Blind Assassin, Halfway Structurally speaking, we have settled into a kind of rhythm with the sections of The Blind Assassin: the odd sections bring us to the text and plot of Laura Chase's The Blind Assassin, interspersed with newspaper articles that discuss the lives of the Griffins and Chases from a contemporary, outside-in perspective; the even sections bring us old lady Iris and the memoir she is navigating and writing. In this second quarter of the book, Laura's The Blind Assassin and Iris' memoir seem to dovetail together with the introduction of a new character: Alex. After Alex appears on the scene, Iris memoir becomes at least as interesting as The Blind Assassin chapters, at least for me. I can't get over the way that Atwood structures her plot, and the way that this plot structure can heighten the dramatic effect of the story for the reader (me). Atwood really earned that Man Booker prize, as far as I'm concerned. To pronounce the name of the dead is to make them live again, said the ancient Egyptians: not always what one might wish. AP Poetry Rubric, Progress Check, Unit 3 AssessmentJust a reminder about your Unit 2 poetry assessments. To assess them, I used the AP Scoring Rubric for Essay 1, the essay where you will be analyzing poetry. I discuss this rubric and the grading scale in an earlier post written after your Unit 1 assessment (where I used the Scoring Rubric for Essay 2). So in the HUB, you received a score somewhere between 0 and 6, 6 being the highest. In the comments, I indicated which row(s) of the rubric you lost points on: Row A is the claim, Row B is the development, evidence, explanation of the claim, and Row C is sophistication. On that note, for those of you who are so inclined to take advantage of the opportunity for practice, I have released the Free Response Unit 2 Progress Check in AP Classroom. While we're on the topic of assessments and the like, it seems like an appropriate time to tell you what your Unit 3 assessment will look like. You won't be writing a regular analytical paragraph, but you also won't be writing a full-blown analytical paper until Unit 4. This assessment will be a transitional assessment. You will write an introductory paragraph for a ghost paper, complete with a claim, explanation, and thesis statement. Then, you will plan (but not write) an outline for an analytical paper composed of "paragraphs" with claims and text evidence. Your last set of AP Classroom videos from Unit 3 discusses the differences between claims and thesis statements. We will start looking at those together in class starting next week. The biggest difference just to help you start wrapping your mind around it, is that your thesis statement will contain an arguable abstract idea that refers to the work as a whole. Writing Workshop DebriefingI will be restructuring the Writing Workshops for our next round on Thursday afternoon. That means your debriefing form is due by noon on Thursday. This might be the last time I restructure the workshops for a while, so take advantage of this opportunity if you wish to switch groups. I shared the Google Form for the debriefing in the Announcement section of the HUB.
Hello class! This week is our first week with The Blind Assassin, and I for one am entranced. In her Master Class trailer, Margaret Atwood said something like: "There's only one rule of writing: HOLD. MY. ATTENTION." As I mentioned earlier, she certainly seems to be walking the walk. In this blog post, I'll discuss:
Plot IntricaciesY'all this plot structure is amazing. It reminds me of so many things: those Russian nesting dolls, where you open a doll-shaped box to find another doll, then another, then another. A spider web spun by a master spider. A kaleidoscope. Basically, the title of our book, The Blind Assassin (1), is also title of a book within a book: dead Laura's posthumous masterpiece The Blind Assassin (2). However, the story of The Blind Assassin (2) is the story of a man and a woman falling in love as the man tells pieces of a story he is creating for the woman, The Blind Assassin (3). Even though we are looking at characterization in this week's dialectical journals, it's no secret that all the elements of fiction work together. I encourage you to start thinking about plot and how Atwood chooses to unfold her narrative now, because it's amazing, complex, and I've never seen anything quite like it. One way to do this is to ask yourself the question: why this scene? Why now? Also: how do each of the big sections work together to advance the plot? I've been thinking about that 2nd question, and at this point, here are my thoughts: Section I: Sets up the seed of conflict and mystery to drive the rest of the of the book. Three vital layers. Section II: The Blind Assassin, love story in the past, the way fictions guide our lives Section III: Navigating the past through Iris's memories. Trying to find the cause. Claim Guidelines, ConsolidatedEach week of Unit 3 you will write one claim, the best possible claim you are capable of writing. Here, in one place, are all the guidelines we've discussed over the course of the 1st cycle to help us craft strong claims, along with links to the original blog posts:
Writing Workshop ReminderRemember, your first writing workshop must be completed by Friday. On Monday's Content Hour, we'll be doing the 2nd half of our first writing workshops.
Morning! Just a heads-up: there's a cold front coming this evening. Friday and Saturday are supposed to be lovely. We should all consider breaking up with our computers (temporarily) and going outside. My brother whose lives in Austin and I started this thing where we identify different trees around us. I'm going to be on the hunt for a Chinquapin oak. Please remember, you need a copy of The Blind Assassin by Monday. In this blog, I'll discuss:
The Importance of ShiftsAs we read The Blind Assassin (or anything else), I'd like us to start training our brains to focus in on the shifts. What I mean when I say shifts is:
Poetry is a good place to start looking for shifts. Language is typically so dense in poems, that each line has the ability to overturn all the expectations built in the preceding lines. Novels are also a good place to look for shifts, especially shifts in the how the character relates to the events of a story. Think about how the internal shifts in the main character of "Bloodchild" affected his decisions, which in turn affected the events of the plot. We get to see these shifts operating on a wider, richer scale in a novel, so be on the look-out for them. Writing Workshops: On Selecting a Piece of Writing to ShareI think I've said this already to you all, but having the dedicated eyes of an invested reader of your work is a precious thing. Starting on Monday, we should all have at least three sets of eyes looking at and thinking about our written words. You get to choose what to share with your fellow workshoppers. You an choose to discuss some of your analytical writing from class, a college essay, a piece of writing from another class, or a creative piece you've written. Here's some things to consider as you decide:
Debriefing DJ's: More on ClaimsTime to add to our growing list of pointers on claims. Here are a few more things to consider:
1. Steer away from long quotes in the claim. The place for long quotes is in the body of the text, not in the claim. Student Example: In her poem “Pilgrimage,” Natasha Tretheway uses the metaphor “Here, the Mississippi carved its mud-dark path, a graveyard for skeletons of sunken ships,” to compare the Mississippi river to a graveyard in order to display its dark history in connection to the violence and fatalities of the Civil War. Stronger revised claim: In her poem "Pilgrimage," Natasha Tretheway uses metaphor to compare the Mississippi river to a graveyard in order to display its dark history in connection to the violence and fatalities of the Civil War. 2. Try to stay away from pronouns in a claim. Also demonstrative adjectives. Remember when I said that every word in the claim has to hold weight, has to do work? Pronouns don't hold enough meaning. The don't do enough work. Student Example: In Natasha Trethewey’s “Pilgrimage” she is using this metaphor to symbolize how they are on ground that claimed the lives of hundreds of men, and annually relive it. The meaning of this claim is completely obscured by vague language, courtesy of pronouns and demonstrative adjectives. Let's end by looking at another example of a super-awesome student claim: In his poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”, Robert Frost makes use of repetition in the final two lines of the poem to put emphasis on the theme of persistence and dictating the pace of one’s life instead of allowing life to run you over. It was so nice to meet some of your parents at Open House yesterday :) In this blog post, we'll:
MacArthur Geniuses and Nobel LaureatesI just wanted to let you know that NK Jeminson won a 2020 MacArthur genius award, along with $625,000. I've never read her, but I feel like her work would probably be right up my alley, and yours as well if you were into Octavia Butler. In fact, it kind of seems like Jeminson is an Octavia Butler for our generation. In this Guardian article, the newspaper describes Jeminson's work as "pushing against the conventions of epic fantasy and science fiction genres while exploring deeply human questions about structural racism, environmental crises and familial relationships." While we're on the topic of awards, I want to let you know that the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday. Fingers crossed for Margaret Atwood. Poetry Claims DebriefingThe claim is the foundation of our analytical writing. If there's a problem with the claim, it's usually nearly impossible to spend the rest of the paragraph defending it successfully. Let's look at some opportunities I noticed for strengthening our claims. Read through these carefully before you submit your next round of DJ's. Also, reread last week's debriefing on claims. Some of us need to review the structure of a strong claim. 1. The claim should be one sentence. Now, I'm not saying that every strong claim that has ever been spun out of a mind has always been one sentence long. What I am saying is that a sentence is enough space to create a strong, arguable claim. When we start bleeding our claims into other sentences, often our language becomes sloppier and we add unnecessary additional ideas. A strong one sentence claim is more difficult to write than a sprawling idea spread out over many independent clauses. A strong one sentence claim is often more precise than sprawling claims. Here's an example of a multisentence student claim: In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas repeats, “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” to convey his belief that life is bright and should be fiercely protected to the very end. This poem is the fear Thomas has of his father giving in to death, so repeating for him to fight for his life shows how important life is to Thomas that he compares it to a light. There is too much here that belongs in the explanation, not the claim. Here's a revised, stronger, one sentence version of the claim: In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas illustrates the tragedy of death and the beauty of life by the repetition of the phrase "the dying of the light." 2. Revise your claims on a word level. The claim is an important sentence, maybe the most important sentence of your analysis. It needs to be strong. Every word should accomplish some sort of work. Before you turn in your second set of dialectical journals, and before you turn in any analytical work, reread your claim to make sure that every word is important and necessary. 3. Distinguish between author and speaker. The difference between the author and the speaker is more confusing in poetry than in fiction. But it's essential that these terms aren't confused with each other. For our purposes, the author of the poem is the person whose hand in around the pen, the person making the stylistic choices and crafting the words we are reading. The author doesn't inhabit the poem, the author creates the poem. The speaker is one inhabiting the poem. Let's look at a second claim example of a student claim: The author is grieving over the loss of his dad, which alludes to the perspective of the speaker which is the author relating to anyone who grieved over the loss of a loved one. And a stronger revision: In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas' shift into the second person point-of-view in the last stanza turns the speaker's argument for the morality of resisting death into his personal grief at the approaching death of his father. That's probably enough to be getting on with for now. More next week. Writing WorkshopsNext Monday's Content Hour will be our first Writing Workshop. Here are a few details about how they will work:
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
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