Appendices for the Honors
Curriculum Resource Guide
Appendix A: Textual Analysis Resources
Race in America Unit
Name: _________
“The Sky is Gray” Close Reading/Annotations Assignment
Read “The Sky is Gray” and annotate looking for the following:
1) specific examples of “voice,”
2) specific examples of ways that the point of view shapes the reader’s understanding of and
response to a situation,
3) specific examples of elements that relate to race and racism, and
4) the rite of passage: boyhood to manhood/pride in being (or trying to be) a man
We will have a mini-seminar using your annotations in the next class.
At the end, answer these questions in 1-2 sentences each:
How does the author develop this narrator’s voice? What effect does it have on you as a reader?
How does reading this story through this point of view shape your response to it?
What is the author saying about race and racism in this story?
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Dialectical Journal for The Scarlet Letter
Name: _____
Chapters:___
Use this form to document elements of the text that have to do with either our thematic questions
(What do we owe society? What does society owe us? To what extent should our actions and
decisions be driven by societal norms and values versus our own individual conscience? What is
the role of shame (or the idea of sin) in a culture in general? In Puritan culture? What should it
be?) or our stylistic question (How can characterization, plot, symbols and motifs to contribute
to a theme?).
For each chapter, you should find at least 5 significant quotes. Draw a line between each
entry to separate them.
Quote (first two words…last two words)
Page
Significance/meaning
(TH: Theme, CH:
characterization, P: Plot, S:
Symbols, M: Motif)
List at least one question you have about this section of the book, or about what will happen later
in the book:
Grading: 3 points per quote, 5 point for the question = 20 points total
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Intertextual Analysis
Directions: Intertextuality explores the web of connections between texts. Now that you’ve read
and annotated both “Winter Dreams” and The Great Gatsby, you are in a unique position to
explore how F. Scott Fitzgerald developed thematically and stylistically between these two texts.
For this assignment, you’ll build on your ability to do close reading (focusing on a passage), and
synthesis (using multiple passages from one text to make a claim) to take your skills to the next
level: analyzing intertextual connections between two different pieces of literature by the same
author.
Guidelines:
1. Choose one passage from “Winter Dreams” and one passage from The Great Gatsby that you
believe are connected or juxtaposed in an interesting way. They might be passages of dialogue or
description; they might focus on something more concrete (characterization, conflict, plot,
setting) or something more abstract (theme, symbolism, writing style, narrative style.) They
might be similar, or they might demonstrate an intriguing contrast. You may choose any
passages that strike your interest, but try to keep them to a moderate length (about a half a page
for Gatsby; a quarter to half a page for “Winter Dreams.”)
2. Type up your passages and annotate them carefully. Annotated passages will be due with your
drafts.
3. Write a 2-3 page double-spaced analysis paper [in MLA format] in which you do the
following:
1) Introduce the two passages you’ve chosen and clearly state your thesis
2) Provide a detailed close reading of Passage #1, using significant textual evidence
3) Provide a detailed close reading of Passage #2, using significant textual evidence
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4) Most importantly: put these two passages “in conversation” with each other. This
means more than just noting a similarity (i.e. “In Passage #1, Judy puts up a façade to
conceal her emptiness; in Passage #2, Daisy puts up a façade to conceal her emptiness…”
or “In both passages, Dexter and Gatsby use the war as a means for escaping their tangled
emotions”) or a difference (i.e. “Passage #1 hints at the color white—“fine linen,”
“winter”—but Passage #2 more explicitly uses white as a repeated symbol…”) Okay,
great, but so what? Putting the two passages in conversation with each other means
exploring how F. Scott Fitzgerald developed (thematically or stylistically, or both)
between these two texts. Did his tone become more positive? More negative? Did his
word choice or sentence structure change significantly? Why did he shift from 3rd person
to 1st person narration? How did his use of imagery change or develop, it at all? Have
characters become more dynamic or more static? Has his perspective changed on the
American Dream? These are just a few ideas to get you thinking critically…
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Big Picture Ideas in The Bluest Eye
The study guide for The Bluest Eye focuses on level 1 and level 2 questions. This exercise is
to develop responses to bigger questions—analysis at a more advanced level. Consider the
question your group has been given carefully. Present your findings to the class in a way
that they will remember what you said. ATTACH THIS PAPER TO YOUR GROUP
RESPONSE THAT IS DUE FRIDAY.
1. Being “Put Outdoors”
Children, in particular, are afraid of being without the homes they know. In The Bluest Eye are
multiple examples of people being kicked out, ostracized, and sent away—beginning with Pecola
being sent to live with Claudia and Frieda the first time. Find at least 3 other examples of being
“put outdoors” in the book and explain how they relate to each other. How do they contribute to
a theme of the book?
2. Rumors and Innuendo
In The Bluest Eye (starting at the bottom of p. 188), Claudia and Frieda encounter neighbors who
are gossiping about what happened to Pecola. These rumors are vicious, ignorant, and lack
foundation. Identify what these rumors are. THEN—consider these rumors in comparison to the
rumors about Jay Gatsby.
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3. How to raise children
Pecola, Frieda, Claudia, Huckleberry Finn, and many characters in short stories we read were
mistreated by their parents or by adults. Discuss and make a list of examples of mistreatment.
Why do you think authors write about these instances? Do these situations make you
uncomfortable or unsettled? Why?
4. More About Con Men
Soaphead Church (see p. 173-76) is a con artist with tactics similar to the Duke and the King in
Huckleberry Finn. Soaphead is a deviant; he is a dangerous and perverted man. What are the
ultimate effects of his promise to Pecola that she will obtain blue eyes? Why does Morrison cast
him as such a deviant BEFORE Pecola comes to his house?
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5. Cholly Breedlove
After we know about Cholly’s acts of perversion and depravity (the rape of Pecola, his
drunkenness, burning down his house, beating his wife, and so forth) Morrison tell his story as a
child starting on p. 132. She seems to be making excuses for him and his behavior. What
happens to Cholly that might explain his behavior? Are you able to excuse him once you hear
his story? Is he simply beyond redemption.
6. Mrs. Breedlove
Polly Breedlove also has a difficult early life (pages 110-117). Document and explain key events
and circumstances in her life that lead to the tragedy that Morrison has already revealed. What is
her level of culpability? Is she absolved of guilt for how Pecola and her son turn out? Explain.
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Affirmative Action: Summary, Synthesis, Persuasion and Citation Activity
In the last 50 years, state and federal governments and college and universities have
engaged in “affirmative action” programs and policies that give preferences and advantages to
racial groups that have been historically disadvantaged. While by many standards, racial
inequality has decreased enormously during that period, it has by no means been eradicated.
However, some people now argue that while these programs have been socially beneficial, they
now constitute a form of reverse discrimination, giving those groups unfair advantages.
Below are several excerpts from both sides of the affirmative action debate. Read and
annotate these articles, and then write an essay in which you convey your opinion on this topic,
explain the most obvious counter-argument, address the counter argument, and support your
arguments with evidence from at least four articles. Be sure to follow the guidelines for quotes
below:




Use at least one direct quote of less than four full lines and make sure you use quotation
marks and the citation (Author’s Last Name Page)
Use at least one direct quote of more than four full lines and make sure you do NOT use
quotation marks, indent each line one tab, and include a citation (Author’s Last Name
Page)
Summarize (brief overview) or paraphrase (word for word or line by line) the ideas of
one of the authors and include a citation
Make sure that you put each quote in context and introduce it as a grammatically correct
part of the sentence.
Rubric
Possible
Points
Score
Thesis statement
Direct quote of less than four lines uses quotation marks
Direct quote of more than four lines indented, no quotation marks
In-text citations used correctly (Last name Page)
Accurate summary/paraphrase includes citation
All quotes are introduced and contextualized effectively
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General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on Dec. 15, 2004 titled
"Affirmative Action Revisited: A Legal History and Prospectus":
"The origins of affirmative action law may be traced to the early 1960's... Judicial rulings
from this period recognized an 'affirmative duty,' cast upon local school boards by the
Equal Protection Clause, to desegregate formerly 'dual school' systems and to eliminate
'root and branch' the last 'vestiges' of state-enforced segregation...
Congress and the Executive Branch soon followed by adopting a panoply of laws and
regulations authorizing, either directly or by judicial or administrative interpretation, 'raceconscious' strategies to promote minority opportunity in jobs, education, and governmental
contracting. The basic statutory framework for affirmative action in employment and
education derives from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Public and private employers with 15
or more employees are subject to a comprehensive code of equal employment opportunity
regulations under Title VII of the 1964 Act...
Official approval of 'affirmative action' remedies was further codified by federal regulations
construing the 1964 Act’s Title VI, which prohibits racial or ethnic discrimination in all
federally assisted 'programs' and activities, including public or private educational
institutions. The Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education interpreted Title VI
to require schools and colleges to take affirmative action to overcome the effects of past
discrimination and to encourage 'voluntary affirmative action to attain a diverse student
body.'"
Dec. 15, 2004 - Congressional Research Service
"Affirmative Action Revisited: A Legal History and Prospectus" (315KB)
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PRO
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated the following in its Mar. 21, 2008
publication "Striving for Equal Opportunity: Why the ACLU Supports Affirmative Action,"
available at www.aclu.org:
"We have come a long way since the Civil Rights Movement, and many Americans feel that the
time for affirmative action is over. Opportunities for women and people of color have expanded,
and many believe that the unequal conditions that once justified affirmative action no longer
exist. Sadly, this is just not true. Millions of Americans continue to experience race and gender
barriers in education, contracting and employment. Existing laws help to prevent outright
discrimination on the basis of race and gender, but they alone are not enough to create equal
opportunities for every American.
Affirmative action programs – including targeted outreach and recruitment efforts, the use of
non-traditional criteria for hiring and admissions, after-school and mentorship programs, and
training and apprenticeship opportunities – are tailored to fit specific instances where race and
gender must be taken into account in order to provide fair and equal access to minorities and
women. These programs recognize and strive to correct the barriers that continue to block the
paths of many individual Americans, including women, Native Americans, Arab Americans,
Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans. Affirmative action helps ensure equal access
to opportunities and brings our nation closer to the ideal of giving everyone a fair chance. We
support affirmative action and other race- and gender-conscious policies as vital tools in the
struggle to provide all Americans with equal opportunity, to promote diversity in academic and
professional settings, and to give each and every one of us a fair chance to compete."
Mar. 21, 2008 - American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Reginald T. Shuford, JD, Senior Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union
Foundation Racial Justice Program, stated the following in his May 21, 2009 article "Why
Affirmative Action Remains Essential in the Age of Obama," published in the Campbell Law
Review:
"[W]hether in the arenas of housing, employment, education, wealth, health care, or the justice
system, African- Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans continue to lag way behind
others. By way of example, according to one study of over 1300 employers in Boston and
Chicago, job applicants with 'white-sounding' names are twice as likely to be called back for
interviews as equally qualified applicants with 'black-sounding' names. More than one million
students will not graduate from high school this year, and a disproportionate number of them will
be African-American, Latino, or Native American. African-American women, moreover, earn
only sixty-three cents per hour and Hispanic women only fiftytwo cents per hour for every dollar
a white man earns for similar employment. Given its well-documented effectiveness, affirmative
action is an appropriate tool for combating these and other ongoing disparities...
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While it is abundantly clear that America has made laudable progress towards racial equality—
as reflected, in part, by the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s forty-fourth president...
America’s promise of a fully inclusive society has not materialized. In light of all the relevant
evidence, America has not fulfilled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a truly equal society.
While Obama’s election qualifies as a down payment on equality, much more remains to be
done. Affirmative action— which is just one of many effective tools for expanding
opportunity— remains essential for the full inclusion of all of those who historically have been
and continue to be structurally relegated to the margins of society, and who are increasingly left
further behind in the race to achieve the American Dream."
May 21, 2009 - Reginald T. Shuford, JD
Barack Obama, JD, 44th President of the United States, provided the following statement on
affirmative action to the NAACP "2008 Voter Action Center,"(accessed Nov. 16, 2009):
"I support affirmative action. When there is strong evidence of prolonged and systemic
discrimination by organizations, affirmative action may be the only meaningful remedy
available. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the
sciences, for example, a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced
degrees in these fields won't keep white students out of such programs, but can broaden the pool
of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy. We shouldn't ignore that race continues to
matter: To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socio-economic disparities that we
often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience - and relieves us of the
responsibility to make things right."
Nov. 16, 2009 - Barack Obama, JD
Scott Plous, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University, wrote in his article "Ten
Myths About Affirmative Action," posted on his website (accessed Aug. 17, 2005):
"Several studies have documented important gains in racial and gender equality as a direct
result of affirmative action...
Despite the progress that has been made, the playing field is far from level. Women continue to
earn 76 cents for every male dollar.... Black people continue to have twice the unemployment
rate of White people, twice the rate of infant mortality, and just over half the proportion of
people who attend four years or more of college.... In fact, without affirmative action the
percentage of Black students at many selective schools would drop to only 2% of the student
body....
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Some writers have criticized affirmative action as a superficial solution that does not address
deeper societal problems by redistributing wealth and developing true educational equality. Yet
affirmative action was never proposed as a cure-all solution to inequality. Rather, it was
intended only to redress discrimination in hiring and academic admissions. In assessing the
value of affirmative action, the central question is merely this: In the absence of sweeping
societal reforms -- unlikely to take place any time soon -- does affirmative action help counteract
the continuing injustice caused by discrimination? The research record suggests, unequivocally,
that it does."
Aug. 17, 2005 - Scott Plous, PhD
The National Organization for Women (NOW), a national feminist organization, stated the
following in its article "Talking About Affirmative Action," available at www.now.org (accessed
Nov. 19, 2009):
"Affirmative Action levels the playing field so people of color and all women have the chance to
compete in education and in business. White men hold 95% to 97% of the high-level corporate
jobs. And that's with affirmative action programs in place. Imagine how low figures would be
without affirmative action...
Despite the enormous gains made by the civil rights and women's rights movements, women and
people of color still face unfair obstacles in business and education. An astonishing 70% of
schools are not in compliance with Title IX, the federal equal education opportunity law...
Affirmative Action programs merely acknowledge that hundreds of years of discrimination
cannot be erased in a few decades and still hold women and people of color back. Affirmative
Action is the bridge between changing the laws and changing the culture.
The radical right wing would have us believe that women and people of color earn less because
we don't work as hard or we're not as smart. That simply isn't the case. Laws have changed, but
discrimination persists. Affirmative Action only opens doors, women and people of color have to
walk through those doors by themselves."
Nov. 19, 2009 - National Organization for Women (NOW)
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CON
Dana White, International Communications Associate at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in her
June 27, 2003 article titled "Who Says I'm Inferior?":
"Thirty years ago, affirmative action may have been a necessary step to open the doors of
American universities and companies. It helped to correct a history of racial discrimination
propagated by whites, but it’s a new day in America....
Too many blacks do remain oppressed, but not by white Americans. Rather, it is by blacks who
relish a perverse sub-culture of low standards and perpetual victimization. No longer do white
racists tell black children books are for white people. Today, black people do this. Every day,
black children suffer ridicule and disgrace for doing their homework, behaving in class, striving
for excellence -- in short, 'acting white.'...
Affirmative action helps the children and the grandchildren of Jesse Jackson, John Conyers and
Al Sharpton who have the money for the SAT prep courses, private schools and the clout to call
the deans of admission should something go awry.... It is time for liberal black leaders to stop
hiding behind racism and admit that our priorities as a community have become our greatest
hurdle to achieving long-term success."
June 27, 2003 - Dana White
Jeff Jacoby, JD, Columnist at the Boston Globe, wrote in his Mar. 19, 2004 article titled "On
Flattering Minorities" for Townhall.com:
"Once upon time it was racists who insisted that 'nonwhite' was a synonym for 'intellectually
deficient.' Today that attitude is promoted most emphatically by the defenders of affirmative
action, a system rooted in the belief that blacks and certain other minorities can't hope to win if
they have to compete on a level playing field. And so racial preferences are used to tilt the field
in their favor: lower admissions standards at colleges and graduate schools, minority set-asides
for government contracts, unofficial racial quotas to benefit those applying for jobs.
Racial preferences are clearly a boon for some minorities -- particularly those from uppermiddle-class families who know how to leverage them to get into a good school or land a good
job or get in on a good investment. But they do no favors for minority groups as a whole.
Preferences stigmatize them as less able than other Americans to stand on their own two feet.
Many end up resenting those who believe they need such a crutch -- as well as resenting those
who would take the crutch away....
Fortunately, there was no affirmative action at the turn of the 20th century to give members of
'beaten races' a leg up in the competition for education and jobs. They had to rise on their own
merits if they were to overcome the stigma of inferiority -- and rise and overcome they did. Black
and Hispanic Americans would rise and overcome as well if only they could be liberated from
the condescending mind-set that thinks it's a compliment to tell a group of college seniors that
they show great promise -- for minorities."
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Mar. 19, 2004 - Jeff Jacoby, JD
Ward Connerly, former University of California Regent, in his Mar. 27. 2000 interview with
Salon.com titled "A 'Poison' Divide Us," stated:
"In my view, using the powers of government to make sure that people are not discriminated
against, I think that was the original intent of affirmative action.... But when it gets to the point
where you are making a selection for someone to be admitted to the university or someone to be
hired for a job, and to have one standard for someone who is black and another standard for
someone who is white ... I think that's a preference.... I think that when you apply different
standards to people, that's discriminatory, no matter what you want to call it....
But as long as you have this paradigm where people seem to be using race and gender as a means
of making hiring decisions, as long as they keep uttering this mindless blather about 'we've got to
achieve diversity,' it kind of taints the whole process. And the decisions that they're making
would be no different, in my view, if they just discarded the whole system....
If we really wanted to help black people -- let's just take black people for an example -- we
would not be putting so much emphasis on getting them into Berkeley as we would giving them
the equivalent money to go out and buy their own cabs, or get the tools to become an electrician
or a plumber, or the money to take a vocational course.... But we don't even look at that. If I
proposed that, they'd think I was a kook, because we're so hung up on the notion that you either
go to college or life's a failure. And if you don't get into Berkeley and you're black, there must be
some institutional racism there."
Mar. 27, 2000 - Ward Connerly
Clint Bolick, JD, Director of the Goldwater Institute, stated the following in his June 29, 2009
article "The Supreme Court and New Haven's Firefighters," published in Forbes:
"When blacks and Hispanics flunk examinations, the cause is less likely to be discrimination
than the appalling educational conditions to which most economically disadvantaged black and
Hispanic children are consigned. 'Affirmative action' programs that leap-frog less-qualified
minorities over more-qualified non-minorities sweep those systemic problems under the carpet.
As such, race-based affirmative action programs perpetuate fraud upon the very groups they are
designed to help."
June 29, 2009 - Clint Bolick, JD
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John A. Farrell, Contributing Editor at US News and World Report, stated the following in his
June 10, 2009 article "Obama's Election Shows That Affirmative Action's Day Has Passed,"
published in US News and World Report:
"In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Barbara Grutter, a [white] college grad who sued
the University of Michigan law school because it employed racial preferences in its admissions
process to achieve academic diversity.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined the court's four liberal justices to keep affirmative action
alive that day, in a 5-to-4 decision. But the moment was fast approaching, O'Connor said, when
the promotion of people of color, solely because of their race, would not be justified.
No one knew precisely when the tipping point would be reached, O'Connor wrote, but 'the court
expects that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.' Five
years later, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.
Obama's election was the sign we've been waiting for. It is time we do away with preferences
and recognize people, as Martin Luther King urged us, by the content of their character. Today, a
black man sits in the Oval Office, having narrowly defeated a woman for the Democratic
nomination whom, to considerable acclaim, he then appointed secretary of state."
June 10, 2009 - John A. Farrell
Source: http://aclu.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000697
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Appendix B:
Stylistic Essential Questions and
Multi-Genre Text Set Resources
Stylistic Analysis Activity: “Young Goodman Brown”
Directions: Read and annotate the story below, looking for examples of characterization, plot
and symbolism that contribute to the theme.
Summarize the theme in 1-2 sentences:
Number your examples in the text, identify whether it is characterization (CH), plot (P) or
symbolism (S) and explain how they contribute to the theme below:
Type
Explanation of how this element contributes to the theme
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Thesis/Intro (three sentences):
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2 Ch examples (best of what you and your group found)
A.
B.
2 Plot examples
A.
B.
2 Symbolism examples
A.
B.
Young Goodman Brown
By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1835
Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head
back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as
the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with
the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear,
"prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is
troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry
with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year."
"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night
must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be
done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we
but three months married?"
"Then God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons; "and may you find all well when you
come back."
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"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no
harm will come to thee."
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the
meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a
melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I to leave her on such
an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a
dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; 't would kill her to think it.
Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her
to heaven."
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more
haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees
of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed
immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a
solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the
thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen
multitude.
"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he
glanced fearfully behind him as he added, "What if the devil himself should be at my very
elbow!"
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld
the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at
Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him.
"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking as I came
through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone."
"Faith kept me back a while," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the
sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were
journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance
to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for
father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as
simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would
not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court, were it possible
that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as
remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought
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that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must
have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
"Come, Goodman Brown," cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a
journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."
"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by
meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples touching the
matter thou wot'st of."
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless,
reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the
forest yet."
"Too far! too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never
went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest
men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name of
Brown that ever took this path and kept"
"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. "Well said,
Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the
Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the
Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a
pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war.
They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and
returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their sake."
"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters;
or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New
England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have a very general acquaintance
here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me;
the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General
Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too--But these are state secrets."
"Can this be so?" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed
companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own
ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how
should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice would
make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day."
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Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of irrepressible
mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in
sympathy.
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman
Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't kill me with laughing."
"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my
wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own."
"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not
for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm."
As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown
recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and
was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall," said he. "But
with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian
woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I
was going."
"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path."
Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced
softly along the road until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile,
was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some
indistinct words--a prayer, doubtless--as she went. The traveller put forth his staff and touched
her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her and leaning
on his writhing stick.
"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the
very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is.
But--would your worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I
suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the
juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane"
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman
Brown.
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"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying,
being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they
tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good
worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling."
"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse; but here
is my staff, if you will."
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods
which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown
could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down again,
beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited
for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
"That old woman taught me my catechism," said the young man; and there was a world of
meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make good
speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring
up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs,
which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely
withered and dried up as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace,
until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump
of a tree and refused to go any farther.
"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand.
What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to
heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?"
"You will think better of this by and by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest
yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along."
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight as
if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the roadside,
applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the
minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what
calm sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely
and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal
himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him
thither, though now so happily turned from it.
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On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly
as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of
the young man's hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that particular
spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small
boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the faint
gleam from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown
alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head
as far as he durst without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he
could have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and
Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination
or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
"Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an ordination
dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from
Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the
Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.
Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion."
"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we
shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground."
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on
through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed.
Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young
Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint
and overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting
whether there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars
brightening in it.
"With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman
Brown.
While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray,
a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The
blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping
swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and
doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of
towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met
at the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct
were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest,
whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the
sunshine at Salem village, but never until now from a cloud of night There was one voice of a
young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some
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favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and
sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of the
forest mocked him, crying, "Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all through
the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his
breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices,
fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above
Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch
of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is
but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given."
And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his
staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to
walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length,
leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides
mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the
trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a
distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were
laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its
other horrors.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.
"Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch,
come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You
may as well fear him as he fear you."
In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of
Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied
gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own
shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his
course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks
and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at
the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard
the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many
voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The
verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the
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sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried
out, and his cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one
extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some
rude, natural resemblance either to an alter or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines,
their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage
that had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully
illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light
arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and
again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
"A grave and dark-clad company," quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and splendor,
appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others
which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded
pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there.
At least there were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows,
a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who
trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light flashing over the
obscure field bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the church members of
Salem village famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and
waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with
these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy
virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all
mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good
shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among
their pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native
forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
"But where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined
to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.
Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung; and still the
chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final
peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the
howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and
according with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines
threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke
wreaths above the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth
and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it
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spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the
New England churches.
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice that echoed through the field and rolled into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and approached the
congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked
in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him
to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of
despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat
one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized
his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female,
led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had
received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the
proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race. Ye have found
thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend worshippers were seen;
the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed
them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of
righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded
elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how
many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him
sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers'
wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not, sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and
bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye
shall scent out all the places--whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest--where crime
has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty
blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than
human power--than my power at its utmost--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children,
look upon each other."
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and
the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its
despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
"Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now
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are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome
again, my children, to the communion of your race."
"Welcome," repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of
wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water,
reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape
of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might
be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and
Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering
alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband, "look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one."
Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself amid calm
night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away through the forest. He
staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all on
fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring
around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard
to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed,
on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon
Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open
window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who
had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the
grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith,
with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him that she
skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman
Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witchmeeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a
sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of
that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he
could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed
strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his
hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant
deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading
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lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking
suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the
family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife,
and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse,
followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides
neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was
gloom.
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The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called
on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas
W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that
Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only
conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim
Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence
of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly
succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated
tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and
had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused
up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some
inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley Rev.
Leonidas W. Smiley a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident
of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas
W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then
sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never
smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he
tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through
the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed
me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was any thing ridiculous or funny about his
story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of
transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through
such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to
tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in
his own way, and never interrupted him once:
There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49 or may be it
was the spring of '50 I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one
or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp;
but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever
see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Any
way that suited the other man would suit him any way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But
still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and
laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solittry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on
it, and -take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find
him flush, or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if
there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was
two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a campmeeting, he would be there reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best
exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to
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go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to,
and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out
where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that
Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him he would bet on
any thing the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it
seemed as if they warn's going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how
she was, and he said she was considerable better thank the Lord for his inftnit mercy and coming
on so smart that, with the blessing of Providence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he
thought, says, "Well, I'll risk two- and-a-half that she don't, any way."
Thish-yer Smiley had a mare the boys called her the fifteen- minute nag, but that was
only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that and he used to win money on
that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the
consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start,
and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and
desperate- like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber,
sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e
dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose and
always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.
And he had a little small bull pup, that to look at him you'd think he wan's worth a cent,
but to set around and look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money
was up on him, he was a different dog; his underjaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a
steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might
tackle him, and bully- rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three times,
and Andrew Jackson which was the name of the pup Andrew Jackson would never let on but
what he was satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else and the bets being doubled and doubled
on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab
that other dog jest by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze on it not chew, you understand, but only
jest grip and hang on till they thronged up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out
winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd
been sawed off by a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money
was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet bolt, he saw in a minute how he'd been
imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peered sur- prised,
and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got
shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his
fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind legs for him to take bolt of, which was his main
dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good pup,
was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was
in him, and he had genius I know it, because he hadn't had no opportunities to speak of, and it
don't stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them circumstances, if
he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the
way it turned out.
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom- cats, and all of them
kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd
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match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate
him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to
jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next
minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut see him turn one summerset, or
may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got
him up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly
every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could
do most any thing and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this
floor Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and quicker'n
you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on
the floor again as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind
foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You
never see a frog so modest and straightforward as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle
than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you
understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a
red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled
and been everywheres, all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town
sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller a stranger in the camp, he was come across him
with his box, and says:
"What might it be that you've got in the box?"
And Smiley says, sorter indifferent like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary,
may be, but it an't it's only just a frog."
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and
says, "H'm so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?"
"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "He's good enough for one thing, I should judge
he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."
The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to
Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n
any other frog."
"May be you don't," Smiley says. "May be you understand frogs, and may be you don't
understand 'em; may be you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, as it were.
Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in
Calaveras county."
And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger
here, and I an't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."
And then Smiley says, "That's all right that's all right if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll
go and get you a frog."
And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along
with Smiley's, and set down to wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out
and prized his mouth open and took a tea- spoon and filled him full of quail shot filled him pretty
near up to his chin and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in
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the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this
feller, and says:
"Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore- paws just even with
Dan'l, and I'll give the word."
Then he says, "One two three jump!" and him and the feller
touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and
hysted up his shoulders so like a Frenchman, but it wan's no use he couldn't budge; he was
planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was
a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was,
of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he
sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulders this way at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate,
"Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he
says, "I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for I wonder if there an't something
the matter with him he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap
of the neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!" and
turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it
was, and he was the maddest man he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never
ketchd him. And[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what
was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: "Just set where you are, stranger,
and rest easy I an't going to be gone a second."
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising
vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev.
Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.
At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button- holed me and
recommenced:
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a
short stump like a bannanner, and "
"Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!" I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old
gentleman good-day, I departed.
After reading the humorous tale above, complete the analysis activity on the following page.
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Element
The situation
Example
How does this element add to the humor?
Dialect /
Dialogue
The narrator
Exaggeration
Repetition /
repeated
elements
The characters
Other?
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Name:
Date:
Period:
Speech to the Virginia Convention
Patrick Henry
Literary Terms. In his speech, Henry uses examples of persuasive techniques. Define each
literary term below; then give one example of each persuasive technique from Henry’s speech.
Persuasive Technique/
Definition
Example from Henry’s speech
Literary Term
FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
EMOTIONAL APPEAL
LOGICAL APPEAL
RHETORICAL
QUESTION
LOADED WORDS
ANAPHORA or
PARALLELISM
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Comprehension
1. In one sentence, summarize the thesis of Henry’s speech.
2. What does Henry mean by “those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not”?
Allusions
3. What is an allusion?
Explain the following two allusions, found in Henry’s Speech to the Virginia Convention.
Allusion
What it refers to
3. General lesson of
4. How it relates to
the allusion
the colonists’
situation
“The battle, sir, is not Ecclesiastes 9:11: “the
to the strong alone; it race is not to the swift,
is to the vigilant, the
nor the battle to the
active, the brave.”
strong.”
“Mr. President, it is
natural to man to
indulge in the
illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our
eyes against a painful
truth, and listen to the
song of that siren, till
she transforms us into
beasts.”
Homer’s Odyssey:
The sirens’ seductive
song lured sailors to
their deaths. The
goddess Circe lured
men to her island and
then magically
transformed them into
pigs.
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Notes: This poem uses a traditional meter (trochaic pentameter) and a rhyming couplet rhyme
scheme. But in the poem, an African-American poet grapples with his relationships to his
competing cultural heritages (Africa and America). As you read, consider his attitude towards
each and how he conveys that attitude.
Heritage
by Countee Cullen
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie,
Plighting troth beneath the sky.
So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums throbbing through the air.
So I lie, whose fount of pride,
Dear distress, and joy allied,
Is my somber flesh and skin,
With the dark blood dammed within
Like great pulsing tides of wine
That, I fear, must burst the fine
Channels of the chafing net
Where they surge and foam and fret.
Africa? A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink; no more
Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept.
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see
What's your nakedness to me?
Here no leprous flowers rear
Fierce corollas in the air;
Here no bodies sleek and wet,
Dripping mingled rain and sweat,
Tread the savage measures of
Jungle boys and girls in love.
What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything? The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set—
Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,
Even what shy bird with mute
Wonder at her travail there,
Meekly labored in its hair.
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who find no peace
Night or day, no slight release
From the unremittent beat
Made by cruel padded feet
Walking through my body's street.
Up and down they go, and back,
Treading out a jungle track.
So I lie, who never quite
Safely sleep from rain at night—
I can never rest at all
When the rain begins to fall;
Like a soul gone mad with pain
I must match its weird refrain;
Ever must I twist and squirm,
Writhing like a baited worm,
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While its primal measures drip
Through my body, crying, "Strip!
Doff this new exuberance.
Come and dance the Lover's Dance!"
In an old remembered way
Rain works on me night and day.
Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods,
Clay, and brittle bits of stone,
In a likeness like their own,
My conversion came high-priced;
I belong to Jesus Christ,
Preacher of Humility;
Heathen gods are naught to me.
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
So I make an idle boast;
Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,
Lamb of God, although I speak
With my mouth thus, in my heart
Do I play a double part.
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Ever at Thy glowing altar
Must my heart grow sick and falter,
Wishing He I served were black,
Thinking then it would not lack
Precedent of pain to guide it,
Let who would or might deride it;
Surely then this flesh would know
Yours had borne a kindred woe.
Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features where,
Crowned with dark rebellious hair,
Patience wavers just so much as
Mortal grief compels, while touches
Quick and hot, of anger, rise
To smitten cheek and weary eyes.
Lord, forgive me if my need
Sometimes shapes a human creed.
All day long and all night through,
One thing only must I do:
Quench my pride and cool my blood,
Lest I perish in the flood,
Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I thought was wet
Burning like the dryest flax,
Melting like the merest wax,
Lest the grave restore its dead.
Not yet has my heart or head
In the least way realized
They and I are civilized.
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Analysis
Read the poem once and explain the
overall topic of the poem in 1-2 words
List 4 interesting or significant diction
choices the poet made.
Describe in your own words what you
think the poet’s attitude towards Africa is,
and then list 4 words or phrases from the
poem that contribute to this tone.
Describe in your own words what you
think the poet’s attitude towards America
is, and then list 4 words or phrases from
the poem that contribute to this tone.
Identify 3 examples of figurative
language (metaphors, similes, etc.)
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I, Too, Sing America
by Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Analysis
Explain the extended metaphor in this poem.
Name two other poetic devices this poem employs.
Who are “they”? What is the poet’s attitude towards “them”? Cite evidence from the text to
support your inference.
What is the poem’s attitude towards himself? Cite evidence from the text to support your
inference.
What elements of this poem reflect the fact that it is modern (20th century)?
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Visual Rhetoric Paper & Presentation
Directions: Find one TV commercial, presidential campaign ad, or public service announcement
that you think is especially interesting, persuasive, and/or controversial. Most advertisements are
available on YouTube or other video sites. The video you choose should be no longer than 2
minutes (most will be between 30 seconds and a minute) and it should be school appropriate, as
you will be sharing it with the class in a short in-class presentation. If you’re unsure whether a
video is school appropriate, it probably isn’t—but check with me so I can okay it before you get
too far into the project.
Guidelines:
1. Watch your video through several times, just like you would do multiple readings of a text. On
the first couple views, look at the big picture; on subsequent views, “zoom in” on the little
details.
2. Write a transcript of all the words in the video, whether they are spoken aloud (by actors onscreen or in a voiceover) or displayed in text. Don’t worry about any small-print disclaimers.
3. Then, write an essay analyzing your video. Your essay should be a minimum of two pages,
typed and double-spaced, with a clear heading and title. Include your transcription at the end.
Your essay should be broken up into the following sections:
1) Overview & Rhetorical Strategies
2) Visual Elements (see Visual Rhetoric Notes & Questions To Consider below)
3) Analysis: What does this video reveal about American society?
--> What can we infer about American society—its values, beliefs, etc.? You might
consider how it
portrays gender, religion, sexuality, community, morality, traditions, patriotism,
technology, etc.
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Questions To Consider (focus on those that apply to the video you’ve chosen)










What is the product, service, or candidate the ad is attempting to sell?
Who do you think is the target audience for this ad? Why? (Be specific)
What is the setting of the ad, and why has this setting been chosen?
Describe the characteristics of the actors involved in the ad (age, gender, ethnicity, etc.),
if any, and infer what effects those characteristics have. Include a description of the
clothes they are wearing and any significance this might have (e.g. bathing suit, doctor’s
white jacket, etc.)
What sounds or music accompany the ad, if any, and what effect do they have?
What kind of mood or feelings is this video intended to invoke in the viewer? (Pathos)
What are the explicit “promises” being made in the ad?
What is the “argument” being made? (If ____, then _____.)
What are the implicit “promises” being made?
What evidence is being used to support the argument? (e.g. “4 out of 5 dentists surveyed
recommend Aquafresh…”) How reliable, credible and verifiable is this evidence?
(Logos)
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Harlem Renaissance Poetry Analysis Essay
Using the poems and notes in the Harlem Renaissance Poetry packet, write an essay of at least
300 words addressing the following two questions:

How did the Harlem Renaissance poets’ use of poetic forms and devices reflect their
conflicted sense of cultural identity?
 In what ways were they able to develop new and unique “voices” and convey the
perspectives and experiences of African-Americans?
Your essay should address at least 8 poetic forms and devices and cite evidence from at least 5
different poems, either as direct quotes or paraphrasing/summary. You should cite each quote,
paraphrase, or summary using the last name of the poet and “1” as the page number.
When quoting poems, if you use two or three consecutive lines, use a / to indicate the break
between lines: “and miles to go before I sleep/and miles to go before I sleep” (Frost 1).
If you are quoting four or more lines of poetry, write them out as a block indent in their original
form:
Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills. (McKay 1)
Rubric
Possible Your
Points
Score
Correct identification of 8 poetic forms and devices
15
Explanation of how the forms and devices reflected conflicting cultural
identities
15
Explanation of the ways poets were able to develop new and unique
“voices” and convey the perspectives and experiences of African-Americans
15
Citations for direct quotes
15
Citations for paraphrasing and/or summaries
10
Quality of writing (especially punctuation and sentence structure)
20
TOTAL
90
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1984 – George Orwell
Analysis: Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing: hints or clues that suggest what events will occur later in the story
Refer to Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, Part Two: Sections I, IV, and VI. Locate passages that
suggest foreshadowing. Briefly explain what each passage implies about what will happen as the
story continues to unfold.
Part Two: Section I
In the same instant it occurred to him that he did not know what color the girl’s eyes were. They
were probably brown, but people with dark hair sometimes had blues eyes. To turn and look at
her would have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together, invisible among the press
of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the
aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair. (117)
Part Two: Section IV
…the idea of renting Mr. Charrington’s room had occurred to him. Both of them knew that it
was lunacy. It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves. As he sat
waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was
curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness. There it lay, fixed
in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but perhaps
postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, willful act, one chose to
shorten the interval before it happened. (140)
For several moments he had had the feeling of being back in a nightmare which had recurred
from time to time throughout his life. … He was standing in front of a wall of darkness, and on
the other side of it there was something unendurable, something too dreadful to be faced. In the
dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in fact know what
was behind the wall of darkness. With a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own
195 | P a g e
brain, he could even have dragged the thing in to the open. He always woke up without
discovering what it was, but somehow it connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut
her short.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s nothing. I don’t like rats, that’s all.” (144)
Part Two: Section VI
(159)
Part Two: Section VII
(166)
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The Grapes of Wrath: Literary Analysis
Read Chapter 1, finding one example of each device listed below. Then, determine the
significance of each device: how does its use contribute to the meaning or purpose of this
chapter?
Literary Device
Simile
Example
“In the morning…the sun was
as red as ripe new blood.”
Significance
Blood has a negative connotation, as if the
drought and dust has wounded the land.
The strong sun against the dry land is like
opening up an injury, suggesting danger
and pain for those involved.
Color imagery
Personification
Sight imagery
Sound imagery
Repetition
Simile &
Metaphor
Smell imagery
Parallel structure
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Juxtaposition in The Grapes of Wrath
Juxtaposition refers to placing two elements next to each other to create an effect greater than the
sum of the two elements. For example, a picture of an anxious student juxtaposed next to the
picture of a clock ready to strike 3:48 leads the viewer to conclude that the student is anxious for
the school day to finish. Authors use juxtaposition to influence the emotions a reader feels while
reading a text. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck uses “interchapters” to includes images,
symbols, and observations that don’t directly involve the Joad family. These interchapters relate
thematically to the Joads’ experiences, offering the reader an enhanced, understanding of the
main characters.
Group Work. You will be assigned one of the four interchapters we’ve read up to this point in
the book: Chapter 1, Chapter 3, Chapter 5, and Chapter 7. Re-read your assigned chapter. Then,
as a group, discuss how the insertion of that chapter helps to create an enhanced, often more
emotional, understanding of the Joads’ journey. Be specific in explaining how the interchapter
adds to other chapters in the book. Be prepared to present your findings to the class.
Detail from my assigned
interchapter
Relevant detail(s) related to
the Joads’ journey
How the juxtaposition
impacts a reader’s
understanding of the text
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Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
We Wear the Mask
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
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Analysis
Read the poem once and explain the
overall topic of the poem in 1-2 words
Note any structural patterns in the poem
(rhyme scheme, forms, stanzas)
Read the poem a second time and identify
examples of end rhyme, rhyme scheme,
and repetition.
Identify an example of an extended
metaphor
Explain who “we” and “them” refer to.
Describe the poet’s attitude towards the
“masks” we wear, and identify three
words that contribute to that tone
Tone:
1.
2.
3.
Read the poem a third time and explain
what you think the theme of the poem is
in one complete sentence.
Explain how the poetic devices used in
the poem contribute to the poem’s overall
effect on the reader.
Connection: In 3-4 sentences, explain what “masks” you think you or people you know wear,
why you or they wear those masks, and what the effects of wearing the masks are.
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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (page 580)
Analyzing Structure
The structure of a work of literature is the arrangement of its parts. This story is arranged in
three numbered sections. Each section signals a change in time. Keep track of the events in the
story as you read. After reading, re-organize the events so that they are in actually chronological
order: number the events, with 1 being the first event to happen chronologically.
Actual
Order
Description of the event
Events in Section I:
Events in Section II:
Events in Section III:
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Events that happened outside the story:
Journal or discussion: How did the author’s choice of non-chronological order impact the
reader’s sympathy for Peyton? Explain using specific examples.
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The Gettysburg Address and Rhetorical Devices
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield
of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot
hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor
long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us
the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.
1. Underline phrases in the second paragraph that describe the situation the listeners were in
when they head the address.
2. What is the purpose of the last sentence in the second paragraph?
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3. Underline words and phrases in the third paragraph that stress what the listeners must do
in the future. What is the greatest task they must yet accomplish?
4. Which words in the first paragraph suggest the birth of a nation?
5. How does Lincoln’s speech come full circle, concluding by re-addressing the images of
birth established in the first paragraph?
6. How does “The Gettysburg Address” reaffirm the democratic principles that are the
keystone of our government?
7. In the Address, how does Lincoln imply that such a government can be in danger?
8. In the Address, how does he reach out to both the North and South?
Understanding Diction
Diction refers to the writer’s choice of words. Diction may be formal or informal, abstract or
concrete. “The Gettysburg Address” is written in formal, dignified language.
9. Find five words or phrases in “The Gettysburg Address” that contribute to its formal,
dignified diction.
10. What effect would less formal language have had on Lincoln’s speech?
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11. Is Lincoln’s language objective, subjective, or both? Find examples, and explain why he
chose to use such language.
12. Find one example in which Lincoln used juxtaposition of two or more elements. What
effect was he creating?
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From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (page 562)
Author’s Purpose
Authors write for any number of reasons, such as to inform, entertain, or express themselves.
Knowing an author’s purpose can help you better understand a piece of writing. What is
Douglass’s purpose in writing this narrative?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Using details from the text, use this chart to explain how the reader is supposed to feel about
Douglass, Sandy, Bill, Covey, Master Thomas, and slavery in general.
Example of Douglass’s style
Description of his style
Intended reaction of the
reader
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Brave New World
Figurative Language
Day 3




Read Chapters 4-6 in Brave New World
Discuss Mood Chapter One
Find and analyze figurative language (chart)
BNW (refer to passage)
Discuss figurative language from
homework; emphasize how use
of figurative language enhances
text/accomplishes author’s
purpose
Discuss article “…Designer
Babies”…consider how
technology affects our lives.
Journal: In what ways has
technology enhanced our lives?
In what ways has technology
diminished our humanity?
Name:
Date:
Period:
Example #____
Record an example of figurative language from your selected novel. Examples may include
similes, metaphors, hyperboles, personification, etc. Record the full passage (include page
number), label with appropriate corresponding literary term, and explain the meaning these
particular words bring to the passage in which it is found. Your explanation should address the
following questions: What is the author trying to convey? How does the figurative language
enhance the meaning of the text and suggest a deeper connection through connotation?
Passage
Record the
passage and the
page number.
207 | P a g e
Type of
Figurative
Language
Label the type of
figurative
language.
Explanation
Explain what is
being described
and why it is
being described
this way. Address
the following
questions: What is
the author trying
to convey? How
does the
figurative
language enhance
the meaning of
the text and
suggest a deeper
connection
through
connotation?
208 | P a g e
Directions for Papers on The Scarlet Letter
In this unit, we examined how an author uses characterization, plot, symbolism and
motifs to contribute to a larger theme. We have analyzed how authors accomplished this in two
short stories, and have discussed how specific elements of the characterization, plot and
symbolism of The Scarlet Letter contribute to its theme. One of the culminating assignments for
this unit is a literary analysis paper in which you explain how Nathaniel Hawthorne uses these
four elements throughout the novel to contribute to any of its themes.
You will complete this task in three stages:


Prewriting using the outline form attached is due 11/1 (A) and 11/2 (B)
Complete, readable first drafts (handwritten or typed) are due on 11/7 (A) and 11/8 (B) It
is critical that you have this ready by this date as we will spend time in class getting
feedback on these drafts which will help you to improve the quality of your final draft
 Final draft (submitted along with a completed rubric) due 11/9 (A) and 11/12 (B)
Requirements/Notes






Papers should be at least 4 full pages, typed, double spaced, with one-inch margins (12
point font)
You must use a minimum of 5 direct quotes from the text. Each should be clearly
introduced (give us the context of the quote and lead into it in a grammatically correct
way); correctly punctuated, formatted and cited; and explained thoroughly (What is the
significance of this quote? How does it contribute to the larger point you are making?)
You must correctly cite not only direct quotes, but any specific content from the text that
you are using to support your argument.
Include a Works Cited page listing the novel and any other sources you used (although
the analysis should be yours alone, not gleaned from other sources).
Refer to the “How to Write a Paper” document on LoudounVision for formatting
guidelines
Be sure to read through the attached rubric before you start and after you finish your
rough draft, and then complete the self-evaluation column when you finish your final
draft, so that you are clear that you are meeting all of the requirements for the
assignment. You will be turning in your outline, rough draft, final draft, and rubric,
stapled together in that order, at the end.
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Prewriting/Outline
Draft thesis statement:
Introductory paragraph (should include a reference to the author and the title of the novel)
Explanation of the theme(s) in the novel you are addressing:
Characterization
Quote
Context
Page
Significance/explanation of how this
supports or illustrates the larger
point
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Plot Elements
Quote
Context
Page
Significance/explanation of how this
supports or illustrates the larger
point
Symbolism
Quote
Context
Page
Significance/explanation of how this
supports or illustrates the larger point
211 | P a g e
Motifs
Quote
Context
Page
Significance/explanation of how this
supports or illustrates the larger point
Conclusion:
212 | P a g e
Rubric for The Scarlet Letter Paper
Category/Objective
Mastery/Excellent
Good/Competent
Fair/Poor
No Evidence
Correctly format a paper
(heading, title, line spacing,
paragraphs, margins)
All formatting guidelines are followed
perfectly
Most formatting guidelines are followed
perfectly
Many formatting guidelines are not
followed perfectly
None of the major
formatting guidelines are
followed
Develop a concise but
descriptive title that is
appropriately capitalized
Title is short but accurately describes the
topic of the paper. Nothing is in bold and
only titles of works analyzed are
underlined or italicized. Title is
appropriately capitalized.
Title is short but accurately describes the
topic of the paper. Inappropriate use of
bold, underlining, italics, or
capitalization.
The title does not describe the topic
of the paper
Appropriately underline,
italicize or put in quotation
marks the title of a literary
work when referring to it
Title of novel or play is consistently
underlined or italicized
Title of novel or play is usually
underlined or italicized
Title of novel or play is both
underlined and italicized
Write a clear,
comprehensive, concise
thesis statement
Thesis statement is clear, comprehensive
and concise and draws the reader into the
arguments in an engaging manner
Thesis statement is clear, comprehensive
and concise
Develop an introductory
paragraph that provides a
context for the thesis and
explains each of the main
arguments in broad strokes
Introductory paragraph mentions the title
and author, provides a clear context for
the thesis and explains each of the main
arguments in broad strokes
Begin body paragraphs
with transition statements
that provide a conceptual
bridge between ideas
Each body paragraph begins with a
transition sentence that clearly introduces
the main idea of the paragraph and
connects it with the rest of the essay.
Score/
Subtotal
x2=
/10
There is no title
x1=
/5
Title of novel or play is
not underlined or
italicized OR title is never
mentioned
Thesis statement is two of the
following: clear, comprehensive
and concise
No thesis statement is
evident.
Introductory paragraph does most of the
following: mentions the title and author,
provides a clear context for the thesis and
explains each of the main arguments in
broad strokes
Introductory paragraphs are
missing several key elements
Introductory paragraph
does not serve any of its
key functions
All body paragraphs begin with some
type of transition OR most transitions are
well-written
Most body paragraphs have
transition sentences that are not
well-written
x1=
/5
x2=
/10
x2=
/10
Body paragraphs do not
begin with any transition
sentences
x2=
/10
213 | P a g e
Meet minimum length
requirements/ provide
adequate quantity of
supporting evidence
Essay meets minimum requirements for
length and quantity of supporting
evidence; includes a word count
Develop a strong,
convincing, coherent, wellorganized argument
Argument is very strong, convincing,
coherent and well-organized. All
supporting evidence is completely
accurate and relevant
Accurately interpret and
analyze the text
Evidence from the text is accurately
interpreted, significant patterns in the text
are thoroughly and insightfully analyzed
Essay is close to minimum requirements
for length and quantity of supporting
evidence
Argument is generally clear, convincing,
coherent and well-organized. Most
supporting evidence is accurate and
relevant.
Most of the evidence from the text is
accurately interpreted and most patterns
in the text are analyzed
Essay is not close to meeting
minimum requirements for length
and quantity of supporting
evidence
No evidence is given to
support the thesis
There is a basic argument evident,
but it is not very strong,
convincing, coherent, and/or wellorganized. Much of the
supporting evidence is inaccurate
and/or irrelevant to the argument.
No clear argument is
evident.
There are several examples of
inaccurate interpretations and/or
incomplete or inaccurate analysis
Most of the evidence
provided is inaccurate.
x4=
/20
x3=
/15
x4=
/20
Introduce, contextualize
and explain supporting
evidence
Correctly format and
punctuate direct quotes
Use correct MLA-style intext citations
All supporting evidence is effectively
introduced, contextualized and its larger
significance explained
All quotes are correctly formatted and
punctuated.
All quoted, paraphrased or summarized
information from other sources has
correctly formatted citations
Most supporting evidence is effectively
introduced, contextualized and its larger
significance explained
Most quotes are correctly formatted and
punctuated.
Most information from other sources has
correctly formatted citations
Much of the supporting evidence is
not effectively introduced,
contextualized and its larger
significance explained
None of the supporting
evidence is effectively
introduced, contextualized
and its larger significance
explained
Many quotes are not correctly
formatted and punctuated.
None of the quotes are
correctly formatted and
punctuated.
Much information from other
sources do not have correctly
formatted citations
None of the information
from other sources has
correctly formatted
citations
x2=
/10
x2=
/10
x2=
/10
Develop a correct MLAstyle Works Cited page
Works Cited page follows all MLA
formatting guidelines
Works Cited page follows most MLA
formatting guidelines
Works Cited page follows some
MLA formatting guidelines
There is no Works Cited
page
x2=
/10
214 | P a g e
Effectively use a variety of
sentence structure/Identify
and correct sentence
fragment and run-on
sentence errors
Essay effectively uses a variety of
sentence structures
Effectively proofread rough
drafts for errors in spelling,
capitalization, punctuation
or missing/extra words.
Essay does not include any obvious
errors in spelling, capitalization,
punctuation or missing/extra words.
Identify and correct any
errors of grammar,
mechanics or usage
Essay uses a variety of sentence
structures with no incomplete or run-on
sentences.
There is an average of 1-2
incomplete or run-on sentence per
page
There are 3 or more
incomplete or run-on
sentences per page
x2=
/10
No grammatical, mechanical or usage
errors are apparent.
Develop a clear, concise
conclusion that summarizes
your argument in fresh
language without restating
exact phrasing.
Conclusion effectively summarizes the
thesis and arguments in fresh language
without restating exact phrasing
Develop a complete rough
draft and make significant
revisions to the rough draft
when creating the final
draft.
Rough draft is complete and final draft
reflects significant revisions.
Develop a thorough outline
that includes a thesis, all
supporting evidence, and
citations for all evidence.
Out line includes a thesis, all supporting
evidence and citations for all evidence
There is an average of 1 spelling,
capitalization, punctuation or
missing/extra words error per page
There is an average of 1 grammatical,
mechanical or usage error per page
Conclusion effectively summarizes the
thesis and arguments
Rough draft is mostly complete and final
draft reflects a few significant revisions.
There are an average of 2-3
spelling, capitalization, punctuation
or missing/extra words errors per
page
There are an average of 2-3
grammatical, mechanical or usage
error per page
There are an average of 4
or more spelling,
capitalization, punctuation
or missing/extra words
errors per page
There are an average of 4
or more grammatical,
mechanical or usage error
per page
Conclusion does not effectively
summarizes the thesis and
arguments, inappropriately
introduces new ideas, or repeats
exact phrasing
There is no real
conclusion to the essay.
Rough draft is incomplete
No rough draft is evident
(or is the same as the final
draft)
x2=
/10
x2=
/10
x2=
/10
x1=
/5
Outlines includes thesis, most supporting
evidence and some citations
Outline is incomplete
No outline is evident
x1=
/5
215 | P a g e
Thoroughly and accurately
self-evaluate your work
using this rubric
Rubric is completed in a thoughtful and
thorough manner.
X
Rubric is either not completed
thoroughly or does not reflect
much thought
Rubric is not completed at
all.
x1=
/5
TOTAL
/200
216 | P a g e
Appendix C:
Socratic Seminar Resources
Socratic Seminar: Society and the Individual
Name: ___________
Your grade for this seminar will be based on three elements:



Your seminar notes (20 points)
Your contributions to the seminar discussion (50 points, see rubric)
Your feedback as part of the Outer Circle (20 points, see form on the back)
Part I: Seminar Notes (20 points)
Essential Questions:








What do we owe society? What does society owe us?
Does the Individual exist simply to support Society?
Is Society simply a social contract individuals agree to for their mutual benefit?
To what extent should our actions and decisions be driven by societal norms and values
versus our own individual conscience?
What is the role of shame (or the idea of sin) in a culture in general? What should it be?
To what degree should we be governed by our own individual consciences as opposed to
social norms, social pressure, or even laws?
To what degree and in what ways are we responsible for others?
Ideally, how should we prioritize our own needs and those of others? Should we sacrifice
our own needs for others? If so, in what situations?
Task
Develop your own coherent responses to these questions. Outline an argument addressing
these questions that includes a 2 sentence thesis statement, a counter-argument with counterexamples, and a refutation of the counter-argument. Support your ideas with at least 6 examples
from any of the texts below*, including at least 2 examples from The Scarlet Letter, and at least
one example illustrating your counter-argument.
Text Set






The Scarlet Letter
“On Rainy River” from The Things They Carried
Articles on entitlement
Federal, state and county budgets: how is this balance the needs of the individual and the
needs of society reflected in our practical, economic decision making?
Socrates: I am a slave to the State
“Around My Way” by Lupe Fiasco
*Note: You may also use up to 2 supporting examples from 1 additional source of your own (as part of the 6), but
you must bring that source with you to class.
217 | P a g e
Thesis statement:
Counter-argument:
“While…, ”
“Although…, ”
Refutation
Evidence for your thesis
Quote (first three words… last three words, but have the
full quotes handy for the seminar)
Source
Page
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
218 | P a g e
Examples for the counter-argument
Quote
Source
Page
1.
2.
219 | P a g e
Part II: Participation in/Contributions to Seminar Discussion (50 points)
50 points (Outstanding Contributions)
• Participant offers unique, insightful analysis, without prompting, to move the conversation forward
• Participant, through her comments, demonstrates a deep knowledge of the text and the question
• Participant has come to the seminar prepared, with notes and a marked/annotated text
• Participant, through her comments, shows that she is actively listening to other participants
• Participant offers clarification and/or follow-up that extends the conversation
• Participant’s remarks often refer back to specific parts of the text
45 points (Proficient)
• Participant offers solid analysis without prompting
• Through comments, participant demonstrates a good knowledge of the text and the question
• Participant has come to the seminar prepared, with notes and marked/ annotated text
• Participant shows that he/she is actively listening to other and offers clarification and/or follow-up
40 points (Competent)
•
•
•
•
Participant offers some analysis, but needs prompting from the seminar leader
Through comments, participant demonstrates a general knowledge of the text and question
Participant is less prepared, with few notes and no marked/annotated text
Participant is actively listening to others, but does not offer clarification and/or follow-up to others’
comments
• Participant relies more upon his or her opinion, and less on the text to drive her comments
30 points
•
•
•
•
•
0 points
Participant offers little commentary
Participant comes to the seminar ill-prepared with little understanding of the text and question
Participant does not listen to others, offers no commentary to further the discussion
Participant distracts the group by interrupting other speakers or by offering off topic questions and
comments.
Participant ignores the discussion and its participants
 Participant makes no contributions to the dialogue
Your score:
Part III: Outer Circle Feedback
(20 points)
Take notes on specific people who either follow or do not follow the guidelines below:
Make
insightful
contributions
Cite reasons and
evidence for their
statements/
Speak
loudly and
clearly
Stick with
the
subject
Paraphrase
accurately
Ask for help
to clear up
confusion
Listen to others
respectfully/
Interact in a
civil manner
Pose
thoughtful
questions
Use the text to
find support
Note: If you feel your participation in the seminar discussion did not reflect the depth of your
understanding of the texts, and/or your ability to interpret and analyze them, see the teacher for
an alternate assignment
220 | P a g e
Appendix D:
Creative Writing and Writing Process Resources
Writing Metaphors and Similes
Good writers are able to engage the reader by providing new perspectives that leave a lasting
impression on the reader. One way writers accomplish this is through the use of figurative
language (simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, symbolism, etc…). This assignment is
designed to give you a chance to experiment with figurative language- specifically, metaphor and
simile.
Assignment
a. Study the picture you’ve chosen
b. Identify 2-3 dominant elements in the picture.
ex: train and smoke
c. List 3-5 characteristics (not details) for each of the things you listed
ex: trains- big, powerful, loud
d. List 3-5 different things that share all or some of these characteristics
ex: storm, horse, monster
e. Use these notes to write one metaphor and one simile
221 | P a g e
Train
Loud
Powerful
Big
Smoke
horse
storm
Billowy
clouds
Dark
ghosts
monster
Shifting
volcanic ash
Fast
floating
Metaphor:
Simile:
The engine was a black horse galloping
frantically across the plain.
Smoke spewed from the engine like volcanic
ash and hung in great plumes above the
tracks.
222 | P a g e
Humor Writing Assignment
Write a fictional piece or a reflective (or informative) essay that contains humor. Your essay
should be 1-2 pages in length and should include humor. Consider the elements we discussed
that contributed to the humor of Twain’s and Barry’s pieces.
Prewriting: What is your purpose in writing your piece? To answer this question, consider the
purposes of Mark Twain and Dave Barry.
Name / Piece
Dave Barry
“All Fired Up for
the Fourth”
Example(s) of humor
Purpose in including humor
Mark Twain
“The Notorious
Jumping Frog of
Caleveras County”
Mark Twain
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
Your humor piece:
223 | P a g e
Writing Haiku for Modern Audiences
Below are selections of haiku by Richard Wright. Wright’s style is distinctive in its angry,
biting tone, especially compared to the haiku from the Orient. This exercise allows
students to write their own haiku and also emulate tone. Print the Wright haiku and give a
different page to a pair of students. They must do the following:



Each person in the pair writes a haiku emulating Wright’s style
Each pair chooses one of the two haiku that they want to use
Each pair reads aloud—four haiku by Wright with their own creation placed
randomly among the other four. The class attempts, via votes, to identify
which is the student work. Stumping the class results in extra points that are
appropriate to teachers’ grading system.
1
I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.
3
Keep straight down this block,
Then turn right where you will find
A peach tree blooming.
7
Make up you mind, Snail!
You are half inside your house,
And halfway out!
11
You moths must leave now;
I am turning out the light
And going to sleep.
16
All right, You Sparrows;
The sun has set and you can now
Stop your chattering!
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18
Sparrow's excrement
Becomes quickly powdery
On sizzling pavements.
20
The dog's violent sneeze
Fails to rouse a single fly
On his mangy back.
21
On winter mornings
The candle shows faint markings
Of the teeth of rats.
22
With a twitching nose
A dog reads a telegram
On a wet tree trunk.
24
The webs of spiders
Sticking to my sweaty face
In the dusty woods.
30
A bloody knife blade
Is being licked by a cat
At hog-killing time.
31
In the falling snow
A laughing boy holds out his palms
Until they are white.
50
One magnolia
Landed upon another
In the dew-wet grass
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Appendix E:
Full Unit Example
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