Citation for "Elephant"

This may not be formatted correctly (depending on how it shows up on the blog), but here's the citation you'll need for the "Elephant" piece.

Orwell, George. "Shooting an Elephant." The Dolphin Reader. Ed. Douglas Hunt and Carolyn Perry. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.

You can cite the novel and the Harmon and Holman (if necessary) for yourself.

"DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER"

Winston doubleplusbravewise notewrite, but do you have the guts to do it? 

How would you overthrow Big Brother?

Be goodthinkful; we have dissected the oppressive tactics of the Party, as well as its impact on individuals and society. Keep in mind, this may not be a quick operation by any means...

Give yourself 30 minutes to brainstorm and write.  (Once again, bullets are fine.) I can't wait to hear your plans! 

(I'll make sure that the room is free of telescreens and undercover thinkpol, like Mrs. Browder. It'll be just us oldthinkers plusbellyfeeling crimethink!)

Bahahahahahahahahaha! 

(I mean, doublepluslaughful.)

"Victory" Homework

Respond to the following prompt for 25-30 minutes.  Be sure to write well: use a strong command of language, varying sentence structure, textual support for your ideas and avoid using paraphrase as analysis—make your points explicitly.

We’ve read a wide variety of literature, from Greek and Roman classics to modern novels and poems; within this selection, we’ve also come across many different genres, from epics to existentialism; romanticism to transcendentalism; modernism to magical realism.  In our current novel, Orwell introduces us to a new genre: a "soft" type of science fiction.  However, the ideas presented should be familiar.  Many of our authors have made similar statements about the human and/or societal experience, no matter what the genre.  Therefore, what thematic connections are you seeing to other pieces we've read this year?  Choose at least two and explain.

P.S. BOTH Achebe and Conrad are off limits--you can use one, but not both.

What the Faulkner?

Below I have provided excerpts from the Harmon and Holman on “modernism” and “modernist literature.” The term “modernism” has nothing to do with the time period in which a piece is written (i.e. not all contemporary pieces are modern).  “Modern literature”:

“[…] is centered in the experimental examination of the inner self”

“[…] protested against the nature of modern society”

“[…] explor[es] the private self through the stream of consciousness”

“[…] is writing marked by a strong and conscious break with tradition”

“It employs a distinctive kind of imagination that insists on having its general frame of reference within itself.”

“[…] [employs the viewpoint that] we create the world in the act of perceiving it”

“[…] implies […] a sense of alienation, loss, and despair”

“[…] rejects traditional values and assumptions, and it rejects equally the rhetoric by which they were sanctioned and communicated”

“[…] elevates the individual and the inward over the social and the outward, and it prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious”

“[…] revels in a dense and often unordered actuality as opposed to the practical and the systematic, and in exploring that actuality as it exists in the mind of the writer it has been richly experimental”

Now, you’re going to need five notecards, one for each of the pieces that we’ve read this week (Woolf, Kafka, Faulkner, and Marquez) and then an extra for the final question at the end of this post.

On each notecard, make connections between the tenets of modernism and the piece you’re exploring.  Please note: we’ve dug into some pretty specific aspects of these pieces during our discussions—I’d rather see you focus on specifics than fill your notecard with broad, general statements that don’t really show a thorough read of the pieces.

After you’re done, answer this question on a separate notecard: What else have we read this year that you would consider modern?  Why?  (Don’t fall into the trap of picking a piece just because it matches one of the criteria above—make sure to choose based on a comprehensive view of the piece and the excerpts from the H & H).

Achebe and Conrad...the final question

Tomorrow, we will have one last "timed-answer" question with Paloma leading off, and then we will discuss the question below:

          Consider Marlow’s discussion with Kurtz’s Intended and the closing paragraph of the novella in conjunction with the final chapter of Things Fall Apart.  Compare and contrast the conclusions of these two pieces and how they function as closure for their respective works.

In order to answer this question, here's what I'd like to see:

1.  Spend at least 30 focused, uninterrupted minutes on this.  Put your phones away, get off of Facebook or Skype and focus on the question and what it's asking.

2. For 20 minutes, you may answer this however you'd like: a stream-of-consciousness-esque freewrite, a spiderweb mind-map, a list of notes, etc.  Any option that you choose, though, is going to come with PLENTY of writing in 30 minutes--get as much on paper as you can.  Now that we've studied these books in depth, you know that what the question asks is not as simple as it seems (especially the italicized part)...

3. For the last 10+ minutes, craft a two-three sentence answer to the question.  When finished, these answers should not be the least bit awkward, choppy, or clunky: carefully craft each word that you put on paper.  Realize, too, that in answering this question you also have to provide clarification on what the prompt is asking--and that's up to you. (You're welcome!)

Remember that your typed quote journals are due on Wednesday and that you'll have 30-45 minutes of reading for homework tomorrow night.

Achebe Rewrites and More!

Here're your assignments for the weekend:

1. Due Monday: a HAND-WRITTEN rewrite of your timed essay for Things Fall Apart.  I can't provide any more help on this this weekend, but don't be afraid to rely on each other.  Like Stephen Colbert says: "You scratch my back and I get my back scratched."  (Waaaaaait a minute...)  Anyway, I think that you'd learn a lot by seeing what each other did right and wrong.

2. Due Wednesday: a reading journal (the quote kind) for both Achebe and Conrad.  (This needs to be typed.)  Choose three quotes from each piece and dig into them.  We are going to continue to discuss these books through the end of class on Tuesday, and I expect to see a comprehensive view of the quotes you've chosen.  Pick them apart for everything from theme, to narration, to lit. devices, etc.  Treat the quote as part of the piece as a whole--not an island: How does the quote you chose affect the novel as a whole? You will have homework on Monday and Tuesday night--which is why I'm giving you this over the weekend.  Trust me, procrastinating this until Tuesday night will prove extremely painful.

3. You can always work on lit. devices, as well.

To be or not to be...A tragedy?

You have three assignments for tonight; here they are:

1. Read (or reread) the Achebe bio from the Norton Anthology that I gave you before we read Things Fall Apart.  (Yes, it's lengthy.  Read it.)  Make notes on important facts or concepts.
2. Read (or reread) the Conrad bio from the Norton Anthology that I gave you before you started Heart of Darkness. Make notes on important facts or concepts.
3. Reread the tragedy handout from Hamlet; as you do, make notes on if and how Things Fall Apart is a tragedy.  Instead of focusing on the broader facets of tragedy, see if you can connect the novel to some of the more specific pieces.


We will continue our discussion tomorrow!  Let me know if you have any questions.