Today we need to discuss Walden and Rhetorical Devices. We also need to finish reading Emerson's "Self-Reliance". On Friday you will write a precis on "Self-Reliance" in class, and next week you will have an in-class analysis essay on Thoreau.
We need to start to discuss some examples of rhetorical devices in Walden.
Anaphora -
“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” (Winston Churchill)
Apart from the function of giving prominence to certain ideas, the
use of anaphora in literature adds rhythm, thus making it more
pleasurable to read, and easier to remember. As a literary device,
anaphora serves the purpose of giving artistic effect to passages of prose and poetry.
As a rhetorical device, anaphora is used to appeal to the emotions of
the audience, in order to persuade, inspire, motivate, and encourage
them.
Allusion (everywhere).
parallelism
parables, aphorisms, symbols, diction and syntax.
Okay, so we need to discuss the first 100 pages of Walden and start to perhaps outline it by chapter.
1st - Themes: Self - Reliance
Living Simply
Social Criticism
Technology
Visions of America
Meaning of Existence
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
"To be awake is to be alive."
Live your life according to your convictions; have the courage to be different, regardless of what others say.
Living "simply" frees you of the worry about material possessions and rewards you with more time for what really counts.
Chapter 1 - ECONOMY
DEFINITION (from dictionary.com)
- thrifty management; frugality in expenditure or consumption of money materials
- the management of the resources of a community
- the prosperity or earnings of a place
Questions:
What is real wealth?
What are the necessities of life?
Do luxuries corrupt? Humans work their entire lives for luxuries.
What does it mean to be philanthropic?
Discuss Thoreau's house?
Quotes: "Cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately, or in the long run."
Example - house that costs $800 and which takes ten to fifteen years to pay off
"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."
"Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made."
Transportation - "the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot." The fare of a train is almost a day's wages.
"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it."
CHAPTER 2 - "Where I Lived and What For"
He goes to Walden Pond because he wishes to live deliberately, to slow down the fast pace of modern life and actually enjoy it. He claims that you can't learn anything from newspapers about live ("The Revolution will not be Televised")
Quotes:
"As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or a county jail."
"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering?"
"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life."
"I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
"Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity."
"We do not ride on the railroads; it rides upon us."
"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?"
"To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip."
"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature."
"I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born."
Chapter 3 READING
Reading literature is the closest thing to live.
Reading great books requires training such training as athletes undergo.
Nothing truly can be translated.
"Most men have learned to read to serve paltry convenience, as they learned to ciper in order to keep accounts... but reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a higher sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury .. but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to."
"The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers."
"I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannont read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects."
"We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment."
As describe in Walden what is Thoreau's assessment of American
Culture (what is wrong with it)? Using specific evidence from the text
discuss and outline his argument. Then respond to it. Do you agree or
disagree with his insights? Discuss.
Transcendentalism was an intellectual movement that emphasized the
dignity of the individual and advocated a simple, mindful life.
Key tenets of transcendentalism included:
1) A theory that "transcendent forms" of truth exist beyond reason and
experience; every indvidula is capable of discovering this truth on his
or her own, through intuition.
2) A conviction that people are inherently good and should follow their own beliefs, however controversial they may be
3) A belief that humankind, nature, and God are all interconnected
What is the main theme of "Self-Reliance"?
What is Emerson speaking of when he mentions consistency, and why does he berate it as "the hobgoblin of little minds'?
Writer Henry James argued that Emerson had no concept of the evil that
exists in the world. In James' words, it was "a side of life as to
which Emerson's eyes were thickly bandaged...He had no great sense of
wrong...no sense of the dark, the foul, the base." In your opinion, is
this a valid criticism of Emerson? Citing evidence from "Self-Reliance"
explain why or why not.
Today, we need to take a vocabulary quiz. Talk about the 1st 20 pages of Walden, and read the essay called "Nature" by Emerson.
1st let's look at Bob Dylan an Howard Zinn
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-
linsfirst loved livvy.
DIALECTICAL JOURNALS/ANALYSIS ESSAYS
Effective students have a habit of taking notes as they read. This
note-taking can several forms: annotation, post it notes, character
lists, idea clusters, and many others. One of the most effective
strategies is called a dialectical journal. The word “dialectical” has
numerous meanings, but the one most pertinent is the “art of critical
examination into the truth of an opinion” or reworded “The art or
practice of arriving at the truth by using conversation involving
question and answer.” As you read, you are forming an opinion about what
you are reading (or at least you are SUPPOSED to be forming an
opinion). That opinion, however, needs to be based on the text – not
just a feeling. Therefore, all of your opinions need to be based on the
text.
The procedure is as follows:
1. Either in your textbook or in a notebook and draw a line down the center of each page of the
notebook. NOTE: I expect you to publish these journal entries on your
blogs nightly and number them as you go. 2. As you read, pay close attention to the text.
3.
Whenever you encounter something of interest (this could be anything
from an interesting turn of phrase to a character note), write down the
word/phrase in the LEFT HAND COLUMN making sure that you NOTE THE PAGE
NUMBER. If the phrase is especially long just write the first few words,
use an ellipsis, then write the last few words.
4. In the RIGHT
HAND COLUMN, WRITE YOUR OBSEVRATIONS ABOUT THE TEXT you noted in the
left-hand column. This is where you need to interact in detail with the
text. Make sure that your observations are THOROUGH, INSIGHTFUL, and
FOCUSED CLEARLY ON THE TEXT.
Your analysis essay will be on Walden - make sure you read closely and publish your dialectical journals daily.
"If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anoalously did its duty."
Most
of Melville's novel has seemed dedicated to redefining religion and
religious practices. Many allusions have been made to Jesus and many
characters display characteristics that seem representative of Jesus-
Pequod launching on his birthday, Moby-Dick's seeming rebirth and
immortality, Ishmael's lack of parental information, Queequeg's
'miracles' and heroic saviors, and Ahab's sense of higher power. This
chapter, in a sense, define's what Ishmael percieve's Jesus (the
greatest carpenter) to be. A humble man who was 'no duplicate', and
simply followed out his orders and purpose willingly and succesfully.
Hey, perhaps every character in Moby-Dick corresponds to a character
from the bible? Melville did call this a 'wicked text'...did he rewrite-
maybe even mock- the holy book?
“We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.” Page 36
This relates to our current world: with the way we are using up our natural resources prices now are lowering (such as gas in the lower 48 reach below 2 dollars) however, the next generation will have to deal with outrageous prices and depleted oil fields. Also, global warming is another issue that the previous generation gave us and we will pass on to the next generation.
“Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail? Or of the three who succeed?.......where there is no house and no houskeeper” page 37
Thoreau is again referring to the uselessness of extravagance. Do the expensive "baubles" or decorations come at the expense of the many poor? He says there is no beauty in things man made that don't fulfill the most basic needs. Thoreau questions whether anything in a home is beautiful if the foundation of the house is not made from honest labor and toil.
Today, we are going to continue to work on your synthesis essay. This is due on Wednesday. We will be starting Unit Two tomorrow. Remember - News article due on Wednesday (some of you have already done this), and vocabulary quiz on Wednesday).
Second Quarter: A Study of Justice or Civil Rights and Responsibilities
Everyday Usechapters 4-6 (pages 93-153)
“The Times They Are a-Changin’” by Bob Dylan
“Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth
“Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau
“Letter from the Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
“The Position of Poverty” by John Kenneth Galbraith
“Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin
“The Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln
“Second Inaugural Address” by Abraham Lincoln
“How It Feels to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston
“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” by Mary Wollstonecraft
“Speech on the Signing of the Treaty of Port Elliott” by Chief Seattle
“The Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson
The Autobiography of Malcolm Xby Alex Haley and Malcolm X
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
In-class activities:
·Analyzing appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos
·Hand-outs on keeping a Dialectical Journal and OPTIC
·Group and individual analysis of readings
·Writers workshop – grammar and style exercises
·Group edition and assessment sessions
·Vocabulary lists
BLOG WRITING:
Students will continue to write précis on selected readings and on all film clips. Further, they will keep their dialectical journal onThe Autobiography of Malcolm Xon their blog so that it can be reviewed and commented on by the teacher while in-process, and by fellow classmates. They will do 1 media write up (like quarter 1) every two weeks.
Writing Assignments:
Synthesis Essay on a topic of the students choice that relates to the theme of Justice and Civil Rights. Students must use at least five sources, one of which must be visual – either a chart, photography, political cartoon, video, etc. All sources must be cited in MLA format. The essay will go through multiple drafts.
Analytical Essay – explained above, a response to a prompt based on one of the assigned readings.
Today, we are going to finish the chapter on Education (looking at "This is Water"). Then you will have time to work on your essay (draft #3). Make sure you included at least four outside sources. Think 5+ pages. Think AP score of 6 or 7. Think - how do I convince an audience. Think Logos, Ethos, Pathos. Think - Expert Testimony, statistics/research/facts/figures, personal connection (but this being a small part, not the complete part), counter-arguments (or the opposing side), make the argument "new", and what is in your conclusion for the audience? Why should the audience care?
Finally:
1) make sure you've looked up the new vocabulary (test next week)
Today - we need to take a QUIZ, review the synthesis essay and AP grading.
Also, discuss where you can approve you essay through research:
1) Questions: If this is the dumbest generation....who is to blame: technology, education, parents?
2) Compare to other generations? Also evaluate technology? Note, the generation that fought WWII has been considered "America's Greatest Generation" - but they also produced the Atomic Bomb.
3) Generation Z - where does this term come from? Douglas Coupland actually coined "Generation X" (and uninspired people had adopted Generation Y and Z to follow). What was generation X about?
4) Remember pose counterarguments. Remember concede arguments. Don't get offended by the question.
5) Research the positives concerning video games, etc.
6) Reread the articles you already have been given and evaluate them. Most of you aren't analysis what they say and using it.
2nd Draft - if you have adequately finished your 1st draft (if you have a sub-4 you haven't) - is due on Monday.
Today, you need to turn in your 1st drafts of your synthesis essay, and then we'll talk about them.
Then we'll - according to request - begin to read chapter 4 (this reading will be do on Friday).
Finally, I will give you time to research either news article #3 - which you should post today. Remember find an article, write up a summary of it, and respond to it: do you agree with it (make sure you discuss why), are there bias within it, what's important about it?
If you have news article 3 done, begin to research articles for your synthesis essay.
NOTE!!!!! Some of you have not turned in the OPEN QUESTION from last week (MOCHA, LILY, SADIE), and some of you are missing PRECIS (Zach, Danny, Sadie), Outline chapter 3 (LILY), and Vocabulary Quiz (MOCHA).
Current I's - Danny, Zach, Lily, Mocha, Sadie.
HW: Continue to read chapter 4, look up vocabulary words, work on synthesis essay and/or make-up work.
