HOME LEARNING WEEKs 8-9 TASKS
(1) Your Odyssey assignment asks you to include a final body paragraph of personal reflection as it pertains to the Big Question you selected. Today I’ll give to you my expectations for that. Please remember that your essay is due this coming Friday. I’ll be holding office hours during community time throughout the week in our Zoom room if you’d like for me to take a look at your written work. I’ll consider holding office hours after school this week if there’s a big turnout.
(2) Read the next episode with Teiresias, the blind prophet, and the choral ode that follows (lines 316-565). Then watch the following two videos, the corresponding parts from our production.
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We begin today with a summary of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to enhance our understanding of some of the philosophy behind Oedipus’s battle through the gauntlet of ignorance. The big question we want to answer is this: How does Oedipus’ journey through Plato’s Cave inform our understanding of his role as a tragic hero?
Let’s start by thinking: Below are the stages of Plato’s Allegory, each corresponding to a stage of Oedipus’s journey. Where is Oedipus at this point in the play?
Stage 1: Imprisoned by Ignorance – The prisoners think the shadows are reality.
Stage 2: Recognition and Denial – The prisoners realize that concrete objects make the shadows, but they do not yet believe in the world outside the cave.
Stage 3: Freed by Knowledge – The prisoners see the outside world and its reality; enlightenment.
Stage 4: Sharers of Knowledge – Freed prisoners return to the cave to share their knowledge and free the others.
Now let’s watch the video above, which does a much better job in explaining the idea behind Plato’s cave. In what ways do you see the scene between Oedipus and Tieresias staging the philosophy behind the Cave?
Before we go I’d like to remind you about what goes into introductions and conclusions of essays. Please remember that your essay is due on Friday to turnitin.com. 3:30, please.
Homework:
For our next class I’d like you to (1) read the next episode with Oedipus, Creon, and Jocasta, as well as the choral ode that follows (lines 566-974). Then (2) watch the corresponding scenes below:
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Please remember that your essay on the Odyssey is due TODAY by 3:30. Please post to turnitin.com if you have not done so already. I’m going to give you the period to put the finishing touches on it.
Before our next class, please read the next episode of Oedipus with the messenger (the play’s best character) and Jocasta followed by the short choral ode (lines 975-1175). This is my favorite scene in the play as Oedipus moves right up to the brink of enlightenment and Jocasta begins to piece the puzzle together. It’s unbearably tense. It’s just a few pages, and we’ll discuss both this section and the previous during our next session. Our production does a great job staging the scene. Skip ahead to the 4 minute, 15 second mark:
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Today I’d like to share with you the prompts for the short answer test that you’ll write for me during our last class together on Thursday (section 3) or Friday (sections 5, 6, 7). You’ll have 50 minutes to respond to each in two or three sentences each. You’ll then post to turnitin.com. Have a blank document ready to go at the beginning of class.
(1) Compare and contrast Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with Sophocles’ Oedipus the King in relation to the subjects of IGNORANCE and TRUTH.
(2) Define DRAMATIC IRONY. Give an example from the play and explain the effect on the audience.
(3) Aristotle defined a TRAGIC FLAW as consisting of “error and frailties”. What errors does Oedipus make? What are his frailties?
(4) Yes, the events of the play are fated, but in what ways can Oedipus be regarded as responsible for the suffering and death in the play?
(5) Having just plucked out his eyes, Oedipus, in a moment of real human emotion, speaking to the Chorus, emotes,
Oedipus: What can I see to love?
What greeting can touch my ears with joy?
Take me away, and hurry—to a place out of the way! quickly
Take me away, my friends, the greatly miserable,
the most accursed, whom God too hates
above all men on earth!
Write a response using just this section of text as evidence that precisely defines the specific emotions Oedipus feels at each beat of the passage.
Homework: Before our next class, please read lines 1176-1373, stopping just before Oedipus re-enters. Below are the corresponding scenes from the Michael Pennington production:
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Today in class we’ll brainstorm responses to each of the questions on the Oedipus the King assignment that you’ll complete during our next session.
Homework: Before you can complete that assignment, though, you need to finish reading and watching the play. So, your homework for next time is to do just that. There’s just a couple hundred lines left. Once you finish reading, you can access the final clips from our production below:
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HOME LEARNING WEEK 7 TASKS
This week we’re going to move on to our final unit of the year: DRAMA. We’re going to learn a little about how plays differ from prose and epic narratives; we’ll discover a little of how the Ancient Greek theatres staged their plays; we’ll read the entirety and watch excerpts of Sophocles’s famous tragedy Oedipus the King. But all of that begins tomorrow. For now I’d like to give you your third and final class period to work on your body paragraphs for the Odyssey essay.
Before that, please take a look at the marked-up body paragraphs below. Study my notes to apply them to your own work. Each student below is asked to revise his paragraph and re-send to me, so I can post the ‘after’ of the ‘before and after’.
BEFORE:
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Last semester we focused on narrative fiction—short stories, a graphic novel, a novel. This semester we moved to narrative poetry. These are all forms of a storytelling form we call diegesis. Now we finish with a short unit on drama, a storytelling form we refer to as mimesis. We’ll read a very famous Ancient Greek play, Oedipus the King. It’s found in your Literature to Go anthology.
Lessons for today:
Thanks to my wife for sketching what I’d normally have a student sketch on the board.
Here is the PDF with all of my notes for today. We’ll be asking and answering the following questions:
(1) What is drama, and how is it different from long-form fiction? How did drama get started, probably?
Drama not only imitates real life but transcends it. That's kind of what theatre is: a heightened version of real life. All poetry, Aristotle argues, is imitation or mimesis. Aristotle imagines that poetry springs from a basic human delight in mimicry. Humans learn through imitating and take pleasure in looking at imitations of the perceived world.
(2) What is Ancient Greek Theatre?
(3) What is Ancient Greek TRAGEDY? Why is tragedy so alluring?
(4) The Theban Legend; or, Kubus spoils everything
Homework for our next class:
(1) Watch the first video that discusses the importance of theatre in the lives of those living in what we now call Classical Athens.
(2) Watch the second video that focuses on the genre that we'll be reading, tragedy. TRAGEDY is that genre that deals with human suffering. TRAGEDY allows us to stare at the darker parts of our lives without actually experiencing them firsthand and to experience catharsis, the purging of emotions.
(3) OPTIONAL for those students who are keen to soak up more.
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Assignment for our next class:
In Literature to Go, read the introductory portions of Oedipus, pages 601-608. Then, read the Prologue (lines 1-174), the Parados (lines 174-224), and the beginning of the first Episode, just before Tiresias enters (lines 225-316). If you left Literature to Go on campus, here is a PDF of the same translation as is in our anthology.
Respond to the following two questions in your notebook.
(1) What kind of a person is Oedipus in the opening scene? What characteristics stand out to you early on?
(2) How does the Chorus feel about Oedipus in the Parados? How do you know?
STOP FOR NOW. WE’ll PICK UP FROM HERE NEXT TIME.
Now that we’ve read and discussed the opening scenes of Oedipus, I’d like for you to go ahead and watch the corresponding scenes of a production. In this production Michael Pennington plays Oedipus, and his performance is excellent in my opinion, but the production itself is very outdated and a bit on the cheesy side. It’s not the production I’d like to use to introduce you to good drama, but unfortunately, guys, it’s the only free one we can get our hands on; it’s going to have to do! Let’s get over the cheesiness and let the production tell the story as best as it can. There’s only so much they could do in the 80s on a soundstage on a budget. So, by our next class, just watch each ten-minute clip below.
When watching a production of a play, you always want to be thinking about choices by the cast and director that are intended to tell the story in a certain way. In this production, what do they want to highlight about Oedipus? How do they do it? Where do they have him stand? What is he wearing? How does he talk? Are there certain lines he emphasizes? These are all things to notice as you watch. Continue to take notes in your notebook about any observation you make and would like to mention during our next class.
STOP FOR NOW. WE’ll PICK UP FROM HERE NEXT TIME.
what's due?
Tuesday, May 5 - Extra Credit Vocabulary Quiz
Friday, May 15 - Final Odyssey Assignment
May 21 / May 22 - Oedipus Short Answer Test
our virtual classroom code
Each time we’d have a regularly scheduled class, you’ll follow this link and enter code:
640-291-5956
getting in touch with kubus
Click the image to the left to see how to get in contact with Mr. Kubus while we’re learning at home.
Kubus English Hotline:
832-479-9238
Call anytime between 9a and 5p, M-F.
current text to use daily
“In the realm of narrative psychology, a person’s life story is not a Wikipedia biography of the facts and events of a life, but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally—picks them apart and weaves them back together to make meaning. This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way she tells it, can both reflect and shape who she is. A life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they’ll become, and for what happens next.”
