Reading and Writing Focus
Reading
1. Each quarter we will have a major thematic focus with a major text that drives that focus.
2. You will also have two individual reading projects-due at the end of teach term-that is not
associated with the major theme. You will select a novel from the list below.
3. All short stories MUST be read outside of class. Please come to class prepared.
4. At the end of each term, you will have a novel assignment due that includes the following:
1) Complete a Major Works Data Sheet.
2) Write a one-page (minimum), typed evaluation of the work you have read from the Independent
Reading List. Your essay should be an evaluation of the novel rather than a description. Your task
is to decide what is good, what is bad, and what is mediocre. Take a position on the work. Be
sure, however, that your reaction is based on rational and logically defensible grounds.
Demonstrate the grounds for your evaluation (excellencies or deficiencies of style, idea, structure,
character portrayal, logic, point of view, etc.) Analyze the probability, truth, force or power with
which the work embodies these elements. Avoid summary for its own sake. Emphasize
evaluation rather than description
3) Socratic Seminar in class based on reading
Term 3 novel: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Term 4 novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Writing
1.
You will have at least one timed essay a week.
2.
You will have four major writing assignments due at the end of each quarter. See given
list for topics.
Viewing: Movie Analysis: Life of Pi
After watching the movie, complete one of the following prompts:
1. A narrative technique often employed by novelists and playwrights is to present multiple
versions, told by multiple sources, of the same event. Write a well-organized essay in
which you analyze the meaning of the varying accounts of Pi’s tale and what they
contribute to the overall meaning of the novel. Do NOT just summarize the two stories.
2. On his journey, Pi discovers a floating, carnivorous, algae island inhabited by thousands
of meerkats. What is the significance of this island to the story? How is this island an
allegory? What is the effect of this story on the novel as a whole? Describe each of the
symbolic elements present within the story of the island and discuss how this relates to
the themes presented in the rest of the work.
Syllabus and Class Calendar
Quarter 5: Love and Relationships (with course introduction)
The course reading will include but not limited to:
Major text: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Reading selections:
“Desiree’s Baby” Kate Chopin
“No one’s a Mystery” Elizabeth Tailent
“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston
“Hills Like White Elephants”
“Popular Mechanics”
“Sonny Blues” James Baldwin
“Teenage Wasteland” Anne Tyler
“Introduction to Poetry” Billy Collins
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” Wilfred Owens
“Facing It” poetry analysis
“The Rich Brother” Tobias Wolfe
Paired Poems: “Slam, Dunk, & Hook” and “Fast Break”
Prose analysis: “Reunion” by John Cheever
Quarter 5 Essay due Jan 30
Quarter 6: Home and Family
¶
Major Text: The Tragedy of Hamlet by W. Shakespeare
Reading selections:
“My Last Duchess” Robert Browning
“I Stand hear Ironing” Tillie Olsen
“Let America be America Again” Langston Hughes
“A Rose for Emily”
“On My First Son” Ben Johnson
“We are Seven” William Shakespeare
“Mother to Son” Langston Hughes
“My Papa’s Waltz”
“Those Winter Sundays”
“Daddy”
“Rites of Passage”
“Cousins” by Kevin Young
Quarter 6 Essay due Feb 20
Novel Assignment Due Feb 26
Movie Analysis Due March 13
Quarter 7: Identity and Culture
Major text: The Taming of the Shrew by W. Shakespeare
Reading selections:
“The Free Radio” Salman Rushdee
“Girl” Jamaica Kincaid
“A &P” John Updike
“When I Consider How my Life is Spent”
“The World is Too Much for Us”
“Heritage” Countee Cullen
“We Real Cool” Gwendolyn Brooks
“Identity Card” Mahmoud Darwish
Paired Poems: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The White Man’s Burden” Rudyard Kipling
“The Black Man’s Burden” H. T. Johnson
Quarter 7 Essay due March 26
Quarter 8: Tradition and Progress
Reading selections:
Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
“Revelation”
“Everything that Rises Must Converge”
“Good Country People”
“The Life you Save will be Your Own”
Joyce Carol Oates
“Where are you going, where have you Been?”
“Homage to My Hips” Lucille Clifton
“London” William Blake
“The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats
“A Bedtime Story” Mitsuye Yamada
Performance Assessment April 24
Quarter 8 Research Paper Due May 8
Novel Assignment due May 1
AP Exam May 6
Major Writing List
The paper must be in MLA format, double spaced in Times New Roman size 12 font. You
must have a title but no title page. Please refer to your writing handbook for correct MLA
format.
Quarter 5 Love and Relationships
1. Using this novel as your basis, discuss the nature of "good" and "evil," or "the double"
and the duality of man's nature, as presented in The Strang Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde.
2. Contrast Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Lanyon in their basic responses to scientific medicine, to
metaphysics, to the basic nature of evil itself, and to man's duality.
3. Utterson as a narrator is objective and honest, and yet he often comes to the wrong
conclusion about matters such as forgery, Hyde's existence, Jekyll's motives, and other
matters. Discuss the character of Utterson and how he is so often misled in his opinions.
Quarter 6 Home and Family
1. Select three texts from this chapter that you found particularly memorable and in a well
organized essay; analyze how the writers have explored the theme of home and family.
2. Several of the works in this unit explore multigenerational family units. Using two or
three different texts, discuss the ties that keep families together as well as those that
challenge the connections through the generations.
Quarter 7 Identity and Culture
1. Author James Baldwin wrote: “An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in
which the person faces and uses his experience.” Discuss this quotation by referring to at
least one of the texts you have read in this unit and your own experience.
2. Most Americans believe that they are the master of their own destiny—and their own
identity. Anyone can create and re-create him- or herself. To what extent do you believe
that identity is the result of free choice rather than something determined by factors out of
our control, such a race, gender, and ethnicity? Include references to at least three of the
texts studied in this unit in your response.
Quarter 8 Tradition and Progress
1. Write an essay on one of the following characters, elucidating his or her significance,
within the story:
a. The Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
b. Red Sammy in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
c. The Bible salesman in “Good Country People”
d. Mrs. Freeman in “Good Country People”
e. Carver’s mother in “Everything that Rises Must Converge”
f. Arnold Friend in “Where are you Going, Where Have you Been?”
g. The narrator in “A Brutal Murder in a Public Place”
2. Discuss the use of the following symbols: the purple hat in “Everything that Rises Must
Converge;” animal symbolism in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and the golden car in
“Where are you Going, Where Have you Been?”