26 Jan Which of the following best

American Literature

Week 1 Discussion

Gender, Ethnicity and Social Power Discussion

How might differences in gender, in ethnicity, in social power, and in historical circumstances affect literary imagination and style?

Where and how do we see minority or marginalized voices challenging or complicating the prevailing aesthetic values of their own time and the literary legacy they inherit?

American Literature

Week 2 Discussion

DQ1 Discussion of Video

After viewing the video in this week’s lesson, write your understanding of Native American voices. Post in the Discussion and respond to one peer by Saturday.

DQ2 The Iroquois and The Navajo

Discuss the role of animals in the creation stories of both the Iroquois and the Navajo. What is the role of the landscape?

Discuss whether animals and the landscape serve as a backdrop to the action of the human characters, or whether they play a more integral role in the development of the narratives.

American Literature

Week 3 Discussion

DQ1 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Read “The Day Is Done” aloud—it doesn’t take long to get through— and try to describe the mood, the psychological condition, that the poem seeks to create and address. The poem is on p. 575-576 in Volume B, Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Post a minimum of one paragraph, in your own words, your response to the above: describe the mood, psychological condition that Longfellow has created.

DQ2 Washington Irving

Read the story of “Rip van Winkle” by Washington Irving. It is an allegorical tale and was published in “The Sketch Book”, followed by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the headless horseman, who is often seen on Hallowe’en carrying his head in his arms and riding his horse. The stories are told as though they are the truth; however, it is important to realize that they are fiction.

What happens to Rip’s cultural identity that makes it possible for the townspeople to produce their first storyteller? Post your response in the discussion thread and respond to one peer.

All references to any reading assignment are found in the Table of Contents in each volume of the text books. Washington Irving is the first name in Vol. B. All authors are also in the Index of each volume, along with the titles of the writings.

See p. 25 for the beginning of Washington Irving’s section.

American Literature

Week 4 Discussion

DQ1 The Scarlet Letter

Instructions

Nathaniel Hawthorne is the “father of the short story” in American Literature. One of the rites of passage in an American education is reading The Scarlet Letter and writing a paper on it. The novel has psychological intensity and complexity, exemplified by color motifs (red, black), and formal symmetries (three scaffold scenes, daylight, midnight) and the scarlet “A”. Read The Scarlet Letter beginning on p. 425 and respond to the below questions in a discussion.

Discuss:

In Chapter II, Hawthorne writes of the women by the prison door: “There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day.” If one of the themes of the novel is that the status and power of women has changed for the good over the intervening two hundred years, what is he implying in the above observation?

How does this remark, and other portraits of women in the book, complicate our thinking about the status of women, then and now?

DQ2 Abraham Lincoln’s Speech to the Republican State Convention

Instructions

Read Abraham Lincoln’s speech given at the close of the “Republican State Convention in 1858”. It is famous for the lines: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

In your own words, after you read the speech, compare Lincoln’s words to today’s political climate. Do you see how historical literature can be relevant today, in the 21st century? While Lincoln refers to African slaves, the US is fighting a “war” against slavery today, but it is called “human trafficking”. Sometimes situations and cultures do not change very much.

Post your response in the discussion thread, and respond to one classmate’s post.

American Literature

Week 5 Discussion

DQ1 Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin was a well-known and respected woman writer in the second half of the 19th Century. She wrote prolifically, and her brief biography is detailed on p. 537 – 538. The Story of an Hour is an interesting tale. Read p. 542 – 544.

Respond to the following question in 250 words or more by Friday at 11:55 pm EST. Then respond to one of your classmates by Saturday at 11:55 pm EST:

Describe the narrative point of view in The Story of an Hour. What is your understanding of the ending?

DQ2 Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Discuss some of the similarities of these two poets: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Note the differences and the similarities. Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” is read by students of American Literature and is considered a masterpiece. Read Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass, p. 23-65. It is long, but imagine those words belonging to you.

Dickinson wrote prolifically and influenced many with her words. Read Poem 479 (p. 101-102); Poem 518 (p. 102); Poem 545 (p. 103); p. 591 (p. 103). What is your understanding of the theme of these poems? Be specific in noting language from each one that supports your point of view.

American Literature

Week 6 Discussion

DQ1 Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois

Instructions

Minority writers’s voices were heard and given respect in America during this period. Among those voices were Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Booker T. Washington materials give us a real opportunity to talk about the construction of an American identity, of an autobiography, and of a text that converses with other important documents in our cultural history. Writing at the very end of the nineteenth century, Washington was deeply aware of the historical and literary moment in which he was working: Franklin, Jacobs, Douglass, Whitman, Ulysses S. Grant, and many other autobiographers had already done much to establish the pace, subject matter, and general configurations of an American life. Read his brief biography (p. 699 – 701).

Du Bois had a different point of view about the black man and woman in America and is recognized as a strong spokesperson for his time. His life was very different from Washington’s and that is depicted in his writings, which influence American dialogue about race today. Read Mr. Du Bois’s brief biography (p. 918 – 920).

Discuss the following in 500 words or more by Friday at 11:55 pm EST, then respond to one classmate’s post by Sunday at 11:55 pm EST.

In Chapter XIV in Up from Slavery, Mr. Washington addresses the Atlanta (Georgia) Exposition. His achievements by the time of this address were many, and his invitation to speak was recognition of his intelligence and discipline.

Contrast W. E. B. Du Bois and his approach to the situation of black Americans and his writing, Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others (p. 927).

Do you think Mr. Du Bois respected Mr. Washington and his point of view on black opportunities and equality? If not, why not? If you think he did, provide examples to show your point of view.

DQ2 Voices of Immigrants; Jose Marti

Instructions

Visit The Library of Congress ” A Century of Immigration, 1820-1924 http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-century.html which has a great deal of information on the immigration of Jewish people to America. Many immigrants came to America with the hope of a better life than the one they had left. The Cuban poet, Jose Marti, was a prolific writer. Read his brief biography (p. 691 – 692). Then read “Our America”, which is his most widely published essay about his concerns for Latin independence and American dominance in the hemisphere.

Discuss your analysis of Marti’s concerns, and post your work by Thursday in the Discussion thread, responding to one classmate by Saturday.

American Literature

Week 7 Discussion

DQ1 Edgar Lee Masters and Edwin Arlington Robinson

Instructions

Masters and Robinson can work very well in a survey course of American literature as transition figures from the local color regionalism of the late nineteenth century to the modernism of the early twentieth century. Masters and Robinson write about the daily lives of ordinary people from the Midwest and New England, respectively, as did their local color forebears. But what Masters and Robinson add to literary history is the sense of alienation, isolation, and despair that becomes increasingly central to modernist literature. Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, from which the poems in NAAL are taken, is a collection of more than two hundred poems about the deceased residents of the fictional midwestern town of Spoon River. The poems read like the epitaphs of people with folksy names like Ollie McGee and Constance Hatley, but these rural folk all took to their grave secrets of suffering and loss. Similarly, Robinson’s poems about provincial Maine present us with men and women of limited education and experience with the larger world, but the afflictions (both physical and psychological) they suffer from are emblematic of the human condition as we enter the modern era.

Discuss one of the following in 250 words or more by Thursday at 11:55 pm. Then respond to your classmate in 150 words or more by Saturday at 11:55 pm EST.

What is your response to the voices of the dead in Masters’s poems? (p. 24, brief biography; p. 25-27)

Do the speakers in these dramatic monologues remind you of events in today’s news? Support your analysis with examples from his poems.

Robinson’s “Miniver Cheevy” and “Mr. Flood’s Party” are poems about alcoholics and their reasons (or excuses) for drinking.

Are they reasons or excuses?

In other words, does the nostalgia in each poem suggest a deep tragedy that these characters, in true naturalistic fashion, cannot escape?

Or does the nostalgia turn out to be a pretext for the drinking?

Does each poem serve, in some manner, as a commentary on the other?

Post your responses to these questions in 250 words or more in the Discussion thread by Friday and respond to one classmate by Saturday.

DQ2 Robert Frost

Proposition

Like Cather, Frost retains elements of realism, and like her, he portrays moments in which his speaker’s changes in perception are central to his poetry. Several class periods can be spent on individual poems and representative poems by other twentieth-century poets through the fulcrum of an analysis of Frost. You can prepare for a discussion of “The Oven Bird” by reading “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” with its allusion to Eden and human mortality. “The Oven Bird” deserves an important place in our discussion, because Frost’s other poems, his essay “The Figure a Poem Makes,” many other works of literature by modern writers, and even the concept of modernism itself seem contained and articulated in the poem’s last two lines: “The question that he frames in all but words / Is what to make of a diminished thing.” The bird and the poet ask questions that express the central modernist theme: How do we confront a world in which reality is subject to agreement or lacks referentiality altogether? How do we express the experience of fragmentation in personal and political life? How do we live with the increasing awareness of our own mortality, whether we face the prospect of human death (as the speaker does in “Home Burial,” “After Apple-Picking,” and “‘Out, Out—’”), the death or absence of God (as Frost considers in “Desert Places” and “Design”), or mere disappointment at our own powerlessness (as in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”)?

Does Frost embody both American Dream and American Nightmare? You must respond in the Debate below, and post a reason for your response.

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American Literature

Week 8 Discussion

DQ1 Instructions

Ernest Hemingway is remembered as one of America’s great writers. Many of his books were made into films: The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea (for which he won a Nobel Prize in Literature), For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. He was a prolific writer, and his prose is known for its directness and “streamlined style”. Hemingway wrote about the people he met in his travels, and the places where he lived for periods of his life. Gertrude Stein referred to the Americans and English writers who lived in Paris as the ‘lost generation’, and Hemingway was one of those writers.

Read Ernest Hemingway’s brief biography (p. 795 – 796). Then read “Chapter III, from The Sun Also Rises”. Include in your reading the footnotes on the pages which explain some of the meanings and origins of the passages and phrases (p. 797 – 803).

Then read Hills Like White Elephants (p. 803 – 807).

Write a summary of the two stories, analyzing the relationships between the men and women in both.

What do you think the man is referring to in Hills Like White Elephants when he says to the woman, “They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural”?

Post your response in 250- words or more.

American Literature

Week 10 Discussion

Instructions

Select two of the topics below and write an essay, 300 words or more, by Friday at 11:55 pm EST. Then respond to one classmate by Sunday at 11:55 pm EST. Please state which number you are writing about in your post.

1. Demonstrate how concepts of African American identity influence prose forms in works by the following writers: Douglass, Jacobs, Chesnutt, Hurston, Toomer, Ellison, and Walker.

2. Consider points of connection, useful contrasts, or central themes in each of several works that may be considered focal points for their respective literary traditions: Douglass’s Narrative, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chopin’s The Awakening, and Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain.

3. Choose an important writer in an American minority tradition, or in the tradition of American women authors. Write an essay in which you compare the perspective a reader achieves in examining a particular text within the context of the writer’s literary tradition with the perspective he or she might have in placing the text within the context of the writer’s white male contemporaries. Useful writers for this assignment include Jewett, Cather, or Welty; Hurston, Brooks, or Walker; Chesnutt, Sterling Brown, Hughes, or Richard Wright; or Zitkala Sa, Momaday, or Erdrich.

4. Examine characters who have been created by writers of the opposite gender. Compare a male protagonist created by a woman writer, such as Mr. Shiftlet in O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” with a female protagonist in a male writer’s fiction, such as Hawthorne’s Beatrice Rappaccini, James’s Daisy Miller, or O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone.

5. Study the Jewish writers represented in the text: Lazarus, Cahan, Malamud, Miller, Bellow, Roth, Ginsberg, and Spiegelman. Choose a representative text for close analysis and view it either within the context of other works in the tradition with works by the writer’s contemporaries.

American Literature

Week 1 Assignment

American Minority Voices

Instructions

Submit an APA formatted paper discussing one of the following topics:

When minority writers work within or against a dominant literary culture, how does a minority “literary tradition” take shape? Does it begin in a large-scale cultural movement? Can traditions arise, over time, from the creativity of isolated artists?

What connections do we see between such literary traditions and popular culture or folk practices?

How do American minority writers convey in their texts an understanding that they are participating in a tradition, or resisting one?

How is a concept of minority literary traditions useful to us in writing about or discussing American literature?

The paper is to be 3 pages (750 words), with a title page and a reference page. There are many articles, poems, and more that can be accessed through the online LIRN (library). You must follow APA formatting, and the information below will help you do that.

ICHS Virtual Library

Login to the ICHS Virtual Library at http://www.lirn.net, access code 40149 to online books, journals, and other reference resources selected to support ICHS curricula.

Open the template and save it as “template APA” for use again. Then save it as the name of your paper. Once you open it, click on the Pilcrow (looks like a backward P at the top of the icons), type over the text that shows, being very careful to not delete the formatting. Times New Roman 12 pt. font is required, double spaced, with NO additional spaces after paragraphs. (Go into “paragraphs” and be sure the setting is “0” for Before and “0” After, and click on the small box that says to not add any additional spaces after the paragraph.

Use the ENTER key at the end of the paragraphs with a Tab indent (1/2 inch, not 5 spaces). Use Ctrl and Enter to put in a hard page return after your title so you will begin your paper on Page 2. Title page is page 1. Use the page break (Ctrl Enter) before you start the Reference page also.

Power Points: APA ppts from OWL at Purdue.ppt and/or /files/3167453/APA_FORMATTING_9.27.2018.pptx

APA Guidelines Handout: IntextcitationandreferenceexamplesV6.pdf

American Literature

Week 2 Assignment

Instructions

Click on the link below and watch the video:

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit01/usingvideo.html

Then answer the following questions in 300-500 words or more in APA format by Friday at 11:55 pm EST:

1. What are some specific Navajo or Pueblo oral traditions or beliefs that you can see reflected in the written literature of these writers?

2. What do these writers seem to be doing, or trying to say, by employing these traditions?

3. How does Native American history, and the history of the contact between natives and Europeans, affect their contemporary writing?

4. How are their texts a combination of Native American and European literary traditions?

American Literature

Week 4 Assignment

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark

Instructions

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the master of the short story in the 1800s, wrote The Birthmark. Aylmer is a character in the story, and Georgiana is his wife. This is an interesting tale with a profound moral. Remember the time in which it was written, and the language is of that time.

Aylmer performs a variety of small experiments over the course of the story, sometimes to entertain Georgiana (he produces optical illusions, grows a plant spontaneously, attempts to take Georgiana’s portrait in a process that resembles photography, releases perfumes, and cures the leaves of a diseased geranium plant). Write a two-page response paper in APA format in which you closely analyze one of these experiments. Be sure to include the answers to the following questions in your paper:

1) How is it described?

2) How successful or useful is it?

3) How do Georgiana and Aylmer react to it?

4) Does the experiment have bearing on Aylmer’s larger project of removing Georgiana’s birthmark?

American Literature

Week 4 Assignment

Sojourner Truth and Women’s Rights

Instructions

Read the introduction to Sojourner Truth, p. 786. Then read her Speech to the Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, p. 786. Compare her speech requesting equal rights to those of women today, in the 21st Century. Has anything changed? Are women in America equal to those in power? In thinking about the writings up to 1820, which included works by and about about women, do you see any similarity or difference in the words by Ms. Truth and those of women writers like Anne Bradstreet (p. 217) and Mary Rowlandson (p. 249)?

Post your response in 300 words or more, ensuring correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Be sure to cite any resources you use.

American Literature

Week 5 Assignment

Mark Twain and Bret Harte

Instructions

Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel L. Clemens, is considered one of America’s greatest writers. The stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been read and discussed by students of literature for generations. The biggest controversy is the language in Huckleberry Finn and the vernacular (common language) in which it was written. In reading Huck Finn, we read about a boy and his adventures, running away, swearing, and smoking — considered evil behaviors for boys of the day, and his relationship with the slave, Jim. The book was banned in many libraries and denounced from many pulpits. Surprisingly, it was not denounced for its racial content, but for those behaviors noted. Read Huck Finn if you have the time.

Mark Twain wrote a satirical book, Letters from the Earth, about a dialogue between Lucifer, the Angel of Light who fell from grace (Satan), and Michael the Archangel. It is a fascinating text and I encourage all students to read it for the wit and wisdom present in Twain’s words.

In order to enjoy the satire of Mark Twain, read The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (p. 115-119). Calaveras County is in Northern California in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and they hold a Jumping Frog contest there in honor of this story every year.

A cohort of Mr. Twain’s was Bret Harte, author of The Luck of Roaring Camp (p. 342 – 350). Read this short story and compare Harte’s writing to Twain’s writing. Are they similar? Do you see any differences between their approach to writing about America in the 1800s?

Post in 250 words or more a comparison between Mark Twain (p. 111 – 115]), and his story of the Jumping Frog, and Bret Harte and Roaring Camp.

American Literature

Week 6 Assignment

Sui Sin Far — Edith Maud Eaton

Sui Sin Far was a Chinese American woman writer in America in a time when the Chinese were the targets of ‘vitriol’ and looked on with disdain. Read her brief biography, which is impressive in explaining her prolific writings (p. 908 – 909). Then read Mrs. Spring Fragrance (p. 909 – 917). Post your analysis by Friday of the story of Mr. and Mrs. Spring Fragrance and their relationship, noting the formal Chinese concept of marriage and love, and the American concept of marriage and love.

American Literature

Week 7 Assignment

Willa Cather

Read Willa Cather’s brief biography (p. 32 – 34). Reading Willa Cather is a right of passage in American Literature; My Antonia is one of her best known stories.

Read The Sculptor’s Funeral (p. 168 – 177) and write a 2-page summary of the short story. Use proper grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and spelling in your work. Post in the discussion thread. Respond to one classmate by Sunday.

Follow this link for more information about writing a summary: http://wwnorton.com/college/english/naal8/writing/A2-summary.aspx

American Literature

Week 8 Assignment

Comparison of Two Writers

Instructions

Compare two writers from the following lists by discussing writing styles and your preference/s.

Katharine Anne Porter

Zora Neale Hurston

Gertrude Stein

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sylvia Plath

OR

Ernest Hemingway

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Langston Hughes

T. S. Eliot

John Steinbeck

e.e. cummings (He wrote his name in lower case letters.)

You may compare a writer from the first list (women writers) to a writer from the second list (men writers), if that is your preference. Consider how a woman writes about a man, and a man writes about a woman. There are different points of consideration when discussing a writer’s style. When you state your preference, explain why you prefer one writer over another.

Your work must be at least 500 words, or more. Be mindful of correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting.

American Literature

Week 8 Assignment

John Steinbeck

Instructions

John Steinbeck was a reclusive American writer who wrote several books that were made into very successful, and classic, movies. The Grapes of Wrath is about the devastation of the 1930’s drought in the southern plains states and the Joad family who lost their land in Oklahoma and traveled west to California seeking a better life. The book was so controversial that it was banned or burned in several states. However, in spite of those harsh acts, it became a best seller. Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, Cannery Row, and Tortilla Flat. He wrote about social outcasts, inequality, the decency of ordinary people, and underdogs.

In the story, The Chrysanthemums, (p. 846 – 843) you can read his vivid descriptions of Elisa Allen and her husband, Henry, and the ordinariness of their life. But then you are introduced to a stranger.

Post your analysis of this story in 250 words or more, and your interpretation or understanding of why Elisa reacts as she does to the stranger.

American Literature

Week 9 Assignment

Late Twentieth Century

Explore the variety of themes and techniques by which late Twentieth Century writers of fiction depict their own life stories in imaginative literature. You might include the following authors in your paper: Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Rudolfo Anaya, Amy Tan, Annie Dillard, N. Scott Momaday, Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, and Richard Powers, or any of the writers published in Volume E, The Norton Anthology American Literature, Ninth Edition.

You do not have to include all of these writers. Choose 2 to discuss. Be sure to check your grammar, sentence construction, punctuation, and spelling. Do not rely on Spellcheck as it is not aware of how you are using a word. For instance, for, four; to, two, too.

Your paper needs to be 2 pages minimum, with a title page indicating the correct formatting (500 words).

American Literature

Week 9 Assignment

Literary Criticism: Sylvia Plath

Instructions

Read Sylvia Plath’s brief biography on p. 620-621. Plath was a brilliant poet whose life is depicted in her poetry.

The poem “Daddy” is on p. 626. “Lady Lazarus” is on pp. 622 – 624.

Using Literary Criticism

Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a poem whose thematic concerns and formal qualities have a great deal in common with “Lady Lazarus.” Read “Daddy” and the appended analyses of the poem and of Plath’s career generally.

Answer the following questions in your two page paper. Submit your paper by Saturday at 11:55 Pm EST via the dropbox.

Is the speaker in control of her own objectification?

How does the poem engage with violence?

What assumptions about gender does the speaker seem to be reacting to?

What is the speaker’s attitude toward death? Do you think “Lady Lazarus” is an autobiographical poem?

Read “Using Research to Generate Topic and Thesis” in the “Writing about Literature” section at the following website link to help you get started: http://wwnorton.com/college/english/naal8/writing.aspx

American Literature

Week 9 Assignment

Instructions

Toni Morrison’s brief biography begins on P. 605. After reading her biography, read “Recitatif”, p. 607. Then respond to the questions after the graphic.

Definition of “Recitatif”

The word “recitatif” will likely be unfamiliar to you. It is derived from the word “recitative,” which has a number of definitions, all of which hold possible significance for Toni Morrison’s story. The word may refer to a style of expression between song and ordinary speech used by performers during the narrative or dialogue parts of an opera. It also has a now obsolete definition: “the tone or rhythm peculiar to any language.” Recitative may also refer to anything that has the nature of a recital or repetition.

Busing and School Integration in the 1970s

Near the end of “Recitatif” the two main characters, Twyla and Roberta, encounter each other while picketing on different sides of a protest related to school busing and school integration. Public schools in the United States were technically desegregated in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But, by the 1970s, many American school districts were still segregated in practice because of housing inequalities and because of the ongoing segregation of neighborhoods. In its 1971 ruling on Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of required busing to end school segregation. Under federal court supervision, school districts across the nation in the 1970s and 1980s began assigning students to particular schools based on calculations designed to produce racial balance in those schools, rather than based on the students’ geographic proximity to them. Many families protested and resisted what became known as “forced busing,” claiming that it was burdensome and counterproductive to transport children away from their immediate neighborhoods to attend school. Some children transferred to private schools to avoid compliance with integration reforms. Today, most school districts have ended mandatory busing schemes and de facto segregation continues to exist.

Complete the following questions in a Word document and submit your answers via the dropbox by Saturday at 11:55 pm EST:

1. The story immediately establishes that Twyla and Roberta are, as Twyla puts it, “from whole other race[s],” and readers quickly find themselves struggling to determine which character is black and which is white based on ambiguous hints in the story. What racial stereotypes or racial codes serve as “hints” in the story about the two characters’ race? Why are their races ultimately indeterminable?

2. How does the story force readers to question their own reliance on racial stereotypes?

3. How do stereotypes about race intersect with stereotypes about class in the story? What kinds of confusion does that intersection cause?

4. What do we learn about Twyla’s memory over the course of the story? What does she remember vividly, what does she forget, and what does she seem to change her mind about?

5. Is Twyla a reliable narrator?

6. What is Twyla’s relationship to food? What does food seem to represent for her? Do her feelings about food change over the course of the story?

Carefully check your sentence construction, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Points will be deducted if there are errors in these areas. Be sure to read the chapter overviews (for those you have missed or skipped, go back and review them. They are there to help you become more proficient in English writing and speaking). Each question requires a thorough, well-written response. I suggest that you write your responses in Word, check it carefully, then post to the course room.

You can do this!

American Literature

Week 10 Assignment

Instructions

The link below will provide a history of one writing by Emma Lazarus. American Literature encompasses much more than novels, short stories, and poetry. It is also the speeches of Presidents, Senators, Representatives, and other political figures. In addition, it adorns some public places in America. Below is one such piece. When you read it, you will find 5 stanzas that should be familiar to you.

After reading the poem and contemplating its broad meaning, provide your own interpretation of this work of literature. How does the history of this poem compare to the politics of today with regard to immigration? Do you think it has the same meaning to Americans today that it had when it was written? State your opinion and analysis in 250 words or more. Be sure to proofread your work, and check for correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Post your work in the dropbox.

http://history1800s.about.com/od/tothenewworld/f/Statue-of-Liberty-and-Immigration.htm

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

American Literature

Week 9 Quiz

Question 1

Which of the following best summarizes Mrs. Mallard’s views on marriage as an institution?

Question 2

Why does Mrs. Mallard’s sister, Josephine, shield the truth of Mr. Mallard’s death from her?

Question 3

In the last sentence of the story, the attending doctors pronounce the cause of Mrs. Mallard’s death to be “the joy that kills.” What do the doctors mean by this?

Question 4

Which goddess does Mrs. Mallard unwittingly resemble as she descends the staircase with Josephine?

Question 5

Which of the following best characterizes Mrs. Mallard’s relationship with her husband?

Question 6

According to Josephine’s account, how did Mr. Mallard die?

Question 7

Which of the following is, according to the narrator, the “strongest impulse of [Mrs. Mallard’s] being”?

Question 8

“[Mrs. Mallard] sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.” Which of the following is the most appropriate paraphrase of the simile in this passage?