ICE BREAK AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION COLLEGE WRITING INTRODUCTION TO THEATRE READING WORKSHOP

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HOMEWORK PAGE FOR MR. RYCHLEWSKI'S CLASSES, 2011-2012, SECOND SEMESTER

NOTE: These assignments are sometimes subject to modification AFTER they have been posted. I usually announce in class when there are such changes and they will appear in red print. The most recent assignment is at the beginning of the link.

AP LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION

Monday May 7th: Essay on Oscar Wao due. How does the imagination help someone survive? Also, replacement grade using an essay on Blackberry Picking is due. The only grade left will be a professional conduct grade. Then the semster is finished.

THE COUNT DOWN!
 

Monday:  Review problems with the Practice AP exam we took Friday and your individual plans to improve your chances of getting a better grade. Have that typed plan to me on Tuesday. Homework: read about John Donne.          http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-donne for a test on Wednesday

Tuesday: We will examine 4 open essay questions. I've printed them below. Come with a book or play that can answer those questions. We'll spend the whole day discussing the attack plan.

Wednesday  John Donne Exam.

Thursday: The 4-minute poem day! YES! Ten poems will be discussed in 40 minutes!! Oh my Gosh! Unbelievable!

Friday: Open Essay Exam. Homework. Find three scenes in Oscar Wao that crystallize three different themes and write three sentences on each crystallizion

Monday: Oscar Wao! PLUS A BLACKBERRY BONUS. HERE IT IS. Go into my web page and find a document that has a list of literary devices for analyzing "Blackberry Picking." Use it to write a brilliant essay on the poem. I'm thinking 1,500 words would do the trick. Put the word count at the top. If you're only gonna write 500 or 1,000 words, don't bother.

Tuesday: Oscar Wao!

Wednesday: We'll look at some poems (I may have you print them) by Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson and Frost. They seem to always appear in the AP test.

NOTE: I'm willing to stay after class to discuss stuff or practice stuff or just chat. I will be available Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday of this week from 3 to 4.

Thursday: SHOW TIME!

HERE ARE THE FOUR OPEN QUESTIONS

1971. The significance of a title such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is so easy to discover. However, in other works (for example, Measure for Measure) the full significance of the title becomes apparent to the reader only gradually. Choose two works and show how the significance of their respective titles is developed through the authors' use of devices such as contrast, repetition, allusion, and point of view.

1972. In retrospect, the reader often discovers that the first chapter of a novel or the opening scene of a drama introduces some of the major themes of the work. Write an essay about the opening scene of a drama or the first chapter of a novel in which you explain how it functions in this way.

1996. The British novelist Fay Weldon offers this observation about happy endings. "The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from their readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By a happy ending, I do not mean mere fortunate events -- a marriage or a last minute rescue from death -- but some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation, even with the self, even at death." Choose a novel or play that has the kind of ending Weldon describes. In a well-written essay, identify the "spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation" evident in the ending and explain its significance in the work as a whole.
 

2003 A. According to critic Northrop Frye, "Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning." Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.
 

SEMESTER TWO

April 20th = Oscar Wao. If you didn't read it, you can still get a 70 if you have it done by Friday April 20th.  We will start discussing it then. Find three central moments. 

By Thursday April  26 you should have the follow done.

1) You spent 15 minutes each on trying to figure out the 4 Emily Dickinson poems. You then go read about these poems and are prepared to discuss what you read in class. Read two essays for every poem. they are at: www.english.uiuc.edu/maps. It's # 5 in poetry on the "Site Unseen" page.

2) You have those sheets ready with all the novels and plays, all the important characters, and three or four major themes. I'll give you a handout with three or four of those AP Open Essay questions. You'll into groups and figure out which work would answer which questions.

3) You have done MC tests # 4 and # 5 in the Cliffnotes book. Please try to understand why you got certain questions wrong. Learn from each mistake.

COLLEGE WRITING

SEMESTER TWO

May 7th: Essay on College Pressures due.

THE PIANIST ESSAY: Who is it that has interceded on your behalf and because of that changed your life? Discuss these people in comparison with the people who helped the save The Pianist. Questions to consider might be the following:

1) How much did they risk?

2) How did their social position help them to be able to risk?

3) How much of their help turned out in the end to simply be blind luck?

4) Were these those who helped but only on the condition that they get something back? Was it a fair trade?

5) Where and when did the person who was being helped reach down into himself to help his own cause?

6) What were the five most unforgettable scenes in the movie and how many of them were centered on this idea of helping.

7) What single scene sums up the film for you and why?

TRY TO PUT ALL THIS TOGETHER INTO AN ESSAY. DOUBLE GRADE!

Some reviews of "The Pianist" have found it too detached, lacking urgency. Perhaps that impassive quality reflects what Polanski wants to say. Almost all of the Jews involved in the Holocaust were killed, so all of the survivor stories misrepresent the actual event by supplying an atypical ending. Often their buried message is that by courage and daring, these heroes saved themselves. Well, yes, some did, but most did not and--here is the crucial point--most could not. In this respect Tim Blake Nelson's "The Grey Zone" (2001) is tougher and more honest, by showing Jews trapped within a Nazi system that removed the possibility of moral choice.

Perhaps that impassive quality reflects what Polanski wants to say... By showing Szpilman as a survivor but not a fighter or a hero—as a man who does all he can to save himself, but would have died without enormous good luck and the kindness of a few non-Jews—Polanski is reflecting... his own deepest feelings: that he survived, but need not have, and that his mother died and left a wound that had never healed."

April 16th = Into the Wild is done. Find three central moments. 

INTRODUCTION TO THEATER

SEMESTER TWO

April 16th =  Let's get cooking on those scenes. By the end of the week you should be off-book on all of them. Be prepared to come after school and work on them.

READING WORKSHOP

Reading workshop is taking a vacation this year!

NOTE: Students often ask me about great books and great films they might check out. Here are three sites:

1) The best one hundred films from Sight and Sound magazine.

 http://www.filmsite.org/sightsound.html

2) The best one hundred fiction books of the 20^th century

http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

3) The best one hundred non-fiction books of the 20^th century

http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnonfiction.html

VOCABULARY LIST I

Chapter 1 • herculean • bowdlerize • pandemonium • pander • quixotic • cynical • stoical •

Chapter 2 • tantalize • labyrinth • Machiavellian • laconic • maudlin • galvanize • lethargic •

Chapter 3 • mesmerize • martial • erotic • cupidity • philistine • catholic • jeopardize •

Chapter 4 • odyssey • protean • fiasco • idiosyncrasy • quintessence • rankle • decimate •

Chapter 5 • amazon • iconoclast • sardonic • supercilious • nemesis • procrastinate • panacea •

Chapter 6 • aegis • auspicious • jaded • atone • lewd • succinct • prevaricate • aloof • jovial •

Chapter 7 • curtail • travesty • scruple • havoc • mentor • haggard • utopian • mercurial • diffident

Chapter 8 • zealous • candid • posthumous • enthrall • parasite • chagrin • cant • ephemeral •

Chapter 9 • ignominy • aboveboard • anecdote • bedlam • martinet • indolent • meander •

Chapter 10 • agnostic • nepotism • enigmatic • blatant • nebulous • procrustean • denigrate •

Chapter 1 • Achilles' heel • stentorian • mnemonic • fathom • serendipity • desultory • pariah • tawdry

Chapter 2 • Spartan • gadfly • homage • spurn • pedigree • pittance • preposterous • macabre • farce •

Chapter 3 • chimerical • asinine • bellwether • limbo • plagiarize • titanic • irony • effete • hyperbole •

Chapter 4 • dunce • charlatan • sycophant • anachronism • draconian • plummet • fatal • nefarious •

Chapter 5 • venerate • sadistic • malapropism • pragmatic • disparage • vegetate • adamant • conjugal

Chapter 6 • despotic • gullible • guile • exonerate • cliche • trite • melancholy • choleric • phlegmatic •

Chapter 7 • maverick • esoteric • undermine • alleviate • bacchanal • hedonist • nihilist • somnolent •

Chapter 8 • paradox • admonish • penitent • accolade • nonchalant • banal • iridescent • cajole •

Chapter 9 • recalcitrant • pinnacle • siren • Adonis • inexorable • tally • bizarre • remorse • spurious •

Chapter 10 • harbinger • opportune • skeptical • cardinal • trivial • meretricious • lampoon • fetish •

LOOSE NOTES ON THE HERO

ONE CENTRAL THEME IN ALL THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE WORLD IS THAT OF THE HERO AND HIS OR HER QUEST, HIS OR HER TRIAL.

What is a hero? Someone who gives his/her life to something bigger, something other than himself or herself. By giving a life, I don’t mean necessarily you have to die. You can “consecrate” or “dedicate” your life to something and by doing that be a hero.

There is always a journey and two types of deeds.

Physical deed: Saving a life usually or performing a good deed for society. This may mean killing something or someone. The killing may represent man trying to shape his world from the ravages and threats of nature or of an opposing world view. In addition to the slaying there may be drinking of blood to take the powers of those who have been killed. Eat a man’s heart, for example

Examples:

1: The knight slays the dragon, saves the kingdom.

2: Superman saves the girl, saves the planet.

3: Prometheus steals fire from the gods, gives it to man.

4: Gary Cooper kills the bad guys in High Noon, saves the soul of the town

5: The fireman walk up the World Trade Center, save the trapped.

6: Ulysses saves the men from the sirens, saves himself from Calypso, slays the Cyclops, gets back to Greece.

7: Your neighbor, brother or friend goes into the army, fights and dies for a cause.

8: Pete Seeger faces down HUAC and is banned from radio and television for 17 years, offers an example to live by

9: The Indian slays the buffalo, preserves the tribe.

Spiritual deed:  The hero learns to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life, has a transcendental experience, comes back with a message.

1: Moses goes to the mountain, comes back with the 10 Commandments

2: Mohammad goes into the cave and meditates, comes back with the Koran

3: Christ has three temptations, doesn’t give in.

Economic--Satan goes to where Jesus is fasting in the desert and asks him to change stones to bread. (He won’t do it) 

Spiritual--Satan take Jesus to the top of the temple of Jerusalem temple and says. "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." (Luke 4:9-13) (He won’t do it.)

Political—Satan takes Jesus to the mountain top “All these things I will give you if you fall down and do an act of worship to me.”(Matthew 4:9) (He won’t do it.)

4: In certain myths (the Celtic) the hero follows and animal (deer) and there is a transformation. (Ex: The Bear in Faulkner)

5: Search for the father (Luke has to find his father in Star Wars)

Sometimes there will variations of both: Especially in Literature

1)      Huck saves Jim and his soul

2)      Don Quixote defends the helpless and destroys the wicked

3)      The Bundrens honor their mother’s wish to be buried in her home town…and they take a journey.

4)      Holden has his lost week-end in NY, trembles in Penn Station and Central Park, sinks to some sort of bottom, somehow comes out of it

5)      Scout takes a journey out of her childhood and slowly realizes there’s an adult world out there. With strangle lonely men like Boo Radley and racism and lynch mobs and violence and a side of her father that she had know idea even existed. Her story echoes the childhood initiation ritual in which you need to escape the psychological dependency of childhood, die to it, and come back as an adult, self-responsibility. Leaving one condition, finding the source that will bring you back in another condition. Everyone has to take this journey. Huck does it, Holden is getting there.

AUGUST WILSON MONOLOGUES

QUOTES ON GREAT ART

Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past. (Darby Bannard)

he experiential test of whether this art is great or good, or minor or abysmal is the effect it has on your own sense of the world and of yourself. Great art changes you. (Sister Wendy Beckett)

Great art can be neither fully understood nor accomplished without the complete understanding of edges. (Harley Brown)

A great work of art is that which moves and touches one's spirit and adds to one's experience of the world, but does not impose on one's values. It lets one take from it what one wants or needs. (Maritza Burgos)

Great art is always a balancing act. But all art has both – an emotional content and an intellectual content. (George Carlson)

Great art picks up where nature ends. (Marc Chagall)

The great art includes much that the small art excludes: humor, pain and evil. Much that is repulsive when alone becomes beautiful in its relation. To find the ennobling relation is the task of life and art. (Oscar W. Firkin)

Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within. (Edith Hamilton)