
lonely
majestic
melancholy
mocking
mystical
outraged
passionate
patronizing
persuasive
playful
pleading
puzzled
sarcastic
seductive
shrewd
timid
vengeful
weary
wistful
yearning

AP--April Assignments

We have two reading and writing projects yet to complete. The first, reading a novel from the AP authors list, researching critical literature on that novel, and writing your final paper for the course, is described on the "April Reading List" document from Wednesday March 19 on this blog. Give me your choices by Wednesday, April 2. As part of this assignment, post THREE blog entries while you read your novel (due April 11, 17, and 25), the second of which must include your list of research articles found on JStor.

The second project is a poetry unit, the one genre we have not formally considered. The components of this assignment are as follows:
1. Select a poem from a list I will post.
2. Memorize your poem. If your poem is longer than 25 lines, you may memorize part of it--at least 20 lines--and read the rest.
3. Recite your poem to the class as you begin your in-class presentation.
4. Post on your blog (and read as part of your presentation) a 600-700 word essay (approximately) discussing one of the elements of the poem. Discuss either the poem's form, control of tone, diction, use of figurative language, use of imagery, use of irony, or portrayal of its speaker. Whichever element you choose, use specific examples to illustrate how that element of the poem contributes to our understanding of the poem's meaning.
5. Lead a brief discussion.

Finally, our test and quiz schedule is as follows:
April 4--Vocabulary 28-30 (Last vocab quiz of your high school career)
April 11--Multiple choice--12 minute quiz
April 28 & 29--60 minute multiple choice test (section 2 Monday, Sections 1 & 3 Tuesday)
May 2--Papers on novels due
Thursday, May 8--AP exam

April Reading List

AP English--Reading list
Select a novel for independent reading during the month of April. You may choose from the list below, from the first semester list, or another 20th century novel of comparable literary merit (with my approval). Also look for three critical analyses of the novel in a local library or on J Stor. Write a paper of 1500-2000 words (5-7 pages) developing in some depth a key aspect of the novel’s meaning, using both direct quotations and your 3 outside sources. Papers are due Friday, May 2.

Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Handmaid’s Tale; Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
My Antonia; O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
Light in August; Absalom! Absalom! , William Faulkner
Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Howard’s End; A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
Catch-22 , Joseph Heller
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
The Trial, Franz Kafka
Sons & Lovers; Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
All the Pretty Horses or The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
All the King’s Men , Robert Penn Warren
Age of Innocence , Edith Wharton
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Native Son, Richard Wright

Also, consider one of the selections from the October list: Jane Austen (Persuasion, Emma, Sense and Sensibility),Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre),Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities), George Eliot (Silas Marner), Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Thomas Hardy (The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Return of the Native), Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court).

Finally, if you are up to a significant challenge this late in the year, Crime and Punishment or Anna Karenina are excellent but lengthy choices.

Best negative review of the week

From Ron Liddle, in The Times of London, reviewing an autobiography by British politician Menzies Campbell: "This book is drier than an urn full of crematorium ashes."

(thanks to Paper Cuts, the blog of the New York Times Book Review, for this tip.)

AP English--Week 10 (March 10-14)

Reading: Am I Blue by Beth Henley, for next Monday, March 17. Page 1959 in your anthologies.

Writing: In-class essay Friday March 14

Blog: Post 5-10 comments (observing the amenities of civilized discourse and appropriate school language, please) for the blog posts of your peers from either A Doll's House or Fences. Be thoughtful; give praise where praise is due; add an idea of your own.

Links: Information on the Negro Leagues of the 1920s through 1940s;

An article on the life and career of Josh Gibson, the character Troy is partly modeled on;

Further information about the career of Beth Henley;

A photograph posted by Katie Senzig, class of 2006, with her request that we "vote" for her picture to help her qualify for a scholarship opportunity.

Submit your poetry and short prose pieces for publication in Daybreaks. Send them to alex.zadel@pcds.org, deepa.rao@pcds.org, or nina.warner@pcds.org

PS--in my world, Thursday the 13th is my daughter-in-law Adrienne's birthday, Friday March 14 is the birthday both of my brother Grant and his slightly better known physicist counterpart Albert Einstein, the 15th is, of course, Beware the Ides of March Julius day, the 16th is my stepson Noel's birthday, and the 17th is our annual corned beef and cabbage dinner in honor of St. Paddy. A week crowded with incident. And my grades are due Monday also. Fun fun fun.

AP--week 9

Reading--Fences, p. 1996 in your anthology. (N.B.--this play was not included in the 8th or 9th editions of the textbook,so if you are using one of those you'll need to find another source of the text.)

Complete the reading by Wednesday, March 5.

Quiz--vocab 25, 26, 27 for Friday March 7. Also a brief video interview with August Wilson Friday.

In-class essay next week. If you didn't blog last week on A Doll's House, please do so this week for Fences.

Here's a list of August Wilson's plays.

Wilson saw writing a play as akin to writing a poem: "you use metaphor and condense." How might this philosophy apply to this play? What cultural forces or historical processes are embodied in his characters?

Are you a beatnik?

This year, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road, one of the sacred texts of the so-called "Beat Generation," the original 120-foot long scroll of paper on which Jack Kerouac typed the novel is traveling around the country, going "on the road" itself.

To find out if you have the true "beat spirit" take this quiz, sponsored by the University of Texas.

Course sign-up for Juniors (Revised)

Members of the junior class:

It's time to begin thinking about your course sign-up for next year's English classes. You have two options: a year-long AP course, or two semester courses, one required (Introduction to World Literature) the other elective (Shakespeare, African-American Literature, The Art of Composition). Essentially, the difference between the two tracks is that the AP class has more assigned reading, moves at a slightly faster pace, and is graded on a slightly more demanding scale.

The ideal candidate for AP English is the student who enjoys reading, thinking about, and discussing literature, who has already proven the willingness to work hard throughout a year-long course, who enjoys sharing ideas and interpretations with others in a seminar-style discussion format, and who will choose a senior-year schedule with only one or two other AP courses. The ability to write clear, logical, well-supported essays of textual interpretation is crucial, since writing is the primary method of evaluation in the course.

If you wish to be considered for AP, please ask Ms. Driscoll for her recommendation. There are 32 spots available, and I will select the class based on the following criteria (in order of importance):

1. A strong recommendation from Ms. Driscoll about the consistency of your work ethic and level of motivation;
2. A strong recommendation from Ms. Driscoll about the level of your writing skills;
3. B+ or better grades in English III, English II, (and U.S. History since it involves several of the same skills--reading, writing, and motivation).

First preference will be given to those who satisfy all three requirements. Then, if there are spaces available, those who satisfy the first two requirements but have some grades of B will be considered. However, in those cases, Ms. Driscoll's recommendation about the first requirement, your level of motivation and the consistency of your work ethic, will be absolutely crucial. A weak recommendation in this area is by itself grounds for my turning down your request for this course.

I will be happy to answer any questions you have in the weeks between now and the sign-up date.

LCC

"Where We Live"

I just read a short story called "Where We Live" on an online magazine called Strange Horizons. The story is written by Daniel J. Pinney, a former student of mine now a grad student and part-time teacher at NAU. The story, which takes place 40 or 50 years in the future, in the perpetually war-torn regions along the Israeli-Lebanese border, concerns the lives of characters living in a post-nuclear-war zone, a world of constant sniper fire, nuclear fallout, and random, sudden death.

And yet.

And yet it is a love story, reaffirming in its understated but insistent voice that however sad or dangerous the times and places we live in, it's how we live, not where, that matters most. And for this reason, "Where We Live" is a tender and poignant story, of loss but also of life, of terror but also hope.

When Daniel was a student here, he did an independent study with me, producing a 100+page novel called King Arthur: The Untold Story of which I still possess a signed copy. It was great fun to work on the project with him, the product a whimsical but highly amusing tale in which the three main characters are King Arthur, a ghost, and an alien from another world. And Dan has kept in touch with me from time to time over the years, most recently by including me on a distribution list announcing the publication of his first paid piece of writing. It's one of the parts of my job I enjoy most, hearing from former students and being able to follow pieces of their life stories over the years. So thanks, Dan, for the e-mail and for the story, which I very much enjoyed. And may there be several of you, my current students, who will also choose to keep in touch with me, send me news of your lives, pictures of your children, even copies of your writings.

And for those interested in reading Daniel's story, here's the link.

Powered by ScribeFire.

AP--Week 8 (February 25-29)

Read A Doll's House, pp. 1679-1734 in your anthology. Complete the reading by Tuesday, February 26, so that our discussions in class can be fully informed.

Write a blog entry of approximately 500 words after you have read the play. Questions 5 & 6 at the top of page 1735 (under questions for Act III) are, I think, good questions, as are questions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 in the list of "general questions."

Multiple choice quiz Friday, February 29.

AP--Hamlet (blogging for subtext)

Subtext assignment (due as blog entries Friday, February 22--please post Thursday evening, not before):

1. Using this link, download act 3, scene 4 from the beginning to Gertrude’s line “I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me.” (Delete everything beginning with Hamlet’s line “I must to England, you know that?”)

2. Turn this scene into a word processing document. It will be several pages long.

3. Keep the entire text as it is, except change the name Queen Margaret to Queen Gertrude at the beginning of the scene (a mistake on the web site).

4. Identify as much subtext as you can. This is the most important part of the assignment. Subtext refers to all the meanings not directly contained in the text. Specifically, as we discussed in class, the subtext contains implied stage directions, the character’s thoughts, feelings, and motives as the lines are being spoken, as well as notes indicating tone of voice, movements, and gestures. Write your subtext at the end of short speeches or at the appropriate points in the middle of longer speeches. Do not simply paraphrase speeches. And please don't invent off-the-wall meanings which are not clearly implied or logically compatible with the original text.

5. When you finish, paste your document into the "compose" window of your blog. But before you click "publish post," go through the document carefully and put everything you added in BOLD or in a different color (you can't do this step before you post or the formatting will be lost when you paste your word document to your blog and you'll have to do it all over again, probably muttering to yourself inappropriate language in the process, and we wouldn't want that, now, would we?) Putting all your additions in boldface or color makes it easier for me to identify what you have added.

Please do NOT consult with each other in preparing this assignment or wait to post your scene until after you have read the work of others. What you post must be your work and only your work. As you should know, the school takes a particularly dim view of collaborating on assignments that are not collaborative in nature. It's called cheating. Don't let it happen to you.

Done in a spirit of exploration, with a strong mind and a clear heart, this assignment can be a lot of fun for all of us.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Quote of the week

From Brian Frazer, in Los Angeles magazine, on the film version of “Love in the Time of Cholera”:

"[A] movie that would have been more entertaining if they’d just filmed some guy reading the book into the camera."

(I still haven't seen the movie myself, but aren't poison pen comments wonderful when they're as witty as this one?--LCC)

Powered by ScribeFire.

AP--important announcement

To ALL AP English students:

This is a test, of the blogger-announcement system. I am changing the due date of the "Blog to Essay" Assignment, from Friday, February 8 to Monday February 11.

Feel free to complete the assignment and turn it in Friday if you already have a full weekend of other obligations or plans. But if you need the weekend to complete this assignment, you may have it.

Please tell your friends about this announcement. Or don't. From what I can tell in class lately ("when is this due?") not a lot of you have been paying all that close attention to my published announcements lately, so this one is really for the benefit of those of you who are. So let's let it be our little secret, OK?

Powered by ScribeFire.

AP Assignments February 2008

Weeks 5 & 6--Hamlet--Read acts 1 & 2 during week 5 (February 4 - 8), read acts 3, 4, & 5 during the week of February 11.

Writing: For the week of February 4: Re-write one of your blogs from this semester in the form of a short paper (2-3 pages, roughly 600-900 words).

For the week of February 11: 500 word blog on a scene, speech, character, motif, theme, or problem from Hamlet.

For the week of February 18: 10 comments on last week's Hamlet blogs. A new rule for all English IV blogs, one which shouldn't be necessary but which, based on recent evidence, I now state clearly and succinctly: They're your blogs but also school assignments, so all language used must be appropriate in tone. A slightly more casual, personal tone and style are appropriate to the nature of the blog, but no profanities, vulgarities, or insults will be tolerated. All these will result in negative blog points for the writer, and repeat offenders will be referred to the Dean of Students and the Assistant Head of the Upper School for disciplinary action.

Quizzes: Friday, February 8, Multiple choice No school Friday, February 15, therefore no quiz.

Links:

Source

Seneca

Hamlet online

Kafka Movie

Check out the short animated film of "The Metamorphosis" Becca found on a publisher's website, part of a 2003 promotion for the graphic novel version of the story. Post a quick comment on your blog, or on Becca's, saying what you notice (about the music, the art, the way text is incorporated, or anything else you observe). Prize for best original comment.

Blogging Shakespeare

Here are a few suggestions to get you started with the new semester and your Shakesblog:

*One I call Notes & Quotes: find a few of your favorite (brief) passages from the play, copy them from an online Shakespeare source (for the M.I.T. website, click here), and for each one you select, write a few sentences explaining why you chose it. Part of the fun of Shakespeare is exploring the language he uses and the way he says things.
*Write a blog about a character you find either interesting or appealing. Think of characters from other stories who have something in common and explain the similarity. Think of a real person you are reminded of and explain why.
*Go to "Shakespeare and the Internet" (link here) find some interesting material, and write about why it's interesting.
*Choose a scene from the play and explain why it is important to the play as a whole.
*Revisit the list of blog starters on the entry "Your class blog" (click here) for some whopping good ideas you've probably forgotten since August.

As you think of other excellent ideas, let me know.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Blog groups for writing and responding

I said the other day that for the next few weeks we would split into two groups for blogging and responding. Here are the groups (taken from the order in which your names appear on the list on my blog):

Group 1 (blogs this week for Oedipus, comments next week for Antigone; responsible for reading both pieces of literature):

Aaron, Abby, Alex, Ally, Jillian, Becca, Becky, Caitie, Chelsea, Danni, Dave, Deepa, Eric, Gary G, Emily, Andrew, Greg, Hutch, Ian, Ivy, Todd, Jessi, and Jimmy (23)

Group 2 (comments this weekend for Oedipus or Kafka, writes blogs next week for Antigone, reads both plays): Jonny, Julia, Kaleena, Karen, Katelyn, Lauren and Lauren, Lizzy, Manasi, LeManley, Michele Sue, Aravind, Natalie, Navdeep, Nina, Nick, Piper, Q, Richard, Gary S, Sam, Warren, and Yesenia (23)

Comments: Let's make this work well; here a few guidelines:
*Listen to what the writer is saying; give credit for good ideas
*If you disagree, that's OK, but no cheap shots or mocking; take ownership of your own responses by making "I" statements
*Our comments are public documents, so let's keep the tone civil; no flaming or obnoxious language
*Don't limit your comments to your 5 closest friends; each time you write comments, choose different people.
*In a few weeks, I'll redraw the groups so you will have the chance to comment on different blogs
*I absolutely enjoy reading your blogs and giving you my best possible comments; I hope you will have fun with this also.
*Each time you're in the commenting group, leave 5-10 comments at the end of the week and over the weekend.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Vocab game

Mr. White and Katie Senzig told me about a web site that’s fun, educational, and humanitarian. It’s a vocabulary game with 50 levels. When you answer questions correctly, you move to a higher level. Each one you miss moves you to a lower level. More importantly, the sponsors of the web site donate 20 grains of rice, through the UN, for every word you answer correctly. Hence the name, “free rice.”

Here’s the link.

AP Assignments January 2008

Week 1 (January 8-11): Read The Death of Ivan Ilyich, p. 280 in our anthology. Look at my blog entry for September 24, 2007 for discussion and blog questions. As you read this story and the discussion questions, think about the story’s central message. In what ways is Tolstoy’s story critical of bourgeois Russian culture? Is Ilyich meant to be a unique or a representative character? We will discuss questions 1 through 6 beginning Wednesday afternoon through Friday and finish our discussion Monday and Tuesday morning. Blog entries are due by Sunday. No quiz this week.

Week 2 (January 14-18): Read The Metamorphosis, p. 317. Look at my blog entry for November 1, 2007 for a possible blog idea. As you read this story, think about the possible levels of interpretation (Freudian/phychoanalytic, cultural, mythic, historical, and so on) that the story, or parts of it, lend themselves to. What do you see as the significance of Gregor’s transformation? What emotions does Kafka dramatize through Gregor’s plight? Is the story more about Gregor himself or the family situation of which he is a part? We will begin discussion Tuesday afternoon and continue through Friday. Blog entries are due Friday, with a vocabulary quiz over lessons 16-18 also scheduled that day.

Week 3 (January 22-25—No school Monday, MLK Holiday): Read Oedipus The King, page 1285. Also read my Introduction to Tragedy (Wednesday, September 5, 2007 on my blog) and the questions at the end of the play. This is one of the most famous plays in all of Western literature. Why do you think that is? How does Sophocles give the play both philosophical and psychological depth in addition to developing the emotional tension which is central to the experience of all drama, especially tragedy? What does Oedipus’ story represent? How does it raise issues relevant to all human life? This week, half of you will blog on some aspect of this play (entries due Friday), while the other half of you post comments on 5-10 of your classmates blogs (be polite, be respectful, be responsive to others’ ideas—comments due by Sunday). Multiple choice quiz Friday.

Week 4 (January 28-February 1): Read Antigone, page 1324 in our anthology. Look at the links from my blog entry of September 18, 2007 and the questions at the end of the play. Why is Antigone’s dilemma important? What does it represent? Which character, Antigone or Creon, best fits the definition of the tragic character from the Introduction to Tragedy? Blog entries, for those who did not write the week before, are due Friday. Comments (5-10) from those who blogged last week are due Sunday. Vocabulary quiz Friday, covering lessons 19-21.

The Tin Roof Blowdown

James Lee Burke is a mystery writer with a series of twenty or more novels detailing the exploits of Detective Dave Robicheaux, a deputy sheriff in a small Louisiana town, a recovering alcoholic, Vietnam war veteran, married to a former nun--a good if somewhat complicated man. In the latest installment of the series, which I finished yesterday on an airplane to Sacramento--where I'm playing my favorite role, that of "gramps"--Dave finds himself in the middle of a story involving homicide, theft, looting, organized crime, a missing priest, and a psychopathic killer, all coming in the days and weeks following the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

What is remarkable about the novel, at least to me, is the elegiac mood. All the Dave Robicheaux novels involve the solving of a crime, but it's the backdrop of this one, the character's (and author's) palpable sense of overwhelming grief, mixed with anger, at the destruction of a once-beautiful city which he clearly loves, which gives the story the depth of feeling that kept me turning pages for several days.

I recommend it highly to anyone who likes mystery novels or who wants to try to imagine the chaos that followed in the wake of the terible hurricane.

If you're interested in learning more, click here for the New York Times review of the novel (226).

AP exam sample questions

Through the college board's web site, you have access to samples of previous years' essay questions, scoring guides, and other useful information.

Click here to access sample questions and scoring guidelines for the AP exam in English literature.

Elements of Prose Style

Actually two lists, which we discussed briefly in the first week, while looking at Jane Austen's style:

First, the elements of Fiction, as defined by novelist and critic E. M. Forster in his book Aspects of the Novel:

Plot--including not only WHAT happens, but WHY
Characterization--including who the characters are and how we come to know them better
Setting--the effect of time and place on the nature of the action and its effects on the characters
Point of View--First person retrospective, third person limited omniscient, fully omniscient--what are the advantages of a particular point of view to the effect the writer wishes to achieve
Theme--the social, cultural, philosophical or psychological ideas contained in the writing; in the fullest sense, what the story is about.

Second, the aspects of prose style, which apply to fiction and non-fiction, essays, stories, editorials, letters, blogs, journalism, and all prose writing:

Syntax
Organization
Language
Imagery
Diction
Detail
Irony
Point of View
Tone

Of these, often tone is seen as the most important, as it contains our understanding of the writer's attitude toward the subject or topic of the piece of writing. Therefore, the others on the list are often viewed as tools or techniques employed by writers to aid in communicating and controlling the overall tone.

NEW ! ! !

I was having coffee with a friend of mine (a former student), telling her about our blogworld, and she said I should put links to all your blogs on my blog.

So I did. Now, when you want to comment on others' blogs, you can get there directly from my blog. (Thanks, Sophie: "She approaches; she is nigh.")

Ain't blogworld grand?

LCC

English IV: Final paper

English IV: World Literature
Final essay
December, 2007

For your last essay of the semester, identify an important area of human life, human nature, or human values and write a paper of six to eight pages discussing the theme you have identified. In your discussion, refer generously to three or four of the seven authors we have studied. (If you use your summer reading novel, please include three others from the semester.) Your papers are due Tuesday, December 18 by noon, hard copy with turnitin receipt number (turnitin title: 2007-Final Paper).

Sample Questions (develop your own variations):
What does it take to be a successful human being in the world? Is “success” a matter of getting what one wants, of attaining a desired result—love, money, power, freedom, social status—or is it a question of character, of developing within the self those qualities most essential to a complete human being: virtue, wisdom, compassion, spiritual enlightenment, moral insight, ethical depth, duty, honor?

Can social institutions, cultural traditions, or rituals help develop successful people, or does the literature portray these customs more as impediments to growth?
What is a “complete” human being? What components are most important in defining what a human being “should” be?

Under what conditions do the characters’ worlds become traps, bringing out the worst in people, debasing their lives and stripping their existence of meaning or purpose? What happens to the hearts and souls of those who live in such worlds?

Professor Robert George of Princeton says, “the conquest of the self is part of what it means to lead a successful life.” Which characters have inner demons or parts of themselves they must conquer? How successful are they?

William Faulkner said that literature is composed of “old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” Which of Faulkner’s truths find most powerful expression in the literature we have read this semester.

Dr. Carl Hammerschlag, a psychiatrist, writes, “Mental health . . . can be described as having your head, mouth, and heart in a straight alignment. Mental health happens when what you believe in your heart is the same as what you say with your mouth. You are mentally healthy when what you feel is something you also believe. . . .You have to keep in balance if you want to stay healthy.” In these terms, which characters are healthiest? Which are not? How do they achieve balance? What are the costs of not finding it?

Many works we have read center on characters who, because of their personalities, beliefs, or personal circumstances, find themselves in conflict with their society. Choose three important characters from different works and discuss the ways in which they are out of synch with the world around them. For each character you discuss, say whether the conflict primarily reveals a flaw in the character or in the society’s assumptions and moral values.

On Lovers and Madmen

from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, scene 1:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation, and a name.


How does this passage suggest any of the central themes of Love in the Time of Cholera?

Down the Pear Tree

(for Quentin)

Uncle Jason hates her, wishes she’d never been born,
Grandmother locks the door, opens it next morn.
But she won’t be confined, she’ll leave this family,
She has her own way out, down the pear tree.

Once down the tree, she finds the freedom to run,
Young man in a red tie waiting, “come on, we’ll have fun.”
Thousands of Uncle’s dollars, taken from the box,
Escaping his cruelty, evading her locks.

Thirty years earlier, only a little girl,
Her mother began to know the dark power of that world,
Climbed that same tree, to see what she could see,
Had her muddy bottom spanked, coming down the pear tree.

Curiosity not rewarded, love not to be found,
Once down the pear tree all you hit is the ground.
Disgraced and guilty, like her mother, believes she's bad,
Both have to get out, before they run mad.

The future of the family dies the night she leaves,
Grief, despair, and anger, only Dilsey believes.
She disappears forever, finds her own way free,
Out the window at midnight, climbs down the pear tree.

Love in the Time of Cholera blog suggestions

As you read the novel, look for and think about the importance of the following elements. Feel free to choose any of these topics for further exploration in your blog posts.

Themes

Varieties of Love—unrequited, marital, sexual, devotional, devastating, forbidden, loveless, intimate, convenient, passionate, passionless, etc
Time
Cholera/ disease/ illness/ death/mortality
Old age (“gerontophobia”)
History of the country—civil war, modernization vs. tradition, influence on present
Cultural issues/prejudices—race, class, gender, age, European ideas, and the author’s attitude toward these issues (social criticism?)
Absurdity & irony of life
Perverseness of human nature
Wisdom
Compassion

Elements of style

Sensual imagery
Use of flashbacks
Abrupt transitions of subject, time, or tone; juxtaposition of extremes
Use of figurative language—poetry written in prose
Exaggeration, use of non-realistic elements (“magical realism”)

Motifs

Letter-writing
Flowers
Weather
Animals
Human body
Sense of smell

Things Fall Apart study guide

Background research and oral work:

Both from your reading and from research, identify examples of the following elements of culture as they occur in Things Fall Apart. Consider the importance of each to Ibo life as Achebe portrays it. Share your findings with the class.

•Customs / Ways of living (Rituals & ceremonies, Traditions, Manners & etiquette,
rites of passage, family structure)
•Religion / Moral values / Taboos / Superstitions
•Economy / Money
•Government / Social institutions / Structure of social hierarchy
•Agriculture / Food
•Science / Technology
•Transportation
•Architecture
•Education (Formal vs. informal), Gender roles
•Language (oral vs. written) / Proverbs / Wisdom
•Clothing / Fashion
•Arts

Things to look for as you read

1. What are the distinguishing features of Ibo culture as presented in the novel? How do these features compare with what you learned from your search?

2. Which elements of that culture are most comfortable to us? Which most resemble elements of our (your) culture? Which seem more foregn, more difficult to accept?

3. In what ways does Okonkwo embody the values and principles of Ibo culture? What are the strengths of his character?

4. In what ways does Okonkwo deviate from traditional Ibo values? What are his weaknesses as a character?

5. What is Achebe’s attitude toward Okonkwo? How does he communicate this attitude to us?

A few selected web sites ( also google Achebe + “Things Fall Apart” + Ibo culture):

http://nths.newtrier.k12.il.us/academics/english/TFA/tfawebquest.html
http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/achebe/things.html
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/achebe.htm
http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/freshman_studies/resource/fsachebe.html





William Butler Yeats: "The Second Coming" (1921)

Yeats was attracted to the spiritual and occult world and fashioned for himself an elaborate mythology to explain human experience. "The Second Coming," written after the catastrophe of World War I and with communism and fascism rising, is a compelling glimpse of an inhuman world about to be born. Yeats believed that history in part moved in two thousand-year cycles. The Christian era, which followed that of the ancient world, was about to give way to an ominous period represented by the rough, pitiless beast in the poem.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre (1)
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming (2) is at hand;
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi (3)
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries (4)
of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Eng IV assignments Oct 29-Dec17

Schedule of Assignments
November-December, 2007

Week 10: October 29—November 2
Reading: Kafka's Metamorphosis
Style: Sections 3.3, 3.4, & 3.5
Vocab: none
Blog: Weekend—“The Metamorphosis”—see prompt on my blog

Week 11: November 5 - 9
Reading: Things Fall Apart, chapters 1-8
Style: Sections 3.6, 3.7, & 3.8
Vocab: none
Blog: Research Ibo culture on web; list the best links you found; write about the most important or interesting information you discovered relating to religion, customs, history, food, social structure, gender roles, etc.

Week 12: November 12 – 16
Reading: Things Fall Apart, chapters 9-19
Style: Sections 3.9, 4.1, & 4.2
Vocab: Cumulative review, lessons 1-12
Blog: Select one of the questions on the TFA study guide or from an online study guide

Week 13: November 19-23 (No school Wed, Th, Fri—Thanksgiving)
Reading: TFA, chapters 20-25; finish novel by Tuesday, November 20
Style: 4.3
Vocab: None
Blog: None

Week 14: November 26-30
Reading: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, “chapters” 1-3
Style: Sections 4.4, 4.5, & 4.6
Vocab: Lessons 13-15--quiz postponed to the following Tuesday because of conflict w/ essay assignment
Blog: Choose one of your existing blog entries for either Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Things Fall Apart; revise it to a 600-700 word essay, adding textual references, supporting ideas more fully, expanding commentary, clarifying a thesis statement, strengthening your ending. Due Friday, November 30, hard copy and turnitin.com (title: Kafka-Achebe blog essay)

Week 15: December 3-7
Reading: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, sections 4 & 5
Style: None
Vocab: Lessons 13-15, quiz Tuesday, postponed from previous Friday
Blog: CDF—find your own topic--see my list of suggestions, titled "Your class blog" dated July 25 on mrcoonsenglish

Week 16: December 10-14
Class Monday and Tuesday, discussing final papers
Style: None
Vocab: None
Blog: None
Reading day Wednesday
Exams begin Thursday, December 13--History first, science last

Week 17: December 17-21
Final papers due Tuesday, December 18, hard copy and turnitin.com, by 12 noon. Papers may be turned in at the Upper School office or to my classroom (if I'm there), not to the exam room where AP students are taking their final.

AP Assignments Nov 12—Dec 20

Week 12: November 12-16
Tues: (all sections)—have read by the beginning of class Love in the Time of Cholera, pp. 3-51.
Fri: (all sections)—LTC, pp. 53-103; vocab quiz cumulative review lessons 1-12

Week 13: November 19-23
Monday—LTC, pp. 105-163
No class Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—Thanksgiving break

Week 14: November 26-30
Day 1: Read LTC, pp. 165-224
Friday: LTC, pp. 225-278, vocab quiz lessons 13-15

Week 15: December 3-7
Day 1: Have finished Love in the Time of Cholera
Friday: Multiple choice quiz 6
Other assignments TBA

Week 16: December 10-14
Monday and Tuesday—all classes meet—Multiple choice workshop
Wednesday—Reading day
Thursday & Friday—Exams begin

Week 17: December 17-21
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—departmental exams continue
Thursday—make-up and conflict exams
Friday—First semester ends

Kafka's Metamorphosis

An imaginary panel of experts debate the meaning of Gregor’s transformation:

Expert #1: Gregor is angry, frustrated, bitter, helpless, trapped in his family’s downwardly degenerating dependence on his bread-winning capacity. Unconsciously he seeks to escape the unreasonable burdens placed upon him, although he can never allow this desire to reach his consciousness. The psychic symbolism is clear—his transformation from human to insect is the physical manifestation of a repressed psychological desire, a form of unconscious wish-fulfillment.

Expert #2: No, you pseudo-intellectual, pretentious, Freudian wannabe, as usual you miss the point entirely. Gregor has been an insect in human form for years. Don’t you see the disgusting groveling, the overwhelming feelings of worthlessness, the cringing, abject, vermin-like posture he has adopted toward both father and employer, the two most potent authority figures in his life? His body is merely catching up to the true state of his identity.

Expert #3: Alas, my sad, misguided friends, I’m afraid you fail to grasp the heart and soul of the matter (and not for the first time I might add). By repeatedly emphasizing the difference between the way Gregor thinks and feels—his internal, human existence—and the way others see him, Kafka forces us to feel what it is to be completely alienated by external circumstances from one’s essential humanity. In this way he not only comments on the fundamental dehumanization of all of twentieth-century existence, he foreshadows the terrors of such historical developments as the Holocaust, the World Wars, and the genocides that have plagued the world for the last century.

Expert #4: Losers! You just can’t get the picture, can you? The guy’s family hates him, despite all he’s done for them, and they project their image of Gregor so strongly onto him that after a while he has no choice but to fulfill their expectations of him. It’s not that complicated a story, but you guys just can’t get that, can you? It’s the lack of love, understanding, and acceptance that turns him into a big bug.

Which of these views do you see as having the most merit? Why? Explain, in two or three meaty, lively paragraphs, making clear connections with the text.

Notes on Quentin

Professor Arnold Weinstein of Brown University, in his excellent literary study titled A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life, sees Quentin Compson as one of the “progeny” of Hamlet, literary characters who can help us understand, through their creators’ imaginations, the mental state of depression. What follows are some of Prof. Weinstein’s thoughts on the significance and meaning of Quentin’s despair. All are direct quotes from his book.

•Quentin’s dilemma is that of manifold impotence: son of a decaying Southern family, he is himself powerless to prevent its decline, to stop his father from drinking himself to death, and, above all, powerless to protect the honor/chastity of his sister Caddy in accordance with the chivalric code he has inherited.

•Yes, Quentin is depressed. Further, he seems exiled in his own mind, and this matters for two reasons: (1) it is what makes the interior monologue so riveting, for it convey’s Quentin’s consciousness with a rare immediacy, and (2) being exiled in the mind is the very signature of depression.

•Expected to protect the honor/chastity of his sister Caddy, Quentin finds this to be difficult for many reasons. The external obstacle is Caddy herself, a feisty, strong-willed girl who is not to be stopped in her hunger for sexual freedom; but there are internal problems also, notably that Quentin himself harbors sexual desire for Caddy, and, if this were not enough, Quentin also happens to be deeply fearful about sexuality.

•[On the final conversation between Quentin and Father]: Faulkner is spelling out the consequences of the view that nothing lasts, that our loves as well as our hates are invisibly time-bound, can be “called” and “replaced” by “whatever issue the gods happen to be floating at the time,” with the result that you wake up and simply discover, one fine day, that it is all over, it just was, although you said, thought, and needed it to be eternal. All is temporary, including self. . . . Quentin Compson chooses to commit suicide precisely in order to avoid the shameful metamorphosis that has been prophesied here. He fights “temporary” the only way he knows how. He kills himself to remain faithful to his deepest feelings, to remain himself. He acts on the famous “to be, or not to be” in the name of self-preservation.

•Faulkner’s genius consists in finding a new narrative language for [the mind-induced disorder that robs us of strength and the power to act], the incessant thinking that can be a feature of depression. Hence, the Shakespearean device of the soliloquy, brought in to cargo the thoughts of the mind in a shockingly direct way to a Renaissance audience, now becomes precisely the interior monologue, the stream of consciousness, in which the repressed thoughts, damning affective material, and general garbage of one’s past rise to the surface and to language. I am saying that Faulkner may indeed be difficult but that you should listen in because you could well be eavesdropping on the very music of your own mind.


Work Cited
Weinstein, Arnold. A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life. New York: Random House, 2003.

Hamlet Identification list

Hamlet—Identifications—know in what context and with what significance these items occur in the play:

Act I:
Barnardo
Francisco
Marcellus
Fortinbras
Cornelius
Voltemand
Wittenberg
Elsinore
“the funeral baked meats”
“primrose path”
“this above all, to thine own self be true”
“O my prophetic soul”
“put an antic disposition on.”

Act II:
Paris
Reynaldo
“by indirections find directions out”
“Mad for thy love?”
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
“glean whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus”
a fishmonger
“Denmark’s a prison”
Jephtha
Pyrrhus
Hecuba
The Murder of Gonzago
“the play’s the thing.”

Act III:
orisons
nunnery
“the dread of something after death”
“all but one shall live”
England
“not a pipe for Fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please”
Julius Caesar
dumb show
The Mousetrap
Lucianus
“will you play upon this pipe?”
Nero
“some act that has no relish of salvation in’t”
“speak daggers . . but use none”
“Do you see nothing there?”

Act IV:
“not where he eats but where he is eaten”
“you shall nose him . . .”
“Do it England”
Saint Valentine’s Day
“I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father”
a pirate
“choose a sword unbated”
“I’ll anoint my sword [with] an unction of a mountebank”
“ a willow grows askant a brook”

Act V:
Yorick
clown (Who’s grave’s this? Mine, sir)
Alexander
“my father’s signet”
young Osric
“the readiness is all”
“the drink, the drink”
“good night sweet prince”
“go bid the soldiers shoot”

Why Caddy is the central character

Caddy Compson is a tragic character, and the heart of her tragedy is revealed in two soul-baring conversations with Quentin. The second, the night before her wedding to Herbert, is suffused with intense despair and unbearable anguish. The only way Caddy, a girl who can never forget her family’s pride and the social code by which she has been raised, can escape her impossible situation is by marriage to a man of respectable family, even if that man is unworthy of her. Caddy is sick with her pregnancy, sick with worry about Benjy and Father, sick at the prospect of marrying a man she can never respect for the sake of preserving appearances and placating social convention. But in that conversation she alludes to an even more important side of her character when she says to Quentin, “since I since last summer” and “I died last year.” Although she cannot bring herself to finish the first sentence, her words suggest that the key to understanding the hell on earth in which she has lived for the last year and from which she must escape at all costs lies in the events of the preceding summer.

Caddy’s first conversation with Quentin, crucial to our full understanding of what happened to Caddy that summer, took place one evening at the branch where she and Quentin have played since childhood. Like their brother Benjy, Quentin has somehow intuited Caddy’s loss of virginity, and to Quentin’s obsessive regard for family pride and the social codes of the old South, the knowledge is horrifying, undermining the very foundations of his identity. But Quentin’s understanding is limited by his inability to accept the passing of time or his sister’s growing womanhood and the changes both have wrought in the idyllic and idealized version of Caddy he carries within himself. Therefore his whole being yearns to deny what has occurred, his every thought becomes a desperate attempt to make the horror vanish, by falsely claiming incest so he and Caddy can be sent away together, by running away and taking Benjy with them, even by a mutual suicide pact.

What Quentin cannot understand or acknowledge, however, is that what has happened to Caddy is not only a social disgrace, anathema to his code of honor, but also something rare and magical and wonderful. For Caddy—passionate, headstrong, courageous, willful, maternal, devoted and defiant, to whom young men have been attracted since she was fourteen—has found with Dalton Ames the most mysterious and precious and powerful force in human life. She has discovered the dizzying passion and desire of love. And because she has fallen in love with Dalton Ames, because the mere sound of his name makes her blood race, she has given herself to him, body and soul, and the resulting explosion destroys her entire family. Because Caddy falls in love, Mother rejects her, despises her, and spies on her; Mother and Father argue bitterly about her; Father drinks more and more heavily; Caddy and Dalton are somehow torn apart; Caddy’s emptiness and despair lead her to promiscuity, pregnancy, marriage to a despicable man, and exile from her family; Quentin’s life becomes unbearable and ends in suicide; Benjy is left to endure a lifetime of inexhaustible grief and loss; and her daughter Quentin is raised in a house where she will know neither mother nor father—all because a vibrant, radiant, passionate girl of seventeen fell in love.

The Sound and the Fury is a modern Southern tragedy, and like all tragedies, the suffering and destruction it portrays spring from the most fundamentally human qualities of its characters. Of these characters, by far the most human, the most fully alive, and, in the end, the most utterly betrayed by life, is Caddy Compson (625).

Questions--The Sound and the Fury

I. Characters—Identify each of the following characters and gather information about their actions and personalities:
Benjy (Maury)
Caddy (Candace)
Mother (“Miss Cahline” or Caroline)
Father (Mr. Jason)--actually Jason III
Jason IV (usu. referred to simply as “Jason”)
Quentin (brother)
Quentin (daughter of ??)
Uncle Maury
Dilsey
Roskus
Versh
Frony
T.P.
Luster

II. Events—How many different scenes or events does Benjy remember?
What are the key elements of each memory?
What does Benjy love? What upsets him most?
Who died?
Who was married?
What were the four siblings (Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, and Jason) like as children? Who was their leader? Describe the various relationships among them. What have they become as adults?
Why are there two Quentins? What happened to the first? Who is the second? Describe her relationship with her Uncle Jason.
What happened June 2, 1910?
Why did it happen?

III. Images and motifs—climbing up trees to look in windows, climbing out windows and down trees, running away, funerals, weddings, swings, water (the branch), fire, smells, crying, golf, Uncle Maury and the Pattersons, “Sasspriluh,” sickness, watches, time, virginity, child support payments

IV. Discussion topics for part 1

1. What happened the day “Damuddy” was sick? Who got wet? Who fought? Who took the lead? Over what did Caddy and Frony argue? How did Caddy find out what the adults were doing? What was really happening?

2. Compare the two scenes where Benjy sees people in the swing outside the kitchen door. Who does he see in each case? How are the situations similar? How are the reactions he receives different?

3. Briefly describe the argument that takes place at the dinner table April 7, 1928. Who argues? Over what? What threats are made?

4. What changes in Caddy and Benjy's relationship occur as Caddy reaches adolescence? How does Caddy attempt to placate Benjy? At what point can she no longer do so?