Update Jan. 14

Students took a reading quiz at the start of class. We then discussed Huckleberry Finn.

• We explored the symbolic loss of innocence involved in the snake incident on the island. The island was paradisiacal until the snake incident which revealed a darker side to the apparent childlike innocence of the story. Huck and Jim end up leaving the Edenic island and being cast out into the "world" of Southern society, down river.
• With the snake incident, we see Huck lying to Jim by omission.
• We see likewise that the relationship between Jim and Huck may not be as simple as it seems. Jim, an escaped slave, feels threatened when Huck, a member of Jim's owner's household, discovers him on the island.
• Jim strategically prompts Huck how much Huck needs him during the rainstorm.  He may do this to secure Huck's assistance, when in reality Jim has benefited from the relationship as much as, or more than, Huck.
• We detect Jim's intelligence when he discusses his plans for escape. We also saw earlier in the novel how Jim could use his hairball to "scam" Huck.
• When they find the dead body in the floating house, Jim covers the body apparently to protect Huck. However, a careful reading would indicate that this body may belong to Pap (who went away with his pockets full of money with some strange, dangerous looking men). Perhaps Jim has ulterior motives for keeping Huck in the dark--for Pap was the main reason Huck was running away and the main thing keeping Huck from going back to society where he could potentially turn in Jim.

Homework: Read Huckleberry Finn through page 65.

Update Jan. 13

We finished read "A Modest Proposal" together. As we read, we identified rhetorical strategies Swift employs in the article. We noted that Swift was writing a satire, as was Mark Twain. Both used satirical strategies including irony, juxtaposition, and narrative point of view.

Homework: Rhetorical notebook entry for A Modest Proposal due tomorrow. (Do not do number 4--we will write a full-length imitation article later.)


AP
Students took a quiz on subordination and coordination.

We then held a writer's workshop, revising essays using repetition, clear pronoun references, and subordination (conjunctions) for emphasis.

Homework: Final revisions of the monuments essay are due on Wednesday.

Update Jan. 10

By today, you should have read to page 27 in Huck Finn. As you read, you should be annotating ways in which Twain is using the story to comment on Southern society. Please also continue to pay attention to comparisons of Huck and Tom.

Students took a reading quiz and we discussed the assigned reading.

Next, we read together from Jonathan Swift's essay, "A Modest Proposal." (https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html)

Homework: Huckleberry Finn read through page 47. Continue annotating ways in which Twain comments on Southern society.

Update Jan. 8

We discussed the challenging section of "The Ways We Lie" on lying by omission. Students also worked to identify rhetorical strategies in the article and to imitate the syntactical style of one paragraph from the essay.

We then read a bit from Huck Finn.

Homework: Rhetorical Notebook entry on "The Ways We Lie" due tomorrow.

AP
We continued to examine strategies for increasing cohesion in an essay. We focused on repetition, noting that repetition can be used at the beginning or end of a clause. Furthermore, repetition of key words is often used as a transition between sentences or even paragraphs. Overt repetition can be strategically employed, so long as the argument progresses with each repetition. (Remember the slinky analogy.)

Homework: Have your next draft of the essay ready for class on Friday. All the major pieces (i.e. paragraphs) should be in place so that we can work on fine tuning revisions.

Rhetorical Notebook Instructions

Purpose

You will be keeping a rhetorical notebook for the readings associated with our unit on American Faith and Fear. The purpose of the notebook is to help you pay attention to how other writer use the resources of language to enhance your own writing voice and style. With each author you analyze and imitate, you will add new writing “tools” to your own writing toolbox.

Content

For each assigned reading (except for readings from Huck Finn), you need to make an entry that includes the following sections:

1)      Vocabulary—Identify at least 2 vocabulary words that you need to learn. Look them up. Write their definitions and copy down the sentence in which they appear in the essay.

 

2)      Evaluation of the author’s ideas—What is the author saying? Which ideas do you agree with? Which ideas do you disagree with? Why?

3)      Observations about the author’s rhetorical strategies—What rhetorical strategies does the author use? Which strategies are most effective? Why?

4)      Imitation of the author’s style—imitate the author’s writing style in one paragraph giving your own unique thoughts on the topic of the author’s essay.

Rhetorical Notebook Standards

 Each entry is expected to meet the following standards.

1)      Use MLA format, typing all entries.

2)      Each of the sections should be at least one full paragraph in length (with the exception of vocabulary).

3)      Respond using grammatically correct complete sentences. Proofread before submitting.

4)      Demonstrate precise thinking about rhetorical strategies. If you are uncertain, don’t just guess. Discuss your ideas with classmates until you feel confident about your understanding of the author’s strategies.

Notebook entries which fail to meet one of these standards will automatically be dropped a letter grade.

Update Jan. 7

We continued reading and annotating Huck Finn as a class. We discussed Huck's lonesomeness as a symptom of his not being part of society. Thus his freedom is also his lonesomeness. We examined Tom Sawyer's band of "robbers" as a microcosm of Southern society at large.

Homework: Rhetorical Notebook entry for the article "The Ways We Lie" by Stephanie Ericsson is due on Thursday.

Update Jan. 6

Welcome Back and Happy New Year! I am excited to be back with you and look forward to learning together this new semester. We will be starting our new unit on American Faith and Fear.

Today we began reading together from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We noted the following:

1) Why would Twain begin the novel with a notice to not try to find meaning in it? Perhaps this is like a no trespassing sign which invites the curious and mischievous to trespass. Certainly the likes of Tom Sawyer would have seen this as an invitation.

2) What theme(s) are introduced in the novel's opening paragraph? Everybody lies at one time or another, but few will acknowledge it; instead we "tell the truth, mainly" or we "stretch" the truth. The very act of writing fiction is telling a lie so that everyone will believe it is true, and perhaps sometimes the lie is more true than reality. We also noted that from the very first paragraph, Twain sets up a contrast between Huck and Tom.

3) For Huck, civilization is a form of bondage. He sees the hypocrisy in so-called civilized society.

4) Twain juxtaposes the Christianity of the Widow Douglas with Huck's superstition, inviting the readers to see the similarities. After all, there is little difference between Huck's tying up a bit of hair to ward off bad luck and the Widow's "grumbling" a blessing over her meal to ward off ill effects.

5) Why does Tom pay for the candles he "steals"? This seems to be in the same vein as his demand that for Huck to join his band of robbers, Huck must first go back to the widow and be "respectable." He is a thrill seeker, but only for fictional thrills.

No homework.

AP
We discussed strategies for achieving coherence in essay writing. We defined a paragraph as one or more sentences that coherently express an idea. Likewise a sentence is one or more words that coherently express an idea, and an essay in similar fashion.

Strategies for coherence include:

• Repetition
• Emphasis
• Transitions