That one is on me. The upcoming week we’ll have a short lecture on framing your analysis, essentially how to read the book and Wednesday will be classroom work.

The Theory of Everything pt. 2

Here’s a suggested reading list that you might find helpful. Be aware that I have read these books and should be able to give you a lot of help should you encounter problems. Also, if you have decided on which book to read, please tell me so I can put it down in my files.

The Warriors – Sol Yurick                                       
An adaption of a Greek epic to 1980’s (then future) New York were a youth-gang called the Dominators find themselves stranded in the Bronx, trying to get home to Long Island. ~150 pages.

Going Solo – Roald Dahl
The semi-biographical tale of how Roald Dahl goes from being an accountant with Shell in Africa to a fighter pilot, fighting in the battle for Greece and Palestine. ~150 pages.

Matilda – Roald Dahl                                              
A story with fairy-tale elements as well as dark humor depicting a very talented young girl making her way through the world. ~150 pages.

Hunger Games series – Suzanne Collins               
Future dystopian growing up-novel with elements of Greek mythology and science fiction. ~200 pages per book.

Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling                          
Fantasy epic set in both the wizarding and muggle-world of England. Themes includes growing up, friendship, racism, social class and love. ~200-700 pages per book

Animal Farm – George Orwell                                 
A metaphorical story of how the animals rebel and oust the tyrannical farmer: taking controls of the means of production and the struggles they then have to face.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl                                                             
A very intellectual teenage girl struggles to decode the meaning of her life, being a vagabond with her father, and how this fits in with the strange events that happen around her. ~700 pages.

Twilight series – Stephanie Meyer                         
Three novels concerning a troubled teenager who has to deal with supernatural facts in her environment. Themes include love, sex, friendship, racism and history. ~300-600 pages each.

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad                      
Marlow is a British sailor who is enlisted to travel up a river in Belgian Congo to retrieve a Belgian official named Kurtz who has gone mad. Themes include colonialism, racism, civilization and insanity. ~100 pages.

The Beach – Alex Garland                                       
The cloudy dream of an American backpacker who tries to find utopia in Thailand. The novel is sprinkled with dreams and hopes and how they match with reality. Themes include colonialism, racism, group psychology and madness. ~400 pages.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick                                                              
A fevered, dystopian novel where humanity is on the decline and it is nearly impossible to tell androids from humans. Dream-sequences make it hard for Deckard to tell reality from dream. The book that influenced Blade Runner and a difficult book to read. ~250 pages.

The old man and the sea  – Ernest Hemingway                                                    
The greater than life novel of Santiago, an old fisherman, who finds himself toe to toe with nature itself during a bout with a great fish out to sea. ~100 pages.

Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein                
No one is sure how to read it as a parody or as a dead serious praise to dictatorship. A future earth is solely based on military order and fighting alien invaders. ~300 pages.

Game of Thrones series – R.R. Martin                   
One of the most popular fantasy-series today. The novels tell the story of Westeros and its rival noble houses who compete for power while facing outside threats. ~400-900 pages.

Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh                                  
The quirky and dark story of Renton, a Scottish heroine addict trying to make a living in Thatcher-era, AIDS-riddled and recession-plagued Glasgow. ~250 pages.

The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien                                    
Originally written as a children’s story, The Hobbit has several important themes that speak to all ages: maturing, bravery, friendship and adventure. ~200 pages.

On the Road – Jack Kerouac                                  
The original road novel. This novel is often mentioned as the foundation of the Beatnik and later on Hippie-movements. ~200 pages.

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess             
Dystopian novel of a future with violence happening everywhere and taking a ritualistic form while civil society ineffectively tries to deal with it. ~150 pages.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald                  
A snap-picture of the 1920’s United States with alcohol and gambling controlled by the mafia. Essentially a love story, it is also an acclaimed portrait of a more innocent America. ~100 pages.

The Theory of Everything pt.1

The final, and by far the largest, project of this course has begun. You are to demonstrate your ability to understand the historical context of a work and its stylistic elements. For you to succeed you need to come see me for the compendium Interpreting Fiction.this compendium will be the toolbox for your literary analysis.

Book Report: Work and Context. v.1.0

You are now to embark on your final project in this course. The task is to read and understand a specific work of English fiction and also to be able to understand the context in which the novel was concocted. Doing this, you must consider a) the context – time and place – in which the author wrote the novel and b) the style elements that the novel comprises. You are also expected to give background info on the author, for instance, what circumstances in the author’s life made him or her write this particular novel?

Part A – The Historical Context

This part deals more with issues of history, society and even religion. This part serves as a way of you to demonstrate your understanding of how English is used and has been used in different parts of the world. In this part you are expected to use external sources to compliment your analysis such as news articles, Wikipedia, films and documentaries, textbooks and whatever you might find. In this part you are expected to:

–          A portrait of the author. When and where was he/she born, what schools did he/she attend, what social class was the author born into?

–          Are there any specific experiences that the author had that affected the novel or its characters? A real event or person that is.

–          Lastly, I want you to categorize the novel using literary terms and motivate your categorization.

• Would the author have a specific reason to write this specific novel at the time he/she did? Consider!

Part B – The Novel

This part will deal with the aesthetics of the novel; the things that make it out as a work of literature. To support this analysis you are expected to use quotes from the novel to strengthen whatever your case may be.

–          What is the setting of the novel? (Middle-Earth, Wizard World of England, In a galaxy far, far away…)

–          What are the major plot outlines? You are not to give an exact summary of the novel but an overview of the plot in terms of:

• The main characters (Choose a maximum of three)
• A conflict that each of these characters must face in the plot. Usually something that has to be overcome. (The ring into Mordor, wake from the dream)
• How the conflicts are resolved, which usually concludes the plotline. (Ring-Fire, Voldemort-Fight to the death, I think this might be the beginning of a great friendship)

–          Style. What makes this novel what it is? How is it told? Consider the questions below:

• How is the narrative constructed? Is it a narrator, first person narrative or a mix?
• What is the author’s style of writing? Here I expect you to use the tools you mastered earlier in the course such as allusions, metaphors, irony, dark humor and so on.
• Compare the two preceding points in terms of context: is it a love story in space or a thriller in a retirement home? What are the effects of this?

Specifics

Your essay must meet several requirements to be eligible for a passing grade. The purpose of these specifics is to make your essays as comparable as possible both for me and between yourselves. Note that there is a difference between guidelines and requirements. The list below shows requirements.

Requirements

1. The essay is to consist of 3000 to 5000 words
2. You are to use 1,5 line spacing and Times New Roman 12pt.
3. Your essay is to contain the following headings:
   1. An introduction to the novel and your reasons for choosing it.
   2. A portrait of the author, his/her life and social background and how this may have influenced the novel
   3. A short review of the methods you have used to obtain the information you use. However, this is not a list of references. You are to account for which types of sources you have used such as Wikipedia (online resources), encyclopedias or textbooks and discuss the validity, benefits and drawbacks of each one of the different types of sources.
   4. Genre where you briefly assign the novel to an overall literary genre.
   5. Plot, what happens in the novel?
   6. Style, allusions, metaphors, narrative.
   7. Conclusion, where you conclude your experience reading the novel and the lessons you have learned writing your essay.
   8. A list of references that you have used for your paper. It is essential that you give the precise information on your sources since every reference will be a page number.
   9. You are to use the MLA-referencing system, and use it properly. Note that all word processors from roughly 2007 and newer have this template installed as a tool.
      1. Use 4-12 sentences per paragraph.
      2. Try to make use of hyphenation and semicolons to test your own writing capabilities.
      3. In order to structure your essay you are well advised to use sub-headings, especially in ‘style’.

Guidelines

During the remainder of the semester I will provide tutoring during class time. You are expected to attend the lessons unless you have made specific arrangements with me or I communicate otherwise. There is plenty of time to work with the essay and note that this assignment contains all the course criteria apart from hearing comprehension so this is a good chance to really up your grade.
          Deadlines to be announced.

 

Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham

During the break I watched this gem. It’s quite long but I would certainly recommend it because of the challenge to Darwinism – and indeed science as a whole – by the school of creationism. This debate could perhaps be one of the questions that will mark our time in the future next to the debate whether to vaccinate your children or not (If any one of you have a good debate on that topic please tell me so!). Watch, enjoy.

Rehearsing and Rectifying

First of all. For Friday’s session, those of you that have already had your halfway-seminars do not have to attend the lesson. Instead, you may do your work at home but if you wish, you may of course come see me if you have questions regarding the assignment. Those of you that have not attended a halfway-seminar yet would are expected to attend Friday’s lesson for feedback.

Plainly, if you have not attended a halfway-seminar you are to attend Friday’s lesson. The rest of you may take a leave-of-abscence.

For the final presentations – the presentation that will be graded – we will do them starting Wednesday 26th and Wednesday 5th. Groups to be announced.  As usual, if you have any questions be sure to contact me on my e-mail or through Schoolsoft.

Best regards, Anton

Yeah Yeah

I’ve gotten a bit de-railed here.

Too much TED

Yeah yeah, the Steve Jobs life-story at Stanford was nice. But I kept thinking of this for some reason.

A little pick-me-up.

So on Wednesday we’ll talk a bit of the old oxymoron. Until that, enjoy the sound and video of this piece of art.

War is Peace.

To those of you feeling a bit lost right now, don’t worry! You’ll push through!

Some heads up on rhetoric devices

I’m going to give a few samples of different rhetoric devices that I found on youtube. They use different aspects of language and previous knowledge of the listener. I’m also going to give a short interpretation of the source to give you an idea of how you could structure your own analysis.

First of all, here’s an old favorite of mine featuring Nick Vujicic, the chicken drumstick man. Fast forward to 1:25. Here Vujicic responds to a boy’s question about his lack of limbs. The answer is a spell of dark humor, playing on both schools anti-smoking campaign (smoking will cause DEATH) and the irony of this compared to Vujicic’s state of living. You should consider this source in relation to the overall notion of his talk: that you are good the way you are; he likes himself despite being limbless so why shouldn’t you? This could be called irony, dark humor (perhaps even morbid) and inspirational.

This parody of Barack Obama is also quite interesting. Obama’s usual style of speech is replicated, using his pauses, his way of lingering on words and his way of blurting out “but” to change the subject of the speech: the wellbeing of average americans. Overall the speech is very generic. That is, meaning very little. This is clearly shown when Obama towards the end essentially says “you’re in deep shit”. Here, it can be argued that using Obama’s regular tone until the end is an ironic effect.

Lastly, one of the most controversial leaders of the time, Malcolm X was a master orator. A quick background, as a part of freeing themselves from the mental slavery, members of the Nation of Islam was encouraged to change names from their slave names. Right in the beginning of the speech Malcolm has his name questioned by another guest at the show. The guest asks whether the name is his legal name that has been established by a court. Note how Malcolm does not really evade the question but answers the question as a question of race by comparing himself to a Chinese man named Murphy, meaning that he is an African and should have an African name. This strategy could be defined as he does not agree that the question is; he activates a different set of values (race, heritage, liberation) compared to the man who questions him (legality, mainstream, American name tradition).

On friday, we will discuss these examples, especially that of Malcolm X to understand how we can systematize his discourse.