Looks don’t matter; it’s who you are on the inside that counts. Do we really believe that?
Which of these faces are beautiful? Which face would you like to resemble? How many of them do you recognize?
What is your definition of BEAUTY? What makes a beautiful person?
How about this face?
This is Lucy Grealy. In the photograph on the cover of her book, Autobiography of a Face, she’s a child; her blond hair is blowing in the wind, and she is holding a translucent piece of material across her face. Her eyes are round, her nose is neatly shaped and her mouth tugs downward just a bit. The image is at once charming and disturbing. What is she hiding from, or hiding from us?
What will we see when she drops the veil?
As you read this book, and then Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, consider the authors’ basic ideas about identity. How is who you are formed, and how closely is it linked to how you look, or speak, or laugh? How is your identity connected to who your friends are, and what you’re good at, or wish you were good at? Think about how Grealy is taking us through her own process of gaining an identity after she’s been disfigured. Do you find her believable? Remember that this is a memoir, not journalism, so it’s not bound by the same rules of factuality. It’s how she remembers things rather than what happened exactly.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (last year’s summer read) Ken Kesey wrote, ”Everything in this is true even if it never happened.” This’ll be more important later but keep it in mind as you read.
Invite your friends, your own age and otherwise, to read Grealy’s autobiography, or parts of it. Ask them what they think and invite them to post their ideas on the blog. I’ll post about Truth and Beauty soon.
Before you start reading The Road check out Michael Chabon’s review for The New York Times Review of Booksit’ll set you up for the kinds of themes and writing you’ll be looking for. Be sure to notice the way that Chabon writes about the novel. He’s not summarizing or giving broad overviews of the plot. He’s taking his reader in to the way that McCarthy delivers his themes. Don’t worry if you can’t write as well as Chabon-you’re not supposed to…yet. (As a sidelight, Michael Chabon is seriously good writer himself. Check him out if you find yourself craving more to read.)
While you’re reading you can use this link to take a look at the route that the boy and his father take:
You’ll also want to write about what you’re reading-who wouldn’t-so please leave 2-3 comments about the book. It’s nice to have a conversation so please respond to each other’s ideas.
Your comments are due by July 10th.
Here are some additional spots to check out-feel free to post your own findings.
Death of a Salesman is about work. Work that allows us to get what we want. Work that defines who we are.
Go to the StoryCorps website and listen to 2 stories about work. Next write a reaction to what you heard and discuss what you think about work. How do you see work? What kind of work do you see yourself doing and why?
Finally, talk to 2 people you know who have or had full time jobs. Ask them about what they did. How they got into that line of work and how they see themselves. Keep that information for a future assignment.
Once you’ve listened to this write a reaction to anything you heard? Do you see Willy anywhere. Think about this quote:
“A salesman does have to dream. … Because you have to see something that isn’t there, and you have to make it happen. … You have to have the ability to believe in yourself enough to go out there and make it happen.”
Gregory Hamilton
Does this mean that you’ll have to learn how to be a salesman? Is this the future you see for yourself?
I’ve been thinking about Holden Caulfield-mostly because I’m currently teaching the novel to you tenth graders. I’ve been looking through your links and I wonder why this character has become such an icon.
Scroll down through the list and check out at least two of the references. Think about why this single character manages to find it way into our collective thoughts. Salinger wrote Catcher in The Rye in 1951, far before any of you, and in some cases your parents were born, yet many of you find the character realistic and believable.
Finally, write, you knew you’d have to write, a 250 or more word discussion about why you think this character has endured and become part of who we are. What about the character makes him so important to our culture? Write it in Word then paste it in to the blog.
J D Salinger’s Holden Caulfield carries an object that has meaning for him, his brother Allie’s baseball mitt.
On this page first write about your own talisman-what it is and why it has meaning for you. Then write down the best stanza from your poem for Allie’s mitt along with a link to the entire poem.
Now leave a comment that responds to ideas presented by the video and the audio clip. Consider the ways that different social classes of people experience the world. Do you feel lucky to be living where and how you are? How do you feel when you see peopel whose lives are considerably easier or harder than your own? Are you envious of the rich? How do you feel about the poor?
Compose your comment in a word document then cut and paste it in to the comment space.
Reading Slaughterhouse Five has me thinking about war…I remember John McCain saying that we’ll be in Iraq for 100 years and I’m getting depressed about the future.
I have two sons and I don not want them to fight and die in a pointless war. But as I reread the book I can’t get past the idea of “so it goes.”
February 22, 2008 at 4:50 am · Filed under Observations
February is too cold and too dark to be reading anything as potentially depressing as The Picture of Dorian Grey but that’s what we’re doing in AP Literature. It’s interesting how many of my students really like this book. They seem to respond to the ideas that are expressed by Lord Henry-mostly the ones concerning hedonism and, youth. It’s a little scary to see them respond to literature like this. I know I’m supposed to want them to but, at the same time I’m worried that they’ll take the ideas too far or miss the irony.
I remember going through my own phases along with the books I was reading. I was an Objectivist after reading Atlas Shrugged and, I still feel vaguely guilty whenever I betray the ideals I was so committed to after reading Walden. But I don’t remember getting these books from any of my teachers-they just seemed to wander in, connected to each other by the threads of what I was doing. (I remember reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice because it was mentioned in Annie Hall. Now that I think about it I read a number of things because of Woody Allen movies, Marshall Mcluhan, Portnoy’s Complaint, Sentimental Education. Does that make me a Woody Allen disciple?)
I don’t want to turn these kids into disciples of Lord Henry or Oscar Wilde or Woody Allen.
