Having some serious issues...

...with disqus so this is a new thread I'm opening for you to post responses to the last prompt (timed writes). Even if you've emailed, responses will have to be posted on the blog to get credit.

Best,

-RMH

Thought I forgot, didn't you...

...well, BA-HUMBUG! hahaha

So this is where you're going to post the strengths and weaknesses of the sample essays I handed out to you in class. Identify what catapulted the '9' and what sunk the '3' (2?). How do your essays measure up? What did reading these essays bring to mind about your own writing?

These will be in preparation for your timed writing for Heart of Darkness upon your return.

Happy Holidays!

-RMH

Prompt for Blog Post due 12/16

Here are the questions from today's class:

After making some less than condemnatory remarks about Kurtz, Marlow is pegged as a "fellow traveler" of Kurtz. How does Marlow react when he finally closes in upon and then encounters Kurtz?


What does Kurtz say in his final illness? What, if anything, does Marlow learn from Kurtz? How does he interpret Kurtz's phrase "the horror, the horror"?


Kurtz finally passes away, and, at the text's conclusion, Marlow decides to visit Kurtz's "Intended," or fiancée. Why does Marlow lie to her about Kurtz's last words? Does his lie reflect any insight he has gained from his trip up the Congo and to "the Heart of Darkness"? Explain.

Identify the group you were in, write some of what you wrote, building on prior comments and through this we will illuminate the other groups. If you have something you would like to add to a comment from a different group, feel free!

Re-Read Part III before class on Tue.

We'll be doing some substantial digging during class on Tue and it will greatly improve your understanding of the more complicated themes and motifs if you're re-read.

Hope you had a great weekend,

RMH

No Blog Post for Wednesday

Freeing up some time for you to focus on essay revisions. Re-read Part II, though, so we are extra prepared for discussion tomorrow.

Best,

RMH

Writing Notes

Conventions: Stuff we covered already that I didn't kill you on, but I will next time: Contractions and past tense. You have to get these right. Some proofreading was poor - this is inexcusable and pretty much over forever in terms of your academic career. If you're not having multiple other people read your essays, you simply are not going to get this right (sentence fluency is also connected to this).

Presentation: Again, a no-brainer. There are many students in the C-B range that would have been in the B-A range had their conventions and presentation been on point. 12pt. font, Times New Roman, 1-1.25" margins all-around. Added for next time: last name/page # headers for pages 2 through X. Also, in-text citations will have to be perfect for our next formal essay.

Lastly, 4-6 means AT LEAST 4.

Add your concerns/thoughts in here if you'd like either me or your peers to chime in.

Timed Write Prompt for class on 12/1

In some works of literature, a character who appears briefly, or who does not
appear at all, is a significant presence. Choose a novel or play of literary merit and write an essay in which you show how such a character affects action, theme, or the
development of other characters. Avoid plot summary.

Obviously you'll be using Heart of Darkness in this essay and you have multiple options for characters to use based on your copious notes detailing class discussions ;)

Best,

RMH

Blog Prompt for post due 11/23

Y'all have the necessary information to post the thematic connections from Friday's classwork. Make sure you identify which group you're from.

Have a great weekend,

RMH

Blog Prompt for post due 11/19

Consider Part I ¶ 62, 63, and 64, starting with:

I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

Consider the following three questions and answer one of them:

What lie does Marlow tell for Kurtz, and why does he tell it? How does Marlow become entangled in a lie when he signs on as a steamboat captain in the Congo?

What is the nature of his attachment toward—loyalty for—Kurtz? Just a preference for hot-running devils?

Can you find any clue to the effects—physical & spiritual—of Marlow's experience in the Congo in Narrator One’s description of him?

Blog Prompt due 11/16

Part 1, par.9:

The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

par. 14:

We looked on, waiting patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.

Conrad may be warning his readers about the tale that is about to unfold. What do his warnings tell us to expect? What do they tell us of Marlow's character. READ THESE EXCERPTS CLOSELY! Be arguable in your analysis.

Have a fab weekend,

RMH

BOOK MUST BE READ...

...by the end of the week (haha). Not the next class. But you should've read a significant amount by now.

Best,

RMH

Precursor Joseph Conrad Bio Video and Blog Prompt

Cool haircut, eh?

Blog Prompt: Read the following: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bryan.htm Consider Bryan's argument and America's other dalliances (or worse) with imperialism. Does our most recent war in Iraq qualify? We reap certain benefits, but at what price?

I'll say it again, though y'all do well with this, be respectful of opinions that conflict with your own.

Note about the Timed Write and Focus questions for Oedipus (Edit - see at the bottom)

1. What is the significance of Oedipus's slow coming into awareness of that identity?
2. What is the significance of the physical blindness of the prophet Tiresias? Is blindness an important and repeated symbolic motif in the plain? How can we interpret Oedipus's act of self-blinding? Is his physical blindness symbolically similar to or different from that of Tiresias?
3. What do you make of the various situations at the end of the play (the suicide of Jocasta, Oedipus's self-blinding and exile, his prediction of a miserable life for his own children)? Why are the outcomes so tragic and extreme? What is the significance of the curse/prophecy which seems to haunt the family of Oedipus?
4. Is Oedipus an innocent victim of an unjust fate or does he bear some responsibility in the outcome of his life? Is his fate the result of unavoidable necessity or does he contribute to it through his own choices? Could he have changed the fate described in the prophecies? How?


When you are considering the prompt also be considering the Fate vs. Determinism discussion you had with your classmates. Your answer to how Sophocles addresses this will help to make your essay more arguable. ALSO, What is the impact of the dramatic irony? How does the effect of the tragedy change when we know what is going to happen? How does this tie to the Archetype of the “Tragic Hero”?


-RMH

Blog Prompt for post due 10/20

What I would like from you is a beginning of your post by our deadline tonight at 10:00 pm; but considering the broad scope of the debate, I would like you to continue writing, discussing and debating up to Thursday at 10:00. I will score this one thread as two blog posts.

Read the following (surprisingly good) overviews of Determinism vs. Free Will (as well as any other research you choose): http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Historical_Introduction_to_Philosophy/Determinism_and_the_Problem_of_Free-Will and http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/determinismandfreewill.html

Answer the following question after reading and taking notes:  

There is little doubt that humans have a perception of choice in our daily lives. We believe we make choices; that we are not mere puppets of either the gods nor the blind forces of the universe.

But do we? 

Have fun and keep it respectful.

You do not have to buy Oedipus...

...I will provide copies in class.

Yours,

-RMH

Black Tie Essays are to be (as stated in the syllabus)...

...4-6 pages.

The rest of the format we took notes on.

No Blog Prompt until Thursday

You need time to perfect your essays ;)

-RMH

BNW Essay Prompts, if you missed 'em

Brave New World essay prompts:

I. “It is as sparkling, as provocative, as brilliant, in the appropriate sense, as impressive as the day it was published. This is in part because its prophetic voice has remained surprisingly contemporary, both in its particular forecasts and in its general tone of semi-serious alarm. But it is much more because the book succeeds as a work of art...” –Martin Green

-Write an essay in which you defend this statement about Brave New World.

II. Analyze the following paragraph from pg. 69. Write an essay that explains this excerpt in the context of all that we discussed in class.

“A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.”

III. A topic of your choosing. I must approve of it prior to writing.

Many will be lured by the first prompt, but it is actually the more the difficult of the two - not that you should be dissuaded; but you will need to be very, very specific about the language of the prompt and answering it wholly, especially about its qualifications as a work of art (we talked about this a bit in class).

Also, class discussions are artillery for these essays. I've seen few students taking notes during them, but my expectation is that the ground we covered in class will find its way into your argument.

Lastly, BE SPECIFIC, BE ARGUABLE, CLOSE-READ EVIDENCE! 

Three Paragraph "Helmholtz" Essay

is exactly what it says = 3. total. paragraphs. Intro, body, conclusion. Rough draft in the journal. That's it.  Having trouble getting started? Well, I should hope so. You need to do some up front thinking and close-reading of the passage before writing.

A small hint: If your intro or thesis statement has the phrase "because she is sad" or a similar derivation, you're not reading closely enough.

You're welcome ;)

-RMH

Blog Prompt due 10/1

The Rock and the Sealing Wax (per Mr. Duncan):

Near the end of Chapter 2, you will find this short paragraph (another sentence fragment, by the way—guess they're not so bad after all, provided you know how to use them):

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.

Explore this simile and decide what it signifies.

Then find examples in the Brave New World in which the rock nearly breaks through the wax, or where the wax layer is so thin that the rock can be perceived, even if only for a moment. Start with the characters you explored in class and branch out if you have other examples you'd like to cite.

Blog Prompt due 9/23

Our quote from today (Tuesday):

1.     Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.

The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.

ATTRIBUTION:

Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, Points of Rebellion, pp. 32–33 (1970).


The quote above is making a pointed statement about dissent and our capacity to engage in it. Are we more or less prepared or capable of dissent in the U.S. relative to when he wrote this? Why? What does this have to do with our next novel, Brave New World?

Wednesday addendum: Everything should be a "reply" to another's post after the first five, earliest comments.  Let's avoid the one-off comments and deepen the discussion. -RMH

Candide Timed Writing Prompts

Hopefully you're checking the blog daily, as requested (well, demanded). These are the prompts, from which you will choose one, tomorrow.  You can prepare as fully as you wish, but no notes or the book will be allowed tomorrow during the timed essay.

In questioning the value of literary realism, Flannery O'Connor has written, "I am interested in making a good cause for distortion because I am coming to believe that it is the only way to make people see." Write an essay in which you "make a good case for distortion," as distinct from literary realism.  Base your essay on Candide. Analyze how important elements of the work are "distorted" and explain how these distortions contribute to the effectiveness of the work. Avoid plot summary.


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 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 self, even at death."  In a well-written essay, identify the "spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation" evident in Candide and explain its significance in the work as a whole.

Blog Prompt due 9/17

Furthering our discussion about Voltaire's contradiction of Optimism and Providence, read the following abstract of Leibniz' argument for Providence and Rousseau's refutation of Voltaire's skepticism:

http://www.leibniz-translations.com/wedderkopf.htm

and

http://www.leibniz-translations.com/dialogue.htm

and finally

http://geophysics-old.tau.ac.il/personal/shmulik/LisbonEq-letters.htm

With Voltaire on one side and Leibniz and Rousseau on the other, where are you personally on the argument? Back it up using evidence from the three authors.

For those of you that didn't...

...sign up yet (for shame!), here is another post on which to comment/register.

Important addition to the end of Period 3...

....Your copy of Epistle 1, parts 1-2 of "Essay on Man" is missing this at the very end:

"Then say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
  Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought:
  His knowledge measur'd to his state and place;
  His time a moment, and a point his space.
  If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
  What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
  The blest today is as completely so,
  As who began a thousand years ago."


Pretty important, eh?

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