Friday, December 7, 2007

Discussion Question 1 (of 2)

Do you believe that Akakii Akakievich is made a better man by the experience of saving for and finally acquiring his new overcoat, or is he made worse by it?

Please respond with a reply of three or four sentences, explaining in what way he is made better or worse, and support your answer with evidence from the book.
Click on the Comments link below (next to "Posted by Tracy Mendham at 8:29 AM") to answer.

Discussion Question 2 (of 2)

Although "The Overcoat" can be read as a tale of perfect poetic justice, for the moment let's look at the story as a tragedy. Please say which you think is the greater failure in "The Overcoat": Is it the story of an individual's (Akakii's) failure to meet the needs and requirements of his community, or the community's failure to meet the needs of the individual?
Please write a reply of three or four sentences in which you argue for either individual or societal failure, supporting your position with evidence from the text.

5 Minute Paper

Please click on the Comments link below, and spend five minutes writing your response to the following question: What does "The Overcoat show us about the world as it really exists?" Write in roughly the form of an introduction paragraph for an essay you could write about the topic. Write the best answer you can in five minutes, and submit your answer.
Then, read your classmates' responses to the exercise, and complete a three minute peer review of one of their five minute papers, borrowing from any of the styles of peer review we have used in class.
[This was originally going to be a chatroom, but the chat tool seemed to be losing the responses, learned after the tragic loss of a five-minute paper. I'll make another post with the chatroom in case anyone wants to experiment.]

"5 Minute Paper" Chatroom UNDER CONSTRUCTION

This is the chatroom that doesn't seem to be working correctly, but I'll leave this post up in case it's only my own computer that's hinky and not the Meebo Chatroom service. Use at your own risk!
Please click in the chatroom box below, and spend five minutes writing your response to the following question: What does "The Overcoat show us about the world as it really exists?" Write in roughly the form of an introduction paragraph for an essay you could write about the topic. Write the best answer you can in five minutes, and then hit the Enter key to submit your answer.
Then, read your classmates' responses to the exercise, and complete a three minute peer review of one of their five minute papers, borrowing from any of the styles of peer review we have used in class.
http://www.meebo.com/rooms

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Nineteen Eighty-Four

If you're hooked on Orwell or just want more context for the reading, the full text of his novel 1984, (of which "The Principles of Newspeak" is an appendix) can be read at http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/.
An excerpt from Chapter One:

It was always at night — the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vapourized was the usual word.

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:

theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother —

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door.

Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved heavily towards the door.

(http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_p_1)

"Ultimate Discourse" Podcasts

I reviewed the podcasts from your "Ultimate Discourse" responses again as I evaluated journals, and took the opportunity to add tags and descriptions to them. Here they are again:

Bigger Classroom #35 - Shelby's First Podcast

Shelby chooses the film Ever After for her response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."



Bigger Classroom #34 - Cliff's Podcast

Cliff chooses the novel Lord of the Flies for his response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."



Bigger Classroom #30 - Nate's Podcast

Nate applies Doctorow's claim that fiction tells us "without shame what people do with their bodies and think with their minds" to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code



Bigger Classroom #29 - Linda May's First Podcast

Linda applies Doctorow's statement that readers experience what the character experience ("This is the way it is, it will say, this is what it feels like,") to Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook.



Bigger Classroom #28 - Dawn's Podcast

Dawn applies Doctorow's statement that fiction "will know [characters] nightmares and blinding moments of moral crisis" to Robert Heinlein's book Job.



Bigger Classroom #27 - Hank's Podcast

Hank applies two of Doctorow's statements to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Doctorow notes that "The fiction writer...understands the homage a modern up-to-date world of nonfiction specialists pays to his craft--even as it isolates him and tells him he is a liar," and that "Weather reports on television are constructed with exact attention to conflict (high-pressure areas clashing with lows)."



Bigger Classroom #33 - Jeff's First Podcast

Jeff chooses All Quiet on the Western Front for his response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse"



Bigger Classroom #26 - Patricia's First Podcast

Patricia chooses Stephen King's The Green Mile for her response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."



Bigger Classroom #25 - Linda Moody's Podcast

Linda relates James Patterson's The Honeymoon to EL Doctorow's assertion that fiction "distributes the suffering. It says we must compose ourselves in our stories in order to exist."



Bigger Classroom #24 - Bonnie's First Podcast

Bonnie chooses the movie Heidi for her response to EL Doctorow's "Ultimate Discourse."

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

"Ultimate Discourse" Podcasts

For this week's journal assignment, I've asked students to leave voice messages on our Gabcast channel relating the story of their choice to the qualities and powers EL Doctorow attributes to fiction in the essay "Ultimate Discourse." Here are the voice messages so far:

Bonnie: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #24



Linda: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #25



Patricia: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #26



Hank: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #27



Dawn: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #28



Linda: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #29



Nate: Gabcast! Bigger Classroom #30



Listen to the podcasts at they appear at: http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&id=12483