Heart of Darkness & Apocalypse Now: text vs. film

Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are two very separate entities, but in my view, Coppola played with the ideas from the original text in some meaningful ways. Please choose one aspect (a character, motif, scene, theme, etc.) of the text, and comment on how Coppola adapted it in the film. Include your evaluation of the success of this adaptation as well as a description and analysis of the ways in which the text and movie interact.

Please post your response before class on Friday 15 May. The assignment has a weight of 3 (standard 3 / standard 5 / standard 6). Please respond directly to this post (choose “leave a reply”). There is no specific minimum or maximum length, but try to aim for 250 – 500 words. You may wish to read the posts by last year’s eleventh graders and continue the discussion begun by one of them, but feel free to ignore these if you prefer.

English 9 poetry: selections for memorization and commentary

By 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, please post below your first and second choices for poems to do oral commentary on next week. Simply copy, paste and post both poems as a reply to this blog post, indicating which you prefer. I want to approve all of your poems as soon as possible so that you can begin your analysis before Monday’s class. You’ll be submitting oral commentaries on these songs for next Wednesday. By posting on the blog, other students can take a look at appropriate selections, and can also look over your second-choice poems and possibly choose them.

I would like all students to choose new, modern poems between 15 and 25 lines in length, because I want to avoid poems with extensive analysis available online. (I am willing to make some exceptions for students who truly prefer older poems, but if your poem is analyzed on SparkNotes, Shmoop or GradeSaver, it is not eligible.) The poem you choose must be by a published, professional poet (i.e., amateur online poetry is not appropriate for this assignment).

This is an excellent site for reviewing possible choices, and this site is also useful. If you set the browse or search options to poets born in the 20th century, you will avoid many overanalyzed options.

English 9 poetry: Carol Ann Duffy

This post is due by the time your class meets on Thursday, 23 April.

In class, we’ll read the first poem below (“Litany”), and discuss its main ideas. For homework, you should also read the second poem (“In Mrs. Tilscher’s Class”). After reading both poems, respond to the questions below in three short paragraphs:

1. Choose one image from each poem that you believe create similar effects. Analyze the role of each image in its poem: why does Duffy choose these particular sights / sounds / smells / sensations / tastes to describe? How do they help to convey the major ideas of the poems?
2. Do you have any childhood recollections you can compare to those the speakers in these two poems describe? If so, explain them, and how they affected you. If not, how did your childhood experiences, in general, contrast with those of these speakers?
3. Which poem do you find more effective and/or interesting? Why?

Litany
The soundtrack then was a litany – candlewick
bedspread three piece suite display cabinet –
and stiff-haired wives balanced their red smiles,
passing the catalogue.  Pyrex.  A tiny ladder
ran up Mrs Barr’s American Tan leg, sly
like a rumour.  Language embarrassed them.

The terrible marriages crackled, cellophane
round polyester shirts, and then The Lounge
would seem to bristle with eyes, hard
as the bright stones in engagement rings,
and sharp hands poised over biscuits as a word
was spelled out.  An embarrassing word, broken

to bits, which tensed the air like an accident.
This was the code I learnt at my mother’s knee, pretending
to read, where no one had cancer, or sex, or debts,
and certainly not leukaemia, which no one could spell.
The year a mass grave of wasps bobbed in a jam-jar;
a butterfly stammered itself in my curious hands.

A boy in the playground, I said, told me
to fuck off; and a thrilled, malicious pause
salted my tongue like an imminent storm.  Then
uproar.  I’m sorry, Mrs Barr, Mrs Hunt, Mrs Emery,
sorry, Mrs Raine.   Yes, I can summon their names.
My mother’s mute shame.  The taste of soap.

 

In Mrs. Tilscher’s Class
You could travel up the Blue Nile
with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs. Tilscher chanted the scenery.
Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswân.
That for an hour, then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.
The classroom glowed like a sweet shop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs. Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she’d left a good gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil, slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed
from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce,
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared
at your parents, appalled, when you got back home.

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.
A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs. Tilscher smiled,
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,
as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.

English 9 poetry: Sonnets

This post is due by the time your class meets on Tuesday, 21 April. Thank you to the students who posted earlier.

One of the most enduring poetic forms, the sonnet—a fourteen-line lyric poem about a single topic, with strict rules for meter and rhyme—was popularized by an Italian named Petrarch in the 1300’s. Later, English poets modified its rules a bit, and the English or Shakespearean sonnet was born. Both versions remain popular today in a variety of languages, although the strict rules that defined sonnets when they first became popular are often modified or wholly abandoned by modern poets.

Read the four sonnets below, and then complete the following items as a reply to this post. Note: though not required, any analytic comments you make about the sonnets’ meter, based on our work from Wednesday in class, will be much appreciated.

1. Comment on the differences between the modern and traditional sonnets. Which style do you find more effective or compelling?
2. Consider the two Shakespearean sonnets: what is their central difference? Which do you prefer? Why?
3. Of the four sonnets, which did you find most effective? Why? Give at least two examples directly from the sonnet. (This may be the same sonnet you chose for #2 if you like, but your comments should be different or, at least, more developed.)
4. Finally, choose a third sonnet that you like from one of the sources below, and comment on its effectiveness, using at least two specific examples. Please paste your sonnet into your response, or as a comment on your response.

all of Shakespeare’s sonnets / famous sonnets / more varied and modern selection (note that some of those on this last link can only be considered sonnets by very liberal standards—for your selection, try to stick with those that have only 14 lines, or close to 14 lines with a rhyming couplet at the end)

(scored with a weight-of-2 grade in standards 5 & 6)

Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 

Shakespeare: Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

   As any she belied with false compare.

 

e.e. cummings: being to timelessness as it’s to time

being to timelessness as it’s to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer? all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad? only their smallest joy’s
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

—do lovers love? why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools, all’s well

Claude McKay: America
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

English 9 poetry: “Annabel Lee”

Read “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe below, and then, in a reply to this post, do the following in approximately 4 – 8 sentences.

1. Comment on the poem’s rhythm and rhyme. What patterns do you notice? How does this differ from Mary Oliver’s poetry? Which style do you prefer?
2. Give your initial impressions of the poem. It’s a narrative poem: what kind of a story does it tell? What emotions does this story evoke in you? What kind of a mood does Poe create, and how?

(scored with a weight-of-2 grade in standards 5 & 6)

Annabel Lee (1849)
It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Link to Poetry Foundation text

English 9 poetry: Mary Oliver

Post due by 8:30 a.m. on Monday, 13 April

Read the two Mary Oliver poems below, and then, in a reply to this post, do the following in approximately 4 – 6 sentences.

1. Indicate which of the two poems appeals to you more, and explain why. This explanation does not need to be analytic, but if you find one or both of the poems meaningful, I encourage you to explore that meaning in your response. However, please avoid choosing one poem over the other only because you feel that you understand it better.
2. Comment on a key quotation, from 1 – 3 lines in length, from the poem that you preferred. Describe its effect on you, and what you think it might suggest. This time, in your description, do try to use terms specific to literary techniques—image, metaphor, diction, juxtaposition—but above all, be specific about the content of the lines. Say something about them that would not apply to any lines in the poem, but specifically to these.

(scored with a weight-of-2 grade in standards 5 & 6)

Wild Geese (1986)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Swan (1992)
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

English 9 poetry: “Kubla Khan”

Post due by 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, 9 April

Read Samuel Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (below), and then, in a reply to this post, do the following. Please do not look up any analysis of the poem online before answering the questions: there is absolutely no need to offer an analytic interpretation of the work, and I will be suspicious of any responses that sound as though they come from help sites.

1. Give your general impressions of the poem in 1 – 3 sentences. Please do not feel any need to analyze, interpret, seek “deeper meanings,” etc. Just describe the effect that the poem had on you when you read it. 
2. Choose one quotation from the poem, from 1 – 3 lines in length, that you found particularly interesting and/or effective. Explain why this passage stands out for you. You might mention particular literary devices or techniques, but this is not required. Again, you do not need to be analytic, but the more specific you can be in your comments, the better (that is, “The image makes me think of sharp, frightening smells and danger, and gives this section of the poem an eerie and creepy mood” is good; “The image helps me visualize the scene and makes it more interesting” is not). Note: when quoting poetry, include a slash to indicate where a line ends, i.e. I liked the image of the river Alph, that “ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.”

(scored with a weight-of-2 grade in standards 5 & 6)

Kubla Khan: Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
+++Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
+++The shadow of the dome of pleasure
+++Floated midway on the waves;
+++Where was heard the mingled measure
+++From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

+++A damsel with a dulcimer
+++In a vision once I saw:
+++It was an Abyssinian maid
+++And on her dulcimer she played,
+++Singing of Mount Abora.
+++Could I revive within me
+++Her symphony and song,
+++To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

This image of Xanadu was drawn by Pattern Wilson for an 1898 edition of Coleridge’s poem.

TFT (Time for Tangents) #2: “The darkness of man’s heart”

Topic: Are humans innately evil? In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding seems to assert that the human being is, essentially, a wicked and bestial creature, kept in line precariously by a web of controls (parents, teachers, police, laws, government). Do you find this conclusion accurate, or is it too extreme?

Parameters: Between now and midnight of Friday 28 November, please post an original response to the above question. Of course you should give your opinion, but to earn higher than a ‘5’ for standard 6, you should also introduce evidence from outside of the text. If relevant, consider applying research or anecdotes from other disciplines (social studies, science, philosophy, religion, or perhaps even the fine arts) to support your ideas. Include the MLA citation for your resource(s) at the bottom of your post.

By midnight on Monday 1 December, you must also post two or more responses to your classmates’ posts. Your original post should be 200 to 500 words in length; your responses to your classmates’ posts may be any length—be sure to address your peers with respect, even when disagreeing with them.

Grading: you will receive a weight-of-two score for the posts in standards 3 (conventions) and 6 (analysis). You may use informal language, but in order to earn a high score in standard 3, your should be sure to use correct grammar and conventions.

…”the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

David Tennant’s Hamlet: film vs. text

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to cinematic adaptations of Hamlet. I wish we had time to compare and contrast some of these, or that we had space in the unit for me to require you to watch a second version outside of class. However, I’m glad we managed to make time for a full version. As you may have detected, I have a bit of a crush on David Tennant, but I maintain that the one we watched is an excellent interpretation  of Hamlet overall, not only because of his particular charms. I hope those of you who would have preferred Kenneth Branagh’s somewhat more traditional version are not too sore about sitting through this Hamlet in sneakers instead.

You can’t tell me he’s not adorable as a lunatic.

For this post, please choose either (a) a scene or (b) a character from Tennant’s Hamlet, and evaluate the success of the adaptation. For instance, did you find Hamlet too manic and immature in the play-within-a-play scene? Was this doddering Polonius what you imagined when you read the original, or were you looking for a more devious interpretation? What’s your take on Ophelia’s unraveling, or on Gertrude’s portrayal of mental anguish as she chooses between her husband and her son? Be as specific as possible in your evaluation, citing particulars of the character’s appearance, movements, and costume; or the props, blocking, lighting, shots and sound used in the scene you focus on. (You’re welcome to assess Tenant himself, but please note that you will automatically lose 2 points per standard if you do anything but praise his performance. *)

Please post your 250 – 500 word response before midnight on Wednesday 12 November. [This assignment has a weight of 2, assessed for standard 3—conventions—and standard 6—analysis.]

If you’re curious, here’s Branagh’s version of “To be or not to be,” and a bit of utter, straight-jacketed madness from Kate Winslet as Ophelia. Then there’s Helena Bonham Carter, who is my favorite for the role. Too bad we can’t combine her and Tennant!

* Kidding… or am I?