HW for 11/2

1. Essay 1 is due, typed, formatted according to handout requirements, by 2pm. All students late for class (2:01 and on) will be subject to the Late Policy.

2. Read the Sinister Poems handout (download on Canvas.)

Suspense and Dramatic Irony and Poe

Suspense: I believe Carson-Newman College has the most thorough definition of the word, with assertions we can use to analyze short stories going forward...

"SUSPENSE (from Latin suspendere, "to leave hanging"): In literary works with a plot, suspense is "a state of uncertainty, anticipation, and curiosity as to the outcome of a story or play, or any kind of narrative in verse or prose" (Cuddon 937), i.e., emotional tension resulting from the reader's desire to know "what will happen next?" or "what is actually happening now"? Frequently, the greatest moment of suspension occurs at the climax of the plot...

As T. A. Shipley notes, the two main types of suspense (uncertainty and anticipation) appear in the earliest surviving literary works in Greece (563). While Euripides and Sophocles usually wrote about mythological materials already familiar to their audiences (and thus could not create suspense by making the audience guess what would happen next), Euripides created suspense by mixing false or misleading foreshadowing with real foreshadowing alluding to upcoming events (563). Such playwrights were also fond of creating suspense by dramatic irony...

Often writers will use suspense to manipulate the reader by terminating a section of the narrative at a dramatic point. The idea here is often to lure the reader or audience back to the story at some future date. Examples of this would be cliffhangers that deliberately (and sometimes literally) leave the hero hanging off the edge of a cliff at the end of a chapter or scene, or the strategy of Scherazhade in the 1001 Arabian Nights, who continually whets the Sultan's appetite to hear the rest of a story, so he spares her life for another night rather than executing her.

Suspense is typically a vital component in genres such as mystery novels, penny dreadfuls, ghost stories,  creepypastas, and action-adventure novels."

How does Poe create suspense in his story "The Tell-Tale Heart"? Of course, we must consider the conflict…

•  Mad character, and his internal thoughts retold to audience…

• Withholding of detail – tells of murder, but not why or what happens that he confesses…confession comes at the end!

• The drawn out method of his deed:  step-by-step of his murder.
• The drawn out syntax – “It was open – wide, wide open – and I grew furious as I gazed upon it.”

• How many times does he describe the old man or his eye? How does he describe it? What does this do for you as a reader?

How does Poe create suspense in "The Cask of Amontillado"?For this one, I will give you some of the literary elements, but you must discuss where these elements exist in the story...

• Symbolism

• Dramatic irony,  as defined by Carson-Newman College: (the most important type for literature) involves a situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know. In that situation, the character acts in a way we recognize to be grossly inappropriate to the actual circumstances, or the character expects the opposite of what the reader knows that fate holds in store, or the character anticipates a particular outcome that unfolds itself in an unintentional way. Probably the most famous example of dramatic irony is the situation facing Oedipus in the play Oedipus Rex

Sinister Happenings: Questions for Poe Stories

“The Tell-Tale Heart”

1. What point of view is this story, and how does this impact the reader’s trust in the narrator?

2. What is the central conflict in this story, what’s the climax, and what’s the resolution? What does our understanding of the plot do for our understanding of larger themes we take away from the story? 

3. When does the speaker reveal what he’s done and why he’s done it, and what does that ordering of information tell us about the speaker?

4.What is the most powerful image in the story, and how does that image help us further characterize the narrator?

5. How does the narrator describe, in general, his actions? How does his general way of describing his actions further characterize him? What are some specific examples that illustrate our points?

“The Cask of Amontillado”

1. How does this story start differently from the narrator’s point of view?

2. What are some ways that both of Poe’s narrators are similar in character action? In their reasoning of their actions?

3. In comparing both Poe narrators’ plots, what are some general similarities that you can see between the two?

4. What characteristic allows Fortunato to fall into Montresor’s plot, and how then are Poe’s plots similarly structured when considering other literary elements? (Setting, etc. Let’s trace the narrator’s usage across the story’s plot…)

5. How does irony operate differently in both stories?

Again, reviewing Elements of Fiction

As we discuss Poe's stories, we need to review some of the elements that go along with one's we will introduce today.

Here was that first lesson.

Symbols and Other Relevant Literary Elements

• Symbol – person, place or thing in a piece of literature that represents an abstract idea or concept (flower=virtue; bald eagle=America).

• Symbols in these works will reinforce the story’s main theme

• From the Poetry Foundation's Glossary of Poetic Terms: "Something in the world of the senses, including an action, that reveals or is a sign for something else, often abstract or otherworldly. A rose, for example, has long been considered a symbol of love and affection. 
  
  Every word denotes, refers to, or labels something in the world, but a symbol (to which a word, of course, may point) has a concreteness not shared by language, and can point to something that transcends ordinary experience. Poets such as William Blake and W.B. Yeats often use symbols when they believe in—or seek—a transcendental (religious or spiritual) reality. 
  
  A metaphor compares two or more things that are no more and no less real than anything else in the world. For a metaphor to be symbolic, one of its pair of elements must reveal something else transcendental. In “To the Rose upon the Rood of Time,” for instance, Yeats’s image of the rose on the cross symbolizes the joining of flesh and spirit. As Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren write in their book Understanding Poetry (3rd ed., 1960),“The symbol may be regarded as a metaphor from which the first term has been omitted.” 
  
  See also allegory and imagism."

• Allusion – phrase or figure of speech that references a specific piece of art, literary piece, cultural reference (including events, pop cult), and myths (le royale with cheese – alludes to Pulp Fiction; the British Invasion and mop heads: the Beatles)

• Allegories – extended metaphor in which you can infer the characters and the action of a story as having dual meaning that refers to and perhaps relies on an outside person/story (often religious, moral, political, social): the literal meaning within the story and the referenced person/story 

• Example: a character may have the characterization and actions that refer to Jesus Christ. Or, a story may have a plot that reminds people of a famous political scandal, like Watergate or JFK’s affair with MM!

HW for 10/28:

Read Poe short stories from Sinister Happenings packet. Read MLA citation guide help in Seagull or on Bedford's MLA resource site.

Teacher Guided Peer Workshop

1. Label each sentence in their introduction:

• Hook
• Context
• Subtopics (1, 2, 3?, 4?)
• thesis

2. When they introduce subtopics, how specific are those subtopics? Are they too generic or imprecise? Is there any language that teases at an idea but leaves you asking questions to finish off the idea?

3. Is the topic sentence of the first body paragraph a topic sentence? What is the idea the author is exploring in the paragraph based on that topic sentence? Does the paragraph stick to that idea, or is it loosely united by the text. Label each sentence:  P for point, R for reason, E for evidence (example and explanation)

4. Label any sentence in the body paragraph that may be a digression with "digression?" 

5. What evidence do they use? What could they do to explain their evidence more effective than they may already have?

6. Do they consider the whole poem/story in the paragraph, or are they focused on one small passage? Are they too focused; do they think they'd benefit from more evidence to support their topic sentence? Which evidence may help the paragraph? 

7. What point and what evidence do you expect their next body paragraph will be about? Suggest what you believe the next point will be (looking back at intro, if they do a solid job of having subtopics), and also suggest how you would transition to that point and evidence. 

Example passages to develop points of characterization from

Here is that list of "The Language of Literary Analysis," which can help you look at your evidence and craft clearer more effective analytical claims.



"First you have a topic sentence," she explains to Leroy.  "Then you divide it up.  Your secondary topic has to be connected to your primary topic."

To Leroy, this sounds intimidating.  "I never was any good in English," he says.

and in the next scene, after their conversation (context!):

"Norma Jean used to say, "If I lose ten minutes' sleep, I just drag all day."  Now she stays up late, writing compositions"(6).   

Paragraph Unity Strategy: PRE

You may find it interesting (or not) to read this linked post on the similarities in writing and running.

http://home.europa.com/~bence/pre/

The above picture is Steve Prefontaine, a world-class runner who died too young. His nickname is Pre. Look at how focused his eyes are in this picture and remember those eyes when you remember our unity technique, PRE, defined below.

http://www.justrunners.com/Steve%20Prefontaine%20Poster.htm

PRE, besides being a famous runner, is a mnemonic device: each letter represents what type of content needs to show up in a unified, developed paragraph. P(oint)R(eason)E(xample/explanation). 

PRE teaches us that to be the best one must put their best effort into all that they do. PRE can also teach us, again, how to write a unified body paragraph. 

Point: start each paragraph off with a sentence (we call it that Topic Sentence) that states who/what the paragraph is about--your subject--and what you have to say about that subject in that paragraph.

Reason: follow up your Topic Sentence with some logical reasons for why you believe your point is true.

Evidence: follow up your reasons with specific examples that support your point and reasons. You can also add a another e to Evidence besides Example, and that would be Explain! Make sure that when you illustrate your example that you also make sure to explain how it connects back to your Topic Sentence.

How to apply PRE:  

1. Read your text. For our example, read article, "In the Beginning."

2. Develop a larger point about the source text. For our example, the body paragraphs below make basic summary points about "how Prefontaine learned to be successful, according to the article." (We will discuss the different structure of Introductions and Conclusions over the coming semesters.)

3. After making a Point, incorporate your Reasons and some Evidence from the article and the quotes above.

Note that all Points are green, all Reasons are yellow, and the Examples/Explanatory sentences are all gray/black. I color-coded it so that you can see the different types of content and see the order/structure being repeated in each paragraph. 

       Steve Prefontaine, who held many American records in distance running, is a great example of how much effort plays a role in having success in life--even during high school years. Prefontaine started off as one of the weaker runners on his high school team before setting goals to become a national record holder by his senior year.  In the article "In the Beginning," Michael Musca discusses how Prefontaine could not break five minutes in the mile his freshman year of high school, and as a sophomore failed to qualify for state. However, by his junior year in 1968, he went undefeated and won the Oregon state cross country meet in. Musca writes that "From this point forward, the winter of 1968, young Pre embarked on McClure’s 30-week program, which he hoped would yield the time goals and a state championship in the two-mile" (Musca). Prefontaine would run four to eight miles a day while working multiple jobs. His setting goals and following them is what lead to his success during those years.

       Those high school years are a small example of showing how setting goals matters; Prefontaine also had the work ethic and mindset to accomplish his goals. Steve Prefontaine is widely known as the ultimate competitor. He fulfilled his goals by training extremely hard and by maintaining an aggressive mindset that he would maintain for the rest of his life. There is no better evidence than Pre's own words: "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift" (Just Runners). These are the words of a competitor, someone who does not settle for finishing a task. Another quote of Prefontaine is "I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, then I am the only one who can win it" (NKFU). He confidently believes that nobody can beat him if he works as hard as he can.

        Prefontaine's successes came from also following a clear plan of actions to take to accomplish his goals. Pre's high school coach, Walt McClure, helped lay out a training program so that Prefontaine could set the records and live up to his goals. McClure set Pre up on a 30-week training regiment in the winter of 1968 that  helped Pre win state in the two-miler that Spring. Prefontaine continued to run at least four miles a day during that following summer, even as he worked multiple jobs to help his struggling family (Musca). Prefontaine won the two miler his senior year in a national record of 8:41.5 (Musca), which shows how much one can improve in something if they are really dedicated to their own success. 

       Prefontaine was never known as a fast runner, but his effort on those days off helped propel him towards national success at an early age.  ...

Essay 1: (also found on Canvas)

General Type of assignment: Explain the meaning of a poem or story.

New skills required:  Analyze details in a poem or story to draw a conclusion about its meaning.

Specific Prompt

Choose one poem or one short story from our Family Dysfunction unit. Write an essay in which you analyze the characterization of family members to draw a conclusion about a thematic statement made about the relationship portrayed.

To make the easiest and fullest analysis, you will want to use appropriate literary device terms in your claims, as they relate to each piece and genre.

Worth: 200 points (out of 1000 total class points, which is 20% of total class grade)

Due Dates:

• October 26, 2015, by 2pm: Bring Introduction and Body Paragraph 1 to class, TYPED
• October 28, 2015 November 2, 2015, by 2pm: type out and hand in hard copy of revised Essay 1 for grade

Rhetorical Considerations:

·       Your thesis statement should answer, in some way, the question: What is the speaker/narrator’s thematic view of a specific family relationship, as presented in the piece? Support your analytical claims by citing passages from the text and putting those passages in context of your analytical argument (thesis and topic sentence claims).

·       Remember: You have an academic audience. Therefore, you need to supply good contextual details to set up and then support solid reasoning. Your job is to demonstrate a deeper, more universal understanding of the poem or short story.

Paper Format Requirements:

• Creative, Informative Title
• 5-body paragraph structure, with at least five paragraphs:  Intro | body paragraphs | conclusion
• Bold your thesis statement in each draft
• Format: 12-point font (Times New Roman or Cambria); one-inch margins; standard double-spaced 
• Use MLA guidelines for citing your primary source – the subject of your essay (story or poem)
• Include a Work Cited page at the end, which does not count towards page count.
• At minimum: your essay must be at least two and half (2.5) pages, double-spaced, which equals approximately 600-700 words.
• How to label your essay (only on page one, on left top side)

      Student Name

      ENG 111

      Essay 1

Title

·       Staple your essay.