Monday

A-day, work on your proposals and have them fully typed by Friday. Have your first draft (fully typed and formatted) on December 17.

B-day, work on your proposals and have them by Monday. Have your first draft on December 18.

Monday/Tuesday

Go yell for the Stallions! This is NOW!

Thursday IDEAS!

Post your comments here.

Tuesday

Journals for all you B-dayers. I'm serious about the list of ideas for WLA 1!
Watch for reading checks...

Monday

As today's class pointed out so clearly to me, journal entries are due tomorrow for A-day. Also, list ten great ideas for a world lit assignment.

The book should be finished tomorrow, and you should be ready for a reading check on the whole book. Consider: in the end, who wins? How do you know?

Also, consider your new project ideas for The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Powerpoint, portrait, or speech.

Wednesday (and Thursday and Friday too)

Read through Part VI: The Grand March, for Friday/Monday. For Tuesday/Wednesday, finish the book and have ten great ideas for a WL assignment. Complete three new journal entries, one from each "part":

Part IV:
1. Contrast Tereza's views on privacy to those of Sabina in Part III.
2. Remember the backdrop for this novel is a country under totalitarian communist domination. How do you think each of the novel's main characters (or choose one) illustrates an approach or
adaptation to foreign oppression of the country he or she loves? (Use details from Part III).
3. Read the final line of Chapter 6 on page 140. Using Tereza's experience as a model for thought, consider this question: Does oppressive rule relieve a person of certain ethical or moral
responsibilities? Does mandatory school relieve you of responsibility for your work?
4. Contrast IV: 25: 165-166 with Buendia's attempts to stick names to objects in 100 Years.
5. What is important (heavy, light, returning?) about the benches in the river?
6. What do you make of the scene of the shootings on Petrin Hill, presented as real though obviously only imagined, on pages 146-150? What is the meaning and purpose of this scene?
7. Structure: The novel consists of seven parts with this number of chapters in each part, respectively: 17, 29, 11, 29, 23, 29, 7. Does this series of prime numbers suggest or develop any existing theme within the novel?

Part V:
1. Compare and contrast Tereza's ideas about the soul (41), Sabina's ideas about privacy (112-113), and Tomas's experience with the secret police in Czechoslovakia (Part V). What light does his experience shed light on Tereza and Sabina's desire to find or protect their individuality?
2. See the passage on page 226-228 and focus on the imagery associated with Tereza that implies a comparison with Oedipus. Has Tereza, in some way, married her own mother? Remember Tomas's letter to the editor, guilt, and "soul and body" to develop your response.
3. Tomas, impelled to be a doctor, becomes a window washer by "an unspoken vow of fidelity." Fidelity to what? Hasn't he betrayed himself? Was it his choice?
4. Read V: Chapter 9 and then 221 from "Staring impotently…" to "Let us return to Tomas." Why is Tomas such a prolific womanizer? Why do you think the author or narrator has made sex into such a prominent metaphor in the novel? Is Tomas a kind of Faust character?
5. Read the last two paragraphs of 206-207. Compare and contrast this passage with the one on Sabina's views of beauty by mistake (bottom of 101 and top of 102) and Tereza's in the last paragraph on 78 (which is informed by the narration in 11:51-52).
6. In what ways has metaphor changed Tomas's life?
7. Compare and contrast Tomas on 200 with Tereza on 41.
8. Explain how "Love is our freedom" (236) and Tomas's affairs "enslavement" (234) when heretofore he has seemed burdened by compassion for Tereza. Is Tomas's life looking like Beethoven's development of "Es muss sein!" – moving from light to serious, from joke to metaphysical truth – or like Parmenides's development from heavy to light? (195-196)

Part VI
1. Define kitsch in three ways as derived from Kundera's novel. Are you a fan of kitsch, or do you aspire to something else in your life?
2. What is kitschy about Franz's burial? About Tomas's burial?
3. Franz, the western intellectual, has left his wife and daughter, found a true love in his student with big glasses, and gone on a political quest because of his image of Sabina's regard. Has Tomas, the Czech doctor, done the same thing? What are the key similarities between Franz and Tomas? What is the most important difference?
4. What is Franz's conception of the Grand March? How do you think Sabina would regard it?
5. What do rumblings in the stomach, the body, communism, marches,
hidden sewers, and kitsch have to do with each other?
6. Is "United We Stand," like "the barbarity of communism" and "our traditional values" and "President Carter" or "President Bush," an example of American kitsch? How would Kundera place this phrase in his system of unusual dichotomies?
7. One of Kundera's methods is to take opposing poles of existence, like lightness and weight, and toy with that oppositional relation. One way he toys with oppositions is to suggest alternative oppositions. We tend to think of two primary poles of good and evil, of God and the devil. Kundera reformulates this opposition into the sacred and the scatological. First, explain the effect of this reformulation on your understanding; then do it yourself: reformulate an accepted opposition into a new one. For instance, a common dichotomy is love and hate, but I might, based on a different understanding of the primacy of love, reformulate the opposition into love and apathy. Do it yourself with a commonly assumed set of opposites and consider the difference it makes in your understanding of one of the terms.

Friday

B-day, read through Part V: Soul and Body for Tuesday. A-day, be there by Wednesday.

Wednesday

A-day, come in with journal entries completed. Both A and B day students, read through "Part 4: Soul and Body," for Friday/Monday. No new written assignment is necessary right now.

Wednesday/Thursday

For Monday/Wednesday, read big Parts II and III. Choose one prompt from each section to respond to in a one-page, clearly written response. That means three one-page responses next class period.
Part I: Lightness and Weight:
Comment on heaviness and lightness, eternal return, what Tereza, Tomas, and Sabina have to do with any of the above, and then comment on the repetition of the floating basket image.

Part II: Body and Soul:
Complete one journal entry from among these prompts. SHOW you have read the assignment as you think about it:
1. Analyze and consider the repeated metaphor of the soul as a crew in a ship's bowels rushing up to the surface to show itself to Tomas. What has it to do with "Soul and Body"?
2. Think on paper about eternal return and individuation with regard to Tereza's view of herself in the mirror. What are Tereza's attitudes about the body? About the soul?
3. The final sentences of "Part I: Lightness and Weight" are, "Tomas felt no compassion. All he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned." In "Soul and Body," Chapter 2, the narrator says, "But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away." Tomas is a doctor. Does he hold that "lyrical illusion of the age of science" that the body and soul are actually one thing?

Part III: Words Misunderstood:
1. Reread page 111-114. Do you agree more with Franz’s understanding of “Strength” and “Living in Truth” or with Sabina’s interpretation of those words?
2. Comment on the irony – or whatever else you see – in this section’s ending image in which Franz closes his eyes as he listens to the gray-haired man.
3. Why does Franz think his life is light and Sabina’s heavy? Do you agree that Sabina’s experiences with oppression give her life weight? Is Czechoslovakia heavier than Switzerland?

Monday

B-day: Read "Section I: Lightness and Weight" for Wednesday. A-day, you have it read by Thursday.

Thursday

Read the first two chapters of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and consider just what the idea of eternal return means or suggests. How does it fit, or mesh, or clash -- with the ideas of lightness and weight?

Wednesday

I'm telling ya...I want all the way through the epilogue! Many A-day students need to be sure you have read the epilogue and show me that! These reading checks are good to a point, and then there is a sharp drop-off -- as if you have not finished!

Monday

OK, OK. The times have ruined me. B-day, bring in your revised papers by Wednesday. A-day, bring in your revised papers by Thursday.

Begin reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. You don't have it yet, but you will get it in Tuesday's class.

If you click on the Chilean flag, you can see Salvador Allende's final speech. It's in Spanish, of course.

Special announcement from Spanish teachers

Because of the cancellation of Junior TOK on Friday, A-day Spanish students who were not here on Wednesday need to be ready for your "Mala gente" (mah-lah hen-teh) quiz on Friday. Kyle L., Ce-Ce, and Hayley need to be ready for your presentation also on Friday.

Wednesday

Come in ready to convince and present.

Tuesday

Continue to read. Have more than one topic in mind for the project as you come to class so we will not have twenty-nine repetitions of the same idea.

Monday

New assignment for A-day; consider three possible topics for your project and nail down your request Wednesday. Read that novel! These projects are due between October 15 and 22, depending upon your choice.

Friday

Get that book read! I'm at home spending my lovely weekend with your written thoughts...

Thursday

Since your papers are complete by this time and ready to turn in Friday, and since you have read the assigned pages in The House of the Spirits, go to the game and yell until you're hoarse. Go, you Bad Horsies. Good luck Lee, Alex, and Cece.

Wednesday

The first round of big papers is due Thursday for A-day. I can't wait!