Hi Everyone--Hope you are enjoying the beginning of your Easter / Passover Break.
Here are instructions so that you are ready to work on your writer after the break.
1. Read "Green" by Patricia Engel, "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olson and "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker.
2. Choose any one of the writers we have read so far, including the three above whose work we will discuss during the week after the break.
3. Find additional information about the writer you have chosen: interviews, biography, website.
4. Write a blog in which you tell your classmates and me why you have chosen this writer, what interests you most about her and her theme(s). Include in your blog at least one source and a brief description of what you learned about the writer through your research.
That's all!
Please post by Tuesday April 2 so I have time to review your posts and so you can see what others have found.
You may write about character, setting, point of view, symbolism, or theme. We will discuss possibilities on April 4. Basically I will ask you to make a claim (thesis) and support it with evidence from the text. Review, if you wish, "Anatomy of an Essay" on page 10 of your coursepak.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Lyrics for Danny Boy--Munro story--and blog for Wednesday
Questions Below--please choose one and do blog by Wednesday evening.
LINK TO SONG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQtc9msoLjg
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.
And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.
And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.
Blog Questions--choose one:
1. Why does the narrator admire the father? what does he represent? Think about the difference between spaces--inside and outside.
2. How does the narrator attempt to inscribe herself in the male domain?
What does she think about; what does she do?
3. How are the foxes and the horse Flora symbolic of something important for the narrator?
3. Analyze the mother's role in the story and the narrator's attitude toward the mother.
4. Why does the narrator let Flora escape? How does the narrator change at the end of the story?
Is this a positive or negative ending?
5. What part of the song "Danny Boy" above is relevant to the story?--as it is a song the narrator sings as she
is falling asleep.
missing page for "Boys and Girls"
I had told Laird, as soon as he was old enough to
understand such things, that bats and skeletons lived over there; whenever a
man escaped from the county jail, twenty miles away, I imagined that he had
somehow let himself in the window and was hiding behind the linoleum. But we
had rules to keep us safe. When the light was on, we were safe as long as we
did not step off the square of worn carpet which defined our bedroom-space;
when the light was off no place was safe but the beds themselves. I had to turn
out the light kneeling on the end of my bed, and stretching as far as I could
to reach the cord.
In the dark we lay on our beds, our narrow life rafts, and fixed our eyes on the faint light coming up the stairwell, and sang songs. Laird sang "Jingle Bells", which he would sing any time, whether it was Christmas or not, and I sang "Danny Boy". I loved the sound of my own voice, frail and supplicating, rising in the dark. We could make out the tall frosted shapes of the windows now, gloomy and white. When I came to the part, y the cold sheets but by pleasurable emotions almost silenced me. You'll kneel and say an Ave there above me —What was an Ave? Every day I forgot to find out.
Laird went straight from singing to sleep, I could hear his long, satisfied, bubbly breaths. Now for the time that remained to me, the most perfectly private and perhaps the best time of the whole day, I arranged myself tightly under the covers and went on with one of the stories I was telling myself from night to night. These stories were about myself, when I had grown a little older; they took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did. I rescued people from a bombed building (it discouraged me that the real war had gone on so far away from Jubilee). I shot two rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard (the teachers cowered terrified at my back). Rode a fine horse spiritedly down the main street of Jubilee, acknowledging the townspeople’s gratitude for some yet-to-be-worked-out piece of heroism (nobody ever rode a horse there, except King Billy in the Orangemen’s Day parade). There was always riding and shooting in these stories, though I had only been on a horse twice — the first because we did not own a saddle — and the second time I had slid right around and dropped under the horse's feet; it had stepped placidly over me. I really was learning to shoot, but could not hit anything yet, not even tin cans on fence posts.
Alive, the foxes inhabited a world my father made for them. It was surrounded by a high guard fence, like a medieval town, with a gate that was padlocked at night. Along the streets of this town were ranged large, sturdy pens. Each of them had a real door that a man could go through, a wooden ramp along the wire, for the foxes to run up and down on, and a kennel — sometimes like a clothes chest with airholes — where they slept where they slept and stayed in winter and had their young. There were feeding and watering dishes attached to the wire in such a way that they could be emptied and cleaned from the outside. The dishes were made of old tin cans, and the ramps and kennels of odds and ends of old lumber. Everything was tidy and ingenious; my father was tirelessly inventive and his favorite book in the world was Robinson Crusoe. He had fitted a tin drum on a wheelbarrow, for bringing water down to the pens. This was my job in the summer, when the foxes had to have water twice a day. Between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, and again after supper. I filled the drum at the pump and trundled it down through the barnyard to the pens, where I parked it, and filled my watering can and went along the streets. Laird came too, with his little cream and green gardening can, filled too full and knocking against his legs and slopping water on his canvas shoes. I had the real watering can, my father's, though I could only carry it three-quarters full.
In the dark we lay on our beds, our narrow life rafts, and fixed our eyes on the faint light coming up the stairwell, and sang songs. Laird sang "Jingle Bells", which he would sing any time, whether it was Christmas or not, and I sang "Danny Boy". I loved the sound of my own voice, frail and supplicating, rising in the dark. We could make out the tall frosted shapes of the windows now, gloomy and white. When I came to the part, y the cold sheets but by pleasurable emotions almost silenced me. You'll kneel and say an Ave there above me —What was an Ave? Every day I forgot to find out.
Laird went straight from singing to sleep, I could hear his long, satisfied, bubbly breaths. Now for the time that remained to me, the most perfectly private and perhaps the best time of the whole day, I arranged myself tightly under the covers and went on with one of the stories I was telling myself from night to night. These stories were about myself, when I had grown a little older; they took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did. I rescued people from a bombed building (it discouraged me that the real war had gone on so far away from Jubilee). I shot two rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard (the teachers cowered terrified at my back). Rode a fine horse spiritedly down the main street of Jubilee, acknowledging the townspeople’s gratitude for some yet-to-be-worked-out piece of heroism (nobody ever rode a horse there, except King Billy in the Orangemen’s Day parade). There was always riding and shooting in these stories, though I had only been on a horse twice — the first because we did not own a saddle — and the second time I had slid right around and dropped under the horse's feet; it had stepped placidly over me. I really was learning to shoot, but could not hit anything yet, not even tin cans on fence posts.
Alive, the foxes inhabited a world my father made for them. It was surrounded by a high guard fence, like a medieval town, with a gate that was padlocked at night. Along the streets of this town were ranged large, sturdy pens. Each of them had a real door that a man could go through, a wooden ramp along the wire, for the foxes to run up and down on, and a kennel — sometimes like a clothes chest with airholes — where they slept where they slept and stayed in winter and had their young. There were feeding and watering dishes attached to the wire in such a way that they could be emptied and cleaned from the outside. The dishes were made of old tin cans, and the ramps and kennels of odds and ends of old lumber. Everything was tidy and ingenious; my father was tirelessly inventive and his favorite book in the world was Robinson Crusoe. He had fitted a tin drum on a wheelbarrow, for bringing water down to the pens. This was my job in the summer, when the foxes had to have water twice a day. Between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, and again after supper. I filled the drum at the pump and trundled it down through the barnyard to the pens, where I parked it, and filled my watering can and went along the streets. Laird came too, with his little cream and green gardening can, filled too full and knocking against his legs and slopping water on his canvas shoes. I had the real watering can, my father's, though I could only carry it three-quarters full.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Blog #1: Women's Roles in Marriage
Please use this space to formulate your thoughts about women's roles in marriage, and their ways of contesting their condition, or not, based on any of our first three readings: Trifles, "The Story of an Hour," and "Desiree's Baby." This blog will be due Wednesday evening (midnight) for Thursday's class
What assumptions are made about women in each text?
How are women's voices ignored, misunderstood,
erased?
How is setting symbolic in each story? In what spaces do women find freedom, find themselves?
How do women acquire a voice of their own? That is, what strategies do they implement to articulate their feelings?
Why do women sometimes choose not to speak?
How does each story explore, expose, the power of patriarchy? (the law of the father)
You may write about one text or compare two, or all three. Be sure to quote from each text at least once.
The blog should be about 300 words. See page 9 of coursepak for blog scoring.
What assumptions are made about women in each text?
How are women's voices ignored, misunderstood,
erased?
How is setting symbolic in each story? In what spaces do women find freedom, find themselves?
How do women acquire a voice of their own? That is, what strategies do they implement to articulate their feelings?
Why do women sometimes choose not to speak?
How does each story explore, expose, the power of patriarchy? (the law of the father)
You may write about one text or compare two, or all three. Be sure to quote from each text at least once.
The blog should be about 300 words. See page 9 of coursepak for blog scoring.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
A Few Comments on Trifles
Thank You those of you who have joined the Woman Writer Blog. One glitch for our first play, Trifles. The printer reversed some pages so if you are reading the play, look at the page numbers at the bottom (mine!) and read in correct order.
Here are some questions for tomorrow's discussion:
1. How does Glaspell set up the contrast between what women pay attention to and what men focus on? Give examples. Which characters are "round" and which are "flat"?
2. List as many symbols as you can find in the play and consider how symbols are related to themes. For example, there is the literal quilt that the women find; quilting can also be seen as a metaphor for what the women visitors are doing. . .(note--there is a short story version called "A Jury of Her Peers").
3. The play raises important legal and ethical questions: how do the women and the men see their ethical roles and responsibilities differently? How do the women conduct their own trial?
4. How do the women change in the course of the play and what changes them? How do they gradually identify with Minnie Wright?
5. How are two absent characters (one dead, one in jail) present in the play--what details tell us about their characters?
6. Why does Glaspell set the play in a domestic space instead of, for example, a court of law? What are advantages?
7. Why do the women hide the evidence? In the end, who is in control of the story and how is this ironic--and important for Glaspell's theme? Why do women, in general, hide evidence?
Here are some questions for tomorrow's discussion:
1. How does Glaspell set up the contrast between what women pay attention to and what men focus on? Give examples. Which characters are "round" and which are "flat"?
2. List as many symbols as you can find in the play and consider how symbols are related to themes. For example, there is the literal quilt that the women find; quilting can also be seen as a metaphor for what the women visitors are doing. . .(note--there is a short story version called "A Jury of Her Peers").
3. The play raises important legal and ethical questions: how do the women and the men see their ethical roles and responsibilities differently? How do the women conduct their own trial?
4. How do the women change in the course of the play and what changes them? How do they gradually identify with Minnie Wright?
5. How are two absent characters (one dead, one in jail) present in the play--what details tell us about their characters?
6. Why does Glaspell set the play in a domestic space instead of, for example, a court of law? What are advantages?
7. Why do the women hide the evidence? In the end, who is in control of the story and how is this ironic--and important for Glaspell's theme? Why do women, in general, hide evidence?
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