Tuesday, September 29, 2009

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.)

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