Thought Provoker #2

What follows is a THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTION that I would like you to address and debate online tonight. We will be talking in depth about this issue in class tomorrow, and this exercise will help clarify and deepen your own thoughts on the issue. You do not need to have read Goldstein's Book to answer or address this prompt.

So here goes.

Who is the better rebel: Winston or Julia?

[NOTE: Obviously, for this prompt to mean anything, you're going to have to think about what constitutes "better".]

Make an argument, back it up with text, think about how it relates to the bigger picture outside of Orwell's world. THINK!

Thought Provoker #1

TO those about to engage in thought-provoking online discussion, I salute you.

What follows is a THOUGHT-PROVOKING QUESTION about the first part of 1984. Please do your reading first, and then answer the question. This is not a piece of formal writing. This does not have to reference the text, although you can bring in evidence from it if you so desire. This assignment is only designed to get a conversation going.

Here's the prompt: At the beginning of chapter seven of Part One, Orwell describes a moment where Winston wanders into the "prole" quarters of London. There he experiences the following:

He had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices--women's voices--had burst from a side street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep loud "Oh-o-o-o-oh!" that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It's started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding around the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamored round the stall, accusing the stallkeeper of favoritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve. There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another's hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off.

We've been talking this week in class about "methods of control", and even though we haven't yet finished our conversation, this passage seems to stand out. But this quotation seems to say something different about who has power and how the Party keeps people under control from what we've already said in class.

So...what is Orwell saying about how the Party keeps the Proles (and others) under control? And...and this is more important...is Orwell actually talking about us? How do you know?

Who's gonna get it started?

Your Personal Utopia and Dystopia

HW for Tuesday, 9/17:

In the COMMENT space below, please write a short response of no more than 500 words to the following questions:

1. If you could design a utopia to live in, what would it look like?
2. If you could design a dystopia (that you wouldn't ever want to live in), what would it look like?

Your response should be creative, descriptive, and as precise as possible. It's not enough to just say, "My dystopia would be a bad place to live." You need to explain WHAT EXACTLY is bad about it. Is there an oppressive government? Is there no freedom? Who has power? Who doesn't?

IMPORTANT POINT #1: In order to comment on this post, you need to have a Google ID. If I understand correctly, you already have a Google ID from the Newton Public Schools, but if you would like to use your personal Google ID (or create one), that would be fine as well. A Google ID is free and comes with no strings attached.

IMPORTANT POINT #2: if you can't see the COMMENT space, click on the Blog Title ("Your Personal Utopia and Dystopia") above and then scroll to the bottom.

Have fun!
Learn something!

1984 Essential Questions

On the UNIT SYLLABUS documents copied below, the "Essential Questions" box got formatted incorrectly.

Here are the Essential Questions for our unit on 1984!

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: Remember that great literature provokes us to think about great questions. In this box you will find the some of those provocative questions.

Essential Question: Do individuals have the power to change the society in which they live?

a)  Power: How does a single group of people gain such total power in society? What are the methods that people use to gain control over other people? Why do people submit to this power?

           i) Personal v. Principled Rebellion: What are the reasons why people might not submit to that  power? Is rebellion worth it?

b) Identity: How much of our identity should be kept private and how much should be made public? What happens to our identity when people in power take our privacy away?

c)    Interconnectedness: How does being shut off and disconnected from the rest of the world limit our abilities to understand ourselves and gain power over ourselves?

And some other fun ones, for good measure:

a) How can 2+2 equal 5?

b) What's in your Room 101?

1984 Unit Syllabus

Students and Parents:

Attached to this post, you can find the UNIT SYLLABUS for our unit on George Orwell's 1984. This syllabus contains all homework due between September 17th and October 23rd. Enjoy!

D-Block Syllabus

E-Block Syllabus

Please let me know if the links are not working!

Dystopian Film Trailers

In preparation for our unit on George Orwell's 1984, I've posted a number of movie trailers of films that classify in the Dystopian Sci-Fi genre. Seen any of them? (NOTE: it pays to watch all of these trailers because you're gonna notice some music and actors that reoccur! Is that just a coincidence?)

1. 1984 (1984, dir. Michael Radford): This is a staggeringly literal adaptation of Orwell's novel, but it's better than most "movies of the book" because of its bleak, washed out set design and color scheme.

2. Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang): The first truly original cinematic vision of the future, Metropolis came out before even Orwell was thinking about things to come. It's a masterful, tense, frightening, and hugely influential movie that launched an entire subgenre.

3. Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott): Sentient robots (called Replicants) escape from their prison and go on a killing spree in futuristic cyberpunk Los Angeles. Harrison Ford's Deckard is the cop who must hunt them down, unless they get to him first. A dark, beautiful, and philosophical film.

4. Children of Men (2006, dir. Alfonso Cuaron): A global infertility epidemic threatens to destroy the human race...no baby has born in 18 years. Until now. Cuaron directed the third Harry Potter film, but this one is in another league: it forces us to see what we would become if all social order collapsed around us.

5. V for Vendetta (2005, dir. James McTeigue): In this truly Orwellian dystopia, an all-powerful government suppresses individuality and personal freedom, until a masked vigilante named V starts wreaking havoc and inspiring the masses.

6. Brazil (1985, dir. Terry Gilliam): The closest of the original films to Orwell's story, Brazil is like a Monty Python version of what Oceania would be like, which makes sense considering that Terry Gilliam was an original member of the Pythons. But this film, while darkly comic, is nowhere near as silly as any quests for Holy Grails or meanings of life.

7. WALL-E (2008, dir. Andrew Stanton): This Pixar classic is like two dystopias in one: first, the wrecked and abandoned planet earth, populated only by the titular robot; and second, the floating spaceship where humanity has resided in total luxury for hundreds of years, with frightening effects. A beautiful allegory and a charming love story. And you've probably seen it already!

8. The Hunger Games (2012, dir. Gary Ross): My sense is that you've all probably seen this one, too. But if you haven't, it's a story about a dystopia where an all-powerful government maintains control over their population through ritualistic contests where boys and girls are thrown into an arena and forced to fight to the death. And there'll be a sequel in a few months.

Arguments That Matter?

Students!

Last week, in preparation for writing our Summer Reading essays, we spent a day doing an activity on "Paragraph Arguments" (aka, topic sentences) and one of those activities asked you to choose a pre-written PA and then write a paragraph that followed it.

One of those prompts was "Newton Public Schools should purchase personal iPads or laptops for all of the district's students." Some of you chose to write on it (while most of you wrote about twerking and Miley Cyrus).

Well, here's an article from today's (Sunday, 9/15) New York Times Magazine in which that argument is put to the test: one district DID buy iPads for all its students, with many arguments expressed on both sides of the issue.

Read the article here!

And keep in mind: the issues about technology and privacy brought up pertain directly to 1984, the novel we will all start reading this week.

Feel free to leave comments on the article in the space below.

-MrW

Lessons of Argument Writing

Hello students!

Below I am posting some of the most on-target and useful "Lessons of Argument Writing" that you wrote in today's class activity. Pay attention: there's some important lessons to be learned!

1. "Being clear will help your opinion be stronger."

2. "Provide insights that others may not have had."

3. "Your argument should be able to lead to a discussion."

4. "An argument doesn't have to be long to be persuasive."

5. "You need to be bold."

6. "It's ok for people to disagree [with your argument]."

7. "Arguments are only effective if the message comes across simply."

8. "Central arguments should have no unnecessary information."

9. "If your argument uses the word 'better', it can't be provable."

10. "It should provoke your reader to a new way of thinking."

Great job today. See you on Turnitin.com!

Links to Purchase Books

Students and Parents!

I highly recommend that you purchase copies of the literature we will be studying this year, and below you can find links to the amazon page of each text.

1984 by George Orwell (purchase by Monday, 16 September):Amazon Link

Antigone by Sophocles: no need to purchase because I will be photocopying the play for all students.

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (purchase by Monday, 4 November): Amazon Link

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (purchase by Monday, 16 December): Amazon Link

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak (purchase by Monday, 3 February): Amazon Link

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (purchase by Monday, 10 March): Amazon Link

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (purchase by Monday, 7 April): Amazon Link

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (purchase by Monday, 5 May): Amazon Link

Please note that if you have an e-reader, you can use it for class assignments (since I know that e-books can be cheaper than paper books).

Let me know if you have comments or questions!

Arguing Summer Reading

Hi again!

Here's the link for the "Arguing Summer Reading" assignment sheet. It includes all of your homework assignments up to Monday, 16 September:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByoE7NE7ICZhTVJmWS1VVjM1X3c/edit?usp=sharing

2013-2014 Course Syllabus

Students!

Attached to this post is the 2013-2014 MGC English Course Syllabus.

In this document, you can find useful information about our course texts, our course goals, our class norms and expectations, and class policies.

Use it!

Here's the link to the document:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByoE7NE7ICZhc24xS2dxYWxXVTg/edit?usp=sharing