WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17 (1)
A rare interview with with Cormac McCarthy
"When I heard the learn'd astronomer"; Course introduction; Policies; Tiny-scan or take a picture of your document; I may not have time to return these to you by Friday. Collect packet with 6 quotations. Make sure you drop your book off at my office by the end of the day. I'll be returning it to you on Friday. You'll need them for draft writing over the weekend.
To do tonight:
1. Watch Oprah's interview with Cormac McCarthy to the right. We'll refer to it throughout this week and next.
2. Register on turnitin.com:
Class ID: 13114399
Password: magis
Use your mail.strakejesuit email.
3. Make sure you have Google Drive, Google Docs, and Socrative student loaded on your iPad.
4. Review ALL of the policy page. Familiarize yourself with how the class works. Look through the website to see what's available.
5. Sign up for a draft conference here. When you come to the conference, bring yourself a copy of this document, the essay examen, which you'll do for each of your essays throughout the year. It's a great way for you to take ownership of your work and monitor your development as a writer as we add layers to the writing process. I'll have the copy you attached to your draft. Do you need to have a meeting? No. But it will really help. If you don't want to have a meeting, I'll grade your essay the old fashioned way and trickle them back to you over the next couple of weeks. How will I know which ones to grade by hand? I'll start grading the essays of those students who have not signed up for an appointment by Monday.
6. Priorities one and two in this class are to answer two questions: why do we read? and how do we use essays to engage our reading? Literature can help us understand some of life's big questions, and I'd like for you to think about which of life's big questions can be answered by McCarthy's novel. To that end, go back to your provisional thesis and selected passages. How do the passages help develop the provisional thesis? Redefine the essential question you're asking and narrow down the passages to the four or five most important; these will most likely be the basis for your body paragraphs in the essay you'll write. Come to class tomorrow with a clear question you're asking, a refined provisional thesis, and the evidence to support the thesis.
Thursday, August 18 (2)
"When he woke in the woods in the dark"; Your initial reaction to The Road; Any questions about the course?
Getting launched in your writing; Trimble's Checklist (our focus for the first essay):
1. A well-defined statement of argument
2. A clear plan of attack
3. Solid evidence
4. A narrative through line
5. A persuasive closing appeal
By tomorrow read and annotate the entirety of John Trimble's chapter, "Middles", from his book Writing with Style, paying particular attention to pages 46-49. Bring a hard copy of this essay to class.
Friday, August 19 (3)
Model essay explained
A draft of an essay on The Road is due on Monday by 3:30 PM. You'll submit both a hard copy and a copy to turnitin.com.
I'll be looking to see Trimble's checklist in action, your demonstration of what you learned in three years of high school writing instruction. Study the model essay, mimic its techniques. Write an interesting and competent thematic essay. Get your writing out of your head by focusing on structure and clarity at the level of the sentence and the paragraph.
Review the late policy on the policies page of the website.
Essay requirements: MLA heading, citation style, Works Cited page. At least 1,000 words. Times New Roman font size 12. Double spacing throughout. Complete the Essay Examen and attach as the last pages of your draft.
As with all your assignments this year, the essay is to be your own work. Period. No Googling or other "research." Think as you do. Be a man of integrity. How you attain your goal is as important as the goal itself.
Here's a rubric, complete with what I'll be looking for in these essays. More than anything, show me you've engaged the text and read with a focus. This is your first impression as a student. Make a good one.
Monday, August 22 (4)
The Road discussion. Find a partner you trust and use one of the following questions to focus your discussion, or write your own. You'll have the entire class, so I expect you to become an expert in your topic. Work through the novel, collecting passages, following passages, seeing what they tell you, until you have interesting and revealing things to say about the question. Take notes. Be prepared to lead a large-group discussion if I ask you to. And I will.
McCarthy says, “I don’t think goodness is something that you learn. If you’re left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble…..There’s not much you can do to try to make a child into something that he’s not. But whatever he is, you can sure destroy it. Just be mean and cruel and you can destroy the best person” (WSJ interview). According to the novel, what is goodness? Is goodness something learned or something innate? What is it that the man and the boy come to understand about “goodness,” and what it is to live a good life in a harsh world?
What in your view is the novel’s crucial passage? Why? What questions does it raise? How do you see the novel thinking about those questions? Do you find an “answer?” What in your view is the novel’s most important word?
In an interview, McCarthy dismisses attempts to define the cause of the disaster, saying, “The whole thing now is, what do you do?” (WSJ interview). That raises a host of interesting questions. What do the characters do? What questions do you ask about their actions?
McCarthy says that “older people who have had good lives...will say, ‘The most significant thing in my life is that I’ve been extraordinarily lucky.’ And when you hear that you know you’re hearing the truth” (WSJ interview). How does luck figure into The Road?
Characterize the novel’s style, the specific grammatical features of its sentences, the nature of its words, its imagery, its tone. Why do you think McCarthy uses such a style for this novel?
The world of the novel seems awfully bleak. Does the novel offer any signs of hope?
Responding to the Wall Street Journal observation that the man and boy “never say, ‘I love you,’” McCarthy says, “No. I don’t think that would add anything to the story at all.” Why wouldn’t it?
Why is food an important motif?
What does the novel have to say about fathers and sons?
What should we make of the novel’s final ¶?
From what point of view is the novel told? What would the novel be like if it were told in first person, from the man’s perspective? the boy’s?
Why did the father choose to survive and not the mother? What did he see that she could not?
When does the boy become a man? What does he see that his father can’t?
What do you think McCarthy is saying about humanity in The Road?
Tuesday, August 23 (5)
The Road discussion, student-driven, Kubus-moderated
Wednesday, August 24 (6)
The Road discussion, student-driven, Kubus-moderated
Thursday, August 25 (1)
Set revision portion of The Road Essay; Sample drafts up on the board
Friday, August 26 (2)
Revision -- The Day Dylan Got it Right
Blending quotations; Sample drafts up on the board
NOTE: First vocabulary quiz next Thursday (units 1-2). Make sure you have your copy of Degen's Crafting Expository Argument and Homer's Iliad ready to go at the end of next week. We will begin using them soon.
Monday, August 29 (3)
We'll use today to begin our discussion of how introductions and conclusions should function in our essays.
Tuesday, August 30 (4)
Today we'll split the class in half, first to continue our discussion of conclusions and then to move back to our discussion of The Road. Tonight I'd like you to think about how you'd answer the following question:
Responding to the Wall Street Journal observation that the man and boy “never say, ‘I love you,’” McCarthy says, “No. I don’t think that would add anything to the story at all.” Why wouldn’t it?
We'll begin there tomorrow and continue to let the conversation move in various directions.
Wednesday, August 31 (5)
The Road, large-group discussion
Thursday, September 1 (6)
The Road, large group discussion
Over the long weekend, in addition to working on your The Road revision, make sure you have this edition of the Iliad, translated by Stanley Lombardo. I'd like you to read
1. the following parts of Sheila Murnaghan's introduction to the Iliad: "The Iliad and the Trojan Legend" (xix-xxi), "Heroic Society" (xxi-xxv), "The Homeric Gods" (xxv-xxix), and "The Poetic Tradition" (liv-lviii).
2. this webpage, outlining the heroic code.
3. this short conclusion from Adam Nicolson's book, Why Homer Matters.
4. Iliad. Book1, lines 1-8.
Click the image to read a short bio of Cormac McCarthy
What's Due?
Wednesday, August 17 - Turn in book with Post-its and annotations; Turn in packet of 6 quotations with responses
Monday, August 22 - First draft of The Road essay due as a hard copy in class and to turnitin.com by 3:30 PM.
Monday, September 12 - The Road essay revision due
The Road Draft Conference Schedule
Word of the day
“He started down the rough wooden steps. He ducked his head and then flicked the lighter and swung the flame out over the darkness like an offering. Coldness and damp. An ungodly stench. He could see part of a stone wall. Clay floor. An old mattress darkly stained. He crouched and stepped down again and held out the light. Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous.
Jesus, he whispered.
Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help us, they whispered. Please help us.”
sample annotated pages
Nabokov on simplicity
“In reading exam papers written by misled students, of both sexes, about this or that author, I have often come across such phrases — probably recollections from more tender years of schooling — as ‘his style is simple’ or ‘his style is clear and simple’ or ‘his style is beautiful and simple’ or ‘his style is quite beautiful and simple.’ But remember that ‘simplicity’ is buncombe. No major writer is simple. The Saturday Evening Post is simple. Journalese is simple. Upton Lewis is simple. Mom is simple. Digests are simple. Damnation is simple. But Tolstoys and Melvilles are not simple... This story is Tolstoy’s most artistic, most perfect, and most sophisticated achievement... Tolstoy’s style is a marvelously complicated, ponderous achievement.”
