Journal

Night Discussion

In-Class Night Journal Project

Homework:

Read to Page 79 of Night.

Complete rough draft of Human Rights Research Paper which is due tomorrow. Don’t forget your outline!!

Journal

Vocabulary Quiz

Human Rights Discussion

Introduction to the Research Paper Process

Homework:

- Study for Literary terms quiz. Be able to define and give an example for each literary term

- Choose research question and turn in a MLA formatted works cited page containing at least 3 of your sources; follow the instructions for requirements and due dates on the handout you received in class

- Read through the OWL Information about writing a research paper and follow their advice!

The next book we will be reading is Night by Elie Wiesel so check it out from the library!

HANDOUT RECEIVED IN CLASS IS ALSO BELOW

Human Rights Research Paper (200 pts)

• This paper will be 4-5 pages long. That means it needs to be AT LEAST 4 ½ pages for you to receive credit.

• You will have a minimum of 6 sources.
  • 1 book (that you can hold in your hand)
  • 1 magazine
  • 1 newspaper article
  • 1 database
  • Remainder of sources can be internet, but must be valid websites, no Wikipedia.

• An outline will be required.  It will be worth 20 point towards the final grade and will be turned in with the rough draft.

• Page numbers and your last name should occur at top right corner of every page.

• The paper should be written in MLA format with 1 inch margins and typed double spaced in size 12 pt Times New Roman or Garamond font.

• Works cited page should be in alphabetical order with MLA documentation.  Parenthetical citations must be correctly done.  You can use Citation Machine to help you correctly cite in MLA form.

• Step #1: Choose a research question
  • http://www.colorq.org/humanrights/
  • http://www.hrw.org/

• Step #2: Research; record bibliographic information for sources explored

• Step #3: Outline

• Step #4: Rough Draft w/ Works Cited Page

• Step #5: Proofreading

• Step #6: Final Draft w/ Works Cited Page

• Due Dates:
  • 50 points- Research Questions and 4 of 6 sources (in MLA format)- Thursday, April 29th
  • 50 points- Rough Draft (at least 3 pages) & Outline- Thursday, May 6th
  • 100 points- Final Draft – Thursday, May 13th

- Journal

- Literary Terms

- Pair/Share Discussion Questions on Cry, the Beloved Country

Homework:

- Read to page 250 of Cry, the Beloved Country and be prepared to discuss it in class.

- Finish filling out your biblical allusions chart (handed out in class on Tuesday) and bring it with you to class next Tuesday. It should be completely full.

- Bring your book to class with you next Tuesday!!

- Make a list of 3 antonyms and 1 synonyms for each of the vocabulary words from List 6

- Journal

- Discussion of Biblical Allusions in Cry the Beloved Country

- AP Practice Questions

- Introduction of New Vocabulary Words

Homework:

- Read through Chapter 22 (p.199) by Thursday.

- Use each vocabulary word from List 6 in a sentence and illustrate it in a picture.

- Have at least ten examples of biblical allusions from Cry the Beloved Country on your biblical allusion chart (handed out in class).

- Journal

- Timeline of South African History

- Discussion of themes & literary tools in Cry the Beloved Country

- Analysis of the first chapter of Cry the Beloved Country

Homework:

- Read Book 1 of Cry the Beloved Country

- Make a list of biblical allusions you encounter as you read using the chart given you in class; you should have at least 12

- Presented Independent Reading Projects

- Irony Project

Homework:

- Complete essay assignment (handout)

- Study for a vocab test on list 5 which will be this Tuesday

TEXT OF HANDOUT BELOW

Read through the handout carefully!! The handout along with your notes from class should give you a great start on your paper.

————————–

Who is it that can tell me who I am? — King Lear

Nature

The Elizabethans believed, or pretended to believe, that the natural world reflected a hierarchy that mirrored good government and stable monarchy. This is a common enough idea in old books from various cultures. Even our scientific age talks both about “laws of nature” and “good government through good laws”, although of course we know the essential difference.

Shakespeare’s era contrasted “nature” and “art” (i.e., human-made decorations, human-made luxuries and technologies, human-made artistic productions), just as we talk about “essential human nature” contrasted to “culture”. Shakespeare’s era also contrasted “natural” and “unnatural” behaviors; the latter would include mistreating family members, opposing the government, and various sexual activities not intended for procreation.

King Lear deals with how children and parents treat each other, whether human society is the product of nature or something we create so as to live better than animals do, and whether human nature is fundamentally selfish or generous. Not surprisingly, you can find various ideas about the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

• You already know that 57 different animals are mentioned in the play.

• Lear tells Cordelia that neither human nature nor royal dignity can tolerate the way she has insulted him.

• Lear tells the King of France that “nature is ashamed” to have produced a child like Cordelia, whose lack of love is so contrary to nature. King Lear expects people to be naturally virtuous, in other words, to tell him the lies he wants to hear.

• The King of France suggests that Cordelia has a “tardiness in nature”, i.e., that sometime’s it’s natural to be inarticulate. France sees nature as the source of human frailties, rather than vice.

• Edmund begins, “Thou, Nature, art my goddess.” Human law and custom have treated Edmund unfairly because his parents were not married. Edmund intends to look out for himself, like an animal. Edmund sees nature as the opposite of human virtue.

• Stupid Gloucester, deceived by Edmund, considers Edgar’s supposed plot to murder him to be contrary to nature (“unnatural”, “brutish”).

• Gloucester believes in astrology. Gloucester thinks that the eclipses, which result from natural causes, still have unnatural effects, causing the breakdown of human society. Edmund doesn’t believe in astrology. He says he was born rough and self-centered, and that the stars had nothing to do with it. Later, Kent believes the stars must account for the inexplicable differences in people’s attitudes. Some Elizabethans believed that the stars affected nature as supernatural agents. Others believed that they were powerful natural forces.

• Edmund remarks that Edgar’s nature is gentle and naive, and (at the end) that he will do one last good deed “in spite of mine own nature.” This reminds us of the ongoing scientific and political controversies over how much of an individual’s behavior is genetically programmed, how much is learned and conditioned, and how much one is responsible. (“Nature vs. nurture”; “innate vs. cultural”, and so forth.)

• King Lear, thinking of Cordelia’s “most small fault”, laments the way it scrambled his mind (“wrenched my frame of nature from its fixed place”).

• King Lear also calls on “nature” as a goddess, to punish Goneril with infertility, or else give her a baby that grows up to hate her (“a thwart disnatured torment”).

• Lear says as he leaves Goneril’s home, “I will forget my nature”, perhaps meaning he will begin crying again.

• Gloucester jokes that Edmund is “loyal and natural”. The latter means both “illegitimate”, and that he cares for his own flesh-and-blood as a son should. Regan’s husband speaks of Edmund’s “nature of such deep trust”, i.e., his trustworthy character is inborn.

• Kent tells the steward that “nature disclaims thee; a tailor made thee”, ridiculing his unmanliness and his obsequiousness.

• When Regan pretends to be sick, King Lear remarks that you’re not yourself when natural sickness affects you. “We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body.” There’s a foreshadowing here.

• Regan tells King Lear that “nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine.” In other words, you’re getting too old to make your own decisions, and Regan’s behavior is only that of a good, natural daughter.

• We’ve already seen (“allow not nature more than nature needs…”) King Lear says that it is superfluous luxuries that raise us above the natural level of animals. He will soon change his mind.

• Kent and the other basically good characters see the treatment of Lear and Gloucester as unnatural. Albany says to Goneril, “That nature which condemns itself in origin cannot bordered certain in itself” — i.e., if you mistreat your own parent, what kind of person must you be? Writers who talk about the Elizabethans believing in cosmic hierarchy and so forth will see a moral warning against deviating from nature: If you have violated nature by being less than generous to your parent, your self-centeredness will grow and you will become morally worse than an animal.

• King Lear calls on the storm to “crack nature’s moulds” and end the human race.

• Kent urges King Lear to seek shelter, since “man’s nature cannot carry the affliction nor the force” and “the tyranny of the open night’s too rough for nature to endure.”

• King Lear, crazy, asks whether Regan’s hard-heartedness is the result of natural disease or chemistry or something perhaps cultural or perhaps supernatural. “Is there any cause in nature that makes this hardness?”

• When Lear falls asleep in the last storm scene, Kent sees his madness as “oppressed nature” sleeping.

• Cordelia is said to “redeem nature from the general curse” brought by the other two daughters. With people like Cordelia in the world, one could not say the human race is generally bad by nature.

• The physician calls sleep “our foster-nurse of nature.” Readers may remember Macbeth, who after committing the “unnatural” crime of killing a king, becomes an insomniac.

• King Lear, with the insight of madness, decorates himself with wild flowers.

Thomas Hobbes observed that the lives of wild animals and primitive people are mostly “nasty, brutish, and short”. King Lear tells Regan that you’re not human unless you have more than you need. (“Allow not nature more than nature needs…”) Then in the storm, King Lear cries out that only the poorest person, who owes nothing to anyone (not even the animals), is truly human (“… the thing itself.”) Which do you think is right?

In I.iv., King Lear himself introduces the question, “Who am I?” in the passage that begins “Doth any here know me?…” and ends with “Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

And if you want to keep it very simple, just notice this. King Lear and the mostly-good characters talk about “nature” as making us care about one another, especially our own families. Edmund talks about “nature” as making us care only about ourselves.

Animal Imagery: Shakespeare uses metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech to compare Regan, Goneril, and other characters to animals. This imagery shows that human greed and lust for power, as well as other negative qualities, turn people into rapacious or poisonous beasts. It also demonstrates that the dilemmas people create for themselves can lower them to the status of beasts. Among the animals to which characters are compared are rats, wolves, sheep, goats, horses, dogs (including a mastiff, a greyhound, a spaniel, and a mongrel), cats, mice, owls, wild geese, bears, monkeys, crabs, snails, an ass, a hedge-sparrow, a cuckoo, and each of the following:

• Kite: bird of prey that occurs in several varieties. It feeds on small land animals, fish, garbage, and carrion. In Act I, Scene IV, Lear speaks this line to Goneril: “Detested kite! thou liest” (Line 284).
• Vulture: scavenger bird that feeds primarily on carcasses. In Act II, Scene IV, Lear bemoans Goneril’s behavior by saying that “she hath tied / sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here

• [points to his heart]” (Lines 136-137).

• Serpent: large snake, such as a python or boa constrictor; any poisonous snake; the devil in the form of a snake. In Act II, Scene IV, Lear says Goneril “struck me with her tongue, / Most serpent-like, upon the very heart” (Lines 162-163).
• Pelican: bird of prey that feeds on fish. In Act III, Scene IV,  Lear “scolds” himself for fathering Regan and Goneril, saying “‘twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters” (Lines 76-77).
• Tiger: Tiger: largest member of the cat family. In Act IV, Scene II,  the Duke of Albany condemns Regan and Goneril for their treatment of Lear, comparing them to tigers.

The use of animal imagery in King Lear prompted critic G.B. Harrison to write, “It is as if Shakespeare wished to portray a world in which most men and women are beasts, and only the exceptional few [are fully human].”–G.B. Harrison, ed. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York: Harcourt, 1952 (Page 1139). Write a 3-4 page MLA formatted essay in which you analyze King Lear in response to this thesis. Examine at least three of the literary tools Shakespeare utilizes and provide examples from the text to support your arguments.

- Journal

- Lecture on Irony

- Watch PBS Version of the end of King Lear

Homework:

Thursday-  Independent Reading Project Due!!

Tuesday-    3-4 page MLA formatted essay Due!!

The use of animal imagery in King Lear prompted critic G.B. Harrison to write, “It is as if Shakespeare wished to portray a world in which most men and women are beasts, and only the exceptional few [are fully human].”–G.B. Harrison, ed. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York: Harcourt, 1952 (Page 1139). Write a 3-4 page MLA formatted essay in which you analyze King Lear in response to this thesis. Examine at least three of the literary tools Shakespeare utilizes and provide examples from the text to support your arguments.

- Journal

- Introduction of new vocabulary words

- Discussion of King Lear

- Watched King Lear, Act IV, Scene 6

Homework:

- Find 3 synonyms and 3 antonyms for each vocabulary word

- Read Act V of King Lear

- Answer the following questions in complete sentences about Act IV, Scene 6 (which we walked in class). Please type and double space your answers.

1. Describe in 1-2 sentences each King Lear & Gloucester’s views on the following:

- family, nature, corruption, justice, blindness & insight, and fate

2. Is Lear completely mad? Explain.

3. Do what extent does Lear bear moral responsibility for his madness?

4. Is Edgar mad? Why or why not?

5. Is Gloucester mad? Why or why not? What is the difference between Lear and Gloucester’s conditions?

6. What does Lear mean when he calls the world “this great stage of fools”? In what way does everyone exhibit madness or act the fool?

- Journal

- Discussion of Animal Imagery in Lear

- Review of Symbols, Motifs, & Themes in Lear

- Hands-On Project creating symbols for each character in Lear

Homework:

- Complete Hands-On Project creating symbols for character you were working on in class and for the extra character you were assigned as you left class. Incorporate themes & symbols into your work. The main thing I’m looking for is the effort you put in!!

- Read Act IV of King Lear