Friday

Do not let a missed class confuse you! Do the assignment below, both A and B day classes.

Second block, a class of CP seniors, published their first podcast! You can subscribe at the bottom of the downloads page. If you can do better, get on it!

Thursday

Both A and B days may comment under this post. Post at least twice. Avoid lamely posting twice in a row.

One student wrote in her response to One Hundred Years of Solitude and magical realism: "All of the uses of magical realism cause us to create either a stonger or weaker bond to the book. It also causes us to remember that this is a piece of fictional writing. It only causes me to keep thinking that it is not real and that it could never happen." What advantages and effects does this constant reminder of the book's fictionality provide? Review the overview of magical realism by Lindsey Moore linked as "Magical Realism" at right. What does Moore mean by "irony regarding author's perspective"? Discuss these and other questions from class: written history and pictures in the novel, for instance, if the irony question dries up.

We will discuss your interpretive questions next class period.

Wednesday

Keep up with your discussion questions and keep reading. You are through page 313 and are therefore ready for a little quiz. Get finished with the first reading of the novel by Monday/Tuesday.

Creative or Personal

If you need to communicate with classmates for any reason of your own, comment here. If this flies, I will link a specific blog for that purpose. Remember that this is not a private page. It could be, but you would have to log in just to see it. You will continue to find a link to it to the right and down, even as it ages. Does anyone have art you would like posted here so I don't have to use these crummy professional ones?

Monday

Add to your items to note as you read through page 313: the marriage of Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda; the change in the house as Fernanda rises and Ursula declines; and the way Marquez creates the echo of Remedios the Beauty in Meme.

A-day should be through 313 tomorrow. B-day has helped you with some notes. Find them on Downloads.

Friday

Just read, baby.

Be thinking about the marriage between Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. What is the basic conflict between them, and why (in a literary or psychological sense) would they marry?

Or, if you prefer, think of the change in matrons of the Buendia household as Ursula ages and Fernanda rises.

Read pages 203-313 by Tuesday/Wednesday, February 26-27.
Read pages 315-417 by Monday/Tuesday, March 3-4.

Thursday

Loved the discussion today. Your blog entries had anticipated some of this. Reread the postings to see how you arrived at it before we ever talked about it in class. Keep up with the reading schedule! Note and tag page numbers in your book.

Wednesday

Remember to take the little quiz to your right.

Comment at least twice on this post. Comment at two different times so that others can comment in between your comments. Respond to the prompt and to each other -- it's like a conversation -- but use specific text references. Here is the prompt material:

When Aureliano Segundo enters Jose Arcadio Buendia's workshop, nothing has changed, "nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jose Arcadio Buendia vaporized mercury." Melquiades speaks to him and is but forty years old. Yet when Jose Arcadio Buendia sees Prudencio Aguilar, Prudencio has aged and decomposed in death. Why do you think Marquez depicts an aging, rotting Prudencio in Jose Arcadio Buendia's eyes and an ageless Melquiades to Aureliano Segundo's eyes? How are these perceptions revealing about the history of the town? Consider what Aureliano Segundo is doing when Ursula comes to clean the room, which does not need cleaning. He is reading or deciphering manuscripts...Be fresh and piercing here! Try not just to go through the motions.

Tuesday, Part Deux

Bring in One Hundred Years of Solitude for use during first block, please. (It's a senior thing, you wouldn't understand!) You will get them back the same day.

Good work on the blog...some thoughtful remarks. To WK: I did count!

Comment on the following:

Comment at least twice on the following. Comment at two different times so that others can comment in between your comments. Respond to the prompt and to each other -- it's like a conversation -- but use specific text references. Here is the prompt material: When Aureliano Segundo enters Jose Arcadio Buendia's workshop, nothing has changed, "nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jose Arcadio Buendia vaporized mercury." Melquiades speaks to him and is but forty years old. Yet when Jose Arcadio Buendia sees Prudencio Aguilar, Prudencio has aged and decomposed in death. Why do you think Marquez depicts an aging, rotting Prudencio in Jose Arcadio Buendia's eyes and an ageless Melquiades to Aureliano Segundo's eyes? How are these perceptions revealing about the history of the town?

Reading schedule, repeated...

Here's a reposting of the reading schedule. It will move down the list as new posts go up, but still, look at it.

Read pages 103-201 by Thursday/Friday, February 20-21.
Read pages 203-313 by Tuesday/Wednesday, February 26-27.
Read pages 315-417 by Monday/Tuesday, March 3-4.

B-day

Write your one-page, MLA formatted paper for Monday. See below for a more complete version of the assignment. I've linked Macondo to this page. Poke around it, but if you want a definition of magical realism, go to the left sidebar and click "Magical Realism" and scroll down to "Selected Sites" and click "Magical Realism Overview." That page will not link without taking you right back to Macondo, which is curiously like the novel itself...

Tuesday

B-day -- bring in One Hundred Years. We will study magical realism and do a few close readings.

Monday

Read assignments listed below for Wednesday.

Assigned Friday to A-day

For Tuesday, respond to elements of magical realism and their apparent purpose in the reading selection. Write exactly one coherent, sensible, and specific page. Phrases such as *really makes you feel like you are there* or *really really brings out the emotion of the characters* will result in immediate zeros. That will earn you a big BS: Be Specific. Write about the selection you read and YOUR thoughts, not on some nameless imagined *reader* upon which any wild notion could depend. I suggest that you focus your one page focus on a single important idea (important to humanity as well as to the book): time and memory; history and difficulties knowing it; isolation and alienation; dangers of half-understandings; the nexus of scientific ways of knowing and primitive intutions.

Friday

Bring One Hundred Years of Solitude to class with you.

Tuesday

Continue to prepare to do presentations. Be ready to PLUG and PLAY.

Read from 100 Years!