unit 1: Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
AUGUST 11 (SECTIONS 1-5) AUGUST 12 (SECTION 6)
MEETING 1
Welcome. Today we’ll see how Dostoevsky’s careful ordering of the plot events in Book One show how Raskolnikov gradually justifies his decision to kill Alyona Ivanovna. We’ll especially focus on the section when Raskolnikov encounters the young woman on the bench.
But first: the novel’s key passage, you would say.
We’ll finish today with a course introduction and overview of the semester.
HW:
(1) Register on Turnitin. The Class ID is 35267972. The Class Enrollment Key is Magis. Please use your full first name, last name, and mail.strakejesuit email.
(2) Order this copy of Moby-Dick. We’ll spend the year reading it together. Make sure you have it by August 26.
(3) Read, learn, and follow these four rules down the path to success:
(1) Use the restroom and get your water before class.
(2) If you’re absent, ask a peer what you missed and what you need to make up.
(3) Want to meet with me? Done. You got it. No e-mail exchange necessary. Just pop in. I’ll enjoy the surprise.
(4) No screens in my classroom. Ever. So, put your phone and iPad in your bag. In my classroom, you’ll be a person.
(4) Familiarize yourself with this page of my website and the others—the writing center and the policy page. You’re responsible for knowing the policies of this course.
(5) Finish working through the front of the characterization handout.
AUGUST 12 (SECTIONS 1-2) AUGUST 15 (SECTIONS 4-6)
MEETING 2
You’re back! Here’s what’s on tap for today:
First, I’ll set the vocabulary and sentence composition assignment you’ll work with throughout the year. Your first quiz is next week.
Then, we’ll move through the rest of the front of the characterization handout.
Our main business for today, though, has to do with Dostoevsky’s handling of secondary and minor characters throughout the novel. We’ll discuss doubling/foiling and how Dostoevsky uses characters to embody and feel philosophical ideas. Dunya, for instance, doubles Sonya; Raskolnikov doubles Svidrigailov. So, we might ask what Dostoevsky is doing with this contrast or inversion: Why can’t Dunya do for Svidrigailov what Sonya does for Raskolnikov? Is it as a result of a difference between Svid and Rask, or Dunya and Sonya?
HW:
(1) Write the paragraph on the back the characterization handout.
(2) Re-read the novel’s two main “Sonya” chapters: Part Four, Chapter IV and Part Five, Chapter IV. What does Sonya see in Raskolnikov that she would show such compassion? What is it about Sonya that makes Raskolnikov want to confess to her and only her?
AUGUST 16 (SECTIONS 1-4) AUGUST 17 (SECTIONS 5-6)
MEETING 3
We begin today with the reading quiz. You’ll have 20 minutes to work through it.
Let’s put the document camera to work and see of few of your paragraphs.
The bulk of today’s class, though, will cover the Sonya chapters.
HW:
(1) Read through the Crime and Punishment essay assignment. Choose one of the topics on the list (or one that you don’t see that you think should be there) that you feel equipped to discuss. You’re not locked into this topic for the writing of the essay. Find 3 short passages from anywhere in the novel that you think suggest something about the topic. Ask yourself: How does each passage develop my selected topic?
(2) George Panichas says in “The Dark World of Fyodor Dostoevksy,” “Generally, [Dostoevsky's] fictional world mirrors metaphysical qualities; pictorial details are included, cumulatively, so as to help one penetrate metaphysical depths. Hence Dostoevsky employs sensuous elements in order to heighten and color, to body forth, an inner realm.” I hope as you were reading you picked up elements of this in, for instance, desolate and claustrophobic descriptions of Raskolnikov’s closet or the seediness of Petersburg. Come to our next class with one representative passage with penetrating sensorial details that may or may not call our attention to the metaphysical realm. Be able to explain.
AUGUST 17 (SECTION 1) AUGUST 18 (SECTIONS 2-6)
MEETING 4
Today I’ll take questions about the Crime and Punishment essay and we’ll begin to work through a topic or two, focusing mainly on what to do with a passage of prose. I want to look at one of your setting passages to demonstrate.
We’ll also review thesis statements.
HW:
(1) Read the model essay on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Look closely at each developing ¶ and notice how it works with the other ¶s to build the larger idea in the thesis.
AUGUST 19 (SECTIONS 1-2) AUGUST 22 (SECTIONS 4-6)
MEETING 5
Today we will move through the model essay and a few sample Crime and Punishment body paragraphs.
What did you notice about the model essay’s structure and its methodology within ¶s?
HW:
(1) Make a plan for your Crime and Punishment essay. Write your thesis and ask, “What does my thesis demand I do structurally to fully develop my idea?” Once you know the answer to that question, write your topic sentences.
AUGUST 23 (SECTION 1-5) AUGUST 24 (SECTION 6)
MEETING 6
Today we begin with the first vocabulary quiz of the year.
We’ll continue of discussion of theme from last time and further how we use evidence in our body paragraphs to support topic sentences and thesis statements. We’ll use a sample body paragraph on Razumikhin.
HW:
(1) Finish reading the handout with the remaining sample body ¶s.
(2) Write one of your body ¶s.
(3) THINK: If there is no epilogue, how is the novel different?
AUGUST 24 (SECTIONS 1-2) AUGUST 25 (SECTIONS 4-6)
MEETING 7
Today we’ll have our final discussion about Crime and Punishment and work through sample openers and closers.
HW:
(1) Make sure you bring Dante’s Inferno and Melville’s Moby-Dick to our next class.
due DATES
syllabus
cyclical vocabulary and sentence composition assignment
CURRENT TEXTs TO HAVE DAILY
Moby-dick central
Click for full reading schedule and assignments
You’re undertaking the reading of the greatest work of American fiction and one of the world’s greatest works of art. It’s a project that’ll span the entirety of the year, completing the reading outside of class and in addition to your other regular assignments. It’s an undertaking to read this novel, to be sure, but it need not be arduous if you’re disciplined.
An undertaking, yes, but that does not mean you should simply set it down and walk away when you hit a tough or a boring chapter. It’s a rewarding book to those who work the hardest and put in the time it requires. This section of the course page provides you the tools you’ll need to work the novel through to its completion.
Here is a handy document you might consider printing and having with you while you read: Allusions in Moby-Dick
You may find it useful to use the audio recordings from The Big Read; each chapter has a special guest reading it. Listening along will help, especially at the beginning. The readers are (mostly) excellent at capturing the tone of each chapter. As you read, seek out and consider the following concepts:
Water meditations and man's attraction to water, Ishmael's curiosity about and tolerance for human motivation, The quest, The nature of God and man, Finding and losing the self (Narcissus), Parallels between land and sea, Civilization and "savagery", cannibalism, Biblical echoes and references: Jonah, Job, Ahab, Elijah, Ishmael, etc., Monomania and madness, the value of religion, the value of community
“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”
History of the whaleship Essex
The origin of the name Moby Dick
How to read Moby-Dick (a great site!)
Power Moby-Dick (a great annotated text)
Audio version of Moby-Dick (The Big Read)
fall semester units
Unit One: Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment Unit Two: Dante’s Inferno Unit Three: Moby-Dick, Chapters 1-22 Unit Four: Lyric Poetry 1 Unit Five: Short Fiction 1 Unit Six: Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Unit Seven: Moby-Dick, Chapters 23-46