Meta Maus

Please read and listen to the interview material here. When you are done, please write a comment of about 250 to 300 words in which you cover your reponse to the two basic questions that emerge when we first approach Maus. First, is a comic book serious enough (in terms of genre) to treat the shoah? And second, what is your reaction to the choice of mice for Jews? Does the irony make it an effective choice or is it, as an older jewsih friend of mine put it, "a choice in poor taste?"

9th Grade Honors

1. Read the story Girl in your anthology.

2. Then read the short critical article here.

3. Next, re-read the story.

4. Finally, write a carefully constructed response based on this assignment:

Low Stakes Writing

Response Paper

Write your paper at your google document site, then share it with me for credit.

Length: about two pages word processed, double spaced

Audience: academic audience, including peers and instructor, the group of educated people who understand and appreciate literature.

Purpose: to demonstrate that you have read and comprehended the text; to express your intellectual response to the text; to help you become more curious about how literature works.

Prompt: read the story/poem Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. Then write a series of paragraph in which you discuss how Kincaid describes the life of women and girls in this culture. In what ways are their lives difficult. How do they react to or even overcome the difficulty? How do women retian their individuality in the face of oppression?

Argument

Read the essay here. What does it add to our discussion of the modes of reason?

Also this is fascinating....

What Truths Science Cannot Speak

Read and respond to this essay from the New York Times. Bring our class discussions about argument into play...you can even reference David Quammen and others.

Raymond Carver Boxes

Carver's story Boxes gives us two of the patterns I have stressed: 1. the difficulty and desperation of the working class and 2. the pre-epiphanic moment, at which a character sort of "wakes up." I have noted that many of the moments are also moments of the awareness of mortality.

When you have read Boxes, please write about 200 words. Tell me the defining characteristics of the narrator and note for me any significant details, that is, any details that function not only as part of the setting or plot, but also of theme or motif.

Where I'm Calling From

This is one of Carver's most praised stories. Published in the early 1980's, it was included in the Best American Short Stories and was subsequently tagged for inclusion in John Updike's BASS of the Century Anthology.

The style is somewhat richer than the spare minimal sentences that Carver produced under the editorial hand of Gordon Lish. I think it points the way Carver would be turning in his last years, as he wrote true masterpieces like Errand.

In the story, Carver uses supporting characters to develop the voice and character of the narrator. Given your reading and completion of the worksheet, please write no more than 4000 characters in which you discuss how several supporting characters helps us to understand the protagonist-narrator.

Carver Video

Please watch parts 1, 2, 3.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three