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.

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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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