English III 4th Period Research Paper Schedule
Wed. 11/18/09: 5 Source Cards Due
Fri. 11/20/09: 25 note cards due (minimum of 1 from each source)
Mon. 11/23/09: Outline Due
Tue. 11/24/09: Rough Draft and Final Works Cited Page Due
Tue. 12/01/09: Final Paper Due
· The above dates apply whether school is in session or not.
· The paper will be 5 typewritten, double spaced pages (not counting Works Cited).
· The Works Cited page will be the last page of the paper.
· Each source must be cited at least once in the body of the paper.
· Font must be Times New Roman no larger than 12 point.
· All MLA documentation rules must be followed.
· The paper is due at 11:00 am on Tuesday, 12/01/09. There will be no exceptions!
o If you are going to be absent, have someone else bring the paper to school.
11/09 – 11/12/09
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Project Presentations on Thursday, November 12th.
Project Guidelines and Requirements:
· The project will be completed in groups of two.
· You may choose your partner, but be sure one of you has computer
experience and proficiency.
· The final project will be a paper and a Power Point presentation.
· The paper will be a minimum of two pages.
· The Power Point presentation must be between 10 and 15 slides.
· It should include text and graphics.
· It may include any other elements you wish.
· The paper will be graded for content and form as well as grammar.
· The Power Point will be graded for content, originality, creativity and
presentation.
· The topic of the paper and the Power Point will be a theme of
American Literature or value of American society as presented in the novel.
· You may have to do research to find themes and examples of them in the novel.
· All examples should be documented with page numbers in the paper.
Good luck!
Note: We are moving the review to 11/05 and will take the test Friday, 11/06/09
10/21 – 11/09/09
“A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”
Wed. 10/21: Introduction; Read chapters I – VI
Thu. 10/22: Read chapters VII – XI
Fri. 10/23: Read chapters XII – XVI
Mon. 10/26: Read chapters XVII – XX
Tue. 10/27: Read chapters XXI – XXIII
Wed. 10/28: Read chapters XXIV – XXVI
Thu. 10/29: Read chapters XXVII – XXX
Tue. 11/03: Read chapters XXXI – XXXIV
Wed. 11/04: Read chapters XXXV – XL
Thu. 11/04: Read chapters XLI – XLIV
Fri. 11/05: TEST REVIEW
Mon. 11/06: TEST
You are responsible for this material whether we are in school or not.
11/05/09
ACYIKAC Test Review
1. What elements of the Yankee’s character make him so peculiarly suited to the task of modernizing Arthurian Britain?
2. What flaws appear in the Yankee’s character?
3. Examine the Yankee’s view of the Catholic Church and freedom of religion.
4. What does the Yankee regard as the true source of political power, and what form of government does he consider ideal?
5. Why does Twain include excerpts from Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, and what is the significance of the characters’ reactions to them?
6. Discuss Clarence’s development under the Yankee’s influence.
7. Discuss the Yankee’s portrayal as an outsider.
8. What is the significance of the book’s ending?
11/05/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters XLI – XLV
Chapter 41 The Interdict
After bringing Hello-Central out of another lapse of illness, Hank realizes that his ship has not returned. He sails to England immediately, leaving his family behind in France. When he lands, he finds the cities dark and deserted, without activity. Hank bewilderedly wanders through the town until he spies the church bell tied in black‹it was the Interdict.
Hank disguises himself as one of his servants and travels to Camelot. The courts are deserted and all of the electric lights are off. He goes and finds Clarence in his quarters.
Chapter 42 War!
Clarence explains that while Hank was gone, Launcelot’s affair with Guenevere was exposed, starting a war between him and Arthur’s men. While Arthur was away sieging Launcelot’s castle, his nephew Mordred usurped the throne and tried to marry Guenevere. A great battle ensued to regain the throne, and both Mordred and Arthur are killed. The wars have wiped out many of the knights and devasted the land. Finally, the Chuch lays down its hand and imposes an interdict that is to remain in effect until Hank, too, is dead. The remaining clans loyal to the church are gathering their forces to destroy Hank and everything he has built. Hank’s own doctors and the officers of his ships were agents of the Church; they tricked him into leaving before the civil wars.
Clarence also tells Hank that there are only sixty faithful men on Hank’s side: the rest deserted out of fear of the Church. Clarence has fitted an electric plant in a cave with supplies and equipment for a siege. He encourages Hank to take the offensive and declare a republic.
Analysis:
The civil wars and King Arthur’s death follow an orthodox retelling of Malory. In this version, though, the sad roll of events is touched off by a contribution of Hank’s new economy: the conflict starts when Launcelot completes a shady stock deal that affects the King’s nephew. Somehow, Hank’s civilizing solutions could not prevent the disaster and even throws a sinister light on modern business intrigue.
In fact, Hank returns to find that his civilization has failed to impress many people at all: he has but sixty faithful boys left in his service. These boys are faithful to him because they have been trained from the beginning; in another time and context, one might say that they have been indoctrinated to the purposes of the leader. In any case, the values of the old system prove to be more compelling and powerful than the Yankee’s industrial system.
The Church has awakened and rallied its forces to become something more powerful than Hank’s technology and Arthur’s charisma combined. For Hank, it is the vague, looming specter of the institutional machine. For better or for worse, the conflict is an age-old one for many rulers and dictators have feared religious institutions as enemies, rivals for power, and bastions of opposition.
More important however, is Hank’s response. Clarence has made provision for a total war, replete with guns, bombs, electricity and destructive expertise that has grown out of the Yankee’s factories and systems. Once the decision to fight a war is made, Hank dives in with the relish of a boy at play: delights at the mines that explode on a “Church committee,” the “:torpedoes and gatlings” ready to go.
The civilization that Hank created contained the means of its own destruction, not only in its weapons but more literally. Clarence tells Hank that he re-routed the wires that detonate bombs placed beneath all of the factories, schools and works in the kingdom. The switch had been located in Hank’s bedroom. Twain’s uncanny prescience predicted the capacity for total destruction that has plagued much of this last century.
Chapter 43 The Battle of the Sand Belt
Hank and Clarence retreat to Merlin’s Cave and send word to all their factories and great works to stop operations and vacate. They have fitted each one with secret mines to destroy the civilization should it prove necessary. Hank spends the week writing up the manuscript of his adventures and gathering information on the coming war.
The Church has united all the nobles and gentry against them, and it seems that the clamor for a republic has been stifled completely. Hank’s boys are afraid that the whole country is turned against them and that there is no hope‹but Hank assures them that only the nobility will fight and that afterwards, the republic will be theirs. They steel themselves for the siege. The next morning the Church’s knights charge the cave and Hank sets off the bombs to destroy his civilization and to create a great ditch between the cave and the outside. Thousands of men are blasted into the embankment.
Hank sends out men to divert a mountain brook south of their lines for use in an emergency. They have laid out electric fences all around the cave and wait for the men to try and cross their lines in the night. The next dawn, Hank and Clarence crawl out to watch as the knights come. They touch the fences and are immediately killed, one upon another, until a great pile of burned bodies fill the spaces between the fences. Hank fired rockets and in the glare, saw that he had half of the army trapped between his fences. Before they could rally and surge forward, he turned on all of his electric wires, electrocuting eleven thousand men at once.
The remaining ten thousand of the army were pressing forward into the ditch. Hank fired three revolver shots‹the signal to open the floodgates and let the stream water flood the ditch. Hank’s boys opened fire and sent the rest of the army to drown over the embankment. Within a short while the battle was over: they were masters of England.
Analysis:
A horribly modern war is the disturbing climax of Hank’s adventure. So extreme and gruesome, it comes as a complete surprise to many first time readers, but its seeds were already latent in Hank’s origins. He was, after all, the superintendent of an arms factory. Electricity, technology, expertise, once harnessed for human benefit are now harnessed for its destruction.
Hank fights with the dangerous belief that wiping out a single class of people, in this case, the Church’s nobility, will solve the problems of the country and usher in a peaceful republic. In essence, he is advocating for genocide and achieves it in the battle.
Even more macabre is the Yankee’s apparent enjoyment of the killing. He throws the switch that kills eleven thousand men at once and exclaims, “There was a groan you could hear!” The chapter is glutted with the dehumanized language that he often uses during his bogus miracles: bodies and horses “acres deep,” a “homogenous protoplasm” of the dead and dying. The situation has become so out of hand that Hank has literally buried himself in death.
Chapter 44 A Postscript By Clarence
The manuscript at this point is in Clarence’s hand, and he finishes the story. As they inspected the thousands of dead and dying glutting the embankment and the lines, Hank was stabbed by a vengeful knight. The wound was not serious, but Hank was bedridden in the cave while he recovered. Merlin, disguised as an old woman, came to nurse Hank’s wounds and cook for the remaining crew.
The stench and disease bred by the thousands of corpses surrounding the cave claimed some of Hank’s boys and Clarence lay ill. New enemy camps were forming against them and Clarence realizes that they are doomed if they stay and vulnerable if they leave.
Clarence catches the old hag‹Merlin stooping over Hank in the night. He declares that they will all die in this cave‹everyone except Hank, who will be put in an enchanted sleep for thirteen hundred years. Reeling with laughter, Merlin accidentally touches one of the charged wires and dies with a cackle on his face.
When Hank doesn’t wake, Clarence and the remaining boys lay him in the recesses of the cave where no one will find him. Clarence then finishes the manuscript with a promise that if any man escapes, he will return to write the fact on the manuscript, and hide it with The Boss, their “dear good chief . . . be he alive or dead.”
Analysis:
The ultimate and end result of Hank’s industrial civilization is total destruction‹of people and eventually, itself and its creators. The thousands of dead create a miasmic plague that will eventually destroy all of Hank’s boys in its wake.
The Yankee’s long-standing rivalry with Merlin emerges again as Merlin puts him in a 1300 year sleep, and laughing the last laugh, fries himself on one of Hank’s electric wires. In this act, the legend is subverted. It is not Arthur, the lion-hearted King of England who is “the once and future king,” but Hank, who becomes “the once and future boss,” returning to the nineteenth century where it is the steel in locomotives, not swords and armor that dominates the landscape.
Chapter 45 Final P.S. by M.T.
The scene returns to modern England, where Mark Twain has just finished reading Hank Morgan’s manuscript. He walks into Hank’s room and watches him as he sleeps and dreams fitful dreams about Sandy, Hello-Central and Clarence. Hank opens his eyes and looking up at Mark Twain, imagines he sees Sandy. He begins to mutter and exclaim about the battle of the sand belt and all the things he has seen. After awhile, he falls silent, sinking into death. At his last rasp he exclaims, “A bugle? . . . It is the king! The drawbridge‹there! Man the battlements‹turn out the . .” and then expires. Mark Twain finishes the story by saying that Hank was getting up his last ‘effect’ but never finished it.
Analysis:
Hank, the father of destruction is ironically the only one who survives the cave. But in his return to modernity, to the environment he cherishes and exemplifies, he has lost the elements of society he loved most‹people, human relationships and family. He is “plagued by the torture of hideous dreams,” tortured dreams of democracy and violence, of his family and horrible battle. In the end, Hank Morgan dies longing for a piece of what he had set out to destroy: he longs for a bit of the chivalric beauty and heroism that Arthur represents; in his final dream he is far away from the civilization that ruined him, loyally manning the battlements for the king.
11/05/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters XXXV – XL
Chapter 35 A Pitiful Incident
The King and Hank are sold to another slave trader. Arthur is vexed and depressed that he has been sold for a mere seven dollars; he can’t understand how he, a king, couldn’t even be worth twenty-five. For a month they walk on the end of a chain-gang, whipped and beaten by a harsh master. Hank notes how the King’s spirit is unfazed despite the hardship they are in. Arthur declares that at the end of this adventure he will abolish slavery; a result that makes the matter worthwhile for Hank.
They move on in cold weather, losing many of their company. One day, a beaten and bloodied woman runs to the slave train begging for protection against a pursuing mob. She is accused of being a witch. The slave master has an idea, and demands that the mob burns her on the spot. When they do, he forces his chain gang to stand around the fire and get warm.
Later, the gang passes the site of an execution‹a young mother suckling a child is going to be hanged for stealing linen. Her husband was conscripted and sent to sea without her knowledge. Unable to provide for herself, she sold what articles they owned and finally tried to steal a linen cloth to obtain food for her baby. The crowd pitied her and was moved by her case, but law was law and could not be circumvented. An onlooking priest promises the woman to care for her baby until he dies, which she gratefully acknowledges as the hangman lets her fall.
Analysis:
After being sold for a mere seven dollars, Arthur ponders “the nature of his prodigious fall” in what is Twain’s modern rendering of the ancient theme of the Wheel of Fortune. Prominent in Arthurian legend as early as the 11th and 12th centuries, the Wheel of Fortune was a symbol of the cyclic nature of Fate, who raised up and brought down kings in their turn. Here, however, Arthur’s fall serves an educational and social cause: to end slavery in England. Extending on Hank’s previously stated belief that hard-headed humans need to experience a thing before understanding its gravity, their time in slavery has the express purpose of ending it. When Arthur finally decides he will abolish the institution, Hank decides to plan their escape, “but no sooner.”
The story of the condemned girl is one which, by now, the reader can construct for himself. It contains all of the same elements of Victorian melodrama of Hanks previous stories: an oppressed woman with a helpless babe, estranged from her husband and condemned for a crime that the unjust laws caused her to commit in the first place. One notes again that Twain’s tragedies are family tragedies, that is not enough to pity a woman to be hanged, it is a woman with a baby and a husband who is impressed into the merchant marine.
Chapter 36 An Encounter in the Dark
The slave gang arrives in London, which Hank describes as nothing more than “a big village.” Hank spots a wire stretching between two rooftops and plans to somehow get to the telephone or telegraph office that must be waiting there. Their owner offers to sell both Arthur and Hank for twenty-two dollars. The buy asks for a day to consider, and Hank plans to make his move. He intends to pick his lock using a pin he has stolen from the buyer’s cloak, free the king, and beat the master when he comes to check on the slaves while they sleep. When they hear the master approaching, however, Hank has only managed to get himself free. Arthur urges him to leave and fetch the master back.
Hank goes out into the dark and scuffles with his adversary. Before long, lanterns come and the two are taken into custody by the night watchmen of the town. The light of the jail reveals that Hank has fought with the wrong man.
Chapter 37 An Awful Predicament
Hank nervously awaits to find out what has happened to Arthur and the other slaves on account of his mistake. He learns from a man in the street that upon finding that he had lost a slave, the master was wild with anger and began to beat the others. They resisted and killed him.
By morning, all the slaves had been recaptured and the troupe was sentenced to hang as soon as they found the missing slave‹Hank. Hank changes his clothes and hurries to his telegraph office where he contacts Clarence and tells him to send Launcelot and 500 knights to London right away.
Hank decides to keep changing his disguises throughout the day until he can work himself to some finery, and thus the immunity of being a gentleman. His plan is foiled by one of the slaves sent to find him. As soon as he is caught, the courts decide to hang the whole lot of slaves by mid-afternoon that day. There was no way Launcelot would arrive in time to rescue them.
Analysis
Hank manages to escape and get word to Camelot, but then proceeds to put himself (and the rest of the slaves) in danger by going out into the London streets. The reason he is doing this, of course, is to continue changing costumes until he can procure velvets and finery for his coming great rescue and ‘effect.’ The episode reveals Hank’s willingness to take risks for “show” while increasing the tension of the eventual last minute rescue. But when Hank despairs that the knights won’t be able to rescue him‹the savior of England and the bearer of civilization‹rather than showing concern for the rest of his comrades, it is an even clearer indication of a self-centeredness that runs in his character.
Chapter 38 Launcelot and the Knights to the Rescue
Arthur and Hank declare that they are the King and the Boss respectively, all to the crowd’s derision and amusement. The spectacle cuts short when the sheriffs arrive to carry out the sentence, and all of the slaves are lined up at the gallows to be hanged one by one. When King Arthur is brought to the noose, Hank springs to his rescue, keeping his eye on a grand sight‹Launcelot and 500 knights streaming in on bicycles.
The rescue is as grand and theatrical as Hank could have wished, and Clarence comes up to them himself and explains that he had made “the boys” practice for a long time and “was hungry for a chance to show off.”
Analysis:
The description of the knights, while delightfully humorous for all of its contrasts, also serves as a foretaste of things to come. In WWI, the British bicycle troops were the first mechanized fighters‹a description of them can be found in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. While Hank’s description is glorious and heroic: “the plumes streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed”‹the later historical episode is a somber and grim part of war. Twain, too, will extend this idea of a new warfare to its insane end in the Battle of the Sand-Belt, when Hank will harness technology for more destructive purposes than a showy rescue.
Chapter 39 The Yankee’s Fight With the Knights
A couple of days after they return to Camelot, Hank spies an ad placed in the paper. It is Sir Sagramore le Desirous’s challenge to meet him in armed combat. He had returned from seeking (and failing to find) the Holy Grail and was ready to take on the Boss. There was no talk in all of the kingdom except on the coming fight. It would be no ordinary combat, but a battle between two magicians, two orders. On the one hand, Merlin was preparing enchantments over Sir Sagramore’s armor, even creating a gossamer web that was supposed to render its wearer invisible to his opponent. On the other hand, Hank was the Boss, and expected to employ some great magic against Merlin’s. When the day of the tournament came, Hank came out to the field dressed in gymnast tights and “blue silk puffings.” His intention was to shame and break knight errantry as an institution this day.
Each time Sir Sagramore charged him, he shifted lightly out of the way, until the knight grew angry and began to chase him. Finally, Hank draws out a lasso and ropes Sir Sagramore right out of his saddle. His novel weapon causes a sensation as knight after knight challenges him and is lassoed off the field. Eventually the invincible Launcelot goes to meet him and is lassoed as well. Hank is sure he has defeated knight errantry when he hears the bugle sound for one more challenger.
Hank looks down and sees that his lasso is gone; Merlin has stolen it. Arthur and the court look on tensely as Hank waits upon the field unarmed. Despite Arthur’s request to let Hank obtain a weapon, Sir Sagramore stands upon the rule that the knights may only use the weapons they themselves have brought. The crowd yells for Hank to run, but he waits until Sir Sagramore is fifteen paces away before pulling out a Colt revolver and shooting him in the heart.
Hank challenges all the knights to come at him at once, and believes his bluff will intimidate the entire assembly into yielding him the victory. He miscalculates however, and hundreds of knights stream towards him. He draws two revolvers and starts shooting, hoping they will give up before he fires his last shot. After nine men, the crowd surrenders and Hank remains, victorious over all the knights of Arthur’s land.
Analysis:
The Yankee’s fight starts with “gymnast’s tights” and a lariat but ends with guns, with wit and humor followed by deadly force. After shooting nine knights, Hank declares, “The march of civilization has begun,”; it is an omen that his march has started with bloodshed when he earlier declared that it would be a gentle “illumination.” His use of physical power to consolidate his political position is reminiscent of the patterns used by so many tyrants throughout history. We also know that this is no accident; Hank has been contemplating this moment for years. The guns are not the store-bought answers to an immediate need, they are carefully crafted results of the factories and plans the Yankee established when he first came on the scene. Instead of regret that this solution had to include violence, Hank feels “immensely satisfied” with “the magic of science.”
Chapter 40 Three Years Later
Having humiliated the order of the Round Table, Hank decides to reveal his activities of the past years. He unveils the very next day all of his schools, factories, mines and workshops to the world. To keep the knights at bay, he engraves his challenge anew: he promises that given fifty assistants, he will take on the world’s chivalry en masse and destroy it.
The next three years are ones of rapid modernization. Slavery is abolished, schools and factories spring up everywhere. Hank employs the knights and nobility as train conductors and missionaries to spread the use of new inventions and goods, and is at work with two of his most ambitious projects: the replacement of the Catholic church with Protestant sects and the establishment of a republic after Arthur’s death.
In the meanwhile, Hank has married Sandy, a move made more out of a sense of propriety than affection. Sandy was bound by chivalric honor to stay with Hank until some challenger wrested her away from him; Hank decided that the best thing to do was marry her. He falls in love with her and they have a child, Hello-Central. Sandy heard Hank whisper the words in his sleep, and thinking it was the name of some lost loved one, she named their daughter in its honor. Hello-Central falls ill and Hank and Lancelot nurse her out of danger. The King’s doctors advise Hank to take his family to the sea to give the child a needed rest in the sea air. He leaves for the French coast, and after a month, sends his ship back to England for fresh supplies.
Analysis:
Hank decides to expose “the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth” the day after his fight with the knights. He had declared in the beginning that this is precisely what he had not wanted to do‹”floodlight” in one sweep the old order with the new‹until England was ready. The fact that makes England “ready” however, is a totalitarian threat of destruction that Hank engraves in public squares. He and fifty men will destroy the “chivalry of the earth” if he is challenged. The project appears to be successful though, if only in economic and industrial terms. We are not specifically told that human life has vastly improved, we merely assume that they have.
The uneasiness that Hank’s new dictatorial power incites is assuaged by the fact that the Yankee has developed human relationships and for the first time, shows affection to someone in Arthur’s England. Sandy’s presence as Hank’s adored wife shows that he can love; his affection towards his child, Lancelot and Arthur soften his outline. He is a goodhearted Yankee again, planning baseball games and involving his friends in his projects, not a dominating technocrat ready to pounce on any opposition in his way. In a generic sense, Yankee is truly a mirror of conflicting images of America‹of wholesome democracy and economic, military and political domination.
11/04/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters XXXI – XXXIV
Chapter 31 Marco
The coal burner’s name is Marco, and Hank goes out with him into the hamlet to observe the goings-on there. At the local provisions shop he has a twenty dollar coin broken and causes a stir with his wealth. He meets several mechanics and the rich village blacksmith, Dowley. He invites Dowley, the mason, and the village wheelwright to dinner at Marco’s on Sunday.
Hank sets out and buys all of the provisions for the dinner, including new suits of clothes for Marco and his wife. He orders a list of goods from the provisioners and waits to produce his next effect. He tells Marco that King Arthur is a rather well-off farmer named Jones, and that for their kindness and hospitality, all expenses and gifts would be his treat.
Chapter 32 Dowley’s Humiliation
All the goods arrive at Marco’s hut Saturday afternoon, and it is all the poor couple can do to keep from fainting. Hank has outfitted them with a new table, stools, crockery‹an assortment of goods that the villagers imagined only a king could afford. Dowley arrives with his friends bragging about how he has meat twice a month, unprepared for the splendor Hank has arranged. Hank’s other purpose in this project was to get a feel for the cost of living in the country and to inspect his new cash economy at work.
When the storekeeper’s son comes to collect the bill, the townsmen almost fall off their stools in fear and wonder at how Hank would ever pay up. When Hank lays down four dollars and tells the boy to “keep the change,” they are shocked beyond belief and Dowley is humiliated for bragging about his feasts, whose total cost is under seventy cents a year.
Chapter 33 Sixth Century Political Economy
After dinner, the men retire to talk about business and wages. King Arthur, not finding anything of interest to talk about himself, dozes off. A humorous parlay between Dowley and Hank ensues as Hank tries to convince Dowley that although his wages are higher in amount, they are lower in value compared to another region where the cost of living is much lower. The men fail to see the logic of the scheme and argue that because their wages are higher, they are simply greater and that is that.
Hank is unbearably frustrated with the men and tells them that 1300 years from hence, men will be able to set their own wages through trade unions. The men are taken aback and refuse to believe that such a lawless time will come. During their debate the subject of the pillory comes up, and Hank digresses to explain to them why he thinks the pillory ought to be abolished. During the heated discussion, he mistakenly slips out that at the wages these men are paying their apprentices, they can be legally placed in the stocks themselves. All discussion comes to a sudden halt and at this point the dinner becomes dangerous; the men are now highly suspicious of Hank and King Arthur and are waiting for a the slightest indication of betrayal before seizing them.
Analysis:
Twain applies a modern politico-economic discussion to a sixth century scenario. He speaks on behalf of free trade against protectionism in terms of crude ‘village’ business, but the arguments share the same essence with Twain’s political reasons for deserting the Republican party to vote for Democrat Cleveland, a free trade advocate, in 1884.
Chapter 34 The Yankee and King Sold As Slaves
Hank quickly changes the subject and diverts their attention to his invention, a toy gun that dispenses money (in the form of shot). But the king awakes from his nap and feeling good, begins to talk about farming. Hank tries to warn him that they are on dangerous ground with Dowley and the men, but Arthur trips along and talks about onions growing on trees, “plums and other cereals” being dug up, and “the tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage.” Now the townsmen believe Arthur to be mad and Hank to be a traitor. They try to kill the men, but Arthur rises up to his combative nature and strikes them down.
Arthur and Hank take to the woods and soon hear a posse with dogs coming after them. They wade into a stream and climb up a overhanging branch and wait for the search party to pass. Hank suggests that they move to a neighboring tree in case the villagers figure out their ruse. After dark, the search party returns, and someone suggests that they might have climbed the tree overhanging the stream. Hank is pleased at his clever foresight but is terrified to find that the blundering villager sent to investigate has chosen the wrong tree‹the tree that they are currently hiding in. They defend themselves as valiantly as they can against the onslaught of men. However, when the villagers start a fire, they realize their game is up and they come down from the tree to surrender. The mob is about to kill them both when a gentleman comes through and bids them to cease.
The gentleman asks them who they are and mounts them on his horses. The next morning they ride to a town twenty miles away. Their savior-gentleman is Lord Grip, a slave trader. He orders them to be cuffed to the chain gang and sold at auction. As they cannot prove that they are freemen, they have no choice but to go along.
Analysis:
When the King and Yankee are wrongfully sold as slaves, the King challenges the slave trader to prove that they are not freemen. Hank realizes that the King only knows the law “by words, and not effects”; that in practice, the burden of proof is often placed upon those most vulnerable to injustice.. Hank makes the thoughtful comment that as a Yankee, the unlawful bondage of free blacks into slavery “never made an impression” on him until he himself experienced it. Cognitively, he could take a moral stance on the issue and deem it “improper.” For Hank, and, as he contends, for everyone else, it takes experience to finally realize that such practices are “hellish” rather than just wrong.
11/03/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters 27-30
Chapter 27 The Yankee and King Travel Incognito
Hank cuts King Arthur’s hair and otherwise tries to disguise him for their new adventure. But Arthur has a difficult time acting humble, and his dignified attitude puts them in danger each time knights or noblemen pass them. Arthur talks to Hank about prophecy, and Hank tells him that he can see the future 1300 years in advance. Arthur is amazed yet again at Hank’s abilities; before he had respected him as a magician, now he respected him as a prophet as well.
Before long, the King is accosted by two knights, who almost trample him underfoot with their horses. When Arthur hurls an insult at them, they come charging with their swords. Hank rescues the king by diverting their attention and then throwing a dynamite bomb at them.
Twain further develops Hank’s conflicting attitudes towards the king. At once patronizing and respectful, Hank feels compelled by his reason to look at Arthur as no more than “an active, heedless child,” while at the same time something in him is magnetically drawn to Arthur’s regal bearing and courage. Even within the criticism there is growing affection as Hank looks out for the king and puts himself in danger for his sake.
When Hank throws a bomb at two charging knights, the macabre imagery again warns that there is something not right about Hank’s use of his scientific power. Hank describes the explosion as “a very neat and pretty thing to see,” and the image of “microscopic drizzle of knight, hardware and horseflesh” is to graphic to be funny. Although Hank is quick to assure that the explosion was an isolated incident the book is by degrees becoming more violent, and the effects of Hank’s civilizing process less benign.
Chapter 28 Drilling the King
In order to preempt further disasters, Hank drills the King on how to stoop, act humbly and get along in common society. He teaches him that they must eat as equals, that they must address the people they come across as brother and friend rather than “varlets” and “villeins.” Arthur does the best he can and takes all of Hank’s suggestions very thoughtfully, but Hank realizes that one who has never experienced hardship or known base physical labor cannot be properly asked to understand what it is to be a peasant. He muses that work, as we know it is unfair‹the more enjoyable and creative work is, i.e. intellectual work, the more pay one gets. Twain writes that this irony “is the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship.”
Chapter 29 The Smallpox Hut
As The Boss and The King travel together they reach a dark and still hut, and upon entering, they find a wasted and sick woman. She warns them to leave for the Church’s ban is on the hut and will fall upon any man that is found near there. Hank tells her that he doesn’t fear the ban and goes to fetch her a bowl of water from the neighboring spring. When he returns, King Arthur is inside the hut, and a shaft of light reveals that the woman has smallpox. Hank tries to persuade Arthur to leave, but the king refuses on his knightly honor and stays to help.
They find her dead husband, and the woman asks the King to climb to the loft and report what he finds there. He goes and comes down carrying a dying girl of fifteen, and gently lays her next to her mother. Hank is moved by the brave and majestic act of the king, braving smallpox for the sake of a peasant mother.
The child breathes her last in the mother’s arms. The mother explains that her sons were accused of cutting down the local lord’s fruit trees, and were duly imprisoned. When the harvest time came, the family could not provide the men needed to harvest the lord’s fields, so mother and children had to work. As they struggled, their own fields were neglected and they were fined for not being able to meet the quota for church tithe and lord’s dues. Starving and at their wit’s end, the final blow came when the mother fell ill and brought on the Church’s ban on her home. She has waited since to die.
Analysis:
The tragedy of the smallpox hut is the most melodramatic and pathos filled narratives Twain creates as a condemnation of the Catholic Church, feudalism and general injustice. Everything miserable that can happen falls upon this one family: wrongful imprisonment, forced labor, fines, loss of livelihood, starvation, sickness, excommunication, and finally, death. The story is almost wooden in its severity, as if Twain strings tragedy upon tragedy at random for effect; it is almost a literary club Twain uses to beat pity out of the reader.
For Hank, the episode was a turning point in his assessment of Arthur. When the King braves smallpox to give help and compassion to his dying subjects, Hank considers it “heroism at its last and loftiest possibility,” and looks upon Arthur at that moment as “great, sublimely great.” Arthur’s person embodies the courage and compassion that every century craves, and Hank’s scheme for modernity cannot substitute or replace that charisma.
Chapter 30 The Tragedy of the Manor House
King and minister watched over the house until the woman died at midnight. Covering the bodies with rags, they left the house and fastened the door. As they stepped out into the night, they heard footsteps approaching, causing them to dart for a safe hiding place. From their dark corner behind a shed they heard the woman’s grown sons saying that they had escaped. Hank pulled King Arthur and they fled, not wanting to witness the pitiful scene that would follow.
They spotted a fire glowing in the distance and traveled down towards it. Along the road they spotted nine hanging bodies from the trees and heard men chasing other men through the woods. Judging the place to be unsafe for strangers, Hank and the King make steal away from the lights until they reach a charcoal burner’s hut a few miles away. They take rest there until the afternoon. They are told the story of the fires and hangings from the night before: someone had set fire to the manor house and killed its owner, the local landlord. The first suspects had been a family with a grudge against the landlord, and all of these were rounded up and hanged by a peasant mob. No one had yet suspected the three escaped sons of the smallpox house.
The whole sordid story depressed Hank and assailed his dream of turning England into a republic. He learned that the charcoal burner was actually a cousin of the fugitive men involved. The humble peasant refused to report this news to the authorities, confiding to Hank that he believed the men had done a righteous deed. Hank praises his manliness and holds on to his hope of gradually establishing a democratic government after Arthur’s death.
Analysis:
The terror of the mob hunt during the night and the hanging bodies Hank and Arthur find strewn across the landscape have a strong resemblance to lynch mobs of the modern day; in fact, much of the violence in Twain’s text reaches directly into its modern legacy. The connection is further strengthened when Hank makes a direct reference to “poor Southern whites” whose economic problems are caused by slaveholders, but who nevertheless rally to their causes, fight their battles and protect their interests.
10/29/09
ACYIKAC: Chapters 24-26
Chapter 24 A Rival Magician
Hank decides to leave Sandy in the nunnery for a rest while he prepares to go out into the country disguised as a peasant for a week. As he takes a walk into the valley, he comes across a cave where he discovers one of his telephone clerks manning a new line. He calls up Clarence in Camelot and finds that King Arthur’s court is traveling to the Valley of Holiness to see the site of the miracle. He also learns that Arthur has been working to establish a standing army and will be choosing his officers by competitive examination while traveling. Arthur sends word to his West Point, and tells them to dispatch an officer to meet them in the Valley of Holiness.
When he returns to the monastery, Hank finds a man who claims to be a great magician from the east. He awes the monks by telling them the thoughts and actions of any person around the world, such as the current actions of the Emperor of China. Hank challenges this humbug by asking him to prophesy what he is doing with his right hand behind his back, but the magician retorts that his magic only works with great people. Hank is frustrated that he has just performed the greatest miracle these people have seen and yet they choose to believe the charlatan magician over him. He challenges the magician again, telling him to predict where King Arthur was going at the moment. The magician claims that Arthur is by the sea; Hank correctly predicts that he is coming to the Valley. When the King enters the monastery, the monks scramble to greet him with due respect. Despite Hank’s efforts, they had not been expecting it.
Analysis:
The presence of the rival magician beats upon the theme of superstition again, but more importantly, it brings up the fact that no matter how extravagant and important Hank’s ‘miracles’ are, they are soon forgotten by a fickle and show-hungry crowd. In this case, Twain’s criticism of human nature is understated in Hank’s frustration with the short collective memory of people. At the same time, the author deals even-handedly with Hank’s growing ego-mania, subjecting even the Yankee to his satire.
Chapter 25 A Competitive Examination
The King continues some of his court business while in the Valley of Holiness. Once Hank’s West Point cadet arrives, he has him examined by the King’s deputies for the position of lieutenant in the standing army. When the deputies discover that the cadet is a weaver’s son, they discount him immediately in favor of a highborn candidate. When Hank has the two candidates examined by his West Point professors, the cadet is clearly superior in knowledge of warfare, mathematics, weaponry and strategy to his rather dense opponent. All of Hank’s efforts are to no avail, however, since the nobility refuses to be usurped by a meritocracy. Hank makes a concession to the King that he will have an army of officers consisting of only noblemen‹these will be the King’s own men. To join this force, the princes have to give up their Royal Grants, money entitled to them for being related to the King in order to have their expenses paid by the military. The rest of the army will consist of commoners, chosen by Hank’s system. King Arthur agrees to this arrangement and Hank succeeds in saving the kingdom money while ensuring that his West Pointers serve in the army.
Analysis:
Arthur as a person and king begins to emerge in the novel. Whereas in the beginning Hank merely dismissed him as the insubstantial figurehead of the kingdom, he now acknowledges the elements of Arthur’s character that make him such a beloved figure. He says that he is “a wise and humane judge” who does best “according to his own lights,” meaning according to the best that his training and circumstances allow him. The problem is not in the person of Arthur as the upholder of law, it is in the imperfect construction of the laws themselves that injustice lies. In is interesting that despite Twain’s readiness to attack and villify so many elements of the Arthur legend, when it comes to the man himself he remains fairly orthodox. Even for cynical Twain, the Arthur of the old texts still embodies a courage, manliness and integrity that stand up to inspection.
In the competitive examination of officers of the standing army, we receive a foretaste of the type of modernization that Hank has in store. Beneath the more obvious themes of merit versus rank that Twain brandishes in this chapter, there is a sinister foretaste of what will soon come: somehow, in Hank’s peaceable kingdom there are guns and bombs; and in the midst of his ‘gentle revolution,’ provision has been made for the ‘art and science’ of total war.
Analysis:
The specific insertion of a ‘West Point’ into Arthur’s England and the competitive exam talked about here point to a contemporary issue in Twain’s day.
Chapter 26 The First Newspaper
When the King learns that Hank is going out into the country incognito to learn how the commoners live, the King decides to join him. Before they go, the King finishes his annual duty of healing patients who come to him with scrofula, or king’s-evil. It is believed that if the King lays hands on them they will be cured. Hank cleverly uses the occasion to introduce his newly-minted nickels, one for each patient cured. This practice not only satisfies the crowd but saves the kingdom the cost of giving out gold coins. He calculates that by doing so, he economizes four-fifths of the day’s national expense.
As Hank sits in a window, he hears the call of the first newsboy selling the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano. He picks up a copy and reads the write-up of his latest miracle in the Valley of Holiness. The monks who see the paper crowd around in amazement, and Hank beams proudly, “steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment.”
Newspapers and journalism have always been close to Twain’s heart: he attempted to start many newspapers during his lifetime and was renowned as one of America’s wittiest and most read journalists. (The type of ‘Yankee commentary’ crafted in the book has roots in his earlier travel correspondence during travels in Europe.)
Twain even gives advice on the manipulation of print media: He claims that to tell the truth straight is wrong, that for readers’ interest one must always “coat it in a new cuticle of words,”‹advice strongly resonant in today’s media environment.
10/28/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters XXI – XXIII
QUIZ:
1. What does Hank do with the pigs? (gives them to servants)
2. Why do people travel to the Valley of Holiness in the “Cuckoo Kingdom”?
(a miraculous spring or fountain)
3. What language does Hank say Sandy is the “mother” of? (German)
4. What does Merlin say has to be done for the fountain to flow again? (pronounce the demon’s name)
5. What appears to be Hank’s favorite word in describing crowds of people? (acres)
Chapter 21 The Pilgrims
Hank and Sandy drive the whole herd into a house where they spend the night. Hank ponders Sandy’s odd delusion and attributes it to her training and the influence of superstition on her mind. To her, he reasoned, it made perfect sense for a group of princesses to be enchanted into a herd of swine, just as it made perfect sense to him that one could speak over large distances via the telephone or travel on a locomotive. Hank quickly moves the herd out and tries to find a solution to his predicament. He gives the pigs away to the servants and Sandy is satisfied that the princesses’ friends will soon come to collect them.
They meet a band of pilgrims who are going to the Valley of Holiness in the “Cuckoo Kingdom.” The valley is a famed residence of holy hermits and is known for a miraculous spring that flowed when an abbot prayed for water in the parched land. Hank decides to visit the place, and along the way, he and Sandy meet up with a chain gang of slaves that are being sold town-to-town. Hank describes at length their piteous condition, from the harsh lash of the slave trader to the thick layer of dust that veils each wasting one. Hank is reluctant to free the slaves, lest he draw too much attention to himself by overriding the country’s laws. He leaves them alone and watches as families are separated and people are sold.
One of Hank’s knights, Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy comes past the inn where Hank and Sandy are staying and he tells them that there has been a disaster in the Valley of Holiness. The miraculous fount has been dry for nine days, and all in the Valley are praying and processing and pleading for its return. They have called in Merlin, who has been there three days trying to break the enchantment.
Hank gets an idea and immediately dispatches Sir Ozana to Camelot with a message to Clarence. He asks him to send to trained experts and a shipment from their chemical department to the Valley of Holiness.
Analysis:
Twain alludes to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in comparing that work’s jovial and motley pilgrims with the ones that Hank and Sandy meet up with along their way from the Ogre’s Castle. But the pilgrims are a mere backdrop to contrast with the slave-gang that comes by. One is concerned with miracles and intangibles, the other is very much trapped by real horrors and miseries. When dealing with slavery, many of Twain’s images become much more vibrant, in part because it is an issue close to his heart and also because modern readers have a historical connection to anchor the fiction. He uses the powerful image of the thick layer of dust that masks and dehumanizes the slaves as they walk chained to one another, tracks of tears their open sign of suffering. The flaying of the slaves, the merciless slave-trader, conjure scenes from the Antebellum South.
Chapter 22 The Holy Fountain
The abbot and monks of the Valley of Holiness greet The Boss and beseech him to do something about the fountain lest they be ruined. To stall for time until his supplies arrive, Hank says that he will let Merlin have a full attempt to restore the fountain before he works his miracle.
When Hank visits the fountain he confirms his suspicion that it is a mere well, one which he believes has sprung a leak. The well shouldn’t be hard to repair, but Hank builds up the idea through “advertising” that the task will be difficult and will require great enchantment to complete. Word spreads through the valley as people anxiously await the result.
Hank and Sandy go though the valley visiting all of the hermits who live there. They are a strange and unkempt lot, and Hank is highly critical of what he calls their “complacent self-righteousness.”
Analysis:
Hank sees the holy fountain as his kind of adventure, one that allows him to pit his scientific talents against superstition while gaining the awe and respect of the common people. His nemesis, Merlin, has been impotent from the beginning, and Hank takes pleasure in setting him up and knocking him down. Twain digresses to make a quip about German literature in naming Sandy “the mother of the German language.” Her endless sentences, he says, are forerunners of German intellectual and literary works; for those who have read German romantic prose, one can see the truth and humor of Twain’s tirade. Twain also takes a shot at one of his great peeves: the Catholic Church. Biased by his Presbyterian upbringing, Hank is sees no sense in asceticism and considers is foolish and self-righteous. For him, the hermits in the valley are odd monsters, putting on a show of piety that benefits neither their fellow man nor themselves. For Hank, such people deserve no reward, in this world or the next.
Chapter 23 The Restoration of the Fountain
Merlin has finally reached the climax of his attempt and has gathered a crowd of people as he burns smoking powders and mutters spells to make the waters flow. Exhausted by his efforts, he tells the abbot that the waters will never flow again, and that it is enchanted by a terrible demon. The only way to release the fountain is to pronounce the demon’s unpronounceable name at the risk of death.
Hank takes up the challenge. By evening, his two experts arrive with a load of Greek fire, rockets, electric apparatus and pipes. They set to work through the night to repair the well. When the well is repaired, they install an iron pump and lead piping through the wall of the chapel. They also place a sheaf of rockets on the roof of the chapel over the well, covering the corners with Greek fire and wiring a detonation device to the entire set-up. Hank even has a platform built so that when he performs the ‘miracle’ later that night, the coming crowd will be able to see.
Thousands of people flood the valley after dark to see if Hank can restore the well. Hank stands before them and utters a long nonsense word, and his boys set off the blue Greek fire. He waits as the terrified crowd shrinks back before doing it again and again, each time igniting a different colored flame. Finally, when he is sure that his experts are manning the well, he dramatically pronounces the dreaded name: “BGWJJILLIGKKK!” At that moment the sheaf of rockets is touched off and the water is sent pumping through the chapel door. The crowd surges ecstatically. From then on, Merlin’s spirits are crushed and he is sent home a useless pile of bones. It was Hank’s most spectacular effect yet.
Analysis:
Hank’s showiest “effect” is a triumph of science, but does little to free people from superstition. It is precisely superstition that feeds Hank’s greatness, and while he says his miracle was “bogus,” he nevertheless considers himself “a superior being” for performing it. Hank drinks in the approbation of the people; it is not enough for him to defeat and demystify Merlin, but he makes himself godlike in the eyes of the commoner as well. It is ironic that Hank’s showy effect bolsters the Church and the practices that he professes to detest.
Hank also has a habit of objectifying masses of people. He describes “acres of people” and “acres of foundlings,” and a “pavement of human heads that stretched for miles.” Acres is his favorite word to describe vast numbers of people; it is used many times throughout the work, especially during the moments when Hank feeds off of the fear or the adoration of the masses.This dehumanizing imagery evolves into its most grotesque form when Hank later describes a war in terms of “one great mass” of carrion or “walls” of dead men.
10/27/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters XVI – XX
QUIZ:
1. What product is the knight wearing a sandwich board advertising?
2. What had the man who Morgan Le Fay had on the rack done?
3. What does Hank do with the forty-seven prisoners he finds in Morgan Le Fay’s dungeon?
4. What does Sandy reveal to Hank about the six knights he captured earlier?
5. What do the “maiden captives” turn out to be?
Chapter 16 Morgan Le Fay
Hank spots a knight coming along the road descending from the castle. The knight is wearing an odd sandwich board with gilt lettering‹and Hank remembers that this is one of his knights. The board reads, “Persimmon’s soap‹All the Prime Donne Use It,” and this set-up was an idea of Hank’s to ridicule knight errantry while sending “missionaries” through the country to disseminate soap and other modern goods. The knight’s name is La Cote Male Taile (from the French, “ill tailored coat”) and he tells Hank that the castle belongs to King Uriens and his wife, Morgan Le Fay.
Hank knows Morgan Le Fay by reputation‹she passes herself as a great sorceress, very cruel and malicious. He and Sandy pass into the castle to gain audience with its owners.
Hank is amazed to see that Morgan Le Fay is very young and beautiful, though cruel, and there is something intriguing about her. Without a thought, she stabs a young page who stumbles across her knees, and then resumes entertaining her guests. Hank notes sardonically that she is an excellent housekeeper, keeping a watchful eye on the servants to make sure that they clean every drop of blood and remove the body quickly and quietly. Hank accidentally lets drop a word about her hated half-brother, King Arthur. She flies into a rage and almost has Hank and Sandy thrown into a dungeon when Sandy indignantly exclaims that she is dealing with “THE BOSS,” at which Morgan Le Fay pales with fright and entreats Hank “as one who has defeated Merlin,” to show her his power by blasting somebody.
Chapter 17 A Royal Banquet
After prayers Hank and Sandy have dinner with the court in the royal banquet hall. It is a splendid affair with over a hundred courtiers and officials with just as many liveried servants busily ranging through the hall. Musicians played, wine flowed and all are feasting and telling bawdy tales and jokes throughout. As the priest readies the benediction over the drunken and glutted crowd, an old woman appears before the hall and curses Morgan Le Fay for killing her only grandson. Morgan Le Fay rises up coldly and majestically, ordering her guards to take the woman to the stake. But Sandy gives Hank a look and stands before the Queen, declaring that Hank will dissolve the castle into thin air if she proceeds with the execution. Morgan Le Fay backs down and the entire banquet hall is scattered lest they witness the threatened calamity.
The Queen soon gains her spirits again, and takes Hank along for a tour of the castle. A muffled moan comes up through the halls and Morgan Le Fay tells Hank that it is a prisoner who has endured the rack for many hours. She leads him down to see the man, and explains that he is held prisoner for killing a hart on royal hunting grounds and is being tortured to confess to the crime.
Hank asks Morgan Le Fay to clear the room so that he can speak to the prisoner alone. Since he is Arthur’s minister and The Boss, she complies. Hank finds out that the man did in fact kill the hart, for it was destroying his crops, but refused to confess in order that his property would not be confiscated upon his death according to the law. He does not want his wife and child to be thrown out penniless. Hank finally understands the situation and is impressed by the display of self-sacrifice. He sends the man and his family to Clarence, so that he can place them in a “Man Factory.”
Analysis:
Though Morgan Le Fay embodies cold wickedness, she is one of the few who draws an outright respect from Hank. He is oddly drawn to her beauty, her musical voice and can’t help but admiring her exactness and calculating ability even while he shudders at her cruelty. The combination makes for dark humor as she asks Hank in her most dulcet tones to blast and kill someone for the evening’s entertainment. The attraction to Morgan Le Fay’s efficient execution of her way of life has strong parallels to currents running in Hank’s character; she is a ‘backwards’ version of Hank, concerned with her task and willing to resort to violence to complete it.
Twain makes a new attack on the piety of the nobility, insisting that although “murderous” and “morally rotten,” they nonetheless have a great enthusiasm for religion: going to mass, saying prayers and giving thanks for their crimes. He makes an allusion to the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, whose famous biography also contains contrasts of sublime piety and violence. Much of the Arthurian literature (and much of history) contain such incongruities: knights hack each other to death only after taking Communion; Kings give saints praise for victories in bloody battles.
To his knight Sir La Cote Male Taile Hank says, “We have brains, and for such that have brains, there are no defeats, but only victories.” The statement summarizes Hank’s Yankee self-assurance, his attitude towards himself and his abilities. This confidence that “there are no defeats” tragically ironic echoes at the end of the work, when Hank’s brains bring him a defeat that he cannot overcome.
Chapter 18 In the Queen’s Dungeons
When the Queen finds the next morning that her prisoner was released, she is furious, but unable to do anything about the matter. Hank uses his authority to examine Morgan Le Fay’s dungeons, claiming that he has been doing this sort of general “delivery” throughout the region. When he goes down into the dingy cells, he finds forty seven wasted, pathetic captives, most of whom were imprisoned for petty crimes and insults. There were even five among the crew whose names and crimes were forgotten; they had been prisoners before King Urien’s court came into occupancy and Morgan Le Fay never thought to release them. Hank sets all of the prisoners free and watches as the ragged bunch emerges from the castle. He exclaims that he wishes he could photograph them, and Morgan Le Fay, feigning that she understands what photography is, rushes at the group with an ax. Hank marvels at how she would think to interpret his meaning with an ax before anything else.
Analysis:
The stories Twain crafts to illustrate the injustices and suffering of feudal society take on a generic pathos as he piles on horror after horror. England’s dungeons are never filled with criminals, but always young brides torn away from hearth and family for petty insults, or honest men falsely accused. The nameless peasants Twain paints are hopelessly oppressed, and his narratives almost seem like muckraking about the past. In fact, Hank often implies that the prisoners and peasants he comes across have been made subhuman; he describes them as behaving with “animal curiosity” or understanding as “animal does when it knows it has been done a kindness.” This type of ‘oppression narrative’ becomes a recurring feature in Hank’s travels, escalating in pathos and severity as the book goes on. For some, this type of pounding tends to produce a sense of irreality rather than pity.
Chapter 19 Knight-Errantry as a Trade
Sandy and Hank set off on the road again, and Sandy continues with her never-ending tale of the identity of the six knights Hank has vanquished. This time, however, she finally finishes, revealing that the knights are a duke and his sons. “A duke!” Hank exclaims, and begins rattling off about the illogic of knight errantry as a trade, worse than investing in pork.
Analysis
Twain’s style of humorous writing is often marked by unlikely and incongruous ways of treating a general topic, and this chapter is a prime example of his brand of wit. When Hank finds out that the six knights he has vanquished are a duke and his sons, he is quite pleased with his haul and begins to consider knight errantry in terms of its profitability, comparing one’s odds in “pork bellies” to one’s odds in conquering men at arms. This commodification of chivalry is a humorous idea in itself, marrying the dry and practical mind of Hank to an institution of senses, glamour and myth.
Chapter 20 The Ogre’s Castle
Another of Hank’s billboard-knights comes along peddling toothbrushes and toothwash, and he tells a humorous story of how he had been tricked by a fellow knight into hawking his wares to a band of‹toothless men and women. The group turns out to be the old prisoners that Hank had set free. Hank himself encounters the troupe and watches helplessly as they return to homes that they don’t remember and are greeted by family they cannot recognize. The piteous scene makes Hank wonder if the type of gentle revolution he is planning will really work in this society, but his philosophizing is cut off by Sandy, who exclaims that they have come upon the object of their quest‹the Ogres’ castle.
When Hank turns the corner, the much awaited castle turns out to be a pigsty, and its ‘maiden captives’ a herd of swine. Sandy claims that the castle is enchanted, and that to Hank, it appears as a pigsty, but to her piercing eyes, it is a great castle abounding with ladies of high-rank. Hank can’t make any sense of this situation or understand why Sandy, otherwise sensible, would make such ridiculous statements. He plays along with the scheme and pays three swineherds (the Ogres according to Sandy) for their goods.
Analysis:
The episode of the Ogre’s Castle is the oddest and most ironic twist of book. It is effective because it is anti-climatic. For Hank and the reader, there is no good explanation given for Sandy’s delusion: Twain creates her as talkative and at times flighty, but she is nowhere near mad. But in making the Ogre’s castle a mere pigsty, Twain achieves several things. First he brings to its fullest development the idea that the power of superstition is strong enough to cause even sensible people to believe the most insensible things. Secondly, he fulfills Hank’s suspicion that there is nothing at all‹not even a grain of truth‹driving the stories of chivalric heroism of Arthur’s day. If there had been a real castle or real maidens, Hank would have to back down from his hard line derision of knight errantry and Arthur’s court. As it stands, Hank is even further justified in his intentions to overthrow sixth century society and replace it with a more practical, if less romantic one. Finally, “The Ogre’s Castle” creates a visual joke that reaffirms Hank’s ideas about nobility: it is all in the title. Hank might as well treat pigs as royalty if that is their title, for a Duke would be no more remarkable than a pig if it were not for his title. The same idea emerges towards the end of the book when Clarence jokes that a royal family of cats would serve just as well as any other.
10/26/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters XI – XV
Chapter 11 The Yankee In Search of Adventures
At this time, a woman comes into Camelot claiming that her mistress and forty-four other maidens are being held captive in a castle guarded by three ogres. For Hank, this woman is just part of a typical pattern of liars that come through Camelot, fueling knight errantry. The King confers her cause upon Hank, and he is required to go with her and liberate her compatriots. The woman’s name is Demoiselle Alisande de la Carteloise; Hank calls her Sandy for short. He skeptically interviews Sandy for details about her case, of which she has none. According to custom, she is to ride with Hank as they seek out their adventure. Ever the Yankee, Hank is extremely uncomfortable about the idea about going into the woods with an unknown woman (he tells Clarence that he was practically engaged to Puss Flanagan before his accident) but knows he has to go.
The next day, he is outfitted with a suit of armor, which he describes in detail. During this humorous departure, he is unable to put on any of the armor himself; he is helped by “all the boys” as he refers to the Knights of the Round Table. Furthermore, because of all of his armor, he unable even to mount his horse and must be carried, like an invalid, and planted upon the saddle. Sandy mounts up behind and the pair are off towards an unknown destination, with the uncouth village boys outside of Camelot hurling sass and clods of dirt at them as a sort of farewell. Hank finds it ironic that no matter what century, the insolence of little boys stays the same.
Chapter 12 Slow Torture
After a short while, Hank begins to feel the discomfort of his armor. The sun on the metal makes him very hot, and he is unable to reach his handkerchief, which he has stuffed in his helmet. Cursing all garments without pockets, Hank endures the trickling sweat over his itching, burning body. He also realizes that each time he dismounts, he must wait for passersby to help him on his horse again. To make matters worse, Sandy turns out to be an endless conversationalist, “steady as a mill,” and chattering the whole day long without cease or concern‹all to Hank’s great irritation.
Analysis:
Twain’s interplay with the elements of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur make a considerable portion of the satire and humor found in the book. In fact, he doesn’t have to invent most of the situations, he merely lifts them from the legend and retells them with through Hank’s skeptical, modern voice. In the stories, knights did go questing based on the uncorroborated stories of strangers; they did ride with damsels in no particular direction and without maps. Twain takes the Arthurian knight and logically extends him into the practical arena‹how do they manage their armor, how do they eat and sleep?–to find his humor.
Chapter 13 Freemen!
As all knight-adventurers must, Hank has to find his food and shelter by chance. While Hank would just as soon have packed sandwiches and tied them to his saddle, he has to endure this added dimension of privation during his journey as well. After setting Sandy in a safe place to spend the night, Hank sleeps on the ground, freezing while swarms of insects find their way into his armor to shelter there.
As for food, Hank asks to share a crude breakfast with a group of freemen assembled to mend the local road. Hank talks to them about their lives‹the hardships they endure, the injustices they face on a day to day basis, what they perceive the role of government to be. One particularly bold freeman tells Hank that he believes that to rob a nation of its will is the first crime among crimes. This man Hank singles out and gives a piece of bark containing instructions to put him in a “Man Factory.” The freeman is to take the message to Clarence, who will put the man in one of the Boss’s training centers where he will be made into the type of citizen Hank wants for his budding civilization.
Analysis:
As Hank describes the group of freemen reparing the road, their situation‹not being able to leave the land, buy or sell property without ceding a large portion of the proceeds to the landlord appears akin to the description of sharecropping, which Twain, who was Missouri born-and-bred before he became a Yankee, would have been perfectly aware of. The type of unfair land practices Twain describes were not confined to the sixth century, but could be easily found in the United States into the twentieth.
Also in this chapter one finds Twain’s famous formulations that there were two reigns of Terror: the one of French history and the other of the centuries of oppression under European monarchial government. With uncompromising gall, Hank declares that the terrors of the French Revolutio were but half a drop of blood compared to the “hog’s head full” that had been pressed from the masses by the torture of feudalism. Twain makes it clear that his Yankee is no pacifist and accepts violence against oppression as just even though he chooses to reform England through technology and education. He terms his system a “new deal,” words with which Roosevelt would later christen his famous economic reform program
There is also the interesting idea of Hank’s “Man (u) Factory”, a place where citizens are retrained in democratic thinking and ‘modern values.’ The existence of such a system proves that Hank believes that men are in fact, made; they can be shaped and reformed into the type of citizen one wants. Hank asserts again and again his belief in proper education as the cornerstone of a free society, but he is also is reducing man to a type of industrial product, just like the things Hank produced in his Connecticut Factory.
There is an another element, one more intractable, that Hank prizes as much as training, and it is a thing he calls, “manliness.” For Hank, manliness is a combination of courage and human dignity that shines independently of station or wealth and is best seen in times of adversity. Despite his critical attitude towards the court, he sees this element in the faces of Arthur and his men and respects them for it.
Chapter 14 “Defend thee, Lord!”
Hank pays three pennies for his breakfast, not yet accustomed to the fact that three pennies were enough to feed dozens of people at that time (a quip on inflation) [ Hank has a new mint that is trickling currency into the kingdom to introduce a cash economy. In gratitude, the farmers give Hank a piece of flint and some steel, which he uses to light his pipe. When he takes his first puffs, the clouds of smoke coming out of his knight's helmet is enough to send everyone scattering into the woods, and Sandy even falls off the horse in a swoon. Hank realizes that the fear and awe inspired by his pipe will be a handy weapon against any giant or ogre that would come their way. The next day, as he and Sandy cross a great meadow, six knights and their squires begin to charge Hank all at once. He lights his pipe and sends them fleeing in the opposite direction. When they stop 300 yards away, Hank thinks his plan has backfired and is sure that they will return for him. He tells Sandy that they have to flee as fast as they can, but she refuses. The girl tells him that the knights are afraid and waiting to yield themselves to him. Then Sandy, without any hesitation, walks to the knights herself and with grand words and gestures, bids them to appear before Arthur's court to yield themselves as The Boss's knights in two days' time.
Chapter 15 Sandy's Tale
As Hank and Sandy ride along, she tries to tell him the identity of the six knights he just vanquished. But her tale is so long and convoluted that Hank falls asleep between chapters, drops the thread of her story and constantly interrupts to reform her grammar. "The truth is," he tells Sandy, "these archaics are a little too simple; the vocabulary is too limited, and so, the descriptions suffer in the matter of variety . . . in fact, the fights are all alike."
Hank loses himself in his thoughts about his lost love, a fifteen-year-old telephone operator ("hello girl") whom he used to call up just to hear her voice. He meanders sadly through memories of his own century and through his beliefs about nobility and equality. As the sun sets, they come upon a massive castle and try to find out whose it is.
Analysis:
Hank's criticism of the nobility never changes in its tone or tenor or its object; it becomes repetitive quite early. Again he cites the poor manners and lack of virtues of noblewomen, saying that the humblest telephone operator could teach them courtesy. He finds a sardonic restatement of his belief that noblemen are useless: "a jackass is useful because he is a jackass; a nobleman is not useful because he is a jackass."
10/23/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters VI – X
Quiz:
1) Who told the Yankee the correct date?
The monk at the execution
2) After becoming the King’s minister, what does the Yankee do for another “miracle”?
Blow up Merlin’s tower
3) Who first gave the Yankee the title “The Boss”?
A blacksmith
4) What is the first thing the Yankee establishes?
A patent office
5) Who challenges the Yankee to a fight?
Sir Sagramore
Chapter 6 The Eclipse
Hank is sure that his threat has made such a considerable impression on everyone that he will negotiate his freedom in no time. The dungeon door opens, and men-at-arms announce that he is to come, for the stake is ready. Hank is led startled out of his cell as he demands why his execution has been moved up a day. Clarence gives him a wink and whispers that he set up a ruse by telling the king that Hank's powers were still growing to their full strength and that executing him on the twentieth was a sure way of circumventing the calamity. This lie was meant to free Hank early: he would perform some smaller magical trick, intimidate the court and be set free. Of course, Hank is in despair and doesn't even have the heart to tell Clarence that his trick would spell doom for the poor Yankee.
As Arthur's men finish tying Hank to the stake and a priest intones his last rites, the assembly freezes in terror as a solar eclipse begins across the edge of the sun. Hank takes immediate advantage of the moment and raises his hand to the sky, and declares that if any man move, he will consume everyone present fire and brimstone. He negotiates terms with the King, promising that he will not blot out the sun eternally provided that he be made the King's executive and that he be given 1 percent of the increase of the annual revenue thereafter. The King agrees to Hank's terms and orders him to be released. Hank plays his hand for all its worth and delays until the eclipse has become total before grandly declaring, "Let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!"
When the sun's disk appears from the other side of the black shadow, the entire crowd cheers for joy and rushes Hank with blessings and gratitude.
Analysis:
We get here a taste for the Yankee's sense of showmanship, which emerges as a very important part of his character. Even in dire and life threatening situations, Hank never loses a sense of flair, always maximizing a dramatic effect when he gets the chance. While this element of Hank's character adds to the brand of humor Twain sells in his book, there is something also very telling about the way Twain has chosen to characterize his nineteenth century man: showy and shrewd, a PT Barnum type character who knows how to play a crowd.
Chapter 7 Merlin's Tower
Hank loses no time in setting about his business. He sadly notes of all of the nineteenth comforts he lacks in his sixth century surroundings, from matches and soap to posters (chromos) and coffee and tea. Furthermore, he realizes that since the eclipse and his sudden rise to power, the masses have been eager to see him perform another miracle, and that Merlin has been spreading rumors that Hank "is a humbug." So Hank takes Clarence into his confidence and with him, sets up a new "miracle. " They create a few barrels of blasting powder, planting charges in Merlin's tower that will be sparked off by a lightning rod. Hank has Merlin arrested as he waits for the appropriate storm to come along. When the moment does arrive, he summons Merlin and challenges him to try to ward off the disaster. Merlin's enchantments and imprecations are to no avail; a lightning bolt blasts his tower into a fiery inferno of broken brick and mortar. This new miracle is quite effective: it firmly buries Merlin's reputation and sets up Hank as the undisputed wizard of England. As Hank says, "Merlin's stock was flat."
Chapter 8 The Boss
Hank considers his new position in the land as something entirely unprecedented and never seen again. Here, thirteen centuries before his time, he is a colossal power, holding knowledge that no one else will approach for a millennium; he considers himself equal, if not greater in power to the King. Hank muses on the power of the Church, of which he is wary, and is critical of the fact that despite his great 'miracles' and high position as Arthur's right-hand man, people do not give him respect because he is not a titled nobleman. Hank, and thus, Twain, issue invective against the British system of hereditary nobility. Though Hank could easily obtain a title, his Yankee sensibilities reject the notion. Instead he takes on a title given to him while passing through a blacksmith's shop‹The Boss. He likes the idea, and from then on is officially known to the English people as The Boss.
Analysis:
Hank considers the English people of Arthur's time as a collective bunch of children‹simple, quaint, trustful‹"nothing but rabbits." Although he sees himself as a grown man in a great playpen, he must endure the fact that as a person without rank, he is not entitled to the respect and honor he feels he deserves.
Furthermore, in this country of 'rabbits' there are serious social problems to overcome. As he sees it, most of the inhabitants are slaves, "in name or in fact," living with misery and inherited attitudes of servility. Twain's Yankee constantly considers the power of "inherited ideas" on the outcome of a person and if people can change their ways once taught how.
Twain is merciless on the Roman Catholic Church, claiming it as "awful power" that had "converted a nation of men to a nation of worms." In fact, he attributes the social stratification of Europe and all of its injustices to the Church's apparatuses and doctrines, which bolstered the "divine right of kings" and the meek humility of the masses to their betters. Twain makes this very clear attack connect to the modern Europe, whose societies still retained the residual effects of this legacy. For Hank and Twain, there is nothing more ridiculous than the idea that a man would bow and scrape before another on account of his title or rank‹meaningless things in political and human terms.
Chapter 9 The Tournament
Among the very first acts of office that Hank performs as the Boss is to create a patent office to register all of his future work in the country. While he is busy planning how he will run the country, King Arthur and his Knights of the Table Round are busy having tournaments every week. Interested in how he might improve this too, Hank sets about attending and studying the tournaments.
During a particularly long tournament, Hank sends "an intelligent priest from the Department of Public Morals and Agriculture" to report on the proceedings. He is trying to train up journalists for the future time when the country would be ready to circulate newspapers. While Hank himself was reviewing the lists, Sir Dinadan the humorist enters his box and begins to tell him his humorless, sour, boring jokes, exasperating Hank to his wit's end. When Sir Dinadan finally leaves to take his place at the end of the lists, Hank mutters, "I hope to gracious he's killed," just as Sir Sagramore le Desirous is slammed against his box in heated combat with Sir Gareth. The hotblooded knight takes the comment as an insult, and challenges Hank to armed combat at a date to be set three or four years later‹after Sir Sagramore comes back from hunting for the Holy Grail.
Analysis:
As an institution of Arthurian chivalry, the tournament becomes an object of ridicule for Twain's satiric pen. Hank describes the tournament as a type of weekly get-together, like a game of croquet or bridge. As an idea, tournaments are at heart illogical displays of testosterone driven foolhardiness; Hank calls them "ridiculous and picturesque human bullfights," and Hank's practical mind sets to work on how to improve the practice. Twain also takes a shot at the famed search for the Holy Grail, saying that the knights who searched for it had no expectation of finding it, and wouldn't know what to do if they found it‹it is a type of endless and useless expedition, "the Northwest Passage of that day, that was all."
Chapter 10 Beginnings of Civilization
The terms are agreeable to Hank, who projects that in about four years' time he will have his government machinery running smoothly enough that Sir Sagramore's challenge should not seriously affect his plans. In this short amount of time, Hank has already set up the embryonic stages of many industries and has been clandestinely recruiting the best young minds of the country to his service. He has started public schools and Sunday schools (of varying Protestant denominations) to educate his new nation, and has agents roaming the countryside, battling superstition, undermining old values and recruiting more people to the nineteenth century way of life. Hank has done all of this very quietly, even creating an ultra secret West Point military academy. His gravest concern is the watchful eye of the Roman Catholic Church while he sets his infrastructure in place, taking care to lay his telephone and telegraph wires by night, to hide his factories and academies. Hank has decided to set everything up and introduce change gradually, rather than unveiling his grand plan all at once. Before he knows it, the term of his delay has come to an end, and the King advises him to start off into the countryside to seek adventures and thus build his knightly reputation before fighting with Sir Sagramore.
Analysis:
Hank's full intent is to subvert the current order and institute the type of civilization he deems best, one that closely resembles nineteenth century America. He believes that "unlimited power is the right thing when it is in safe hands," and since it is his hands that he considers the safest, he sets to work re-programming the people by degrees. Hank sets up Protestant Sunday schools of various denominations and cites his decision in political, rather than spiritual terms. A united church, he argues always gets "into the wrong hands" and stifles liberty. In his system, having numerous sects of Christianity keeps a balance of power that allows people free exercise of their religious impulses while keeping the threat of an institutional church. For all of Hank's talk of freedom and liberty, however, one becomes slightly uneasy at his tendency to believe that he has all of the solutions and has the mandate to institute them; the talk echoes that of most modern dictators, who, with love for country and people, vie for total control of a system in order to reform it according to their vision.
Assignment: Read chapters XI - XV
10/22/09
ACYIKAC
Chapters I – V (discuss)
Chapter 1 Camelot
Hank does not even recognize the name, "Camelot"; he doesn't note its connection to King Arthur and instead thinks it to be the name of the asylum. As the knight and prisoner move along, the Hank notices that it is he who seems to be the one who is oddly out of place; however, he concludes that everyone he sees must also be mental patients. The pair walks through a village and Hank is appalled to see what he describes as "wretched" thatched cabins with dirty and meager people with matted hair staring out at him. He notes that all are "no better than slaves" and some even have shackles about their necks and hands. Naked children play in the streets along with the swine and dogs who wallow there. They hear trumpet blasts and a gorgeous cavalcade cuts through the town, seemingly oblivious to the poverty and misery there. The knight and Hank merge into the procession and follow it into the fortress court, where courtiers in lavish costumes range about in happy bustle and activity.
Chapter 2 King Arthur's Court
Hank meets a young page named Clarence who tells him that he is in King Arthur's court and that the year is 528. Hank realizes that something has gone terribly wrong, but his reason refuses to believe that he has been transposed 1300 years before his birth. He knows that if what Clarence says is true, there should be a total eclipse of the sun in exactly two days time, and he resolves to wait out that period to test the truth. He also pulls his wits together and resolves to either take over and run Camelot should it prove to be an asylum or take over and run Camelot and England should it prove to be the year 528.
Clarence tells Hank that he must soon report to Sir Kay the Seneschal, his captor, that he might be displayed before the court as Kay tells the story of how he defeated and captured the strange Yankee. He is escorted to the great hall containing a round table as large as a circus ring, seating knights arrayed in fabulous colors and plumed hats. All of these knights drink and feast while recounting to the king their exploits. The Yankee stands with the other prisoners, many of whom are maimed and gory, as one by one, the knights describe how they vanquished their captives.
Chapter 3 Knights of the Table Round
Hank describes the proceedings of the Round Table: each knight brings forth his elaborate tale of valor and adventure before the reveling crew. Six or eight knights come forward before the Table and yield themselves as prisoners of Kay the Seneschal, who supposedly vanquished them single-handedly. Everyone becomes incredulous at this point and Queen Guenevere urges Kay to tell the truth, and he does, giving an exaggerated account of the 'Malory excerpt' found in a the first chapter. The knights there are Launcelot's prisoners in Kay's name. Clarence whispers to Hank that the tale would have been twice as exaggerated had Kay drunk another flask of wine. As soon as Kay finishes with his tale, Clarence looks up with alarm as the crowd rolls its eyes in anticipation of some great boredom. It is Merlin, who stands to tell the same tale that he has told hundreds of times. Clarence curses and foams as people prepare to doze off. Merlin tells of his quest to obtain a magical sword for Arthur from the Lady of the Lake. All around him "soft snoring" rises as he tells how Arthur grasps the magical sword from the middle of the lake and of the value of its scabbard, which is able to keep its wearer from injury.
Chapter 4 Sir Dinadan the Humorist
Hank is actually quite charmed by the tale; however, he has only heard it once while everyone has heard it for the thousandth time. A knight named Sir Dinadan the Humorist awakes and ties tin mugs to a dog's tale, laughing hardest at his own practical joke while telling other jokes that Hank claims were as "poor, flat, [and] worm eaten” then as they would be thirteen hundred years later.
Finally, Kay the Seneschal stands up and fabricates an account of how he encountered and captured Hank, whom he describes as a ‘ horrible sky-towering monster” and a ‘tusked, taloned, man-devouring ogre.’ Hank is amazed that the crowd doesn’t seem to notice the disparity between these descriptions and his real-life presence, and he is even more shocked at Kay’s matter of fact conclusion: Hank is to be executed at noon on the twenty-first.
They strip Hank of his nineteenth century clothes because they were believed to be enchanted, and he stands naked in front of the court ladies, who regard him as “unconcernedly as if he had been a cabbage.” As he contemplates the crude morals of the gentry, he is carried off to a dark dungeon cell to eat and sleep with rats.
Chapter 5 An Inspiration
Hank awakes to his dreary cell just as Clarence comes to see him. Hank pleads with Clarence to help him escape, but Clarence shrinks from the idea in fear‹not because of the guards, but because of the enchantment that he believes looms over the dungeons: it is said Merlin has cast a spell over the prison, and no man dare escape lest he fall prey to whatever disaster Merlin has put in store.
The powerful display of superstition gives Hank an idea. He tells Clarence to tell the King that he too, is a great magician, capable of bringing calamity on them all if he is not released. The terrified boy goes off to give his grave message.
Meanwhile, Hank racks his brains for the miracle he is to produce when he hits upon the very thing: since he is to be hanged on the 21st, the date of the solar eclipse, he will threaten to blacken out the sun.
Chapter 6 The Eclipse
Hank is sure that his threat has made such a considerable impression on everyone that he will negotiate his freedom in no time. The dungeon door opens, and men-at-arms announce that he is to come, for the stake is ready. Hank is led startled out of his cell as he demands why his execution has been moved up a day. Clarence gives him a wink and whispers that he set up a ruse by telling the king that Hank’s powers were still growing to their full strength and that executing him on the twentieth was a sure way of circumventing the calamity. This lie was meant to free Hank early: he would perform some smaller magical trick, intimidate the court and be set free. Of course, Hank is in despair and doesn’t even have the heart to tell Clarence that his trick would spell doom for the poor Yankee.
As Arthur’s men finish tying Hank to the stake and a priest intones his last rites, the assembly freezes in terror as a solar eclipse begins across the edge of the sun. Hank takes immediate advantage of the moment and raises his hand to the sky, and declares that if any man move, he will consume everyone present fire and brimstone. He negotiates terms with the King, promising that he will not blot out the sun eternally provided that he be made the King’s executive and that he be given 1 percent of the increase of the annual revenue thereafter. The King agrees to Hank’s terms and orders him to be released. Hank plays his hand for all its worth and delays until the eclipse has become total before grandly declaring, “Let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!”
When the sun’s disk appears from the other side of the black shadow, the entire crowd cheers for joy and rushes Hank with blessings and gratitude.
10/21/09
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Introduction
· What do you know about King Arthur? (discuss)
o Why was he so revered in American society?
· What do you think about the concept of time travel? (discuss)
· What is satire? (read definition)
· What do you know about Mark Twain?
o Read bio.
o Discuss Twain’s distrust of technology.
· Read intro of ACYIKAC on pages ix – xi.
· Discuss meaning of the term “Yankee”.
· Read “Preface” and “A Word of Explanation” (xv – 7) aloud.
· How is a book about an American in an ancient British society going to relate to our American values? (discuss)
Assignment: Hand out books & reading schedule.
10/20/09: Great Gatsby Test
10/19/09: Test Review (Test Tuesday)
10/16/09
The Great Gatsby
Choose two of the following topics and write a five-paragraph essay for each.
1. Women in the novel. Has Fitzgerald been fair in his development of female characters?
Review actions, speeches and remarks made about them (use page numbers for your examples). Should the novel have featured at least one ’sympathetic heroine’, or is there at least one who is?
2. Evaluate the structure of the novel. Could there have been more elaborate development
of some of the characters? Is Nick a reasonable narrator? What contrast is there to provide sharp focus on the more important elements of plot, setting and character? Use page numbers for your examples.
3. Expressionism in the novel. How are colors, names, and other symbolic ideas
presented? Do they wear thin or are they successful? Choose at least three items to write about, using page numbers for your examples.
10/15/09
The Great Gatsby – chs. 8-9
Chapter Eight
That night, Nick finds himself unable to sleep, since the terrible events of the day have greatly unsettled him. Wracked by anxiety, he hurries to Gatsby’s mansion shortly before dawn. He advises Gatsby to leave Long Island until the scandal of Myrtle’s death has quieted down. Gatsby refuses, as he cannot bring himself to leave Daisy: he tells Nick that he spent the entire night in front of the Buchanans’ mansion, just to ensure that Daisy was safe. He tells Nick that Tom did not try to harm her, and that Daisy did not come out to meet him, though he was standing on her lawn in full moonlight.
Gatsby, in his misery, tells Nick the story of his first meeting with Daisy. He does so even though it patently gives the lie to his earlier account of his past. Gatsby and Daisy first met in Louisville in 1917; Gatsby was instantly smitten with her wealth, her beauty, and her youthful innocence. Realizing that Daisy would spurn him if she knew of his poverty, Gatsby determined to lie to her about his past and his circumstances. Before he left for the war, Daisy promised to wait for him; the two then slept together, as though to seal their pact. Of course, Daisy did not wait; she married Tom, who was her social equal and the choice of her parents.
Realizing that it has grown late, Nick says goodbye to Gatsby. As he is walking away, he turns back and shouts that Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch [of the Buchanans and their East Egg friends] put together.”
The scene shifts from West Egg to the valley of ashes, where George Wilson has sought refuge with Michaelis. It is from this latter that Nick later learns what happened in the aftermath of Myrtle’s death. George Wilson tells Michaelis that he confronted Myrtle with the evidence of her affair and told her that, though she could conceal her sin from her husband, she could not hide it from the eyes of God. As the sun rises over the valley of ashes, Wilson is suddenly transfixed by the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg; he mistakes them for the eyes of God. Wilson assumes that the driver of the fatal car was Myrtle’s lover, and decides to punish this man for his sins.
He seeks out Tom Buchanan, in the hope that Tom will know the driver’s identity. Tom tells him that Gatsby was the driver. Wilson drives to Gatsby’s mansion; there, he finds Gatsby floating in his pool, staring contemplatively at the sky. Wilson shoots Gatsby, and then turns the gun on himself.
It is Nick who finds Gatsby’s body. He reflects that Gatsby died utterly disillusioned, having lost, in rapid succession, his lover and his dreams.
Analysis
Nick gives the novel’s final appraisal of Gatsby when he asserts that Gatsby is “worth the whole damn bunch of them.” Despite the ambivalence he feels toward Gatsby’s criminal past and nouveau riche affectations, Nick cannot help but admire him for his essential nobility. Though he disapproved of Gatsby “from beginning to end,” Nick is still able to recognize him as a visionary, a man capable of grand passion and great dreams. He represents an ideal that has grown exceedingly rare in the 1920s, which Nick (along with Fitzgerald) regards as an age of cynicism, decadence, and cruelty.
Nick, in his reflections on Gatsby’s life, suggests that Gatsby’s great mistake was in loving Daisy: he thus chose an inferior object upon which to focus his almost mystical capacity for dreaming. Just as the American Dream itself has degenerated into the crass pursuit of material wealth, Gatsby, too, strives only for wealth once he has fallen in love with Daisy, whose trivial, limited imagination can conceive of nothing greater. It is significant that Gatsby is not murdered for his criminal connections, but rather for his unswerving devotion to Daisy; it blinds him to all else even to his own safety. As Nick writes, Gatsby thus “[pays] a high price for living too long with a single dream.”
Up to the moment of his death, Gatsby cannot accept that this dream is over: he continues to insist that Daisy may still come to him, though it is clear to everyone including the reader that she is bound indissolubly to Tom. Gatsby’s death thus seems almost inevitable, given that a dreamer cannot exist without his dreams; through Daisy’s betrayal, he effectively loses his reason for living.
Wilson seems to be Gatsby’s grim double in Chapter VIII, and represents the more menacing aspects of a capacity for visionary dreaming. Like Gatsby, he fundamentally alters the course of his life by attaching symbolic significance to something that is, in and of itself, meaningless; for Gatsby, it is Daisy and her green light, for Wilson, it is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Both men are destroyed by their love for women who love the brutal Tom Buchanan; both are consumed with longing for something greater than themselves. While Gatsby is a “successful” American dreamer (at least insofar as he has realized his dreams of wealth), Wilson exemplifies the fate of the failed dreamer, whose poverty has deprived him of even his ability to hope.
Gatsby’s death takes place on the first day of autumn, when a chill has begun to creep into the air. His decision to use his pool is in defiance of the change of seasons, and represents yet another instance of Gatsby’s unwillingness to accept the passage of time. The summer is, for him, equivalent to his reunion with Daisy; the end of the summer heralds the end of their romance
Chapter Nine
Like insects, reporters and gossipmongers swarm around Gatsby’s mansion after his death. They immediately busy themselves with spreading grotesquely exaggerated stories about his murder, his life, and his relationships. Nick tries to give Gatsby a funeral as grand as his parties, but finds that Gatsby’s enormous circle of acquaintances has suddenly evaporated. Many like Tom and Daisy Buchanan have simply skipped town, while others including Meyer Wolfsheim and Kilpspringer flatly refuse to attend the funeral.
Nick tracks down Gatsby’s father, Henry C. Gatz, a solemn old man left helpless and distraught by the death of his son. Gatz shows Nick a book in which the young Gatsby kept a self-improvement schedule; nearly every minute of his day was meticulously planned. The only other attendee at Gatsby’s funeral is Owl Eyes, the melancholy drunk who was so astonished by Gatsby’s library.
Nick meets with Jordan Baker, who recalls their conversation about how bad drivers are only dangerous when two of them meet. She tells Nick that she and he are both “bad drivers,” and are therefore a treacherous combination. When Nick ends their affair, she suddenly claims to be engaged to another man.
Months later, Nick runs into Tom Buchanan on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Tom admits that it was he who sent Wilson to Gatsby’s; he shows no remorse, however, and says that Gatsby deserved to die. Nick reflects that Tom and Daisy are capable only of cruelty and destruction; they are kept safe from the consequences of their actions by their fortress of wealth and privilege.
Nick, repulsed by the shallow and brutal East, determines to return to the Midwest. He reflects that he, the Buchanans, Gatsby, and Jordan are all Westerners who came east; perhaps they all possess some deficiency which makes them unsuitable to Eastern life. After Gatsby’s death, the East is haunted, grotesque; the Midwest, by contrast, now seems as idyllic as a scene on a Christmas card.
Staring at the moon on his last night in West Egg, Nick imagines a primeval America an America made for dreamers like Gatsby. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock is like the green continent of America, beckoning its legions of dreamers. Gatsby, for all his greatness, failed to realize that the American Dream was already dead when he began to dream it: his goals, the pursuit of wealth and status, had long since become empty and meaningless. Nick muses that contemporary Americans are “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”; any attempt to progress, to move forward, is ultimately futile.
Analysis
The final line of The Great Gatsby is one of the most famous in American literature, and serves as a sort of epitaph for both Gatsby and the novel as a whole.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Here, Nick reveals Gatsby’s lifelong quest to transcend his past as ultimately futile. In comparing this backward-driving force to the current of a river, Fitzgerald presents it as both inexorable and, in some sense, naturally determined: it is the inescapable lot of humanity to move backward. Therefore, any attempt at progress is only a conceit, the result of hubris and outsize ambition.
Nick, in reflecting on America as a whole, links its fate to Gatsby’s. America, according to Fitzgerald, was founded on the ideals of progress and equality. The America envisioned by its founders was a land made for men like Gatsby: it was intended as a place where visionary dreamers could thrive. Instead, people like Tom and Daisy Buchanan have recreated the grotesqueries and excesses of the European aristocracy in the New World. Gatsby, for all his wealth and greatness, could not become a part of their world; his noble attempt to engineer his own destiny was sabotaged by their cruelty and by the stunted quality of their imaginations. Fitzgerald’s America is emphatically not a place where anything is possible: just as America has failed to transcend its European origins, Gatsby, too, cannot overcome the circumstances of his upbringing.
Though Nick worships Gatsby’s courage and capacity for self-reinvention, he cannot approve of his dishonesty and his criminal dealings. Gatsby, both while he is alive and after his death, poses an insoluble challenge to Nick’s customary ways of thinking about the world. Nick firmly believes that the past determines who we are: he suggests that he, and all the novel’s characters, are fundamentally Westerners, and thus intrinsically unsuited to life in the East. The West, though it was once emblematic of the American desire for progress, is presented in the novel’s final pages as the seat of traditional morality an idyllic heartland, in stark contrast to the greed and depravity of the East.
It is important to note that the Buchanans lived in East Egg, and Gatsby in West Egg; therefore, in gazing at the green light on Daisy’s dock, Gatsby was looking East. The green light, like the green land of America itself, was once a symbol of hope; now, the original ideals of the American dream have deteriorated into the crass pursuit of wealth. In committing his extraordinary capacity for dreaming to his love for Daisy, Gatsby, too, devoted himself to nothing more than material gain. In Fitzgerald’s grim version of the Roaring Twenties, Gatsby’s ruin both mirrors and prefigures the ruin of America itself.
10/15/09
The Great Gatsby: Post-reading questions
Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.
Ch. 1
1. How is Gatsby introduced as a character?
2. What is the difference between East Egg and West Egg?
3. Describe the Buchanans, as well as Jordan Baker, in detail.
Would you want to meet them?
4. How is Gatsby physically introduced?
5. Does Daisy know of her husband’s affair? Explain your opinion.
Ch. 2
1. Why did the narrator go to New York with Tom?
2. Why are Tom and Myrtle attracted to one another?
Ch. 3
1. What is Nick’s opinion of the opulence of Gatsby’s parties?
2. Does the man in the library remind you of someone mentioned previously in the novel?
3. How long would you stay at this party? Why?
4. How is the behavior of people at this party similar to that of the people at McKees
party earlier? What observations, if any, do you have about the people of the ‘Jazz Age’?
Ch. 4
1. Why has Fitzgerald written a list of the names of some of the partygoers?
2. Why is Nick so “overwhelmed” by Gatsby’s account of himself?
3. a) What are the highlights of Daisy’s background as revealed by Jordan to Nick?
b) Describe Daisy’s previous encounter with Gatsby.
4. What realization has Nick come to about Gatsby’s arrival in the neighborhood and how
did Nick come to that realization?
Ch. 5
1. Write a note on each of the following direct quotations. Include the meaning of the quotation in terms of the development of the novel’s theme, plot or character, as well as any personal reaction you may have to it.
a) “You don’t make much money, do you?”
b) “Who is ‘Tom’”?
c) “Gatsby, pale as death…was standing…glaring tragically into my eyes.”
d) “She’s embarrassed?”
e) “I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter.”
f) “‘They’re such beautiful shirts!’ she sobbed”
g) “His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one”
h) “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly
heart.”
Ch. 6
1. How is Nick’s relationship with Jordan progressing?
2. Why does the author choose this point at which to reveal the facts about Gatsby?
What are these facts?
3. Why is Gatsby “catching his breath?
Ch. 7
1. Why did Gatsby dismiss his servants?
2. What does Gatsby mean by “her voice is full of money”?
3. What was on Gatsby’s mind, in your opinion, when Nick describes him as having “a
definitely unfamiliar and vaguely recognizable” look on his face?
4. What is ironic about Tom’s situation now?
6. Do you have any sympathy for Tom after the truth is heard? Why or why not?
7. Do you have any sympathy for Gatsby at this point? Explain.
8. Do you have any sympathy for Daisy?
9. How does Michaelis’ report speed up the plot?
10. How has Tom “set things up”?
11. Would it have changed matters at all for Nick to tell Gatsby what he knew about Tom
and Myrtle?
12. Explain the meaning of the last line in this chapter.
13. What story does Gatsby reveal to Nick in this chapter? Why did the reader hear about
it earlier?
14. In Nick’s assessment, what crucial error of judgment was made by Gatsby?
15. Is there a realistic explanation as to what caused Gatsby to become as deluded about
Daisy as he did?
16. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch of them put together”, says Nick to Gatsby. Do
you agree? Explain your answer.
Ch. 8
1. Make a list of the matters that are resolved for you in this chapter.
Include elements of plot, your suspicions about various characters (including
Nick), and your final assessment of Gatsby.
10/14/09
The Great Gatsby
· Quiz on Chapter 7.
10/13/09
The Great Gatsby
Quiz over chapter 4 (concerns Jordan’s story about Daisy and Gatsby as she relates it to Nick).
1. Where did Daisy grow up?
2. What did Daisy do on her wedding day that almost stopped the wedding?
3. What did Tom do immediately after returning from their honeymoon?
4. Who was the Army officer that Jordan saw in Daisy’s car the year before she got married?
5. Why did Gatsby buy the house on West Egg?
Read chapters 5 and 6 aloud.
Chapter Five:
One night, Gatsby waylays Nick and nervously asks him if he would like to take a swim in his pool; when Nick demurs, he offers him a trip to Coney Island. Nick, initially baffled by Gatsby’s solicitousness, realizes that he is anxiously waiting for Nick to arrange his meeting with Daisy. Nick agrees to do so. Gatsby, almost wild with joy, responds by offering him a job, a “confidential sort of thing,” and assures Nick that he will not have to work with Meyer Wolfsheim. Nick is somewhat insulted that Gatsby wishes to reimburse him for his help, and so declines Gatsby’s offer.
It rains on the day that Gatsby and Daisy are to meet, and Gatsby becomes extremely apprehensive. The meeting takes place at Nick’s house and, initially, their conversation is stilted and awkward. They are all inexplicably embarrassed; when Gatsby clumsily knocks over a clock, Nick tells him that he’s behaving like a little boy. Nick leaves the couple alone for a few minutes; when he returns, they seem luminously happy, as though they have just concluded an embrace. There are tears of happiness on Daisy’s cheeks.
They make their way over to Gatsby’s mansion, of which Gatsby proceeds to give them a carefully rehearsed tour. Gatsby shows Daisy newspaper clippings detailing his exploits. She is overwhelmed by them, and by the opulence of his possessions; when he shows her his vast collection of imported shirts, she begins to weep tears of joy. Nick wonders whether Gatsby is disappointed with Daisy; it seems that he has made of her a goddess, and though Daisy herself is alluring she cannot possibly live up to so grandiose an ideal.
Gatsby has Ewing Klipspringer, a mysterious man who seems to live at his mansion, play “Ain’t We Got Fun” (a popular song of the time) for himself and Daisy:
In the morning, in the evening
Ain’t we got fun!
Got no money, but oh, honey
Ain’t we got fun!
As Klipspringer plays, Gatsby and Daisy draw closer and closer together; Nick, realizing that his presence has become superfluous, quietly leaves.
Analysis:
The exchange between Nick and Gatsby that opens this chapter highlights the uncertainty at the heart of their relationship: is Gatsby’s friendship with Nick merely expedient that is, is he merely using him to draw closer to Daisy or is he genuinely fond of him?
The question cannot be absolutely decided: while it becomes clear that Gatsby has great affection for Nick, it is also true that he uses his money and power as leverage in all of his personal relationships. Gatsby, in his extreme insecurity about class, cannot believe that anyone would befriend him if he did not possess a mansion and several million dollars a year. Fitzgerald seems to bitterly affirm this insecurity, given the fact that Gatsby was abandoned by Daisy because of his poverty, and remains ostracized by the East Eggers even after his success. In the world of the novel, only Nick does not make friendships based upon class.
The gross materialism of the East and West Egg milieus explains the obsessive care that Gatsby takes in his reunion with Daisy. The afternoon is give over to an ostentatious display of wealth: he shoes Daisy his extensive collection of British antiques and takes her on a tour of his wardrobe; Gatsby himself is dressed in gold and silver. His Gothic mansion is described as looking like the citadel of a feudal lord. Nearly everything in the house is imported from England (the scene in which Gatsby shows Daisy his piles of English shirts is one of the most famous scenes in American literature). Fitzgerald implies that Gatsby is attempting to live the life of a European aristocrat in the New World of America. This, Fitzgerald suggests, is a misguided anachronism: America committed itself to progress and equality in abandoning the old aristocracy. To go back to such rigidly defined class distinctions would be retrograde and barbaric as is implied by the fact that the major proponent of such ideas is Tom Buchanan, who is clearly a cretin and a brute.
This chapter presents Gatsby as a man who cannot help but live in the past: he longs to stop time, as though he and Daisy had never been separated as though she had never left him to marry Tom. During their meeting Nick remarks that he is acting like “a little boy”: in Daisy’s presence, Gatsby loses his usual debonair manner and behaves like any awkward young man in love. Gatsby himself is regressing, moving back in time, as though he were still a shy young soldier in love with a privileged debutante.
Nick describes the restless Gatsby as “running down like an over-wound clock.” It is significant that Gatsby, in his nervousness about whether Daisy’s feelings toward him have changed, knocks over Nick’s clock: this signifies both Gatsby’s consuming desire to stop time and his inability to do so.
Daisy, too, ceases to play the part of a world-weary sophisticate upon her reunion with Gatsby. She weeps when he shows her his collection of sumptuous English shirts, and seems genuinely overjoyed at his success. In short, Gatsby transforms her; she becomes almost human. Daisy is more sympathetic here than she is at any other point in the novel.
The song “Ain’t We Got Fun” is significant for a number of reasons. The opening lyrics (“In the morning/ In the evening/ Ain’t we got fun”) imply a carefree spontaneity that stands in stark contrast to the tightly-controlled quality of the lovers’ reunion. This contrast is further sharpened by the words of the next verse, which run: “Got no money/ But oh, honey/ Ain’t we got fun!” It is bitterly ironic that Gatsby and Daisy should reunite to the strains of this song, given the fact that she first rejected him for his poverty.
Chapter Six:
A reporter, inspired by the feverish gossip about Gatsby then circulating in New York, comes to West Egg in the hopes of obtaining the true story of his past from him. Though Gatsby himself turns the man away, Nick interrupts the narrative to relate Gatsby’s past the truth of which he only learned much later to the reader.
His real name is James Gatz, and he was born to an impoverished farmer in North Dakota rather than into wealth in San Francisco, as he claimed. He had his named legally changed to Jay Gatsby at the age of seventeen. Though he did attend St Olaf’s a small college in Minnesota he dropped out after two weeks, as he could not bear working as a janitor in order to pay his tuition. Gatsby’s dreams of self-improvement are only intensified by his relationship with Dan Cody, a man whom he met while working as a fisherman on Lake Superior. Cody was then fifty, a self-made millionaire who had made his fortune during the Yukon gold rush. Cody took Gatsby in and made the young man his personal assistant. On their subsequent voyages to the West Indies and the Barbary Coast, Gatsby became even more passionately covetous of wealth and privilege. When Cody died, Gatsby inherited $25,000; he was unable to claim it, however, due to the malicious intervention of Cody’s mistress, Ella Kaye. Afterward, Gatsby vowed to become a success in his own right.
Several weeks pass without Nick’s seeing Gatsby. Upon visiting Gatsby at his mansion, Nick is shocked to find Tom Buchanan there. Tom has unexpectedly stopped for a drink at Gatsby’s after an afternoon of horseback riding; he is accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Sloane, an insufferable East Egg couple who exemplify everything that is repellent about the “old rich.” Gatsby invites the group to supper, but Mrs. Sloane hastily refuses; perhaps ashamed at her own rudeness, she then half-heartedly offers Gatsby and Nick an invitation to dine at her home. Nick, recognizing the insincerity of her offer, declines; Gatsby accepts, though it is unclear whether his gesture is truly oblivious or defiant.
Tom pointedly complains about the crazy people that Daisy meets, presumably referring to Gatsby. Throughout the awkward afternoon, he is contemptuous of Gatsby particularly of his acceptance of Mrs. Sloane’s disingenuous invitation.
The following Saturday, Tom and Daisy attend one of Gatsby’s parties. Tom, predictably, is unpleasant and rude throughout the evening. After the Buchanans leave, Gatsby is crestfallen at the thought that Daisy did not have a good time; he does not yet know that Tom badly upset her by telling her that Gatsby made his fortune in bootlegging.
Nick realizes that Gatsby wants Daisy to tell Tom that she has never loved him. Nick gently informs Gatsby that he can’t ask too much of Daisy, and says, “You can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby spiritedly replies: “Of course you can!”
Analysis:
Nick begins the story of Gatsby’s past by saying that Gatsby “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.” In order to understand this statement, the reader must remember that the “Platonic conception” of a person or thing refers to that thing’s ideal form. That is, the Platonic form of an object is the perfect form of that object. Therefore, Nick is suggesting that Gatsby has modeled himself on an idealized version of “Jay Gatsby”: he is striving to be the man he envisions in his fondest dreams of himself. Gatsby is thus the novel’s representative of the American Dream, and the story of his youth borrows on one of that dream’s oldest myths: that of the self-made man. In changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby, he attempts to remake himself on his own terms; Gatsby wishes to be reborn as the aristocrat he feels himself to be.
It is significant that Gatsby leaves college because he finds his work as a janitor degrading. This seems a perverse decision, given the fact that a university education would dramatically improve his social standing. His decision to leave reveals Gatsby’s extreme sensitivity to class, and to the fact of his own poverty; from his childhood onward, he longs for wealth and perhaps more importantly for the sophistication and elegance which he imagines that wealth will lend him. His work as a janitor is a gross humiliation because it is at odds with his ideal of himself; to protect that ideal, he is willing to damage his actual circumstances.
Fitzgerald uses the character of Dan Cody to subtly suggest that the America of the 1920s is no longer a place where self-made men can thrive. Cody, like Gatsby, transcended early hardship to become a millionaire; also like Gatsby, he is remarkably generous to his friends and subordinates. Cody takes to drinking because, despite his wealth, he remains unable to carve out a place for himself in the world of 1920s America. It is important to note that Cody’s death is brought about, at least in part, through the treachery of the woman he loves; this foreshadows the circumstances of Gatsby’s death in Chapter VIII.
The painfully awkward luncheon party at Gatsby’s mansion underlines the hostility of the American 1920s toward the figure of the self-made man. Both the Sloanes and Tom Buchanan treat Gatsby with contempt and condescension, because he is not of the long-standing American upper class. Though Gatsby is fabulously wealthy perhaps wealthier than Tom himself he is still regarded as socially inferior. For Fitzgerald, nothing could be more inimical to the original ideals of America. The first Americans fought to escape the tyrannies of the European nobility; Tom Buchanan longs to reproduce them.
This chapter makes it clear that Daisy, too, is a part of the same narrow-minded aristocracy that produced her husband. For Gatsby, she became the symbol of everything that he wanted to possess: she is the epitome of wealth and sophistication. Though Gatsby loves this quality in Daisy, it is precisely because she is an aristocrat that she cannot possibly fulfill his dreams: she would never sacrifice her own class status in order to be with him. Her love for him pales in comparison to her love of privilege.
10/12/09
The Great Gatsby
Chapters 3 & 4
Ch. 3
Synopsis
· Nick meets Gatsby at one of his parties.
· Why doesn’t Gatsby introduce himself to Nick when they first sit down together? (wants to see if they will say something about him)
· Nick begins spending time with Jordan.
· What does he have to do before they can become more involved?
· (break up with girlfriend back home)
Literary Focus
· Does Nick’s first meeting with Gatsby make him more or less mysterious?
· Gatsby’s smile/artificiality (formal speech)
· Rumors about Gatsby.
· Jordan is careless in both her driving and speech.
· This prepares us for later events.
Ch. 4
Synopsis
· Nick has lunch with Gatsby in New York.
· Gatsby gives his bio? Is it all true? (doubtful)
· Nick meets Meyer Wolfsheim.
· What does this tell us about Gatsby? (shady associates)
· Revelations about Gatsby and Daisy (used to be together)
· Jordan asks Nick to invite Gatsby and Daisy for tea.
· Why doesn’t Gatsby ask Nick himself? (insecure? Aloof?)
Literary Focus
· Why the list of names of Gatsby’s summer visitors?
· Why do so many of them have tragic ends?
· Why do you think Gatsby carries “evidence” of his past?
· What is the “San Francisco/Midwest” thing all about?
· How does Jordan’s telling of the Gatsby/Daisy romance make Gatsby more real for Nick?
Read Chapters 5 and 6
10/09/09
The Great Gatsby
Chapters 1-2
Ch. 1:
· Synopsis: Meet main characters
· Tom
· Daisy
· Nick
· Jordan
· Literary Focus:
· Gatsby is a presence rather than a real person
· What is the “secret society” Tom & Daisy belong to? (cynicism, sarcasm)
· Daisy’s “thrilling” voice
· What does Fitzgerald say about the voice? (full of promise to men)
· What does “full of promise” mean?
· “single green light”
· We will see it again.
· Think about what it means to Gatsby.
Ch. 2:
· Synopsis: Meet Myrtle
· Horrible party with Myrtle’s sister & the McKees
· Literary Focus:
· “valley of ashes”
· symbolic of the wasteland America has become
· What wasteland? (vapidness of chasing money)
· “eyes of Dr. T.J. Ecleburg”
· What do they symbolize? (God?)
· Tom’s attack on Myrtle represents what? (the views he and Daisy have for the rest of the world: everyone is beneath them)
10/08/09
The Great Gatsby
· Intro: Read “1920’s Economy” (see attached)
· Things to look for as you read the novel.
· “The American Dream”
· What is it? (discuss)
· Discuss American attitudes toward wealth and poverty.
· As you read, take note of the different characters’ chasing of the American Dream.
· Parties
· Much of the action takes place at parties.
· As you read, compare the different parties and think about what the events of each reveal about the characters and participants.
· Themes
· Love
· Dreams and Aspirations (Gatsby)
· Have you ever had a dream you held on to for a long time and then had it come true?
· Is the reality as good as the dream?
· How does it feel when you don’t have a dream to pursue anymore?
· As you read, pay attention to Gatsby’s dreams, whether or not they come true, and the effect each has on him.
· Assignment: Read chapters 1 and 2.
· Vocabulary:
banns
deft
extemporize
fractious
rotogravure
supercilious
contiguous
ectoplasm
pastoral strident
09/22– 10/07/09
Reading schedule for “The Grapes of Wrath”
Tue 09/22/09 Great Depression Read chapters 1-4
Wed 09/23/09 Discuss chapters 1-4 Read chapters 5-7
Thu 09/24/09 Discuss chapters 5-7 Read chapters 8-10
Fri 09/2509 Discuss chapters 8-10 Read chapters 11-13
Mon 09/28/09 Discuss chapters 11-13 Read chapters 14-16
Tue 09/29/09 Discuss chapters 14-16 Read chapters 17-21
Wed 09/30/09 Discuss chapters 17-21 Read chapters 22-25
Thu 10/01/09 Discuss chapters 22-25 Read chapters 26-30
Fri 10/02/09 Discuss chapters 26-30 Post-Reading Questions
Mon 10/05/09 Complete Post-Reading Paragraphs Test Review
Tue 10/06/09 Test Begin Audio/Visual Interpretation Presentation
Wed 10/07/09 Audio/Visual Interpretation Presentation
You are responsible for this material whether you (or we) are in class or not..
10/07/09: GRAPES OF WRATH TEST
10/06/09
The Grapes of Wrath
Answer the following questions in paragraph form on a separate sheet of paper.
Five sentences make a paragraph. Due at end of class.
1. What is the importance of the government camp?
2. What is the meaning of the book’s title?
3. How does Rose of Sharon’s character develop throughout the novel?
4. What two major sins does Steinbeck condemn the landowners for?
5. What is the importance of the way the tractor is used in the early chapters?
6. Discuss the importance of the boxcar as both actual object and as a symbol.
7. What is the significance of Casey’s death?
8. How does Tom’s character change throughout the novel?
9. What does the word “Okie” mean, and what emotions does it reflect in both the people who use the word and those to whom it refers?
10/05/09
The Grapes of Wrath
Discussion Questions – answer in complete sentence form
1. Are we meant to conclude that Tom’s killing of the deputy is justified?
2. What makes Casy believe that “maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of”?
3. Why does Steinbeck devote a chapter to the land turtle’s progress on the highway?
4. Why does Pa yield his traditional position in the family to Ma?
5. What does Ma mean when she says, “Bearin’ an’ dyin’ is two pieces of the same thing”?
6. As Tom leaves the family, he says, “I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look”. In what sense does he mean “everywhere”?
7. Why does Steinbeck interrupt the Joads’ narrative with short chapters of commentary and description?
8. Why does Rose of Sharon smile as she feeds the starving man with milk intended for her baby?
9. What does Steinbeck mean when he writes, “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage”? (p. 477)
10. Why do different characters insist at different points in the book, “A fella got to eat”?
11. Why does the book start with drought and end with floods?
12. Is the family intact at the end of the novel?
13. Why does Uncle John set the dead baby adrift rather than bury it?
14. What is the source of Ma’s conviction that “we’re the people—we go on”?
15. Does nature function as a force for either good or evil in this book?
For Further Reflection – answer in paragraph form
1. As his land is destroyed, an anonymous tenant says, “We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change”. Is Steinbeck suggesting that a just social order is possible?
2. When the narrator says “men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread”, the implication is that this break diminishes humanity. Can spirituality be maintained with increasing automation?
3. Casy tells Tom about a prisoner whose view of history is that “ever’ time they’s a little step fo’ward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back . . . they wasn’t no waste”. Do you agree with this view?
10/05/09
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapters 27-30
Ch.27 · All about cotton picking. · “Side-meat tonight, by God! … Stick out a han’ to the little fella, he’s wore out. … The ol’ woman’ll make some nice biscuits tonight, ef she ain’t too tired.”
Ch.28 · The Joads pick cotton for a month, and every night they have meat, and the boxcar they share with another family is “almost nicer than anything we had ‘cept the gov’ment camp.”· By the time later-arrivers come they’re aristocrats. · While Ma’s cooking dinner, Ruthie brags to a girl that her brother (who’s hiding from killing a man) can whip her brother. · Ma takes food and seven dollars to Tom’s cave in the willows.· She wants him to go hundreds of miles away, but he’s decided to do what Casy did.· He remembers some scripture Casy told him once (Ecclesiastes 4). · Tom: “maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one. … I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look.”· Returning, Ma runs into a man looking for pickers and says they’ll be there in the morning. · Mr. Wainwright worries about his grown daughter and Al. · Pa thinks about the old place. Ma: “This here’s purtier—better lan’.” · Ma notes that a man lives in a jerk, a woman in flow. · Al announces he and Aggie are aiming to get married. · The families celebrate with pancakes and syrup. · They wake early for the day’s picking. · There’re so many the field’s picked clean by eleven. · It rains heavily on the way back and Rosasharn gets chilled. · Pa, Al and John fetch firewood all afternoon. It rains all night.
Ch.29 · Rain. Winter. Floods. No work. No relief. Illness. Mud. Begging. Hunger. Stealing. Sheriffs.· No work till spring. No work, no money, no food (unlike horses). · “The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last.” “…the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.” · “Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year.”
Ch.30 · After three days of rain Pa worries the creek may flood if they don’t build a bank against it.· Rosasharn’s baby comes early, so they can’t leave. · Eighteen men help Pa build a bank.· As a scream comes from the boxcar the water rises over the first thrown dirt. · They keep working on the levee through the evening and the screaming. · A falling tree wrecks the levee and all scramble for the boxcar. · Al tries the truck but it’s under water.· The baby doesn’t breathe.· As the water rises, Al suggests building a structure in the boxcar to hold things dry.· Uncle John is given the task of burying the baby. · Instead he lets it float away in the stream: “Go down in the street an’ rot an’ tell ‘em that way.” · The water rises to six inches above the floor. · All but Al, who’s staying with Aggie and their stuff, wade up to the highway and Ma spots a barn on a hill. · Inside the barn they find a man and a boy. · The man is nearly starved, couldn’t keep down bread the boy stole the day before.· After Ma makes everyone else leave, Rose of Sharon nurses the man.
10/05/09
The Grapes of Wrath
Ch. 26 Quiz:
1) Why do the Joads leave Weedpatch?
2) What crop do the Joads pick at Hooper Ranch?
3) Who does Ma say you should go to if you need help?
4) Whose skull is crushed by a man with a pick handle?
5) What does Tom do that causes the Joads to leave the ranch?
26 · One month in Weedpatch and the Joads are down to a day’s worth of grease, two of flour, and ten potatoes. · In all there’s been five days work for Tom. · Ma decides they’ll have to leave. · Al will miss his blond, Ruthie and Winfield (who’s not well) the croquet, and Tom the dances.· Going toward cotton in Tulare they have a flat tire. · A man from the Hooper Ranch east of Pixley tells them there’s work picking peaches at five cents a box.· Cops lead them past shouting men. They’re told to find House 63.· The family picked the rest of the day for a dollar and everybody’s tired. · It takes the whole dollar to buy fat, gristly hamburger, potatoes, bread and coffee. · Ma to the storekeeper: “I’m learnin’ one thing good … If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help.” · Guards complain to each other about government camps spoiling the Okies. · Tom goes to see the pickets and runs into Casy who explains they were making two and a half cents and talks about the union struggle. · Vigilantes chase them under a bridge.· Casy: “You fellas don’ know what you’re doin’. You’re helpin’ to starve kids.” His skull is crushed with a pick handle. · Tom takes the weapon and kills George. They crush his nose but he escapes back to the hut. Next morning Tom tells what happened, plans to leave, but Ma tells him to stay. · Winfield gets sick from hunger.· At night they put Tom between two mattresses in the truck and all leave the farm, heading for Highway 101. · Ma: “Gives ya funny feelin’ to be hunted like. I’m gittin’ mean.” Pa: “Ever’body’s gittin’ mean…. Down that gov’ment camp we wasn’ mean.”· They go about twenty miles and find a bunch of boxcars and a sign: COTTON PICKERS WANTED. · Tom says they should stay in a boxcar and he can hide in culvert in the brush by the creek. · Ma starts to take over as head of family· Family starts to turn on each other· Al talks about leaving all the time; Pa yells at Al for complaining.· Store at ranch has higher prices than in town.· Page 515: Who was J.P. Morgan? (owned G.E., U.S. Steel, 5000 miles of railroad)
10/02/09
24 · The camp prepares for the Saturday dance. · The Committee prepares for trouble and plans no violence. · Al tries to pick up a blond girl. · Tom kids Rosasharn about getting big, then joins Willie’s committee.· Pa debates Black Hat over becoming a twenty-cent man. · Tom and Jule watch visitors arrive.· Jule spots three troublemakers, and a kid tells Huston there’s two cars with guns. · Ma and Rosasharn sit on a bench as the band plays “Chicken Reel.” · The men capture the three troublemakers and remove them.· Deputies can enter without a warrant if there’s a riot. · They put the three over the fence. · Black Hat tells of a turkey shoot in Akron the previous March and how that put an end to being molested. · Pg. 476: Religious people complain about the dance. (don’t watch)
25 · Read Aloud· The beauty of Spring in California. · How debt chokes off the crops and the farmers. · Everything is destroyed to keep up the price. · “And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange.” “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
10/01/09
Grapes of Wrath
Quiz on chapters 19-21:
1) Who sacrifices himself for Tom?
Casey
2) What family member abandons the Joads?
Connnie
3) When they leave the Hooverville, where are the Joad’s headed?
Government camp at Weedpatch or south
4) Who wants to go to the Santa Clara Valley and come back for the family once he makes money?
Al
5) Who leaves to get drunk but is brought back by Tom?
Uncle John
Ch.19 California goes from Mexicans to American landgrabbers to businessmen. With Chinese, Japanese, Mexican and Filipino slaves the farmers grow fewer and richer. Many have never seen the farms they own. The owners hate Okies; so do the workers. Life in Hoovervilles. “Pray God some day a kid can eat. And the association of owners knew that some day the praying would stop.” · Pg. 316: What is menat by “owners followed Rome”?· Pg. 319: Food thrown away rather than given away. Why? How do we fix this problem?· Discuss “Hoovervilles”· Pg. 325: Does history have to repeat itself?
Ch.20 Granma’s corpse is left with the county in San Bernardino. They camp in a Hooverville across a bridge, where a Floyd Knowles explains the labor gimmicks, the handbills, the blacklist. Casy to Tom: “Almighty God never raised no wages.” Casy thinks of leaving, but Tom tells him to stay. Connie tells Rosasharn he’d been better of driving tractor back home. Ma cooks a stew with fifteen hungry kids looking on; she learns about the camp at Weedpatch and the Sat’dy night dance. Al helps Floyd with the valves. A woman scolds Ma for sharing the stew with her kids. Floyd thinks there’s work in Santa Clara Valley. Contractor says they need workers in Tulare County; the deputy with him says they’re gonna clean out the camp. Floyd slugs the deputy when he tries to arrest him, runs away; the deputy shoots a woman’s knuckles off; Tom kicks the deputy unconscious as Floyd runs for the willows. Casy tells Tom to hide.Casy takes the blame and rides off with the deputies. Rosasharn says Connie’s gone away. Casy’s noble act makes Uncle John get drunk.The family decides to leave before the camp gets burned. Tom goes looking for Uncle John and brings him back after knocking him out. Their truck is stopped by armed men who tell them to go to Tulare; Tom pulls off till they’re gone (they burn the camp) and he heads south on 99. · Pg. 341: Casey giving up on God.· Pg. 343: What causes Tom to think something’s going on?o (people are quiet; normally even good people will gossip)· Pg. 351: the sharing of the stew demonstrates the Joads’ generosity· Pg. 356: Al talks of leaving; how long can the family stick together?· Pg. 359: “talkin’ red” (will be more of this to come)· Pg. 363: Why would Casey sacrifice himself? (earlier conversation with Tom)· Pg. 366: Discuss attitudes about women and complainers· Pg. 372: Connie leaves· Pg. 374: Not unusual for people to leave their family under these conditions· Pg. 383: Has a different time come yet?
Ch.21 “And money that might have gone for wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.” · Pg. 386: What is the “ache of ownership”o How do the men who don’t own the land think they actually do? (credit, jobs)· Pg. 387: How do owners manage to pay such low wages?o (supply and demand)· Pg. 388: Based on Steinbeck’s novel structure, what might we see happen to the Joads in the immediate upcoming chapters?
10/01/09
Grapes of Wrath
Ch.22 Tom pulls over the speed bump into the government camp and then to Number Four Sanitary Unit. The watchman explains governance: each of five units elects a Central Committee man, and they make the laws.How they allowed preachers but no collections, and no preachers came. All sleep. Tom wakes and finds a girl nursing a baby while cooking on an iron stove. He goes with her men to find work at Mr. Thomas’ who informs them the Farmers’ Association (Bank of the West) has switched the wage from thirty cents to twenty-five (they also sent the men who burned the camp; and they’re going to the dance on Saturday). “A red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents an hour when we’re paying twenty-five.”Ruthie and Winfield discover the toilets, then show them to Ma who is embarrassed to find out she’s using the men’s and that the Ladies Committee is due. Mr. Rawley visits and has coffee. Pa, John and Al go to look for work. Rosasharn learns how to shower. Ma: “Why, I feel like people again.” Mrs. Shandry complains to Rosasharn about hug-dancin’ on Sat’dy night and that Rawley’s the devil, which he says he isn’t. The Ladies Committee arrives and show Ma the Sanitary Unit. They tell Mrs. Joyce to stop stealing toilet paper; to take money and feed her daughters cheese. Ruthie and Winfield play with Amy, but Ruthie is ostracized. The men don’t find work; John’s not looking well. Ma drives Mrs. Shandry away; while Shandry howls, the manager notes she’s not well. Ma tells John to get Pa to buy good stuff for dinner. · Discuss the camp, central community, communism/socialism· Is Steinbeck promoting socialism/communism?· Pg. 393: Watchmen says you’ll have to find out why there aren’t more places like the camp for yourself. Foreshadowing?· Pg. 402: Explains how banks and farmer’s associations run things.· Pg. 403: Conspiracy to keep wages low.· Pg. 406: workers don’t even know what communism is.o Why does Steinbeck have them not know? (makes the desire for socialism look natural)· Pg. 409: children afraid of toilets· Pg. 426: toughness of the people· Pg. 432: effects of receiving charity; still true today?· Pg. 442: for reasons we don’t know, Pa blames himself for Noah’s leaving
Ch.23 Migrant entertainment.Stories (the Indian, naked as the sun; an’ bang! an’ you spoiled sumpin better’n you). Movies. Getting drunk. Preachers. Harmonicas and guitars and fiddles. Texas boy and Cherokee girl dancing. · Different forms of entertainment and ways to occupy time.
Read chapters 24-25 in class
24 · The camp prepares for the Saturday dance. · The Committee prepares for trouble and plans no violence. · Al tries to pick up a blond girl. · Tom kids Rosasharn about getting big, then joins Willie’s committee.· Pa debates Black Hat over becoming a twenty-cent man. · Tom and Jule watch visitors arrive.· Jule spots three troublemakers, and a kid tells Huston there’s two cars with guns. · Ma and Rosasharn sit on a bench as the band plays “Chicken Reel.” · The men capture the three troublemakers and remove them.· Deputies can enter without a warrant if there’s a riot. · They put the three over the fence. · Black Hat tells of a turkey shoot in Akron the previous March and how that put an end to being molested. · Pg. 476: Religious people complain about the dance. (don’t watch)
25 · Read Aloud· The beauty of Spring in California. · How debt chokes off the crops and the farmers. · Everything is destroyed to keep up the price. · “And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange.” “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
09/30/09
Grapes of Wrath
17 “In the daylight they scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water.” The structure and function of the moving campsite society. · Picture of insects crawling across the land.· Why do the families group together? (safety in numbers; misery loves company)· Page 265: What is Steinbeck’s message when the families make their own rules? (people left alone will normally do what is right) Do you agree?
18 They drive through the rest of New Mexico and Arizona (driving all night) and arrive at the Colorado River by dawn. At Needles the men take off their clothes and bathe in the river, joined by a father and son who’re going back to the panhandle. He tells how the land is already owned and not worked, how sheriffs push you around, and people call you Okie. How a newspaperman with a million acres is afraid of dying. In the shade Noah tells Tom he’s going downriver to stay. A Jehovite wants to hold a meeting in Granma’s tent, to see her on her way to Jesus, but Ma says no. A sheriff tells Ma he’ll run them out if they’re there tomorrow; she runs him off with an iron pan. Wilson announces they’re not going on (Sairy’s deathly ill). Around four the Joads start. The Needles gas station attendant tells them he wouldn’t have the nerve to cross desert in their Jalopy, then tells his helper: “Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain’t human.” Around midnight, near Daggett, is the agricultural inspection. Ma say’s Granma’s real sick so they are allowed to push on. They hit Mojave at dawn. They go through Tehachapi Pass and see the valley. Pa: “I never knowed there was anything like her.” Ma: “Thank God! The fambly’s here.” She tells them Granma died before the inspection stop. They drive on down into the valley.· Page 313: Tom talks about what Granpa and Granma would have seen if they got to the valley and the only ones who really see it are Ruthie and Winfield. What does he mean?· Page 314: Tom laughs: Hope. It’s amazing how strong hope can be.
09/03/09
Grapes of Wrath: chapters 14-16
Ch. 14 · “The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunderstorm.” · … If from “I have a little food” plus “I have none” the sum is “We have a little food”, the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. … · “This is the thing to bomb.” · Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes. · Chapter discusses reasons for revolution· America and Soviet Union· Could revolution happen in America again?
Ch. 15 · The truck stop hamburger stand.· Fat man and his wife on the way to Beverly-Wilshire Hotel and the Pacific Ocean stop by (“shitheels”). · Then two truckers. · Family gets a 15-cent loaf of bread for 10 cents and nickel-a-piece candy two-for-a-penny. · The truckers leave two half dollars for two ten-cents cups of Java. · Mae: “Truck drivers … an’ after them shitheels.” · Page 211: disdain of business, not a flattering description Is it true? Does it have to be the case for all businesses?· Page 214: opinion of money. Can’t usually see it work.· Sympathetic diner has his slots rigged· Why did truckers leave such a large tip?
Ch. 16 · Across the panhandle, stop overnight west of Amarillo, and into New Mexico. · Rosasharn says she and Connie plan to live in town. He’ll learn radio.· Burned out con-rod bearing. · Tom suggests he and Casy stay behind.· Ma grabs a jack handle to fight Pa with: “I ain’t a-gonna go.”· The truck goes on to find a campsite. · Tom works on the car, cuts his hand, covers it with piss-mud. · Casy philosophizes about mass movement. · Al arrives and says Granma’s gone nuts. · Back in Santa Rosa a one-eyed junkyard man who hates his boss helps Al and Tom get the part they need. · They return to Casy and fix the Dodge with a flashlight from the man. · The campsite owner won’t let them stay. · A ragged man who’s been to California and is going home to starve tells them all about labor contractors and about how his wife and two kids died out there.· As Tom, Casy and Uncle John go back to the Dodge Tom throws a clod that busts the proprietor’s kerosene lamp. · Page 222: Al steals a fence rail. Why does Steinbeck have him steal it instead of finding it? (frustration and need of trip; good people forced to steal)· Page 223: Rose is paranoid about baby· Page 224: Rose speaks of the American Dream· Page 225: What is Ma’s final analysis of Rose and Connie’s Dream (it’s just a dream) Why does she think it is just a dream? Would it be possible for Connie and Rose to make this come true? What are the barriers to making one’s dreams come true?· Page 236: Tom talks about “one foot at a time”. What does he mean? Do most people go through life that way? Why?· Pages 244-246: Tom talks to the man at the junkyard. Another example of Tom’s blunt honesty (truck driver, gas station attendant, junkyard man) Does this type of honesty encourage or discourage people? (pg. 247) Should we be that brutally honest all the time? What does Tom’s message seem to be? (stop whining and do something about it) Do you think Tom’s time in prison had something to do with that?· Page 248: Again, Tom being brutally honest. This time with Al. Tells Al not to be defensive all the time.· Page 259: Is this the truth about California?· Page 263: “bolshevisky” what does this mean?Read chapters 17-18
09/29/09
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapters 11-13
· Quiz over chapters 11-13
1. Who is the first “family member” to die on the trip? (the dog)
2. Which family member dies of a stroke? (Granpa)
3. What is Rose of Sharon constantly worrying about? (her unborn baby)
4. What is the name of the family the Joads decide to travel with? (Wilson)
5. In chapter 13, Steinbeck says the people who have lost everything move from “I” to _________. (“we”)
Ch. 11
· When a horse quits work there’s life yet; when a tractor’s turned off its cold dead.
· Cats go wild, and bats and weeds take over deserted farmland.
· Horse vs. tractor = life vs. death
· The farm is no longer a living place, it is just a machine now.
· Page 159: end of the former life.
Ch. 12
· “Highway 66 is the main migrant road.
· 66—the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield
· —over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys.”
· Highway 66 is now called what? Route 66
· What does it represent here?
· Hope, rebirth, path to paradise
· What does it represent now?
· Fun, adventure, nostalgia
· Why the difference?
· Prosperity, progress, and technology make the once necessary entertaining.
Ch. 13
· Al drives to the highway at Sallislaw and heads west.
· Ma thinks there may be mountains before California, but “Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one.”
· Near Paden a gas station man is surly till he learns they’ll pay, asks “What’s the country coming to?”, and Tom tells him “you don’t want to know.”
· They all drink water. The dog gets run over.
· Granma naps in the restroom.
· Tom drives through Oklahoma City.
· Ma worries about his crossing the state line on parole.
· At Bethany they camp near the Wilsons’ touring car.
· Granpa has a stroke and dies with Casy saying the Lords Prayer and Granma shouting. He’s buried in the Wilsons’ quilt with Psalms 32:1 written out.
· They hear of the Wilsons’ hard times.
· Pa shows them a handbill that says PEA PICKERS WANTED IN CALIFORNIA. GOOD WAGES ALL SEASON. 800 PICKERS WANTED.
· Tom suggests they share the ride with the Wilsons.
· Ma: “Each’ll help each, an’ we’ll all git to California.”
· Page 173: Has America stopped moving? (westward expansion)
· Why do people move?
· Gas station attendant complains but has no answers and doesn’t really want to hear any.
· Page 174: Large corporations kill smaller businesses
· Trip not going well for Joads
· Forgot water
· Granpa dies (page 199) Tom says he was tied to the land
· Page 189: family council changes with the death of Grampa
· Page 194: looking for paper; what could they have used if it had been brought?
(stationary box)
· Read chapters 14-16.
09/25/09
Grapes of Wrath
Quiz on chapters 8-10:
1. Who is asked to go with the Joads but stays behind? (Muley Graves)
2. Who wants to stay but is taken anyway? (Granpa)
3. What is Tom’s answer when Muley asks him if he’s going to cross the state line and break parole? (he doesn’t answer)
4. What personal item does Ma burn? (stationary box)
5. Do the Joads take Jim Casey with them? (yes)
Ch. 8
· Tom and Casy head for Uncle John’s place.
· John’s wife died of “appendick.”
· Tom’s joke about Elsie Graves teasing Willy pleases Casy.
· They sneak up on Pa who’s fixing a Hudson Sedan converted to a truck.
· They surprise Ma cooking breakfast; “Come right in mister”; her fork clatters to the floor.
· Grampa and Granma sleep in the barn (easier night trips). Grampa can’t button his fly. Granma repeats “Pu-raise Gawd for vittory.”
· How Pa botched Noah’s delivery.
· The preacher says a grace (“mankin’ was holy when it was one thing”).
· Rosasharn’s got married and pregnant.
· Al’s out a-billygoatin’.
Page 100: Mother as the strong center of the family (citadel)
Common theme in American literature
Page 101: Why does Tom bite his lip?
Why does Ma back away?
Page 104: Mother has become somewhat bitter.
Speaks of 10,000 member strong army of run off tenants.
Would it be possible? Is this what the framers had in mind?
Ch. 9
· Disposing of everything. Sell it. Pack it, leave it or burn it.
Pg. 117: why are men ruthless about the past, but women not?
Women understand that eventually people want to remember the past.
Pg,.118: “buying a plow to plow your own children under”
Karma? Since they are cheating them, they are cheating their own children.
It will come back to them in the future.
Pg. 120: Pilgrim’s Progress
Ch. 10
· Al takes a truck of junk to Sallisaw.
· Ma worries about California being too good. Tom tells her to “jus’ take ever’ day.”
· The preacher asks to go along.
· The truck returns. Uncle John’s appetites now restrained.
· The truck is Al’s responsibility.
· They got eighteen dollars for every moveable thing on the farm.
· At the conference Pa says they have a hundred fifty-four.
· Al assesses the truck.
· Pa figgers close and asks Ma if they can take the preacher. “It ain’t kin we? It’s will we?”
· Two pigs are slaughtered and they decide to go next morning.
· Ma burns her stationery box.
· Muley drops by but won’t go. Grampa won’t either, but they use Ma’s soothin’ sirup.
· They leave Muley two dogs and the chickens.
· Ma wants to look back but can’t.
Pgs. 122-123: Ma believes California might not be so great. “Too good to be
true.” Could this be foreshadowing?
Pg. 137: Concept of family hierarchy. Still present in today’s society?
Pgs. 139-140: Ma chides Pa for even considering not taking Casey with them.
Mother as moral center. Helping fellow man.
Pg. 148: Why does Ma burn the stationary box?
Pg. 154: Why doesn’t Tom answer Muley’s question about breaking parole?
Pg. 156: What does Ma looking back allude to? Lot’s wife.
Read chapters 11-13
09/24/09
Grapes of Wrath
Ch. 5
· How the bank agents tell the tenants to leave the land.
· How the tractors rape the land.
· How the tractor driver knocks the tenant farmer’s house off its foundation.
· “Caught in something larger than themselves”
Do we have control over everything in our lives?
Do we feel that we have to do things we don’t want to, but benefit from?
Analogy of bank as monster
Why are there no names or quotation marks when the owners talk to the tenants?
Detached, impersonal, could be anyone
Why do you think the owners tell the tenants to go to California?
Why are there names and quotation marks when the tractor driver talks to tenants?
The driver was one of them – is he a traitor now?
It speaks of men not having connection to the bread – do we?
Why are we sentimental about family farms?
Do we feel the same about other industries?
Why is it so hard to find the right person to blame for the loss of the farm?
John Cougar Mellencamp: “Rain on the Scarecrow”
Steve Earle: “The Rain Came Down”
Discuss elements of the novel present in each song.
Ch. 6
· The gate is unhung (set to keep in pigs like the one that got away and ate the
Jacobs’ baby).
· Tom notices that nothing’s stolen the way it was when Albert Rance took his
family to Oklahoma City for Christmas; so everyone must be gone.
· The turtle continues southwest. Muley tells Tom his family is at Uncle John’s.
· Tom explains the murder of Herb Turnbull.
· They cook Muley’s rabbits on an open fire. Tom says prison makes no sense. Casy gets the sperit: he’s gonna hit the road.
· Muley shows them how to hide from deputy Willy Feeley. They sleep in the open.
Sharing the rabbits: what does Muley have a hold of that is bigger than him?
Community, kindness to fellow man
Muley’s speech about what the owners took.
They took more than just land and homes. They took memories.
People are connected to the land – they are the land
Ch. 7
· All about used car lots: “Goin’ to California? Here’s jus’ what you need.
· Looks shot, but they’s thousan’s of miles in her.”
09/23/09
Grapes of Wrath
Finish reading through chapter 4 aloud
Chapters 1-4:
1) Description of the dust bowl. “The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men – to feel whether this time the men would break.”
· Difference in families’ reliance on men versus independence of women today
· American resilience (“Of Plymouth Plantation; Bradford)
2) Tom Joad gets a lift at a truck stop and tells the driver he’s paroled from prison in McAlester (for murder) and he’s headed home. “But sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a [No Riders] sticker.”
· Disdain for the perceived wealthy.
· Is this an American ideal?
3) Turtle’s endless struggle to go southwest. Up on the highway, missed by a car, hit by a truck. His struggle plants an oat head he picked up earlier.
· The journey is commonplace in American literature.
· As we travel from one place to another, we pick up things and leave other things behind, whether the journey is external or internal.
· The journey is foreshadowing for the Joad family.
4) Tom picks up the turtle. He spots Jim Casy sitting by a tree singing, “Yes, sir, that’s my Savior”. Jim condemns himself for laying with girls he’d earlier filled with the Holy Spirit (“the sperit ain’t in me no more’). The turtle keeps trying to escape Tom’s jacket. Casy explains his beliefs. Tom tells Jim, “Pa always said you had too long a pecker for a preacher”.
· Little or no respect for religion
· Traditional in America?
Tom talks about how you can get comfortable with jail.
· For many in jail, life is better than outside – should this be the case?
(American ideal?)
They talk of how Uncle John tried to eat a whole shot.
· Humor used to make the story more real.
· Everyone has a funny story about a relative.
At the Joad place: “They nobody there”.
Begin reading chapters 5-7 in class.
09/22/09: POETRY TEST
09/21/09: National Honors Society Induction
09/18/09
American Poetry Test Review
Write the basic definition of each term on a separate sheet of paper.
If the term is not in the Literary Terms Handbook in your textbook, you may have to use the glossary or index.
1. Allusion
2. Analogy
3. Apostrophe
4. Dramatic Monologue
5. Fireside Poets
6. Free Verse
7. Imagery
8. Imagism
9. Irony
10. Lyric Poem
11. Meter
12. Narrative Poem
13. Onomatopoeia
14. Paradox
15. Parody
16. Personification
17. Realism
18. Rhythm
19. Satire
20. Slant Rhyme
21. Sonnet
22. Spiritual
23. Stanza
24. Theme
25. Tone
· You will also need to be able to discuss the time period, themes, characteristics and goals of the Transcendentalists, Fireside Poets, Realists, Imagists, Modernists, and the poets of the Harlem Renaissance.
NOTE: Review Friday, 09/17/09
TEST Monday 09/21/09
09/17/09
Modern Poetry
· Read “Mirror” on page 1216
· Read “In a Classroom” on page 1217
· Read “The Explorer” on page 1218
· Read “Frederick Douglass” on page 1219
· Read “Runagate Runagate” on pages1221-1222
o Discuss Theme
Connotation
· Read “For My Children” on pages 1241-1242
· Read “Bidwell Ghost” on pages 1243-1244
· Read “Camouflaging the Chimera” on pages 1245-1246
o Discuss Lyric Poetry
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-10 on page 1223 in complete sentences
Answer questions 1-8 on page 1247 in complete sentences
09/16/09
20th Century
· Read “Gold Glade” on pages 1050-1051
· Read “The Light Comes Brighter” on page 1052
· Read “Traveling Through The Dark” on pages 1053-1054
· Read “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” on page 1132
· Read “Most Satisfied by Snow” on page 1133
· Read “Hunger in New York City on page 1134
· Read “What For” on pages 1135-1137
· Read “Losses” on page 1209
· Read “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” on page 1210
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-7 on page 1055
Answer questions 1-5 on page 1138
Answer questions 1-8 on page 1211
09/15/09
20th Century
Carl Sandberg
Read bio on page 838
Read aloud “Chicago” on page 841
· Discuss: Discuss:
· Theme
· Speaker
· Personification
· Imagery
· Apostrophe
Read “Grass” on page 842
Read “Jazz Fantasia” on page 435 (old book) (play “Black and Tan Fantasy by Duke Ellington from “The History of Jazz: The Early Days” PLATCD712, track 15, while reading)
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Rhythm
· Onomatopoeia
· Colloquial Language
· Read “Cool Tombs” on page 1141 of Norton’s.
Robert Frost
Read bio on page 880
Read “The Road Not Taken” on handout
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Rhyme
· Symbol
Read “Fire and Ice” (handout) and “Acquainted with the Night” on page 892.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Metaphor
· Symbol
· Sonnet
Read “Nothing Gold Can Stay” on handout.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Metaphor
· Allusion
· Rhyme
Read “Stopping by Woods…” on page 885.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Rhyme (chain-link stanzas)
Read “Desert Places” on handout.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Repetition
· Imagery
Read “Mending Wall” on page 886.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Speaker
· Symbol
· Blank Verse
· Characterization
09/14/09
ee cummings
Read bio on page 772.
Read aloud “old age sticks” on page 775 and “anyone lived in a pretty how town” on page 775.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Analogy
· Form
· Free Verse
· Personification
· Hyperbole
· Hand out “grasshopper” and have students translate.
· Translation on screen
· Read and enjoy poems from Norton’s
Assignment:
Choose and object or a creature that has a characteristic motion, and write a poem in which you capture that motion by playing with words and their visual appearance on the page, as “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” does.
20th Century
W.H. Auden
Read “The Unknown Citizen” on pages777-778
Wallace Stevens
· Read “Of Modern Poetry” on page 794.
· Read “Anecdote of the Jar” on page 795.
Archibald MacLeish
· Read “Ars Poetica” on pages 796-797
Marianne Moore
· Read “Poetry” on pages 798-799
Assignment: Read question 9 on page 800. Write a 5-paragraph essay in which
you choose another art form (writing, art, music, film, or a subset within) and discuss what characteristics make a “good” version.
For example, what makes a “good” expressionist painting; what makes a “good” country song, what makes a “good” horror film.
What makes a “good” novel? Choose something you feel you know about.
09/10 – 11/09
American Poetry
Modernism & Imagism
Modernism
T.S. Eliot
Read bio on page 714.
Read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Peacock” pages 716-720
· Discuss:
· Dramatic Monologue
· Speaker
· Tone
· Personification
· Main Idea
· Irony
· Imagery
· Image Pattern
· Theme
· Allusion
· Symbol
If time permits read “The Waste Land”
Imagists
Read bios on page 724-725
Read Imagism on 725
Pound
· Hated traditional poetry
· Did not like rhetoric, generalities, long lines, national chauvinism (Whitman)
Read poems on pages730-732
Read “L’Art, 1910” from Norton’s
· Discuss:
· Imagery
· Rhyme
· Metaphor
· Even though he hated traditional poetry, he felt the need to prove he could do it so he began writing Cantos.
· First, however, he had to apologize to the man he thought was the worst of the old.
· Read “A Pact” and discuss Pound/Whitman.
Williams
Read poems on pages 733-734
· Discuss meaning of each poem as it is read
· Discuss:
· Imagism
· Free Verse
· Imagery
· Realism
· Form
· Speaker
· Tone
H.D.
Read “Pear Tree” and “Heat” on pages 735-736
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Imagism
· Form
· Symbol
· Free Verse
Stein
Read “I Am Rose” and “A Sound” from old textbook
· Discuss:
· Repetition
· Theme
· Juxtaposition
Play “It’s the End of the World as we know it (and I Feel Fine)”.
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-8 on page 721and questions 1-8 on page 737
09/09/09
American Poetry
Harlem Renaissance (jazz, blues and poetry)
Read pages 910-911 aloud
Langston Hughes
Read bio on page 942.
Read “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” on page 926
Read “I, Too” on page 929
Read “Dream Variations” on page 930.
· Play “Swingmatism” by McShann from “The History of Jazz: The Swing Era” PLATCD714, track 20.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Repetition
· Imagery
Various
Read “From the Dark Tower” on page 938
Read “A Black Man Talks of Reaping” on page 939
Read “Storm Ending” on page 940
Read “Morning After” on page 1740-1741 in Norton’s.
· Play “Your Feet’s Too Big” by Fats Waller from “The History of Jazz: The Swing Era” PLATCD714, track 10.
Assignment:
Timed Writing Lesson on page 943
Follow instructions.
09/08/09
19th Century: Spirituals
· Read aloud page 496
o Discuss refrain
· Read “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” pages 498-499
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
· Read “Go Down, Moses” page 500
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
· Read page 650 aloud
· Read “Douglas” on page 653
· Read “We Wear the Mask” on page 654
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
Assignment:
1) Bring in a song (lyrics) that is personally inspiring (not comforting).
Does not have to be religious; prefer it not be.
Early 20th Century
· Read page 658 aloud
· Discuss speaker
· Read “Luke Havergal” on page 661
· Read “Richard Cory” on page 662
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
· Read “Lucinda Matlock on page 663
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
· Read “Richard Boone” on page 664
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
Assignment:
2) Choose a famous deceased person and write a poem in their voice.
What would they have to say to their contemporaries today?
Minimum 15 lines
09/04/09
American Poetry
Walt Whitman
· Read bio on page 438.
· Discuss Free Verse
Read “Song of Myself” on pages 442-445
· Discuss: Free Verse
Diction
· Answer Critical Reading questions on page 445 aloud
Read “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” on page 446
Read “By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame” on page 447
· Answer Critical Reading questions on page 447 aloud
Read “I Hear America Singing” on page 448
· Answer Critical Reading questions on page 448 aloud
Read “A Noiseless Patient Spider” on page 450
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
Assignment: Answer questions 1-8 on page 451
09/03/09
A New Nation
Ralph Waldo Emerson
· “Concord Hymn” (page 395)
· Read Aloud.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Alliteration
· Imagery
· Stanza Form
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud.
· “The Snowstorm” (pages 397-398)
· Read aloud.
· Answer Critical Reading questions aloud.
Emily Dickinson
· Read bio on page 424
· “Because I Could not Stop for Death” (pages 426-427)
o Read aloud.
o Answer Critical Reading questions aloud.
· “I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died” (page 429)
o Read aloud and discuss.
o Answer Critical Reading questions aloud.
· “There’s a Certain Slant of Light” (page 430)
o Read aloud and discuss
· “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close” (page 430)
o Read aloud and discuss
· “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” (page 431)
o Read aloud and discuss
o Answer Critical Reading questions aloud
· “The Brain- is Wider than the Sky” (page 432)
o Read aloud and discuss
· “There is a Solitude of Space” (page 433)
o Read aloud and discuss
o Answer Critical Reading questions aloud.
· “Water, is Taught by Thirst” (pages 434)
o Read aloud and discuss
o Answer Critical Reading questions aloud.
Assignment: Questions 1-6 on page 435
09/02/09
AMERICAN POETRY – THE FIRESIDE POETS
· Read Fireside Poets piece on pages 272
· Longfellow
· Read aloud “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” (pg. 275).
· Discuss
· Theme
· Repetition
· Personification
.
· Bryant
· Read aloud “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Personification
· Main Idea
· Metaphor
· Meter
· Holmes
· Read aloud “Old Ironsides” on page 281
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Metaphor
· Personification
· Whittier
· Read aloud “Snow-Bound” on pages 283-288.
· Discuss:
· Theme (main idea)
· Word Choice
· Imagery
· Speaker
· Assignment:
· Answer Critical Reading questions 2-6 on page 276.
· Answer Critical Reading questions 2-5 on page 279.
· Answer Critical Reading questions 2-4 on page 281.
· Answer Critical Reading questions 2-4 on page 288.
· Answer questions 1-6 on page 289.
09/01 -02/09
American Poetry
· Puritan Ideals
· “Huswifery” Edward Taylor (page 94)
· Read aloud and discuss.
· Discuss:
· Image
· Theme
· Speaker
· Main Idea
· Answer Critical Reading questions verbally.
· “To My Dear and Loving Husband” Anne Bradstreet (page 96)
· Read aloud and discuss.
· Discuss:
· Theme
· Rhyme Scheme
· Compare and Contrast
· Speaker
· Main Idea
· Answer Critical Reading questions verbally.
· Colonialism
· Read Wheatly bio on page 180
· “An Hymn to the Evening” page 182
· Read aloud and discuss.
· Answer Critical Reading questions verbally.
· “To His Excellency, General Washington” (pages 184 – 186)
· Read aloud and discuss.
· Discuss:
· Heroic Couplet
· Personification
· Theme
· Speaker
· Symbol
· Allusion
· Rhythm and Parallelism
· Main Idea
· Answer Critical Reading questions verbally.
Assignment: Answer questions 1-6 on page 187 in complete sentences.
NONFICTION TEST REVIEW 08/31/09
Using your textbook, write the definitions for the following terms on a separate sheet of paper:
1. Transcendentalism
2. Tone
3. Theme
4. Suspense
5. Style
6. Rhythm
7. Plain Style
8. Point of View
9. Persuasion
10. Parallelism
11. Oral Tradition
12. Narration
13. Metaphor
14. Irony
15. Imagery
16. Foreshadowing
17. Folk Literature
18. Figure of Speech
19. Figurative Language
20. Exposition
21. Essay
22. Characterization
23. Autobiography
24. Allusion
25. Analogy
In order to pass the test you will need to do the following:
Take notes on the following topics (use a separate sheet of paper) that you can turn into an essay when asked.
· Understand influence the Puritan writings had on American ideals and values as evident in the writings of William Bradford and Jonathan Edwards.
· Know what it means to be an American according to the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Fredrick Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln.
· Know what Ralph Waldo Emerson’s and Henry David Thoreau’s writings tell us about the Transcendentalist ideas about individualism and one’s place in the world.
· Understand how Carson McCullers and Anna Quinlin feel about American society’s expectations.
· Understand what William Faulkner means by “real writing” and if William Safire and Ian Frazier practice that.
08/28/09
20th Century
· Read and discuss “The Development of American English” on page 712.
· Read and discuss Faulkner’s “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech” p. 875-876.
· Read JFK’s Inaugural Address on page 1228
· Read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail on page 1232
08/27/09
Modern Non-Fiction
Read “Onomatopoeia” on pages 1146-1147
Answer questions on page 1147 aloud
Read “Coyote v. Acme” on pages 1148-1152
Answer questions on page 1152 aloud
Read “Loneliness…An American Malady” on pages 1153-1155
Answer questions on page 1155 aloud
Read “One Day, Now Broken in Two” on pages 1156-1158
Answer questions on page 1158 aloud
08/26/09
Nonfiction
Twain and the West
Read Mark Twain info on pages 572-573; 574
Read from “Life on the Mississippi” by Mark Twain (pgs. 576 – 580).
Discuss:
Autobiography
Tone
Setting
Contrast
Description
Theme
Imagery
Purpose
Colloquial Language
Tone
Irony
Style
Metaphor
Comparisons
Audience
Cause and Effect
Jargon
Dialogue
Read “Heading West” on pages 608-
Read “I Will Fight No More Forever” on page 614
Students answer questions 1-5 on page 615 in complete sentences.
08/25/09
Civil War
Frederick Douglas
· Read from “My Bondage and My Freedom” on pages 507 – 512
· Discuss:
o Autobiography
o Tone
· Answer Critical Reading questions on page 512 aloud.
Robert E. Lee
· Read bio on page 530
· Read “Letter to His Son” on pages 534 – 535
o Discuss:
o Letter Writing
· Answer Critical Reading questions on page 536 aloud.
Mary Chestnutt
· Read from “Mary Chestnutt’s Civil War” on pages 550 – 553
· Discuss:
o Diary and Journals
Abraham Lincoln
· Read bio on page 530
· Read “Gettysburg Address” on page 532
o (Edward Everett spoke for two hours before Lincoln got up)
· Discuss:
o Speeches
o Diction
Assignment:
Write a speech paying tribute to an important event. It may be from the distant past or a more recent time period. Do not give us a list of facts, but concentrate rather on the impact and meaning this event had for those who experienced it and those who came after, including yourself.
08/21 – 24/09
Transcendentalism
Emerson:
Transcendentalism: American philosophical and artistic attitude based on the belief that
the most fundamental truths about life and death can be reached only by going
beyond the world of the senses.
Knowledge of this kind comes not through the mind’s logic, but through a deep free intuition – the ‘highest poser of the Soul’.
Students read aloud pages 384 – 385.
Read, “What is Transcendentalism?” essay
Read aloud Emerson bio on 388.
Read first part of “Nature” from old book.
Have students read remainder of “Nature” on pages 390 – 391.
Discuss following:
· idea of viewing natural world with unobstructed vision is transcendentalist
· personification: nature is a being
· metaphor: “transparent eyeball”
· occult here means hidden or not easy to discover
· main idea: nature and the human soul produce what we see as natural beauty.
Answer questions on page 392 aloud.
Have students read aloud “Self-Reliance” on pages 393 – 394.
Finish reading aloud from old book
Discuss following:
1st par. – Main Idea – people understand their place in the universe and
must act accordingly.
Purpose – believe in individualism and practice it by asserting their
own strengths
Metaphor – belittles need for continuity between past and present
Yesterday’s judgements may not be appropriate for today
2nd par. – Style (contrast) life of rose vs. self conscious life of people
Answer questions on page 394 aloud.
Thoreau (08/24/09)
Read aloud Thoreau bio on page 404.
Have students read from “Walden” on pages 407-415 silently.
· Discuss:
· Simplicity
· Self-reliance
· Individuality versus Conformity
· Visions and Ideals
Answer questions on page 415 aloud.
Give Transcendentalism Quiz.
Assignment:
Make a list of 5 things that Thoreau would say
are complicating our lives. For each item, list one way we could change the way it works or the way we use it in order to make our lives simpler.
08/20/09
Expanding the Country
· Discuss Louisiana Purchase:
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of more than 529,000,000 acres of territory from France in 1803, at the cost of about 3¢ per acre.
The French territory of Louisiana included far more land than just the current U.S. state of Louisiana. The lands purchased contained parts or all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains, the portions of southern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta that drain into the Missouri River, and Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi River including the city of New Orleans.
The land included in the Purchase comprises 22.3% of the territory of the modern United States.
The United States was afraid they would lose the use of New Orleans, so they offered to buy just the city and surrounding areas.
The American negotiators were prepared to spend $10 million for New Orleans, but were dumbfounded when the entire region was offered for $15 million. The treaty was dated April 30, 1803 and was signed on May 2nd. On July 14, 1803 the treaty reached Washington D.C. The Louisiana territory was vast, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to Rupert’s Land in the north, and from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. Acquiring the territory would double the size of the United States at a cost of less than 3 cents per acre.
France then turned New Orleans over to the United States on December 20, 1803. On March 10, 1804, a formal ceremony was conducted in St. Louis, to transfer ownership of the territory from France to the United States of America.
Effective on October 1, 1804, the purchased territory was organized into the Orleans Territory (most of which became the state of Louisiana) and the District of Louisiana, which was temporarily under the control of the Governor and Judges of the
When purchased, the boundaries of “Louisiana” were not defined, and the land itself was generally unknown (which led to the Lewis and Clark expedition). In particular, not wanting to anger Spain, France refused to specify the southern and western boundaries.
The tributaries of the Mississippi were held as the boundaries. Estimates that did exist as to the extent and composition of the purchase were initially based on the explorations of Robert LaSalle.
Read “Commission of Meriwether Lewis” on pages 293-294.
· Answer questions 1 – 7 on page 295.
Read aloud “Crossing the Great Divide” on pages 299 – 300.
· Answer Critical Reading questions on page 300 aloud.
Read aloud “The Most Sublime Spectacle on Earth” on pages 301 – 305.
· Answer Critical Reading questions on 305 aloud.
08/19/09
Henry, Jefferson, and Paine
Patrick Henry
Discuss:
· Colonialism
· Growing unrest in colonies
· Speeches
Read aloud “Speech in the Virginia Convention” on pages 203 – 206.
· Discuss details
· Answer questions on page 206 aloud.
Declaration of Independence
Read Declaration of Independence aloud (pages 170 – 173)
Notes:
· D.O.I. is an example of a persuasive document – attempts to sway the reader to think or act in a particular way.
· Jefferson’s goal is to convince other colonists and the rest of the world that revolt must occur in the colonies.
Page 170:
1st paragraph: enlightenment. Tone articulates the belief that humans can shape
their own destiny.
2nd paragraph: parallelism: sentence structure adds conviction to the list of truths
of which Jefferson seeks to persuade his readers.
Tone: calm, reasoned
Straightforward adjectives – absolute, unalienable
Discuss unalienable rights
Evocative nouns – abuses, usurpation
Evocative verbs – reduce, throw off (create pictures, you can see the king
abusing the colonies and them throwing him aside)
End of 2nd paragraph: identifies audience as the world to get other nations to help
Page 171:
Persuasion: Jefferson repeatedly uses the word “He” to reinforce the idea of the
king as a tyrant. Personalizes the argument.
Repetition of the word “for” emphasizes reasons for revolt.
Page 172, 4th paragraph:
Style – writer’s characteristic way of writing determined by his diction,
imagery, tone and choice of literary devices.
Jefferson shifts from objective, legal language to strong verbs such as
“plundered” and “ravaged” Why?
Theme: people’s natural right to freedom and a voice in government
Page 173
Last Paragraph:
Persuasion – adds power of righteousness
If they didn’t agree before, you can’t argue with God.
Theme: numbering and listing American rights combines with unalienable ones
Thomas Paine
Discuss Revolutionary War (colonists losing at first)
Read “The Crisis: Number 1” on pages 174 – 176)
Discuss details
Assignment:
1) Using “Poor Richard’s Almanac”, Ben Franklin’s “Autobiography”, and Patrick Henry’s “Speech in the Virginia Convention”, write a five-paragraph essay giving three qualities every American should possess. Use one quality from each of the above works.
2) Write a paragraph or two in which you find three themes or ideas in “The Crisis Number 1” that can be directly traced to the themes of “The Declaration of Independence”. Due by end of class.
08/18/09
Jonathan Edwards
Read aloud from “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (pages 102-106)
[use excerpt from old book]
· Discuss:
· Page 41:
· What words in the 1st paragraph identify the attitude of God toward “natural men”?
(provoked, anger, arbitrary will, incensed)
· What does such language suggest about Edwards’ view of God?
(frightening, capricious, implacable, unforgiving, impossible for humans to understand)
· Page 42:
· What must each person undergo in order to please God?
(a “great change”)
· What does Edwards mean by a great change?
(realization of human frailty and dependence on God’s mercy)
· Page 43:
· What does Edwards say Christ has done for poor sinners?
(flung open the doors of mercy and forgiven them their sins)
· Why does Edwards create such a terrifying image of God and then follows it with such a forgiving image of Jesus Christ?
(terrifying people makes them more receptive to and grateful for
Christ’s mercy)
· Discuss Puritan values and ideals
· Discuss persuasive writing (use infomercials)
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-10 on page 107.
Benjamin Franklin
Ø Give brief history of colonial life including French/Indian War.
Ø Discuss colonial and British relations.
- Tax structure
- Keeping soldiers in homes
- No representation in Parliament
Ø We need to understand how people viewed themselves in the colonies.
Ø We do that through the literature.
Ø Most was political in nature
· Read bio on page 140.
· Read aloud from “The Autobiography” on pages 142-147.
- Discuss Virtues (p. 143) and Scheme of Employment (p. 145)
· Read aloud from “Poor Richard’s Almanac” on pages 148 – 150
· Figurative Language: language not meant to be taken literally
· sinking ship = accumulating debt
· Vivid dramatization
· Parrallelism: repetition of phrases or sentences so that parts are alike
· in structure or meaning
· “keep thy shop…”
What other? “For want of…” “to err…”
Themes: self-reliance, thrift (Puritans), self-improvement
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-7 on page 151
08/14 – 17/09
Non-fiction
· Christopher Columbus
· Read “The Journal” aloud (pages 58-62)
· Discuss:
· Purpose (p. 60)
· Journal (p. 61)
· Answer Critical Reading Questions on page 62 aloud.
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-10 on page 63 in complete sentences.
· John Smith & William Bradford (pages 68 –86)
· Read “The General History of Virginia” on pages 70-75
· Discuss
· Narrative Accounts (p. 72)
· Answer Critical Reading Questions on page 75 aloud.
· Read “Of Plymouth Plantation” on pages 76 – 83
· Discuss:
· Narrative Accounts (p. 80)
· Discuss Critical Reading Questions on page 83
Assignment:
Answer questions 1-9 on page 84 in complete sentences
CLASSROOM PROCEDURES Mr. WARD 2009-2010
· Be in your seat before the bell rings.
· Remain in your seat for the entire class period.
· Keep any conversation in class to a minimum and relevant to current class topic.
· Pick up all trash and place in trashcans at the end of class.
· You are not dismissed by the bell. The bell is to inform the teacher it is time to stop teaching. Students are dismissed by the teacher. Please remain in your seat until the teacher dismisses you.
· Turn your cell phones off before entering the classroom. If your cell phone is confiscated, your parents will have to claim it at the office the next day.
· All other rules, including dress codes, listed in the student handbook will be enforced. If you are seen with any non-allowable item you will give that item to the teacher upon request.
· Demonstrate the same respect and courtesy for others as you wish to receive.
· You are responsible for bringing your own materials to class.
· Place assignments in corresponding boxes at the beginning of each class.
· You will find previous days’ assignments in notebooks if you are absent.
· Use blue or black ink only for all assignments; including quizzes, tests, and essays.
· Assignments will be turned in on white paper. Use college ruled paper for essays.
· Late assignments will lose 10 points per day.
· Extracurricular activities, including athletic events, club events and after school jobs do not excuse students from deadlines. All procedures regarding late assignments will apply.
· If you turn in an assignment on time and are dissatisfied with your grade, you may redo the assignment and turn it back in the day after it is returned to you.
· You have 5 days following your last day absent to make up any work.
· Quizzes cannot be made up. If you are absent on the day a quiz is given, you are excused from it and it will not count against you.
· Any missed tests will be made up before or after school by appointment within five days.
· Fold all assignments lengthwise.
· Assignments need to have the following heading printed on the outside fold:
· Name: First and Last
· Class: English II, English III, etc.
· Period: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.
· Date: month/day/year (08/14/07)
· Assignment: Essay Title, Page #s, etc.
08/27/09
Modern Non-Fiction
Read “Onomatopoeia” on pages 1146-1147
Answer questions on page 1147 aloud
Read “Coyote v. Acme” on pages 1148-1152
Answer questions on page 1152 aloud
Read “Loneliness…An American Malady” on pages 1153-1155
Answer questions on page 1155 aloud
Read “One Day, Now Broken in Two” on pages 1156-1158
Answer questions on page 1158 aloud
21:
I hope that your wife is doing okay! I actually can’t wait till you get back cause of the Research paper is really hard not knowing how you want us to do it and actually giving us the step by step help! Well im going to go! Hope that your wife gets well soon!