Human Spirit Essential Questions (For CFA #4)

1) How can perspective affect the reader's understanding of the human spirit and an individual’s ability not only to endure but to prevail?

2) What motivates the human spirit and an individual’s ability not only to endure but to prevail?

3) When characters/individuals' human spirits are challenged, what internal and/or external conflicts do they face?

4) What are the outcomes of acts of characters/individuals that seek not only to endure but also to prevail?

5) How are characters/individuals ultimately affected when their human spirits are challenged?

No Exit Quotations

We have finished reading No Exit.  Choose five quotations from the play. For each one, write a few sentences that explain the significance of the quotation to the character who says it and to the play as a whole. Hand it in, please. 

FYI Information about the AP exam

The exam is at the high school on May 9th.

Report directly to the gyms at 7:20.

Do NOT bring any backpacks or purses.

All cell phones will be put at the front of the room.

Bring #2 pencils and black pens. 

You can bring water in a clear bottle with NO labels.

The Stranger and AP review.

We have finished The Stranger.  We will continue discussing it while we are preparing for the AP exam.  The AP exam is two weeks away; make sure you are studying literary terms and reviewing the books you have read.

The Stranger is a great book to write about on the last essay of the exam.

The Stranger Progress

Please read up to chapter four of part two in the novel.

Also, remember that the AP exam is on May 9th.  Please prepare!

The Stranger Reading

Please make sure you have read up through chapter 3 in The Stranger. 

Also, if you were not in class today, make sure you make contact with Guidance in order to schedule an appointment to fill out your AP exam paperwork.

Editing Questions

For Editors:
Read the first paragraph.  Now, in your own words, write what you think the paper will be about.
Read the entire essay and edit, focusing on grammar, mechanics, clarity, and MLA format.
Write the main point of the paper in your own words.
Identify three strengths of the paper that should not be altered.
Identify three weaknesses of the paper.  What needs to be expanded?  What needs to be cut?  Provide suggestions for improvement.
Provide a possible title for the paper.
Provide other suggestions for the writer of the paper. 
Sign the bottom of the paper. 

Brief samples of explications

Here is an example of a close reading of a poem.  Actually, there are two examples.  Note that Paglia does not use outside criticism.  You, of course, will. 

Poetry Research Paper

Poetry Paper
For this assignment, you will explicate a poem by one of the poets listed below.  You will use published literary criticism to enhance your explication, so be sure to choose a “canonical” poem.
Your explication will be a 5-7 page, typed, double-spaced research paper.  You must use at least five cited sources; they may be articles from books, journals, or databases.  Sparknotes, Wikipedia articles, Cliff’s Notes, and the like are not acceptable.  I have links to some useful internet sites on my webpage.  Additionally, the AHS library databases and ebooks are essential resources.
• Please provide a copy of the poem with your paper.
• Please print a copy of your paper.  Electronic copies will not be accepted.  It is especially important that you provide a hard copy of your rough drafts, since you will need it for peer review during class.
• Your paper must meet MLA guidelines.

The Poets:
Sherman Alexie, A.R. Ammons; Matthew Arnold; Margaret Atwood; John Ashbery; W.H. Auden; Aphra Behn; John Berryman; Elizabeth Bishop; William Blake; Anne Bradstreet; Gwendolyn Brooks; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Billy Collins; Hart Crane; Robert Creeley; e.e. cummings; H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); James Dickey; Emily Dickinson; John Donne; John Dryden; Paul Laurence Dunbar; T.S. Eliot; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Robert Frost (NOT “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Not Taken”); Allen Ginsberg; Thomas Hardy; Seamus Heaney; George Herbert; Robert Herrick; Geoffrey Hill; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Langston Hughes; Ben Jonson; James Joyce; John Keats; Kenneth Koch; Ted Kooser; Philip Larkin; D.H. Lawrence; Denise Levertov; Amy Lowell; Robert Lowell; Andrew Marvell; Herman Melville; Edna St. Vincent Millay; John Milton; Marianne Moore; Frank O’Hara; Sylvia Plath; Edgar Allen Poe (NOT “The Raven” or “Annabel Lee”); Alexander Pope; Ezra Pound; Adrienne Rich; Edwin Arlington Robinson; Theodore Roethke; Christina Rossetti; Muriel Rukeyser; Anne Sexton; William Shakespeare; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Sir Philip Sidney; Stevie Smith; Gary Snyder; Edmund Spenser; William Stafford; Wallace Stevens; May Swenson; Sarah Teasdale; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Dylan Thomas; Derek Walcott; Robert  Penn Warren; Phillis Wheatley; Walt Whitman; Richard Wilbur; William Carlos Williams; William Wordsworth; James Wright; William Butler Yeats

• Rough drafts are due and ready for peer review: 9 April
• Final drafts are due: 16 April


Please do not plagiarize.

Godot Project

Write an additional scene for Waiting for Godot.
It should be two to three pages long.
I would prefer it to be typed.
It must be “true to the spirit of the play.”
Due March 6th

Waiting for Godot Discussion Questions

1. What do Vladimir and Estragon represent/symbolize?  Are they interchangeable, or are there important differences?
2. What does Pozzo represent/symbolize?  (the pipe, the chicken, the bones, the vaporizer, his eventual blindness)
3. What does Lucky represent/symbolize?  (the rope/leash, the picnic basket, the stool?)
4. What does Godot represent/symbolize?  What are they waiting for?  Why do they continue to wait?
5. Why do the boys appear?  What function do they serve?  (think about the things they say)
6. What does the tree represent/symbolize?  What about the few leaves that appear in the second act?
7. What do the hats represent/symbolize?
8. What do the boots represent/symbolize?
9. How is the play a “tragicomedy?”
10. What does the play mean?  What is Beckett trying to say?
11. Do you think this play would make more sense with subsequent readings?  What about a live viewing?
12. Did you like it?  Did you hate it?  Why?  Think about your answer.
13. Did you find it interesting?
14. Like it or not, what did you gain from reading it?
15. Imagine you had to write an essay about this play in which you had to address the theme.  What would you write?

Waiting for Godot progress

Period 2 is on page 40 and period 4 is on page 36.

Using a Concordance

Use a Shakespeare concordance to look up a word that appears several times in King Lear.
 https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/

In what contexts do you see the word?

Does the word have multiple meanings?  How does knowing these meanings contribute to your understanding of the word in context?

How does the word connect to the meaning of the work as a whole?

King Lear

We have finished reading King Lear, and we will have a test on Thursday.  (multiple choice and two short written responses to characters and important thematic ideas)

Please do the following:

Find and write down ten quotations from King Lear that, taken together, summarize the play.  Then, analyze those quotations. Try to choose memorable quotations. They could come in handy on the AP exam if a King Lear-themed essay appears--and that is likely.

Here are some discussion topics:

“Nothing”
“Nature”
“Fools”
Appearance/Reality
Deception
Vision and recognition
Morality/immorality
Nature– natural/unnatural
Chaos/order
Parents/children
Lear/Gloucester
Edmund/Regan & Goneril
Edgar/Cordelia
Good/evil
Innocence/experience
Youth/old age
Paradoxes
Irony
Tragedy

Macbeth Progress

We are on Act IV of Macbeth. 

Also, please make sure you are finished with your independent reading book by Friday.  We will have an in-class assignment about it on that day.