A Few Notes Before Renconvening

AP Students! Hope You've Enjoyed Your (Seemingly) Two Months Off!




A few notes:
1. I sent grade reports via email today. Email me if you did not receive your report (mrmalley04@yahoo.com). I do not have an email for Monique, Franceska, Sara, or Katrina.
2. If you find an error on your grade report, bring it tomorrow and I'll rectify that error.
3. Make sure you have your writing assignment for tomorrow. We will be using your commentaries to drive class discussion of the book. Be prepared or be chastised.
4. Some of you owe me $ for Invisisble Man. I need it as soon as possible. I found my list and my envelope.
5. Grade reports do not include poetry professor presentation grades. I had problems exporting on the last day of school. If I waited for the film to export, I would have been in school until yesterday (hyperbole). I shall rewatch and score them and resend reports by Wednesday night.
6. We do not have school on Wednesday, and I can't remember if Tuesday is a 11 or 12 dismissal, so I can't remember if we have class. So, I've amended the PP schedule for this week. Due to poem length, these are slightly out of order:

• Thursday - Naiem B. ("Ulysses"), Savaun B. ("Miniver Cheevy")
• Friday - Christy ("My Last Duchess"), Augustine ("The Magi")

7. I will be offering substantial extra credit work over the next few weeks. This extra credit will be past exam essay questions (maybe a bit o' multiple choice too). I'm going to offer a lot of assignments, but only give out a smidge of credit for each task completed. You will be able to really bump up your grade (and practice), but you'll have to work pretty hard and balance the rest of your assignments.
8. You must finish Invisible Man by April 145th. Two weeks. Two hundred plus pages.

See you tomorrow.

Spring Break Reading Assignment

Read Invisible Man Chapters 1-15. I strongly suggest that you annotate your novel, although I will not check that you have. Instead, complete the following assignment. All reading and written work is due on Monday, March 31st. We are in the stretch run now. It's time to tap into that discipline, drive, and intelligence that have made you the successful, insightful, intelligent young adults who come to my room everyday.

Invisible Man is a great book, maybe even the greatest I have ever read. It's the story of a guy who is trying to find his place in the universe, even though it seems to be conspiring against him. Who among us can't relate to that?

Written Assignment:
Pull out three passages of no more than 35 lines and write commentary on each passage. You may want to consider the following questions when organizing your response:

• How does the passage further the reader's understanding of the protagonist?
• How does the passage introduce or further any theme which the author is developing?
• Is setting a factor? Why?
• Does the passage further this text as an existential novel?
• How is the passage important in and of itself? As a part of the whole novel?
• Also, consider Ellison's craft. Is the diction noteworthy? Imagery? Figurative Language? Other observations?

Existentialism Notes

Today in class we took these notes on existentialism to prepare for our study of Invisible Man.

Poetry Professor Presentations Day One

The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner

After reading "The Death of the Ball Turrett Gunner," (page 1195) answer the following two questions:

1. Cite any instances of assonance or alliteration. Describe each instance of the particular sound technique on the overall sound as well as meaning.

2. I know that this is a short poem, but what other techniques has Jarrell used? If you were to explicate this poem in front of the class, what other techniques would you focus on?



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image URL: http://untoldvalor.com/images/ball_turret_ad_great_shot.jpg

Sound Techniques

When analyzing, you may also note the repetition of a particular type of sound. For instance, you may make observations on repeated harsh consonants, like -k, -p, -t, -d sounds. This isn't alliteration, per se, but still noteworthy.

Multiple Choice Answers

26. B
27. E
28. D
29. B
30. A
31. D
32. B
33. C
34. A
35. D
36. A
37. C

Synethesia - description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another (icy voice, loud perfume)

Poetry Professor Schedule

Okey dokey, here be that schedule (click to enlarge):



Remember:

• all poetry annotations are due on the day the presentation is given. If you have an excused absence I can accept the annotations on the day you return to school.
• your poetry journal is due on Friday, March 21st and Friday, April 11th. I will gloss over the journal on the 21st and grade it more closely on the final due date.
  

Poetry Professor Poetry Assignments

Hello folks. Follow the link to reach your assignment for the Poetry Professor project.

Here you go...

Here's that poem...

DULCE ET DECORUM EST₁

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares² we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest³ began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots⁴
Of tired, outstripped⁵ Five-Nines⁶ that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets⁸ just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime⁹ . . .
Dim, through the misty panes¹⁰ and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,¹¹ choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud¹²
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest¹³
To children ardent¹⁴ for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.¹⁵

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

1 DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country

Poetry Professor Video

Well, it took me a few tries during school today, but I've just now finished with the Poetry Professor video from class today. I added subtitles to reinforce the structure of the setup and also to reemphasize the literary devices.

I also made note of several inaccuracies from the presentation. Most notably, Wilfred Owen was writing about Chlorine gas, not mustard gas. Consider this from the NYTimes:

In April 1915, hoping for a military breakthrough, Germany launched the war's first major chemical attack, releasing chlorine gas to blow toward French and Algerian troops in their trenches at Ypres, in Belgium. As Tucker gruesomely recounts, along four miles of the front line, tons of yellow-green gas rose to a height of 30 feet as the wind slowly edged it forward. The lethal cloud scorched the eyes and lungs of the terrified French and Algerian soldiers, who vomited and collapsed in agony. Hundreds died, coughing up blood and green froth. The soldiers' silver insignia and buckles immediately turned greenish black. Five months later, Britain launched its own retaliatory chlorine attack, and by 1916 both the Allies and the Central Powers were using artillery packed with chemicals — a total collapse of the Hague declaration.

Also, gas masks were introduced to the battlefield in 1916, so it can be presumed that the speaker was referring to a gas mask when he mentioned "clumsy helmets." Otherwise, the speaker would be as dead as the other guy. Lastly, Owen died at 25, not 19. He still died during the war.

Poetry Professor Handouts

We are now embarking on an excellent adventure. Over the next month YOU will take over teaching duties. You will put on the professorial vest and guide us through a poem.

Here are the handouts:

Assignment Sheet
Guideline Questions

Specific Assignment Sheet
Copy of Billy Collins' "Schoolsville"

Sample Poetry Journal Entry

"Schoolsville" - broken down by structure, annotated.










Finally, here is a copy of the "Schoolsville" explication paper I wrote last year.

Britney Spears - American Tragedy

Color me amused by the cover of the Rolling Stone that appeared on my doorstep (mailbox, to be more specific, but doorstep has such Middle American connotations) this past Thursday.  It'll be in the classroom next week, but if you can't wait, it is an expose of the "tragedy" of Britney Spears.  I think Aristotle might have a lot to say about Americans' fascination with Ms. Spears.  The article reads like a textbook tragedy.  Again, we are not at all unlike the Greeks, Romans, or Elizabethans.  In fact, we're probably worse, as most celebrities' tragic flaws seems to be their inability to deal with the pressure of celebrity.   Paradox and irony all rolled up into one.

Looking for Alaska

Today I showed you John Green's response to a handful of Depew citizens' call to ban Looking for Alaska. If you're home, here's that video:



If you're interested, here's his website and here's that Nerdfighter's site. After all, these guys are made of awesome. Here's an article about the Nerdfighter's cause.

If only Kate Chopin had access to Youtube!

A-wiki-ning!

Today we're going to hold a discussion in a slightly different way. Proceed to this wikispace and await further direction.

Awakening Discussion

Open your novels to chapter nine. Find the the paragraph that starts "But there was no reason why every one should not dance." Read the rest of the chapter, noting in your book or on a separate sheet of paper the ways that Chopin builds tension/suspense in this important scene.

Great discussion today. I know we got off track later in the period throwing around questions of Leonce's fidelity and materialism. Madamemoiselle Reisz' piano scene kind of got away from us. Essentially, we hit the main points I wanted to discuss (Reisz vs. Ratignolle, that scene as the beginning of her awakening), even if it was in a kind of stream of discussion kind of way.

As a kind of post script to our discussion, I'd like to pose the following questions/thoughts to you:

• Reisz and Ratignolle are very different characters. One is the mother woman, the other is an older, single, "disagreeable little woman" who is also "homely...with a small weazened face and body...no taste in dress...with a bunch of artificial violets pinned to the side of her hair." Yet it's obvious from Chopin's tone who we are meant to favor. What is Chopin hoping to accomplish by presenting us with an integral, profound character that is also socially awkward and, well, "homely"?
• What role does music play in the novel? What does it represent in the larger sense?
• As for the tension, Chopin builds it because it is welling up in Edna, only to be released by the tears. The setting builds tension ("moon was coming up, and its mystic shimmer was casting a million lights across the distant, restless water"), the description of Reisz before she plays adds tension ("perfectly still" and "not touching the keys"), as does the antithetical description of the effect of Ratignolle's playing and the images described that develop in Edna's mind's eye. All this tension builds until that first note when "a keen tremor" runs "down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column."

Awakening Uber Quiz

Here's that Awakening Uber Quiz. Bianca, if you're reading this, why don't you take the quiz and have it sent back to me along with the 1/5-2 page response mentioned a few posts back.

Fadela Amara and Chopin

We're reading The Awakening, and obviously there are a lot of gender issues inherent in that text. But, how do those gender issues relate to us today? I mean, we have Brittney Spears all over the media. How does she relate to the questions Chopin deals with? This morning I was listening to NPR and heard a story about Fadela Amara, a French cabinet member who also happens to be Muslim. The story covered the changing dynamics of Islam in France, focusing mostly on the role of women. How can we relate that to The Awakening?

Enjoying Your Vacation?

I hope you are enjoying your Regents week. Make sure you stay up on your reading, as we are having an Awakening uberquiz on Monday. In the meantime, enjoy these two interesting news stories that have popped up lately:

Where is Mary Shelley when you need her?US scientists close to creating artificial life

Not quite Oedipus, buuuuttt....
Unknowing twins marry each other

Also, it's tragic about Heath Ledger (not to mention Brad Renfro), but why the ubiquitous coverage? (Answer: Because we're not that different from the Greeks. We subconsciously, perversely, love tragedy because it makes us feel better about ourselves.)

Oedipus Alive! Reflection

Here is the reflection I'd like you to write in class on Thursday.  If you are for some reason not in class, and checking this blog, please complete and complete it for me by Friday.