For Thursday/Friday

Check updated calendar.

Read "You and the Atomic Bomb" by George Orwell.


Complete this preparation for commentaries -- Keep this work very neat and orderly:
As you did for homework with symbol, do also with situational and verbal irony. Find and list four examples from "Shooting an Elephant" with at least one representative example for each type of irony.

Do the same for tone, and extract three passages that prove what you say. See board for adjectives describing tone.

On a comparative T-chart, describe the narrative stance of each story, the novella Heart of Darkness and the essay “Shooting an Elephant.” (Note punctuation AND genre.)

Continuing this chart, describe the similarities and differences in each author’s purpose.

On the chart, describe the similarities and/or differences in tone.

Here is the old post on tone:
Tone describes the attitude of the writer, narrator, or speaker toward his subject or audience. Tone can only be demonstrated through diction and phrasing that reveal attitude, preferably examples with more than one possible meaning. It helps if you define "attitude toward WHAT" -- the subject, character, or audience? The context determining the meaning, and the meaning so determined, demonstrate tone. The author or narrator's tone will not be "dark." That's way too ill-defined. It will be bitter, callous, condescending, contemplative, contemptuous, critical, cynical, defensive, defiant, desperate, detached, determined, didactic, diplomatic, disdainful, dramatic, formal, friendly, enthusiastic, humorous, indignant, informal, intimate, ironic, judgmental, lighthearted, malicious, mocking, nostalgic, objective, persuasive, reflective, reverent, sarcastic, sardonic, satirical, sincere, sympathetic, tragic, urgent, or vindictive. Those adjectives describe a very specific attitude. And then you have to take individual words, sentences, and relationships within the text and convince me that you are right about it.)

Prepare your paired oral commentaries, which have been moved to Monday/Tuesday. (I just changed this: I am calendar deficient.)

For Monday/Tuesday

Read "A Hanging" by George Orwell. It's in the dropbox Orwell pack.

Pick one of these questions to focus on as you read:
1. Discuss the role of these details: the dog, the puddle, the dialogue at the end.

2. What three sense details struck you most forcefully? Choose specific details, not type of sense appealed to.

3. Find two metaphors in "A Hanging." Are they decorative for simple visual appeal (many are) or do they convey and idea or meaning beyond the picture? Explain.

for Thursday/Friday

1. Neatly, on a piece of lined paper, with reference to a dictionary or literature book, define symbol in its literary sense.

2. Determine what might be symbolic in Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant."

3. Write a paragraph with a topic that states what the item from Orwell's essay symbolizes -- that is, what it stands for -- and explain how you know it symbolizes what you say it does.

for Tuesday/Wednesday

Read "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell. See what similarities it has with Marlow's narrative. 

 

I have placed it in Dropbox in a .pdf file called "OrwellEssays08.pdf"

For Friday/Monday

Prepare for an oral commentary on the extract you received last class. This commentary is to be done individually, not in pairs, and assessed by one-two classmates.

for Wednesday/Thursday

Communicate with your partner and create outlines for your extracts. The aim is to find certain literary elements and critical approaches that you can apply to a variety of extracts from Conrad. Present orally and visually (with outline) on Wednesday/Thursday.

 

Outline should have 1. Focused intro, 2. Thesis that can work for either passage, 3. At least three topic sentences that directly apply the thesis. You should be able to detail your plan in your presentation: what parts of the text will you focus on?

 

Language quiz today and tomorrow.

for Monday/Tuesday

You have now read both "The Journey Within" by Albert Guerard and "An Unreadable Report" by Peter Brooks. Again, post a 100+ word blog response that involves 1.a peer's comments, 2. either Brooks' or Guerard's comments, 3. some textual evidence, 4. a consideration of at least one of the topics below, and 5. something original of your own. You might start by considering: What was Conrad's central problem in telling this story?

topics to consider
psychology (inner journey)
lies
grave imagery
narrative
dream
truth and transmissability
intentions and reality
the limits of language

For Thursday/Friday

Read the extract below and post a comment beneath it. Bring all your thinking to bear on it, whether from criticism, discussion, or whatever. Acknowledge your borrowed ideas informally (as in "Achebe even implies that Conrad sustains the imperialist presence in the Congo.") This elements are required: 1. involve a peer's comment, 2. involve a critic's comment, 3. consider symbolism, and 4. extend with something original of your own. Your response should be at least a hundred words.

She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half- shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her...
"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.