questions for brave new world chapts 4 & 5

Thanks Alex!

Chapter 4

1. What is life like for the Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron who runs the elevator?
2. How do the other Alphas relate to Bernard?
3. What does Lenina do on her date?
4. What does she think of the lower castes?
5. Why is Bernard the way he is? What does he really want?
6. Why is Helmholtz the way he is? What does he want? How is he different from Bernard?

Chapter 5

1. What do Lenina and Henry talk about on their way home? What happens at the crematorium?
2. Why are stars depressing?
3. What are the solidarity services like? What role do they play? How does Bernard fit?

april 30

JOURNAL TOPIC:
When do you seek others' counsel in making a big decision, and when do you take the plunge on your own?

AGENDA:
I have no idea who's going to be smarter, more balanced, or in class today as a result of testing, so we'll pick up where we need to when I see you.  Please continue reading in Brave New World and make sure-- at minimum-- that you've completed your Modernist Author components and answered the Brave New World chapter-by-chapter discussion questions.  We will have a Socratic Seminar on Brave New World tomorrow (Friday) -- and we will be listening for your contribution.

april 29

JOURNAL TOPIC:
Why are you tested so much/often?  What are adults trying to figure out?  Why can't they do it another way?

AGENDA:
I have no idea who's going to be smarter, more balanced, or in class today as a result of testing, so we'll pick up where we need to when I see you.  Please continue reading in Brave New World and make sure-- at minimum-- that you've completed your Modernist Author components and answered the Brave New World chapter-by-chapter discussion questions through Chapter 10.  For those intrepid souls who have already finished the reading/questions through Chapter 10, here are the questions for the remaining chapters (after the jump).

april 28

I have no idea who's going to be smarter, more balanced, or in class today as a result of testing, so we'll pick up where we need to when I see you.  Please continue reading in Brave New World and make sure-- at minimum-- that you've completed your Modernist Author components and answered the Brave New World chapter-by-chapter discussion questions through Chapter 10.

april 27

JOURNAL TOPIC:
How do you want to be remembered after you die?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Depending on how far you've read, answer the following questions about Brave New World (Chapters 6-10) and post to your course blog.  Please finish for homework & be ready to discuss Tuesday.

Chapter 6

1. Why is being alone a bad thing?
2. What do Lenina and Bernard do on their first date? Why is the ocean important? The moon?
3. What does Bernard say about freedom? What does he mean?
4. How does the date end?
5. What does it mean to be infantile in this society?
6. How does the director feel about Bernard? Why is he warning him?
7. What does his story mean? What does it show us about him?
8. How does Helmholtz feel about Bernard after he hears the story of the meeting with the director?
9. What do we learn from the Warden? What are the reservations like?
10. What does the word Malpais mean?

Chapter 7

1. How is the mesa like a ship?
2. Why doesn’t Lenina like their Indian guide?
3. What is the city itself like? What are the people like? How does Lenina respond? Bernard?
4. What ceremony do the witness? What does it mean? What does it seem like to Lenina?
5. What idols emerge from the ground?
6. How is John Savage different? What does he want? How does he respond to Lenina?
7. What is Linda’s story? What has her life been like here? How does Linda react to her?

Chapter 8

1. What was John’s upbringing like? His relationship with Linda? His education?
2. Why doesn’t linda want to be called a mother?
3. What social positions do Linda and John hold in Malpais?
4. What does John want in his life?
5. What does Linda tell him about the Other Place?
6. What does he learn from Shakespeare? How does he relate to Hamlet? The Tempest?
7. What does it mean to discover “Time and Death and God?”
8. What do John and Bernard have in common?
9. Why does Bernard want to take John to London?

Chapter 9

1, Why does Mustapha Mond agree to the plan?
2. What happens when John watches Lenina sleep? What does he think or feel?

Chapter 10

1. How and why was the DHC planing to make an example out of Bernard?
2. Why is unorthodoxy worse than murder?
3. How does Linda act in the hatchery? How does the DHC react? The spectators?

april 24

JOURNAL TOPIC:
What grade do you deserve at this point in the course?  Is this a function of effort, talent, understanding, or something else?  Please explain.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Work on Modernist Author Project and post to your course blog.

HW:
1. Make sure your blog and your Modernist Author Project work is up to date.

april 23

Please review the document and Prezi below for testing next week.

ELA Environmental-Awareness CA

online conference with connected learning

Thanks to everyone who participated in yesterday's webinar.  Here's the video and a slideshow they produced:

brigette's masterpiece

This just in from Brigette:

Please see her for more information.

april 22

JOURNAL TOPIC:
As you think about the modernist author you chose to research, can you imagine that person as a human being?  Someone who came home, kicked off his/her shoes, and sat down to write?  How would s/he want to be remembered?  Explain your answer.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Modernist Author Project
3. Return/review Brave New World exams
4. Chapter 5

HW:
1. Please review & begin work on your Modernist Author Project
2. Please finish reading Chapter 5 and summarize on your course blog

modernist author project

modernist author project

Here is the assignment the way I shared it on paper back in 2007-08.  HACK IT.

THE PROJECT

Part I: Individual Research

1. BIOGRAPHY/IDENTITY of the author
1. “I Am…” statements for your author (minimum 5)
2. Paragraph explaining how “I Am…” statements influence author’s worldview
3. Brief descriptions of 5-7 events in the author’s life that YOU (not some website from which you cut/paste) believed influenced his/her sense of self and writing style
4. 3 quotes from the author’s work that show how the author’s identity is evident in his/her writing

2. THE AUTHOR’S CREDO 
1. Use one quote from the author that you believe clearly states his/her philosophy on life or “words to live by” (If you can’t find one, write one for him/her and write a paragraph to explain why you wrote it the way you did.)
2. Paragraph explaining the quote
3. 3 quotes from the author’s work that support the credo

3. DESCRIPTION/ANALYSIS OF THE GENRE
1. In a brief essay (no more than two typewritten pages), describe the genre with which your author is associated and why
2. Select five (5) quotes from your author’s work that illustrate the elements of the genre.  For each one, include a brief explanation (2-3 sentences) of how the example illustrates the genre.

4. YOUR PRESSING QUESTION and the fifteen (15) answers/examples to which it led you in at least three (3) different works by your author. (see PRESSING QUESTION handout for more on this.)

5. SYNOPSES 
1. Brief (1-3 paragraphs) descriptions/summaries of each work you read by your author (remember that you need to read at least 3 works).

6. ARTWORK. Pictures or drawings that convey what you believe your author would look like today.

THE PROJECT

Page 2

7. ESSAY. A brief paper (2-4 pp.) which explicates the answer to your pressing question.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY/WORK CITED SECTION.  Properly cite any work by your author or others that you quote or indirectly reference your essay.  We will discuss format in class.

9. RESEARCH LOG.  This is your record of the times and places you spent working on this project.  You must spend at least one hour in the RHS Library, a city library, a used bookstore, or a college/university library.

WRITING AND RESEARCHING

A

PRESSING QUESTION

What IS a pressing question, and how do we know what to ask?

As you begin to explore the work and life of the author you’ve chosen, you are bound to become curious about something.  For example, when I first read Mark Twain’s writing I stopped at some point and wondered: “How did this guy manage to make fun of everything that people took seriously, and not only get away with it but leave his readers begging for more?”

Now that you have done some “author shopping” and you have identified an author about whom you’d like to learn, it’s time to think about what you know and how you can use it to learn more.

When I write a pressing question, I first ask myself some questions to determine what I know.  Here are some examples:

1. When did the author live and write?
2. For what audience did the author write?  
3. In what form (poetry, short story, novel) did the author write?  Why?
4. Is the author identified with a particular genre?  Which one?  Why?
5. What was the author’s purpose for writing?  To inform?  Amuse?  Persuade?  Get something off of his/her chest?
6. What effect does reading the author’s work have on me?  When I read this author’s words, how do I feel?  What does it cause me to think about?

In answering these types of questions I find myself feeling more like a detective than an English teacher.  I have to search for evidence in the author’s writing, the author’s biography, and the general history of the author’s time.  I also have to use my own logic and imagination, because not every answer is spelled out on a page somewhere. 

Once I have answered some of my questions and I write down what I know, I think about what I’d like to discover.  For example, once I knew that Mark Twain was an iconoclast who used his sense of humor to question serious things, I wanted to know more about how he could do that without insulting his audience.  Another example is a very different author we’ve read, Edgar Allen Poe.  After I learned the tragic details of his personal life, I was motivated to search for examples of how he expressed his pain in his writing.

Now it’s your turn.  Use the following steps to write your own pressing question and begin your search into the life and writing of the author you’ve chosen.

1. Ask yourself what you know about the author (you can use the sample questions above as a starting point) and write it all down.

2. Ask yourself what the author’s goal in writing was (Note: I promise it was NOT to make money or entertain, so really put yourself in your author’s shoes and ask the question from his/her point of view.).  Write that down too.

3. Ask yourself how the writer achieved his/her goal, and—you guessed it!—write that down too, in BIG, BOLD letters.

4. Search for 20 examples in your author’s work that support your answer to the pressing question

Due Dates

Friday, April 24

§  Author “taste test” paragraphs and all-star selection

Monday, April 27

§  [1] Biography/Identity

§  [3] Description/Analysis of Genre

Monday, April 27

§  [2] Author Credo

§  [4] Pressing Question with answer/examples

§  [5] Synopses

Friday, May 1

§  COMPLETED PROJECT DUE TODAY

stick your neck out

I just got two emails in a row.  The first was about a student taking a risk.  The second was this.  Enjoy.

april 21

JOURNAL TOPIC: (Today's tunes: "Sing for the Moment" by Eminem)

Eminem once said, "Rap is my drug."  What did he mean?  How was his experience with rap similar to or different from Bernard's experience with Soma in Brave New World?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. BNW test on Chapters 1-4 (after the jump)

HW:
1. Read Chapter 5

april 20

JOURNAL TOPIC:
Are you making progress on your masterpiece?  What are you going to have to show for this semester when it's over?  How will you teach the rest of us what you've learned?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Write BNW (Chapters 1-4) test: questions, answers, p.#s, reason you think it's an important question to know.

HW:
1. Review Chapters 1-4 and study for test

april 17

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "C'mon Get Happy" by the Partridge Family; "The Dope Show" by Marilyn Manson; "Don't Worry Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin]

If you compare it with the headlines, Modernist literature can be a depressing, even shocking reminder that society appears to be going awry.  So why do so many people regard it as such a brilliant genre?  Why have generations of high school students been required to read about sex play, book burning, and blank, staring, anesthetized adults engaged in the pursuit of pseudo-happiness?  Is there a silver lining to this dystopian Modernist literature?

AGENDA:
1. Journal/discussion
2. Wrap up Chapter 3 (quiz?)
3. Start reading Chapter 4

HW:
1. Finish reading Chapter 4. Take active reading notes & post them to your blog.

april 16

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "C'mon Get Happy" by the Partridge Family; "The Dope Show" by Marilyn Manson; "Don't Worry Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin]

If you compare it with the headlines, Modernist literature can be a depressing, even shocking reminder that society appears to be going awry.  So why do so many people regard it as such a brilliant genre?  Why have generations of high school students been required to read about sex play, book burning, and blank, staring, anesthetized adults engaged in the pursuit of pseudo-happiness?  Is there a silver lining to this dystopian Modernist literature?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Finish reading Chapter 3 of Brave New World and answer the study questions

_____________________

Brave New World Chapter 3 Study Questions

1. How do the children play together? What is childhood like?
2. How is our world depicted? How do we get from here to there?
3. Why must games be so complex in this society?
4. Why are strong emotions dangerous? Family relationships? Romance? Religion? Art? Culture?
5. How is sexuality used in this novel? Do you see any problems with it?
6. What does Mustapha Mond do? What is his relationship to history?
7. Is there anything unusual about Lenina Crowne? Bernard Marx? What? Why?
8. How does Huxley use the cinematic technique toward the end of this chapter?
9. What is soma? What are its uses?
10. How do people age in this society? 

april 15

JOURNAL TOPIC:
What does the word modern mean to you?  Has the meaning of the word changed over time?

(*Build on yesterday's entry.  Does modern mean cutting edge technology, and everyone flying around in jet packs? Does it mean politically correct, or showing an "advanced" mindset?  Does it mean "something that doesn't suck as much as things used to"?)
 OR (thanks, Nathan!)
Imagine you're in a box.  How do you get out?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Review Chapters 1 & 2 of Brave New World
3. Modernism (continued)
4. Chapter 3 of Brave New World

HW:
1. Finish reading Chapter 3 of Brave New World and answer the following questions on your course blog:

1. How do the children play together? What is childhood like?
2. How is our world depicted? How do we get from here to there?
3. Why must games be so complex in this society?
4. Why are strong emotions dangerous? Family relationships? Romance? Religion? Art? Culture?
5. How is sexuality used in this novel? Do you see any problems with it?
6. What does Mustapha Mond do? What is his relationship to history?
7. Is there anything unusual about Lenina Crowne? Bernard Marx? What? Why?
8. How does Huxley use the cinematic technique toward the end of this chapter?
9. What is soma? What are its uses?
10. How do people age in this society? 

april 14

JOURNAL TOPIC:
What does the word modern mean to you?  Has the meaning of the word changed over time?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Read Chapter 2 of Brave New World.  Answer the following questions (on Chapters 1 & 2) on a piece of paper and place in your period's crate by the end of class.

Chapter 1

1. Why is the first sentence strange? What does it set up?
2. What is the meaning of the World State’s motto “COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY?”
3. Why does the fertilizing room look so cold, when it is actually hot inside? What goes on there?
4. Why do particulars “make for virtue and happiness,” while generalities “are intellectually necessary evils?”
5. How do people know who they are in this society?
6. Why use the Bokanovsky process at all? How is it an instrument “of social stability?”
7. Why don’t the Epsilons “need human intelligence?”

Chapter 2

1. What work does the conditioning do? Who gets conditioned? How does hypnopaedia work?
2. Why condition the Deltas to hate nature but love outdoor sports?
3. How does time work in this book? History? Why does Ford say “History is Bunk?”
4. What are the various castes like, and why?
5. How do the students demonstrate their own conditioning?


HW:
1. Describe how your writing in this modern moment is different than it would have been five years ago.  What about you/the world has changed in ways that express themselves in what you write?

april 13

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "I Melt With You" by Modern English; "Modern Love" by David Bowie; "Modern Man" by Bad Religion]

Agree or disagree with the following quote:

I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.
Dalai Lama 


AGENDA:
l. Journal
2. Brief introduction to Modernism

HW:
1. Choose an author to study from the following list (or research and propose a Modernist author you don't see here):

• Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)
• Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924)
• Doolittle, Hilda (1886-1961)
• Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888-1965)
• Faulkner, William (1897-1962)
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896-1940)
• Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961)
• Hughes, Langston (1902-1967)
• James, Henry (1843-1916)
• Lawrence, D. H. (1885-1930)
• Lowell, Amy (1874-1925)
• Pound, Ezra (1885-1972)
• Shaw, George Bernard (1856-1950)
• Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)
• Williams, Tennessee (1882-1941)
• Woolf, Virginia (1882-1941)
• Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939)

2. In a post on your blog entitled MY MODERNIST, declare your selection and explain your reason/s why.
3. Finish reading Chapter 1 of Brave New World

the real spring break work

STEP 1:
Read a great science-fiction story about the increasing confusion between the lives of people, virtual avatars, and machines.  Here are some suggestions.  Read a few pages and see if one grabs you.  If you have a suggestion please post a comment so we can check it out too.

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Reamde by Neal Stephenson
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

STEP 2:
Imagine the following scenario.  You are being rejected for scholarships, university admissions, job opportunities, and even military recruitment because you are suspected of not being fully human.  Even as you read this authorities in a faceless office park are reading your file and determining whether to reclassify you as a tool and assign you to sorting multi-colored beads in a warehouse for the rest of your (battery) life.  Your job is to write a persuasive essay in which you prove that you are fully human.  It had better be good.  And it had better be on your blog by Monday, April 13.

Effective appeals will include:

• Sound logic (think truth, validity, and effective use of ethos, pathos, & logos)
• Avoidance of fallacies in reasoning and accurate identification of fallacies in the opposition's reasoning (so don't forget to include and debunk counterclaims)
• Textual examples from novels and other source materials that illustrate:
• How the book you chose used theme, tone, characterization, and/or other literary techniques to convey meaning to the reader
• How-- even though science often begins with science fiction-- your world is different from the world described in the book

• A thorough explanation of how your artificial body augmentations (braces, hearing aids, earbuds, phone-shaped hands, tattoos, piercings, etc. etc.) and habits (staring at screens instead of people, isolating yourself with personally contained music, e.g.) make you more human and not less.

Good luck.  I hope the authorities see you for who you really are.  Unless you really are a robot, in which case I hope they pull the plug.

spring break lit work

Here is the work for Spring Break.  Please comment or email with questions.

POETRY
Select a poem from this list (or make a case for a poem of equivalent literary merit).  Then select a poetry essay prompt from this list.  On your course blog, explain why the prompt fits the poem (feel free to substitute the names of characters, descriptive details etc. in the prompt).  Then write your essay.  We will have writer's conferences the week of 4/13 as we begin Macbeth.  If you want written comments, please print your essay and bring to class 4/13.

PROSE
Please read "Young Goodman Brown" and write an essay in response to this prompt.  The prompt will be familiar; the acts of completing a pre-write, articulating a clear thesis statement, and presenting a well-structured analysis supported with literary techniques and illustrative examples are hopefully becoming more familiar.  Same deal re: writer's conferences and written comments.

Happy reading and writing.  See you in what seems like a long time but will inevitably go by way too fast. -dp 

april 1

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "(Now & Then There's) A Fool Such As I" by Hank Snow; "Ship of Fools" by Robert Plant]

You have seven minutes to write an epic poem about a unified theory of consciousness and the history of the papacy concentrating especially but not exclusively on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific. Be ready to recite your poem from memory in any ancient language (except Greek) to the 2000 people who will be waiting expectantly on the field outside 608 in eight minutes.

[OR]

Attempt to explain why people like the experience of making/being made a fool at least once a year.

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. March Madness in April

HW:
YOU MUST CHECK THIS BLOG TOMORROW.