Oden's day, February 6th

We will start off the period correcting the following sentence.  We will start the period most days with one of these sentences.  You are to correct the sentence as you write it in your notebook.  When we hand in the notebook on March 1st, I will be looking for grammatically perfect sentences.

Notebook:  You don't need to keep a formal notebook.  You may simply staple pages together.  I do need them to be organized as follows, though:

• Sentence corrections (all together)
• Journal entries
• Poems and notes
• Other

Today we will take a look at another blog of mine that teaches a couple of things about The Bean Trees.  The blog is found here: The Bean Trees blog

February 5th

Welcome to American Literature!
Mr. Isom

This week:
Introductions
Vocabulary for The Bean Trees here:  Vocab list  Every week you will have a vocab test Friday.
Read The Bean Trees for four weeks

January 28

Here's an online text for the novel Of Mice and Men:

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

December 3

November 15th

Walden Poster Project
Walden Quotes are found   here





Read The Crucible

Watch movie tomorrow

November 9, 2012

The Crucible

Watch the movie up to the point when the point where Reverend Hale comes to Salem
Read pages 8-30

vocabulary quiz

Here's an online text for the play if you need to read it at home and don't have your book:
The  Crucible

And here's the audiobook of The Crucible if you'd like to listen while you read along
Audiobook of The Crucible

And here is another audio book
The link above reads the whole book cover to cover

Vocabulary for The Crucible

November 2

1. Vocabulary test, Edgar Allan Poe
2. Finish Formative Assessment
3. Notes: characteristics of Transcendentalist philosophy

4. Watch Dead Poets' Society

5. Write your ten examples and briefly state the connection to Transcendentalist ideas


Transcendentalism

• praises individual worth over society
• shows contempt for attachment to social customs and habits
• belief in living in harmony with nature
• great dignity in manual labor; the common man is the true hero
• praise for the simple life; criticism for reliance on material possessions
• relationship with God should be personal
• value for revolutionary thoughts and ideas
• rejection of customs, especially traditional European ones
• focus on individual responsibility for developing a moral code
• value for intense feeling; Transcendentalists feel deeply and value that
• belief that Nature is the Great Teacher
• optimism

The Dark Romantics--Poe and Hawthorne--have a worldview that is, on the one hand very different from that of the Transcendentalists, and on the other, similar at its foundation.  I've reprinted the principles of transcendentalism, but this time I've changed them to show that the Dark Romantics take a similar view but put a dark, pessimistic tone to it.  The focus is still upon mankind and intense personal feeling, but . . .

• The individual doesn't fit into society because he's damaged
• shows contempt for attachment to social customs and habits 
• Nature is malevolent; mankind struggles with his inner demons
• The common man is the subject of the stories, and the protagonist is evil
• The protagonist has a dark relationship with dark forces within (no God in these stories)
• The protagonist has revolutionary thoughts and ideas, but they're twisted
• rejection of customs, especially traditional European ones
• the individual moral code is twisted and is at odds with society's values
• value for intense feeling; stories are all about the heart and psychology
• there is no Great Teacher.  The protagonist has no moral center.  He is alone
• Pessimism

Current Polls
And according to NYDailyNewhttp://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_rumble/2012/11/obamas-electoral-college-advantage-%E2%80%94-and-americas-new-normalshttp://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_rumble/2012/11/obamas-electoral-college-advantage-%E2%80%94-and-americas-new-normal