Month: December 2011

The Metamorphosis

Before we depart for holiday break, we will spend some class time exploring The Metamorphosis; the famous short story by Franz Kafka. We began with a brief look into the mind of Kafka (The Metamorphosis intro) and an introduction to your dialectical journal assignment (dialectic journal).

Read chapter 1 of The Metamorphosis for class on Monday, and complete the first three dialectic journal entries.

Due Dates:

  • Monday: chapter 1, journals 1, 2 and 3
  • Tuesday: chapter 2, journals 4, 5 and 6
  • Thursday: chapter 3, journals 7, 8 and 9

Jr.’s – Writing your Rogerian Argument

Today in class we read through the rubric for the Rogerian Argument. Your essays will be worth approximately 60 points, but you have the potenial to earn more than that if your final drafts are “Distinguisged”. Check the rubric for the expectations: crucible essay rubric

Your first draft is due on Monday. It should be based on the following outline: Shaping the Essay – RA outline

If you need any help, please come to tutorial or let me know.

You can email me at murphybr@bsd405.org, or message me on facebook.

A historicist view of The Butter Battle Book… in trisyllabic meter

Courtesy of Matthew Toles:

After a great many books about nothing at all

Dr. Seuss the rhyme master came up with the gall

To write a book with more morals than ever before

About Russia, destruction and nuclear war

The pictures were colored, the meter all rhymes

A juxtaposition to the tense, angry times

Such was the style that children enjoy

Too bad that their parents couldn’t employ

The lessons his book had always said

Like not to nuke commies just ‘cause they’re red

Or if you make building guns into a race

Your enemy might just try to keep pace

You see Malenkov and Reagan just ain’t right in the head

To be build those bombs that could blast us all dead

So the book’s about war and the war’s about bread

Reflecting the times, as seen in old Seuss’s head

The Crucible comes to an end…

We are ALMOST done reading the crucible, and as such, you should ahve copies of the homework/classwork available for you.

Here is a copy of Act IV: The Crucible – Act 4

There are two activities that go along with Act IV:

act 4 – page 54-58

act 4 – page 58-end

Note: You need to complete ALL of the homework activities like these two by FRIDAY if you want to recieve credit for them. This includes any make-up work; there are many of you who never turned these in.

You also need to get a jump-start on your essay by completing this sheet FOR TOMORROW: Determining blame

Archetypes, History nerds, and Feminists… Oh my!

We’re off to see the Wizard! Well… maybe not. But I am talking about the Archetypal, Historical and Feminist forms of Criticism!

Sine the last post, we have looked at three different types of Criticism, with three different children’s books.

Feminist Criticism saw us revisiting Silverstein’s Giving Tree. Here is the powerpoint from class: Feminist Criticism, and here is the article: feminist crit

For Archetypal criticism we took a JOURNEY into Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Stendak. Here is a link to the PPT for this one: Archetypal Criticism, and another for the brief reading: archetypal crit.

Finally, for Historical Criticism/New Historicism, we took a brief look into my all-time favorite Dr. Seuss story: The Butter Battle Book. Here is the PPT: Historical Criticism and here is the redaing: historical crit.

For another look-through, here is a link to a computer reading the book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71Czfh8w3o

Here is a link to only the text:

http://english11poets.pbworks.com/w/page/19005446/The%20Butter%20Battle%20Book

The Next two links are the two part cartoon that they made out of the book in 1989:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qkqzdgL3wo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLLgBlygqP4&feature=related

Psychoanalytic and Marxist Cricism

As you know, we looked at The Giving Tree in class on Tuesday, and your assignment was to analyze the book from the perspective of Marxist crticism.

Marxist Criticism PPT

There’s a copy of the Giving Tree here: http://allpoetry.com/poem/8538991-The_Giving_Tree-by-Shel_Silverstein

Today we looked at Psychoanlytical Criticism and Green Eggs and Ham

Psychoanalytical Crit PPT

Here’s a copy of the text online: http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~linda/greeneggs/gepage1.htm