In the story Sonny’s blues by James Baldwin write about the meaning and function of music in this story what does it represent
Assignment: Write a 5-paragraph essay illustrating your understanding/comprehension of the novel, Lord of the Flies. Each paragraph should be approximately 3/4 of a page in length. Thus, your works cited page will contain a minimum of three sources. Your works cited page will be the final page of the assignment (most likely page 6 of your essay).
Question 1 Edgar Allan Poe developed a theory of the construction of a tale. He wrote:
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents – he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the out bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design.
Analyze Poe’s careful crafting of the works we studied. Keep his theory of the short story in mind – the idea that a story must have a “singular effect.” He carries this philosophy over to his poetry as well. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” what is the singular effect of this story? How do the setting, characters, and plot all work together to carry this effect to the end? Be sure to also include the purpose of the literature within the story (“The Haunted Palace” and the Ethelred story).
How does he craft “Annabel Lee” and “The Raven”? How do the elements of each poem work together to carry a “singular effect” to the end?
Question 2 Answer the following question in complete sentences.
You should not merely answer in bullet style. Write a well-developed essay that incorporates all of the ideas in the question. The question is two-pronged.
First, discuss the idea of conformity vs. nonconformity in the works of Emerson and Thoreau. The focus of your essay should be the works that we studied by these authors. This is important. Give consideration to these things in your answer:
how the transcendentalists view man
Emerson’s concept of “man thinking” and a “foolish consistency”
what it means in their eyes to really be a “man” (think of Self-Reliance and the “different drummer” quote)
how society affects the individual
obstacles that keep a person from truly being himself
the general lesson about conformity that can be drawn from the path Thoreau wore between his house and the pond
how Thoreau defines true success
Though Whitman and Dickinson were quite different poets, both were greatly influenced by the transcendentalist movement. In the second part of your essay, explain this transcendentalist influence in Whitman and Dickinson, using at least four of the poems listed in your discussion. Ask yourself, what “tenet” of transcendentalism does each one express?
“Song of Myself #1” – Consider the poem as a whole, but also think specifically of these lines:
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
“When I Heard the Learned Astronomer”
“Much Madness Is Divinest Sense”
“I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed”
“Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church”
Question 3 In the document on Nathaniel Hawthorne (found in Content),
Give five predominant themes that can be found in Hawthorne. DO NOT GO TO THE INTERNET TO FIND THEMES IN HAWTHORNE; FOCUS ON THE NOTES I HAVE PROVIDED. Choose three themes and demonstrate how they can be seen in the Hawthorne short stories that we studied – “The Birthmark,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “My Kinsman Major Molineux.” Here are your guidelines:
1. You must write in complete sentences, but you MAY approach the answer in bullet form rather than writing a cohesive essay.
2. You should give specific examples on how you find a particular theme in a particular work. HOWEVER, You MAY NOT repeat any examples that I have given in my discussion of that theme.
Each theme receives five points. You only have to give one example from one story for each theme; however, you are welcome to discuss the theme in all three if you would like.
Question 4 Answer ONE of the following shorter essay questions.
“The Devil and Tom Walker” takes the form of a folk tale. In such tales, (a) the tone is generally humorous; (b) the main characters are stereotypes; and (c) many events are unbelievable and ascribed to hearsay. Find and discuss at least one example of each of these three characteristics in “The Devil and Tom Walker.”
The excerpts that we read from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass include two epiphany experiences from Douglass’s life. Explain what an epiphany is in a person’s life. (Look up the definition if you need to.) Then describe the two experiences FROM THE ASSIGNED EXCERPTS that Douglass relates that you would consider epiphany experiences. What did Douglass gain / learn from each experience? Do your best to capture the profound effect that each experience had on his life. As always, you should not search for this answer. The Internet may take you to experiences outside our assigned reading.
Question 5 Choose two of the following quotes to interpret.
Identify the poem from which the quote comes as well as the author of the poem; then explain the meaning of the quote in the context of the entire poem.
1. God preaches,”a noted clergyman,”
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I ‘m going all along!
2. I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
3. His own parents,
He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and birth’d him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day – they became part of him.
Write about the topic “How does Jefferson represent both the best and the worst of Enlightenment thought?” The primary text for Jefferson’s is linked below. Ignore the first paragraph about the topic proposal.
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1776-1785/jeffersons-notes-on-slavery.php
What does it mean to be an American and what does freedom mean in America? Our course has covered a variety of texts from several different periods of American Literature. Each has articulated different and at times competing definitions of America and of what it means to be an American and what freedom means in the United States. The topic of America and the definition of freedom is very general, so feel free to approach this subject from whatever angle you wish. You may be more interested in studying a theme that does not have much to do with the topic of America. Whatever topic or theme you choose to write upon, be sure to make a conscious effort to at least connect it to the more general question: What is America and its view of freedom (or what is an American)?
Inquiry Essays (20%) In these essays, you will answer a Big Question for one piece of literature To avoid overlapping with other assignments, choose a literary text that is from the particular unit we’ve been covering.
Choose a different big question to answer for each of the inquiry essays — no repeating the same topic. Keep in mind that I know these texts, so don’t waste time and space writing a summary; the word “summary” never appears in the instructions below. Instead, focus on arguing for your answer and analyzing the text.
Your inquiry essays should be 400-500 words. The essays should be posted to the correct folder by 11:59pm on the assigned day. Each inquiry essay is out of 10 points (see below).
Follow these steps to complete the essay:
1. Pick one of the Big Questions (see below) to answer in relation to one of the literary texts (not How to Read).
2. Write a short introduction that identifies the text you’re writing about and answers the question in a nice, clear sentence that works as your thesis. Your thesis — which should be the last sentence of the introduction in these essays — needs to make sense, and the question you’re answering needs to be clear. (2 points) 3. Write two body paragraphs that support your answer. Each paragraph should have one direct quotation from the text (1 point) and an explanation of what that quote means, including how it supports your answer (1 point) This is analysis, and it’s important! (4 points total for the body) 4. Write a short conclusion paragraph that relates your two body paragraphs together and ties back into the thesis. (1 point)
Doing all of these components will get you 7/10 points or a C (average, meaning you met the requirements). The three remaining possible points are for accuracy, creativity, and good wri
Big Questions How does the text imagine national identity and/or ideas of American-ness? How are women represented in the text? How does the text agine manhood and/or masculinity? How does race work in the text? How do people in the text try gain power? How does the text address inequality? How does the text, or someone in it, work to create unity? How does the text, or someone in it, work to claim equality? What’s the relationship between the individual and the community?
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Nature
First of all, be sure to read the footnote to Nature. Emerson’s main point in the introduction (which he makes in several of his works, by the way) is that we should not experience nature (or life) through the eyes of “foregoing generations.” We should experience nature on a personal level. He questions, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?” Basically, the transcendentalists expressed faith in the intuition of the individual; each individual should experience life for himself or herself and should create a personal philosophy based on insight – not on what tradition has taught. Keep that in mind as you read the excerpt from Nature.
Your assignment for Nature is to express Emerson’s main points in your own words. Summarize chapter 1 (pp. 554 – 557). Follow the format below and consider the questions for each section.
1. The first two paragraphs. What is his point about the stars? What does he mean by “Nature never wears a mean (there is more than one definition to this word) appearance?”
2. The third paragraph. What is the difference between the wood-cutter (the natural man) and the poet? How does a poet view nature?
3. The fourth paragraph. What is the point Emerson makes about children/adults in relation to nature? What does nature do for those who take the time to experience it? What do you make of the following quote?
“Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and
uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a
transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal
Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
4. The fifth and sixth paragraphs. Focus on this quote from paragraph six: “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” Do you see a similarity in Emerson’s message and these opening lines of “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant? Explain the connection.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
The American Scholar
From The American Scholar we have the following quote:
In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he [the scholar] tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
Emerson encourages instead urges the scholar to be “Man Thinking.”
1. In your own words, what does it mean to be “Man Thinking”?
2. Emerson then begins to discuss influences upon the scholar. What are the two influences (marked I and II in the text) upon the scholar? What would Emerson say is the right relation (or response) to these influences? Think this concept through and be specific.
3. What does Emerson say about books and learning from books?
4. The third topic Emerson discusses in this essay is action. What does Emerson say about action in the first two paragraphs of section III?
Self-Reliance
You will find the following quotes in order as you read the assigned pages in Self Reliance. Comment on each quote, telling what you think Emerson is saying and possibly why he is saying it. NOTE THIS: Emerson uses the term’s man / manhood several times in these passages. What is he saying about being a real man (or woman)?
1. There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground given to him to till.
2. Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.
3. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
4. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. . . . Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. (Why does he use the word sacred? Given what you know about transcendentalism, what is the significance of this word choice?)
5. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.
6. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . . . With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. . . . To be great is to be misunderstood.
What values and ideas did the writers of the Revolutionary period have in common with their Puritan forebears? What values and ideas did they leave behind?
Consider the ideals, values, and themes that early American writers considered to be important and worthy of inclusion in their journals, sermons, and poems. What are these ideals and values? Why were they important? How do different writers incorporate them into their works? Did certain values or ideals seem to become more or less important over time? If so, why? Cite specific examples from the writings of Bradford, Winthrop, Bradstreet, and Edwards in your response.
“Review pages 75-83 in the Norton which cover plot, and read/re-read Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” on 1197-1207. Then complete the Plot Diagram handout (linked above). Map out the plot of the play by identifying the elements that correspond to the Freytag’s Pyramid labels on the handout. You must type your responses; if you have trouble with the pyramid formatting, you can type a detailed list addressing each of the following requirements rather than trying to add text boxes on the pyramid. Be sure to properly cite page numbers per MLA.
Instructions
Identify three pieces of important information we learn in the exposition, three plot points for the rising action, identify the climax, two plot points for the falling action, and the two pieces of information from the conclusion. The aforementioned points do not need to be complete sentences–absolutely no quotations are permitted, but you must provide specific page numbers for each point you identify (MLA citation). For the conflict, provide two complete sentences: identify the conflict in one and then provide an explanation of why you believe that to be the conflict in the second.
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