In to the Wild by Jon Krakauer (Eng 11)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (AP)
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (AP)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (AP)
The Crucible by Arthur Miller (AP)
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by John Edwards
“The Author to Her Book” by Ann Bradstreet
“Why I Hated Tonto” by Sherman Alexie
“Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie
“Excerpt From His Autobiography” by Richard Rodriguez
“Declaration of Independence”-Thomas Jefferson
Aphorisms from his Autobiography by Ben Franklin
“Speech to the Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry
“Speech at Stanford Graduation” by Steve Jobs
“Why I Want a Wife” essay by Judy Brady
“Oval Portrait” story by Edgar Allen Poe
“The Raven” poem by Edgar Allen Poe
“Annabel Lee” poem by Edgar Allen Poe
“I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“The Narrative of the Life of FD, an American Slave” by Frederick Douglass
“Necessary to Protect Ourselves” interview with Malcolm X
“On Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau
“from Walden” by Ralph Waldo Emmerson
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
“Personal Narrative” Gary Keilor
“Coming of Age in Mississippi” by Ann Moody
“Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan
“Danse Macabre” by Stephen King
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman
“Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
“A Pair of Silk Stockings” by Kate Chopin
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (AP)
“Lucinda Matlock” poem by Edgar Lee Masters
“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin (AP)
“Miriam” by Truman Capote
“A Clean Well-lighted Place” by Ernest Hemmingway (AP)
“1906 Earthquake,” nonfiction account by Jack London
“Where are you Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
“The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck (AP)
“The Lake” by Ray Bradbury
“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
“A Small Good Thing” by Raymond Carver (AP)
“Ambush” by Tim O’Brien
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Films:
Waiting for Superman (English 11)
Food Inc. (AP)
“Fuck” documentary about forbidden language (AP)
My Cousin Vinny (English 11)
Freedom Writers
Shawshank Redemption
Others left off the list:
OR Essay Prep Activity
On a separate piece of paper, list your OR Selection(s) for this semester. Meet with
at least one other student reading the same book(s). With that partner, decide which
theme(s) below apply to your OR book(s). List as many as you can find that apply.
Then, choose assigned readings or films from the other list that fall under those
same themes. Develop arguments or lessons learned about those themes, as they
apply to your OR selections and assigned works and record them on your paper.
Prepare to share with the class.
THEMES for OR Essay Topics:
Examine the list of course themes.
1. DEATH: Based on the readings, what have you learned about death?
2. Change: Based on the readings, how do humans make change happen when
others resist? Or, how does change affect us when we don’t want it? Why do
things change?
3. Alienation because of Gender, Race, Class, or Creed: Why do humans
alienate each other based on superficial categories? Will we ever stop? How
do we overcome alienation? Why is eliminating that alienation important?
What have we learned about this theme?
4. Violence: Violence is a predominant thread in American history and
literature. What have we learned about violence, as it applies to the readings
and course selections?
5. Family Relationships: Why are they important? What have we learned
about family relationships? How do they affect American culture?
6. Hopefulness: Is hope dangerous or is it helpful? What have we learned abut
hope, as it applies to the course selections?
7. Self-Deception/Absurdity/Denial of Truth: What have we learned about
self-deceptions from the characters and lives studied this year? Who deceives
the self? Why?
8. Freedom and Independence: What have we learned about freedom and
independence? What happens when a person or group takes the freedom of
another? How does one effectively achieve it in the face of oppression? Who
embraces their own loss of freedom or captivity? Why?
9. Knowledge and Wisdom: How do knowledge and wisdom affect our
ultimate leves of happiness and well-being? How do we obtain it? Why is
important?
10. Language as Power and Key to Identity: What have we learned about
language as power?
11. Money and Class in America: What have we learned about money and class
in America?
12. Nature: What have we learned about nature and the human’s relationship to
it?
13. Passion vs Responsibility: When should we follow or passions and when
should we ignore them in light of our responsibility to ourselves and to
others?
14. Ego, Pride, and Self-Knowledge: What have we learned about ego and
pride? How is self-knowledge and self-understanding critical to our own
happiness and success, as evidenced by the course selections?
15. The Limitations of Society: When and how does society limit the
individual? Why? How do we break free from those limitations without
harming ourselves or others? How do we create a society that allows room
for the individual or which discourages blind comformity? What have we
learned about the limitations of society?