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