Wed. - Fri., Feb. 19-21: "Rights of Man" Essay ((I-CE #4))

Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 19 and 20
We'll use class time to write this essay on America.
It's fine to take your draft home and work on it at night.

Friday, Feb. 21
Hand in your completed I-CE #4 -- typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, in 12-point type font.  We'll begin to investigate the "relationship-between-two-concepts" argument prompt on Friday.

I will score your I-CE #4 essays over the weekend.

Mon., Feb. 24
4th Period students will do scoring and commentary on 5th Period I-CE #4 essays, and 5th Period students will do scoring and commentary on 4th Period essays.

For Tuesday, Feb 18 (post-President's Day)

Please review "The Clan of One-Breasted Women" (see pages, below), and read Wendell Berry's essay, "An Entrance to the Woods" (p. 825 of LOC).

Further, please read Cumulative, Periodic, and Inverted Sentences (pp. 893 - 898) and type or write out your responses to Exercises 1 & 2 (p. 898) and bring them to class.

For Friday's class, on February 14

Read "The Clan of One-Breasted Women," by Terry Tempest Williams.  You'll find this in The Language of Composition, pp. 816-822.

We'll score the Horace/adversity essays.  To score yours accurately, please see the AP Scoring Guidelines, the Student Essays, and the Scoring Commentaries for the 2009 (Form A) exam, FRQ #3.

For Thursday and Friday, Feb. 13 and 14

Wednesday night:  Homework amnesty.

On Thursday, Feb. 13, 4th Period AP English will take the A LUNCH.  I'll leave a reminder note on the door.  (We're taking the early lunch to support Abdi's bid for glory in Poetry Out Loud -- the East Metro regional competition is Thursday morning.)

In Thursday's class, we'll take an AP Multiple-Choice quiz, for rehearsal.  We'll also correct it and discuss M-C strategy.

Speaking of the AP exam, the time is fast approaching to register for AP exams.  We'll talk about that.

Thursday's homework will be in LOC -- be sure you have access to your copy this Thursday night.

WEDNESDAY'S TEST: PART I (Passage analysis) and PART II (Interpretive essay):

PART I.  Passage Analysis.

For this segment of Wednesday’s test you’ll see two excerpts from the book, and you’ll be asked to write a literary analysis of either one.  Successful essays will put the chosen passage into context in The Things They Carried and then discuss details of Tim O’Brien’s writing style and the effects he achieves with language on behalf of his ideas.

To be successful with this, write about the way O’Brien’s use of tone and other literary devices contributes to larger themes in The Things They Carried.

Sample Passage:

      The road curved west, where the sun had now dipped low.  He figured it was close to five o’clock – twenty after, he guessed.  The war had taught him to tell time without clocks, and even at night, waking from sleep, he could usually place it within ten minutes either way.  What he should do, he thought, is to stop at Sally’s house and impress her with this new time-telling trick of his.  They’d talk for a while, catching up on things, and then he’d say, “Well, better hit the road, it’s five thirty-four,” and she’d glance at her wristwatch and say, “Hey! How’d you do that?” and he’d give a casual shrug and tell her it was just one of those things you pick up.  He’d keep it light.  He wouldn’t say anything about anything.  “How’s it being married?” he might ask, and he’d nod at whatever she answered with, and he would not say a word about how he’d almost won the Silver Star for valor.

 Sample Essay in response to this passage.

To “keep it light” appears to be Tim O’Brien’s tone in this passage.  The airy lightness of these words – excerpted from the chapter where Norman Bowker drives around the lake in his car – acts as a counterweight to the enormous emotional weight that Norman carries within himself.

The dialogue is friendly and cordial (“Hey, how’s it being married?”), and the sentences move in a predictable and orderly direction.  The innocent-sounding episode is one of several scenarios that play out in Norman’s mind as he circles the lake.

Subtle alliteration guides the longer sentences.  In the following example, O’Brien reinforces his ominously superficial tone by returning to the letter ‘w’:  “The war had taught him to tell time without clocks, and even at night, waking from sleep, he could usually place it within ten minutes either way.”  The ‘w’ doesn’t signify anything in and of itself, but it serves as a gentle guide for reading the sentence, discreetly congealing the reader’s sense of the “time-telling trick” Norman intends to play on Sally.

The breezy simplicity of Tim O’Brien’s outward tone cuts against the sad interior of Norman’s traumatized heart and mind.  The tragic and violent death of Kiowa still haunts Norman.  No amount of lakeside small talk can diminish the pain that still haunts him five years after the Vietnam War has ended.  The vain thought that he will somehow please Sally, an old girlfriend, ultimately contributes to our sense that Norman is lost; for Sally is a happily married woman, not a dating prospect.  Norman’s inner hopes and thoughts are bleak, not breezy.

Part II -- Interpretive Essay

You'll see three of these prompts on Wednesday, and you'll be asked to write one (1) of the three.  With that in mind, you'd do well to prepare four -- that way, you'll have at least one well-prepared essay sitting in front of you as the test begins.  (It's fine to bring one page of typed or handwritten notes into Wednesday's test.)

1.    How, according to Tim O’Brien, does someone “tell a true war story”?  What is ironic or double-edged about the phrase “a true war story” in the context of The Things They Carried?  Choose one  story from the second half of the book and clearly explain how this story lives up to O’Brien’s standard of telling “a true war story” – in its events and its deliberate blurring of truth and fiction, but especially in the emotions it evokes.

2.     Discuss the idea of “Notes,” both as it pertains to “Speaking of Courage,” and as the idea of “notes” is developed metaphorically.  What kinds of notes appear in “Notes”?  How does this chapter contribute to the overall meaning of the book? 

3.     Discuss the way guilt affects the lives of Norman Bowker and Rat Kiley.  In what ways is guilt a motivating factor in their behavior?  What makes shame or guilt so difficult?  In what way does guilt provoke each man to make emotional decisions instead of well-reasoned decisions? How does storytelling help to relieve some of Norman’s and Rat’s guilt?

4.     Paradox is central to The Things They Carried.  Write about one of the following paradoxical relationships in the book, making specific references to events and ideas:  war and beauty; the fourteen-year old orphan who dances when her family is killed; enemies among friends; war heroes and shame or embarrassment.  Explain what your chosen paradox seems to signify to Tim O’Brien.

5.     O’Brien ends the book with “The Lives of the Dead.”  Referring to this and at least two other stories (chapters) in The Things They Carried as examples, explain what O’Brien means by this phrase.  In what sense do dead people come alive in The Things They Carried? 

6.     At one point Tim O’Brien says that his writing is “not therapy”; however, at the end of the book he writes about the life-saving quality of stories.  Discuss the theme of art and healing in The Things They Carried.

Tuesday and Wednesday, February 11 and 12

TUESDAY, FEB. 11

We'll review for Wednesday's test.  I'll be as explicit as I can about what's going to be on the test.

For example, there will be a Passage Analysis question (short essay on a passage from the second half of the book), and an Interpretive Essay.  For the latter, you'll have a choice of three prompts, all pertaining to the latter half of the book (plus "How to Tell a True War Story).

The three prompts appear here, among these six:

1.     How, according to Tim O’Brien, does someone “tell a true war story”?  What is ironic or double-edged about the phrase “a true war story” in the context of The Things They Carried?  Choose one story from the second half of the book and clearly explain how this story lives up to O’Brien’s standard of telling “a true war story” – in its events, its characters, and its emotional life.

2.     Discuss the idea of “Notes,” both as it pertains to “Speaking of Courage,” and as a metaphor.  What kinds of notes appear in “Notes”?  How does this chapter contribute to the overall meaning of the book? 

3.      Compare the way guilt affects the lives of Norman Bowker and Rat Kiley.  In what ways is guilt a motivating factor in their behavior?  What makes shame or guilt so difficult?  In what way does guilt provoke each man to make emotional decisions instead of well-reasoned decisions? How does storytelling help to relieve some of Norman’s and Rat’s guilt?

4.     Paradox is central to The Things They Carried.  Write about one of the following paradoxical relationships in the book, making specific references to events and ideas:  war and beauty; the fourteen-year old orphan who dances when her family is killed; enemies among friends; valor and embarrassment.  Explain what your chosen paradox seems to signify to Tim O’Brien.

5.     O’Brien ends the book with “The Lives of the Dead.”  Referring to this and at least two other stories (chapters) in The Things They Carried as examples, explain what O’Brien means by this phrase.  In what sense do dead people come alive in The Things They Carried? 

6.     At one point Tim O’Brien says that his writing is “not therapeutic"; however, at the end of the book he writes about the life-saving quality of stories.  Discuss the theme of art and healing in The Things They Carried.

The test will be Closed-Book, but you'll be allowed to bring ONE SHEET of rough-outline notes into the test -- quotations from the book and bullet-point ideas for essays.  You'll staple these to your test when you hand it in.  Do the math:  if you outline at least four of the six essays, you'll be bound to have at least one essay that's fully outlined & ready to write when you walk in on Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 12:  Written test on The Things They Carried, with a strong emphasis on the latter half of the book -- from "The Man I Killed" to the end.

Over the Weekend, please finish TTTC and...

To support success on Monday's I-CE #3, read these exemplary Argument essays in LOC

“The Argument Against TV,” by Colin Trubey – (LOC, p. 777-778)

         Presumably, the prompt was Americans should participate

         in a nation-wide “TV Turn-Off Week,” regaining at least

         a week from the nine years they currently lose to television-

         watching over the course of their lives.  Agree, disagree, 

         or offer a qualified argument.

“The Liberal Arts in an Age of Info-Glut,” by Todd Gitlin (LOC, pp. 155-156)

         Presumably, the prompt was “Fewer and fewer American

         college students graduate with majors in the humanities – 

         English, History, the Classics, Modern Languages.

         Given this decline in participation -- and especially, given the wide

         availability of information on these subjects

         in the media -- universities should strongly consider

         reducing the resources they devote to

         the humanities.”  Write an essay in which you agree, disagree, 

         or offer a qualified argument in response to the prompt.

“Political Paradoxes,” by Elisabeth Baseman (student essay in LOC, pp. 996-998)

       (see the prompt on p. 996)

Two more resources online:

"Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?"

and 

Vonnegut's Eight Tips for Writers.