Monday, Jan 25 2016

Exam Building

1. CONFERENCING WITH PEERS - common area for exam questions to be collected
2. Design questions first! Come up with questions from your notes and double check those questions for commonality - i.e. do your peers also have those notes? 
3. Break questions into chunks - i.e. those headings for the different types of exam questions
4. Answer questions in short form with peers - partners.
5. Write down questions and answers and submit to Mr. The Lobb to save yourselves!

The above is for marks!

Poetry Analysis

1. Title
2. Poet - context
3. Time - context
4. overall feeling - your response
5. pick out power words - identify the meaning, value, etc
6. 5 Ws
7. Possible meanings/themes - JUSTIFY - REFS, PROOFS, REASONING

In essays and answers, how do we show logic and reasoning. 

Macbeth is being manipulated by his wife, so he’s not completely responsible. 

Well, he did a bunch of bad stuff

He loves his wife and she knows it and we know it because of that letter he sent her. 

That letter says that she is his “partner in greatness” and it reveals the way he thinks about her. He thinks of her as a partner and that, when something great comes to him, she will share in it and, as a partner, that suggests equality. This is not something we might expect from the time period. In reading (Women in Culture, pg 34) the role of a woman in Medieval society…. and yet, Macbeth follows a completely different path. 

Once she receives his letter, Lady Macbeth realizes that there is an opportunity here for them both. She loves him also, but fears that he “is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way”. In her estimation, Macbeth is too kind, too gentle and more so, is perhaps too womanly in his nature. He is “full of the milk,” like a nursing mother would be, which is a strange way to think about her husband. She appears to be the more masculine in her approach and thinking, and in fact, asks for demons to come down and “unsex her”, making her more manly so that she is without guilt and fear and etc..

But it really wasn’t because he was evil and wanted to do it. 

Friday, Jan 15, 2016

Nature vs Nurture

What really makes a monster?  Nurture appears to be a HUGE factor but there is a balance here that can go very right or very wrong. 

Some could say that the Monster was poorly created in the first place (nature), but in the novel it seems much more so that his “upbringing” was mostly to be blamed for his dark, violent behaviour.

The whole “challenging God” thing would seem to suggest that the Monster was a monster from the inception - from the moment Victor created him as an abomination - the Monster is a living blasphemy

The information we get in Chapter 10 seems to show us a Monster who is just a baby, not a monster at all, but a big piece of possibility

Appearance is Reality

The brutal reality of being judged by your outer self. 

MLK - famous speech - I have a dream, an awesome dream… where we can be judged not by the colour of our skin, but by the content of our character…” (in so many words)

The Monster is an extreme and very dramatized version of this situation 

The Monster represents the person who does not fit because of their face, body, skin, etc…

The closest references are racial or medical or sexual, etc - the monster might have an insight into a more female sense of what this is like - to be OBJECTIFIED by one’s looks

For one’s value to be not in their person but in their appearance

Part of this is that whole reduction of a person to a part or some parts - i.e. a guy with nice abs becomes just a set of nice abs - he doesn’t need a personality or skill or integrity, etc… (this happens to almost all women every day every where all the time)

The defining aspect of his entirety is his appearance, which is not standard, not “attractive”

The frustration of being a woman in THAT time period (early 1800s) must have been amazing, considering how frustrated women are even now…

Frankenstein Final

Franklinstein

Focus on elements that would “teach” someone the key ideas of the chapter, of the book, of the “chunk” in question.

Characters

Plot

Setting 

Theme

Changes and progression *character*

Associated ideas outside the story (what does the subject of the chunk remind of from our world?)

What ideas are in your head in response to whatever happened in that chunk? 

Symbols and archetypes

similarities and diffs from Macbeth

Look for some imagery or music or some other medium that can “show” some aspect of your chunk

Put this material together into some kind of presentation and submit

Re context ualisation

Planning and Writing Your Own Exam!

Short Answer Questions - 15 marks (5 X 3 marks each)

2-4 marks each

define and give an example of (briefly) 

making reference to something studied that requires only that definition to be explained

hubris maybe (but then you’ll say, wait, hubris can ALSO be applied to the novel and the play!) YES! Hubris could also be utilized in a longer answer, but it can be used for a short by only asking for the def.

Paragraph Answer Questions - 15 - 20 marks (5 marks each X 3 or 4 questions)

5-7 marks each

define, give an example and explain with some context (the info AROUND the specific answer that helps show the meaning more completely)

you have to bring a little more of TEXT TO SELF or WORLD (text to novel)

this is frequently the worst part of an exam - i.e. students don’t write enough or they repeat themselves - HOW BEAT THIS? - plan your answer

Site Passage Response - 25 - 30 marks, with questions all over the map

You will read something live in the exam, it will require thought and then you will respond to questions and show you have the ability to think deeply in the moment. 

Commonly, there are questions about symbols and symbolism, imagery, themes, deeper meanings, characterization, perspective changes and then often a text to world element

Most often, this is where Lobb steps in and constructs the questions, old fashionedly (this is not a word)

THIS IS WHERE GROUP WORK IS KEY

Creativity Piece - this is usually baked into the site passage - HEY! Do your own response to this piece! (10 marks straight up)

Creative work with good word choice and maintaining thematic and stylistic similarity with the source - i.e. it feels like the source poem or story

In-Class Essay - 30 marks (or so) and uh oh…

Comparison between Frankenstein and Macbeth.

Hey, what is the thing to compare? Hey, these guys both challenged God and She hates that!

Who is a monster? What makes a monster? Compare those two sources in this way. 

Two tragic heroes, two rise and fall stories, two terrible endings that bring everything back to Normal. 

Wednesday Dec 16 2015

Frankenstein

Analyze the two Franks (monster and Victor)

Consider thematic elements - this idea of the outsider, the monster, the one who does not fit - that we are how we look (which we know to be untrue)

Make a list of characters and places for reference (don’t be scared to use a map, Homie)

Eventually, you’re going to have to do:

1. research piece
2. character analysis
3. teaching module
4. exam questions
5. creative piece

Canned e-canes or fresh e-canes?

Today:

WORK

SHARE

DRAFT

REFINE

SUBMIT!

Monday, Dec 14 2015

Frankenstein

Main character is Frankenstein - the monster is called The Monster and this is the main problem with the book as far as pop culture sees it

Everybody thinks the monster is Frankenstein. 

The key event that this whole story revolves around is the creation of that monster by the doctor 

The bulk of the book is the ramifications of the doctor’s terrible decision to challenge God!

The book was written in the early 1800s by a woman in her teens

Mary Shelley

She was WAY more interesting than the average teenage girl in 1818…

Age of Reason - pamphlet that came out at the end of the Age of Enlightenment and capped off a very interesting period in human history - Thomas Paine (writer) - challenged the Bible, the power of the Church and the religious rule of the day

It comes out right around the time Mary Shelley is born - 

It reveals a big change in the culture and she was part of a new way of thinking, even as a kid

We need to think about history as a long line of people reacting to change (technological, philosophical, moral, etc)

The key “age” that influenced the novel Frankenstein all influenced the pamphlet above and that age of Enlightenment is seen to go from 1700 to 1800 (or so)

This time period was a boom of science, logic, creativity, justice and reasonable thinking (supposedly). 

Scientists like Sir Isaac Newton were challenging the basic ideas of life. 

Before those great scientists, people just assumed that “God did it” and that was the only answer they needed. 

Bit by bit so much basic reality was being figured out that scientists got cocky and said “EVERYTHING can be figured out!” “SCIENCE!”

This time period is a very clear distillation of the same kinds of problems that we have now. 

Mary Wollstonecraft - early feminist - there is no such thing as feminism -freedom for people to make choices and be treated fairly by their leaders and the culture in general

Mary died giving birth to her daughter, Mary, leaving her daughter alone with William, who was a thinker, a writer and an intellectual rebel - this has an impact on Mary (the daughter)

William Godwin - was also a believer in justice and fair treatment and choice for all people

Percy Bysse Shelley - famous poet and writer - he hooked up with Mary Shelley when she was just a teenage girl - he was into art, himself, free love, literature, opium, crazy times

Mary lost a couple of babies in her younger years - very traumatic, but it was the way it was

Mary is educated, well-off, liberal, trained to be critical and respectful of others’ ideas, political and, better yet, she lost her mother and has a miserable step-mother (better for her art)

She travels to Switzerland with Percy and his pals and she has “an experience”

She writes Frankenstein as part of a challenge, using her nightmare as a starting point, but she pulls in so many things from her own life and the time period in which she grew up (and was educated)

THIS is why the novel is such a classic - it’s probably the first science fiction book, and one of the earliest classic horror stories

Reading the Novel:

Skip the opening letters - Lobb does opening letters

Chapters 1 - 5 - Victor’s life up to the creation of the monster - Students read these

Chapters 6 - 10 - Victor’s life after the monster begins his campaign of revenge - Students do these with Lobb

Chapters 11 - 16 - Monster tells his story - broken into assigned group readings

Chapters 17 - 24 - the final revenge - broken into assigned group readings

The week of Dec 11

Freud’s Tripartite Definition of Personality

realizes that there is something going on in our brains underneath our regular, day-to-day thinking and behaving

he calls it the subconscious

Freud was trying to find a way to help people who had deep problems that they really couldn’t understand or articulate - these problems were “real” but they were not physical - they were impossible to “see” 

Psychoanalysis

• a process for uncovering “things” that someone has in their subconscious mind - these “things” are sometimes unknown to the person and they are behaving as a result of these “things”

Freud figured that these problems stemmed from childhood trauma or developmental issues

Many of Freud’s ideas seemed to revolve around sex and sexualization at an early age

Though that stereotypical “couch therapy thing”

People don’t just walk around doing what they want. 

They are doing what they are compelled to do by their deeper psychological drives. 

These are sometimes designed and defined in their childhoods (maybe mostly…)

Freud started to come up with all kinds of theories around the basic premises he has figured out

ID

• the first part of one’s self that is created - you kind of come out with an ID intact
• wants to eat, drink, react to the environment in the most immediate way
• reproduce! yell! cry! fight!
• this is the animal self - the lizard brain - the deep core of living creatures
• this is a critical part of the living creature to stay alive - the drive to BE
• this part of the self is a jerk
• it is a very bad part to utilize in social scenarios
• ie grabbing the buttocks of attractive men with generous buttocks
• ie fighting people who hurt your feelings
• ie stealing things you want
• a baby IS the ID incarnate

EGO

• the second part of the self that is created - develops as the baby gets older and starts to realize the world out there isn’t the self - the realization of being a thing in a place
• the logical self - the protector of the self from the dangers of the ID in the context of a world
• “Hey, you had better not grasp the generous buttocks of that officer! He might hit you!”
• “Hey! Don’t steal that phone! You might get caught!”
• the ego is a reaction to learning about the dangers of the world - parents can help, peers can help, laws can help, etc. 
• it’s all about self-protection and taking logical steps to mediate the ID

SUPEREGO

- the last part that is created and, for some, it is not created properly

• the mother’s voice - the conscience - the angel on the shoulder
• this is the development of the true moral self - “the voice of other people in your mind”

- empathy!

The whole person, the happy, socially functioning person is working in balance between these three personality structures

Freud might say that an unhealthy person is out of balance and he might be able to figure out what part is most active and least

RELIGION kind of acts as the superego and some people think that it is the ONLY way to generate the same kind of balance against the animal self

(Mr. Lobb disagrees)

There is something innate in us that respects life and wants to see “harmony”

Freud is a foundational thinker in medicine and psychology, but many of his theories are seen as overly simplistic

He was too focused on sexuality (no surprise)

Thesis idea

some loose notes to support

some quotations to support your support

a general sense of the essay you will write

SMART MONEY says you’ll have a first draft in the middle of next week

SMARTER MONEY says you’ll have essay marks from ME by Friday next week

Plato’s Cave Allegory

Plato is trying to come up with a way of describing how reality works for the viewer (participant) in that reality *in light of this idea of FORMS*

The Cave Allegory is a metaphor that explains some of the thinking behind his version of reality - WHAT IS REAL? WHAT IS THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING A PERSON IN REALITY? 

This metaphor is a useful way of thinking - we start to realize that each person is seeing a different “world of forms” and those forms are subject to the interpretation of each person - consider their biases, upbringing, experiences, teaching, region, age, sex, etc. 

Using one’s own desires and beliefs and so on is an EXCELLENT way to control one’s reality - e.g. MACBETH!

Carl Jung - the collective unconscious

Totems and Symbols in Macbeth

hands - culpability - symbols of the evil action that the “owner” of them took

blood - 

snake

crown

severed head

ghost

line of kings

weather - pathetic fallacy

King Duncan’s clothes

witches

Macduff’s son

Exam questions much?

What is the way to do Recontextualization Assignment 1 for Macbeth? 

Get into a group. 

Break the assignment into pieces. 

Example - one person writes one article for this newspaper, another does a shorter article and a photo/caption/ad/classified/personal/etc (texture), another person might do a front page (may not have a full article, but may have a few starts and “see page A2”

Incorporating information from the play (content) into a new form or medium where you add new CONTEXT 

You can add phony information that gives more new context and adds interest and readability

Why DO People Read it? 

Fantasy

To feel better about life in general 

To satisfy creepy star love (the small people always get curious about the big)

The “stars” of the Medieval period would be the royalty - 

The idea of making a gossip mag about them is pretty fitting. 

Today:

1. Work in groups with similar essay thesis/topic people - compare, contrast, confer with others to get something good going
2. Have a rough outline of your key points - a loose “sketch” of your essay
3. Show Mr. The Lobb your process/progress.