AP English Literature and Composition
Patrick McGhee
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Room 332
Course Description
This course is designated as Advanced Placement, a rigorous, college-level course. The works we read are challenging. “The AP English Literature and Composition course focuses on reading, analyzing, and writing about imaginative literature (fiction, poetry, drama) from various periods. Students engage in close reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature to deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style, and themes, as well as its use of figurative language, imagery, and symbolism. Writing assignments include expository, analytical, and argumentative essays that require students to analyze and interpret literary works” (from AP English Literature and Composition: Course and Exam Description, V.1, p7). Because the works taught require careful, close reading and annotation, students may be required to purchase their own copies of novels and plays to annotate.
Conferencing and revision with your colleagues and myself will be an important part of the writing process in this class. Students should come each day to class prepared to interact. Much of the knowledge gained will be from listening and learning not only from the teacher but also from each other. As you write, share and revise your product, it is hoped you will grow as a writer and gain an understanding of what good writing encompasses: a strong focus, logical organization, effective syntactic structure, and textual evidence to support your assertions
Grading Policy
40% classwork/homework
25% tests
20% projects/papers
15% six-week exam
Late Work Policy
Students are expected to complete all assignments by the due date. In the case of an absence, daily homework can be turned in the next time the student comes to class. Work for minor assignments such as homework will be accepted late at a penalty of 15 points per day. Work for a major assignment that is not completed on time will not be accepted late. If a student is to be absent on the day a major assignment is due, I expect the student either to turn in the work prior to the absence, email it to me by the beginning of class time and follow up with a hard copy at their earliest convenience, or have a colleague turn it in. For all major assignments, ample time will be provided to allow the student to complete their work. The responsibility of turning in work on time lies with the student.
Classroom Behavior
Students are expected to behave in a manner that promotes learning, scholarship, growth, and honor. Any breaches of school rules or acceptable behavior will be dealt with first with the student, and as necessary with a parent. Administrators will be informed as warranted.
Academic Honesty
If a student is found copying assignments, all parties involved will receive zeros on that assignment. If a student cheats on a test, the student will receive a zero for the test and no re-test will be given. There is no higher academic crime than plagiarism. We will review proper MLA formatting to eliminate any accidental plagiarism. If a student is caught knowingly plagiarizing, they will receive a zero for the assignment, parents will be contacted, potential colleges will be notified, and disciplinary action will ensue per campus and district guidelines.
Attendance
Students must attend class. If a student is not physically in my class room then they will be counted absent. If they are on a field trip or other school function, it is the responsibility of the appropriate faculty member to report the activity to the attendance office, which will make the appropriate changes. If a student accumulates too many absences, excused and unexcused, then district policy and state law mandate that credit be denied. There will be no flexibility on this point. It is the student's responsibility to check the attendance reports generated in the attendance office and notify me of any errors PRIOR to the end of the six weeks. Failure to check this will result in the error remaining on the attendance report.
Tutoring
My philosophy on tutoring is simple: I will help you any reasonable time, any reasonable place, barring any scheduling conflicts. Once the school year has commenced, we will collectively decide on the best days for me to have weekly office hours, but if you want or need help just let me know; we can do it!
Reporting Grades
I will update your grades regularly every six weeks. You are responsible for looking carefully at the online grading system and notifying me of any errors. Failure to do this PRIOR to the end of the six-week period will result in the erroneous grade remaining the grade of record.
Contacting Me
You are welcome to email me. Just know that I check my email once a day. If you email me after that, I will not get your message until the next day (amazing how that works). If you are emailing me an assignment, I ask that you both attach the assignment, and cut and paste it into the body of the email. Failure to do both may result in you not getting credit for turning in the assignment.
Course Framework
Thematic Focus: It’s the End of the World as We Know It, And I Feel Fine
Unit 1: Long Fiction I (about 10 class periods)
Text: The Handmaid’s Taleby Margaret Atwood
In this unit, the text was assigned to be read as summer reading. Students should re-read the novel at home as appropriate, dividing the reading into reasonable chunks, annotating the text and taking reading quizzes weekly
Sample Activities and Assignments
Setting (Skill Category 2.A) After reading and discussing several chapters of the book, students will construct a mind map illustrating the details that reveal the situation and setting of the novel.
Structure (Skill Category 3.E)After the students have read about half of the novel, they should work in groups to choose a significant event in the text and try to determine what lasting effect this incident has on the boy and the man. For homework, each student should write a paragraph explaining how this particular episode affected the attitudes and values of the novel’s main characters.
Structure (Skill Category 3.F)The novel involves two main conflicts: the “Handmaids” against the “ruling elite” and the environment against human beings. In groups of four or five, students should create PowerPoint presentations that trace the course of one of these conflicts through the novel. The last few slides should explain how this conflict shows the reader something universal about the human condition.
Character (Skill Category 1.B;) After reading the entire novel, students should pair up and examine the text for evidence that the character of the boy changes over the course of the novel. For homework, they will individually write a paragraph explaining what change takes place and how the character’s development conveys a part of the story’s theme.
Literary Argumentation (Skill Category7.B): After completing the previous activity, students will spend a class period practicing the skill of writing a strong thesis statement with a defensible claim. For homework, each student should write a thesis statement that makes a claim about the changes the boy experiences over the course of the novel.
Literary Argumentation (Skill Category 7.D)After completing their thesis statements, students will spend a class period practicing the skill of selecting apt evidence to prove a thesis. For homework, each student should select from the text five quotations or details that illustrate the changes the boy experiences in the novel.
Literary Argumentation (Skill Category 7.C)After compiling a list of evidence, students will spend a class period writing commentary that links the evidence they have chosen to the thesis statement they developed earlier.
Literary Argumentation(Skill Categories 7.A-D) In an out-of-class setting, students should use their prewriting to construct a multi-paragraph argument that explains and illustrates the importance of the ways that the boy in the novel changes over time.
Literary Argumentation(Skill Category 7.E) After the students have completed their essays, the teacher should line-edit the papers for grammar, mechanics, and style and score the essays with a rubric that takes into account content, reasoning, evidence, and structure. After a brief face-to-face conference with the teacher, students should revise their essays and re-submit them for a grade.
Personal Progress Check1(Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 1.A, 2.A, 3.A-B, 4.A-B, 7.A-D.)
Unit 2: Poetry I (about 12-14 class periods)
Texts:
“Lineage” (Hughes)
“Litany” (Collins)
“Museé des Beaux Arts” (Auden)
“When I Have Fears” (Keats)
“Out, Out” (Robert Frost)
“Desert Places” (Frost)
“Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God” (Donne)
“When Death Comes” (Oliver)
“I Felt a Funeral in My Brain” (Dickinson)
“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (Milton)
Sample Activities and Assignments
Texts: “When I Have Fears,” “Desert Places,” and “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”
Character (Skill Category 1.A)Students should read the three poems carefully. Then, in small groups, they should draw a comparison chart in which they list elements that reveal something about the character of the poems’ speakers.
After completing the chart, the students should respond to the following writing prompt:
Each of the three poems is written in first person, and each reveals a highly personal situation. Write a paragraph in which you make inferences about the “personality” of each speaker. Support your ideas with short quotations from the text.
Text: “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”
Structure (Skill Category 3.C)
After reading the poem carefully both silently and aloud, the students will pair up to create PowerPoint presentations about the poem. On their slides, students should examine each stanza separately, placing its concrete images on different slides (for example, a funeral, a brain, mourners, a drum, a coffin (the “Box”), the “Boots of Lead,” the universe as a “Bell,” a person who is just an “Ear,” the speaker (and her companion, Silence) shipwrecked on a beach, a plank in an upstairs room breaking and a person plummeting down). The slides should make it clear how each stanza creates a literal image that conjures up a figurative meaning and should explain how each stanza adds an element of disturbance or instability that culminates in an ultimate mental breakdown.
Text: “Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God”
Structure (Skill Category 3.C) This activity is designed to enhance the students’ understanding of poetic structure and its relationship to meaning. This sonnet’s structure is organized into an initial 8-line group (the octave) and a final six-line group (the sestet). The sections are divided by the shift-word “yet.”
The students should examine the first four lines of the octave. What is the speaker’s request? With what figurative image does he illustrate it? Especially notice the context and meaning of the words “batter knock, breathe, shine, mend, rise, stand, o'erthrow , bend, break, blow, and burn” as they are used in the first four lines.
They should next examine the second four lines of the octave. What statement does the speaker make about the condition of his soul? With what figurative image does he illustrate his point? Students should look up the words “usurped,” and “viceroy” and consider the role the speaker thinks that “Reason” should play in this contest.
At this point, students should answer the question, “What is the combined effect of the octave?”
Before the students move on to the sestet, they should consider the words “imprison,” “enthrall,” “chaste,” and “ravish.” If they are not sure of the meanings, they should look them up in a good dictionary, noting the etymology, if possible.
Then they should examine the first three lines of the sestet and consider the questions “What desire does the speaker express? What prevents the speaker from gaining his desire? Is this difficulty literal or figurative? What can God do to free the speaker so that his love for God can be complete and faithful? How does the use of figurative language intensify the reader’s perception of the speaker’s passion?”
Lastly, students should examine the three final, shocking lines of the sestet and consider these questions: “What is the speaker asking God to do? How does the figurative nature of this request convey the speaker’s concept of union with God?”
The class may also wish to examine how Donne’s use of paradox intensifies the complexity of his attitude toward God.
Text: “Museé des Beaux Arts”
Structure (Skill Category 3.D)
After reading the poem carefully and viewing the related painting by Brueghel, students may make a chart showing the contrasts between the ordinary and the extraordinary depicted in the poem (for example, the “miraculous birth” contrasted with the bored children ice skating). After completing the chart and discussing the juxtapositions with their classmates, student should write a paragraph explaining how Auden uses contrast to show how the ordinariness of human life tends to hide life’s most extraordinary aspects.
Text: “When Death Comes”
Figurative Language (Skill Category 5.B 6.A,B)
This poet uses metaphor and simile to convey her conception of death and her complex attitude toward its arrival After hearing someone read the poem aloud, students should consider the poet’s use of figurative language. What is it about death that makes the speaker compare it to a “hungry bear in autumn”? What is it hungry for? Why is it autumn? When the speaker compares death to someone who gives “all the bright coins” he has in his “purse” to “buy” the speaker, what does that image represent? What might the “bright coins” be? What’s the “purse”? In what way does death “buy” a person? Why would death “snap the purse shut” after the purchase is made? The students should ask themselves similar questions about all of the figurative language in the poem. They should also consider which words and phrases are used figuratively and which are used literally.
Literary Argumentation (Skill Category 7.A)
After a thorough examination of the text, the students should formulate a thesis statement that clearly indicates their own ideas about what Mary Oliver’s conception of death is and what kind of attitude she hopes to take toward it in the end. Then they can write a paragraph explaining how the poet’s use of figurative language conveys her thoughts and feelings about death. They should use short quotations from the poem to develop and support their ideas.
Personal Progress Check 2 (evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 1.A, 3.C, 5.A-B, 6.A-B, 7.D-E).
*Note: during this unit, it would be valuable for student to write poems of their own using the techniques and resources of language they have learned about by studying poetry.
Unit 3: Short Fiction I (about 13-15 class periods)
“The Second Bakery Attack (Murakami)
“My Side of the Matter” (Capote)
“A Worn Path” (Welty)
“The Sound of Thunder” (Bradbury)
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (Oates)
Sample Activities and Assignments
Text: “The Second Bakery Attack
Character (Skill Category 1A) In small groups, students will list details from the text that indicate the main character’s wife’s inner and outer attributes—her skills, her virtues, her strengths, her feelings, her relationships, her goals and dreams. Then, individually, they will write a paragraph that explains how these details reveal the character’s perspective and motivations.
Text: “My Side of the Matter”
Literary Argumentation (Skill Category 7A): At the end of the story “My Side of the Matter,” the main character sums up a questionable argument to absolve himself of any culpability in the chaos of his household. After guided practice in writing a literary analysis thesis statement, students will write a paragraph advocating the character’s side of the matter or challenging it (i.e., who is truly at fault for the predicament in which he finds himself?) and will use evidence from the text to support their point of view. At the end of the paragraph, students should explain the thematic importance of the quotation, depending on how the reader interprets it.
Text: “A Worn Path”
Structure (Skill Category 3.A,B) The plot and structure of the story “A Worn Path” contains many of the basic elements of the archetypal “Journey of the Hero” (for example, the task, the maze, the threshold, the ordeal, help from the supernatural, etc.). In a whole-group discussion, students will identify these elements and link specific plot elements to the archetypal narrative structure. For homework, each student will write a paragraph explaining how the archetypal elements contribute to the reader’s perception of the story’s meaning.
Perspective (Skill Category 4 A,B) The narrator of “A Worn Path” tells the story from a third-person perspective, focusing primarily on the actions and words of the main character, Phoenix Jackson. The narrator does not tell the reader what Phoenix thinks or feels but allows the reader to make inferences about her thoughts and feelings based on her actions and words. In a student-led discussion, the class will list the actions and words provided by the narrator and link them to the main character’s possible thoughts and feelings. For homework, each student will write a paragraph explaining how a single action or speech by Phoenix reveals something important about her character.
Setting (Skill Category 2A) In the story, the main conflict takes place between a human being and nature. The hostile setting of the Far North proves to be a deadly adversary. As a whole-class exercise, the students will identify the images and details in the story that create the setting, writing them on the whiteboard, then explain how each element presents a challenge or threat to the narrator. As a homework assignment, each student will write a paragraph examining the images that create the setting and explaining how the setting serves as the antagonist of the main character.
Text: “The Sound of Thunder”
Figurative Language (Skill Category 5B and D) In this story, the talented stylist Ray Bradbury chooses connotative words and creates powerful images that convey the terrifying size and nature of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that dominates the story. In class, students will create a mind map in which they link the images and connotative words to the terror the main character feels when he sees the dinosaur he is to hunt. As a homework assignment, students will choose two or three of the images, words, or phrases and write two sentences of commentary for each, explaining how the author uses language to create an impression of terror.
Figurative Language (Skill Category 5A/6A/B) Bradbury uses multiple metaphors and similes in the story to compare the unknown with the known. Dividing a piece of paper into six equal squares, the students will draw a literal representation of the simile or metaphor to visualize the effect intended by the author. For example, Bradbury says of the T Rex that “each lower leg was a piston,” and that it has “thick ropes of muscle” and “skin like the mail of a terrible warrior.” Students would draw images of the legs as pistons in an engine, muscles as real ropes, and skin that looks like a warrior’s armor. For homework, the students should write a paragraph describing a terrifying object or being, using their own metaphors and similes to produce the effect of fear in the reader.
Literary Argumentation (Skill Category 7A) As an end-of-unit activity, each student will choose one of the stories and write a literary analysis paragraph based on the following prompt:
After reading the story carefully, write an essay in which you explain how the author has used the resources of language (imagery, diction, detail, comparisons) to create a powerful character or setting for the story.
Personal Progress Check 3 (Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 1.A,1.B, 2.A, 3.E, 3.F, 7.A-E)
Thematic Focus: Cruelty and Compassion
Unit 4: Short Fiction II (about 17 class periods)
Suggested Texts:
“Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Le Guin)
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” (O’Connor)
“A Rose for Emily” (Faulkner)
“Shooting an Elephant” (Orwell)
Sample Activities and Assignments
Character(Skill Category1.A): As students read the account of Mr. Earnshaw’s homecoming, when he introduces the foundling boy Heathcliff to his two children, Cathy and Hareton (Chapter 4, “The Foundling”), they should highlight the details and actions that reveal the prejudiced, selfish and hateful attitude that Cathy, Hareton, Mrs. Earnshaw show toward the newcomer up to the line, “This was Heathcliff’s first introduction to the family). After they have read this section of the chapter, they should conduct a “fishbowl” discussion to determine why each of these characters would react negatively to Heathcliff’s arrival. What do the details and word choice of each character tell us about their perspectives and expectations?
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Character (Skill Category 1C): After reading the second part of Chapter 4, students should examine the behavior of Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw during the incident in which they quarrel over the horses they have been given. Which details show Hareton’s hot, uncontrollable temper, and which show Heathcliff’s calm, unemotional resolve? What does the difference in their temperament tell us about Emily Bronte’s view of human nature and the will to power?
Character(Skill Category1.D): In Chapter 5, (“The Death of Mr. Earnshaw”), the narrator describes the misunderstanding that exists between Cathy and her father, which is at least partly caused by the constant reproofs and sermonizing of the zealous old servant Joseph. How does Joseph’s rigid value system contribute to the conflict between the wild and free Cathy and her stern father?
Setting(Skill Categories2.B) In Chapter 1, “A Visit to Wuthering Heights,” Mr. Lockwood, the first narrator of the story, describes his visit to the house Heathcliff inhabits. Using a large piece of butcher paper, students in groups should draw and label the objects, animals, and people in the house. After forming a complete picture of the “Heights,” they should write a short in-class paper under timed conditions explaining how Bronte creates a setting of rugged, brutal ferocity as the background of her tale of the fierce, pitiless, and violent-tempered people who live there.
Setting(Skill Category2.C): After reading Chapters 2 and 3 (“A Singular Family” and “A Ghost at the Window,” students should again use butcher paper to draw a life-sized sketch of Mr. Heathcliff, the owner of the “Heights.” In the head, students will list quotations that show his thoughts, near the mouth, the words he speaks, in his eyes, the things he has seen, in his heart, the feelings the reader can infer from his behavior, in his abdomen, the dark secrets or desires he may have, in his ears, the words he hears about himself, on his hands, the things he does. After presenting their portraits to the class, the students should compare their drawings of Wuthering Heights to their portrait of its owner and construct a comparison chart that relates the setting of the novel to its “hero.”
Narration(Skill Category4.A-C): In Chapters 4 and 5, the narrative of Nelly, the female servant at Thrushcross Grange, replaces that of Mr. Lockwood, Heathcliff’s tenant. After reading the first five chapters of the novel, students will collaborate to examine the differences between Lockwood’s and Nelly’s perspective. Lockwood, as the outsider, is a newcomer to the scene and has no personal link with it; Nelly is practically a member of the family, although her social station is lower than that of the Earnshaws, who are of the “gentleman farmer” social class. The students should evaluate the possible prejudices and previous experiences that might make Nelly a less-“reliable” narrator than Lockwood. Since the “ghost” scene is witnessed by Lockwood personally, should the reader consider him a “reliable” witness to these supernatural events? Students should write a one-page reflection on the effect of the two narrators on the reader, using direct quotations and explanatory commentary to provide support for their assertions.
Literary Argumentation(Skill Category7.B-D): After reading Chapters 6,7,8, and 9 (“New Acquaintances,” “Catherine Becomes a Lady,” “The Disintegration of the Earnshaws,” and “The Disappearance of Heathcliff,”) the students should consider Cathy’s relationship with both Heathcliff and Edgar Linton, and the choices she makes about each young man. After a class discussion about Cathy’s remarks to Nelly and the subsequent departure of Heathcliff, students should write a paper detailing Cathy’s reasons for her choices and evaluating their worth or lack thereof. The papers should contain a defensible claim about the meaning of the text, evidence that supports the claim, and commentary that makes their line of reasoning clear
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Literary Argumentation (Skill Category 7E) After the students have written their essays and their teacher has line-edited and scored the essays, the students will revise the papers, correcting any misuses of conventions and adding elements that strengthen their analysis and style. Teachers should re-score the essays after students have revised them.
Text: “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Structure(Skill Categories3.A): After reading “A Good Man is Hard To Find,” students should consider the structure of the story, identifying the exposition, inciting incident, rising action, turning point, falling action, and denouement (which in this case, coincides with a dramatic epiphany). After dividing the text into these parts, students should write a 20-minute in-class essay explaining how Flannery O’Connor has used readers’ expectations about the standard structure (especially the ending) of a story to both startle and confound them by her odd ending.
Text: “Miss Brill”
Structure(Skill Category3.D): After reading and discussing “Miss Brill,” the students should examine the author’s description and characterization of Miss Brill’s furs, which occurs at three different points in the story: the beginning, middle, and end. What changes take place in both Miss Brill’s and the reader’s perception of the furs, and what realization do both come to at the end?
Text: “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Structure(Skill Category 3D): As a final exercise, students should read “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” with the idea that the text, nominally a fairy-tale-like fantasy, is not a fairy tale or a fantasy at all, but a story that has very direct links with real life, history, and current events. After reflection and discussion, the students should prepare a thesis, list of quotations, and line of reasoning that will assist them in writing in class a well-supported essay analyzing how the contrast between the city and the child creates the theme of the story.
Personal Progress Check 4 (Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 1.A,C,D; 2.B,C; 3.A,D; 4.A-C; 7.B-E)
Unit 5: Poetry II (about 17 class periods)
Suggested Texts:
“Rite of Passage” (Olds)
“The Man He Killed” (Hardy)
“Cruelty” (Clifton)
“The Raven” (Poe)
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (Keats)
“Dulce et Decorum Est” (Owen)
“Daddy” (Plath)
Sample Activities and Assignments
Text: “The Raven”
Structure (Skill Category 3.C): Poe’s poem “The Raven” is written in a closed-form structure with a predictable pattern of meter and rhyme. Each of the eighteen six-line stanzas has a purpose. In pairs, students should examine the poem and state the purpose of each stanza. After doing so, they should compare their responses with those of the other students.
Figurative Language(Skill Category 5.B): The repeated word “Nevermore” in the last line of each stanza changes in meaning as the poem develops. Students should discuss and explain how Poe uses this word both to unify the poem and to surprise the reader with the multilayered repetition of the key word.
Text: “Rite of Passage”
Figurative Language (Skill Categories 5.A, 6.B): In this poem, Sharon Olds uses figurative language to suggest a dark truth about the lives of children. After reading the poem carefully, students should identify the metaphors and similes that convey the poem’s meaning. For each metaphor and simile, students should explain the literal meaning of the figurative language and then decide what deeper meaning the comparison suggests. At the end of the exercise, students should write a thesis statement such as the following: “In her poem “Rite of Passage,” Sharon Olds uses figurative language connected to (subject) to convey the idea that (statement of theme).
Text: “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Figurative Language(Skill Category 5D): After reading the poem carefully, students should list the sensory details with which Owen conveys the misery and ugliness of a mustard gas attack during WWI and, by implication, the misery and ugliness of all warfare. Next to each image, the student should explain the feelings and associations that it evokes in the reader.
Text: “Daddy”
Figurative Language(Skill Category 6.D): In this poem, Sylvia Plath alludes to both Hitler’s Germany and to the legend of the vampire to characterize her father. Students should research the specific references to Hitler and learn about the legend of the vampire. Then each student should write two paragraphs of analysis: one explaining how the Hitler references characterize the speaker’s relationship with her father and one analyzing the references to the vampire legend and stating how that allusion conveys the relationship.
Text: “Cruelty”
Figurative Language (Skill Category 6C) this poem, Lucille Clifton personifies the roaches by comparing them to victims of an invasion and to Jews killed in the Holocaust. Ironically, the poem seems to suggest that the roaches have no importance and can be destroyed without guilt or shame. Students should discuss how Clifton’s clever use of personification ironically emphasizes the horror of the speaker at her own capability for cruelty.
Text: “The Man He Killed”
Narrative (Skill Category 4.B): After reading the poem and looking up any unfamiliar terms, students should write poems that imitate the structure of the Hardy poem and that convey a similar theme—the irony of the fact that the speaker and the dead man might have been friends had they met under other circumstances. The student poems should employ first person point of view and use the dash as Hardy does—to express the speaker’s doubt and uncertainty about his own actions.
Text: “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
Figurative Language(Skill Category 5B): After reading the poem, students should investigate the meaning of the archaic terms Keats uses to narrate the story. Then they should consider the effect of the poet’s using language appropriate to an earlier time period to tell the sad story of the knight and the beautiful lady. Each student should write a paragraph with an arguable topic sentence explaining how Keat’s use of medieval language enhances the poem’s effect on the reader.
Literary Argumentation (Skill Categories 7.B-E): As a final exercise, the students should spend a class period reading poems from Billy Collins’s website “Poetry 180” or any other anthology of poems. Students should choose a poem that relates to the subject of “Cruelty and Compassion” and write a multi-draft essay interpreting the poem and explaining how the author of the poem uses imagery, detail, diction, point of view, and figurative language to express a truth about the human condition.
Personal Progress Check 5 (Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 3.C; 5.A,B,D; 6.B-D; 7.B-E)
Unit 6: Longer Works of Fiction II (about 17 class periods)
Texts:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(Stevenson)
Metamorphosis(Kafka)
Sample Activities and Assignments
Character(Skill Category 1E): After reading Chapters 1-5, students should carefully examine the words and actions of the convict as well as Dickens’s descriptions of him. Although this character terrifies Pip (and the reader), the text contains indications that his surface appearance is deceiving. Students should analyze the means by which Dickens creates complexity in this central character by making a “Pro/Con” chart of details, images, and description that reveal the convict’s multidimensional character.
As a related exercise, students should write a one-page analysis of the way Dickens uses emotionally charged details and images to influence the reader’s complex feelings about the convict. At the end of the paper, the students should explain the reasons why Dickens chooses to make his readers view the character with more than one attitude.
Structure(Skill Category 3.D): In the novel, Dickens describes with great care the country environment in which Pip grows up as well as the environment of the city of London as Pip experiences it during his education as a “gentleman.” At least one discussion and writing assignment should focus on the contrast between the country and the city and its thematic importance in the novel. The students should try to determine what implicit statement Dickens is making about the simple life of the country and the more sophisticated life in the city. The teacher may wish to assign a synopsis or the full text of Rousseau’s “A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts” and “Discourse on Inequality” to deepen the students’ understanding of this issue.
Figurative Language (Skill Category) 5.C: A famous scene in the novel describes the decaying wedding cake that Miss Havisham displays to the horrified Pip. Students in groups should read aloud and then discuss this part of the text, with a scribe taking notes about how Dickens uses the cake as a symbol for the self-imposed ruin of Miss Havisham’s life. The next day, students should use their discussion notes to help them write in class about the symbol’s significance and effect on the reader.
Structure (Skill Category 3.A,B): In Chapters 52 and 53, Pip has a terrifying encounter with Orlick, Joe’s former apprentice. After they read these chapters, the students should list the events that take place in these chapters, then write an analysis of how Dickens uses this sequence of events to create suspense for his readers.
Narrative (Skill Category 4.C): Chapter 23 of the novel describe Pip’s introduction to the Pocket family. As the students read this chapter, they should note the difference between Pip’s perception of the Mrs. Pocket and her own view of herself. Students should prepare a role-playing performance in which they perform the dialogue in the chapter, showing their audience the absurdity of Mrs. Pocket’s way of life and how her unrealistic viewpoint negatively affects her family.
Narrative (Skill Category 4.D): In one of the early chapters of the book, Miss Havisham tells the story of her wedding day; we later hear the story from Compeyson’s perspective. Which is the more reliable narrator of the story? What biases might each speaker have that influence his or her narration of the events on that fatal day? How do the details the speaker choose to omit or include indicate their biases?
Character (Skill Categories 1.A,C;Literary Analysis, Skill Categories 7.D,E): Before the students begin reading the book, each should choose a pair of “foil” characters as a point of focus for their reading and annotation. Choices could be as follows: Estella and Biddy, Mr. Jaggers and Mr. Wemmick, Magwitch and Miss Havisham, Pip and Herbert Pocket, Joe Gargery and Mrs. Joe, or another pair of parallel, contrasting characters. As they read, they should create a dialectical notebook in which they record quotations important to an understanding of the contrasting characters and generate commentary that explains the significance of the quotations. After they have finished reading and discussing the novel, each student will prepare a thesis statement and related topic sentences explaining Dickens’s literary and thematic purpose in creating the “foils.” Students will use their dialectical journals to write a full-length, multi-draft essay about the nature and effect of the foil characters in the novel.
Personal Progress Check 6 (Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 1.A,C,E; 3.A,B,D; 4.C,D; 5.C; 7.B-E)
Thematic Focus: Alienation and Reconciliation
Unit 7: Short Fiction III (about 17 class periods)
Suggested Texts:
“Cathedral” (Carver)
“Bartleby the Scrivener” (Melville)
“The Minister’s Black Veil” (Hawthorne)
“Sredni Vashtar” (Saki)
“Babylon Revisited” (Fitzgerald)
“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (Fitzgerald)
“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (Fitzgerald)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (Gilman)
Sample Activities and Assignments
Text: “Cathedral”; “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”
Characterization (Skill Category IB). In pairs, students will examine the story for evidence that the main character changes in the course of the story. For homework, they will write a paragraph explaining what change takes place and how the character’s development conveys a part of the story’s theme.
Text: “Battle Royal”
Figurative Language(Skill Category 5C):
In the story, the main character and the other boxers scramble to pick up what they think are gold pieces that the white men have scattered on an electric carpet. Students should explain the symbolism of this incident, using the following formula to think about the topic:
Each element in this incident represents an aspect of African-American life as Ralph Ellison views it.
The gold coins represent:
The eagerness of the boxers to pick up the coins represents:
The glee of the white organizers of the fight represents:
The electric carpet represents:
The fact that the coins turn out to be fake represents:
Text: “Sredni Vashtar”
Character(Skill Category 1.D): In the story, the relationship between the Aunt and the Boy is complicated and unusual. After reading the text, students should examine the way the Aunt and the Boy describe each other and write a paragraph inferring what attitude they have toward each other.
Text: “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Narration(Skill Category 4D): The narrator of the story is a woman who has recently given birth. After reading the story carefully, students should search the story for evidence that the narrator is either reliable or unreliable. After this activity, each student should construct an arguable thesis about the reliability of the narrator that hints at the significance of the story and list evidence that supports their theses. The next day, students may write an in-class essay on the topic of the narrator’s reliability and the connection between the narrator and the meaning of the story.
Text: “Babylon Revisited”
Setting(Skill Category 2.B and C): This Fitzgerald story is set in the time after the Crash that sent the Roaring Twenties into a decline that led to the Depression. Students should mark the clues in the story that tell the reader what the time period is and that indicate the change between the bubble of optimism and gaiety that characterizes the Twenties and the harsh reality of the Post-Crash era. The main character, too, has aspects that indicate his connection to his era. After discussing the clues in the story that connect the character and the time period, and researching any unfamiliar references, students should write an in-class essay explaining how the actions of the main character of the story reflect his place in time.
Text: “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Structure (Skill Category 3A and B), Narrative, (Skill Category 4D;) Figurative Language, Skill Categories 5C and D)
After the students have read the story, they should consider the sequence of events by which Bartleby goes from a peculiar, but fairly normal, employee to an anomalous, reclusive man who refuses both to do any work and to leave his job. Identify each step in his descent into disorder and decline.
Students should also consider the way Melville uses symbolism in the story. Mentions of “Wall Street” and other walls and dead-end streets recur in the setting and reflects something important about the lives of the men like Bartleby who work in the offices . In addition, the reader knows that Bartleby has previously worked in the “Dead Letter Office” of the Postal Service. Students should research what a “Dead Letter Office” is and what a worker there does. After some discussion and prewriting, students should write two well developed paragraphs, in which they interpret these two important symbols from the story. Under each paragraph, students should draw their own representations of the “walls” in the story and the “Dead Letter Office.” Post the papers in the classroom and encourage students to make a “gallery walk” of the paragraphs and drawings to view the interpretations of their classmates.
Literary Analysis/Writing about Literature (Skill Category 7A-D) As an end-of-unit activity, each student will choose one of the stories and spend a 45-minute period writing a literary analysis based on the following prompt:
After reading the story carefully, write an essay in which you explain how the author has used the resources of language (imagery, diction, detail, comparisons) to create a powerful character or setting for the story. In the conclusion of your essay, interpret the story in terms of theme. How has the character in the story or the setting of the story affected your own knowledge of the human condition?
Personal Progress Check 7 (Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 1.B,D; 2.B,C; 3.A-B; 4D; 5C-D, 6.A,C; 7B-D)
Unit 8: Poetry III (about 17 class periods)
Suggested Texts
Excerpt from Paradise Lost
“America” Claude McKay
“Redemption” (George Herbert)
“Intimations of Immortality” (Wordsworth)
“Death, Be Not Proud” (Donne)
“The Powwow at the End of the World” (Sherman Alexie)
“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” (Wilber)
Text: “Redemption”
Structure(Skill Category 3.C) and Figurative Language(Skill Category 5C): The structure of this sonnet is unusual, as the first two quatrains follow the traditional Shakespearean pattern of the “abab/cdcd “rhyme scheme. However, the third quatrain changes its rhyming pattern to “effe” before returning to the familiar ending couplet of the Shakespearean tradition. In addition, the poem is separated into four stanzas (3 quatrains and a couplet) by spaces, whereas the usual sonnet’s lines are not separated.
After the students have read and discussed the poem, they should determine the purpose of each stanza, reading on the literal level (the first explains the situation of the “tenant” and states his purpose in seeking the “manor lord,” the second tells of his visiting the “lord’s manor” in heaven and not finding him there; the third takes the speaker back to earth, where he searches for the “lord” in cities, theaters, and courts; the last line abruptly hints at where the “lord” will be found—not in places where the rich and respectable reside, but in a “ragged” place. The couplet (on a literal level) describes the “tenant” finding the “lord” in the company of “thieves and murderers, and the “lord” grants the “tenant” his “suit” just as he dies. In a whole-group discussion, the class should try to determine reasons why Herbert might have chosen to depart from the usual rhyming pattern of an English sonnet in the third quatrain, and why he chose to separate the sonnet into four separate stanzas.
Next, students should make a chart in which they determine the second layer of meaning in the poem by interpreting its metaphors. Who, really, is the “tenant”? What is the deeper meaning of his “suit”? Who is the “lord”? Why is the tenant not “thriving”?
Literary Analysis(Skill Categories 7.B,D,E)
At the end of the exercise, the students should individually write an analysis of the poem’s structure and the poet’s use of metaphor to create meaning. In their commentary, students should explain how the poem’s structure reveals the poet’s design, and how the metaphors link up to form an allegorical narrative.
Text: “America”
Structure(Skill Category 3D) and Figurative Language(Skill Category 6B): In this text, the poet makes use of both contrast (his conflicting attitudes toward America) and metaphor (his likening of America to things like a tiger, a flood, an ocean, a woman, etc.). In small groups, students should identify each metaphor and write it on a note card (for example, America=a tiger that is biting the speaker in the throat). Then they should write on the notecard any feelings and/or associations they have with the item to which America is being compared. The groups should exchange cards during the next part of class, and note the additional feelings and associations that their classmates have identified.
Literary Analysis(Skill Categories 7.B,D,E)
After this exercise, students should use their notes about the metaphors to write an in-class essay that interprets the metaphors and links them to meaning.
Text: “The Powwow at the End of the World”
Figurative Language(Skill Category 6.D): In this poem, the author alludes to a Native American ritual with which most students will be unacquainted. Students should research “powwows,” discuss the significance of the word, and then write an analysis of how this allusion deepens the reader’s understanding of the poet’s meaning.
Text: “Intimations of Immortality”
Figurative Language(Skill Category 5B): This poem contains many striking images and famous phrases such as “splendor in the grass.” The students should identify the phrases that form these images and write them on the whiteboard, grouping the images into categories after they have listed them all. Then they should break into small groups, with each group choosing one category of imagery to analyze. Each group should present a short panel discussion/presentation about their images. They may choose to use PowerPoint to focus their discussions and presentations.
Personal Progress Check (Evaluates student progress in Skill Categories 3.C,D; 5.B-C; 6.B,D; 7.B-E)
Unit 9: Longer Works of Fiction III (about 17 class periods)
Macbeth (Shakespeare)
It is helpful to give the students a bookmark that indicates the most important motifs, subjects, and questions addressed in the text for use while annotating.
Activities and Assignments
In this unit, students will use a combination of the activities and techniques outlined in the previous 8 units to practice all the skills of literary analysis and literary composition, paying particular attention to the following skills, which will be evaluated in Personal Progress Check 9(Character, 1.B,E; Structure, 3E,F; Narrative 4.C, Literary Argumentation 7.B-D). At this point, the students should be accustomed to the practice of close reading, analytical discussion, and argumentative writing. Throughout this unit, the teacher should administer in-class writing tests that are representative of the essays required on the AP Literature and Composition Examination.
