©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Include the copy of the selection from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins and “Did I Miss Anything” by Tom
Wayman in your journal. Complete the appointment clock with members of your class and cut and paste into the front,
right cover of your journal.
You will receive a copy of “The Page” by Margaret Atwood in class. Complete the activity as described in the prezi and
include the picture of Margaret Atwood in your journal along with the poem and your reaction.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Name__________________________________________
My Essential Literature
Title____________________________________________Author_____________________________________________
Meaning of the Work as a Whole _______________________________________________________________________
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Opening Sentence for Essay___________________________________________________________________________
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Key Plot Incident:
1.
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3. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
4. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
5. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
Key Characters (Who and Why)
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Settings____________________________________________________________________________________________
Opening___________________________________________________________________________________________
Closing____________________________________________________________________________________________
Style of Narration/Point of View________________________________________________________________________
Structural Design____________________________________________________________________________________
Quote(s) You Would Have Tattooed on Your Body____________________________
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Crafting a Generic Opening Sentence for the Open Question
Students often struggle with their opening sentences for the AP Open Question and frequently just restate the
prompt itself. Others freeze, staring at a blank page, unable to put pen to paper. However, students can
prepare generic opening sentences for works they study throughout the year. By practicing these sentences,
students develop skill in identifying major themes in a work and confidence in beginning the essay for the Open
Question. This strategy gives student writers a previously crafted opening sentence that provides direction,
analysis and addresses the Meaning of the Work as a Whole (MOWAW) immediately.
The objective is for the writers to incorporate a central theme/idea into a statement about their selected work.
Instead of--Ibsen shows how a character’s surroundings shape her character in A Doll’s House.
Try-From the moment Nora bustles in the door with her holiday gifts until she slams it shut on Torvald at the close
of A Doll’s House, Ibsen illustrates the difficulty of a woman asserting her individuality in 19th century Norway.
Variations:
Beginnings and Endings
From the meter by meter description of the hatchery to the closing view of John’s feet rotating from compass
point to compass point, Huxley’s Brave New World examines a dystopian society where independent thought
has been extinguished.
Direct Thematic Statement
Harper Lee illustrates her theme of empathizing with others through Scout’s experiences in To Kill a
Mockingbird.
In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the moral dilemma of deciding between right and wrong is epitomized
in the psychological turmoil in Raskolnikov’s mind.
Structure
Zora Neale Hurston celebrates Janie’s journey of self-discovery through her relationships with Logan Killicks,
Jodie Starks and Tea Cake and her triumphant return to Eatonville in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The Friday evening gatherings at Troy Matson’s home serve as a vehicle to show the disintegration of Troy’s
character in August Wilson’s Fences
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
APLit Book Club
“Read Great Literature by all means, but read good writing. Much of what I like best in my reading I’ve found
by accident as I poked around bookshelves. And don’t wait for writers to be dead to be read; the living ones
can use the money. Your reading should be fun.”
~Thomas C. Foster: How to Read Literature like a Professor
HOMEWORK:
hhs.d300.org/sites/hhs.d300.../howtoreadliteraturelikeaprofessor_0.pdf
Available on my website--download and read Ch. 25—“Don’t Read with Your Eyes”
Annotate as you are reading—be prepared to discuss your thoughts on Friday!
Having seen the list of AP Books and their dates of use, you will develop your own Essential Literature list. At
this point, you may have one book in your backpack that you know and love from the list, but as we progress
through the year it is my hope that you have a valise filled with books you can say are truly yours. This book
club is designed to help you do that with books you have interest in reading.
According to CollegeBoard, creators of AP, students should be able to do the following
STANDARD 4
Using Strategies to Comprehend Texts
Objectives
R4.1 Student uses strategies to prepare to read.
R4.2 Student uses strategies to interpret the meaning of words, sentences, and ideas in texts.
R4.3 Student uses strategies to go beyond the text.
R4.4 Student uses strategies to organize, restructure, and synthesize text content.
R4.5 Student monitors comprehension and reading strategies throughout the reading process.
We will be reading in and outside of class. For your first novel, you will select from the list provided—given the options in
class. Please pay attention! Your group will be made up of at least 2 other members but no more than 3. You cannot
read on your own; your group cannot be larger than 4 members.
As a group, you will decide your reading schedule based on the book you choose and knowing you have 7 Fridays to
discuss your reading. This means you need to read outside of class and come prepared for discussion. Each Friday you
meet, you will be given an Open Question to discuss. One member will complete the following and turn in on Friday for all
of you. You will also spend time completing your Essential Literature for the book.
Our discussion today was:
Very interesting
Interesting
Somewhat interesting
Not interesting
Because....
In My Essential Lit. we completed....
At this point we are wondering.....
In regards to our reading goal we are:
Right on track
Getting behind
Way behind
We need to read _____ pages/chapters by next Friday.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Take notes the on Geoffrey Chaucer from the prezi and cut and paste into your journal.
Choose one and take notes on the Middle Ages from the prezi and cut and paste into your journal.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
How to make your Quizlet
1. Go to www.Quizlet.com
2. Click Sign in if you already have a page, or click sign up or google sign in if you don’t.
3. Enter your birthday and email. Create a username, and a password. (or enter your email and password if using a
google log-in)
4. Check the “Agree to Terms of Service” box and click sign up.
5. If you are using the google sign in, enter in your email and password, and then enter your birthday and a
username YOU WILL REMEMBER!
REMINDER: A Facebook log in for Quizlet CANNOT be made on a school computer, but you can make one at
home with Facebook if you like.
How to join a class.
1. Go to the white side bar and click the “join or create a class” button in blue.
2. Type in “sLeonetti” in the box and scroll down until you find the AP Literature class.
3. Click the green “Request to join class” button.
4. Your Request will be emailed and accepted by Mrs. Leonetti when it pops up in her email.
Reading a Work of Art “Death and the Miser”
From ReadWriteThink.org
Listed below are the questions students respond to when working with the Reading a Work
of Art Online Tool: rwtinteractives.ncte.org/view_interactive.aspx?id=526
Crucifix
1. What is the symbolic meaning of the beam of light?
2. How does the beam of light’s symbolic meaning contribute to the protagonist’s conflict?
Demon over the bed
1. What is the symbolic meaning of the Demon perched on top of the bed?
2. How does the demon perched on top of the bed contribute to the main conflict of this work?
Death
1. What is the symbolic meaning of the image of Death? What specific aspect of death is being
communicated by this symbol?
2. Describe Death’s effect on the dying Miser. What comment does this make about how Middle Age
society viewed death?
3. Read Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death" (712). What is the difference
between Dickinson’s attitude towards death in her poem and the Miser’s attitude towards death in
this painting?
Dying Miser
1. Identify the denotative and connotative meanings of the word miser.
2. Is the miser looking at Death, the demon, or the crucifix? Explain the significance of the direction in
which he is looking.
3. Describe the movement of the dying Miser. What does this movement suggest about the nature of
the Miser’s character?
4. What is the conflict being experienced by the Miser? Identify the elements that are causing this
conflict.
Demon beside the bed
1. What is the symbolic meaning of this demon’s movement?
2. How does this demon contribute to the protagonist’s conflict?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Angel
1. What is the symbolic meaning of the angel’s movement?
2. How does the angel contribute to the protagonist’s conflict?
Healthy Miser
1. What does the movement of the healthy Miser suggest about the nature of his character?
2. What are the symbolic meanings of the key and rosary? What do these symbols suggest about the
nature of the Miser’s character?
3. Explain how the healthy Miser’s character contributes to the central conflict of this painting.
Demon beside the lockbox
1. What comment is made through the indulgence held in the hand of the demon beside the lockbox?
Knight’s Armor
1. What does this armor suggest about the Miser’s past?
2. How does the armor serve as a contrast to the image of the Miser dying in the bed?
The Literary Element of Theme
From ReadWriteThink.org
Theme is:
• the central, underlying, and controlling idea or insight of a work of literature.
• the idea the writer wishes to convey about the subject—the writer’s view of the world or a revelation about
human nature.
Theme is NOT:
• expressed in a single word
• the purpose of a work
• the moral
• the conflict
Identifying the Theme in Five Steps
To identify the theme, be sure that you’ve first identified the story’s plot, the way the story uses characterization, and
the primary conflict in the story.
Use these steps to determine the theme for a work:
1. Summarize the plot by writing a one-sentence description for the exposition, the conflict, the rising action, the
climax, the falling action, and the resolution.
2. Identify the subject of the work.
3. Identify the insight or truth that was learned about the subject.
• How did the protagonist change?
• What lesson did the protagonist learn from the resolution of the conflict?
4. State how the plot presents the primary insight or truth about the subject.
5. Write one or more generalized, declarative sentences that state what was learned and how it was learned.
Theme Litmus Test
• Is the theme supported by evidence from the work itself?
• Are all the author’s choices of plot, character, conflict, and tone controlled by this theme?

Can you apply the theme to all of humanity?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Writing Workshop Preference Questionnaire
Name:____________________________________Period: 1
2
3
4
5
6
1.
I would prefer not to work with ____________________________________.
2.
I would enjoy working with _____________________________or_________________________________.
3. I would prefer to work with a group that is
4.
5.
6.
o
All on gender
o
Heterogeneous
o
Doesn’t matter to me
I would assess my general writing performance on the AP nine point scale as
9-8
7-6
5-ish
3>
7-7+
6-ish
5-4
2>
I would describe my confidence in my writing as
o
Very confident
o
Some confidence
o
Little confidence
o
A total basket case
My birth order in my family is
first born
middle child
last child
only child
7. Other comments to help me form Writing Workshop groups:
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8.
I would like to use quizlet for this class as
Completely optional
An optional assignment
A required assessment
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Fill with notes from the prezi you did not know.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
After we are done, cut and paste the squares together to create a book on/of sonnets. On the blank pages you will take notes from the prezi.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Petrarch’s Sonnets
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
On the Petrarch’s Sonnet 42 identify the octave, the sestet, the volta, the rhyme scheme, and what type of two-part statement.
Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was an
Italian scholar and poet in Renaissance Italy, and one of the
earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is
often credited for initiating the 14th- century Renaissance.
Born: July 20, 1304, Arezzo, Italy
Died: July 19, 1374, Arquà Petrarca, Italy
Period: The Renaissance
Influenced by: Virgil, Cicero, Augustine of Hippo, Ovid
The spring returns, the spring wind softly blowing
Sprinkles the grass with gleam and glitter of showers,
Powdering pearl and diamond, dripping with flowers,
Dropping wet flowers, dancing the winters going;
The swallow twitters, the groves of midnight are glowing
With nightingale music and madness; the sweet fierce powers
Of love flame up through the earth; the seed-soul towers
And trembles; nature is filled to overflowing . . .
The spring returns, but there is no returning
Of spring for me. O heart with anguish burning!
She that unlocked all April in a breath
Returns not . . . And these meadows, blossoms, birds
These lovely gentle girls—words, empty words
As bitter as the black estates of death!
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Take note of Shakespeare’s form, and identify the rhyme scheme, quatrains, couplet, and turn, mark one line for iambic pentameter, and count the syllables.
Shakespeare’s Form and Language
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My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
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I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
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And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
By breaking form, do these still qualify as sonnets? Check their syllabification and rhyme scheme. Do they have a turning point?
Do not stand at my grave and weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep:
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starshine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I am not there; I did not die.
"Do not stand at my grave and weep" is a consoling elegy with a
mysterious genesis, as it was written by Mary Elizabeth Frye (19052004), a Baltimore housewife who lacked a formal education, having
been orphaned at age three. She had never written poetry before.
Frye wrote the poem on a ripped-off piece of a brown grocery bag, in
a burst of compassion for a Jewish girl who had fled the Holocaust
only to receive news that her mother had died in Germany. The girl
was weeping inconsolably because she couldn't visit her mother's
grave to share her tears of love and bereavement. When the poem
was named Britain's most popular poem in a 1996 Bookworm poll,
with more than 30,000 call-in votes despite not being one of the
critics' nominations, an unlettered orphan girl had seemingly
surpassed all England's many cultured and degreed ivory towerists in
the public's estimation. Although the poem's origin was disputed for
some time (it had been attributed to Native American and other
sources), Frye's authorship was confirmed in 1998 after investigative
research by Abigail Van Buren, the newspaper columnist better
known as "Dear Abby." The poem has also been called "I Am" due to
its rather biblical repetitions of the phrase. Frye never formally
published or copyrighted the poem, so we believe it is in the public
domain and can be shared, although we recommend that it not be
used for commercial purposes, since Frye never tried to profit from it
herself (The Best Sonnets Ever).
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Here’s a fellow who is more contemporary but follows the rules more precisely. Identify the rhyme scheme, syllabification, and turning point. What’s this all
about?
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost
figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and
British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an
Irish Senator for two terms. Wikipedia
Born: June 13, 1865, Sandymount, Republic of Ireland
Died: January 28, 1939, Menton, France
Poems: Lake Isle of Innisfree, Adam's Curse, More
Influenced by: T. S. Eliot, John Keats, William Blake, More
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Select a topic--choose your rhyme words, try to make your lines at least 10 syllables. What will your turn be? What will your answer be?
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How did writing your sonnet go? What was easy? What was
difficult? What does this say about Shakespeare’s writing?
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Sonnet by Billy Collins
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
Use “sonnet” for the cover of your book and this blank page
for the back, so you can glue it into your journal.
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blowout the lights, and come at last to bed.
Cut the pages of your sonnet book out, glue them together, and staple to create a book. Tape the book into your journal.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Free Response Comparison Template
First, read the selection for meaning(s) of the work as a whole. Annotate as you read!
Then, introduce the poems, their meaning(s), and how they compare and contrast in the first sentence.
EXAMPLE: Both poems by Keats and Longfellow reflect on unfulfilled dreams and the imminence of death, yet their
conclusions are somewhat different.
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Now, describe what each poet does more specifically in one sentence each—think meaning of the work here.
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Continue by writing one more sentence where you specify the comparison/contrast between the two. This should set
you up for the rest of your essay.
EXAMPLE: Longfellow’s ultimate tone about death is fearful and grim, but Keat’s is more appreciative of the wonder of
life and therefore more hopeful.
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Go back and reread and break down the poems analyzing them for poetic devices, using specific lines to support your
analysis. Make sure you have something to say using the devices/quotes regarding the work(s) as a whole, though—be
explicit in your analysis! If it helps you to organize your thoughts, go beginning, middle, end.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Poetic Devices:
Anaphora-repetition of a
word, phrase, or clause at
the beginning of two or
more sentences in a row.
Alliteration-repetition of
the same or similar
consonant sounds in
words that are close
together.
Imagery-the use of
language to evoke a
picture or a concrete
sensation of a person, a
think, a place, or an
experience. Often employs
at least one of the five
senses-see, hear, taste,
smell, or feel.
Metaphor-a figure of
speech that makes a
comparison between two
unlike things without the
use of such specific words
of comparison as like, as
than, or resembles.
Simile-makes an explicit
comparison between two
unlike things using words
such like, as, than, or
resembles.
Symbols-a person, place,
thing, or event that has
meaning in itself and that
also stands for something
more than itself.
Tone-the attitude a writer
takes toward the subject
of a work, the characters
in it, or the audience,
revealed through diction,
figurative language, and
organization.
Example beginning and use of quotation: The similarities between the poems lie mainly in the
openings which begrudge the fleeting nature of life. Keats’ fear that he “may cease to be”
parallels Longfellow’s statement that “half of [his] life is gone.”
Beginning:_________________________________________________________________
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Analysis:___________________________________________________________________
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Example Middle: The middles, or second parts, of the poems illustrate the contrast between
the two situations.
Middle:____________________________________________________________________
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Analysis:___________________________________________________________________
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Example End: The end of poems show these different attitudes toward life and death by using
similar situations.
End:______________________________________________________________________
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Analysis:___________________________________________________________________
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Last, reread your ideas
thus far and close with
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an analytical and
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defensible reading of
the poems coming back
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to your meaning of the
works as a whole.
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Given time, rewrite your essay as a whole here:
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Mark Twain
“Until lions tell their stories, tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.”
African proverb
Critical Lens
With thanks to Ashley Byrnne
Both Twain’s comment and the African proverb provide clues as to the importance of perspective. As individuals, we are
used to viewing all texts through our biases. Those biases depend on many factors, from your family background to your
personal tastes. Critical perspectives give you the opportunity to step outside of your biases and view texts from a
perspective that you may not have considered before. This is kind of like putting on a pair of sunglasses; once you put on
a pair with blue lenses, the way you view the world changes, but your eyes are not in any way changed. Following is a
brief overview of two critical lenses you will select from to read Hamlet through new eyes.
Psychological/Psychoanalytical Criticism
This critical perspective utilizes the principles of psychology to study literature. Some basic assumptions:

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Considers psychoanalytical concepts that appear in the work, such as the psyche, repression, the unconscious,
and the conflict between id and ego, and the superego,
Considers the psyche of the writer, and how the creative process itself is affected by the psychological concepts
listed above.
Concentrates on internal or family-based power dynamics (not larger, political systems)
Like psychology itself, not all psychological critics agree. Is largely formed by the theories of a particular
influential thinker from the field of psychology (e.g. Sigmund Freud)
Mythological/Archetypal Criticism
This critical perspective emphasizes the role of common themes, characters, and symbols that repeat through various
cultures, eras, and genres. Some basic assumptions:
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Seeks out archetypes (an archetype is a symbol or character that can be found in a variety of cultures, e.g. the
wise old woman or man, the trickster, the hero’s quest, temptation by evil…)
To varying degrees, considers Carl Jung’s definition of an archetype as "primordial images"; the "psychic residue"
of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited and shared in what he
called the "collective unconscious" of the human race
Utilizes Joseph Campbell’s view of literature and myth as the manifestation of our need to find meaning in
human experience
Explores a literary work by considering it in relation to other works with similar archetypical elements.
Finds great significance in symbols and religious allusions
These brief overviews will be further expanded by a few brief videos. From this information you need to complete the
following and select the lens through which you would like to read Hamlet. To further your understanding, try applying
your lens of interest to John Green’s Crash Course on Hamlet.
As you watch consider the two critical lenses, use this graphic organizer to take notes on the information. These notes
are not meant to be comprehensive – they are meant to give you a starting point for later exploration.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Psychological Criticism
Basic principles or ideas, as I understand them at this point in Hamlet in regards to this lens:
Some initial questions I have about Psychological Criticism:
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Archetypal Criticism…
Basic principles or ideas, as I understand them at this point in Hamlet in regards to this lens:
Some initial questions I have about Archetypal Criticism:
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Now that you have been briefly introduced to these two critical lenses, take a moment to write down your initial
response to the concept of critical lenses. How might the idea of critical theory change the way you think about the texts
you read? Lastly, of the two, which lens would you like to read Hamlet through?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
A Poem a Day
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Go to http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/
Read the 3 introductory paragraphs.
Yes, subscribing is optional, but
Click on Subscribe.
awesome because you get a poem every
Select E-mail under Poetry 180 in the pop-up box.
school day in your inbox—yay!
Enter your E-mail address and click on submit.
Go back to the Poetry 180 home page.
Click on the List of All 180 Poems.
Scroll through the titles and start to read. You are looking for poems you just enjoy. If you don’t, try another.
a. Other places to find poems:
i. Dead Poet’s Society
ii. Favorite Poem Project
iii. Poets.org
iv. PoemHunter (this is also an App, if you want to be a complete nerd, like me, and read poetry on
your phone in your spare time.)
Find and print at least three other poems that you like.
Cut and paste the poems that you choose into your journal (remember to maximize space, so if more than one
will fit on a page, do it!) Make sure to include the poems’ author and title.
Underline or highlight poetic devices and label them in the poem—try for at least 2 per poem, try not to repeat
devices.
Narrow down your choices to one favorite poem. Over the break, create a poster of the poem on the
construction paper provided. Your poster must include:
a. The poem in 48 font—this should fill the majority of the page (if your poem is too long, you can use a
smaller font, but only to make it look nice on the page).
b. The title and author in 72 font.
c. A picture of the author.
d. On the poem, either in your best handwriting or typed labels, highlight and label at least 3 devices as
you see them in the poem.
e. Supplement your poster in the empty spaces with relevant images, either hand drawn or printed.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Porphyria's Lover
THE rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listen'd with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneel'd and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And call'd me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me—she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I look'd up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipp'd me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laugh'd the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untighten'd next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
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35
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Blush'd bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propp'd her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorn'd at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gain'd instead!
Porphyria's love: she guess'd not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirr'd,
And yet God has not said a word!
50
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Robert Browning
Poet
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues,
made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.
Born: May 7, 1812, Camberwell, United Kingdom
Died: December 12, 1889, Venice, Italy
Spouse: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (m. 1846–1861)
My Last Duchess
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will ‘t please you sit and look at her? I said
‘Frà Pandolf’ by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘t was not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, ‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,' or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart -- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Sir, ‘t was all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -- all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! but thanked
Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech -- (which I have not) -- to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’ -- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
-- E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will ‘t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806 - 1861
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent English
poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both Britain
and the United States during her lifetime. Wikipedia
Born: March 6, 1806, Kelloe, United Kingdom
Died: June 29, 1861, Florence, Italy
Spouse: Robert Browning (m. 1846–1861)
Children: Robert Barrett Browning
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Prometheus
BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading
figure in the Romantic movement.
Born: January 22, 1788, Dover, United Kingdom
Died: April 19, 1824, Missolonghi, Greece
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric,
as well as epic, poets in the English language.
Born: August 4, 1792, Horsham, United Kingdom
Died: July 8, 1822, Lerici, Italy
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
The Seven Ages of Man
Poem lyrics of Seven Ages Of Man by William Shakespeare.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Recreate diagram in your journal and use to compare
themes/devices across the three poems.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Autumn
by Emily Dickinson
Fall, leaves, fall
by Emily Bronte
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Although part of a prominent family with strong
ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life highly introverted.
Born: December 10, 1830, Amherst, MA
Died: May 15, 1886, Amherst, MA
Free Response Comparison Template
First, read the selection for meaning(s) of the work as a whole. Annotate as you read!
Then, introduce the poems, their meaning(s), and how they compare and contrast in the first sentence.
TEMPLATE: Both poems by _______________ and __________________ reflect on ____________________________,
yet _____________________________________________________________.
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__________________________________________________________________________________________________
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Now, describe what each poet does more specifically in one sentence each—think meaning of the work here.
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Continue by writing one more sentence where you specify the comparison/contrast between the two. This should set
you up for the rest of your essay.
TEMPLATE: ______________’s ultimate tone about ______________ is ___________________, but _____________’s is
more _______________________ and therefore _________________________________________.
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©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Fill in the blanks based on what you now know.
1.During the summer of 1816, eighteen-year-old ________________________ was hanging out in a Swiss lake house with her lover and future husband
__________________; famous English poet, Lord Byron; and Byron's doctor John Polidori. (And some others, but those are the important names.) It
was a bummer of a vacation, since the 1815 eruption of Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora disrupted weather patterns so severely that 1816 became
known as the "Year Without Summer."
So, you're bored out of your skull in a lakeside villa with two of the most famous writers in all of English literature. What do you do?
You have a ghost story contest.
Let's back up for a second: ________________________ wasn't just any eighteen-year-old. She was the daughter of two seriously smart people: Mary
Wollstonecraft, who wrote basically the first work of English feminism ever (not to mention a bunch of political philosophy about human rights in general);
and William Godwin, an atheist, anarchist, and radical who wrote novels and essays attacking conservatism and the aristocracy. Just imagine their
dinner table conversations.
Our point is, __________________ wasn't some girl writing _________________ in her LiveJournal. She may have been only eighteen, but she was
seriously engaging with major intellectual questions of the time, like:

Should there be limits to scientific inquiry?

What's the relationship between human rationality and human emotion?

What's the role of the individual in relation to society, or to the family?
The critics didn't exactly go wild, but it was popular enough to be republished as a one-volume edition in 1831. Only _______________ wasn't the same
bright-eyed 21 year old she'd been in 1818. By 1831, she had lost her husband and two of her children, and the revised edition has a grimmer tone. In
the 1831 text, nature is a destructive machine; _____________ is a victim of fate, not free will; and families are not so much happy and supportive as
claustrophobic and oppressive. She made so many changes, in fact, that there's a real question about which version we should be reading.
Shmoop is sticking with the 1831 edition, because that's the one most people read. But if you ask us (and most scholars), the 1818 edition is where it's
at.
2. You can't get much more romantic than __________________: a poor, unloved, and unattractive orphan uses her awesome personality to win over a
wealthy sort-of-aristocrat and live happily ever after.
Oh, and by "awesome personality" we mean "blunt and somewhat annoyingly obsessed with duty." And let's not forget to mention that the sort-ofaristocrat is (1) mean, (2) ugly, and (3) comes with more baggage than an Airbus. And "happily ever after"? Ha. That comes in the last few pages of a
very long (and very messed-up—think "psychopathic mind games" and "imprisoned people in the attic") courtship.
What we're saying is, ___________________ isn't exactly the harlequin romance novel that a movie poster like this might suggest. But don't worry: it's
still a crowd-pleaser. Madness, disability, missionaries, and a tasty sprinkle of the gothic make ___________________ a pretty compelling read for a
book that was published (under the pseudonym ____________________) in the wayback days of 1847.
Still, there's a lot more going on than the makings of a Hollywoodblockbuster... even though __________________has graced the screen a whopping
thirty-three times. At the heart of _____________________ is a struggle that's almost certainly close to your heart: the struggle to grow up and live a life
that's authentic and meaningful.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
So does living an authentic life mean following your cousin across the world to convert the "heathens"? Does it mean living as a wealthy spinster and
teaching the rural poor how to knit? Or does it mean marrying your brooding, crippled landlord who has a sordid, secret past?
It's Choose Your Own Adventure, nineteenth-century style: if you choose wisely you'll gain everlasting love and a swanky mansion; if you choose
poorly... well, we just hope you like spending a lot of time in attics.
3. When ________________ published _________________ in 1813, people were still getting used to the idea that women would do something so
totally immodest and exhibitionist as to actually have strangers reading something she wrote for money. Oh, how shocking and taboo! Just one step
away from prostitution! (We're not even joking about that.) Because of all that, the novel came out anonymously, as had her
book ____________________ only a year earlier.
Not only was it a big deal for women to be authors, but it was also kind of a foregone conclusion that everyone would think that their novels were
automatically kind of silly and chick-lit —you know, not like man-novels, what with their deep thoughts and serious subjects. Especially when your novel,
like ______________'s, was essentially about marrying off a bunch of sisters. ____________ made fun of those expectations in a letter she wrote to her
sister:
[_____________________] is rather too light & bright & sparkling; —it wants shade; —it wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter […]
about something unconnected with the story; an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Bonaparte —or anything that would form a
contrast & bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness & Epigrammatism of the general stile. (Letter to ____________________, February
4, 1813)
How do we know she's kidding around? Well, just imagine: you're flipping pages frantically during Mr. _________________'s proposal, trying to find out
what ___________________ says, and all of a sudden the narrator starts in on a long essay about contemporary literature. It kind of ruins the mood,
right? But that's exactly what most people expected from books—a little non-fiction mixed in with your fiction, just enough so you can say, "Yeah, I know,
it's a novel—but I'm reading it for the articles."
In reality, the novel deals with plenty of its own deep thoughts and serious subjects. At the turn of the century, the old debate between rationality and
emotions was heating up again. The 18th century had been the Age of Enlightenment, with Voltaire and David Hume and Adam Smith making sense of
life in a super-scientific, man-centered, non-religious way. These Enlightenment ideas about the rights of men and the value of individuals got a bunch of
people fired up in the American colonies, and pretty soon they were doing it up democracy-style across the Atlantic. And just across the English
Channel? The French Revolution led to an overthrow of the entire monarchy. Kings all over Europe were making sure their heads were still attached to
their necks.
_________________ was no dummy, and it's no coincidence that characters spend a lot of time debating whether they're supposed to be making
decisions based on reason and rationality or feelings and impressions. These were high-stakes questions for individuals as well as nations—particularly
educated women, who suddenly looked around and said, "Hey, how come we don't get to own property? How come earning our own money is somehow
disreputable? How come we have no rights or political power? How come we're supposed to be all quiet and not talk or think, even though we have
brains?"
______________________ may not be a dissertation about political independence or the relative merits of passion and reason—but it's definitely a
reflection on what those ideas might mean for women's lives.
We speak student
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Is it Coming-of-Age?
With a group that represents Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice (no repeats until all groups are complete; no groups
larger than 4-5), identify elements from the work and explain how they reflect the characteristics of the Coming-of-Age genre. Be
sure to include concrete references from you reading. Remember that the work need not embody all of the characteristics in order
to be considered among the Coming-of-Age novels.
2013 Open Choice Prompt: A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, recounts the psychological or moral development of its
protagonist from youth to maturity, when this character recognizes his or her place the world. Select a single pivotal moment in the
psychological or moral development of the protagonist of a bildungsroman. Then write a well-organized essay that analyzes how
that single moment shapes the meaning of the work as a whole.
Coming-of-Age
Characteristics (PBS)
Opening Scenes: The opening of a
story must do more than get our
attention; it should also present
key ideas and themes that will be
echoed in some way throughout
the story. What did the opening set
up about the story to come?
Voice and Point of View: From
whose point of view is this story
told? How would you describe the
narrative voice of the story? Are
you sympathetic to this voice, or
not? How does this point of view
influence or affect the story?
Turning Points and Major Themes:
What were the most significant
events in the protagonist's early
life -- those that truly changed who
he or she became? How does the
story show the importance of
those events? What recurring
themes and motifs are there in this
person's story?
Who Am I? In some way, all
coming-of-age stories address the
quest to define oneself. Who is
this in your book and how does
(s)he set out on this quest?
Relationship with Parents/Guardians:
Does the main character have
"good" parents by your definition?
How do they influence him or her?
Family: What is the role of the
main character in his or her
family? Does that role change?
What code or set of beliefs does
the family seem to live by? What
expectations does the family have
for this person? Does he or she
meet them? How does the
character try to separate from his
or her family? To what extent is he
or she successful?
Gender Roles: How many stories
can you think of that portray men
and women in stereotyped gender
roles? Now examine the story you
are studying: to what extent are
the roles of men and women
stereotypical?
Friendship: For many young
people, their peer group becomes
more influential than their family.
How do friendships change this
character? In what ways are these
Frankenstein
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
friendships a substitute or
continuation of his or her family?
Rebellion: In what ways does the
character rebel, and what does he
or she rebel against? How does
the character rebel -- outwardly or
inwardly? Does rebelling
accomplish something important?
Where is Home? How does the
main character in the story you are
studying define "home"? Is it the
place the character comes from, or
somewhere of his or her own
making? What about this
character's "home" seems to stay
with the person wherever he or
she goes?
Romance and Sexuality: Almost no
coming-of-age story is without this
theme. How big a role does it play
in the story you are studying? Do
you wish it had played a smaller or
larger role? How?
Political and Social Realities: At what
point do the characters in the story
you are studying begin to
understand the political and social
boundaries that define their lives?
What incidents set off this
understanding? How does it shape
them?
1.
Looking over your grid, highlight the areas in which you find particularly strong similarities among the different works.
What conclusions can you draw from these similarities?
2.
Now that you have discussed several books from the same genre, what would you list as some of the clichés of the comingof-age story? Look for those characters, realizations, turning points, and themes that seem to appear again and again, and
that seem particularly hard to make “fresh” each time. Which works on your list do the best job of avoiding cliché? Which
do the worst job? Why?
3.
Which main character from one coming-of-age story would have the best advice to give the main character from another
coming-of-age story? Perhaps both characters go through the same experience, on more successfully that the other, or
perhaps one find a better way of dealing with a troublesome relationship or issue. Staying true to the character’s voice,
write the advice this character would give the other, stating at what point in the advisee’s story the advice would best be
given.
With thanks to: PBS.” PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/coorain/tg_comingofage.html>
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Magazine Requirements
Working with your Book Club, each of you will contribute 2 pages to your group magazine (those marked with * must be included in your magazine,
if you have more than 3 group members, each person MUST complete 2 pages, so select from those not marked *). You will be individually graded
on your own article, but your will also receive a group grade for the magazine as a whole. It is important to work together to make the overall
layout of the magazine flow as well as peer edit to avoid errors in your own articles and as a whole. The contents are as follows; work with your
group members to determine which pages each group member will create.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Cover—in color, including titles and authors of individual articles, relevant picture(s), poignant quotations, and date of publication (of
book)*
Table of Contents
Article 1: Life and Times of the author*
Article 2: The Victorian Era and author’s place in it
Article 3: Impact of Romantic Elements on book*
Article 4: Impact of Coming-of-Age Elements on book*
Article 5: Impact of Gothic Elements on book*
Article 6: Critical Analysis of book
Works Cited that reflects on citations from every article*
You will be given 4 work days with the Chromebooks to complete your magazine in class. If you need to work outside of class, remember the
assignments you work on here are available on your Google Docs as long as you sign in using your school account anywhere you go.
When you go to put your magazine together, make sure that you follow these directions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Organize your articles into logical order for your magazine based on the writer’s input.
Create cover page that looks like a magazine cover with title, pictures, and interesting article titles. This should be in color.
Table of Contents with titles of articles, author’s first and last name, and page number(s).
Works Cited with ALL citations from contributors. This must follow MLA Format and be the last page of your magazine.
Peer-edit one another’s work before final submission—grammar counts for your magazine as a whole as well!
You are responsible for staying on task during working days. It is your responsibility to make sure the magazine work is completed. Use the time
wisely to discuss ideas and get information on paper. You will be given one library day to create your article; in-class time to organize your
magazine; and, ½ day in the library to put your magazine together.
Magazine rubric available on in-class handout.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Article Rubric: Each of your individual articles will be graded using this rubric.
Grade/Criteria
Layout
A
B
C
D
F
Intriguing title in unique, largest font heads the article
followed by a subtitle and author’s name.
Interesting title in largest font
heads the article followed by a
subtitle and author’s name.
Title in largest font heads the
article followed by a subtitle and
author’s name.
Title heads the article and author’s
name.
Irrelevant or missing title or
missing author’s name.
The article is formatted into at
least 3 columns which are
completely filled with a readable,
10-12 pt. font.
The article is formatted into at
least 2 columns which are mostly
filled with a readable, 10-12 pt.
font. Fits in with the style of the
other articles in the group to make
a cohesive magazine layout.
The article is somewhat formatted
into columns which are partially
filled with a readable, 12 pt. or
larger font. Does not necessarily
fit the style of the other articles in
the group—does not look like
there was participation in the
layout.
Does not look like an article. Does
not fit the style of the other
articles in the group—does not
look like there was participation in
the layout.
The article is formatted into at least 3 columns which
are completely filled with a readable, 10-12 pt. font.
Uses creative lettering to signify the beginning of new
paragraphs.
Fits in with the style of the other articles in the group
to make a cohesive magazine layout.
Photographs
Content
Includes at least 2 very relevant, striking photographs
with captions.
It is made clear by a subtitle which article is being
written by taking the explanation and rewriting to
interestingly include the topic. This should not be a
question.
Fits in with the style of the other
articles in the group to make a
cohesive magazine layout.
Includes at least 1 relevant
photograph with caption.
It is made clear by a subtitle which
article is being written by taking
the explanation and rewriting to
include the topic. This should not
be a question.
Article is very interesting and pertinent throughout.
There are no errors in the article.
Citations
Connection to Book
Includes at least two very relevant quotations from at
least one source on topic. Also includes very relevant
quotation from your book.
The in-text citations in the article adhere to the rules
for MLA and match up with the Works Cited provided
in the overall magazine.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/
Uses at least one quotation from the book to
intriguingly make a connection between the topic of
the article and the reading—it should be very clear
that you are keeping up with reading.
Includes relevant photograph(s)
without captions.
It is made clear by a subtitle which
article is being written by writing
the description from the handout.
This should not be a question.
Irrelevant photograph
It is made clear by a subtitle which
article is being written by writing
the description from the handout.
Might have been written as a
question.
OR
Article does not exist.
No photograph
No subtitle.
The topic of the article is unclear.
Article is off topic.
Article is pertinent throughout.
Article is interesting and pertinent
throughout.
There are minimal errors, not
distracting.
Includes at least two relevant
quotations from at least one
source on topic. Also includes
relevant quotation from your
book.
The in-text citations in the article
adhere to the rules for MLA and
match up with the Works Cited
provided in the overall magazine.
Uses at least one quotation from
the book to make a connection
between the topic of the article
and the reading—it should be
clear that you are keeping up with
reading.
There are a few errors that can be
distracting.
Includes at least one relevant
quotations from at least one
source on topic. Also includes
quotation from your book.
The in-text citations in the article
adhere to the rules for MLA and
match up with the Works Cited
provided in the overall magazine.
Uses at least one quotation from
the book to make a connection
between the topic of the article
and the reading—it may become
clear that you are not keeping up
with reading.
Article goes off topic at some
points.
There are several distracting
errors.
Includes at least one quote from
the book or another source.
Relevance of quotation is
questionable.
Attempts to use in-text citation.
Attempts to use a quote from the
book, but it is irrelevant.
Very clear that you are not
keeping up with reading.
The article is riddled with errors,
making it difficult to understand
the content.
Does not include quote or it is
very irrelevant.
Does not use in-text citation.
Does not include a quote.
Very clear that you are not
keeping up with reading.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Monsters ink
Two hundred years after the heyday of the gothic novel, people still want to scare themselves. We read tales of
murderers and vampires because we crave the sensation of fear we so rarely feel in everyday life.
Queen of goths: Mary Shelley painted in 1830
In 1816, just after the end of the Napoleonic wars, four young writers staying in the Villa Diodati, near Lake
Geneva, decided to invent hideous stories for each other. Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Polidori took
their turn, but the most successful was the 19-year-old Mary Shelley. She terrified herself with her story of
Victor Frankenstein and his monster, and would soon frighten the rest of the world. Life in the western world
today is increasingly less "nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas Hobbes put it. Yet we are entranced by
representations of horror and preoccupied by gothic representations of the terrible killer. Murder films and
books abound. Frankenstein still exercises great power over us and last summer a stage adaptation of the novel
entertained audiences at the National Theatre in London. We cannot resist a gothic demise.
Today, most of us would be more likely to kill ourselves than be murdered - we die from overeating, drinking,
smoking, or lack of exercise. But we do not terrify ourselves with artistic representations of giant cigarettes or
bottles of whisky, or demand art that explores the conditions that will destroy us - cancer, obesity and heart
disease. Instead we want to see death in its most outlandish forms. Harold Shipman might have been Britain's
most prolific serial killer, but portrayals of murderous doctors are rare. We tend not to imagine dread of lovers
or colleagues, even though they are, statistically, most likely to deprive us of our lives. Instead we relish fear of
the stranger - the mysterious murderer, the monster running untamed.
Fascination with the murderous arts is a modern phenomenon, growing at the same rate as improvements in life
expectancy and living standards. Like those in the Villa Diodati in 1816, we are hunting for the sensation of fear
because we lack it in life. A learned response usually created by vicarious experience or instruction, fear alerts
the human to danger and the need to "fight or [take] flight". It is no coincidence that Byron and his friends were
searching for sensation just as the bloodiest European conflict in years finally ended.
For 18th-century writers, an individual's experience of terror was a route to potential greatness. As Edmund
Burke wrote in 1759, the "terrible", or whatever excited the "ideas of pain, and danger", was a source of the
sublime, the "strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling". Such sensation, he suggested, was
produced by contemplating vastness or infinity. Vastness and infinity were not easy to represent in fiction,
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
however. Horace Walpole in his novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) communicated the "terrible" with more
prosaic props - ancestral curses, secret passages and fainting heroines. Writers enthusiastically copied his plots,
and so the gothic novel was born.
Schloss horror: Castle Frankenstein in Germany, which may have influenced Mary Shelley's novel
Named after the medieval architecture of abbeys and castles in which the novels are set, the form generated a
thrilling dread in the reader by means of sinister suggestion and the conjuring of an eerie atmosphere. Those
who see Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, published posthumously in 1818, as lampooning Ann Radcliffe's
works miss the point: Catherine Morland finds terror in normal life because she fails to finish The Mysteries of
Udolpho and thus never reads Radcliffe's pragmatic explanation for all the clanks and chains - the fake Italian
nobleman's ambition to steal the protagonist Emily St Aubert's legacy.
Not only was the supernatural explained in the gothic novel, it was presented as beneficial. As Radcliffe wrote
in 1826, bald representations of atrocities annihilate perception, but true terror, a product of obscurity and
indeterminacy, works to expand the soul and awakens the faculties "to a higher degree of life".
Frankenstein was very different. With a desperate monster and the notion that the greatest horror was our own
creation, Mary Shelley undermined confidence in rational explanation. The supernatural exceeds our attempt to
control it and the soul is not expanded but petrified with dread at its capacity for iniquity.
The idea that human beings could contain great evil was particularly appealing to the Victorians. For them, the
city, rather than a ruined abbey, was the setting most conducive to terror. G W M Reynolds's lurid story series
The Mysteries of London, begun in 1844, transported the plots of the gothic novel to a capital swarming with
"venomous objects, wearing human shapes", as criminals use trapdoors, chests and secret passages to pursue
their diabolical ends.
Dickens, too, explored London as a site of cruelty in Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. But
the representation of the city as the most auspicious setting for murder reached its apogee in Robert Louis
Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Stevenson's bestseller introduced the idea of the
split personality to the popular imagination. In the early 19th century, many murders were attributed to gangs.
By the late Victorian period, however, the notion of the individual criminal mind had taken hold. Now, every
murderer had to be hiding a dark secret.
When, in 1888, women started to be found in Whitechapel with their throats cut, the public read the imagined
culprit as a character in a novel. The conjecture that he was a respectable man with a dark side proved
irresistible. An actor playing Hyde on stage was briefly arrested because his performance was deemed too
convincing to be feigned. Yet the most prolific killer of the period was not Jack the Ripper, but Mary Ann
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Cotton, who was hanged in 1873 after murdering several friends and relations in order to benefit from their life
insurance.
Many murderers are dully methodical about their tasks and are caught only when they grow careless about their
systems. But we tend to be resistant to what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil". Instead, we are
compulsively attracted to the wild, Hyde-type killer, possessed by his demons and violently aroused.
Gothic fascinations tend to increase with recessions. Frankenstein was perfectly fitted to the economic slump
that followed the end of the French wars. And it is often suggested today that economic contraction will bring
benefits as we become less materialistic and more devoted to family and community. History, though, shows
that, on the contrary, recession increases crime and makes us desperate for distraction - the more monstrous the
better.
In my novel The Pleasures of Men, set in recession-struck early Victorian London, the inhabitants seek to divert
themselves from their troubles by following the activities of a murderer. This is a perilous error, as their interest
takes them too close to danger. Nowadays, however, we are safe with our vampires and monsters.
My earliest memory of fear is sitting in my school hall aged five and being told by the teachers that the whole
school would watch something that would scare us and that no one was allowed to leave. I remember the panic I
felt watching a rather creaky film about children who played on railway lines. No experience of dread has ever
rivalled seeing the train appear and the memory induces a slight terror in me even now. There is something
about fear that returns us to the state of childhood: we are controlled by another and are unable to predict what
will happen next. The gothic murderer, the vampire or the monster running wild is more than an entertaining
distraction; he represents the failure of reason and rational explanation to encompass our experiences.
Fifty years hence, our murderers will seem quaint. But one thing is certain: people will still want stories of
mysterious death. Exposing ourselves to fear in art is a way of reminding ourselves that we are alive.
By: Kate Williams is a historian and the author of "The Pleasures of Men”
Parenthetical Reference: Any information borrowed from this article must have a parenthetical reference at the end of sentences
with borrowed information included. The parenthetical reference for this article would look like this: (Williams 50).
MLA Works Cited Entry:
Williams, Kate. "Monsters Ink." New Statesman 141.5088 (2012): 50. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 22 May 2012.
Gothic Literature
Let's play a word association. We're going to say a word, and you're going to tell us what it makes you think of. Ready? Go.
Goth.
[We'll wait.]
We're guessing your list looks something like this:

Studded cuffs

Black clothes and makeup

Leather

Underground music
©Sara M. M. Leonetti

Spikes
But get this: behind the derivative black-and-spikey look is a movement that started in 1764. Yep, that dyed hair has a centuries-old tradition
behind it.
The 18th century nourished two opposing trends:
(1) The Enlightenment. Proponents of this movement valued objectivity, reason, and a light sherry. Enlightenment thinkers had a lot of influence in
the birth of America, and the U.S. founding fathers tried to imbue the constitution with these values.
(2) Romanticism. The Romantics were pretty sick of the Enlightenment and what they saw as its insistence on cool, detached interaction with the
wider world. Romantics wanted to feel things. They demanded that emotions be valued, and they sought to reclaim Imagination-with-a-capital-I.
Fuggedabout development and industry; wilderness and the unknown is where it's at for them. Romantics were also super focused on the
individual. Why get lost in a crowd when you could shine alone?
Why are we yammering on about all this? Well, Gothicism was kind of the nightmarish kid sibling of Romanticism. It took up all of these values
and gave them…well…a shadier spin. Almost sinister. In 1764, Horace Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto, and in it, he planted the seeds for
every Gothic novel to follow (Shmoop):
Elements to Look For:
Where is the setting?
How is it castle-like?
What evidence is there of
mystery and suspense?
How does this impact the
overall tone of the work?
What evidence is there of
an ancient prophecy or
hidden past?
Evidence from your book
Remember These?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
How do omens, portents,
or visions impact the
outcome of the work?
What inexplicable events
occur?
AND
How do they impact the
outcome of the work?
Who displays
overwrought emotion?
What impact does this
have on the
characterization of this
character?
What woman is in
distress?
AND
Who is the tyrant
overpowering her?
How does the setting
portray a metonymy of
gloom and horror?
Is your novel gothic or not?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Use this image to take notes from the prezi
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Read this poem and annotate by trying to fill the blank space around it to find meaning based on your perspective. Even
take it to the point of looking at it line by line. Fill the space!
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
captured the intensity of
her turbulent life in an
autobiographical novel
and personal, revealing
poetry. An accomplished
scholar and writer,
Plath won many awards
as a young woman,
including a scholarship
to Smith College and
a Fulbright fellowship
to Newnham College in
Cambridge University.
In 1956, she married
poet Ted Hughes. As
their marriage dissolved,
Plath produced poems
of striking pain and
power. These poems
were published in the
collection Ariel (1965),
which appeared after her
suicide in 1963.
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible.
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
3 min. after bell: Entry Task—Begin as soon as you sit down! Answer the following questions in your journal—please
just write your response, do not talk to others or ask questions about the questions.
Who makes the most money?
Who should pay for a date?
Who should get married?
Who should raise children?
How often do you compromise?
How often do you say "sorry"?
How often do you say exactly what you think?
How often do you pretend to be something you're not?
How much thought do you put into what you wear?
What are the expectations for you on prom night?
What are you good at?
What are your interests?
What are the worst names you have been called?
What is the worst name you have called someone?
5 min. Chalk Talk: When time is called, please review your answers and select three that you think are the most
impactful to you, and copy your answer on to the corresponding poster WITHOUT TALKING.
5 min. Reader Response: After you have written your answers on the posters, please take a walk around the classroom
and read what others wrote. In your journal, write your response to what you read. What was shocking? What was
not? What does this have to do with anything?
30 min. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc
In your journal write your reaction to the video. Is there a connection between what you saw and your response to
what you read on the posters?
Last 5 min. Begin Socratic Seminar Entry Ticket
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Feminism Socratic Seminar
Learning Targets:
●
●
●
I will be able to analyze and discuss using evidence from my reading and viewing.
I can listen attentively and contribute effectively based on my understanding of the reading and viewing.
I can take a stand for good, evil, or both, but be willing to alter my opinion(s) based on the discussion.
Socratic Seminar Expectations
Before the Discussion…
You must come prepared. You will be expected to have your entry ticket complete to participate in the Socratic
Seminar discussion (plus your evidence from the movie and readings).
During the Discussion…
Inner-Circle: Participate in the discussion based on your notes, but do not simply read from what you wrote.
You should be listening to what others are saying and responding to that. Those who are most effective in the
discussion are those who refer not only to their personal experiences but also those that you have read or
watched.
Outer-Circle: You will select one of the options from the following sheet and make notes about the discussion
only in regards to that option. Your sheet should be completely filled to show that you were paying attention
throughout the discussion, and you should be able to draw conclusions based on what you heard. You may
jump into the hot seat at any point you feel it is necessary, but it is not required.
How do you participate well?
Not At All
I took a position, explained it clearly,
and used evidence to support my ideas.
I willingly answered people’s questions
about my position, and I respectfully
explained or defended my position
when asked. I also asked my classmates
to clarify or justify their positions when
appropriate.
I listened actively and respectfully to my
classmates’ positions. I also compared
and contrasted their ideas with my own.
I kept an open mind and was willing to
modify my own position.
Throughout the discussion, I
summarized in my mind the things that
others had said.
I was actively involved in the
conversation.
Somewhat
Considerably Extensively
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
SOCRATIC SEMINAR ENTRY TICKET
Name: _________________
Title of seminar: Having read and watched multiple articles and videos in relation to feminism, take a stance on whether
or not you think feminism is an important or relevant issue today.
Purpose: Support your findings from the sources provided by making note here. Then, support your stance either by
participating verbally in the inner circle, or show your stance in your reflection on the outer circle. Either way, it should
be clear what you think.
Guiding Sources for Discussion
We should all be feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Emma Watson to United Nations: I'm a feminist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9SUAcNlVQ4
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Michael Kimmel: Why gender equality is good for everyone — men included
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_kimmel_why_gender_equality_is_good_for_everyone_men_included?utm_campai
gn=ios-share&utm_medium=social&source=email&utm_source=email
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Text-Set Article: ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Text-Set Article: ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Text-Set Article: ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Text-Set Article: ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Text-Set Article: ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Text-Set Article: ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Inner Circle: Socratic Seminar Reflection
Your Stance:
1. Summary of key ideas:
2. Reaction: Identify what someone said; write down his/her comment. React to his/her statement.
3. Explain how the Seminar influenced your thinking about the topic or the text(s).
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Socratic Seminar
Outer Circle Responsibilities
Introduction: Socratic Seminars take on many shapes, but for this seminar, there will be two concentric
circles—an inner circle and an outer circle. The inner circle is where participants will actively share ideas, and
the outer circle is where participants will actively observe and take notes on the discussion.
Task: Choose one or two approaches to observations from the list below that interest you. When you’re in the
outer circle, record information on the back of this sheet. You will share pieces of this information (the
highlights—what stands out to you) with the class or with individuals at the conclusion of the seminar. Many of
you will likely focus on note taking.
Possible observation approaches:
• Opposite person
Watch the person opposite you (across the circle so you can see his or her face).
How many times does the person speak? Does the person listen well? How does the person behave during the
discussion? Provide a few examples of the person’s comments and behavior.
• Questions
Who asks questions? Do people answer the questions? Which specific question is most interesting to the group?
• Discussion leaders
Who seems to be leading the discussion? Is it more than one person? Does the leader keep other members
engaged in the discussion? Does he or she keep attention focused on ideas in the text?
Does he or she listen carefully to others? Describe the leader’s behavior briefly.
• Gender dynamics
Do you notice different discussion techniques between males and females? Who interrupts whom? How are
interruptions received? Do the males and females listen differently?
• Discussion difficulties
What parts of the discussion are awkward? Why? What are your suggestions for improving discussion
techniques?
• Note taking
Record notes and questions that you want to bring to the inner circle discussion
• Balance of discussion
Count the number of times each person speaks
• Good points
What are the speakers doing well? Make a list of their positive discussion techniques.
• Quiet people
Are the quiet people listening? Do they give subtle signals that they wish to speak? Do the talkers ignore them
or look at them?
• Focus
How often does the group get off topic completely? (Count and record examples.) How often does the group
find tangents to the discussion? (Tangents are ideas not directly related to the passage but still on topic.) When
the group finds tangents, to what do they refer? (Count and record examples.)
Remember: The purpose of the outer circle is to improve your own ability to participate effectively in a Socratic
Seminar and to help others. The class dynamics should improve each time a Socratic Seminar takes place. If
your feedback is critical, be sure it is presented in a supportive manner, not meant to criticize.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Outer Circle: Socratic Seminar Reflection
Your Stance:
Observation Notes:
From what you observed, what jumped out at you? What were the highlights? What are your major takeaways
from observing the seminar?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
Summary:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle
Last Edited: 2010-04-21 08:25:52
S/he
Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or
undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of theory
looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose
the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women" (Richter 1346). This misogyny, Tyson reminds us,
can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in the world of modern
medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only" (83).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers
from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to
under-represent the contribution of women writers" (Tyson 82-83).
Common Space in Feminist Theories
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of commonality. This list is
excerpted from Tyson:
1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal
ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so
2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference
from male norms and values
3. All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical
portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or feminine)
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the
world by prompting gender equality
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and
experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not (91).
Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves of feminism:
1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights
of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria
Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920
with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment
2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working conditions necessary in
America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in
1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le deuxième sexe, 1972) and Elaine
Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American
Civil Rights movement
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over
simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave
feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on
marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the
concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and
for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of
work women perform" (Tyson 97).
Typical questions:
©Sara M. M. Leonetti











How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of
patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about women's creativity?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of
patriarchy?
What role the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition? (Tyson)
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:








Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792
Simone de Beauvoir - Le deuxième sexe, 1972
Julia Kristeva - About Chinese Women, 1977
Elaine Showalter - A Literature of Their Own, 1977; "Toward a Feminist Poetics," 1979
Deborah E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," 1980
Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, 1983
Lillian S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," 1983
Camile Paglia - Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, 1990
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/11/
Feminist Lens
General Focus:
Role of women/ battle of the sexes and how each are used/viewed differently with a greater focus on the female role in the novel.
Focus
The Awakening
A Doll’s House
Question
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
How is the
relationship
between men and
women
portrayed?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
What are the
power
relationships
between men and
women
(or characters
assuming
male/female
roles)?
How are male and
female roles
defined?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Focus
The Awakening
A Doll’s House
Question
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
What constitutes
masculinity and
femininity?
AND
How do
characters
embody these
traits?
Do characters
take on traits
from opposite
genders? How
so? How does
this change
others’ reactions
to them?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
What does the
work reveal
about the
operations
(economically,
politically,
socially, or
psychologically)
of patriarchy?
Focus
The Awakening
A Doll’s House
Question
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
What does the
work imply
about the
possibilities of
sisterhood as a
mode of
resisting
patriarchy?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
What does the
work say about
women's
creativity?
What does the
history of the
work's reception
by the public
and by the
critics tell us
about the
operation of
patriarchy?
Focus
The Awakening
A Doll’s House
Question
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
Include citation with pg. to answer the question.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
What role does
the work play in
terms of
women's literary
history and
literary
tradition?
(Tyson)
REFLECT ON LEARNING:FEMINIST LENS
Looking over your answers to all guiding questions, what do you think the feminist critic may say is the major theme of A Doll’s
House? Remember that themes are sentences that describe the author’s observations about life, society or human nature that they
hope the reader will understand and apply to their own life. Use a complete sentence(s) to describe this theme.
Looking over your answers to all guiding questions, what do you think the feminist critic may say is the major theme of The
Awakening? Remember that themes are sentences that describe the author’s observations about life, society or human nature that
they hope the reader will understand and apply to their own life. Use a complete sentence(s) to describe this theme
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
In comparison, do they have the same theme or different? Explain.
Imagery and Characterization Assignment
Throughout the course of the unit you will work together (no more than 3) or independently (your choice) to create a
character project for one of the characters in either The Awakening or A Doll’s House. Characters may not be repeated
within the class, so you will select today. You can use in-class time if you finish your other assignments first, but you
may have to work on this project outside of class to meet the expectations as delineated. Your poster must display the
following:
Characterization
Character name, title, and author
Significant quote by the character
Significant quote about the character
Accurate representation of the character’s
physical qualities
Character traits using vocabulary from the text
The Awakening
Edna Pontellier
Mademoiselle Reisz
Robert Lebrun
Adele Ratignolle
Alcee Arobin
Leonce Pontellier
Doctor Mandelet
Imagery
Quote that uses imagery to describe a scene
Accurate representation of the scene described
Accurate representation of a symbol or object
associated with the character
Explanation of the meaning of the symbol or
object and its importance to the text
All aspects of the poster must show creativity and
thoughtfulness—neatness counts! 5/item=45 pts.
A Doll’s House
Torvald Helmer
Nora
Doctor Rank
Mrs. Linde
Nils Krogstad
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Name ____________________
AP Literature:
*With thanks to Ashley Byrne
Comparing Kate Chopin’s Male Characters
Directions: In the “description of character” row, note specific attributes of that character as described in The
Awakening. In the second row, with a quote that supports, describe the tone the character takes in the story, and in the
third row describe their relationship or contrast to Edna –what role do they serve in her life? How is this character used
to compare or contrast Edna? In the fourth row, explain what the character does –what is their role in society? Can
they be classified as a “type” of person? What is their social status how does this present different “options” for Edna
during this time period?
Character Analysis
Description of
Character
Tone of Character
Relationship/
Contrast to Edna
Mr. Pontellier
Robert Lebrun
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Role, job, or place in
society
Finally, what do the various characters’ statuses, situations, and choices in life offer Edna Pontellier? What do their
differences offer Edna? Which one do you think she’ll choose in the end? Explain.
Name ____________________
AP Literature:
Comparing Henrik Ibsen’s Male Characters
Directions: In the “description of character” row, note specific attributes of that character as described in A Doll’s House.
In the second row, with a quote that supports, describe the tone the character takes in the story, and in the third row
describe their relationship or contrast Nora? In the fourth row, explain what the character does –what is their role in
society? Can they be classified as a “type” of person? What is their social status how does this present different
“options” for Nora during this time period?
Character Analysis
Description of
Character
Tone of Character
Torvald Helmer
Doctor Rank
Nils Krogstad
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Relationship/
Contrast to Nora
Role, job, or place in
society
Finally, what do the various characters’ statuses, situations, and choices in life offer Nora? What do their differences
offer Nora? What do you think it is that Nora has done? Explain.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Name ___________________
AP Literature:
*With thanks to Ashley Byrne
Comparing Kate Chopin’s Female Characters
Directions: In the “description of character” column, note specific attributes of that character as described in The Awakening. In the second column, describe
their relationship or contrast to Edna –what role do they serve in her life? How is this character used to compare or contrast Edna? In the third column, with a
quote describe the tone of the character, and in the fourth column, explain what the character does –what is their role in society? Can they be classified as a
“type” of person? What is their social status how does this present different “options” for Edna during this time period?
Character Name
Madame Ratignolle
Mademoiselle Reisz
Mariequita
Description of
Character
Tone of Character
Relationship/Contrast to
Edna?
Role, job, or place in society
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
“lady in black”
Madame Lebrun
Finally, how do the various characters’ statuses, situations, and choices in life compare to that of Edna Pontellier? Is their lifestyle appropriate to the kind of life
Edna wants to lead? Why or why not?
Directions: In the “description of character” column, note specific attributes of that character as described in A Doll’s House. In the second column,
describe their relationship or contrast to Nora –what role do they serve in her life? How is this character used to compare or contrast Nora? In the third column,
with a quote describe the tone of the character, and in the fourth column, explain what the character does –what is their role in society? Can they be classified
as a “type” of person? What is their social status how does this present different “options” for Nora during this time period?
Character Name
Description of
Character
Tone of Character
Relationship/Contrast to
Edna?
Role, job, or place in society
Christine
Nurse
Finally, how do the various characters’ statuses, situations, and choices in life compare to that of Nora? How does their effect Nora and her decisions? Explain.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Book Club Discussion Questions for The Awakening
For this Book Club you will have two or three group members, together you will discuss your selection
of the questions and make notes of your discussion. Each Friday you will submit the questions you
answer and the key points of your discussion including the specific references you made to the text.
A different group member needs to be responsible for the notes each week—only you get the points,
so you must facilitate the discussion and keep it on track.
Questions About Identity
1. Edna says in Chapter Sixteen: "I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for
my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to
comprehend, which is revealing itself to me." What is she talking about?
2. To what extent does Edna feel motherhood to be a component of her identity?
3. What is the key moment(s) in the novel where the Inner Edna begins revealing herself? At what point does the
Inner Edna’s dominance yield negative repercussions?
Questions About Women and Femininity
1. To what extent does Edna imitate or learn from the other female characters in the novel?
2. Why doesn’t Edna try to be more like a "mother-woman"?
3. Does Edna’s awakening provide potential for other women to be awakened (like maybe Adele Ratignolle)?
Questions About Marriage
1. What’s Edna’s problem with marriage? She hates on it so much even though she is married. How did that
happen?
2. What would a happy marriage look like for Edna? Is such a situation possible?
Questions About Love
1. Does The Awakening have an example of true love? Do Robert and Edna really love each other or are they just
clinging to a fantasy? Are the young lovers on Grand Isle and example of true love?
2. What are the most predominant forms of non-romantic love in The Awakening?
3. Love and sex are distinguished in The Awakening (so conveniently, too, in the forms of Robert Lebrun and Alcee
Arobin). What’s the effect of that distinction? Why don’t love and sex seem to go together in this book?
Questions About Society and Class
1. To what extent is society to blame for what happens at the end? Not at all? Totally?
2. What role did Creole society play in Edna’s awakening? Did it play a role?
Questions About Repression
1. Who is the least repressed character in The Awakening? The most repressed?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
2. Why does Mr. Pontellier remain so restrained when he sees Robert Lebrun flirting with his wife?
3. What if the character seeking sexual fulfillment was Mr. Pontellier? How would the book change?
4. Why on earth does Edna play games with Arobin and then sleep with him for the first time after finding out that
Robert will soon be home?
Questions About Art and Culture
1. Why does Mademoiselle Reisz tell Edna that it takes great courage to be an artist? By her own criteria, is
Mademoiselle Reisz an artist?
2. What’s the difference between when Mademoiselle Reisz plays the piano and when Adele plays the piano?
3. Why does Mademoiselle Reisz consider Edna to be the only audience member worth playing for?
Questions About Family
1. What exactly is a "good mother" in Edna’s society? Why does Edna have trouble following that model?
2. Is Edna a good mother by the standards of her society? By the standards of our society?
3. How important is motherhood to Edna? Why did she have children in the first place?
Questions About Respect and Reputation
1. Who cares the least for his or her reputation? Who cares the most? Why?
2. What are the various ways we see in the text that a woman can lose her "good reputation"? How many of them
did Edna hit?
3. Is reputation a true reflection of character in The Awakening?
4. What defines a person’s reputation in The Awakening?
5. How does Edna’s reputation evolve over the course of the novel?
Questions About Life, Consciousness, and Existence
1. We found this quote from Chapter Twelve a little scary: "She was blindly following whatever impulse moved her,
as if she had placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility." Is this Divine
Providence directing her actions? How did her soul suddenly get freed of responsibility?
2. To what extent does Edna’s newly independent identity feel like a dream that comes crashing to a halt once she
returns to Grand Isle?
http://www.shmoop.com/the-awakening/
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Take notes about Henrik Ibsen from the prezi
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Whole Class Discussion Questions for A Doll’s House
Together we will discuss your selection of the questions. After reading through the questions, anyone
can start the discussion—we do not only have to stick to these questions, but if, at any time there is a
lull, refer back to the questions as a continuing point. As each questions is brought up in your class,
please highlight it, so we move on from it once it has been discussed. Each time we discuss the play,
you have the opportunity to earn your discussion points. You will earn up to 15 points for your
contribution (5 pts. per valid remark) to the discussion. If you continue to contribute beyond the
requirement, you will earn 1 extra credit point each time you contribute.
Questions About Marriage
1. How are ideas of marriage different today than during the time period of the play? How are they
similar?
2. Can the Helmers' marriage be salvaged?
3. How could the Helmers make their marriage equal?
4. Is the destruction of the Helmers' marriage a good or bad thing?
Questions About Women and Femininity
1. What are some characteristics of the roles of women in the play?
2. How does Christine's perception of motherhood differ from Nora's by the end of the play?
3. What unique powers do the women in the play have? Are they really as submissive as they seem?
4. What is the difference between feminism and humanism? How can this difference be applied when
interpreting the play?
Questions About Men and Masculinity
1. In what ways is Torvald caged by society's prescribed masculine roles?
2. There is usually a lot of discussion about Torvald's sexist behavior, but what sexism does Krogstad
demonstrate? Dr. Rank?
3. In what ways is Torvald's masculine self-worth tied into his public reputation? Krogstad's?
4. Are there any moments in the play where the men defy the gender roles prescribed for them by
society?
Questions About The Home
1. How does the concept of home change over the course of the play?
2. What does it mean that the Helmers' home is "a doll's house"?
3. How does the idea of home differ for each character?
4. In what ways is Nora's home with Torvald similar to the one she shared with her father?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Questions About Respect and Reputation
1. Why is scandal so scary for Torvald?
2. What methods does Krogstad use to try to regain his reputation?
3. Does Dr. Rank seem concerned with reputation in any way? Why or why not?
4. In what ways do the women in the play demonstrate concern or lack of concern for their reputations?
Questions About Love
1. In what ways is Nora's love for Torvald similar to her love for her father? How is it different?
2. What different breeds of love are seen throughout the play?
3. Is Dr. Rank's love of Nora just as superficial as Torvald's, or does he have a deeper understanding of
her?
4. Do you think the Helmers ever truly loved each other? What does "truly loved" even mean?
Questions About Lies and Deceit
1. How could Nora have saved Torvald without lying?
2. In what ways have Nora's lies weakened her marriage?
3. What deceitful behavior does Torvald demonstrate?
4. Since Nora's forgery saved her husband's life, was it really a bad thing?
Questions About Money
1. What is the relationship between money and power in the play?
2. Which is more valuable to Krogstad: money or reputation?
3. Why do you think Torvald is so horrified of debt?
4. In what ways has financial hardship made Christine a stronger person?
http://www.shmoop.com/dolls-house/themes.html
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
AP Literature Final Book Club
Until this point in the year, you have read and explored 5 works of literary merit (please get out your My Essential
Literature pages), and we have seen and/or written on 13 different open choice prompts since 2002. With each work
we have looked through specific lenses, ranging from psychoanalytical to gothic to feminist, with the purpose of
teaching you to not “read through your eyes”. The prompt that you will get on the AP test in May will be yet another
lens that you will look through for these books. In an effort to broaden our perspectives further, enclosed here you will
find the final 7 open choice prompts that bring us up to 2015.
As you read each prompt,
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
look through your My Essential Literature,
and determine which book you would use to write each prompt.
If you can think of a book, move on to the next prompt.
If you can’t think of a book, look through the list provided on the prompt,
and read the high-scoring student essay attached.
Either from the list provided (you may look at the books available in the classroom or on your phone if you want
more information), or the essay itself, select a book you would like to read and write it on the board (if your
book already appears there, just tally)
7. Go back to your seat and continue to read through the prompts.
8. Repeat steps 1-7 until you have read through all of the prompts or time is called.
How will groups be determined?
After reading the prompts, look at the books on the board—1 row at a time, go to the board and write your initials next
to the 1 book you most want to read. Head back to your seat and watch as others select their books. Only the books
with 3-4 members will be choices. If, after the whole class has selected, your book choice does not have enough group
members, you will select another book, so keep an eye on the other books you have an interest in, in case you must reselect. All book clubs will be determined today.
How will I be graded?
Outlines: At each meeting you will select one of the prompts from this packet to discuss, much like we did in the first
book club, but this time, your job, as a group is to outline how you would “attack the prompt”. Your group will turn in 3
outlines over the course of the 6 Fridays you meet. You can select what dates you turn the outlines in as long as they
are before the last Friday. Use the “Explicit Analysis Looks like This” (back) to guide your outlining.
Final Product: As a group (or individually if your group chooses), you will determine how you want to show your
understanding of the book as a whole. However you choose to do this the project must include what you determine the
meaning of the work as a whole is/are and at least 3 quotations from different chapters with explanations of how your
group determined this meaning.
Ideas: Book Trailer
Scrapbook
Poster
Amazon reviews
Map
Open Choice Prompt
Letter to the School Board to Replace a Book
Artwork
Presentation
Website
Full book annotations Confirm other ideas with teacher
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once.”
~George R. R. Martin
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Go back through your journal and highlight all of the poets we have covered so far—hint there are 12; cut and paste
highlighted version in your journal
Poetry Review Journal Entries: Cut and paste these into your journal as required through prezi
Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
W.H. Auden
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Derek Walcott
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Poet Peer Presentation Review
You will complete 3 of these from the poems you have not analyzed on the board. The goal here is to have a “gut”
reaction; your job is not to spend time analyzing what is presented, but to see how your reaction compares with someone
who did spend time with it. As with anything, the more you practice, the better you will be. Not every poem you get for a
prompt will speak to you, but you should still be able to “see” into it. Consider this practice for doing just that.
1.
Author of Presentation:
Song Choice:
Poem Choice:
Is this a song you have heard before? Do you like it?
What is one poetic device they found in the lyrics? Is it correct?
Watch the video—does it portray the theme they suggested? Why (not)?
Read the poem—what is your reaction? What would you say is the theme after first glance?
Does their TCAS reflect your own reaction? How (not)?
How does their theme compare with your own?
Before reading their comparison of song and poem, how do you think they compare?
How was your comparison similar/different from theirs?
Overall, do you agree with the main message presented or not? Explain.
2. Author of Presentation:
Song Choice:
Poem Choice:
Is this a song you have heard before? Do you like it?
What is one poetic device they found in the lyrics? Is it correct?
Watch the video—does it portray the theme they suggested? Why (not)?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Read the poem—what is your reaction? What would you say is the theme after first glance?
Does their TCAS reflect your own reaction? How (not)?
How does their theme compare with your own?
Before reading their comparison of song and poem, how do you think they compare?
How was your comparison similar/different from theirs?
Overall, do you agree with the main message presented or not? Explain.
3. Author of Presentation:
Song Choice:
Poem Choice:
Is this a song you have heard before? Do you like it?
What is one poetic device they found in the lyrics? Is it correct?
Watch the video—does it portray the theme they suggested? Why (not)?
Read the poem—what is your reaction? What would you say is the theme after first glance?
Does their TCAS reflect your own reaction? How (not)?
How does their theme compare with your own?
Before reading their comparison of song and poem, how do you think they compare?
How was your comparison similar/different from theirs?
Overall, do you agree with the main message presented or not? Explain.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Read the following reviews and select which book you would like to read for our Cultural Perspective unit.
A Woman’s Lot in Kabul, Lower Than a House Cat’s
By MICHIKO KAKUTANIMAY 29, 2007
It’s not that hard to understand why Khaled Hosseini’s first novel, “The Kite Runner” (2003), became such a huge best
seller, based largely on word of mouth and its popularity among book clubs and reading groups. The novel read like a
kind of modern-day variation on Conrad’s “Lord Jim,” in which the hero spends his life atoning for an act of cowardice
and betrayal committed in his youth. It not only gave readers an intimate look at Afghanistan and the difficulties of life
there, but it also showed off its author’s accessible and very old-fashioned storytelling talents: his taste for
melodramatic plotlines; sharply drawn, black-and-white characters; and elemental boldfaced emotions.
Whereas “The Kite Runner” focused on fathers and sons, and friendships between men, his latest novel, “A Thousand
Splendid Suns,” focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women. Whereas “Kite Runner” got off to
a gripping start and stumbled into contrivance and sentimentality in its second half, “Splendid Suns” starts off
programmatically and gains speed and emotional power as it slowly unfurls.
Photo: "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
Like its predecessor, the new novel features a very villainous villain and an almost
saintly best friend who commits an act of enormous self-sacrifice to aid the
hero/heroine. Like its predecessor, it attempts to show the fallout that Afghanistan’s
violent history has had on a handful of individuals, ending in death at the hands of the
Taliban for one character, and the promise of a new life for another. And like its
predecessor, it features some embarrassingly hokey scenes that feel as if they were
lifted from a B movie, and some genuinely heart-wrenching scenes that help redeem
the overall story.
Mr. Hosseini, who was born in Kabul and moved to the United States in 1980, writes in
straight-ahead, utilitarian prose and creates characters who have the simplicity and
primary-colored emotions of people in a fairy tale or fable. The sympathy he conjures
for them stems less from their personalities (the hero of “Kite Runner” was an unlikable coward who failed to come to
the aid of his best friend) than from the circumstances in which they find themselves: contending with unhappy families,
abusive marriages, oppressive governments and repressive cultural mores.
This heavy-handed opening quickly gives way to even more soap-opera-ish events: after her mother commits suicide,
the teenage Mariam — the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, who is ashamed of her existence — is quickly
married off to a much older shoemaker named Rasheed, a piggy brute of a man who says it embarrasses him “to see a
man who’s lost control of his wife.”
Rasheed forces Mariam to wear a burqa and treats her with ill-disguised contempt, subjecting her to scorn, ridicule,
insults, even “walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat.” Mariam lives in fear of “his shifting moods, his
volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies
and sometimes not.”
The life of the novel’s other heroine, Laila, who becomes Rasheed’s second wife, takes an even sharper trajectory
toward ruin. Though she is the cherished daughter of an intellectual, who encourages her to pursue an education, Laila
finds her life literally shattered when a rocket — lobbed by one of the warlord factions fighting for control of Kabul, after
the Soviet Union’s departure — lands on her house and kills her parents.
Her beloved boyfriend, Tariq, has already left Kabul with his family — they have become refugees in Pakistan — and she
suddenly finds that she is an orphan with no resources or friends. When she discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq’s
child and learns that Tariq has supposedly died from injuries sustained in a rocket attack near the Pakistan border, she
agrees to marry Rasheed, convinced that she and her baby will never survive alone on the streets of Kabul.
At first Mariam sees Laila as a rival and accuses her of stealing her husband, but when Laila’s baby, Aziza, arrives,
Mariam begins to soften. Gradually, she and Laila become allies, trying to shield each other from Rasheed’s rages and
demands. Mariam becomes a second mother to Aziza, and she and Laila become best friends.
In the opening chapters of the book the characters are so one-dimensional that they feel like cartoons. Laila is the great
beauty, with a doting father and a protective boyfriend — a lucky girl whose luck abruptly runs out. Mariam is the
illegitimate daughter of a bitter woman and a disloyal father — an unlucky girl whose luck turns from bad to worse. And
Rasheed is the evil bully, a misogynist intent on debasing his two wives.
Gradually, however, Mr. Hosseini’s instinctive storytelling skills take over, mowing down the reader’s objections through
sheer momentum and will. He succeeds in making the emotional reality of Mariam and Laila’s lives tangible to us, and by
conjuring their day-to-day routines, he is able to give us a sense of what daily life was like in Kabul — both before and
during the harsh reign of the Taliban.
He shows us the Taliban’s “beard patrols,” roaming the streets in Toyota trucks “on the lookout for clean-shaven faces
to bloody.” He shows us hospitals turning away women in labor because men and women are supposed to be seen at
different hospitals. And he shows us the “ ‘Titanic’ fever” that gripped Kabul in the summer of 2000, when pirated copies
of that film turned up in the city: entertainment-starved people surreptitiously dug out their TVs (which had been
hidden away, even buried in backyards) and illicitly watched the movie late at night, and riverside vendors began selling
Titanic carpets, Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, even Titanic burqas.
In the end it is these glimpses of daily life in Afghanistan — a country known to most Americans only through news
accounts of war and terrorism — that make this novel, like “The Kite Runner,” so stirring, and that distract attention
from its myriad flaws.
Correction: May 30, 2007
The Books of The Times review yesterday, about “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” by Khaled Hosseini, misspelled a
character’s name. She is Laila, not Lila.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
The Servant
By Edward Hower
Published: August 3, 2003
THE KITE RUNNER
By Khaled Hosseini.
THIS powerful first novel, by an Afghan physician now living in California, tells a story of fierce cruelty
and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young
narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's
revolution and its invasion by Russian forces.
But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in ''The Kite Runner,'' are only a part
of this story. A more personal plot, arising from Amir's close friendship with Hassan, the son of his father's
servant, turns out to be the thread that ties the book together. The fragility of this relationship, symbolized
by the kites the boys fly together, is tested as they watch their old way of life disappear.
Amir is served breakfast every morning by Hassan; then he is driven to school in the gleaming family
Mustang while his friend stays home to clean the house. Yet Hassan bears Amir no resentment and is, in
fact, a loyal companion to the lonely boy, whose mother is dead and whose father, a rich businessman, is
often preoccupied. Hassan protects the sensitive Amir from sadistic neighborhood bullies; in turn, Amir
fascinates Hassan by reading him heroic Afghan folk tales. Then, during a kite-flying tournament that
should be the triumph of Amir's young life, Hassan is brutalized by some upper-class teenagers. Amir's
failure to defend his friend will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Hosseini's depiction of pre-revolutionary Afghanistan is rich in warmth and humor but also tense with the
friction between the nation's different ethnic groups. Amir's father, or Baba, personifies all that is reckless,
courageous and arrogant in his dominant Pashtun tribe. He loves nothing better than watching the Afghan
national pastime, buzkashi, in which galloping horsemen bloody one another as they compete to spear the
carcass of a goat. Yet he is generous and tolerant enough to respect his son's artistic yearnings and to treat
the lowly Hassan with great kindness, even arranging for an operation to mend the child's harelip.
As civil war begins to ravage the country, the teenage Amir and his father must flee for their lives. In
California, Baba works at a gas station to put his son through school; on weekends he sells secondhand
goods at swap meets. Here too Hosseini provides lively descriptions, showing former professors and
doctors socializing as they haggle with their customers over black velvet portraits of Elvis.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Despite their poverty, these exiled Afghans manage to keep alive their ancient standards of honor and
pride. And even as Amir grows to manhood, settling comfortably into America and a happy marriage, his
past shame continues to haunt him. He worries about Hassan and wonders what has happened to him
back in Afghanistan.
The novel's canvas turns dark when Hosseini describes the suffering of his country under the tyranny of
the Taliban, whom Amir encounters when he finally returns home, hoping to help Hassan and his family.
The final third of the book is full of haunting images: a man, desperate to feed his children, trying to sell
his artificial leg in the market; an adulterous couple stoned to death in a stadium during the halftime of a
football match; a rouged young boy forced into prostitution, dancing the sort of steps once performed by
an organ grinder's monkey.
When Amir meets his old nemesis, now a powerful Taliban official, the book descends into some plot
twists better suited to a folk tale than a modern novel. But in the end we're won over by Amir's compassion
and his determination to atone for his youthful cowardice.
In ''The Kite Runner,'' Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his
people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence -- forces that continue to threaten them
even today.
Edward Hower's latest novel is ''A Garden of Demons.'' A former Fulbright lecturer in India, he teaches in the writing department of Ithaca College.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
After you have selected your novel, read through the lens focus and questions for each and select which you would like
to answer through the novel. Email me which you select—a book mark with reading dates/questions will be provided.
Critical Lens
Feminist
New
Historical
General Focus of
Study
Role of women/ battle of the
sexes and how each are
used/viewed differently with
a greater focus on the female
role in the novel.
Link the story to the time
period it was created to
better understand social and
political influences on the
author’s writing
Questions Posed by Critical Lens


How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?




How are male and female roles defined?

What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially,
or psychologically) of patriarchy?

What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?


What does the work say about women's creativity?

What role the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
(Tyson)
What are the power relationships between men and women
(or characters assuming male/female roles)?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change
others’ reactions to them?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us
about the operation of patriarchy?

What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of
the author’s day?

Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the
writing?


How are such events interpreted and presented?



Does the work's presentation support or condemn the event?

How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other
historical/cultural texts from the same period...?

How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and
subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged
and/or the cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the
author?
Can it be seen to do both?
How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the
day?
 How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
 How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
 Are there any oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - are work here?
 How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms
of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example...fear or fascination with
death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-idsuperego)?
Psychological
Uses psychology (mainly
Freud) to interpret the work
to better understand human
nature.
 What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
 What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological
motives of the reader?
 Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings?
Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem
words"?
 How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols? (i.e. making a certain
road stand for death by constant association)
 What is the quality of the work's organic unity "...the working together of all the parts
to make an inseparable whole..." (Tyson 121)? In other words, does how the
work is put together reflect what it is?
Looks at the piece on its own
‘legs’ rather than being
influenced by outside
 How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
 How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Formalist
Mythological/
Archetypal
structure (history, author’s
life, etc). They take a piece
apart to see how it functions
and identifies the qualities
that make the piece work.
Marginalization
Marxist
ReaderResponse
aesthetic quality of the work?




How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
Focuses on similar stories and
or elements that show up in
many pieces of writing, using
these pieces/stories to better
understand the human
experience.




What archetypal elements can we see in this piece?
Gender studies, power and
marginalization critics explore
issues of sexuality, power, and
marginalized populations (woman
as other) in literature and culture.
Closely linked to Feminist studies,
but this lens focuses on the idea
of power and the abuse/misuse
of power. These critics focus on
binaries (opposites like feminine
and masculine) and how the work
treats those that do not fit into
binary modes (contain traits of
both).
 What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful) and
What does the form of the work say about its content?
Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the work?
How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning or
effect of the piece?
Are there any mythic plots, characters, themes, symbols, or reoccurring images?
How do these archetypal elements contribute to the work as a whole?
How do these elements help us to better understand the human experience?
feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these
traditional roles?
 What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the
masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
 What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of
both (bisexual)?
 How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure and
forceful? Or is it more hesitant or even collaborative?
 What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of the work saying about these
power struggles? Who or what is being marginalized?
 What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically)
Gender/
Power/
 How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to the
homophobic and or how do these operations marginalize a specific group?
*In college level classrooms
sexual identity is also included for
discussion, but since our novels
do not overtly discuss these
issues, we will focus on power
struggles, marginalization,
identity and gender conflicts.
 How does the literary text illustrate the problems of "identity,” and the messiness of
trying to group people by label when they do not seem to fit a particular
category or have characteristics outside of society’s idea of that group?
Follows the basic argument
of Karl Marx, these critics
focus on class differences,
economics and otherwise, as
well as the implications and
the complications of the
capitalist system and how
this system influences the
piece as well as the
storyline/character
development.






These critics consider readers'
reactions to literature as vital to
interpreting the meaning of the
text.
 How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?
 What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or a key portion of a
Tyson explains that "...readerresponse theorists share two
beliefs:
 Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they are
1) the role of the reader cannot
be omitted from our
understanding of literature
And
2) readers do not passively
consume the meaning presented
to them by an objective literary
text; rather they actively make
the meaning they find in
literature.”
Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
What is the social class of the author?
Which class does the work claim to represent?
What values does it reinforce?
What values does it subvert?
What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it
portrays?
 What social classes do the characters represent?
 How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?
longer text, tell us about the reading experience pre-structured by (built into)
that text?
spoken by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
 How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or is
analogous to, the topic of the story?
 What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about the
critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced
by that text? (Tyson 191)
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Cultural
Studies
Sounds just like it’s title –
critics analyze the piece and
look for what we can learn
about another’s culture as
well as what we discover
about our own by
comparison/interaction with
an outsider’s culture.





What cultural elements can be seen in this piece?
How do outsiders interact/react to these cultural elements?
What can be learned about the other’s culture?
What can be learned about our own culture when compared to the outsider’s?
What can be learned about our own culture when looking at how the outsider is
treated?
 How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of
colonial oppression?
 What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including
the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as
double consciousness and hybridity?
Identity/
Post-Colonial
These critics are concerned
with literature produced by
colonial powers and works
produced by those who
were/are colonized. Postcolonial theory looks at issues
of power, economics, politics,
religion, and culture and how
these elements work in
relation to colonial
hegemony (western
colonizers controlling the
colonized).
 What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are such
persons/groups described and treated?
 What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist
resistance?
 What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in
which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and
customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of
ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
 How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or
assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
 Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial
populations?
 How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist
ideology through its representation of colonialization and/or its inappropriate
silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
Information adapted from Purdue University OWL web site: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/1/ and/or excerpts from: Doing Literary Criticism:
Helping Students Engage with Challenging Texts By Tim Gil
Below from “The Kite Runner Companion Curriculm,” Amnesty International USA: Human Rights Education Plan.
If you are not in class for the group work, you need to read through all of the information on the ethnicities and answer
the questions in Kahoot!
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Use the blank map to label the countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Russia, The Arabian Sea, Iran, Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan—copy and paste the map into a new document if you
would like it to be larger.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Check your map and make corrections
Read the historical overview and timeline here and answer the questions following if you were not in class.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
If you were not present in class, answer the Human Rights questions considering the challenges presented in the prezi.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
If you were absent from class, read through the case studies and answer the following questions.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
If you are absent from whole class discussion, you need to answer at least 3 questions with specific references to the
text to earn the points.
Whole Class Discussion Questions from Shmoop
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Questions About Love
1.
How does Mariam's love for Laila and Aziza transform her as a character?
2.
How does Mariam's status as a harami prevent her from having loving relationships?
3.
What societal pressures prevent Jalil from truly showing Mariam that he loves her? How does he overcome those pressures?
4.
What sort of imagery does Hosseini use to describe love?
Questions About Warfare
1.
What internal tensions cause infighting among the Mujahideen?
2.
How does the war affect the city of Kabul? How are its people changed by the conflict?
3.
How is Mammy's view of the war shaped by Ahmad and Noor's participation?
4.
Why does Laila remain skeptical about the outcome of the American invasion?
Questions About Women and Femininity
1.
How do the differences between Mariam and Laila's upbringings affect their views on women's place in society?
2.
How do the lives of women change during the different regimes in Afghanistan?
3.
Based on the events of the novel, would you say that Nana's advice on the relationship between women and men is true? Why
or why not?
4.
How does the novel view motherhood?
Questions About Poverty
1.
What psychological effects does poverty have on Aziza?
2.
How did Rasheed's loss of his shop change him? How does it affect his relationship with the other characters?
3.
What effects does widespread poverty have on Kabul as a whole?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
4.
What causes Kabul's economic collapse?
Questions About Visions of Afghanistan
1.
What are the cultural differences between rural and urban Afghanistan?
2.
What are the relationships between the different ethnic groups who live in Afghanistan?
3.
What are the similarities and differences between the ways Kabul and Herat are described?
4.
How do the cultural and regional differences between the various main characters affect their relationships?
Questions About Power
1.
How does Rasheed maintain a hold on Mariam for so long? How does she ultimately break free?
2.
Why does the Taliban focus on maintaining cultural control?
3.
How does Laila react to individuals or organizations having power over her?
4.
How do the people of Kabul, outside of the main characters, respond the overbearing power of the Taliban?
Questions About Education
1.
What is the Soviet attitude towards education? How does it compare to the Taliban's view?
2.
How did Laila and Mariam's childhoods differ in terms of their families' views on education?
3.
How do the different ethnic groups of the novel view the importance of education?
4.
What sorts of challenges do girls face when trying to get an education?
Questions About Family
1.
What are the similarities and differences between Laila and Mariam's relationships with their mothers?
2.
How does Mariam's status as a harami isolate her from a normal family life? How does she eventually overcome that stigma?
3.
Is Mammy right to be upset with Babi over what happened to Ahmad and Noor? Why or why not?
4.
How does Laila's love for her children change her?
A Kite Runner
Questions About Friendship
1.
At the beginning of Chapter 4, Amir says: "But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend." Why do you think
Baba refuses to refer to Ali as his friend? Is it the divide between servant and master? Does Baba consider Ali inferior because
Ali is a Hazara? Does Baba feel guilty about sleeping with Sanaubar and thus unworthy of Ali's friendship?
2.
There's another group of friends in The Kite Runner whom you might pass over at first: Assef, Wali, and Kamal. Describe this
group of friends. How do they compare to Amir and Hassan? Are there any similarities between Assef's clique and Amir and
Hassan?
3.
Early on, Baba seems like a distant myth instead of a father. Certainly, he and Amir aren't friends while Amir is growing up.
Their relationship changes significantly, however, once the pair settle in Fremont, California. Does Amir
eventually become friends with Baba?
4.
Much of the novel is concerned with masculinity (e.g. what does it mean to be an Afghan man). Almost all of the friendships in
the novel are male. How do ideas about masculinity inform the friendships in the novel?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
Questions About Betrayal
1.
We think the main betrayal of the book happens in Chapter 7 when Amir doesn't protect Hassan from Assef. However, the
novel has plenty of other betrayals in it. Tally them up. Does Baba betray anyone? Does Amir betray multiple people? Do
smaller betrayals lead up to this larger one? Do the other betrayals help us interpret Amir's abandonment of Hassan in the
alleyway?
2.
Baba never tells Amir he fathered Hassan. Amir never tells Baba he left Hassan in the alleyway, or that he put the watch and
money under Hassan's mattress. What role does silence play in the novel? Can betrayal (like silence) be continuous?
3.
Early on in the novel, Baba drops the following knowledge: "Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin,
only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?" (3.29). Through the character of
Baba, Hosseini invites us to look at any wrongdoing in terms of theft. Explain each betrayal in the novel in terms of theft. What
has been stolen? Is Baba's theory useful or has he been drinking too much scotch?
4.
Do any betrayals happen on a larger, political scale? Do they map onto the betrayal(s) of the individual characters?
Questions About Warfare
1.
Amir writes a story early on in the novel in which a man kills his wife because he found a magic cup that turns his tears into
pearls. By killing his wife, the man weeps and becomes rich. When Amir reads this story to Hassan, Hassan asks Amir if the
man really had to kill his wife in the story. Hassan says, "In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn't he
have just smelled an onion?" (4.61). Does Hosseini unnecessarily write about not only Afghanistan's violent history but a brutal
act? Or does Hosseini write about a necessary topic? Is Hassan missing the point?
2.
Hosseini explores the American experience of the Afghan wars, which is filtered through the news media. He writes: "Now Dan
Rather, Tom Brokaw, and people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz, the Taliban's last
stronghold in the north" (25.106). Is the book itself a mediated experience? Does Hosseini comment on his own book (and his
readers) in this quote? Is this quote also a criticism of himself and Amir?
3.
The book talks a lot about nang and namoos, the Afghan principles of honor and pride. These principles survive (and even
flourish) despite the multiple wars of the novel. Even though these principles redeem certain characters from the horrors of
war, can these very principles cause wars?
4.
In the middle of the book, we find out that Ali has stepped on a land mine and is dead. In addition, Talib soldiers execute
Hassan and his wife. Even further, Sohrab is (more or less) abducted and forced to be a sex slave for a Talib official. All of
these characters have an air of innocence about them. War, for Hosseini, it seems, is indiscriminate and often murders the
blameless. At one point, Baba, Amir, Ali and Hassan even celebrate Eid-e-Aorban, the holiday commemorating Ibrahim's nearsacrifice of his son to God. Is this celebration intimately tied to Hosseini's concept of war?
Questions About Principles
1.
Describe Amir at the end of the novel. Does Amir believe in all of his father's principles? Has he abandoned a few? Which
ones does he hold sacred? Does Amir develop his own set of principles?
2.
Does someone like Assef have principles, too?
3.
At times, Baba expresses some fairly strong views about honor and pride. But he also seems dismissive of the conservative
Mullah at Amir's school. Is Baba a freethinking liberal or a conservative moralist? Does place matter in this question? Meaning,
is Baba a freethinking liberal in Afghanistan but a conservative moralist in California?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
4.
Does someone as pure-hearted as Hassan even need principles? Are principles much more useful to flawed men like Baba
and Amir?
Questions About Innocence
1.
The character Soraya presents a fairly complex example of lost innocence. She moves in with an Afghan man while in
Virginia. Then, in a dramatic episode, her father "rescues" her from her boyfriend. Now, most Afghan men won't date or marry
Soraya because she's been with another man. This doesn't bother Amir, however, and he promptly marries her. Was Soraya's
innocence ever really lost? How does one lose one's innocence in The Kite Runner?
2.
Compare the descriptions of war-torn Kabul and the descriptions of Hassan after Assef rapes him. How does Hosseini draw
parallels between these two tragedies?
3.
Assef describes his participation in the massacre of Hazaras at Mazar-i-Sharif: "You don't know the meaning of the word
'liberating' until you've done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are
virtuous, good, and decent" (22.24). Does a character like Assef even choose between good and evil? Could Assef be
innocent in ways Amir is not?
4.
How does the character of Hassan remain pure and good even through tragedy and war? Does Hassan just have some sort of
basic goodness? Does Hosseini, through Hassan and Ali, reclaim physical characteristics (the harelip, the limp) literature has
traditionally associated with evil or weakness?
Questions About Race
1.
When Amir sees Assef rape Hassan in the alleyway, he asks himself if he really needs to rescue Hassan because "[h]e was
just a Hazara, wasn't he?" (7.140). How much of a role does ethnicity play in Amir's abandonment of Hassan? How much of a
role does jealously – since Amir's father often favors Hassan over Amir – play?
2.
Do you find the character of Assef believable or does Assef strike you as too evil? If you don't find Assef's character
believable, do you find Assef's brand of racism believable? Can you think of dictators or historical figures Hosseini might have
used to create the character of Assef?
3.
For Baba, nang (honor) and namoos (pride) are the two central principles of Pashtun men. Does this mean that for Baba
Hazara men don't have nang and namoos? Is this why he sleeps with Ali's wife?
4.
How is ethnicity tied to other identities in the novel like economic class and religion? Do religious differences motivate Assef's
prejudice more than ethnicity does? Do class differences motivate Baba's prejudice more than ethnicity does? Or are all these
identities inextricably intertwined in the Afghanistan of The Kite Runner?
Questions About Men and Masculinity
1.
Describe the women on the periphery of this novel: Amir's mother, Sanaubar, and Khanum Taheri. Is Soraya different from
these women? The same? Does Hosseini develop her character more than these other women? If so, why?
2.
Afghan's unofficial national sport is buzkashi, a game in which a skilled horseman rides around with a goat or calf carcass and
tries to drop it in a special scoring circle. The other riders may kick and whip the rider with the carcass in order to stop him.
Why does Baba seem to love this sport? Why does it scare Amir? How doesbuzkashi embody the qualities Baba often
praises?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
3.
Rahim Khan, Baba's good friend, always seems to be around Amir's house. He's more or less a part of the household. Does
Rahim Khan offer Amir a different male role model? Is Rahim Khan more "feminine" than Baba? Is this what attracts Amir to
Rahim Khan?
4.
What version of masculinity do characters like Ali and Hassan present? Do these characters question or support Baba's
version of masculinity?
5.
In the end, what definition or model of masculinity does The Kite Runner embrace?
Questions About Religion
1.
Is the character of Baba just as close-minded about Islam as Mullah Fatiullah Khan (Amir's teacher) is about Baba's
occasional scotch? Or is Baba not close-minded at all and instead just indifferent to religion?
2.
What role does Amir's spiritual awakening play in the novel? Why do you think Hosseini included it in the plot?
3.
It's easy to forget about Ali's faith in the novel since Hosseini rarely mentions it. Hosseini does, however, describe Hassan and
Ali reciting their daily prayers. Do you think Amir aspires to Ali's practice of faith later in the novel? Does Amir discard both his
father's approach to faith and Mullah Fatiullah Khan's in favor of Ali's?
4.
Late in the novel, Amir and Farid (Amir's driver in Afghanistan and Pakistan) witness a public stoning. Two adulterers are put
in hole in the ground, blindfolded, and stoned. Baba also commits adultery in the novel. Do Amir and his father avoid
punishment for their "sins"?
Questions About Admiration
1.
Do Wali and Kamal admire Assef? Or do they simply fear him? Is their relationship with Assef different than Amir's with
Baba's? How so?
2.
Why doesn't Amir admire Rahim Khan as much as he admires his father? What does this tell us about admiration (and its
recipients)?
3.
Contrast Amir's admiration for his deceased mother with his admiration for his father.
4.
Does Amir admire his father less in Fremont, California? Or do their poverty and Baba's deteriorating health increase Amir's
admiration for his father?
Questions About Literature and Writing
1.
A few characters ask Amir if he writes about Afghanistan. Do you think Hosseini, in the end, endorses wildly imaginative
literature inThe Kite Runner? Or does The Kite Runner demand literature tethered to our lives and the political events that
shape them?
2.
Amir treasures the leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan gives him but throws away the biography of Hitler Assef gives him.
Comment on these two uses of writing and Amir's choice of the notebook.
3.
Hassan seems to have a particularly pure love for literature. Does Hassan, in a way, teach Amir how to love literature? Is
Hassan Amir's first literary mentor (Rahim Khan being the second)?
4.
So, there's a fictional piece of fiction in The Kite Runner called A Season for Ashes. Amir's novel tells the story of a professor
who runs away with a clan of gypsies after he finds his wife cheating on him with one of his students. Do you think Amir is
proud of his book A Season for Ashes? Would you be proud of it? How is its plot relevant to The Kite Runner and to Amir's
life?
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
AP Literature Outline Template for Book Club Discussion
Throughout the next 6 weeks, your group will turn in 3 outlines. Each outline will be longer than the next. For the first
outline, you will only include one “Plot Point” through “Explicit Analysis”; for the second, you will include two, and for
the third, you will include all three. Each outline must include “Opening Sentence”, “Thesis”, and “Concluding Sentence”.
The purpose of this is to discuss the book in regards to the prompts you choose but to also talk about how you would
organize your essays as we grow closer and closer to the AP Test.
At the top of your outline, copy the prompt completely.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
Opening Sentence: From the ___beginning _____ to the closing of ___ending______, AUTHOR’S TITLE
(examines) [meaning of the work (for the chapters you have read) in regards to the prompt].
Thesis: After/Once/Since/Although/Because_________________________________________, select
specific words from the prompt that you must address and include them in a powerful thesis statement
that you can delve into for the BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END of the text.
Plot Point: from BEGINNING—put us in the plot here, if you are skipping portions of the book, you need to
give enough to make sense of where you place us. This should be 1-2 sentences max.
a. Specific scene—since you have the book in front of you, you must have a relevant quotation here.
i. Either before or after the specific scene you should include a literary technique that is relevant
to the prompt as a part of the sentence.
Explicit Analysis—include all three trigger phrases
a. The author did this in order to . . .
b. This affects the passage . . .
c. This is significant because . . .
Plot Point: from MIDDLE—put us in the plot here, if you are skipping portions of the book, you need to give
enough to make sense of where you place us. This should be 1-2 sentences max.
a. Specific scene—since you have the book in front of you, you must have a relevant quotation here.
i. Either before or after the specific scene you should include a literary technique that is relevant
to the prompt as a part of the sentence.
Explicit Analysis—include all three trigger phrases
a. The author did this in order to . . .
b. This affects the passage . . .
c. This is significant because . . .
Plot Point: from END—put us in the plot here, if you are skipping portions of the book, you need to give
enough to make sense of where you place us. This should be 1-2 sentences max.
a. Specific scene—since you have the book in front of you, you must have a relevant quotation here.
i. Either before or after the specific scene you should include a literary technique that is relevant
to the prompt as a part of the sentence.
Explicit Analysis—include all three trigger phrases
a. The author did this in order to . . .
b. This affects the passage . . .
c. This is significant because . . .
Concluding Sentence: After all/In essence/That is to say/On the whole,______________________________,
If you had to say it all in just one sentence—what would be the point?! This should be the most profound
statement of your whole essay.
©Sara M. M. Leonetti
©Sara M. M. Leonetti