Literary Elements Glossary
• Reserve a few pages in your notebook to
become your literary elements glossary. We
will be adding to this list of terms throughout
the year, and you will be asked to refer to
and use them as we read and write.
“Oranges” by Gary Soto
Wednesday February 15th:
Class Work:
Analyzing poetry: "Oranges" by Gary Soto.
1. Students will take notes on the following literary term: binary opposition. Click here for
the ppt notes.
2. Students will work in small groups for 10 minutes to analyze the binaries and discuss
other literary terms within the poem. Click here for the discussion questions.
3. Discuss the light/dark binary as a class. What symbols and connotations are associated
with the light/dark imagery? What does the "fire in my hands" symbolize?
Homework:
BRING The Book Thief TO CLASS TOMORROW: THURSDAY 2/16. This will count as
a homework grade. We will have a discussion introducing the novel, and I will assign the
reading that will be due when we return from break.
Also Bring your Poetry/SS reader back to class tomorrow.
Binary Opposition
• Relationship between opposing ideas
• some common binaries:
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•
•
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youth/age
masculinity/femininity
good/evil
Life/death
• one side of the binary pair is usually seen
by a particular society or culture as more
valued over the other.
WHERE DID THIS IDEA COME FROM?
20th century European academic thinkers,
Claude Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes, believed:
• the way we understand certain words depends on our
understanding of the difference between the word and its
'opposite’, not on the direct definition
• words merely act as symbols for society's ideas
• the meaning of words, therefore, was a relationship
rather than a fixed thing: a relationship between
opposing ideas.
Notes on binaries (continued):
• When studying poetry, it is worth looking
for the ways in which layers of meaning
are being created or reinforced through
'binary opposition’
• Recognizing binaries can open up the
ideas the writer is trying to express.